Red Post Collection: Gameplay and Ranked in Season 2020 Video, Ask Riot, & More

Posted on at 10:45 AM by Aznbeat
[Added details on start of season 2020 missions!]

Today's red post collection includes a Dev video on Gameplay and Ranked in Season 2020, this week's 2019 recap Ask Riot, and more!
Continue reading for more information!


Table of Contents


Gameplay & Ranked in Season 2020 | Dev Video 

A new Dev video is now out, giving more info on Gameplay and Ranked in Season 2020, including Rise of the Elements, the ranked season, client improvements, and game modes, and the release of Clash!


The client was updated with a schedule of info releases, so check back for more upcoming this week!

Along with the start of Season 2020, new season start missions are now live!

Ask Riot: Events, Modes, & More 

Check out this week's 2019 recap Ask Riot - "Username changes, custom games with temporary modes, eggs, vetoing roles, and more."
Welcome to 2020, y’all! This week, we’re recapping some of the most common, most talked about, and most… interesting questions we saw in 2019. (If you wanna go down memory lane, head here and also here for previous recaps, including details on how we choose Victorious skins and what happens if you eat a poro… )\ 
Q 
You regularly offer events around themes, champions, or skin series (like Project), but these events have become less quality over time. The gaming experience doesn’t bring anything new to players (like game modes), and we have very limited tasks compared to former events, which makes it banal. Will you do more substantial and interesting events for players? 
A

Yes, absolutely! We’ve heard this feedback and wholeheartedly agree—events have become more stale this year. We want each event to feel like a unique experience that all players can be excited for, which is why our goal moving forward is to make participating in events more rewarding, more novel, and more memorable for everyone. 
Here are some of the ways we hope to achieve this: 
  • Bring back game modes (new and old) to events
  • Improve how missions interact with events, similarly to Trials (ex: Trials gave you a progress bar you filled up by doing missions, which in turn gave you house-specific rewards for the event, so it all felt more cohesive)
  • Deliver more missions and a greater variety of missions beyond just “farm minions,” “get kills,” or “earn gold” 
You’ll begin to see some of these changes soon, starting with our first small steps for the upcoming Worlds event, and we’ll continue making improvements into 2020. I hope you enjoy the Worlds event, and we look forward to hearing your feedback during and afterwards! 
Game Design Lead 
Q 
Why can’t we play custom games of URF and the other game modes? 
A

We’ve talked before about the type of work that goes into keeping rotating game modes functional: Things like new and updated champs, abilities, items, runes, and skins don’t always play nice with modes. Changes or refactors to the game’s underlying code—like how damage is recorded or how textures are loaded into game—can be even more problematic, as the rapid development cycle of RGMs often means we’re building them with duct tape and bubble gum. Back when we were releasing modes more frequently, this type of upkeep work took about half of the Modes team’s total time. 
But what about customs? Wouldn’t it be okay for rotating game modes to be a bit buggy if there’s nothing on the line, and shouldn’t that make it easy for Riot to offer rotating game modes in customs? 
The answer is no. We aren’t willing to offer a knowingly—basically intentionally—buggy experience for customs because we want your League experience to be high quality regardless of how you’re playing. Principled stances aside, some bugs are bad enough that they can crash entire game servers, meaning hundreds of matches would crash, not just the customs they occur in. So even if we were willing to let players opt into a buggy experience in custom games, it’d still lead to risks for the rest of League players as well. 
That means it takes the same amount of work to bring a mode back for customs as it does to bring it back for queues, which takes us back to our previous discussions around why we’ve chosen to invest our time into developing new modes, rather than keeping older modes on rotation. 
RIOT POPC0RNER & RIOT AETHER 
Q 
Why can’t we choose a role we don’t want to play? 
A

Over the years, we’ve experimented with a couple of alternative position select systems, including one where you could “veto” a position. Essentially, it ended up sucking because everyone chose to veto Support, which lowered matchmaking quality and increased queue times dramatically. 
Autofill was introduced as a last resort way of ensuring people don’t sit in queue for a ridiculously long time. We try to avoid autofilling you if we can, but the design challenge here is striking a balance between you getting to pick your position, not having infinite queue times, and getting fair matches. Currently, the only way autofill wouldn’t be necessary is if each position had an equal amount of demand—20% of players—literally all the time. This is a tricky thing to get right, but we’re going to continue looking for ways to get you the position you want and make every game feel winnable. 
UX Lead for Teamfight Tactics 
Q 
What’s going on with Riot Accounts? Why did I have to change the username I use to log into League? 
A

