Red Post Collection: God-King Darius Triumphs, Tooltips Update, Quick Gameplay Thoughts: July 11th, and more!

Today's red post collection includes God-King Darius as our VS 2018 event winner, a tentative look at future tooltip updates, Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for July 11th, a /dev on forging Ornn's music, a new /Ask Riot, and more!
Continue reading for more information!

• Red Post Collection: Series 3 Merch Figures, Champ Memotions Contest, & More
• 7/11 PBE Update #1: Tentative Balance Changes
• Champion & Skin Sale: 7/13 - 7/16

Table of Contents

• VS 2018: God-King Darius triumphs 
• Tooltips Update 
• Quick Gameplay Thoughts: July 11 
• Ask Riot: Battle Royal and Bot Lane
• /Dev: Forging Melodies 
• Quick Hits
• Reminders 

VS 2018: God-King Darius triumphs 

God-King Darius has triumphed in the VS 2018 event! Here's Kantayams with more:

"God-King Darius prevails. Complete your final mission by July 23, 2018 at 11:59 PM PT to earn the Endless War Icon, as well as 1000 Blue Essence for choosing God-King Darius. Make sure to also craft all loot from the event before they expire on July 31, 2018 at 11:59 PM PT.

Learn more about VS 2018 and revisit the action in Where Power Lies. Thank you for participating!"

With Darius as the winner, one final mission will be available to earn the ENDLESS WAR summoner icon - players who chose God-King Darius during the event will also get 1000 blue essence.

Tooltips Update 

As first seen with the Aatrox champion update, updated tooltips are in internal testing including features like holding shift to expand for more information! Here's Riot Reinboom with all the details of what's being worked on and a tentative look at what to expect in the future:

"Tooltips Update 

Hi! Riot Reinboom here bringing you an update about tooltips. 

Tooltips in League are both one of the most important features in the game as well as, somehow, one of the least updated. They have gone from the time before season 1 to now with nary a change beyond some color changes and a couple lines added to keep things separated. 

That lack of change wasn’t without reason. Each attempt at them was met with the scary overbearing cloud of “Wow, that’s a lot of champions. And a lot of languages to translate those changes into. Oh no.” 

Well, we’ve decided to finally take that plunge into updating them, and trying to solve one of the bigger problems the LoL tooltips face. 

This dev corner covers the problems we’re trying to solve, the current progress, and some future looking things. And to call out that for those future looking things, this is all very much a work in progress we would love your feedback on. :) 

The Big Problem 

For League, tooltips serve two major use cases: 

In the moment - “What’s the main thing that happens if I press this button?” With a bit more familiarity this becomes more nuanced like “what’s my cooldown?” or “what’s my highest damage skill?” 

All the details - “How do I maximize this ability’s potential and use it most effectively?” 

There’s a lot of parts to League, from items to which position you’re in, and understanding how those parts hook together requires a lot more detailed information. 

By trying to serve both cases the current tooltips manage to serve neither very well. 

Perhaps the clearest example of this are scaling values (aka ratios). Let's look at Ezreal's Mystic Shot:

Pretty simple tooltip, but there’s some problems. “dealing 15 (+89)(+0) physical damage” lets us math out that it deals 114 damage (before mitigation) pretty easily, sure, but doing the math can still take up time when every moment counts. Worse though is if you want to know what you should buy. To arrive at that Mystic Shot has 1.1x Attack Damage ratio requires an annoying bit of division and you entirely don’t get to know what the Ability Power ratio is until you buy an item. 

So, here we're off the mark with "In the moment" and completely missed with "All the details". If we try to fill the tooltip to the brim with information to solve for “All the details” we will end up a cluttered mess unless we sacrifice showing your current damage that “In the moment” asks for. Either way, we lose the “In the moment” case needed for faster decision making. This problem isn’t exclusive to how abilities scale, either. Many tooltips tread the line between the two worlds poorly even when describing the non-numerical parts of how a spell functions. 

Proposed Solution 

We think we can tackle these issues by presenting two options; one option to show the "RIGHT NOW" and another option to deep dive further. 

