Surrender at 20

[Updated] Red Post Collection: Pentakill Community Collab, Meddler Discussion, Merch Teaser & more!

[UPDATED 8/1: 14 champs coming to F2P rotation soon + a heads up on NA/OCE maint on Aug 2nd!]

Today's red post collection includes Meddler's 8/1 quick gameplay thoughts, a heads up that 14 champions will be added to the F2P rotation soon, a Pentakill community collab, a new LolEsports Arena article on what happens during a pause, a teaser for new merch coming soon, and more!
Continue reading for more information!



Table of Contents


14 Champions in F2P Rotation

In a reddit thread on the same issue, Riot Evaelin commented that starting tomorrow (August 2nd), there will be 14 champions in F2P rotation instead of the usual 10.
"Hey! We think y’all are right. Seeing as we’ve added a lot more champions, updating our model to include 10% of champions instead of just 10 every week seems reasonable. 
Starting from tomorrow, there will be 14 champions in the F2P rotation. The official announcement will roll out to all regions tomorrow as well. It might take us a little longer to fix the banners on articles and other little things like that, but please bear with us in the meanwhile. 
Also, Taliyah will be up there tomorrow c:"

Aug. 2 Maintenance - Ranked Disabled and Possible DCs 

Here's RiotBok with a heads up on NA/OCE server maintenance scheduled for August 2nd:
"Hey everyone, 
Back again to with a heads up we're continuing some back-end router maintenance on August 2 at 6:30AM PDT to perform some software upgrades that could cause some disconnects as well as potential issues viewing support tickets for both the NA and OCE servers. The maintenance is expected to last ~5 hours, so we'll be disabling ranked games from 6:30AM PDT to ~1:00PM PDT (that's 11:30PM AEST to ~6:00AM AEST for all our Aussie friends) to protect your LP while we're leveling up our software. 
I know the maintenance time window is less than ideal, but given this maintenance has a multi-region impact, we tried to find the best compromise we could based on usual play patterns. Since it's a bit more of an impactful maintenance than usual, we're going to be keeping a close eye on things during this maintenance and will make sure to update this thread when the maintenance is complete or if we run into any snags along the way."

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: August 1 

Here's Meddler with his quick gameplay thoughts for 8/1, with thoughts on loading screen tips, Brand, Ancient coin, and more:
"Morning all, 
Usual Disclaimers 
These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get put delayed or even stopped. 
If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler 
Loading Screen Tips 
For anyone still wondering, yeah, these are definitely lasting much longer in game than they should. We'll be shortening them in the next patch (7.16) so they're not still on screen as you're trying to jungle invade or emote spam each other. 
Ward Consistency Pass 
Also going into 7.16 will be a consistency pass on how attack modifying abilities interact with wards. Our intent is that abilities should stack on wards, but buffs shouldn't get consumed by them (in part because those abilities shouldn't be applying their bonus effects to wards). Most abilities already work as they should in that regard, there are a number though that need correcting (Jax R from memory consumes its 3rd hit damage for example). That should be on PBE already, let us know if you're seeing anything that still doesn't behave as it should. 
Brand 
We're pulling the Brand changes that have been in testing for 7.16. Still looking to do a bit of work on Brand at some point, see if we can make him a better choice in mid lane, rather than being as skewed towards a support as he is. Changes we've been testing don't hit the mark in terms of intuitiveness and feeling natural on Brand (bit too mechanical). 
Ancient Coin 
We're also going to be hitting the Ancient Coin line in the next patch. The mana return especially's definitely too high, and we're seeing that come across both in a lot of general power and excessive removal of consequences from poor mana use by many supports (blowing a lot of mana for no gain should have more cost). Might or might not need some further tweaks to gold income at some point, unclear for now if that's in the right spot or not with the mana return also being out of line and clearly in need of reduction. Looking at dropping that down to 10%, also considering whether a lower % max, rather than a larger % missing, model might be more appropriate."


Meddler commented on Duskblade of Draktharr:
"Quote:
further drakthar nerf ?
Not in 7.16 at least. Still pretty high on our watch list though, given how influential it'll be if overtuned."

On Azir, Meddler commented:
"Quote:
Do you estimate the Azir changes being implemented before or after the worlds patch?
Definitely after Worlds patch (which is 7.18)."

As for Taliyah and Zyra, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
Context behind those specific Taliyah nerfs? 
Any idea if Zyra will ever be pushed back into midlane? Most people player her support, but that's mostly because her scaling isn't that great.
Taliyah's costs are low enough she can shove pretty well even skipping a mana item entirely. Looking to make it so if she wants to do that she'll need to at least pick up a Morello's. 
Not sure on Zyra. Would like to given there's nothing too unhealthy about mid Zyra or anything and a number of players would like it to be a more viable choice. Her kit does skew quite a bit towards support play though as we saw almost immediately post launch. Possibility at some point, can't make any promises though."

When asked about Aatrox, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
Will Aatrox Rework come before, during or after the pre-saison ?
After pre-season."


When asked how Urgot is doing after his rework, Meddler mentioned:
"Quote:
Hey Meddler quick question, any thoughts how Urgot is settling in?
Seems ok so far. Not making any 7.16 changes as a result, barring some bug fixes of course."

And on Yasuo, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
Where are the Yasuo changes that you mentioned few weeks ago?
Haven't worked out as hoped yet. Still looking at him, possible we don't ship any version of them at least in the short term though."

Meddler gave his thoughts on another few champions:
"Kayn - About the right mark, potentially still too big a difference between forms. 
Nautilus - Probably needs a bit more help, would want to do so without just giving him a bunch of waveclear back (lead to some low interaction laning). 
Galio - Organized play/regular play challenges. Expect we'll siphon power from his ult elsewhere as a result. 
Viktor - As previously discussed needs less waveclear we suspect to be properly balanceable. 
Morde - Is metal and ghost."

Meddler also commented on Maokai:
"Quote:
Why was Maokai's q reverted?
E damage nerf was higher priority, also chipping a bit of power off Cinderhulk. Will look at Q again if he needs further work."

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: July 28 & Discusssion


Here's Meddler with his quick gameplay thoughts for July 28th, covering 7.15 balance follow-ups, Cho'gath, as well as follow discussion from over the weekend:

Morning all, 
Usual Disclaimers 
These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get put delayed or even stopped.
If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler 

7.15 follow ups

  • Nasus - Seems reasonable so far. He's scary sometimes, but juggernauts should have scary moments when they're in range to melee you.
  • Urgot - Also looking about right, at least initially. Jungle Urgot's struggling pretty hard, but that's as expected, solo lane Urgot seems to be performing fairly well.
  • Shyvana - Potentially too strong, no immediate plans for changes yet though, still watching.
  • Cho - Nerfs hit him meaningfully, may or may not still be out of line in jungle however. It's good to see Cho as a more functional champion (it's been a while), suspect we'll have to do some more work on him however soon or moderately soon. 
Cho and Stoneplate 
Speaking of Cho, figured it would be good to talk a bit about him and Stoneplate. We're very much aware there are some strong opinions about Cho and Stoneplate out there and it's a topic with a range of opinions on it internally too. We talked about that particular interaction a lot before launching Stoneplate. 
Feast's a really high true damage spell, capable of getting to around 1000 damage late game on a tank build, with Stoneplate pushing that up a few hundred more assuming a normal number of Feast stacks. That's more true damage than we'd normally be happy seeing from a champ in a single ability. Cho's got some pretty pronounced weaknesses however, in particular his long cast times, lack of mobility and limited reliability. Between those and the need to build Stoneplate, be around 3+ enemy champs and get into Feast range we concluded it was appropriate to allow the Cho/Stoneplate interaction to exist. So far that's still our take on it at present too. 
Having said that completely agree it can definitely feel really rough being on the receiving end sometimes and Stoneplate's still pretty high on our watch list. The ability to use strong combos with it allow some pretty interesting uses and makes it appealing in a range of different circumstances. So far that seems appropriate, possible we do have to make some changes to Stoneplate and/or other things if the power of those, especially relative to their counterplay, gets out of line, whether that's Stoneplate+Cho, Stoneplate+Locket or something else again. The increased reliability Cho gets off his E slow's also noteworthy, and it's possible that while this was ok with an unreliable Q that the increased target access he's now got might prove too dominant long term. 
Hotfixes 
Forgive the repetition on this one, last time from me I swear. Wanted to cover one final time that our approach to hotfixes has changed somewhat. We've done some technical work which means that hotfixing's now noticeably safer to do. That means we'll be hotfixing a bit more, in particular targeting some things that we're confident are having a negative effect on the game that previously we'd have waited until the next regular patch to change. 
Frequency of those hotfixes is likely to higher around big patches, such as 7.15 or pre-season, both because there's more things to potentially need correction and because those are generally the times where we've had a bit less time for gameplay testing on any given change. 
Censoring Mastery/Rune Page Names 
For anyone that missed mention yesterday the recent really broad censoring of page naming isn't working as intended. That should be back to previous functionality soon. 
7.16 Mid lane changes 
We've got a bunch of changes aimed at bringing strong performing champs who mid a lot down at present. Not targeting anything too large on any individual champ, more looking to shift the highest performing tier there down a bit generally. Some of those changes are on PBE already, should expect a few more, or adjustments to existing ones, over the next few days though (e.g. Syndra nerfs changing to a ratio nerf instead of a base damage nerf)."

When asked about the progress on the Miss Fortune splash updates mentioned in a past gameplay thoughts, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
Hey meddler
Do u have any notice about the update of Miss Fortune's splashes art?
Still planning to do them, it'll be a while though (probably this year, can't be any more definite than that though)."

Meddler continued:
"Quote:
So, after evelynn's rework (?
Sometime after yeah (not necessarily immediately after)."

On Nasus, Meddler commented:
"Quote:
I suggest make ultimate CD buff to increase with the level of ultimate.
Example level 1 ult - 30%, 2 - 40%, 3 - 50% 
And as much as i like you girls should also increase his Siphoning Strike CD by 1 second.
Having the CD scaling by rank's one of the first things we'd consider if this does turn out to have actually overbuffed Nasus. Not looking necessary so far, very with you it'd be a useful lever if that's the case though."

On Karma, Meddler commented:
"Quote:
Will Karma be a part of the mid lane changes? It seems like she's struggling right now.
Karma's not getting changed in 7.16. Mid lane wise we're looking almost exclusively at trimming power off those who are too dominant."

As for Sion, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
On the topic of Sion, I asked a question in the previous "Quick Thoughts" but you didn't catch it. 
Isn't the buff on W too big? It's a 50% increase, going from 2 to 3. Can he really afford that? I'd prefer a smaller buff that still leaves the champion playable than a bigger buff that makes him perma-ban.
Not certain on the W, still testing/discussing that."

Meddler continued:
"Quote:
I'm curious about the goals or purpose of the Sion buffs currently on the PBE
Ult - Sion's a tank who often controls fights as much through zones of threat as actual CC/damage (stay out of Q, avoid R, kite his passive, don't be near W). Looking to reinforce that a bit with the R by rewarding cases where he's not just popping it point blank on people and instead getting a bit of charge up in. Also has the benefit of making it more valuable for allies to try and set up targets as Sion is ulting in. 
W - bit of power being added. Sion's win rates may be higher than many, we don't feel that's representative of him actually being that strong though (lot of ways averages can be non representative)."

On Twisted Fate, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
How much did 5 Movespeed help Twisted Fate to accomplish your goals for him so far?
Looks like it's been a pretty minor, but slightly noticeable, power bump so far. No surprises there and that's also all we were looking to give him."

On Diana, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
Any more plans for Diana or are you happy with the changes?
Nothing short term, some day larger work (probably not this year)."


Meddler gave his opinion on Lethality:
"Quote:
Any thoughts on nerfing lethality? Personally i think whenever jhin builds lethality instead of crit, its an indicator that lethality is too strong.
Lethality looks ok, Duskblade specifically might be too strong still. 
Given his kit I'd expect Jhin to be interested in Lethality if the items it's on are ever in a useful spot in general. Dude's got a really AD caster like pattern, even on his auto attacks. We do want to support caster type ADCs through itemization, and Lethality items are part of that, so that's not a warning flag for us as a result."


When asked for more info on the Sivir buff that was quickly hotfixed on 7/26, Meddler commented:
"Quote:
I've only got one question; how did Sivir's Q buff go live like that?
We do team reviews of upcoming balance changes to discuss intent and impact. Normally that catches stuff like this, where the group will help an individual identify why a suggested change is out of line (problem not correctly identified, impact not correctly assessed etc). In this case while those concerns were brought up we failed to act on the 'getting something different into the patch' end of things and missed that we hadn't covered that while focusing on other stuff. Our bad there, hence the rapid hotfix."

Meddler provided an update on the proposed icon updates mentioned in an earlier gameplay thoughts:
"Quote:
Did the artist decide on what to do with the Ahri icons yet? 
What about the other icons? Will we see them soon?
As said previously we'll probably be leaving Ahri's icons untouched, art team overall concluded they weren't in need of work enough to justify the time as I understand it (getting that second hand though, so possible that changes again someday).
Others still coming at some point, other stuff cropped up though that's taking icon artist bandwidth so they've been delayed a lot more than I'd originally expected when I mentioned them (new Runes icons in part, plus some other stuff)."

Meddler replied to a question about getting the designer's opinion on a reworked champion:
"Quote:
Hey Meddler I got a question about reworks regardless of scope do you guys consult the original designers of the champs when doing a rework
Usually, though it's not always possible (a few people aren't at the company anymore) or not always a good use of time (some people are on R&D now and not so in touch with the current state of the game). 
Talking with the original people that built a champ can be really useful to avoid relearning lessons they went through, to understand initial intent better etc. How the champ's been on live and what players have attached to's often more important though, so while understanding that history's valuable it's not a blueprint to stick to over other factors, particularly when some things have proven to be problematic that weren't originally foreseen."

Pentakill Community Collab 


With the lovely new Pentakill Kayle skin testing right now on the PBE, and a new Pentakill album looming closer, a new community collab article is out from Riot Jynx, showing off art form three community artists:
"Pentakill is back! Which also marks a perfect opportunity to share three epic headbanging collaborations with community artists Shilin, Suqling, and Ze. Enjoy these awesome pieces, and learn more about the creators below! 
Pentakill group by Suqling 
Suqling chose dynamic poses and a moody color pallet for her rendition of the full Pentakill band! Check out our Fan Artist Feature with her to see more of her work. 
Pentakill group by Ze 
Ze shows us a haunting side of Pentakill in her imposing illustration of the entire band! Check out our Fan Artist Feature with her to see more of her work. 
Pentakill Sona & Kayle by Shilin 
Shilin was inspired to focus on the ladies of Pentakill rocking out in this epic new painting! Check out our Fan Artist Feature with her to see more of her work. 
Share more of your favorite Pentakill fan art in the comments!"

Arena: Anatomy of a Pause

LolEsports released a new Arena article, taking an in depth look at what happens when you see a pause during LCS or other tournaments:
"It's game three of a tight series at the NA LCS Battle Arena. The mid-laner surges down the river, roaming on a wild hunch. He smashes his ult, flashes into bot lane, and then -- a pause. The crowd groans, viewers wonder what’s going on, then, the shoutcasters explain the problem. After some duration of time, the game resumes.

But what actually happens on stage and backstage during the pause? 
Some of the team who help keep NA LCS running smoothly sat down to explain how pauses happen, how we prevent them, and what’s going on behind-the-scenes. 
Before we dive into pauses, what do we do to prevent a pause from happening in the first place? Can pauses come from players or only referees? 
RIOT RAVES, HEAD REFEREE: The two biggest things we have to prevent pauses are standardized hardware and a checklist every pro has to complete before the game starts. Every pro computer uses the same base parts except for mouse and keyboard. Components like the graphics card or hard drive need to be on the market for 6-12 months with very stable driver releases. Also, our IT team is always checking out hardware and software to provide the most stable of venues, they’re why we’re so confident with the parts and software we use. 
Also, before any LCS game starts, every pro has a list of steps they need to complete regarding their keyboard, mouse, computer, key bindings, settings, and so on. If a pro finishes this checklist correctly and signs off to their team referee, we shouldn’t see any issues related to an incorrect setup. 
Both the head ref spectator account (operated backstage) and players can pause a game. If a player sees something wrong, the pro can pause the game with the command /pause into chat. If a stage ref sees something wrong, he or she can tell any pro to pause on voice comms as well.

