Red Post Collection: Gameplay Thoughts 4/20, April Bundles, Ask Riot, How We Make Champions, Vision Score Details, & more!

Today's red post includes a look at how our latest duo, Xayah and Rakan, were created, Meddler with a set of quick gameplay thoughts for April 20th, a new edition of Ask Riot, a set of April champion and skin bundles, details on the upcoming Vision Score system, results from the 2017 MSI draw show, and more!
Continue reading for more information!

• Red Post Collection: May Sales Schedule, Rakan & Xayah Launch Icons, [NA] Legacy Client Retires April 24, & more!
• Midseason 2017

• 4/18 PBE Update: Midseason 2017, Maokai/Sejuani/Zac Updates, Dark Star Kha'Zix and Orianna, New Chroma, and Much More! 

• Rakan, the Charmer & Xayah, the Rebel now available!

• Dark Star: Singularity - coming soon to PBE!
• 4/19 PBE Update: Dark Star - Singularity up for testing!

• Champion & Skin Sale 4/21 - 4/24

Table of Contents

• Creative Collaboration: How We Make Champions
• Quick Gameplay Thoughts: April 20 
• It’s time for April bundles! 
• Ask Riot: Snowdown Showdown and pro kills
• Vision Score Details
• Patch Chat with the Playtest Team - 7.8 
• 2017 Mid-Season Invitational Play-In Draw Show Results
• Join the Xayah & Rakan Q&A on Reddit!
• Quick Hits -  X&R Music, Mobile Shop, & more!
• Reminders

Creative Collaboration: How We Make Champions

With Rakan and Xayah's release to live earlier this week, Riot has published  a new mini documentary on how the pair was created:

"Join the Rioters behind League’s newest champions, Xayah and Rakan, as we take you behind the scenes of the champ design process. 

See more behind the scenes at Riot: 

The Founding Interns of League: https://youtu.be/PKbeDeu5Wbk 

Definitely (Not) Rivals: https://youtu.be/N44R8c_F2lI"

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: April 20 

With preseason in swing on PBE, here's Meddler with quick gameplay thoughts for 4/20:

"Morning all, 

Mid-season work's going through it's final phases at the moment. We've got all the content on the PBE now from memory, though some of it still needs final balancing, bug fixing or asset polish still. 

Rift Herald 

Speaking of ongoing polish there's a lot currently going into the updated Rift Herald. As a heads up there'll likely also be a bit of further polish that comes in 7.10 as well. We've got some finishing touches that probably won't be ready for 7.9, so we'll be looking to get those in quickly after as a result. 

Ivern 

Unless anything significantly changes we'll be doing a balance pass on Ivern in 7.10. As mentioned previously 7.9 won't contain many individual champion balance changes, given both that the systemic changes will affect balance on most champs to some degree and that we're still very focused on finishing mid-season itself. We are starting to line up likely projects for the following patch however. 

Starting Items for Passive Support Playstyles 

One of the concerns we've seen expressed since we revealed the changes to the Ancient Coin line is that it's no longer a good option for a really passive playstyle. In terms of how you get rewards as a support that's very much intended, we want reward to be tied to action with a meaningful difference between good and poor choices, something old Coin didn't have. We certainly do want to ensure Coin feels like a good option on squishier ranged champs though, so will be tuning things like coin drop position and pick up radius to ensure trying to get them isn't suicide for non tanky champs. We'll also be watching champs like Soraka and Janna who often aren't great fits with Spellthief's to ensure they're not just left without a good starting item. 