Enter "Press [Shift] for more info"
We just give each ability two tooltips serving each need. 

There’s a preview of this feature with the Aatrox update:

Future Looking 

This type of feature isn't new to other games. But, it's still new to League and we really need your feedback on where to take it for the sake of LoL specifically. Consider Aatrox more like the "first flare for feedback" rather than a declaration of where all tooltips will go. 

With each champion update and new champion we will take another attempt at landing in a better spot about what the correct mix of information is, and potentially other small new features. All the more feedback on these you can provide, the better we will get them. 

One clear example of feedback we’ll be acting on is the demand for “let me just always see more info!”. Look forward to the option for exactly that in an upcoming patch.

Future Future Looking 

Unfortunately, there’s some parts of the tooltips we simply can’t upgrade due to constraints imposed by how we originally built them... for now. 

We’re in the middle of tearing apart the pieces of every tooltip in the game and reconstructing them in a very VERY new way behind the scenes. Some new things (like “Press [Shift] for more info”) we can release individually, but many new features we cannot. Once everything is over to the new system though (tentative sometime during preseason) you can look forward to some larger scale changes! 

And to really hit that idea, here’s a look at Ezreal's Mystic Shot we're testing internally (VERY WORK-IN-PROGRESS): 

 ("In the Moment" version)

 ("All the details" version. Note: The "+1.1" and "+0.4" are ratios and not totals). 

And that's where the tooltip update project is at right now! Let us know your thoughts, and what use cases you want tooltips to serve!"

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: July 11 

Check out Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for July 11th, including thoughts on gold funneling changes planed for 8.14, nerfs to Conqueror, and more:

"Hi 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 

Gold funneling 

We're aiming to have a nerf to mid/jungle gold funneling in 8.14. It's an issue we've been looking at for a little while now, given it creates lanes without much interaction and putting two income streams on one champion produces a range of balance issues. We haven't been able to find a fix that's low enough on collateral damage to regular jungle play, low enough on disruption for a regular patch and that meets our design values, especially on things like intuitiveness and clarity. 

We're at the point though where we don't think we should let the issue persist while we continue to work on those constraints. We'll be going with a temporary solution as a result that's pretty ugly on the intuitiveness/clarity side, with the intention of replacing it come preseason when it's more appropriate to make larger changes. That temporary solution is heavily reduced gold from lane minions if you have a T1 or T2 jungle item and have the most gold on your team. 

We're targeting gold on the champ being funneled to here because that's where the biggest discrepancy lies, with that champ having around 50% more gold at the 15 minute mark than the opposing mid laner. We also took a look at solutions that involved hitting XP instead, difference there's much smaller most of the time though (~10%). We considered nerfs to the support items too, to hit the other side of the equation, but conclusion was that wouldn't actually address the issue, given how impactful the gold lead on the champ funneled to would still be regardless. A penalty to lane gold when ahead by contrast is, despite being rather ugly and heavy handed, targeted directly at both funneling and the resource (gold) that's causing the problems. From internal testing so far affect on junglers who aren't funneling's been very small to non existent. 

Nerfing Conqueror 

We're planning on nerfing Conqueror somewhat. That probably happens in 8.15, though there's a slim change it slips into 8.14 still depending on how work this week goes. Details at time of writing still to be determined. One of our primary goals though is to get tanks back into a more appropriate spot, with things having swung too hard against them. Doing so initially by looking at systemic things like Conqueror that affect all of them, before getting into individual champion changes. 

Runes selection UI 

Not sure yet exactly when, but at some point after the cursor changes are out we'll be doing some work on the runes selection UI. At a minimum that will involve looking at which rune gets replaced when you're trying to change your secondaries. Might also do some work on things like color coding of rune trees, not sure yet. Possible it takes a while to happen, given we've got a few other projects also on the team doing that stuff, definitely planning to do so though. 

