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Red Post Collection: QGT: October 4, G2 MSI Winners Icon, Ask Riot & More

Today's red post collection includes Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for October 4th, the G2 MSI commemorative icon, this week's Ask Riot, and more!
Continue reading for more information!


Table of Contents


Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 4 

Check out Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for October 4th:
"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 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 
Some reflections on new champs/VGUs this year 
Since the game's in a stable state right now with Worlds underway and preseason fast approaching I figured it would be a good time to share some thoughts on how our new champs and VGUs this year (Sylas, Kayle, Morgana, Yuumi, Mordekaiser, Qiyana, Yuumi) have gone from a game design perspective. 
  • Cohesion between gameplay and theme 
This is something we've sometimes missed in the past, Kindred and Shen being some of the clearest examples, where kit and theme/backstory don't entirely gell. This year's releases by contrast I feel have done really well here, with gameplay generally delivering on desired fantasy and expectations. Mordekaiser for example hits the massive, dark magic powered lord of the dead thing pretty well. Yuumi delivers on playful, helpful mage's familiar. 
  • Uniqueness and Satisfaction (playing as the champion) 
I think it’s been a strong year so far in this regard too. I think our new champs and VGUs have generally managed to both bring something distinct to the game and made doing so feel good for the user. Sylas's spell steal, Yuumi's attach and Morde's ult are particular standouts for me here. Some of our past work by contrast has only delivered on one of the two. Skarner's spires are distinct, but for too many players don't feel good to play with. Or from the other side of things Jarvan feels good to play but isn't quite distinct enough gameplay wise I'd argue from other similar champs. 
  • Weaknesses and counterplay 
Here by contrast I think we've had a much more mixed year, in part because of some decisions we've made that have helped champions feel good to play as. Sylas and Yuumi stand out here in particular, with skilled play on them leaving opponents without sufficient ways to deal with them. Morgana, Mordekaiser and Kayle seem better in that regard so far. Not sure yet about Pantheon and Qiyana, reserving judgement there until they've been out a bit longer and we've got a better handle on which effects might just need some numbers tuning versus have larger issues to solve. 
In terms of overall trends this one's particularly on the mind as something we need to get better at. Looking at 2018 releases Irelia, Akali and Aatrox have also been problems in this regard, leading to in game experiences for other players that aren't at the standards we want to hit. All our new releases having good game health, not just some of them, is one of our big champion goals for the coming year. 
  • Maintaining Gameplay Identities 
Historically some of our VGUs have ended up substantially shifting the gameplay identities of the champions being worked on. In some cases I think that's paid off well, with Sion, Poppy and Urgot for example very successful updates even if their gameplay is very different now. In other cases though we've sometimes changed things unnecessarily, losing things players loved about champions that didn't need to be removed on game health grounds. This year I think we've done quite well, with Kayle, Morgana, Mordekaiser and Pantheon all keeping a lot of iconic elements while also addressing some game health problems. Still some room for improvement. Overall though I think we've avoided some of the issues some past updates have had with unnecessarily redefining major parts of a champion (e.g. Graves no longer being able to be played botlane or Aatrox shifting from a very AA heavy playstyle to a more spell based one). 
Thoughts on Worlds Playins so far 
At time of writing we're partway through the second day of playins. Some very early thoughts on how the state of the game's looking so far: 
  • Pacing's generally where we'd hope it would be in terms of things like amount of early conflict, contestation of objectives and time spent in late game
  • Overall pick variety has been ok given we've only seen a subset of teams play so far. Hoping we don't see Qiyana, Panth and Xayah stay at 100% pick/ban throughout the tournament as teams adapt and the meta evolves. They’re sitting there right now, but still very early on in things overall. Possible we should have taken more power out of them when nerfing each of them in 9.17-9.19, at the same time we didn't want to overswing and leave them in too weak a state to be played either.
  • Seeing some non marksmen get picked bot seems to have been healthy so far, with clear strengths and weaknesses resulting from the choice to do so and interesting play. Not clear how much the meta has settled in that regard though, particularly given some teams assumedly have put more time into practicing non marksmen picks than others. Very interested to see how bot develops over the tournament and hoping we continue to see some moderate class variety, especially if teams also feel they've got options for running marksmen in other lanes instead (or as well) when desired."

On Tristana, Meddler commented:
"No immediate plans at least for Trist. 
First thing for preseason will be a dev blog talking about some gameplay goals. Tentative date for that from memory is next Friday."

On Yuumi, Meddler noted:
"We've got some Yuumi work being done at the moment though it's not stable enough yet to be worth sharing details on (pretty experimental). Does include a somewhat shorter passive CD so with you there at least. Certainly agree with the need for a more interactive lane experience for both sides too of course."

