Red Post Collection: TFT Reckoning AMA, K/DA Merch Restock, & More

Today's red post collection includes an AMA from the TFT Reckoning devs, red comments from around the web, new and restocked K/DA merch, a new Prime Gaming LoL shard, and more!

Table of Contents

Celebrate Pride 2021 Across and Beyond Runeterra

"For the past five years we’ve been proudly participating in IDAHOTB, International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia (now known as May 17th), and in 2018, we began sharing our support with you all, in-game with Icons that have made way to homeguard trail animations, emotes and even a Guardian (Legends of Runeterra). 

Now, we’re continuing our support for LGTBQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Trans, Bisexual, Queer and/or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Plus the rest!) folks and allies across all our games, in a whole new way! Through May and June we will be celebrating Pride with free personalization content across all Riot games! 

Here, we’ll be going over the what, where, when and how players can participate in Riot’s Pride celebrations, but to find out more on what Pride means at Riot Games check out our article on it here. 

There’s a lot to be proud of, and a lot of ways to rep your support for Pride, so let’s get into it! 

League of Legends

What: With the return of Rainbow Poro Icons (Rose Quartz Poro, Sapphire Poro, Catseye Poro, Obsidian Poro, Tanzanite Poro, Citrine Poro, Rainbow Poro) you’ll be able to activate homeguard trails that celebrate the diversity of the LGTBQIA+ community! The homeguard trails will be active until the end of June. We also have a couple of emotes and an all new Summoner icon for you to earn via Missions below.

How and When: Through Missions that’ll pop up in your client starting May 17th! While you’ll only have till the end of June to complete these missions, you’ll have all the time in the world to celebrate LGBTQIA+ Pride!

Details Plz: You may have noticed the allusions to Diana and Leona in the missions. A narrative release, covering their temple education in Targon together, will drop sometime soon. As to what happens on the Festival of the Nightless Eve, you’ll just have to wait to find out.

But Wait, There’s More: One more thing to add, is the return of profile splash art customization. If you equip the core Rainbow Poro Icon from last year, you’ll get the old parachuting Poros splash, but if you equip any of the other Pride Icons, you’ll get the new splash art instead — ooh, shiny! 

Legends of Runeterra:

What: Tyari The Traveler stars in the Everybody Gets Love! Emote, Poro Icons for flags (Rose Quartz Poro, Sapphire Poro, Catseye Poro, Obsidian Poro, Tanzanite Poro, Citrine Poro, Rainbow Poro), and an adorable new Guardian, Ellie the Elephant (below). The Poro icons are the same for Wild Rift, so check them out in the Wild Rift section!

How and When: Pride is in the cards, May 19th for patch 2.8.0! Just pick up the 0-coin Jubilant Colors bundle in the store!

Details Plz: Just hop over to the shop and pick up the Jubilant Colors bundle for a whooping 0 coins! It’s got everything collected into one place, just for you — and everyone else too! 

Teamfight Tactics:

What: Look, TFT may be my mainstay, but believe me when I say our personalization content makes the biggest boom. For TFT, there’s a new Pride boom with seven variants to celebrate your victories! Accessible by equipping the Icons (see above) available for League of Legends and TFT players alike, there’ll also be Pride-themed Little Legends trails to hop, float, skip, and slide around the Convergence with flair.

How and When: The Pride booms drop in patch 11.10, May 12th, via a new mission.

Details Plz: The mission to unlock the boom and variants is called “Sun and Moon,” and is pretty simple. Just field a team with Diana and Leona and you’re good to go! In addition to the booms, you’ll also get an additional 200xp towards your Reckoning pass as well. 

Wild Rift:

What: The new kid on the block, Wild Rift, has plenty of Pride to go around, with seven Poro Icons to celebrate the diversity of love, a homeguard trail, and an adorable rainbow Poro emote.

How and When: Pride wilds out on the mobile Rift, May 24th, with two missions to show your support!

Details Plz: Here are the 2 missions of this event:

Merch: 

For those of you celebrating Pride outside of your favorite games, we’ve got a fresh collection of merch for Pride 2021 available from June 1st to July 31st with 100% of net proceeds going to the It Gets Better Project! You can sport and support the cause with 7 identity options across various items.

There’s no mean mugging these adorable Pride mugs.