Non LoL: Game Design Links 

For anyone interested in discussions around game design and development processes the site below's worth a read. Covers some useful topics in pretty clear and concise way. Linked pages are the ones that particularly leapt out to me, many of the other sections are good too though: 

Iterative approach:
https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-4-dot-0-science-of-design?module_item_id=44537
Prototyping:
https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-5-dot-1-prototyping?module_item_id=44546
Decision Making:
https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-6-dot-1-tips-on-decision-making
Different kinds of fun:
https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-7-dot-0-kinds-of-fun?module_item_id=44563
Different types of player:
https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-7-dot-3-player-types?module_item_id=44566"

When asked about the Lissandra passive in internal testing, Meddler replied:

"Quote:

How are the studies about Lissandra going?

Testing on the new passive is going well. Hoping it'll be solid enough to commit to within a week or two. After that though, since it's a passive that needs some new art and audio, will still be a while until it's ready. Not sure how long yet, will do that assessment once the gameplay's locked down."

He continued:

"It'll be a while, probably few patches minimum, potentially quite a bit more than that. Normally we don't share details about WIP stuff like this because, even if the gameplay's looking solid, there's still quite a wait while we get visual effects, audio, bug testing etc done. In this case, given we'd been talking about how we wanted to give Lissandra a new passive for a long time without enough to show, I figured it was worth sharing in advance. Even if the gameplay continues to test well it does mean there'll be a significant wait until it's ready to go out though."

Meddler provided more detail on how it works right now:

"Quote:

How does the lissandra passive work with things like jhins e passive or on champs that are super huge like chogath. The way its worded, it sounds like jhins e with a mini trundle pillar in the middle, but since it says its a statue of the champ, what happens if the champs model is larger than the aoe?

At present model size isn't taken into account, with the radius simply being large enough that the slow/damage would reach beyond even a really stacked Cho. 

Jhin traps would trigger along with this. Not sure it'll be relevant very often, but someone could in theory get hit by both off one of their allies dying." 

When asked how he felt about the Fizz changes, Meddler replied:

"Quote:

In the end are you guys happy with the Fizz changes ?

I think the revised W is a noticeable improvement, keeping some of the things that work from the current W and older ones."

When asked about changing the AD on Conqueror, Meddler commented:

"We've actually been looking more at hitting the AD in the last couple of days. Perspective there is looking at what sort of trade off in regular damage output you should expect to make to get strength against tankier targets, with Conqeuror being too good at both things right now."

Meddler continued:

"Yeah, I was expecting we'd probably go for the true damage when I wrote this post earlier in the week. Discussion's shifted since then though. At time of writing we didn't have anything in testing and 8.14 looked unlikely, at this point it'll probably be an AD nerf in 8.14 though."

On Nasus, Meddler noted:

"Quote:

Any insight on Nasus changes on PBE?

We're looking at a few different directions on Nasus. I think the one likely to ship is a buff to his passive Lifesteal early game, help him get through laning phase a bit better."

As for Karma, Meddler replied:

"Quote:

Are the Karma changes on PBE final, or will there be other changes tested?
I know Rickless said larger work is planned for W in her update, but I'm surprised nothing is being done for her E.

Might be some small tweaks today to Karma on the PBE (e.g. Q radius to 280, versus 300 in previous testing and 250 on live). Overall it's pretty close to final for 8.14 though.
Still looking to do some larger work to her as well, will be talking about who should take that over from rickless this week."

As for Taric and Nunu, Meddler replied:

"Quote:

Does this mean the nerfs on e.g. Taric E or Nunu W will be reverted?

Taric we felt should be nerfed anyway. 

Nunu's got an update fairly soon that doesn't include AP buffing so we were comfortable taking that away regardless."

Meddler continued, noting some details on Nunu's upcoming champion update:

"No, but VGU Nunu doesn't have an ability that gives a % AP amp to an ally."

On Liandry's Torment, Meddler  replied:

"Quote:

Has Riot considered any other way to buff Liandry's Torment besides the current one on the PBE? Like reducing the cost by 100 gold so it can at least match the price of Morellonomicon and be more competitive for that item slot?