In short: We have to update the account system so we can launch new games. When this update takes effect, it’ll cause problems for players with login names that aren’t globally unique (aka, someone else in another region has it as well), so we’re asking players with duplicate usernames to change them. This only affects the username you use to sign into League. Your Summoner Name will not be affected. 
The long version: In preparation for launching new games, we need to rebuild our account system. The old system linked accounts to specific regions, meaning we couldn’t release another game unless it has the same exact regional divisions as League of Legends. This is problematic as we might offer different regional configurations for future games.

In order to fix this, every player needs a unique username, and there’s currently a lot of duplication across servers. As long as there are two people with the same username, neither will be able to log in when we activate the unique username system. We tried to find a way to make the system work differently, but couldn’t find a solution that would be reliable, secure, and sustainable for a multi-game platform. 
We wish this transition were less painful and inconvenient. We know it sucks to have to change a piece of your identity as a player, even if it’s one that only you can see. We’re asking players to change how they log in now—before the unique username system activates—so everyone’s experience with future games is as smooth as possible. We know this process hasn’t met your expectations, and frankly, it hasn’t met ours either. We’re working hard to make sure our new systems are as future-proof as possible to avoid situations like this down the line. 
In the meantime, we hope that being able to save your username and password to auto-login will make things a little easier. We’re also exploring allowing you to log in with your email address instead of your username, which we’ve seen a lot of players ask for. And for anyone who’s unhappy with the username they changed to, we’re planning on letting you change your login credentials again early next year. 
Senior Director, Player Platform Team 
Q 
Do Little Legends lay eggs? 
A

Riot Cactopus approached the peak of the tallest mountain in all of Targon. Panting, out of breath, he heaves himself up the last step to find a simple platform with runic inscriptions from an unknown language. He kneels before the platform, perplexed. Suddenly, he hears a soft whisper, a cold wind all around him, breathing into his ear, “Place your wallet upon the platform to see true greatness.” He doesn’t understand where this voice is coming from, but the compulsion is overwhelming. He places his wallet on the cold stone, and the runes ignite with a magical flowing energy. They pulse… pulse… pulse… and a blooming light appears above the platform as a small egg slowly descends. He picks it up and examines it. It’s warm… so very warm. He trades it between his hands a few times, wondering what its purpose could be. 
Then he hears a small crrk. And a louder crack that splinters down the egg shell. He drops it in a fright, and it falls to the ground and shatters—a huge explosion of light erupts from the egg! He is blinded and falls backwards. He opens his eyes, blinking a few times, trying to see clearly… and into focus comes the most lovable, adorable, magical creature he has ever laid his eyes upon. His life will never be the same. 
No one knows the details of the magical process that determine whether or not Little Legends make eggs, but we do know that Little Legends make great friends. 
Delivery Lead for Little Legends 
Q 
Will League of Legends be neglected because of all the other games that were announced at the 10th anniversary event? Meaning less patches, less focus on the game… 
A

That’s correct! League of Legends is now finally a dead game. RIP! 
… 

Ok nah, that’s a troll. In all seriousness, we’ve been working on other games for years. In fact, for a very long time, the League of Legends team (including marketing) has accounted for under 20% of Riot’s total headcount. 
Many of the other people in that remaining 80% have been quietly working behind the scenes to develop Riot’s new games and all of the global infrastructure we’ll need to bring new games to the market. Others have been working on creative stuff like Arcane, our first animated series. As these Rioters finally get to share their work with you, the League of Legends PC team is going to keep on trucking. 
Buckle up, Summoners. The next 10 years of League of Legends is gonna be even better than the first. 
Communications Lead, League of Legends

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 

  • The new 10.1 Little Legends Craggle, Flutterbug, and Tocker are all now available - an egg + icon bundle is available for each along with the typical random eggs! Check out the preview video below to see them in-game or you can check out pictures of the different variants for each in our 10.1 coverage!


Reminders

To round out this red post collection, here are a few reminders on current promotions or limited time events!
  • The Night & Dawn event is running now through January 13th, including a new event pass and missions, Night & Dawn and Sugar Rush skins, chroma, icons, ward, and much more!

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