Non Gameplay Impacting: Feeney Art for Rakan and Xayah 

A while back we put up a dev blog talking about Feeney art (light hearted temporary loading screen art for champions in development). More about it at the link below. Now that they're out we can also share the Feeney art for Rakan and Xayah for anyone interested, which was what we see loading into playtests for many months before the final splash art was done. As with the final splash art for duo the Feeney art was also made as one piece, then cut in half with that intent it would be shown side by side. That had the added little benefit of being a fun way to test that some code changes to ensure Xayah and Rakan were positioned appropriately on the loading screen worked as intended too. 

http://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/2017/02/before-theres-splash-art-theres-feeney-art/ 

When asked about current thoughts on Lulu, Meddler commented:

"Quote: 

i hope you do realise that according to LOLKING Lulu has close to 90% ban rate in master tier above
while having ~~50% ban rate in plat+
why aren't you talking about her? it's been since 2 months her ban rate spiked while her win rate is high
people are tired of playing against an overpowered champion
isn't the goal of league to balance the game and nerf overpowered champs? cause this logic doesn't seem to be applied to lulu, she's COMPLETLY INVISIBLE in your threads
her laning phase is TEN TIMES WORSE than malz, and malz gets nerfed first
i don't know how, as a support main, i literally don't know how to deal with a point and click 650 range nuke + empowered AA
and so do all those people baning her

We'll probably be considering Lulu in 7.10 too, though that's not quite as certain as Ivern and she's more likely to be affected by the 7.9 changes. 

Lulu's also an example of a champion with very different perceptions by region. Her ban rate's really high in NA and EU for example, while from memory nothing out of the ordinary in Korea or Brazil. That doesn't mean she does, or doesn't, need changes, but it's important to consider when assessing both balance and player stated frustration."

Meddler continued:

"Quote:

she's not receiving individual changes, but support starting items are getting overhauled, so she'll be affected as much as the other supports.

Yep. Support item changes will have at least some effect on champs bot lane in general. AD and defense item changes will also likely have at least some impact on different matchups, team comps etc. Think it's more likely than not we'll still want to look at Lulu, very possible though ecosystem changes mean we don't however."

On Lissandra's new passive in 7.9, Meddler had this to say:

"Quote:

Hey Meddler. Any news on the Lissandra passive front? The recent buff to her was pretty underwhelming IMO, so I'm guessing you still have something planned?

Nothing in the short term at least. There's still need for improvement there, but it's less pressing than other work."

On the Tank updates this 7.9 PBE cycle, Meddler commented:

"Quote:

It seems that the new Maokai is pretty underwhelming for some players, his main problems are: slow W, E doesn't do enough damage and his Ult is slow and worse compared to his old one.Any changes planned? Or is it too soon?

We'll be paying a lot of attention to all three tanks getting updated. We don't want to react too strongly to initial feedback about the kits on paper though, that's gone poorly for us in the past. If he does turn out to be ineffective we'll jump on that quickly, do want to distinguish between actual ineffectiveness and concern that some things look weaker however."

On Ivern and potential nerfs, Meddler commented on his ability to double buffs:

"Quote:

Meddler, about nerfing Ivern, have you guys considered removing the second buff when Ivern or an ally kills red or blue, I know it was made so Ivern can give buffs to others, but a team having an extra blue and red seems like an unintended strength (especially early game, where no buff would be given) , it can simply be changed in the buff just dropping and have the person who wants it to channel for a bit (where do we even see those animations anymore).

Doubling of buffs has been an intended strength on Ivern. It's not something extremely core to him certainly, so could be removed, at the same time though I suspect that wouldn't solve the cases we'll probably need to target (e.g. speed/ease of clear, invade power)."

When asked about Maokai's W speed on the PBE, Meddler explained it was bugged:

"Quote:

Rioter GreaterBelugaWhale said that Mao's W was bugged. Can you clarify what the bug is?

We've been testing a version of Maokai W that starts slow but accelerates quite rapidly as he travels. Still deciding whether we'll ship that or go back to the speed of 7.8 Maokai W. What's on PBE at present however is bugged in that it's the slow starting speed and no acceleration, leading to a bunch of non functional situations. Definitely won't be shipping that version."

 GreaterBelugaWhale added:

It was changed to be slower initially, but with high acceleration. A last second bug fix created another bug, breaking the acceleration. 

Separate of all that, the entire speed change was something we were looking at as a possible cut if we felt he was now too unreliable. Which we do, so now speed is back to live

On Heimerdinger, Meddler commented:

"Quote:

Hey Meddler ive been asking this for awhile with no responses :(. 

Will Heimerdinger get any love this patch? He's spent quite some time in the gutter. I can hear him yelping "EUREKA" every time a patch bites him in the ass.

Very unlikely we make Heimer changes in 7.9. He's a slower burn project at the moment, with mid-season related stuff taking priority.

It’s time for April bundles! 

It's bundle time! The April bundles are now available through 4/27:

"Grab these limited-time bundles now through 4/27/17 at 23:59 PT.

Throw Weapons Not Games Bundle - 50% off at 2096 RP (4105 RP if you need the champions)

Skins included:

• Baker Pantheon
• El León Gnar
• Gladiator Draven
• Rageborn Mundo
• Glacial Olaf (Legacy)

Champions included:

• Pantheon
• Gnar
• Draven
• Dr. Mundo
• Olaf

Enchanted Jungle Bundle - 50% off at 2584 RP (4777 RP if you need the champions)

Skins included:

• Candy King Ivern
• Pool Party Rek’Sai
• Festive Maokai (Legacy)
• Pumpkinhead Fiddlesticks (Legacy)
• Special Weapon Zac

Champions included:

• Ivern
• Rek’Sai
• Maokai
• Fiddlesticks
• Zac

Gauge And Engage Bundle - 50% off at 2699 RP (4546 RP if you need the champions)

Skins included:

• Star Guardian Poppy
• Bloodstone Lissandra
• Surgeon Shen
• AstroNautilus
• Ironscale Shyvana

Champions included:

• Poppy
• Lissandra
• Shen
• Nautilus
• Shyvana

Support And Escort Bundle - 50% off at 2472 RP (4169 RP if you need the champions)

Skins included:

• Star Guardian Lulu
• Armor of the Fifth Age Taric
• Pool Party Leona
• Program Soraka
• Silent Night Sona (Legacy)

Champions included:

• Lulu
• Taric
• Leona
• Soraka
• Sona"

Ask Riot: Snowdown Showdown and pro kills

Vision Score Details

Here's Riot GMang with a detailed post on the new end of game stat Vision Score:

Hey everybody! We're trying a new "Vision Score" end-of-game stat (among some other news ones). 

The TLDR: Vision Score is a loose measurement of vision game contribution, and can be ballparked as "about 1 point per minute of ward lifetime I'm responsible for providing/denying." It tends to be in the 5-150 range. 

If you want more detailed info, here's more stuff to read below! 

Vision Score Context 

Participating in map vision is a powerful way to contribute to winning the game, but compared to many other types of contributions (like killing champions), there aren't very good tools to identify vision performance. You can check "Wards Placed," which is better than nothing, but as a lone data point, it's too isolated to paint a meaningful picture about how vision went in a game. 

Vision Score is a new tool to help players in this effort. It's more complex and comprehensive than Wards Placed, incorporating temporary reveal effects and vision denied while also establishing some anti-cheese rules. The hope is that this score is a more meaningful, trustworthy number for players to analyze and compare performance. 

It's important to note that Vision Score is not trying to be the last word on what good vision looks like. We felt that vision was such an ambiguous, indirect system that replacing player analysis with computer evaluation was not realistic or desirable. We're trying to keep it comprehensive enough to be meaningful but simple enough for interested players to break down and analyze. Vision Score is less trying to be Champ Mastery and more trying to be CS or Damage Dealt--it's a useful metric to evaluate performance, but nowhere near a "final score" on how well each player did. 

So, this system focuses more on "how much are you contributing to vision in a way that's potentially useful?" and keeps "exactly how useful was it?" a more secondary question. 

Vision Score System 

The "scale" of the point system is "every point of Vision Score is about equal to one minute of ward lifetime in value." So if your vision score at the end of a game is 121, you can ballpark "my vision contribution this game was worth about 2 hours of ward lifetime." This number comes from three main sources:  

• Ward Lifetime Provided: Each minute of ward lifetime you provide by placing wards will give you 1 point (can give fractions of points). There are actually a lot of modifiers to this score, see "Ward Lifetime Provided Modifiers" below. 

