Surrender at 20

Red Post Collection: Preseason Item Shop Update and more!

This afternoon's red post collection includes new dev blog on the upcoming Preseason Item changes, including a look at some of the new item icons and a heads up that the full preseason PBE will arrive in less than two weeks!  We also have a new Ask Riot focused on TFT, several miscellaneous news bits, news from Riot's other games, and more!
Continue reading for more articles and information!

Table of Contents


Preseason Item Shop Update

With preseason on the horizon, Riot Scruffy is back with a new dev blog on the Preseason item update including a look at some of the new item icons!  The article also mentions we'll see the full preseason on PBE in less than two weeks!

"Plans for the Shop Interface and Icon Updates":
"Hey everyone! We hope you enjoyed the quick preview for some of preseason's gameplay updates in the most recent Riot Pls. As our PBE date draws near, we wanted to take a moment to share some more information about the Item Shop changes that Safelocked went over. 
Item Shop Update 
Before everything comes to PBE, we wanted to give some more details on the shop interface. Thanks BarackProbama, our UX designer on the project, for the writeup. 
The Recommended Page, has been completely remade to better support our new recommendation system. This system will take into account a full tree of what your champion could build based on high level player data and serve up viable item choices. Here’s how it works: 
1. The shop loads up all the items your champion could build based on what you currently own. 
You are Caitlyn. You have purchased a Doran’s Blade and health potions. Caitlyn most often builds Galeforce, Behemoth Slayer, or Crimson Shieldbow next. 
2. The engine looks at the enemy team’s stats during the game like damage done, CC, healing, resistances, and many others. The shop then displays “good against” recommendations based on which items would be good choices against each enemy’s output that game. 
Since you are against a Malphite building Armor, Behemoth Slayer is especially effective against him. Their Akali is a bursty threat, so Crimson Shieldbow is a strong pick against her. 
3. It displays this info to you but you decide the best strategy in this particular game.
Here’s how this will look: 
Initially (for PBE and the first preseason patch) we will be inputting builds into the system ourselves, but after we collect enough data from the preseason patch we will begin using real player data for the recommendation engine. 
The All Items Page, is where you go to find….all the items. If you are the type of player who wants to craft your own build in real time this is where you will go. 
The page has a few features worth calling out:
  • A series of tabs that let you filter items by the classes that typically build them. If you’re a Tank, everything you need is probably inside the Tank tab.
  • A Popular filter that lets you use the data from the recommendation system to view only the items your character most commonly builds. (When the filter is off you can still see those items indicated by a star)
  • Items are separated by their rarity. Instead of sorting by price like today you can actually see all your basic & starter items in one place, as well as all your top-tier mythics and legendaries in others.
  • Initially on PBE we will not have stat filters, but they are coming soon in a later PBE update and will be ready for the preseason patch.
A new Item Set Page will be coming to PBE at a later date (still in time to ship with preseason), but maintains all the functionality you know and enjoy today. Custom item sets will be supported, as will 3rd party applications loading dynamic sets for your champion. 
In addition to these pages, we’re introducing Quick-Buy sidebars. These sidebars appear in both the Recommended and All Items views, and offer you easy access to commonly purchased items like potions, elixirs, wards, and boots. Now you have no excuse not to buy vision wards because they are always available. 
Item Icon Update 