We're looking at buffing non CC amped DoT damage on it because of how much at present the CC amp's required to get good use from the item. Don't want to remove the combo entirely, but would like to be able to make it more of an optional thing, than something that binds as hard to either specific kits and/or buying Rylai's."

Meddler went on:

"Quote:

quick question: On PBE yesterday, Liandry's unempowered burn was increased to 1.5%, while the empowered burn stayed at 2%. Today, this change has been reverted. Could you please give some insight into the thought processes? I thought the change to be a good idea, moving Liandry's away from being an item that has that forced synergy with Rylai's into something that might be situationally useful on its own.

We're pulling the Liandry's change from 8.14 so we can give it some more work and testing for 8.15. We're also interested in reducing the necessity of that synergy, hence that potential change, not confident we've necessarily got details right at the moment however. Pulling it from the patch as a result, given the patch locks today so we're out of time." 

As for the funneling strategy on Twisted Treeline, Meddler commented:

"Quote:

How will this affect The Twisted Treeline given that "funneling" is an established part of support meta?

I'm 99% certain this change is only on the SR versions of those items. Will double check to make sure that's the case though. Whether or not it's the correct change for TT wouldn't want to push it there so abruptly without a better understanding of its impact."

Meddler continued:

"Quote:

While that is a pretty ugly choice to stop funneling I agree with the temp fix until preseason. The strat is very unfun to play against. 

Curious on what you feel about fleet footwork now, I still see it as the only keystone marksmen take despite the changes to it. Do you think it is the free sustain aspect of it that allows it to stay above PTA? 

Plus could pre season be a timeframe to look at Lethal Tempo? I feel the rune still struggles at times

I think Fleet Footwork's still a solid choice on many marksmen in particular but nowhere near as must take across the board as previously. Usage rate is still really high. In some cases that makes sense, in others I believe there's some inertia from some players assuming it's still the only sensible option until someone else clearly shows them otherwise. 

Lethal Tempo needs work, agreed. Pre-season's a possibility, though we haven't yet mapped out which things like that we will or won't work on in pre-season."

Meddler continued:

"Quote:

Any concerns about this gimping the carrying ability of soloq junglers who get ahead through early kills, though? I can imagine this hurting some of their more extreme success cases (especially those who would splitpush after getting fed). I assume you think it's worth the tradeoff, since the amount of cases affected is low?

There might be a bit of pain on snowballing junglers there if they're taxing lanes heavily and/or split pushing. The penalty going away at T3 jungle items though should catch most of the cases of that happening in regular (non funneling) play."

Meddler also noted:

"Quote:

to clarify with the lane minion gold nerf, a champion has to have a jg item AND have the most gold on the team? not just one or the other right?

Correct. Also only applies to T1 and T2 jungle items."

Ask Riot: Battle Royal and Bot Lane

A new edition of Ask Riot is up, this week including questions and answers on the bot lane meta, Battle Royale, and champion buffs & nerfs.

"This week, let’s talk about the meta and Battle Royales. 

What do you think of the bot lane meta?

We’ve been mostly happy with the amount of diversity we’ve been seeing bot lane since patch 8.11 dropped. Seeing mages, bruisers, divers, etc. being played in the carry role is exciting given how solved the bot lane meta has been for… well… years. One of the things that gives League longevity is how no two games feel the same and the challenges you face keep you on a constant path to mastery. The dynamics of a lane like Heimerdinger + Fiddlesticks are so fundamentally different than what we’ve seen bot for the past while, and we’re excited to see other interesting strategies/combos evolve over time as the meta unfolds. 

That being said, we’re not done balancing bot lane champions and items around the new multi-class meta. We’ve already taken some action in the form of item hotfixes in 8.12, did more follow up last week on our 8.13b patch, and will continue to monitor and make changes as we can. We’re treading carefully since we want to make sure crit marksman are considered viable and feel good to play, but we also know that champions like Cait can have a chilling effect on the diversity we have been seeing, so we want to be judicious about how hard we swing. 

RIOT MAPLE NECTAR

Product Lead, Live Gameplay 

Why do champions that have been untouched in patches for a long time make a sudden reappearance?