So, we’re in game at the NA LCS, everything’s going well and then...there’s a pause. What happened? What’s going on? Why? 
RIOT RAVES: First, someone pauses the game and immediately talks to their team’s referee. Probably 80% of pauses occur around the start of the game and are something fixable within three minutes. The problem could be, “My runes are wrong,” or, “Keybindings aren’t working,” or something far worse. Often, these early issues are items on the checklist that a pro didn’t complete properly and can be quickly fixed. 
As Head Ref, how is this communicated to you? Who else needs to know? 
RIOT RAVES: As soon as a player tells their ref what’s going on, that ref relays the information into the Live Operations (the people responsible for running the show) mic lines. At that time, the head referee, Live Producer, and other key people get basic information about the problem, like, “Keyboard problem. Graphical bug. Monitor issue.” 
RIOT EMIL, LIVE PRODUCER: Since I’m informed along with refs in that first update, I can now track how severe the problem is and communicate to Broadcast Producers (the people responsible for the on-air presentation of the games) so our Shoutcasters know when we cut to show the player having issues, and how long we’re going to be out of game.
So once Live Operations and the refs know, what happens next? 
PHREAK, SHOUTCASTER: Right after Riot Emil and Riot Raves knows, Broadcast is also relayed information about the problem, even if it’s a few words such as, “Keyboard issue, red team, two minutes.” The camera will cut over to a shot of the team and a ref around the problematic part, in this example a keyboard, and we can tell viewers exactly what’s going on. Hopefully we have something good to fill up the remaining 60 seconds with relevant information and then we’re back in game. It’s also important that what we talk about won’t give critical information to a team that they may not have known, like a large gold lead or an impending gank, if one of the pros has their headphones off to communicate more about a problem to the refs. 
THEMAY0R, BROADCAST PRODUCER: From a broadcast standpoint, viewers always need to be informed about what’s going on if we’re not in game. When the broadcast is in a game, it’s easy to see that everything’s great and that the show is running smoothly. But when we’re out of game for whatever reason, fans will need to know what’s happening. 
When there is a pause I can expect to hear from two different places that something’s going wrong: The Observers (team who controls the in-game camera) and from Riot Raves/Riot Emil (Head Ref and Live Ops). Now Production calls to modify the broadcast graphics on the fly with “Technical Pause” then, the director will call to cut to a player cam, so anyone tuned in or just tuning in will see, “Oh, something’s wrong with that pro’s computer.” 
PHREAK: That’s why you’ll hear me or Riv go, “It looks like Sneaky’s keyboard is having problems” when the camera cuts to them, and we can talk about what led up to this point and then what we’re going to see right out of it. With Broadcast Production showing viewers directly what’s happening, and us talking about it, anyone who’s watching should know the who, what, when, where, and why we’re paused. 
What about the times where it’s not so short and sweet? Say it’s a long pause, does anything change? 
PHREAK: Well, the long pauses can be something simple, but time consuming, or… 
RIOT RAVES: Bad. Really bad. Basically, there’s two different types of issues if it’s not a quick pause: more involved hardware problems and bugs. No one wants it to be a bug at all, triaging a bug is not easy and it’s never really the same every time there’s a bug. Problems that are bugs are really bad to work through, if it’s something known we probably have a work around, but if it’s completely new we’re in unknown waters. 
RIOT EMIL: While swapping a keyboard only takes a minute or so, there are problems which are not so quick and easy to fix. Say a pro’s computer screen starts flickering. Or they blue screen. Or input is being delayed for whatever reason. Instead of diagnosing the problem right there and causing a really long pause, we’ll swap out the entire computer. Once we’re sure this is the problem we need to solve, we let players talk again. 
Pros can talk during pauses? 
RIOT RAVES: As soon as we get everything we need from them in order to start diagnosing or solving, we don’t really need their help anymore. So, instead of sitting in silence, Referees let both teams talk at the same time. It’s fair this way—they have the exact same amount of time to discuss whatever instead of one team getting a few extra minutes over the other. 
RIOT EMIL: Swapping a PC takes six or seven minutes, and IT knows that they’ll be swapping PCs around a minute into the pause. Once we inform Broadcast we’re swapping it, they know there’s another six minutes that needs to be filled before pros get back in-game. 
PHREAK: If we hear it’ll be six minutes before we can return to the show, we can go “Hey, isn’t there a piece around Team A that’s five minutes long that we played earlier? We can replay that right now, then cut back to the analyst desk and bring up the pause is almost over.” Camera will cut back to the teams afterwards and then we can jump right back into game with only a few moments of time not showing viewers entertainment. 
How about an actual bug? If something’s wrong with the game itself, how bad can it get? Like that one MF ult Spring 2017. 
RIOT RAVES: Not the MF ult one. 
RIOT EMIL: Oh yeah, that one. 
PHREAK: Yeah, that was a fun one. 
THEMAY0R: We don’t talk about that one /s. Seriously though, we talked about that one a lot. There were a lot of things that went wrong across the board, as well as new tech we tried out. 
RIOT EMIL: Yeah, a lot of things were bad on that bug. 
For those who don’t know or remember, the MF bug was… 
RIOT RAVES: FlyQuest vs. Cloud9. MF casts E, before flashing forward and casting her ultimate. After a few seconds a pause is called. The ref hears something like, “My ultimate did no damage.” 
RIOT EMIL: So we pull up the separate head ref computer (what we use to monitor from backstage) and we can see MF ulting, but no bullets flying out of her guns. Our natural thought is, “Well if the bullets aren’t there, is damage being done as well?” 
THEMAY0R: I’m overhearing all of this and thinking, shit. That’s a game breaking bug. I hate these kinds of situations since we never know how long a bug related pause will take. If we remake the game that can take upwards of 20 minutes to resolve. That’s a lot of time out of game. 
RIOT RAVES: We’ve got to verify it’s a bug and dealing no damage, see if I can reproduce it under similar circumstances…we’re checking to see if this bug was anything more than visual. 
How did you try to reproduce this MF bug? 
RIOT RAVES: If we have a clear look at the bug from our spectator options, we have a clear idea what it was and can proceed on what to do next. If we don’t have a clear look, we attempt to reproduce the bug quickly (hopefully within a few minutes) to better understand what is going on with a custom instance of the game with the same champions. At a later point that day or in the week, we’ll use developer tools to try and recreate the exact timing and positioning of the actions that led to the bug. 
Cooldowns, summoner spells, timing, we’ll use every bit of information we can get about what was going on from the players as well as the video from their screen to try and make it happen again reliably within 10-15 minutes. 
With or without a quick repro to know what caused the bug to occur, we need to either let the game continue as is, or fix the bug. If we can prove the issue isn’t player error, we offer the disadvantaged team a remake, and now we can also offer Chronobreak to fix it. If the bug disadvantaged both teams, both are offered the same choice and if either team accepts we take it. 
What do you mean, fix? 
RIOT RAVES: When we’ve found gamebreaking bugs, we’ve historically had two options: Remake the game from scratch, or let the game continue. Obviously, this can cause some pretty crappy results for everyone if we’re twenty minutes in and we have to go ‘Just kidding, let’s restart.’ Chronobreak added a third option where we can restart the game and queue it up to just a few moments before the problematic time. 
RIOT EMIL: We can’t rewind anything. The way the game is coded, servers are run, once a moment in time has happened, it’s happened. We can’t rewind any game back ten seconds. What we can do, though, is grab what the game was at ten seconds previous, or twenty, or whatever time is best for competitive integrity, and start up a new game from that precise moment. In effect it’s the same game, but it’s a whole new one as well. 
RIOT RAVES: Except Chronobreak at that time was… 
RIOT EMIL: Under development. For what it did, it was amazing. But for what it can do now compared to what it was then, it wasn’t as easy to use. 
THEMAY0R: And it was a little cumbersome.. 
RIOT RAVES: So now we can do this thing, the question to the team becomes: Do you want to continue, or possibly start the game a little before the problem and if that doesn’t work then it’s a full remake? 
Why wouldn’t every team just select the second option? 
RIOT RAVES: Except this first test of Chronobreak on a live setting was a big unknown. If you pick Chronobreak and the new game state doesn’t work, you have to remake completely anyway because the active game is lost. Granted, even with the possible problem it caused, Chronobreak v1 was far better than a remake since you have a good chance at not needing to start a game fresh. 
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Continuing left them in a bad spot, and if we had to remake the game, it wouldn’t be great either. We told FlyQuest and Cloud9 it was the first time we’d be using Chronoshift to start a game just before the problematic time, and they decided to try it. 
RIOT EMIL: So we set up the tool and plugged everything in. The game looked set up right (a few moments before the MF ult), and everyone was in the right place. 
RIOT RAVES: We told the players exactly where and when the game would start, which was but a few seconds before the original ultimate was cast. Everyone was readied up and got ready to start playing from that point… 
THEMAY0R: Broadcast is ready to send us back into game… 
RIOT EMIL: We’re ready to resume broadcasting with the match continuing… 
PHREAK: And as soon as the game starts, we see the game be paused again immediately afterwards. I think Jatt shouted, “Why another pause?” and hung his head on camera. 
RIOT RAVES: Now in the second pause, we told the players that the UI needs a few second to update for ability indicators. When the game unpaused everyone should wait a second or two before worrying an ability won’t come off cooldown. If it did last a few seconds after the pause, we were ready to perform a full remake at that point. 
THEMAY0R: And when we finally managed to get back into game, we missed 10-15 seconds of action. With the quick pause and need to cut between the casters and the pros again, by the time we got into game we were slightly behind the action and joined the game mid-fight. So we had to run a replay of the repeat attempt at the kill bot lane in order to catch viewers up. 
PHREAK: Lesson learned! We had to be really clear with teams when we used Chronobreak. 
RIOT EMIL: There were always plans to include more functionality, but we needed something that worked ASAP, and that’s why 1.0 existed. After a lot of engineering work, we’re now on 2.0 (which has been used successfully multiple times across different regions) and that problem doesn’t exist anymore. We can pick a point before the problem time and ensure a new game is started properly, so Chronobreak is reliable if we have to use it. 
PHREAK: Which we never want to. 
THEMAY0R: Hell no. But it’s nice to have it there. 
So next time a pro hits the pause command, remember that beneath that calm exterior there’s a team of people working furiously to resolve it. May all our pauses be short and few! "

Quick Hits

1) The Riot Games Merch FB posted a teaser picture for an event that will start on 8/10. Keep your eyes peeled for more info!
"Going to be quite an event..."

2) Speaking of Riot Games Merch, an email reminder was sent out for the Limited Edition oversized Warring Kingdoms Azir figure, which will soon be retired from the shop.
"The Emperor has arrived. Warring Kingdoms Azir joins the Series 2 figure line as an over-sized and Limited Edition figure. All pre-orders have shipped and an extremely limited amount are now available in the store before he is retired."
The Riot Games Merch FB provided a look at how this figure was made:


Reminders

Last up, a few reminders on upcoming and ending soon promotions and sales!
  • The Omega Squad 2017 content is now available, including new skins for Tristana, Veigar, Fizz, and Twitch, as well as chroma, bundles, and missions for each! The bundles will last through 7/31 [TODAY!] and the missions have an expiration date of 8/21. Make sure to check them out!
  • As mentioned in 7.15 notes, Ascension returns to the RGMQ on 7/28/17 12:00 PT - 8/1/17 04:00 PT and 8/4/17 12:00 PT - 8/8/17 04:00 PT.
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