A key part of the revamped item experience is to fully update all of our icons to a modern style, whether complete redos to 10-year-old OGs or slight touch-ups to more modern additions. We’re targeting a few different goals simultaneously with these updates:
  • Readability - This is our most important goal. Every item icon needs to have a distinct silhouette and color palette so that it’s instantly recognizable in the shop, inventory, scoreboard, and other places that it will appear. Don’t expect to blow up these icons to a wallpaper size and find intricate details; we need them to have clear visual reads in small sizes for gameplay clarity.
  • Gameplay Match - We want the icon and theme to convey the stats and gameplay of the item. Players should be able to get a thematic sense for the gameplay effect when looking at the item art. We try a variety of techniques to make this possible like lining up the thematic for the intended class (bows for marksman items, heavy armor for tank items). We also try to match the colors of the icon with the colors of the defining stats. This works well, but we can't apply it too rigidly or we end up with all AD items as the same color.
  • Art quality - Many of the existing item art is as old as LoL, dating back to 2009. Our art team has refined and developed our art craft and art style so much in that time. We want to bring each item to life in a more polished and beautiful render.
  • Familiarity - Good change is good, but change for the sake of change is something we want to avoid. In most cases we hope that each new icon is immediately recognizable for players that have gotten used to the old silhouettes and colors.
  • Theme and IP - We want to use the opportunity to make these powerful items fit into—and even sometimes deepen—the lore and world of Runeterra.
With these goals in mind, some of our existing items only needed small changes to meet our goals while others needed large changes or in a few rare cases, a complete retheme. Here are some before and after examples showing a range of change:
Preseason PBE is Coming 
If everything goes well, we will reveal all and bring the full preseason content to PBE in less than two weeks! At that point you will be able to see and play with all of the new items, shop, and other preseason changes. As always, the PBE is a place for unfinished work, so we’re going to be listening to feedback and making any changes we need to before the preseason patch in November. 
Thanks again everyone for playing. Stay safe out there. 
Scruffy"

On twitter, Scruffy added that the preseason PBE is aimed at lasting six weeks:

[1] "Even though we're planning preseason PBE in less than two weeks that doesn't mean the patch is similarly soon. 

Our goal is to have 6 full weeks of PBE instead of the normal 2 considering how big the changes are. Gotta have time to react and iterate."
When asked if icons in the screenshot like RoA and Hextech Revolver will also be updated, Scruffy replied:
[1] "Yes, everything will be updated by the time the preseason patch comes."

Scruffy also added the top left item from the article graphic is Lich Bane!

[1] "Reworked lichbane. Rather than have it be a recolored Zeal we wanted a fully realized mage's sword."


In a follow up, Scruffy also tweeted on the lore connection when redesigning the new icons

[1] "Yes one step is identifying where in Runeterra each item would have been made. Then we incorporate the correct materials and design style of the region. 
 
For old items we tried to match them with regions that would preserve the old look. 
 
BF sword - demacia 
Warmog - bandle city"


Over on the LoL subreddit, UX designer BarackProbama noted the item shop image is a mock up:
"Just a heads up, the image of the shop with the prices/items is totally made up. Don't try and infer anything about prices from it lmao."
Scruffy also confirmed:
 
"Ya these aren't real numbers just an interface mockup"


Ask Riot: Star Shards and Choncc

With TFT: Fates out on live, the latest edition of ASK RIOT is focused on TFT and little legends questions!

"Welcome to Ask Riot! 
   
Today it’s all about TFT: Star Shards, stats, champions, and Choncc. 
 
Why did it take so long to get Star Shards for Little Legends? 
 
We’re constantly listening to player feedback and prioritizing what we want to bring to the table. When Little Legends were first released with TFT, we learned that you wanted more agency in buying both the species and variant of your Little Legend. That got us to the Little Legends Rotating Store. After learning that we still needed to do more to meet your expectations, we came up with “Little Legends Upgrade Token” (which eventually became Star Shards).


Now the question was, when could we start on it?

While we were brewing the idea of Star Shards, the team was shipping TFT Mobile (including the Tutorial and Store), the Galaxies set, the Galaxies mid-set update… not to mention a new galaxy each patch! Around June this year, we were finally able to kick off the project.

How many ways can players get Star Shards? What will it look and sound like? How do we make it work with RP? These are just some of the many questions that our teams had to answer, and with those results transform it into a working feature.

One of the goals for developing the Star Shards system was that it was independent, a new currency on its own, and not limited by the existing ones on League. This allows us to be more flexible, and we’ve also added automation on the way. We worked closely with our PIE (aka Skins and Events Team) Merchant Guild and Content Access Hub team to make sure the pieces came together smoothly.

We did multiple demos and playtests to collect feedback and also ensure that things were running as intended. For example, we needed to make sure that the Star Shard system was hooked up properly to players’ inventories and that spending the currency properly upgraded your Little Legend.

All of this took three months to develop, test, and ship.

