[Updated] Red Post Collection: QGT: 12/6, Riot Forge, Clash Global Beta, Rank Specific Merch & More

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: December 6 

"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 

Looking into the effects of preseason on jungler performance 

We're looking into jungler performance right now, with the goal being to make some adjustments if needs be in 9.24b. Primary angles we're considering are:

• Average level before preseason and after at different points in the game. When combined with kill participation this serves as a fairly good proxy for overall jungler influence.
• Variation in jungler performance. The removal of catch up XP was intended to bring about bigger differences between high and low performing junglers. We do want to make sure we haven't swung too far the other way though, make sure small mistakes or good plays aren't leading to large advantages/disadvantages.
• Whether particular classes and/or jungler styles are over or under performing (e.g. tanks versus carries, farmers versus gankers etc). 

9.24b 

Speaking of 9.24b, a brief timeline:

• Patch 9.24 next week will be the last normal patch of the year.
• We will do a server side only (so no download needed or new content like skins/champs) patch called 9.24b about a week after 9.24 goes out.
• That patch will contain balance changes for SR and TFT, particularly to things that need some follow up after 9.24 (e.g. things that got hit too hard, didn't get hit hard enough, in retrospect should have been in 9.24 in the first place). Some current users of Conqueror are a likely group of candidates for changes for example if the Conqueror changes in 9.24 don't take off the predicted amount of power. 

Support Items 

In addition to looking at jungling we're also doing some analysis on the effects of the support item changes right now. Questions we're particularly looking to answer are things like whether the drop off in income post quest completion is too punishing (more GP10 on the item or less farming penalty?), whether the Ward portion of the quest is potentially being completed too quickly in some circumstances, whether the stat lines for the different items need some adjustments etc. No specific changes planned just yet though. 

Champion Win Rates by Rift Type 

One of the first things we wanted to find out after preseason went out was how the different elemental rifts + dragon souls impacted the power of different champions. We have seen some meaningful win rate differences depending on the champion + map type combination, but nothing particularly dramatic overall. Examples of some of that data below. Note that this is before the Ocean Drake regen nerf. It's also a combination of the impact of the terrain changes, the dragon buffs potentially acquired and the dragon soul potentially claimed. 

Some trends seem very much as expected (e.g. poke champs tend to do a bit worse on Ocean maps, given regen around and brush to hide in. Others are a bit more surprising (e.g. Rengar not actually doing better on an ocean map, with other factors offsetting power he gains from more brush pouncing). Tahm Kench, at least pre Ocean nerf, was the champion with the biggest win rate change based off a rift element, with the next most impacted champs around half his win rate change. Possible he just really wants regen, also possible a small sample size could be skewing data though (he's a less played champ and this is data from just a couple of days). More recent data suggests win rates are likely within 1% across elemental rifts for all champs, Tahm included.

Prestige Points 

On a different note, for anyone with Prestige points sitting around, we've got the Prestige Point shop coming up next week on the 12th of December. That will contain a range of stuff purchasable with less than 100 Prestige Points like skin Jackpot bags, Hextech Keys, Orange essence etc. 

Some more details in case you missed them the first time around can be found at the link below. We'll also have some more details to share when the shop itself goes live.
https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/features/prestige-updates 

Last post of the year 

This will be my last post of 2019, hope the year's treated you folks well! I'm heading home to New Zealand for a couple of weeks, so will be out of contact for a bit. Riot Scruffy's going to get a post here instead though next week covering things like where our jungle/support investigations have led, context on changes in 9.24b etc."

Riot Forge

"We’re a player- and developer-focused publisher; our mission is to bring awesome new League of Legends games to players by partnering with experienced and talented developers from around the world. 

The League Universe and its champions offer limitless possibilities; by supporting and empowering passionate partners to tell their own stories and expand the League world, we’ll deliver a variety of bespoke games that enable players of all types to experience League in new and exciting ways. 

We can’t wait to get these games to players and play them ourselves!
If you’re a developer and want to be a part of our mission, we want to hear from you."

