Red Post Collection: Quick Gameplay Thoughts: 10/27, October Early Sales, & More

Posted on at 12:49 PM by Moobeat
Tonight's red post collection includes Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for October 27th, another look at the October Early Sales, a few reminders foe events happening now, and more!
Continue reading for more information!



Table of Contents


Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 27th

Here's Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for October 27th, including discussion on the balance teams personal ranked ratings,  heath bar improvements, and 'Bandit' on suipport items:
"Morning folks,

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

Balance team is silver, lol

Been seeing this statement, or something similar to it, crop up quite a bit recently. It's been a common enough joke at times in the past of course, feels like there are quite a few people treating it as fact right now however. Figured the easiest way to talk about it as a result was just to link a bunch of accounts from people on the Live Gameplay team who are fairly highly rated this season.  
Note that I've used op.gg below simply because it's a site I personally use, not because Riot endorses it any more or less than any other similar site. Divisions listed are where people are in solo/duo, some people have higher ratings in Flex, others don't play flex at all.
A few other notes:
  • While the Live Gameplay team is the team that does most of the patch to patch balance changes they also do a lot of other stuff too (e.g. item changes, smaller champion updates, runes work etc). They're also not the only team that does balance work (the new champion team for example is responsible for the release balance of a champion, with Live Gameplay taking over after that). 
  • This isn't the full Live Gameplay team. There are some lower ranked folks on the team too, and some other Diamond+ players as well. We've generally found being good at LoL makes it more likely someone will be good at designing on LoL, but also frequently had people who don't do so well in game perform really strongly as designers. 
  • We've also got a separate team called Playtest with a higher average ranking again (generally high diamond to masters) who are focused on assessing upcoming changes and how they'll impact the game.
Health Bar Improvements 
Most people have probably seen this already, for anyone that hasn't, we've got a bunch of health bar changes coming soonish (not in 7.22, but soon after):
https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/2x0eKJkU-preseason-healthbar-update 

In addition to general feedback on those changes thoughts on other ways we could improve health bars further would be really useful too. We're planning a second round of work for early next year, looking at things like conveying HoTs and DoTs well for example. Since we're working on health bars already that makes that the ideal time to add any other features to them that would also be really valuable before the people looking at them move on to other work. 
Bandit on the support items 
For now at least we're putting the old Bandit mastery on the support items to avoid hitting support income in pre-season. Longer term we may look at better ways to deliver that income, at least at present we'll be delivering it there though."

On Galio, Meddler commented:
"Quote:
how does Galio fare now after the hotfix?
Thanks. 
We'll look at Galio again today, not sure yet. 
One of the reasons for putting power into the Q in particular was to try and get back a bit of the old Galio playstyle, create a larger distinction between tank and AP builds. The passive by contrast doesn't help as much there, especially given it also requires him to be in melee range in the first place."

Meddler talked more about shields and the new healthbars:
"Quote:
It's hard to know how large of a shield a player has. They don't last long enough to count health bar lines while also maintaining battle awareness.
With the healthbar being worked on, has there been any work to add clarity with shield strength?
Not sure if it's been considered, I'll pass the thought along though. Can personally see arguments both for and against showing more precise shield values. On one hand having information lets you make more informed choices potentially. On the other the difference between a 300 and 400 point shield won't necessarily change your play and communicating it does make it harder to communicate other stuff (only so much real estate on screen and ways you can split people's focus)."

Meddler answered a user's multiple questions about balance in general:
"Quote:
I kind of figured balance team would be somewhere around Diamond, but I have just a few questions about it since I'm sure it's brought up a lot of times and there's never an answer. 
1) In regards to balance, do you try to balance for everyone (which would be a pain) or do you balance for higher levels / LCS play? In either case, why and really do be honest with it. I'm fine with (most) of the work you guys do, sometimes it seems like you're throwing darts at a wall. 
2) What goes into balancing, do you check statistics, numbers, compare it X vs Y? How long and what discussions go on when, say "Let's nerf this" or "let's buff that?" Is there a whiteboard of all the things that it may affect or hoping it may affect? 
3) Do you guys listen or at the very least consider what boards say? For example, I know a lot of people including myself don't think that Ahri needs the Q movespeed. The reason I bring this up is that I had a developer friend who still works on a website. Being technologically stupid myself, I'd offer ideas which apparently helped him since I was looking more from the other side of the fence. 
4) Finally, who do you think represents the most balanced out of all the champions (fun question)
1 - Our starting point for balance is high ish solo queue/flex play (plat and upwards). We will balance for balance outliers in other contexts though, even if they're fine in that context (e.g. if a champ's completely unstoppable in bronze but fine in Diamond that's still not ok). For a few patches a year (World's Patch especially) we'll also focus more on pro play than usual too. 
2 - Balance uses a combination of assessment of play patterns (what champs do and how others respond), performance statistics, in game experience, collected feedback, theoretical comparison to other champs and almost certainly some other things I'm forgetting. When we're doing buffs or nerfs it starts with a description of both current problem and desired end state, with some arguments following that as to how proposed changes can get to that goal. During discussions we'll often whiteboard out a discussion, the tracking for each patch is done electronically though (Jira, for anyone familiar with the term). 
3 - Boards feedback certainly gets read and thought about. So does Reddit feedback. And Inven feedback. And in client survey feedback. Etc. Getting a range of views, rather than just working off our own assumptions, or those from a small segment of the playerbase only, is really useful. 
4 - I think Morgana's tended to be one of the most balanced champs historically. She's not always meta, but usually at least an ok choice, and hasn't been too dominant generally, despite no massive kit changes. Importantly she also performs well at a wide range of skill levels. She does have some counterplay/interactivity issues sometimes mid too, I figure that's not what you're asking in terms of balance though."

