Red Post Collection: Quick LoL Thoughts October 23rd, K/DA "MORE" Music Video Teaser, and more!

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Quick LoL Thoughts: October 23

"Hi folks, 

**Usual Disclaimers** 

These posts will often talk about future work that could change substantially or get cancelled. If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler 

How we assess our own work part 3: Personalization 

Previous parts can be found here for Gameplay and Technology. Today we’re looking at Personalization. That means a range of non gameplay impacting content and how it’s acquired, things like skins, loot, event passes, eternals, etc. Personalization products have two main goals for us: They’re both a significant source of player satisfaction and the main way we pay our bills, funding maintenance and new development for LoL.

Looking at the revenue side first we judge success through at things like:

• What proportion of target players purchased this content? Target here meaning players we’d realistically expect could be interested in it (e.g. people who play the champion a new skin is for)
• Did this content help diversify our portfolio? It’s beneficial to have revenue come from a wide range of offerings, that way if things change with one content type (e.g. shift in player interest in skins) we’re less affected as a company.
• Did this content generate new revenue or just shift spending from one category to another? There are cases where shifting spending can still be really beneficial (e.g. if it comes with a meaningful increase in player satisfaction). All else being equal though launching something new that just moves spending around means work done for no gain.
• What was the cost to create this new content, system or feature and how does that compare to revenue generated (return on investment).
• And of course, total revenue earned 

As said though revenue’s only one of our goals here. Our aim is to be successful as a business while also ensuring players who’ve bought something are really happy about it. Some things we consider to understand how we’re doing in that regard: 

• What proportion of target players purchased this content? In addition to being an indicator of revenue success this is also an important measure on the player satisfaction side too. Players buy things they like and skip things they don’t.
• What do we see in surveys? What are players telling us about quality, price, ease of use etc?
• Do players use what they’ve bought? With skins for example a key consideration is whether a player consistently uses that skin. Dark Star Jhin’s a really successful case, with an extremely high usage rate amongst purchasers, suggesting players who’ve bought it are really happy with it.
• How does the content measure up to our clarity goals? Is it easy to identify a champion when they’re wearing a new skin? This is a topic we haven’t always done as well at as we’d like, more on our thinking there in the future.
• How do players feel about the theming of a piece of content? E.g. would they love to see other champions get a skin in the same style? 

Preseason 

We’re in the home stretch for preseason now and are focused on bugs and balance. Our most recent large change was to lower item damage, especially damage coming from unique passives and actives, as part of a goal to keep overall item power levels the same as in the current system.  

We’ll be making some pre-emptive changes to specific champions in cases where we’re very confident we understand what the results of item changes will be (e.g. champs with unique interactions with crit or who are currently reliant on the mana from Sheen). For most champions though we’re going to wait and see where their exact power ends up once item builds stabilize, then adjust kits and items as needed. 

Things we’ve tried in TFT that didn’t ship 

Finally some things we’ve tried in the past in TFT and why they didn’t go live. 

Set mechanics (e.g. Elemental Hexes or Chosen units)

• Day/Night (Galaxies)
• This was a system where each stage aligned to day, night or neutral (stage 1 = day, 2 = neutral, 3 = night etc). Celestial units were only available for purchase during the day and gained bonuses during the day. Same deal with Darkstar and night.
• Once we got into playtesting it was clear this was overly restrictive, making traits useless or must play depending on phase timing. We want set mechanics to add more variance to TFT. This did the opposite.
• Pre picked Chosen (Fates)
• In this version at game start 5 units would get picked and communicated to players. Whenever those units showed up in the shop they would always be Chosen (e.g. every Nunu was Chosen Elderwood). Chosen gave double trait bonus but no other benefits.
• As with Day/Night this was interesting on paper. It resulted in an optimization puzzle at the start of the game (which comps are good/bad) that was challenging but solvable however. That meant a lot of generally unfun mental work followed by everybody rushing the same comps. We wanted adaptability during a game, rather a clear right answer from game start, hence the move to the current Chosen model.

Next, a trait

• Imperials
• While we were developing TFT we were playtesting with a set of units and traits, most of which didn’t make it into the launch set. We call that prototyping set ‘set 0’.
• Early on in set 0 Imperials were slated to have walls they could position as a trait bonus instead of the damage bonus they ended up with. The idea was that those walls would funnel unit movement and/or tank for a period at combat start.
• We were still determining how TFT units moved in general at the time however. We weren’t confident adding things that messed that much with movement was the right call as a result, since we didn’t have a solid foundation yet (this was early enough that TFT was still using squares instead of Hexes!)
• Might go back to this someday, Azir in Fates suggests there’s promise in these sorts of effects!