This kind of depends on what the question refers to as a “sudden reappearance.” This can be interpreted two ways: 

1. A champion suddenly becomes a powerful meta pick having had no direct changes.
2. A champion suddenly appears in the patch notes after having not been seen for a while. 

In the first case, the meta tends to naturally evolve as we change parts of the game every two weeks in standard patches. Whether it be runes, items, champs, or other systemic things like Baron or Rift Herald, every change can shift the meta in small (or large) ways that can benefit some champs more than others. If we removed Grevious Wounds from the game, any champion with high health regen would likely climb pretty high in terms of priority in the meta without any other direct changes. If we buffed Grevious Wounds, they’d probably fall substantially out of favor. That’s a pretty drastic example, but I hope it helps illustrate the point. 

In the second case, some champions may appear in the patch notes suddenly due to a variety of reasons, but more often than not it’s because a designer has an idea for what they believe makes the champion better long-term for League—like the work done for Lux a few patches ago. Your perspective on League’s landscape can also affect whether a change to a champ feels random or not. If you care about pro play and you see a meta-dominant champion get nerfed in a patch, it probably makes sense to you. If you don’t watch or follow pro play, you might wonder why the hell we nerfed a champion that doesn’t seem to be considered powerful in your matches. The majority of our patch-to-patch work is prioritized pretty heavily (no, we don’t use a dartboard to choose our targets), but every now and then we work on things that may not immediately be recognized as important in the current meta you’re used to. 

RIOT MAPLE NECTAR

Product Lead, Live Gameplay

Is riot games going to follow the newest trend and add battle royale to the game?

I think to make a game in 2018, you are supposed to have some kind of Battle Royale mode. 

Seriously, though, we had a really hard time even getting Hexakill to work. I’m not sure if we could get 100 or more champions in the game without a ton of engineering effort. We’d want to be pretty confident that level of investment would lead to something really fun. 

On the other hand, there are some really cool things that Battle Royale does that we’d love to be able to bring to League. For example, the expectation that you probably won’t win—you’ll probably lose—is a really nice element. In League, statistically if matchmaking is working really well, you’re going to lose about half of your games. We’d love if there was a game mode where you’re there to kind of do crazy things and see how far you can get, versus just crush the enemy team, but whatever form that takes probably can’t be a Battle Royale. 

GHOSTCRAWLER

Design Director, League of Legends

Thanks for reading this week’s Ask Riot. Have a question? 

Head over to Ask Riot and sign into your League account. Check out the Pro Tips, then ask away. 

We promise to read every question, but we can’t guarantee they’ll all get answers. Some questions may already be answered elsewhere, and some won’t be right for Ask Riot. This isn’t the best place to announce new features, for example, and we might skip conversations on issues we’ve talked about in depth before (though we can clarify individual points). 

We are listening, though, so keep asking. We’ll make sure your questions are heard by the Rioters working on the stuff you’re curious about."

/Dev: Forging Melodies 

Here's Talondor with a new /Dev on creating Ornn's music, including sheet music downloads:

"Talondor here, composer on League of Legends and reigning Dungeon Master of the Riot Music team! Today we’d like to talk to you all about something that holds musical significance to all of us and is featured throughout much of League’s music… lyrical melodies. 

Not all champions, skins, or events call for easily singable melodies—sometimes it’s better to focus on something rhythmically strong, timbrely aggressive, or harmonically rich. For example, if something needs to evoke emotions of fear or uneasiness, then leaning into musical ideas that feel unfamiliar to most people might be the best option. However, a good majority of the time having an easily identifiable and singable melody is the best choice for representing someone or something, especially if the goal is to help it feel more relatable or human. It’s a bit odd, but if you can imagine a champion singing their theme and you can also sing along, then in a way, it helps you connect with that champion. 

Today we’d like to highlight what we believe are four of the most melodically lyrical yet individually unique pieces we’ve written for League: the champion themes for Taric, Taliyah, Ornn, and Irelia. Before we get to the sheet music (and a special behind-the-scenes video!), let’s talk a bit about what we take into consideration when composing lyrical melodies. 