• Ward Lifetime Denied: When you get a ward takedown (earned gold from a ward's death), you get 1 point for every minute of lifetime remaining on the ward (permanent wards are assumed to have 1.5 minutes of lifetime remaining). 

• Vision Mechanics: Various vision-providing mechanics have a baseline score on-use (usually 0.1 to 0.5), and can also give bonus scores if revealing unseen champions or epic monsters (usually 0.1 to 1.0). This includes Scryer's Bloom, trinket activation, ward placement, Scuttler Ward, Ashe Hawkshot, Kalista Sentinel, and Quinn Heightened Senses. A Hawkshot that reveals a full Baron attempt will give much more than a Quinn W that reveals nothing (which will still give some score).

A typical Vision Score can be single digits (short game where you're not using trinket well) to well over 100 (long game with consistent sightstone use). Generally, vision-focused junglers come out on top for shorter games, whereas Sightstone supports come out ahead on longer games. 

Ward Lifetime Provided Modifiers 

The rule of "my wards give me 1 point per minute they're alive" actually has a bunch of rules that can reduce the score. Each of these reduces the score multiplicatively: if two rules each reduce the point value by 50%, the resulting ward will give 0.25 points per minute, not 0 points. Modifiers only apply to the value from their actual duration: getting a -50% modifier for 6 seconds will translate to -0.05 points, not a -0.5 reduction from the entire minute.  

• Staleness: A ward that hasn't seen any interesting units (enemy champions, wards, and epic monsters) in a while will gradually go down in point value, starting at -0% at 60 seconds of staleness and worsening to -50% at 120 seconds of staleness. 

• Redundancy: While a ward is near other friendly sources of vision (allied wards, structures, and lane minions), its point value will be reduced, starting at -25% for 1 redundancy and worsening up to -75% for 3+ redundancies. Lane minions don't count as redundant if the ward is in brush. 

• Safety: A ward that's very close to your base can give less score, starting from -0% score around your buff camps and worsening to about -50% score at your base walls. 

• Pointlessness: A ward that's very close to a friendly structure or inside your own base will have a -100% modifier to its point value. 

• Baseline: If a ward is quickly killed by enemies, it will still give lifetime score as if it survived a minimum of 20 seconds (0.33 points).

This modifier system does make some compromises in the name of avoiding cheese while hopefully staying understandable. The goal here is to capture general contribution, not perfectly measure ward usefulness.  

Closing 

We're excited to start seeing utility contributions get some much-needed visibility. This is an early take on this particular facet of the game, and I'm sure both the mechanics and the presentation have more work to do. 

Hopefully, Vision Score becomes a number that you can appreciate and analyze without it feeling too arbitrary. We'll be looking to iterate on it based on game results and feedback."

When asked about points on the vision score, Riot GMang commented:

"Quote:

The first thing I thought was "It would be cool if I got bonus points every time my ward reveals an enemy champion", but I guess it's more or less factored into the "staleness" modifier?

Yeah we wanted to promote general trends, not specific game events. This is both to avoid cheese (only placing where I already suspect enemies are) and also because the value judgement on individual vision choices is so nuanced (a ward can be perfectly placed and utilized even if there's nothing there to spot). That said, the act of dropping a ward can still give you some score for revealing unseen champions (as mentioned in "Vision Mechanics" sub-bullet). We did this (in combination with the minimum ward lifetime) because reasonable wards are sometimes placed with the understanding that they'll spot something and die quickly, and that seemed like it shouldn't be heavily disincentivized in the system."

Riot GMang continued:

"Quote:

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/k9MXINfa-idea-postgame-ward-map 

Good direction. I think vision awareness needs to be a thing to increase level of play at all levels. 

I am sure this was in production before my suggestion.
Also ADD team total vision score. This is important to promote the team aspect of the game and vision. If you are losing every game and have a lower team vision score, hopefully that can be a message to vision more, etc.
Pointlessness: A ward that's very close to a friendly structure or inside your own base will have a -100% modifier to its point value.
I get this. But what if I don't have red and bought Control to clear an enemy TP ward into our base.

Ya we started playtesting vision score in January. Posts like these are still useful though, any feedback for what you're working on can be a good data/discussion point. 

I think if Vision Score ends up being a useful metric for people, we'll look to expand it further. Being able to find your score mid-game, seeing team score, or knowing your career score is sort of "next step" territory to explore. 

Edit: In that particular case you'd get Ward Lifetime Denied points for the ward takedown. The Pointlessness modifier may deserve more some special casing based on the state of your actual base, though we haven't noticed it heavily influencing score or behavior in our playtests."

When asked about how the CC score is calculated, Riot GMang commented:

"Quote:

This vision score is cool and interactive. I like how it emphasizes the need for a support and encourages ADcough cough the rest of the team to place down some wards for once. 

How is the other score for CC going to be calculated? Is it going to be based off of seconds you CC'd the enemy or what?

CC Score: Hard CC duration applied to enemy champions (in seconds), plus half value for most types of soft CC, plus 1/6 value for slows. You can score off multiple champions at once, and allies can overlap their CC with yours without reduction; but if you apply multiple simultaneous CC to a single target, it only chooses the highest scoring CC you have on them for score. 

People with heavy teamfight CC or who have repeated lane CC tend to get top scores. DPS carries tend to have lowest scores."

When asked about getting points for using Nocturne's R as a vision denying ability, Riot GMang noted:

"Quote:

Make it happen GMang! :)

Was able to whip that up pretty fast, should make it in! 

Decided on Nocturne ult being worth 1.0, which translates to 3 points per minute of Nearsight applied to enemy champions."

On the safety modifier, Riot GMang commented:

"Quote:

Shouldn't the Safety modifier also depend on which turrets of yours are still standing?
If you lost up to t2 turrets maybe the scoring should get better instead of staying worse cause you actually provide useful vision cause the enemy has access to your jungle?

Ya it's possible that it's overly harsh. In general, we were ok with "if your team is losing and in base, you will have a hard time getting a high vision score, because you will have a hard time having actual vision control over the map. Your score will still be high compared to your team, but the fact that your score is getting strangled is probably reflective of the reality of your game state." We might wanna reopen that discussion tho..."

On being rewarded for warding, Riot GMang commented:

"Quote:

I think the direction of having this additional metric is great. However, while it's good for helping players who want to improve, are you guys looking to find ways to encourage (or even reward) more warding/vision? This question is mostly for those auto filled supports who refuse to buy sightstone....Which is a very frustrating experience to deal with.

Making strategic contributions (and the support slot) feel more compelling and require less personal sacrifice is a big topic for us. I suspect it will take a long time until we're happy with it. I agree that buying Sightstone (and autofilling support in general) can be a big buzzkill, and things don't have to be that way. I don't have much to add atm other than what we're already showing for Midseason, but we are definitely thinking about that particular problem and consider it a high priority for LoL core gameplay. Vision Score barely scratches the surface imo."

Patch Chat with the Playtest Team - 7.8 

With 7.8 on live, here's Riot King Cobra with the bi-weekly Patch Chat with the Playtest Team:

"Hey, everyone! I'm Riot King Cobra and it's time for another round of Patch Chat! These threads serve as opportunity for us to talk about the patches that come out every two weeks. You can find the most recent patch by following this link: Patch 7.8 Notes. 

I'm on Riot's Playtest Team, a group of high elo players who play with the new champions, reworks, balance tweaks, items, and map updates before they are released. It's our job to the test the changes that our designers come up with and ensure that we're introducing positive changes to League in terms of both balance and fun. Ask us questions - we'll try to answer as many as we can! 