Rep your Pride rain or shine, with Pride tank tops, crop tops, or hoodies— we’ve got you covered.

Check out the Riot Merch Store come June 1st, for sizing, pricing, and more. Did I mention there’s a Pride fan too? A LARGE hand fan that you can use to cool yourself down while reading the new Diana and Leona lore. It’s all in the store, June 1st through July 31st, so be sure to support your wardrobe and the It Gets Better Project then.

There’s plenty of ways for you to celebrate Pride 2021 across and beyond all our games! Whether you’re flashing your Pride emote as the (enemy) Nexus explodes, celebrating your victory on the Convergence, or being an awesome ally, from all of us at Riot Games, have a terrific Pride!"

 

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: May 14

Here's Riot Scruffy with his quick gameplay thoughts for May 14 - "Champion Counterplay": 

"This week’s focus is on counterplay, one of our principles of Champion gameplay design, rather than upcoming work or the state of the current game. There's not a lot new here for longtime readers, but it's been a while since we touched on the subject so wanted to share our thinking with newer players. 

Champion Counterplay

Counterplay, one of our key values, could be defined as “action, choice, or strategy a player can use to mitigate or overcome an enemy threat.” This has been a staple of our design philosophy for many years and has improved League time and time again when we apply it well. The two main benefits of this game design principle are:

• Fairness - Having an understandable, clear, and useful response significantly reduces the frustration of a losing game or death even if a player or team can't perfectly execute on it at their current skill level. It helps players grow by pointing them toward actions they could have taken to succeed, rather than just feel like the game cheated them. (This is also often referred to in game design as Agency.)
• Depth - Champion designs that leave room for an opponent to respond add many additional layers to the depth of the experience. Battles can be a back and forth of mechanical and mental skill instead of a “who shoots first” one-and-done experience.

"The ideal champion has clear strengths and weaknesses that offer counterplay at a strategic level, paired with tactical counterplay for in combat response." 

Counterplay can come in many forms, and every champion needs a slightly different way of delivering the appropriate counterplay to match their unique strengths and weaknesses:

• Tactical Counterplay - This is the “in the moment” opportunities to respond to a spell or champion combo. 
• Notable examples - Dodging a skillshot, interrupting a channel, long windup for preparing defenses, and positioning behind an ally or minion to block attacks.
• Tactical counterplay is essential for super high impact moments or combos that will often guarantee death like Blitzcrank hook, Ashe R, or Sion Q.
• In most cases it’s best to make sure that tactical gameplay is universally accessible (versus being tied to a specific champ ability like a dash or immunity) so that all opponents have the opportunity to respond to this impactful spell.
• Too much can actually be a bad thing. Not every spell needs tactical counterplay, and too much leads to a kit that feels clunky or overly unreliable.
• Impact and counterplay should often be proportional: Stronger effects benefit from more counterplay. (Some spells like Ashe R do both at once with an increasing stun duration as the spell moves further and gives opponents more time to dodge)
• Strategic Counterplay - This type of counterplay is accessed out of combat and often by the team (instead of in combat like tactical counterplay).
• Notable examples - Building counter items, invading a weak early jungler, grouping against an assassin, using a blue trinket to avoid an ambush, pushing into a champion with poor waveclear.
• Strategic counterplay can be connected to a champion’s specific mechanics (like using control wards to counter Evelynn), but it’s more often a part of dealing with that champion's broader goals, like splitpushing or hyperscaling
• Strategic counterplay can be difficult to understand and appreciate because many forms of it are about setting up the right fight (or avoiding it), rather than executing within a fight. Adding signals that expose good strategic play can get more players engaged in it (pings for example do this well).
• Champion Weaknesses - This is a set of properties, champion class, or team strategy that tend to succeed against a champion.
• Notable examples - Xerath’s immobility makes him weak to mobile assassins, Qiyana’s burst damage runs out of steam against a tank, Nasus is kited by mobile ranged champions.
• These weaknesses should lead to a moderate disadvantage, not a complete counter. The variety that comes from playing the game from advantaged or disadvantaged positions (compared to a perfectly level playing field at all times) helps games from feeling too same-y, but if there is no chance of winning against a counter too much agency is lost.

Finding the right counterplay for a champion is always a bit different, but a commonly successful approach is to design around their strengths.