The team is still continuing to polish Star Shards (alongside the game!). We have a lot to do and we need talented people to do it, so If you are interested in joining our team to make the game even more awesome, check out Riot Careers.

Riot FireNRain, TFT Producer


What were the most popular Traits in Galaxies? Champions? Items?

Did someone ask for data? Here are a few fun stats...

Before the mid-set update, the most popular individual traits were 2-Chrono and Mercenary. After Mercenary’s timely demise, 2-Chrono and 2-Vanguard became the most popular individual traits. If you want even more fun data, the most popular 6-piece trait was 6-Blademaster throughout Galaxies. The most winning (and potentially overrated) individual trait was 9-Dark Star before the mid-set update and 9-Star Guardian after.

Let’s break it down even more. Don’t keep scrolling, you asked for data, you’re getting data.


The most popular champions by gold cost in the first half of Galaxies were:
  • 1 gold: Malphite (the rock solid choice)
  • 2 gold: Blitzcrank with Shen at a close second (grabgrabgrabgrabgrab)
  • 3 gold: Ashe followed by Vi and Ezreal in 2nd and 3rd (but Kassadin was the most likely to get you LP)
  • 4 gold: Wukong (Kayle was a close 2nd and more likely to get you LP)
  • 5 gold: Miss Fortune (There’s no competition for second. It wasn’t even close.)
And after the mid-set update they were:
  • 1 gold: Jarvan IV (hail to the king)
  • 2 gold: Rakan (he must be lonely without Xayah)
  • 3 gold: Ashe (Jayce was more popular for early game, but fell off later)
  • 4 gold: Wukong (but Jhin was more likely to get you some LP… insert low effort number 4 joke here)
  • 5 gold: Gangplank and Thresh (The dynamic duo... or something. I dunno.)

Did you think I was done? Lol nice try.

The most popular items across the whole set were Infinity Edge and Guardian Angel. Guinsoo’s Rageblade was 3rd in the first half when Kayle was a dominant presence, but was overtaken by Seraph’s Embrace after the mid-set update. 
 
The most popular items weren’t the most likely to get you some LP though. If you wanted those fat LP gainz you needed (depending on the patch): Red Buff, Morellonomicon, Ionic Spark, and Statikk Shiv (as well as Demolitionist’s Charge, Battlecast Armor, and of course, Force of Nature if you could find the Spatulas for them). 
 
Ok, you can keep scrolling now.

Riot Benobo, Insights Analyst


Who was the most tricky champion to transfer from Summoner's Rift into the TFT World of Fates?

One of the trickier champions for us to port over from Summoner’s Rift to TFT: Fates was Azir. He posed a series of design and technical problems:

Designing Shurima’s Walls

It was difficult for us to settle on a spell for him that would sell his SR fantasy but not contribute too much visual noise to late-game combat. Since we already used spawning soldiers as a 3-cost spell in Rise of the Elements, we knew we had to go bigger and better for him as a 5-cost, and there was no spell more iconic to him than his Shuriman soldier wall.

One of the initial iterations of the spell had the wall knockback all enemies it passed through, then remain there as impassable terrain while his Emperor soldiers positioned themselves behind the wall to hit the enemies trying to pass through. Although we liked the anti-assassin properties of this iteration, it made a lot of late-game combats hard to follow—he was shuffling the enemy team, his team (who was chasing the knockbacked enemies), and his soldiers. We eventually moved to a version where his wall would only push back enemies near him and his soldiers wouldn’t move with it, significantly reducing the number of units that were displaced every time he casted.

Making Guards for the Emperor 

His Emperor trait required us to change some of our core systems to accommodate the soldier properties. Much like Bard Meeps in Galaxies, we needed to add functionality to our drag-and-drop system to let players place Sand Guards only on the board. Additionally, we had to ensure the Sand Guards leveled up with Azir, didn’t contribute to the unit count, and didn’t show up in damage recap charts.

Additionally, because when Azir dies his soldiers die too, clone army Azirs needed the ability to find their respective ghost soldiers to tell them when to die. This meant we couldn’t just do a surface level copy of Azir and his soldiers to make the clones—we had to give them something more. So we gave clone units information about the original unit they were copied off of, and then recreated the connection that the original Azir has to his soldiers with clone Azir and the clone soldiers.

Honorable Mentions

Aphelios: Spawning turrets such that they don’t interfere with unit pathing is always hard; we also had to do work to make sure that they inherited Aphelios’ item and trait buffs.

Sett: Has a ton of movement logic to make sure that him and the units around him move and path appropriately for The Boss trait and his suplex.

Lee Sin: We had to give units the ability to move outside the bounding box of islands so he could kick them off.

(If he didn’t make an appearance as an Epic encounter in Galaxies, Kayn would probably also be on this list due to his different forms.)

Shynkro, TFT Technical Designer


Who is your favorite Little Legend and why is it Choncc?

Riot Green Teej: A Choncc got that something that I need. 
Riot FireNRain: I like my Sugarcone Furyhorn and Original Fuwa. Sorry Κ•´•α΄₯•`Κ” 
Riot Benobo: Boom boom clap boom boom clap boom clap boom boom boom boom clap

Shynkro: Boom boom clap boom boom clap boom clap boom boom boom boom clap

Choncc (and Furyhorn) Fan Club AKA the TFT Team"

Miscellaneous 


"A true fan follows the elusive Evelynn's career, leading to a chance encounter that changes everything."



  • Following  a late night PBE restart, Porosite tweeted that there wouldn't be anther PBE deploy for the 10.20 cycle until Monday (the 21st).
"And PBE is back open. Sorry for the off cadence maintenance. 

Also FYI there won't be another PBE deployment until next Monday. Enjoy the long PBE weekend!"
  • Following a patch note error, KateyKhaos tweeted  out to confirm that Championship LeBlanc will be released in  September 24th!
[1] "Championship LeBlanc was incorrectly listed as being available today, September 17th, in the patch notes.  
She will be available September 24th."
  • Over on twitter, TFT Lead Tommy Gunardi Teguh shared a look at the various props for the new TFT: Fates little legends!
[1]" Little Legend Props!

Wanted to showcase this seperately, since The Dragon LLs are probably our most ambitious drop of prop work so far covering every Variant.

This where we usually add fun (or literal) easter eggs, when viewed up close!"

[2] "shoutouts:

@Misfortuneee For repainting Choncc's props for the epic T3 splashes. That's alooot of work.

@paul_jarvis for spiking up the guitar idea in the first place!

 Big thanks to the team at Kudos Productions!!
Character Art: @xiang85103723 @APPLEGAN3"


  • For those following the recent surge of K/DA social media posts, another new K/DA image featuring Kai'sa is out! A slightly larger version can be found on the K/DA Instagram!
[1] "And you will finally appear. 
#WHEREWEVEBEEN #KAISA #KDA #CALLINGALLBLADES"


  • The League of Legends twitter tweeted about the upcoming True Damage Yasuo Prestige Edition and their collaboration with AAPE!
[1] "Check out the AAPE BY *A BATHING APE® X LEAGUE OF LEGENDS apparel collection on http://aape.jp. Available online and in select retail stores on September 25. 
@AAPE_OFFICIAL #AAPExLoL"


Other Games

  • Wild Rift
    • Following their recent announcements on regional closed beta, the Wild Rift twitter shared a look at some familiar League of Legends skins that have made their way into the newest build!    
  • Legends of Runeterra
[1] "We're excited to announce our first European tournament: The Legends of Runeterra Masters Europe - Chronicles of Targon. Full moon symbol Learn more: https://riot.com/3c8RwRZ"

  • VALORANT
    • New Twitch Prime Gaming loot is now available for VALORANT! First up is a free Netter Treter Gun Buddy with two more rewards available in the future.
[1] "Gear up and go. Link your VALORANT and Amazon accounts and unlock in-game items with Prime. https://riot.com/3iGbeHf"

Reminders

  • The PsyOps 2020 Event is running now through September 30th! Check out new skins, chromas, missions, and more - including the new Kayle, Pyke, Viktor, Zed that launched in 10.19!
    • "Championship LeBlanc will be available on September 24th, 2020."
    • "True Damage Yasuo Prestige Edition will be available on September 25th, 2020.  "

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