Twitch Prime Loot for LoL & TFT

• A new DJ Sona: Ultimate Concert Vinyl is available on Iam8Bit! It is available in 3 colors, Concussive Red, Ethereal Purple, and Kinetic Aqua!

• over on r/VolibearMains subreddit, RiotLutzburg noted should have more Volibear update info in January  

"There will be a Volibear-specific roadmap in January. I'm not sure how much we'll be sharing there, but expect some concrete details about the kit and some more visuals. :)"

• Riot Astryx tweeted to remind everyone that Issue #2 of the Zed comic will be released December 12 at 12 AM PST!

• All Star 2019 is running December 5-7! Check out the livestream at LolEsports, or check out the full schedule and overview here!

• Riot Scruffy provided changelists for 9.24 balance:

[1] Patch 9.24 Changes Preview:  

Bigger change lists in the thread. Almost final, but a few tweaks may still happen. This is the last patch of the year, but we expect to do a balance hotfix in late december (9.24b).

[2] Senna Nerfs - focused on nerfing adc senna more than support

[3] Yuumi Buffs - making her viable for regular play and less dominant in high elo and pro

On Yuumi, he added:  

"We intend the 9.24 Yuumi changes to have a pretty nice boost to her soloq winrates (and not have her pick ban pro).   

Because it's a pretty big list, we are expecting to check back again after the patch and follow up with buffs/nerfs if it doesn't land where we want." 

[4] Braum Buffs - Also targeted at regular player viability

[5] Omnistone "smart" logic

• Over in the Sugar Rush Zilean PBE feedback thread, Riot KiWiKiD noted:

"Hey thanks for all of the feedback everyone! Will try to get the chroma matching the skin colors as that seems to resonate the most with ya'll"

• Riot Sirhaian posted some updates to the Lux VFX work he's been doing:

[1] Some work I've done for the Lux VFX Update, based off all the feedback I received:
- Reduced some of the pinks overall
- Narrowed her auto attack missiles
- Reduced Base Q brightness slightly
- Added a trail to Base Q
- Added sparks on Q width indicator to make it a bit clearer 

[2] - Base W missile orbs are now pale orange like the rest of her kit
- Adjusted Base E explosion color
- Base R Red beam is now more red
- Added slightly more oomph to her Base R beam
- Did a value pass on all skins for her R
- Added a scorch mark on all her skins after R has fired 

[3] - R cleanup (too many lines)
- Changed the R indicators to match skin color where appropriate
- Adjusted her Quick Cast indicators to actually (and finally) match the range and width of her abilities

"Deep dive into ranked and Clash with Riot IAmWalrus!"

• 1v1 Tournament Returns | All-Star 2019 - League of Legends 

"Watch from December 5 – 7 as Caps returns to defend his title against 31 of the greatest players in the world, including Pabu, the dark horse from the OPL that ran through the bracket in 2018 to nearly win the tournament."

• The Good, The Bad, and the League: 11/16 - 11/29 

"Your semi-weekly dose of server problem-os, NA League news, and other! (Moved to Mondays for easier updates) 

Preseason is here (for better or for worse) with a bunch of dragons, executions, new items, and another set of Clash testing coming to NA! Also, there’s been a bunch of roster changes across various LCS teams, TFT changes, All-Stars incoming, and several items have been removed from League. Oh yeah, and a lot of problems, so here’s a wall of text. :( 

Follow-Ups:

• Mac voice still not working properly Bug grouped with other Mac bugs. Something to do with .plists. Haven’t seen any major progress from JIRA yet.

Ongoing

• None

Server Stuff:

• Delayed game stat processing(11/18, ~8 hours) Automated alerting notifies the NOC that game stat processing is starting to fall behind due to high volume of incoming stats. The NOC doesn’t escalate and instead watches to see if the lag behind reaches a critical state. It does not, and the system catches up to real time in an acceptable time frame.
• Delayed game stat processing(11/19, ~8 hours) See above
• Delayed game stat processing(11/21, ~5 hours) See further above
• Delayed game stat processing(11/23, ~15 hours) See further further above
• Delayed game stat processing(11/24, ~20 hours) See further further further above
• Delayed game stat processing(11/25, ~31 hours) See further further further further above
• LoL Client doesn’t load landing page correctly on first login(11/20, ~21 minutes) Sydney Rioters notify the NOC that Rioters logging in for the first time that day are seeing login issues, but only on the first login for that day. Various testing rules out account specific issues, and a quick workaround is found (clicking on any tab and then back again fixes it). A JIRA bug is created to track and solve the underlying issue, but the root problem doesn’t warrant a hotfix.
• Impacted parties and game invites(11/21, ~50 minutes) Rioters report issues with friend/chat list to the NOC. Quick checks show that relogging fixes the problem for most Rioters, but further investigation shows problems with a dedicated service. Engineers confirm that service is undergoing a deploy, and problems should disappear once the deploy has finished.
• Impacted parties and game invites(11/25, ~21 minutes) Rioters report issues with friend/chat list to the NOC. Investigation shows a specific network node was timing out, causing the problems. Rebooting the node solved the problem.
• Riot API high response times(11/22, ~51 minutes) NOC is manually alerted that the Riot API is exceeding high response time limits. Investigation shows the response time was caused by the League Connect app, and additional scaling is dedicated to the appropriate services, lowering the response times back within acceptable limits.
• Outage impacting player ability to get in game(11/14, ~22 minutes) NOC is notified by automated alerting that there’s an overload in one monitoring system. Compensation mode is enabled and messaging broadcast. LPs on call start an investigation, which points to a specific service that froze, and needed a reboot to reset the issue properly.
• Outage impacting player ability to get in game(11/14, ~26 minutes) See above
• Issues with AskRiot and support site(11/25, ~128 minutes) Reports filter in that the Ask Riot page isn’t working properly. NOC escalates to the appropriate LP and triage shows that it’s likely a DNS issue. Rioters reach out to appropriate contacts to get the proper context, and end up taking down the page since it’s not reachable anymore.
• Store gifting tab causes errors(11/25, ~22 hours) Reports filter that gifting is intermittently failing after a recent store deploy. NOC escalation reaches the LP, who starts a large investigation to uncover why gifting isn’t working properly. The root cause is discovered, and rolling restarts of the core services are needed to return the store to proper working order.
• Match History unavailable(11/27, ~7 hours) NOC is alerted that match history is failing to load on NA. NOC starts to escalate the issue and enables tickers across the support sites. The issue spreads from NA to all Riot Regions, and engineers need to restart the core instances and disable functionality until the load decreased.
• Error rate spike, impacting ranked borders on load-in(11/27, ~90 minutes) Automated alerts notify the NOC that there are error rates exceeding acceptable for a specific service. NOC escalates to the on-call team associated with the service, who discover the root service needs to undergo a full reboot. The reboot is done, and the errors don’t drop off. Further investigation shows a single node is causing problems, and once that node is killed, the errors disappear.

Game Stuff:

• Critical node restart impacts game starts(11/20, ~20 minutes) NOC receives direct reports from Rioters that they are stuck at 0 in champ select. Compensation mode is quickly enabled after verification is made that multiple game lobbies are stuck in limbo. LPs on call make the decision to push messaging and start triaging, only to have all stuck lobbies slowly filter into active games without crashing out.
• Fiddlesticks ult invisible to players(11/20, ~3 hours) The NOC is notified by game designers that Fiddlesticks may require a champion disable due to rising reports of invisible ultimates. 13 minutes later, Fiddlestick is disabled across all Riot-Regions. After a quick triage and change to the back-end services, Fiddle is re-enabled across all regions and messaging is removed. Total time of Fiddlesticks problems: ~3 hours.
• Poro King accidentally enabled(11/26, ~2 minutes) The NOC is notified that the game mode was accidentally enabled by a developer by mistake, and immediately turned it off after realizing the mistake. Sorry fluffy, you’ve got to wait for the right time to be enabled.

Morgageddon"

Reminders

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

• The Essence Emporium is now open in the client! From November 25th to December 10th, you can get chromas, icons, skins, and more for Blue Essence! Head tot he client to check out the deals!

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