• Kayn is meant to transform into a near-godlike form in the late game. This led to both a strategic early game weakness and putting a strong tactical counterplay opportunity in his W that stays relevant even when he’s a big late game boy.
• If Jhin delivers best in class CC and damage at long ranges, it makes sense to pair that with a clear weakness to very tanky teams because he lacks the sustained damage to deal with them. His extreme range also led to clear tactical counterplay needs, so W and R offer opportunities to dodge or mitigate.

I hope these insights were interesting to you all, and you can use your knowledge of these design values to hold us to a high standard and help make League better every day. Thanks again for playing with us."

TFT Reckoning AMA with The Devs & Friends

"Welcome to Reckoning! 

We’re (part of) the team behind TFT: Reckoning. We're taking some time out from fighting the Black Mist to answer your questions about the set’s design, mechanics, arenas, little legends, and all things TFT. We're posting this early (9 am PST) and will be back at noon to answer your questions, but feel free to add them now! And here's who'll be answering your question: 

AliceOfClubs - Technical Game Designer; Not quite a Game Designer, not quite an Engineer, designs and implements traits, spells, and developer tools.

BribbleTheGreat- Senior Visual Designer who crafts the User Interface from set mechanics, to trait icons and beyond.

DazBrakomir- The motion graphics artist who brings all of the in and out of game UI to life.

Leelor- The User Experience designer who prevents you from accidentally selling your unit at the start of the game, created recipe hints for items, and designed the Armory for Reckoning!

LlordLlama- Hyped on Hyper Roll? You’ve got this game designer to thank (and a few other people I guess).

RiotKent - Live gameplay balance designer, who’s responsible for your 8ths, but also your 1sts…

Riot Wittrock- The mad scientist behind our wildest mechanics. Wittrock puts the Wit in WitRock n’ Roll.

Riot_Mort- Lead Game Designer; if devs were a Rock Band, Mort would be the Band Manager, but also the Conductor, and maybe even the Bass player.

Riot Mumble- Game Producer; herds artists to ensure Little Legends and other content is delivered!

RiotGreenTeej - Producer of Producers; Famous Set 1 Challenger player and tea enthusiast.

RiotSvago - If you’ve seen Ruin Rising, then you already know our Creative Director’s work. And if you haven’t seen Ruin Rising, what are you waiting for?

MinionsRpeople2 (comms, patch notes, Little Legend Bios, and more) will answer what questions he can for Svago.

This ensemble of our favorite people will begin answering questions at Noon PST, but you can add your questions to this post right away!

Links for general information about the Reckoning Pass or a Gameplay Overview.

Edit: And we're out! Thanks for asking questions, it's been a blast, but we've got some Black Mist to combat and a Nimblefoot to save."

[Check out the full thread!]

Speaking of TFT, the Ranked Rewards for TFT: Fates split 1 and 2 are rolling out! Here's the announcement from Riot Mort:

"TFT: Fates Ranked Rewards are beginning to be distributed!"

Miscellaneous

[1] For the 11.11 patch, Summoner's Rift Team is working on moving Support Senna's Mythic builds away from Frostfire Gauntlet into more on-fantasy items (like potentially Lethality or AP). If you have thoughts, you can hit up @TheTruexy - and as always, be respectful, please.(1/2)

[2] We're also looking at making more competitive options for top lane tanks' second item beyond Thornmail - mostly looking at Warden's Mail/Frozen Heart and Warmog's here. As always, we can't promise anything will ship, but happy to hear feedback. (2/2)

• Riot Scruffy added:

[1] Two upcoming projects SR team has outside of normal balance work: 

1. Tank item diversity/ balancing (less bramble more everything else) 

2. Moving Senna away from frostfire tank builds

[1] We just pushed out a hotfix for Veigar E not stunning in all cases it should. 

Thanks for the bug reports and dealing with this issue in the meantime.

• New Prime Gaming LoL loot is now available, with the next coming May 21st!

• The Chaos Pengu is here to rule... the airwaves! Check out this new TFT music video from Riot Korea - "Chaos Pengu Anthem (Follow Me Now ft. MUSHVENOM) | Music Video - Teamfight Tactics"

• The LoL twitter provided full turnaround shots of each of the PROJECT skins, showing off all the tiny details you may not be able to see in game: