Red Post Collection: Client Cleanup: Champ Select & End of Game, Behavioral Systems Update, & More

• Red Post Collection: Twitch Rivals, K/DA ALL OUT Merch, Wild Rift cinematic, LoR Patch + K/DA Event, and more!
• 10/29 PBE Update: Splash Art, Chroma Assets, Item icons, and more

• Seraphine & K/DA ALL OUT content now available!

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 30

"Disclaimer

These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The work or goals could change depending on what we discover, and projects mentioned may get delayed or even stopped. That said, I believe it’s important to share as much as we can even if plans may change. 

Champion Complexity Philosophy

Recently the champions team has done an audit and refresh of our principles around champion complexity. At a high level, we want League to have champions across a wide range of complexity profiles to help us deliver the perfect champion for every player. 

A few of our high level goals when it comes to champion complexity

• We want champions to have a rough bell curve on the complexity spectrum with a few very low and a few very high complexity but most falling somewhere in the middle.
• As a sub point to this we want to offer a range of complexity options for each class and position (eg a high complexity ADC and a low complexity ADC)
• Theme and complexity are well matched - an assassin with elaborate ninja tools attracts a player that is usually looking for a challenge while a fluffy teddy bear would attract players looking for a simpler kit.
• For VGUs, we want to keep a similar complexity level to keep the current players of the champion feeling at home with the new kit
• Avoid extreme playing AGAINST complexity - Players shouldn’t have to complete a PHD thesis to understand how to play with or against a champion, there is a limit to how much we want your game disrupted by someone else’s pick. Worth noting - playing AS some champions can require this much research because it is an opt in experience.

We evaluate complexity using 3 axis:

• Mechanical complexity
• Low mechanical demands. Spells are straightforward and “just work”
• Rammus, Warwick
• Medium mechanical demands. Sometimes requires higher apm or timing sensitive combos
• Kassadin, Kaisa
• High mechanical demands. High APM and punishing combos that demand precise execution
• Kalista, Azir
• Knowledge Complexity
• Low - Skills learned from other champs teach you how to play this one
• Miss Fortune, Sona, Lux
• Medium - Playing this champ repeatedly is needed to learn correct play
• Yasuo, Draven, Thresh
• High - Reading a guide needed to learn how to play this champ
• Riven combos, Aphelios
• Playing with/against complexity
• Low - Other players don’t need to change their playstyle when this champ is in the game
• Ahri, Jinx
• Medium - The champ requires other players to be aware of new mechanics or strategies when it is in the game, they can still play the game normally for the most part
• Thresh Lantern, Nocturne’s R
• High - The champ requires other players to think about the game completely differently on a strategic level when it is present
• Ivern, Proxy Singed

To put it in perspective, here is how we rate our champs this year:

• Sett
• Mechanical - Medium
• Knowledge - Low
• Playing with/against - Medium
• Fiddlesticks
• Mechanical - Low
• Knowledge - Medium
• Playing with/against - High
• Volibear
• Mechanical - Low
• Knowledge - Low
• Playing with/against - Medium
• Lilia
• Mechanical - Medium
• Knowledge - Low
• Playing with/against - Medium
• Yone
• Mechanical - High
• Knowledge - Medium
• Playing with/against - Medium
• Samira
• Mechanical - High
• Knowledge - Medium
• Playing with/against - Medium

Thanks again everyone for playing. Stay safe out there."

Client Cleanup: Champ Select & End of Game

Here's Riot Aotus, Riot ID, and Riot Am1t with more client cleanup details - "We're working on improvements to Champ Select and End Of Game."

"Earlier this year, we made a commitment to share bi-monthly updates on the behind-the-scenes work we're doing to improve the performance and reliability of the League of Legends client. 

Today's update is the fifth blog in the series. (See the first, the second, the third, and the fourth.) 

TL;DR: Now that improving client start up times and improving our architecture is complete, we're finally jumping into Champ Select. We've also taken on End Of Game as a new priority. 

Champ Select Begins 

Way back when we started this blog series in March, we mentioned two major goals: Improving client bootstrap time and Champ Select responsiveness, in that order. In September, we finally lowered bootstrap time (client start up time) down to 15.5 seconds for 90% of our players and announced work on Champ Select would finally begin. 

