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Red Post Collection: Riot Pls: The Meta and Beyond, Clash: August 2018 update, & More

Today's red post collection includes a new Riot Pls from New001 covering the Meta and beyond, an update on Clash testing on the PBE, the return of Your Shop, and more!
Continue reading for more information!



Table of Contents



Riot Pls: The Meta and Beyond

Here's New001 with a new Riot Pls:

"Lead Producer New001 gives updates on meta changes and the experimental game mode Nexus Blitz."

Clash: August 2018 update 

Here's Draggles with an update on more Clash PBE testing:
"In our last update, we promised to keep you up to date on our path to launching Clash. We’ve made some progress since we last spoke, so we’re happy to announce we’re heading back to PBE. These tests might be a little buggy and won’t represent the full tournament experience, so as we work to get Clash ready for a full release, your contribution by participating and giving us feedback is invaluable! 
In the past, a large number of issues were caused by many systems working behind the scenes and not communicating well with each other. The PBE tests will let us know how well our proposed fixes and mitigations work, and we’re looking to test three major improvements over the course of September. Here’s what they are and how to get to get involved: 
How to play Clash on PBE 
September 5th - Staggered scouting phase 
We’ll be testing a staggered scouting phase, which allows us to extend the length of the scouting phase for some games, meaning fewer games will start simultaneously. This should significantly reduce load on the systems that are part of the champ select flow and allow you to get into games more reliably. 
To test the variable scouting phase, create your teams and wait for the lock-in time. Once locked in, you’ll get matched and play as normal. This should be a pretty straightforward tournament, with 4 teams in each bracket, so your team will play 2 games. 
September 11th - Game flow changes 
We’ve tightened our backend flow to break out some of the systems that work together when starting games. Much like before, if our fixes prove out, this should be a regular 4-team bracket with 2 games, and if everything works as expected, you shouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. 
September 19th - Clash recovery tool 
One of issues we saw quite early in previous Clash tests is that when stuff goes wrong, it’s hard for Clash to recover. This meant that we often had to blow up tournaments completely, disband existing teams and start another tournament which we know was painful for everyone. We’ve now made our recovery tools more robust and capable of assisting if one part of Clash falls over. 
With this new tool, we’ll be able to more easily edit tournament details such as tier calculations, SMS verification, voice chat settings, Honor restrictions, ticket bids and rewards. If there’s an issue with locking in, we’ll be able to take everyone out and restart. Also, if there’s truly an unsolvable issue with Clash, we’ll be able to cancel tournament days without wrecking the whole weekend. 
After these tests have completed we’ll let you know how they went over on the PBE boards. Sign up for a PBE account to participate in these tests!"

Your Shop is open for business!


Here's Bilby with an announcement on Your Shop returning:
"Your Shop is open for business! 
Discountbot told me he’s finally cracked the code and has literally perfect deals for everybody! … He always says that, though. 
If you’re not familiar with Your Shop:
  • We’ve got the best dang customized deals in the whole wide client
  • The thoughtful and kind-hearted Discountbot selects six skins that he thinks you’ll like and offers them at varying discounts
  • These discounts may include Legacy skins not currently available in the store
  • If you receive a skin discount on a champion you don’t own, the same discount will also be applied to the champ
  • Ultimate, Legendary, Limited, Gemstone, and relatively new skins (released in the last 3 months) will not be featured in Your Shop Stop reading and go see what you got 
We’ll be open for business until August 30, 2018, at 11:59 PM PDT. Even though Discountbot says everything will be perfect, you should still let us know how we did!"

Quick Hits

  • Ghostcrawler gave a look into what he does in his daily work for Riot:
"Good question, but several weird answers. Let me try to correct those perceptions. 
I was the lead designer on LoL until a few weeks ago. The context that is easy to miss is that a) the LoL development team is gigantic - hundreds of people, and b) Riot works in a fairly distributed fashion, where teams are empowered to own their problem space, verus say a studio where all the decisions are made by an auteur of some kind who hands those decisions down to a bunch of implementers who may not have much creative voice. 
I think sometimes players have this idea that designers line up by the lead designer’s desk and ask “Should we buff Lissandra?” and the lead answers “Plus five AP. Next.” But you can imagine how inefficient that kind of system would be when we try to patch every two weeks. So if there are weeks when the lead is focused on say Clash or Blitz or hiring or longer term projects, the lead may not even realize what discussions about Lissandra are happening elsewhere on the floor. That’s a good thing. 
At the same time, the lead designer is accountable if the game isn’t balanced or the team can’t achieve balance. The captain of a ship is responsible for everything that happens on their ship, even if they aren’t personally down in the engine room or whatever. (And again, Riot isn’t nearly as hierarchical as that kind of chain of command.) 
You might also imagine a large corportation where the executives aren’t making individual deals, but they are setting the strategy for how the company should make deals. (And Riot isn’t that corporate and everyone wears t-shirts and hoodies.) 
As I announced recently however I switched teams to focus on support and development of our IP (Runeterra at the moment). This means supporting League and the other game that use the IP as well as doing developmental work on our own to deepen the universe and tell stories that don’t make sense to tell in games. Meddler is the new lead designer on LoL. 
The WoW response is a little baffling to me, because I tended to get in hot water with the WoW community for wanting to make the game more challenging and more of a skill check. One of the most controversial pieces I ever wrote was about how I wanted Cataclysm dungeons to be something that required teamwork and strategy, which was disconcerting to some players coming off of years of blasting through Wrath dungeons while massively overgeared. 
In terms of being a scapegoat, I’m fine with that. Just remember that there are hundreds of developers working on a game like LoL or WoW, and their opinions, ideas and hard work when taken in total count for a lot more."

Reminders

To round out this red post collection, here are a few reminders on current promotions or limited time events!

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