On Zyra, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
Any idea when that Zyra on- kill work will happen to bring her back to Midlane? Or is it just something you guys would like to do post preseason?
We've been testing out some changes with the hope they'll help Zyra play in both support and solo lanes. Timing wise I'd hope sometime in the next few patches, depends on how they test and what fires crop up from pre-season though."

When asked why there was less gameplay change talk this patch, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
With pre-season upcoming, I'm assuming there won't be a whole lot of changes happening until then so not as much to talk about.
Yeah, that's a big reason for less gameplay discussion in some of these posts at present.
The other thing though is I believe there are a lot of people interested in this sort of stuff and feel it is really relevant to various balance discussions."

When asked for context on the Evelynn changes we saw in the 10/26 PBE update, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
Do you have any insight on the pbe change to eves E? The passive and r changes make sense to me but the E change has me puzzled
We're looking to make AD Eve, or at least Hybrid Eve, a bit better, especially given Eve's historically had some value from AD/hybrid builds."

Reav3 continued on the same topic:
"Quote:
Considering she no longer has the AS steroid on her E, I question if she really needs an AD build anymore. Reav3 mentioned she can't be healthy that as a hybrid because she tends towards bruiser and not skirmisher, which I think some people wanted. Also, without the tanky- initiation ult again, I have to ask if supporting AD evelynn is a good idea anymore.
Don't get me wrong, I preferred the old hybrid Evelynn but if we want to be honest, the old evelynn is dead and gone. Part of me says we should let her rotting corpse lie buried.
Overall this should be a slight buff to Eve even if she doesn't build AD at all, but it should at least allow her to buy some AD items if she wants to go that route. Gunblade, for example, could fit into her builds if she wants it now. The change is still in testing though so no guarantee it will go through at this point."

As for Urgot, Meddler commented:
"Quote:
What are your thoughts on Urgot's performance this patch?
Almost certainly too strong. We're testing some nerfs as a result, though will give him some more time to settle before deciding on whether or not to ship them."

October Early Sales: 10.27.17 – 10.30.17

October's early sales are live, including Moo Cow Alistar, Pug'Maw, Renektoy, and Super Kennen.
"The October Early Sale is officially here! To kick things off, the following non-Legacy skins from the past 4–6 months are going on sale from October 27, 2017, at 12:00 a.m. PT through October 30, 2017, at 11:59 p.m. PT. 
October Early Sales:
More previews can be found [here].

Quick Hits


"This week on the Summoner Showcase is a SPOOKTACULAR SPECIAL something something Halloween puns. Bewitching Morgana cosplay, a sorceress Caitlyn concept that’s all magic sniper rifle all the time, a community-favorite Miss Fortune concept brought to life and much more!"

"This is a translation of a post published on our LPL league site 
Following the recent reports of a domestic violence incident involving Li “Vasilii’ Wei Jun, we can confirm that Vasilii is under investigation and is suspended effective immediately from all professional, semi-professional, and Riot-sanctioned competitive play. The full extent of his suspension will be confirmed once the investigation has concluded. 
There is no place for physical violence in the League of Legends community. We will not hesitate to exclude from our game and from our sport those who use violence or physical intimidation against others."
  • In a reddit thread concerning the current Tales from the Rift: Death Sworn missions, Riot_Mort commented briefly on the missions, rewards, and more:

"While I'm glad you guys like these missions, I want to set the record straight on a few things so that expectations are realistic moving forward. 
1.) We meant to give you the Ward Skin Shard, not the Ward Skin Permanent. Due to an issue on our end, we gave out the full permanent instead, which is great for you guys! But it doesn't mean it's the new standard. We are working to come up with satisfying rewards for everyone though! 
2.) We've heard you loud and clear on the equipping an icon pain. Small events like this and Omega don't require the icon equipping, but our larger events do. Our next event (which I'm not going to spoil) will still require the icon equipping, but hopefully this will be the last time. We are working hard on solutions that will improve this experience! 
3.) While some missions are these sort of passive missions that complete in the background if you play enough games, not all missions are going to be that. We will continue to do missions that challenge you to go outside your comfort zone a little, and try things you might not normally. (My favorite recent one was do 50k Physical Damage and 50k Magic Damage) 
And keep posting feedback on missions! We take it very seriously, and will continue to make them better every time."

Reminders

Last up, a few reminders on upcoming and ending soon promotions and sales!
  • Several skins will be going into the Legacy Vault on 11/1! Check out the list here and make sure you get them before they are gone!
  • The ranked season ends November 7th! Check out this post for all the end of season goodies you will be eligible for at the end of this season!
  • With Worlds 2017 in full swing, Summoner's Rift is celebrating with new emotes, map accents, and much more as Worlds hits the Rift through the end of Worlds! Championship Ashe and her Golden Championship chroma, ward, legacy esports skins and much more are now available! Check out the post for all the details.

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