Red Post Collection: Quick Gameplay Thoughts: 9/29, Evelynn Hybrid Context + AMA, Summoner Showcase 127, & more

Posted on at 6:43 PM by Aznbeat
Tonight's red post collection includes a look at Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for September 29th, a thread from Reav3 about the removal of Evelynn's hybrid elements, a new Summoner Showcase, and more!
Continue reading for more info!




Table of Contents


Quick Gameplay Thoughts: September 29 

Here's Meddler with his quick gameplay thoughts, covering the lower frequency of small gameplay updates (think Xin Zhao or Azir) for the rest of the year, Runes feedback, 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 
Fewer champion gameplay updates coming for a little bit 
For a little while (approximately the rest of the year) we'll be putting less time into gameplay updates like Xin Zhao's or Azirs and a lot more into getting pre-season ready and then balanced once it's out. We'll get back to gameplay updates at around the same speed sometime early next year, but expect to see fewer of those for a bit. VGUs (the large updates) by contrast will keep going at their usual speed, given the folks working on those aren't generally involved too much with pre-season. 
Runes Feedback 
Now that all the runes are on the website and people are getting a bunch of play on them on PBE we're poring through feedback about them. There are some things it would be particularly helpful to get people's thoughts on in addition to general feedback, including:
  • Whether it feels like specific champions have no choice of primary and/or secondary tree
  • Runes that you'd always want to take, or never want to take 
  • Runes where how they function isn't clear from the tooltip, or where there's information missing from the tooltip that's essential to making informed choices before the game starts 
Build a Rune page website 
As some of you may have noticed the rune page website doesn't reflect some of the recent changes to runes that are on PBE. We will be updating that website, but not as frequently as the PBE itself changes. Should see an update to it next week, and more regular ones following that, there'll be times where it's a bit out of date though and we're more focused on getting stuff into game and tested quick. 
Balancing in 7.20 and 7.21 
Generally we'll be balancing champions and the game in general for the new Runes system much more than the old one. We'll hit anything that's massively out of line in the new system still, but we're focusing work on how things will be for the long term, rather than the 2-4 weeks any changes in those patch will have on Live before old runes/masteries are replaced and balance around them's no longer relevant. Evelynn's one of the champs most likely to be affected by that (might be temporarily stronger or weaker than she will be long term)."

Meddler commented on concerns that Kleptomancy would become a compulsory rune for supports:
Yeah, there's some risk of that. We'd like Kleptomancy to be one of multiple options for supports, not a mandatory choice. Approach we'd probably take if needs be would be to reduce the raw gold income and put power instead into looted items in ways that aren't as mandatory for supports (e.g. more temporary combat elixirs or something similar)."

When asked for context on the Graves changes this cycle, Meddler commented:
"Quote:
Hey Meddler I wanted ask about the rebalancing, are the Graves changes we are seeing on the PBE the ones you mentioned previously or are there more and do you have an update on ohmwrecker
Just those likely for Graves for now. 
Likely still removing Ohmwrecker at some point, just got bigger priorities right now than finding somewhere else to put the name before we do so. "

Meddler gave his reasoning on why they kept some mastery names and not others:
"Quote:
This is not an issue, but why choose to rename old masteries that have been transferred into the new system? "Grasp of the Undying" kept its name (due to the album name probably), but why not Thunderlord's, or Warlord's, or Stormraider's, etc? A lot of the older names were pretty cool and "Electrocute" in contrast sounds underwhelming. On top of that, they (the old names) make the new system a little more approachable and bring more clarity.
We generally changed names where something about how you used the rune fundamentally changed. Name changes have been shown in the past to help players identify the need to reread tooltips and change behavior (e.g. can't proc Thunderlord's with one spell anymore on many champs or can't burst for Stormraiders). 
Grasp kept its old name because even if you never read the new tooltip and assume it works like the old exactly you won't make any major mistakes. 
Warlord's Bloodlust got renamed because we're looking to open it up to AP builders as well and want to get people to reassess it too. That one was a borderline case though, given for many users it is exactly the same."

