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Red Post Collection: The Latest on League's 2020 Plans | Riot Pls, Update on MSI, Bilgewater LoR reveal, & More

Today's red post collection is bursting with news including a Riot Pls from Safelocked on League 2020 plans including new skin previews for Bard, Pantheon, & Taliyah , Meddler's Quick LoL Thoughts for April 24, an update on MSI from John Needham, a BTS video on the making of the upcoming FPX team skins, a reveal of BILGEWATER as the new LoR region, & more!
Continue reading for more information!


Table of Contents


The Latest on League’s 2020 Plans | Riot Pls - League of Legends

Here's Safelocked with an update on 2020 plans, including the return of Nexus Blitz, peeks at Pulsefire Pantheon, Astronaut Bard, Pool Party Taliyah, an upcoming mid-set expansion for TFT, and more!
"League of Legends’ lead producer Safelocked shares updates on the meta, Ranked, champions, events, game modes, skins, and more.  
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:36 - State of the Game
1:44 - Ranked and Clash
2:38 - Champions
3:38 - Events and Game Modes
4:37 - Skins
5:27 - Teamfight Tactics"

Here's images showing off new skins coming later this year:
 


Quick LoL Thoughts: April 24 

Here's Riot Meddler with his quick LoL thoughts for April 24 - "Clash so far, Improving Event Rewards, TFT and the Galaxies system."
"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 
Clash so far 
Now that Clash has been out for a little bit we wanted to share a few details on how it’s going and what’s up next:
  • The most recent run of Clash hit record participation numbers in most regions. Overall participation was up 30% on previous bests, with some regions up as much as 90%.
  • We’re continuing to work on bug fixes and quality of life changes for Clash. Recent notables include a fix for a bug where a few players couldn’t swap champions in champ select (thanks to everyone who submitted details, they were really helpful) and added details about Clash rewards you’ve earned in the Clash tab.
  • One of our next focuses is on smurfing. We’ve already adopted the policy that an account identified as smurfing will have its rewards stripped and then be blocked from future Clash participation. That’s not enough by itself though so we’re looking into other approaches as well. Nothing specific to share yet, wanted to share that it’s being looked at though given it’s been a key point of feedback received on Clash so far though.
  • Since the launch of Clash we’ve also seen the number of premade 5s in Flex queue increase substantially, up to double where it was previously in some regions before Clash launched. We believe that reflects teams using Flex to practice before Clash tournaments. To help Flex be more useful again we’re going to be removing the tier limits for who you can queue with in flex to make it easier to get a team together (Clash doesn’t have those same restrictions either). To avoid abuse cases we’ll then skew a team’s MMR significantly towards the MMR of its highest MMR player so that adding low MMR players can’t be used to gain an advantage.