And on Wukong, Meddler commented:
"That's just referring to full VGUs and doesn't impact smaller updates like Wukongs. We should have artists freeing up from preseason work to work on that quite soon, along with some similar scoped work on Diana that also needs some art changes."

2019 Mid-Season Invitational Commemorative G2 Icon

A new commemorative icon celebrating G2 as the 2019 Mid-Season Invitational winners is hitting the shop soon, discounted to 1 BE for EU players! Here's the Lolesports article with more info:
"Announcing the G2 Esports 2019 Mid-Season Invitational Icon. 
After the 2019 Mid-Season Invitational we received a lot of feedback that G2 Esports’ victory wasn’t commemorated in the same manner as previous MSI Champions. For context, we've previously given players from the winning region a combination of of ip/xp boosts and a commemorative icon. This year our focus was on House Battles and we chose to celebrate MSI teams with evergreen team icons during the event and the G2 trophy on the Rift after the event. As a result, we did not create commemorative rewards and we did not communicate clearly about what we were not going to do. 
Regardless, G2's win was monumental and as fans, we understand how such a letdown would feel. To remedy this situation we are creating a commemorative G2 2019 Mid-Season Invitational Icon. On October 10th and through November 9th, the icon will go up for sale for 1 BE in EUN and EUW and will be available in other regions for the standard price of 250 RP. Revenues from the sale will be shared with G2 Esports.
Going forward we will commit to commemorating the winning team from MSI and Worlds in a way that’s accessible to the entire player base, however we may experiment with different ways of doing so."

Ask Riot: Worlds Tokens & Meta

Check out this week's Ask Riot - "What else can I get with Worlds tokens? Do you choose the meta for Worlds? Where’s exp from TFT?"
"Today we’re talking about Worlds tokens, Worlds meta, and TFT. We will be taking a break from Ask Riot for one edition, as we’ve got some other stuff planned that week. 
See ya on Halloween! 
Are there going to be more things you can get with Worlds tokens?Yes! We’ll be adding more things you can spend your Worlds tokens on throughout the course of the event, including a Prestige skin for Qiyana. 
Product Manager 
Do you buff and nerf champs to try and make a specific meta for Worlds?

Yes and no… It tends to be less that we’re trying to make a specific meta and more that we’re trying to avoid certain metas. 
Like any other patch, we use the champion balance framework to determine which champs to buff and nerf for Worlds, but the types of changes we make are likely to be more focused on pro play. For example, if we have high confidence that certain champions will have a 100% presence at Worlds, we are likely to try to address this via direct nerfs or by buffing counters. Akali and Aatrox have both seen recent nerfs on account of this expectation. Another thing we generally try to avoid are extremely low-lethality metas for Worlds. A recent example of this is Tahm Kench—we expected him to have a very high pick rate and somewhat low ban rate. We think that at such a high presence, he degrades the quality of the play and viewer experience. As such, we reduced his early safety in patch 9.19. 
At the end of the day, we expect pro teams will gravitate toward certain (and evolving) picks over the course of a long tournament like Worlds, so the approach we take is to try to establish the parameters. In other words, we try to anticipate all of the possible Worlds metas that we might see, and if we think any of those are particularly undesirable for the players and/or viewers, we’ll buff or nerf accordingly to steer away from those metas. 

Lead Summoner’s Rift Designer 
Why don’t I earn experience in TFT?

We created the current leveling system with Summoner’s Rift and SR-like game modes in mind, so it’s tailored to these experiences, both in the rate you level up and the types of rewards you receive (like champions and Blue Essence). We’d like for Teamfight Tactics to interact with these kinds of progression systems, but we want it to do so in a way that feels more customized for TFT players, including the types of rewards you can earn. We’re currently working on a plan for how TFT will interact with leveling systems, and we should have more to share next year. In the meantime, we’ll continue to provide rewards through the TFT tailored passes. 
Senior Game Designer

Have a question? Click on the button below, sign into your League account, and ask away. 
We’ll do our best 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."

Miscellaneous

  • Regarding how ranked borders display on the loading screen in each queue, Riot Scruffy tweeted:
"Loading screen borders - Long term, we're going to make it so that for SR like modes (normal, ranked, aram) we will use SR rank only. For TFT modes we will use TFT rank only."

Reminders

To round out this red post collection, here are a few reminders on current promotions or limited time events!
"This year, we're celebrating the ten year anniversary of League of Legends! Join us on October 15th, 2019 as we kick things off with livestreams and events, including a 10th Anniversary Edition of Riot Pls that starts at 6:00pm PST."

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