Patch 7.8 is largely a preparation patch for the upcoming midseason changes and features changes to some dominant picks such as Ivern, Nautilus, and Shen. There's also some changes for Karthus and Ryze aimed at helping players who are playing on higher latency. Udyr, Amumu, Lissandra, and Aatrox also got some attention in this patch. Additionally, this is the patch our new champions Rakan and Xayah debut! 

All of us on the Playtest Team are avid gamers so feel free to talk to us as fellow LoL players! 

• Ben “Cezium” Burkhardt
• Don “Aesah” Ding
• Nicolas “Gleeb” Haddad
• Dan “penguin” Hardison
• Robert “ROBERTxLEE” Lee
• Rob "King Cobra" Rosa
• Nicholas “Nickwu” Smith
• Blake “S0be” Soberanis
• Trevor “ThEntropist” Thernes
• Arnor "TheLastAirbender" Halldorsson"

Check out the full boards thread for more discussion!

2017 Mid-Season Invitational Play-In Draw Show Results

With MSI 2017 right around the corner, Wednesday, April 19th played host to the MSI 2017 Play-In Draw to decide who will be in which of the two groups!

Results:

Group A:

• CBLOL's Red Canids
• OPL's Dire Wolves
• TBD (TCL Finals on 4/22) 
• LJL's Rampage

Group B:

• LCL's Virtus.pro
• LLN's Lyon Gaming
• GPL's Gigabyte Marines
• CLS's Isurus Gaming

VOD of the broadcast:

The first round of the play-in stage kicks off with Red Canids vs Dire Wolves on Friday, April 28th at 11 AM PT!

Join the Xayah & Rakan Q&A on Reddit!

As usual, expect us to have a summary in an upcoming red post collection! Check out the reddit thread until then!

Quick Hits -  X&R Music, Mobile Shop, & more!

[Quick Hits is our own collection within a red post collection, often including easy to digest stories, specialized information, and/or repeat info you may have missed in other posts!]

1) With their recent release, be sure to check out the Xayah and Rakan music on the LoL Soundcloud - including Wild Magic and The Charmer And The Rebel!




2) Riot Korea has recently announced an beta for a mobile version of the in-client shop!
Here are a round of images from the beta from community member sevn 

3) Cactopus provided an update on the missing ability scaling details on the LCU this cycle:

"I've got a belated update on this—sorry for the confusion. So, the devs actually weren't happy with the quality of this feature and thought it best to pull it down until some major kinks could get worked out. Basically, there are longstanding very complicated problems that restrict our ability to pull accurate ratios on certain abilities directly from the game and publish them elsewhere. 

These are systemic issues that affect anybody trying to pull ability info from League. Look at the ability description of Kog'Maw's W ability on OP.GG to see what it looks like. The game data system basically wasn't designed to feed certain info out accurately. So, as a result, when we implemented the ability ratios in the client, we discovered that 85% (rough guess) of the champs might actually be partially inaccurate. We just don't wanna give players bad information, so we'd rather hold the feature back for now until we can get it right. 

Does this explanation make sense?"

He continued:

"Quote:

Yes, that explanation makes sense. Does that mean that this feature is still planned to come back? If so, do you know of any rough timeframe for it (weeks, months, years)?

We're looking into what it would take to fix it. Seems unclear right now to be honest with you"

4) The League of Legends College Championship kicks of May 25th! See this announcement for more information.

5) The Breakdown with Jatt: Winning a 3 vs. 5 Fight (EU LCS Semifinals) featuring FNC vs G2!


6) VOD for Rivington and Phreak's Duo bot stream to celebrate release of Xayah and Rakan!

Reminders

• As part of the Rakan and Xayah release we'll be having a DOUBLE IP WEEKEND starting Saturday morning and lasting through Monday morning (times vary by region!). Rakan and Xayah are also avvailable for IP gifting and two limited time icons can be obtained by gifting or playing as the pair through April 26th  See this post for more information! 

• As mentioned in the 7.8 notes, Legend of the Poro King returns to the RGMQ from 4/21/17 12:00 PT - 4/25/17 04:00 PT and 4/28/17 12:00 PT - 5/2/17 04:00 PT.