Improving Event Rewards 
I also wanted to touch on our event rewards systems, with some context on how they’ve changed over time and then a bit on what we’re thinking for the future. 
First off, looking at pass grind. The graph below shows the average number of games of SR per day during an event that were required to get that event’s prestige skin and how it’s changed over time. It covers the events from Battle Academia last year to our projections for the next event after Galaxies. Galaxies has separate columns for pre and post token buffs. Around Worlds last year, we realized the event pass/prestige skin system was much grind heavier than it should have been. We’ve been reducing that over time as a result, both by making rewards in general more available and by shifting rewards towards missions, rather than sheer number of games played. 
With Mecha Kingdoms especially we felt we’d gone a bit too far in reducing commitment needed, both from the perspective of how exclusive prestige skins should be and also just from a revenue perspective. Event pass and related sales help fund things like game modes, ability to give away content in free missions/loot, etc. With Galaxies we pulled back as a result, though then realized we’d put too much grind back in. As a result we pivoted partway through Galaxies, putting more tokens into missions to reduce grind. 
We’ll be adding more tokens again to weekly win missions for the next upcoming event as well, as per the May 2020 column in the graph, getting to similar levels as Worlds/Night and Dawn last year.
For anyone who wants to dig into the details more, here’s all the relevant data in table form. Some things to note here:
  • Back when we used win of the day missions instead of weekly missions the average player with an event pass only got 18 wins of the day on average. Almost every pass buyer gets all the weekly missions now however and that’s been factored into the relevant column here.
  • Worlds 2019 is an outlier, since it was a much longer pass than average but also included two available prestige skins. The hours to prestige skin value is for games needed to acquire one of those skins as a result.
Looking to the future we think our event rewards, both free and premium, can be further improved. We’re working on moving to a track based system, like the one TFT and a lot of other games use, which should make it a lot easier to understand what rewards are available, how you’re progressing, what impact missions will have, which rewards you can get for free etc. We do want to ensure a higher degree of player choice remains as well though, in terms of what specific rewards you can get, which we think is a good aspect of the current system. 
In terms of timing that work isn’t far enough along yet to talk about exact dates. We’re aiming for sometime this year though certainly. 
TFT and the Galaxies system 
Finally on the TFT side of things wanted to touch on the Galaxies mechanic that was added in 10.7. Our goal for it was that it should result in games where what was optimal was clearly different than normal, creating different decisions and therefore comps/experiences. Overall we think it’s doing a great job of that so far, giving a lot of game to game variety. It’s still a work in progress though certainly and we’ll be adding further galaxies over time, removing or reworking those that aren’t as enjoyable (or influence game outcome too much), tuning the frequency of how often galaxies show up etc."

Update on MSI from John Needham 

Here's John Needham with details on MSI and it's cancellation this year:
"My thoughts are with you and your loved ones during these tough and uncertain times. As you know, COVID-19 has presented extraordinary challenges around the globe. International travel restrictions and local/regional/national mandates change daily, and nearly all assessments have the pandemic dramatically impacting large social gatherings throughout the summer.

The Global League of Legends Esports team has been working hard over the past few months to react to these changes, support our regional leagues as they have successfully pivoted to online competition, and try to preserve our next big international competition, the Mid-Season Invitational. One outcome of this hard work was the decision to delay MSI from May to July with the hope that the crisis would be waning, travel restrictions would come down, and we could deliver an exceptional MSI. 
Based on the modeling of our external risk advisors, however, it appears highly unlikely that either the global spread/impact of COVID-19 or the restrictive travel and public gathering policies responding to the crisis will abate significantly by the time of MSI’s current planned dates (July 3-19). With this model plus input from health authorities, local governments, regional leagues and teams, travel experts, and other stakeholders, we have made the difficult decision to not hold MSI in 2020. We believe this decision was necessary to ensure the health and safety of the players, teams, crew, partners, media, and fans. 
MSI serves as an international tournament that brings together the global League of Legends community—and any other version of the event this year would not meet our standards. 
Fortunately, our 12 regional leagues have continued to operate using innovative production resources. Our game and esport has served as an important source of entertainment on an almost daily basis to millions of players and fans—and will continue to do so. By making this decision now, our regional leagues can revert to their original Summer Split schedules without the disruption of a multi-week, global event in July. We want to support and amplify the weekly play of the regional league teams and players as they now compete to win their Summer Splits and qualify for the 2020 League of Legends World Championship. 
We also are working with other teams throughout the Riot organization to evaluate alternative events and activities. We are hoping to have some plans far enough along to share with you in the weeks ahead. 
This decision also allows us to dedicate our global esports team and resources to planning for Worlds 2020. We are totally committed to delivering the biggest spectacle we’ve ever produced in China to celebrate our sport’s 10-year anniversary. While we must remain nimble with our plans, we are eager to celebrate everything that we love about League of Legends with a memorable Worlds 2020. Today, we are announcing the 24 invites based on regional competition in this post here. We will share more information about Worlds, including pool placements for all seeds, closer to the event. 
Thank you for your continued support and understanding during this time. It bears repeating that the health and safety of our players and others involved in our events is our top priority. It has been inspiring to see the resilience of esports during this crisis. We look forward to continuing to see you on Summoner’s Rift in the weeks, months, and years ahead."