Evelynn Hybrid Context + AMA 

With testing of the Evelynn update in full swing, Reav3 headed over to reddit to talk about the changes and the removal of her hybrid builds:
"Hi! For those that don't know me, my name is Reav3 and I am the Lead Producer of Champions (Which includes the Evelynn VGU.) I know a lot of Eve mains on this subreddit want to have a more open discussion about Evelynn so I made this thread + AMA. I can't promise that you will all like the answers I give but I can promise to at least give more context behind the decisions that were made (at least more context than "We like our Eve better") 
Since Hybrid Evelynn seems to be the topic I see the most frequently I will give the context behind that first. 
Early on in development we decided that Evelynns Thematic Fantasy matched that of an Assassin, rather then a Diver. We believe that thematic cohesion is important for a champion so we committed to the Assassin gameplay direction rather than the changing her theme to match a diver pattern (we would have probably made her more visually tanky if we went that direction.) Assassins have always been difficult to balance in LoL and we have made great strides in our understanding of how to make healthy Assassins in LoL (Part of the reason her Ult isn't 2 parts is because attaching a Assassins damage to there escape makes them much healthier similar Ekko Ult.) 
Hybrid builds tend to work pretty well on fighter/bruiser type champions but can be very problematic on Assassins, which is one of the reasons we can't balance Live Evelynn as an Assassin and also why Akali tends to be more of a top lane sustained fighter than a balanced Assassin. The first problem being that the burst gunblade gives will lead to us having to nerf Evelynn's base kit until it is healthy with gunblade and then she will basically be heavily pushed towards building a gunblade first every game (like Akali.) Even if we take gunblade out of the equation the type of pattern hybrid builds lead to (stick to a target and chase them down) would likely lead us to nerfing Evelynn's burst damage at which point she would have a much harder time functioning as an Assassin. Her current kit would be much weaker as a diver/bruiser so that would leave her in a bad state that we don't think would really be great for Eve or Eve players in the long term. 
While I know it feels like we don't care about Eve mains, we do care, its just that we also care about Evelynns future. We feel it will be worse if she ends up unhealthy for the game and then we have to nerf her over and over until she can't function as a Assassin anymore which is something we feel has a high chance of happening if she remained hybrid. We don't feel like that would be great for current or new eve mains in the future. 
Anyways, hope that context at least helps, I'll be around to answer more questions over the next couple hours. After that I will still pop in and answer what I can later this afternoon and also over the weekend though it may be harder to answer the micro-design feedback without being in the office to talk to the designers."
Make sure to check out the full thread for detailed questions and answers from the users of /R/EvelynnMains!

While we're on the subject of Evelynn, WAAARGHbobo commented on concerns about Evelynn being a demon, rather that a 'mystery':
I would argue the question now is, "what is a demon?" And I haven't seen someone get even 50% correct yet. (And yes that means there is a specific set of rules and worldbuilding around these things) 
Tahm was not mystery for mystery's sake-- he hints at the larger truths for runeterra."


Summoner Showcase 127 

A new summoner showcase is now available! Take a look at Summoner Showcase 127, featuring some great fan art from across the web. Here's GoMatGo with more:
"Summoner Showcase is on YouTube and Facebook now! You asked for it, you got it. 
This week on the Summoner Showcase we’ve got a Star Guardian Taliyah that’s as gorgeous and brilliant as the desert sun, a Noxus Poppy cosplay with flare to spare, a ridiculous acrylic PENTA-PAINTING and much more.

Join us on the Facebook page where you can submit content, share your favorite artists, and chat with the team: 
  • Riot Swimbananas– Riot Recruiter by day, Summoner Showcase host by night!
  • gomatgo – Producer, Show Runner
  • Riot Jynx – Producer, Creator Support, and cosplay mama 
Tell us what you’d like to see on a future episode!"

Quick Hits



"Greetings all, 
What you're seeing is a different region's version of Evelynn. At times, we will make multiple versions who may be sensitive to the type of content found in splash arts. 
Not to make any assumptions, but if the majority of you are from NA and EU, you will not be seeing any changes to Evelynn's appearance."
"PICK THE WINNING TEAMS FOR WORLDS 
Compete against casters and pros from around the world. Invite your friends to a custom leaderboard to see who will win. 
Unlock the unique 2017 Pick’em Poro icons by participating and by scoring at least 34 points. Get everything right and you will unlock all four Ultimate skins!"

"TL;DR: NA LCS is switching back to a double Bo1 regular season starting in 2018. 
Every split, we evaluate if the NA LCS format and schedule are creating competitive and entertaining matches. After three splits of Best of 3s (Bo3) in the regular season, we’ve weighed a lot of info including months of surveying fans, conducting focus groups, auditing viewership for both streams, and reviewing feedback from fans, teams, and pros. As a result, we’ve decided to move the NA LCS back to a double Bo1 regular season starting with the 2018 Season."
  • When asked about a previously mentioned Yasuo update, Riot Axes commented, noting they hadn't found any good changes yet:
"Explorations so far haven't been fruitful, so we have nothing pending. We still recognize the value of good Yasuo work, though."

Reminders

Last up, a few reminders on upcoming and ending soon promotions and sales!

No comments

Post a Comment