Finally, champ abilities

• Mind Control
• This felt really bullshit, even for a 5 cost ability (e.g. your carry flips around and murders your team). Potential power was extremely high, even at short durations, given chance to steal a spell cast.
• Unclear if we can capture what’s cool about mind control while sufficiently constraining unfair cases (e.g. mind controlled units can’t cast). Mind control’s also not a really strong fit thematically with any current LoL Champions either. As a result of those factors we moved on to other challenges.
• Bard ult
• During both Set 0 and Rise of the Elements we tested a large AOE stasis for Bard since it’s one of the most distinctive parts of his MOBA kit.
• It had a lot of downsides. It felt terrible when it mainly hit your own units. Even when it affected enemies only it was usually just a worse version of a stun. It created a lot of awkward standing around and waiting too.
• It’s a really appealing idea concept though and one we’ll likely try again someday, probably in a way that keeps the visuals and fantasy but with pretty different gameplay details."

Over on the /r/leagueoflegends thread for the post, Meddler also shared his thoughts on Eternals

"Fairly successful. Eternals have hit the mark for a subset of players. Most players aren't interested in them, and that's fine, there's a group who are who feel good about them and have clear interest in more.

I do think they suffer somewhat from players who aren't interested in them wanting something somewhat similar (more progression avenues for example). That to me is more an issue with our baseline progression/identity offerings than Eternals themselves though."

and his thoughts on Soraka with regard to the upcoming the preseason changes:

"Soraka falls into the category of champ we'll react to once we see exactly how she's affected. That might mean tuning GW availability if issues with her balance also affect other healing heavy champs. Could also just mean putting power into her, whether in healing or other aspects, to recognize the new normal. Also possible she's not that dramatically affected, we'll have to see (I think this outcome's less likely, but there are a lot of other things changing for her besides just GW)."

10/20 TFT 10.21 Mid-Patch Update

The patch 10.21 TFT patch notes have been updated with several balance changes pushed out on October 20th:

"Balance Changes October 20 

A combination of recent changes to multiple traits, items, and champions created a truly monstrous Divine comp. We're nerfing a few of the outliers giving this composition just too much strength. Akali is also getting touched to make sure that she doesn't reign supreme in the aftermath of these changes.

• Adept Attack Speed debuff Duration: 2.5/4/7 seconds ⇒ 2/3.5/6 seconds
• Divine Damage Reduction: 50% ⇒ 40%
• Divine True Damage: 50% ⇒ 40%
• Akali Five-Point Strike Damage: 150/225/400 ⇒ 150/225/350
• Locket of the Iron Solari Shield: 350/450/600/800 ⇒ 300/375/500/800
• Statikk Shiv Bonus Damage: Crowd-controlled or Shielded ⇒ Shielded targets"

Over on  Twitter, Mort added:

[1] ""To err is human. To forgive is divine." The following B-Patch is now live:

One thing to note is that Statikk's tooltip will be incorrect until the next patch. Otherwise have fun and enjoy the new meta. Patch Post Mortem will be interesting this time."

[2] "Note: Due to a micropatching issue, when we first tweeted this out, the Shiv change had not gone through. This has been corrected now and everything is live as intended. Apologies for that. Now go forth and enjoy!"

Miscellaneous

"Coming in Patch 10.22 - Chosen odds will be displayed if you mouse over the chosen button.  

The team is awesome about adding these QOL changes, so keep sending your requests our way"

"Check out the Patch 10.22 Preview."

"10.22 Patch Preview with full changes. Not 100% locked but pretty close."

• Scruffy also tweeted at upcoming Preseason PBE items changes:

"Preseason PBE update - we're doing significant tuning passes across all of the items  

Here are two upcoming iterations after our audit of:  

-Assassin Mythic damage 

-Sources of Shreds, % Pen, and overall effectiveness of countering resists"

When asked on LT's "PR Pen" -    

[2] "Just a typo - its % MR pen for the user only"

"We've read all your thoughts and feedback over the past week and made some changes. We can't always take every suggestion, needing to balance between differing opinions and what's possible during the PBE window but hope these updates will feel good!"

"With all the talk of DMCA on Twitch- Friendly reminder that we have a creator safe playlist of Riot music! Feel free to use for your streams/video content. Just make sure to still follow our legal jibber jabber!  

Music: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5hDYD44imzFZEqTfAoco1N?si=hX2Ijfz_SdSUeDPvy4A7gw…

Legal: https://www.riotgames.com/en/legal"

• As of October 19th, a new Prime Gaming mystery skin shard is now available for subscribers.  This was the last in this set of LoL items, stay tuned for more!

Other Games

Wild Rift

• The Regional Open Beta is here with Wild Rift Patch Notes 1.0 - covers the regional open beta, new champ Lee Sin,   and several balance changes. 

• More insights on balance available in new Dev blog - /DEV: Balancing Wild Rift 

• With the new patch comes a slew of new videos previewing the new content & features:

• 6 New Champions Coming to Wild Rift | Road to Wild Rift

• Lee Sin Champion Overview | Gameplay - League of Legends: Wild Rift
  
• Muay Thai Lee Sin preview
• Knockout Lee Sin preview
  

• 7 Things You Need to Know About Wild Rift | Road to Wild Rift

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! Check out the Riot Support article for mission lists and more.

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