Making the FPX Worlds Championship Team Skins | Behind the Scenes

Check out a behind the scenes look at the making of the FPX Worlds skins:

"Making the FPX Worlds Championship Team Skins was a giant team effort. How did our developers work with the FPX team to capture their team spirit? Follow the team through the process."
 Riot Cactopus also provided release details on the FPX chromas:
[1] "FPX Worlds skins are coming soon, and this year if you buy the "Signature Edition Mega Bundle" you'll get some exclusive chromas inspired by the FPX team jersey. 
First looks below (clockwise, from top left: Gangplank, Malphite, Lee Sin, Vayne…)"
[2] "For those asking—yes, these chromas are a bonus exclusive to the full bundle (not sold individually)."

Miscellaneous

  • Over on twitter, Cactopus commented on the ongoing client clean up campaign noting we will see another blog in about 2 weeks.
"The next blog in the Client Cleanup Campaign series is coming in ~2 weeks. Will contain some real talk about both progress and setbacks on client work. 
Some more context I posted on Reddit today:"
  • Laurie Golding noted Sona is still on the Narrative schedule for updated lore:
"As I confirmed earlier this year - Sona is back on our schedule for some much-needed attention (Although once she's done, what will the memes be about then?!)"
  • Riot Creator Support noted the LPP chroma codes were going out for League partners:
[1] Chromas for Dark Star Mordekaiser & Coven LeBlanc will be given to #LeaguePartner over the weekend.
Giveaways start up soon on these channels:
NA- https://riot.com/2KwYdQL
TR- https://riot.com/2Kz05bO
OCE- https://riot.com/2KxtAuu
LAN/LAS- https://riot.com/3bBJKPp (1/2)
[1] BR- https://riot.com/3aAbsus
EU and Russian lists got removed from the website when we updated League of Legends' website and we are working to rebuild it now. If/When they are back up we will make sure to share! #LeaguePartner (2/2)

LoR Bilgewater Reveal & Other Riot Games news

As we get closer to the official Legends of Runeterra release on PC & Mobile on April 30th, Riot has revealed BILGEWATER as the new region along with previews of mechanics & several new cards!

Official reveal over on youtube: New Region: Bilgewater | Legends of Runeterra 

"In this treacherous harbor, locals live and die by one code: take whatever you can. 
Get the game and play RIGHT NOW at https://playruneterra.com. Official launch on PC and Mobile coming April 30. 
See the other regions of Runeterra here: https://bit.ly/2S6hVai 
Join the community and see more: WEBSITE: https://playruneterra.com 
DISCORD: https://discord.gg/legendsofruneterra 
YOUTUBE: you are here 
TWITCH: https://twitch.tv/riotgames 
INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/legendsofruneterra 
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/playruneterra 
FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/legendsofruneterra"

Over on twitter, they shared a few more previews including the new PLUNDER mechanic!
[1] "Bilgewater brings new keywords and mechanics to Runeterra. Here's a sneak peek at a signature keyword: Plunder." 

As well as a preview of new cards!
[2] "Here's a citrus-sweet taste of some Plunder cards on the horizon."
   
[3] "The Winter's Claw owns what they take!" 
   
  • The Fizz reveal is up, including card art and previews:
      
  • The Nautilus reveal video is now up, including art & card previews:
      
  • The Gangplank reveal video is now up, with card art and previews:
     
  • Twisted Fate reveal video is up, including new art & card previews!
  • Miss Fortune reveal is now up, including card art & previews:

   
      
  • VALORANT:
    • Omen agent showcase:


Reminders

  • The Galaxies 2020 event is running now through April 27th, including new skins, chromas, missions & rewards, loot, and the return of One for All for the duration of the event! Check out our post for a loot at the new content, or the FAQ for the full details!
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