Here are our first updates. 

Champ Select Memory Footprint 

We always expected Champ Select to be in a similar need of repair as the rest of the client—ember apps to consolidate, code to optimize, bugs to fix, what have you. Over the course of our deep dive, we uncovered an unexpected type of issue: Champ Select's (and the client's) memory footprint increases each time you run through it in the same play session. 

For the 90th percentile, this looks like:

• The first time you run through Champ Select, the client's memory consumption jumps to 481 MB
• The second time incurs another jump of 56 MB
• The third time onward incur smaller jumps of ~ 15MB to 25 MB

Ultimately, as you get more and more games in during a single session, the client becomes more sluggish until a restart is all but required. 

The existence of memory leaks in the client is definitely not news and we figured some of this leakage was coming from Champ Select. The size and extent of the leaks we’re seeing, however, requires a shift in our approach. In parallel with our originally-planned efforts, we're now working to implement more specialized developer tools which let us identify and tackle memory leaks across the whole client more efficiently, cutting down the time it takes to deliver improvements. 

We did say in parallel, and while progress has been light, we plan on shipping our first small improvements to Champ Select performance in patch 10.23. We’ve improved summoner spell and ward skin selection so they don't create additional ember apps when opened. This leads to a small but measurable reduction in memory usage (~1.6 MB) when players set their spells and ward skins during Champ Select. These were two of the earliest memory leaks we discovered, and fixing them was a great way to put best practices in place to tackle bigger chunks of memory leaks in the near future! We expect more noticeable improvements to ship before the end of year. 

Champ Select UX/UI Review 

Aside from fixing what's broken, another part of fixing Champ Select is identifying which parts of the experience players care about, and which ones we can pull back on, or even remove, because players don't find them as important. The rationale is that the Champ Select experience is critical to the core game loop and so the less complexity we have in that path, the fewer opportunities there will be for things to go wrong. We've leveraged player survey data to tell us what's important when it comes to the Champ Select User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI), and are adding in-client metrics to reinforce those surveys with player activity data. 

Here are some of our early results, and what we've done or plan to do about them: 

• Players want faster and greater clarity around whether their button clicks went through, especially when it comes to picking and banning champions. We'll improve the speed and reliability of the visual and auditory feedback the interface provides to achieve this clarity.
• Players don't find the ceremonies around summoner spell and ward skin selection that important. We're removing the associated animations (in addition to fixing the memory leak issue mentioned above).
• We're adding telemetry to see how often players use certain Champ Select features that are less integral to preparing for the match ahead. If these fall more into the nice-to-have category, we may remove them for the sake of maximizing performance gains.
• Emote Panel
• Champion favoriting
• Missions

Getting into Champ Select 

One of the biggest pain points we’ve heard from players is that getting into Champ Select can run into a whole host of problems. Reliability in Champ Select is a must to help players feel they are ready to focus on the game ahead of them. It's critical that we resolve any issues that may interfere with banning champions or locking in your pick. We also don’t want you to have to worry whether the skin, summoner spells or runes you’ve used over hundreds of games are going to change without your knowledge. 

As we begin work in this space, the primary goals for our approach are to get players into Champ Select with adequate time to make critical decisions, ensure champion banning and picking are reliable, and have all players get into the game successfully. 

End Of Game (EOG) 

While not one of our original focus areas when we started the client cleanup campaign, End of Game (everything that happens between pressing "continue" on the Victory/Defeat screen and you being able to interact with the post-game lobby) has since emerged as a frustration point that's nearly on par with bootstrap times and Champ Select responsiveness & reliability. We're focusing on frustrations around two main areas: 

• Players have reported issues where the client hangs on a "reconnect" button for a while after the game ends instead of immediately transitioning into Honor. We're still investigating the cause of this issue.
• Sometimes the client locks up when players transition back into it from the Victory/Defeat screen, leaving them unable to see or interact with the Honor screen or postgame lobby. We have some promising fixes on deck which should go out in patch 10.23. 

The Settings & Popups Bug

Amidst the work on Champ Select and End of Game, we've also recently tackled a spike in reports of settings bugs over the past several patches. This includes things like Champ Select not remembering your summoner spells, as well as old popups showing up again (and again and again and again).Tracking down these issues was a journey to say the least. A few teams were independently working to update their backend systems around the same time, creating a bunch of scattered edge cases that combined into a perfect storm of many players experiencing at least one form of settings issue. We've introduced three independent fixes to help alleviate the majority of these issues since the last blog, with the most recent being in patch 10.21. 

As we continue to make significant improvements to both Champ Select and End Of Game, we will continue to partner with our internal teams to track and address high player pain bugs if they come up. 

That’s our update this time around! We have a lot of work to do through the end of the year, and we would like to thank you for your patience while we try our hardest to continue making the client better for our players every patch!"

Behavioral Systems: November 2020 Update

Here's Riot Codebear with this month's behavioral systems update - "Sharing our next areas of focus for behavioral systems improvements.":

"Welcome to the November issue of Behavioral Systems. This will be our last post for 2020 as we work to finish out the year strong. We’ll touch briefly on where we are now, then graze the surface of where we’re heading in 2021. 

Leaver and Intentional Feeding Results 

Last month, we called out our ongoing experiments for detection and punishments. As the latest round of iterations wraps up, we’ve had some time to review our tests and simulation results and we’re confident that we’re hitting the right notes. 

Specifically, our leaver detection and penalties, alongside our second iteration of intentional feeding detection, are showing surges in detection accuracy. As our detection accuracy increases, so does the application of the modified penalties we established back in August. We've seen results that indicate that, with these improvements in place, there has been a responsive 30% decrease to recurring disruptive behavior. 

On the flip side, in tests where we increased our thresholds to detection (making it harder for leavers to be flagged) and subsequently decreased our punishment application as a result, we saw a predictable resurgence of negative behavior. 

Finishing out the year, we'll continue training our leaver and intentional feeding models to further increase accuracy and immediacy of our response. 

Where We Are Now 

For other in-flight projects, our development team is hard at work wrapping up the Early Surrender and LP Consolation projects we mentioned in September for release in 10.24. Now that we're closer to launch, we have more details to share: 

Our implementation for Early Surrender will start as the following:

• After 10 minutes of play, when a player is identified as AFK for an extended period of time, there will be a prompt to the team to surrender if they choose.
• As with remake logic, it will be required that the vote for surrender is unanimous.

AFK surrenders will still adhere to LP consolation rules, which are: 

For LP consolation changes:

• LP consolation will be provided to those that are subject to AFK behaviors in their Summoner’s Rift ranked games.
• LP consolation will take into account multiple variables throughout the game to determine an LP value to provide to players affected by an AFK on their team in the game.
• LP consolation will not be provided to the AFK or any premade in the AFK player’s team.
• LP consolation will be capped week-over-week.
• We'll be watching LP very closely to avoid any negative LP trends, influenced by consolation LP alongside other LP changes to Ranked planned for Preseason.

Both of these features should be making their way to you for feedback and iteration on PBE during the 10.23 patch and we are targeting a global release during the 10.24 patch. 

Wrapping Up 2020 & Into 2021 

Ensuring the above projects are launched, stable, and tuned up is our focus though the end of the year, but we also wanted to talk about our next set of goals. 

Some of the core experience targets we’re poking at in early 2021 to expand further on 2020's goals (prevention, deterrence, and harm reduction) are:

• Better visibility for those affected into punishments and actions taken against players that are consistently ruining games.
• Revisit tiered penalty system with the intent of opening up broader ways of addressing a wide range of disruptive behaviors.
• Exploration into additional ranked solutions including queue specific punishments depending on behavior.
• Verbal abuse analysis and what it looks like to automate in-game solutions that prevent further harm once a source has been identified.

In addition to that continued work to address negative behavior, we’ll be starting to dive into better recognizing and acknowledging positive behavior. This is specifically with the intent of showing that sportsmanlike behavior in League of Legends matters. 

We recognize that systems like Honor have started to show their wear and tear, and we'd like to dig into what the next iteration looks like. There are no promises just yet since we won't start splitting time with game-ruining behavior work until we've seen even more improvement than we've achieved today—we may not begin moving here until later in 2021. With that timing note said, we’re striving to see what we can come up with that highlights sportsmanship as a meaningful endeavor in League and allows players to feel good about their commitment over the long term. Keep an eye out for more information on this topic as we’ll surely be enlisting your feedback as we get deeper into the weeds. 