THE MAKEUP OF A MELODY 

If you’ve listened to the theme songs for Taric, Taliyah, Ornn, or Irelia, you might be able to sing (or hum!) the tunes right now. Yet while all of these songs are singable, each one sounds pretty different from the others—why is that? 

Part of the reason is that each champion’s personality varies greatly, and the regions in which they live in Runeterra are all different too. The way Bilgewater sounds paints a certain set of musical expectations on a melody for a champion, just as it would for a champion from the Freljord, Shadow Isles, and so on. However, the degree to which it imposes these regional tendencies varies, as it might not be a priority in what we need to express with the music. 

In some situations, it may be appropriate to use the colors from specific instruments that feel inherent to a particular place in Runeterra, but then have the melody evoke something polar opposite to the emotion you may tie to that region. For example, Kayn’s music has moments where it uses instrumental colors to invoke Ionian influence, but the message they represent is presented in an ominous and menacing way that, while it represents Kayn well, sits counter to Ionian ideals like beautiful harmony and balance. 

Bilgewater Street

Another reason these lyrical melodies can sound quite different is because each piece is composed by a different person on the music team. This affects the melody because our individual artistic tendencies color everything we write. For example, the fact that ShreddyMercury (appropriately named) shreds on guitar while Chemicalseb is way more proficient in piano absolutely colors their respective musical intuitions and informs the way they approach melody. To make sure we’re making the best music we can for a champion (or skin, or event), we all share ideas and give feedback on music throughout the process. This is critical in not only gathering new ideas, but helps confirm our thoughts on what works, what doesn’t, and what resonates across different people. 

MUSIC FOR A MOUNTAINSMITH 

While we all tend to write music through an instrument (like a guitar or piano), there’s another way that’s perhaps the most simple-yet-effective method of all: using your voice. It’s the instrument we all have and can use (you may have even used it earlier in this article!). Writing with your voice allows you to confirm that the melody is not only singable for the vocalist of the song, but also that it has the potential for other people to sing it, which in turn hopefully makes it more memorable. 

However, you don’t always have to sing aloud to make a lyrical melody. Sometimes all you need to do is hum. In Ornn’s case, humming was the spark that ignited the Fire Beneath the Mountain, and in the video below, you can join us as we work to forge a song fit for the Freljordian demigod!

We hope you enjoy browsing the music of Ornn and the other melodic scores below. As a heads up, they may contain shorthand, errors, or ideas that were eventually cut or changed because they’re the raw scores used at the recording session. Also, if you’re looking for more sheet music, there’s more to be found in our previous postand our first post. Happy playing!"

[For full sheet music downloads, check out the /Dev Blog!] 

Quick Hits

• ZenontheStoic commented on the reason you can't see specifics on Kayn's transform bar:

"That was a decision we made early on based on some playtest observations that I regret now! 

Basically we saw a playtest where someone REALLY wanted red form, but saw on their dual meter that they were very close to blue form. They were near bot lane, had ult up, and the enemy bot lane (both ranged) were like 20% hp under tower. 

And Kayn walked away. 

We really didn't want to see that kind of play and the only option other than obfuscation (which we ended up going with) would have been to let Kayn continue to gain points for the form he didn't get after the fact. We were really scared of what that would do to the power level of the character.
Less scared of that today--we might test it some time soon! Unfortunately, getting dual bars at this point is highly unlikely. It's surprisingly large amount of UX and engineering work because our game was never built to have any UI other than what everyone always has."

• Reav3 commented on the size of Runeterra, and the possibility of a champion from a new region:

"Runeterra is massive, and the current landmass that we all know and love (Noxus, Freljord, Shurima, etx) is only one part of a wide world (Basically equivalent of South and North America) !! 

This is something we actually talk about on Champions team a lot. We always get stuck in making Champions fror the same factions/races, over and over, and we have been doing this for years now. We often talk about how cool it would be to introduce and new race or faction from another continent that we haven't explored yet since those other continents must be full of other cultures/races etc. "