Lastly, in order to pave the way for the future of behavioral updates in the League Client and game itself, we’ll be spending some time rebuilding some of the technical frameworks for our services. As we roll out new behavioral features and tests, we’ll also be talking about some of our technical goals for the future and how we can sustainably address this ever-evolving space. 

We’re excited to continue this journey with you in 2021. We’ve been able to make promising changes in our first months of work and we believe that is the case because players have been open and honest with their feedback. 

Please continue to voice your ideas. It’s going to be a great year."

On twitter, Scruffy added:

"If you didn't read the full article - The AFK player and their premade will not get consolation LP. Definitely don't want people abusing this."

Universe Update - The Host & Standing Room Only

STANDING ROOM ONLY by Daniel Couts

"Zaun and Piltover sing to one another."

Sample - Click here for full story on Universe:

"Zaun and Piltover sing to one another. The refrains are full of old wounds, and injustice, and pain. I think it's just me that can hear it, but we all feel it, a hum at the back of everyday life, pushing both Zaunites and Piltovans into strident discord.

I know they can sing together. I've heard it. Scraps of it—once in a while—little chords that make my heart ache with possibility. And once, a beautiful, crushing tidal wave of harmony and hope. It was the same moment I heard my hextech crystal for the first time.

The voice sang a thousand hymns at once. Each of them was a pebble in an avalanche, impossible to understand beyond scattered notes. The voice could hear me—and I wanted so badly to keep listening—but it fell back to a fuzzy hum the instant Zaun and Piltover ended their symphony."...

TFT Mid-Patch Update - October 30th 

The TFT patch 10.22 notes were updated with several TFT balance changes were pushed out on October 30th!

"Balance Changes October 30

• Morgana Hallowed Ground Damage: 325/525/2000 ⇒ 250/400/2000 (reverting unintended change)
• Chalice of Harmony Bonus Spell Power: 40 ⇒ 35
• Jeweled Gauntlet Crit Damage: 50% ⇒ 40%
• Rabadon’s Deathcap Total Spell Power: 75 ⇒ 80"

10.22 Bugfixes on 10/29 and 10/30

A few bug fixes for Kindred, Yuumi, and Tahm Kench went out on 10/29 and 10/30. The 10.22 patch notes have been updated with details.

"10/30/2020 Tahm Kench Bugfix

Tahm Kench

• W - DEVOUR BUGFIX Fixed a bug where Tahm Kench would be able to Devour his ally at any range

10/29/2020 Kindred and Yuumi Bugfix

Kindred

• PASSIVE - MARK OF THE KINDRED BUGFIX Fixed a bug where Kindred's Passive had no champion-specific cooldown, meaning they can mark the same enemy champion

Yuumi

• W - YOU AND ME! BUGFIX Fixed a bug where if Yuumi was affected by crowd control abilities mid-cast, W - You and Me! would not go on cooldown"

Miscellaneous

• Riot Mort noted details on upcoming TFT changes on the PBE:

"Announcement 1 for today: Coming to PBE today!

We're currently planning some bigger system changes for Patch 10.24 (not next patch, but patch after) to address some issues with the flow of the game. We want to make sure we get these right, so they're going on PBE early.

If you play on PBE starting this afternoon, you'll see the following changes to Roll odds, Chosen Roll odds, and player damage.

The goal is to make the choices across the game matter more, and open up more diverse strategies on how to approach leveling.

Let me be clear though...if you give feedback before playing it, we're going to ignore it. Not really interested in people guessing what will happen.

If you play it on PBE though, then we'd LOVE to hear from you! Give us your thoughts! What worked and what didn't!

And finally, these values are not final. We have some ideas of the cause and effect here and where we may end up in 10.24, but we want to get some testing on these values first. It's part of the design process.

Thanks all, and here's to an even better TFT!"

• The TFT Twitter also posted some hotfix changes:

"Heads up! We just micropatched 10.22:

• Morgana Spell Damage: 325/525/2000 >>> 250/400/2000
• Chalice of Harmony Bonus Spell Power: 40 >>> 35
• Jeweled Gauntlet Crit Damage: 50% >>> 40%
• Rabadon’s Deathcap Total Spell Power: 75 >>>  80

Notes updated soon: riot.com/31Kqo7M"

• Over on twitter, Riot Jag has been tweeting a bit about Seraphine's lore and her relationship to the Brackern now that her color story is out:

[1] "Now that Seraphine's color story is finally out ([link]), I can talk about the Brackern a bit.

Our player base is aware that Hextech crystals are based on the Brackern Race, but Seraphine isn't! She's still doing her best to understand the voices she hears (1/X)"

[2]"and she has not yet discovered the origin of the entity she has made a connection with. She absolutely would do her best to give the Brackern a voice if she knew what she was dealing with. That taunt line between Seraphine and Skarner is more for player fun but that may (2/X)"

[3]"have been us going a bit too spicy breaking immersion there (by being aware of the information that the audience had, and not Seraphine). Hopefully this is a story we get to expand upon one day. (3/3)"

 He continued, replying that the line about "the brackern fuel our city, our future. all i can do is sing their elegy" was removed:

[1] "She doesn't have that line anymore; we recorded it but aligned that wasn't the story being told."

[2] "Yes we removed it. We definitely confused our players here, and I'm sorry about that." 

• New Prime Gaming loot is up for subscribers! Enjoy a mystery skin shard now and look for more on Nov 6, Nov 19th, and Dec 3rd!

• Riot Games Creator Support tweeted that the Odyssey Kha'Zix + LPP Chroma codes are going out to LPP members now - look for community contests soon!

"Odyssey Kha'zix Chromas are out into our #LeaguePartner creator's hands! 

Keep an eye out for those giveaways #LPP Creators: 

 

NA- https://riot.com/2KwYdQL

TR- https://riot.com/2Kz05bO

OCE- https://riot.com/2KxtAuu

LAN/LAS- https://riot.com/3bBJKPp 

BR- https://riot.com/3aAbsus"

• The LoL Twitter announced new Logitech peripherals inspired by K/DA!  . The Logitech G twitter also shared more information, including G733, G333, G305, and G840 products in the collection and noting the products are now available in China and launching in other regions in first half of 2021.

"We’re partnering with @LogitechG to bring to players official League of Legends-inspired gaming peripherals. In 2021, bring MORE to your gear with a new K/DA-inspired collection."

• Check out the latest tweet from Seraphine, on the eve of her performance with K/DA at Worlds 2020:

"the reason 🎵 // today’s the big day. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and i wanted to share this with you"

Other Games

Riot Forge

• Riot Forge (publishers of the upcoming Ruined King game) posted a small teaser clip to their twitter...

☠️👑🌊 pic.twitter.com/qeSmbwh6Ls

— Riot Forge (@RiotForge) October 30, 2020

Legends of Runeterra

• With Patch 1.13 and the K/DA event in full swing, the new Lo-fi K/DA beats track from the new lab has been uploaded for your listening pleasure - K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends | Legends of Runeterra .

Wild Rift

• K/DA ALL OUT is also coming to Wild Rift! Check out the event trailer for more previews. Full information on Wild Rifts K/DA event can be found in [this Riot Support article].

• In addition to the video above, they also previewed several of the games latest skins on twitter:

Coming at you live—real, real Wild.

💖 K/DA ALL OUT Ahri
💎 K/DA ALL OUT Kai’Sa
💨 K/DA ALL OUT Akali
😈 K/DA ALL OUT Evelynn
🎤 K/DA ALL OUT Seraphine
🤯 Headhunter Akali
💃 Tango Evelynn
🔫 Bullet Angel Kai’Sa pic.twitter.com/CXSTMBSisd

— League of Legends: Wild Rift (@wildrift) October 30, 2020

• As previously mentioned, Seraphine is also joining Wild Rift! Here's her overview video - 

• For those who enjoyed the recent Wild Rift You Really Got Me video, the music track is available on various streaming services! 

Reminders

• The Worlds 2020 Event is running now through November 9th! Check out new Dragonmancer skins, chromas, missions, and more! With 10.21 the Odyssey 2020 skins and content also released as part of the event and with 10.22 K/DA joined the mix! Check out the Riot Support article for mission lists and more.

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