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Table of Content
Quick Gameplay Thoughts: 10/8
"Welcome back! Again, I’m Cody “Riot Codebear” Germain, Product Lead for Competitive Gameplay on League of Legends.
Season 2021 is reaching its end, Worlds is in the air, and Preseason 2022 is on the horizon. Let’s take a look at how Ranked 2021 went and where Season Start 2022 is headed as we continue to make League the best competitive PvP experience in the world. I’m going to focus on our individual competitive queue—specifically, Ranked Solo—but many of these learnings apply to all of our other MOBA queues as well.
2021 Season Light Review
Heading into 2021, we made a bunch of changes to Ranked, like improving placements for new accounts, softening season resets, and removing division promos, just to name a few. These were pretty huge adjustments, so we intentionally let the dust settle as we actively monitored the system. Informed by the data, we focused on tweaking matchmaking formulas, cleaning up our backend systems, and creating fairer matches. You can read more about these in our 2021 Competitive Gameplay Mid-year Analysis.
Here are some highlights from Season 2021:
We also uncovered some less visible but still highly impactful opportunities for improvement:
- New accounts were ranked much more evenly and effectively
- Overall match quality improved, with less than one division of skill difference between teams for 99% of games
- Time to game (from queue start to match start) stayed the same or improved in every region
- We saw autofill reduced to less than 2% of games in almost every region. In some regions, autofill rates in popular roles like top and mid were brought to almost 0%
Season Start 2022 Expectations
- Rapid LP decay rates at high ranks resulted in volatile matchmaking for players returning to League after a break, causing unpredictable experiences
- Players returning to League after long breaks were also often placed in unexpectedly challenging matches because their MMR did not take into account the effects of being out of practice (a.k.a. "rusty")
- Mid-to-high MMR players who started the climb later in the season were occasionally mismatched in their first few games due to a lack of similar players
- Ranked resets were too soft, unfairly placing our most engaged players in negative LP states early.
- We learned a lot from Season 2021 and are incorporating these into our plans for next year. Overall, we're extremely happy with how 2021 is leaving off, and we're confident that 2022 will be even better!
In 2022, we're being extra deliberate in our investments for Ranked. This is because the competitive systems we have today are in highly mature states, which basically means the “big problems,” have equally "big solutions". The good news is that the doors are now wide open for us to tackle the really difficult ones thanks to the improvements we made to overall stability this year. We'll be able to focus more on our technical challenges moving forward to make your games more satisfying, your accomplishments more prominent, and your overall competitive League experience more modern.
For our first few iterations, we're going after the most time-sensitive and highest impact opportunities:
In addition to the above, we're also looking at how the Ranked experience can be improved for players just entering the ecosystem mid-to-late season, players returning to League after a hiatus, and many more ways to keep driving League competitive play forward.
- Apex Decay: At high MMRs (Master tier and above), decay rates have long functioned like timers ticking away to keep the best of the best at the edge of their game. However, that clock may be ticking too quickly and pushing players into places where they really don’t belong. We're taking a closer look at what decay does for our players and tweaking the system to ensure even fairer matchmaking over the entire season. This means that we’ll be trying out some new decay configurations over the next couple months and reaching out for feedback prior to Season Start 2022.
- Season Reset: The soft resets we did this year might have been a little too soft. Resets introduce some uncertainty to give players the chance to show their improvement since last year. Not resetting cleanly enough takes away the breathing room for players to showcase their improvement, pushing them into negative LP states very quickly. This year, we want to provide a longer runway for players to really show off their growth since last season and get the proper liftoff at the start of their climb. We do this by tuning the resets to be stronger, which puts more uncertainty back into the system. This lets players push their skills to new boundaries and ensures more sustainable growth and accurate system feedback.
Good luck climbing and, as always, see you on the Rift."
Disabling /all chat
"While most of our focus around behavioral systems in 2021 has been on gameplay-based behaviors like AFKing and inting, we've heard from you that verbal abuse has been a rising problem this year, too. We're working on a number of changes to systemically address this at both the League and Riot levels, but one direct change you'll see soon is that in patch 11.21, we're disabling /all chat in matchmade queues.
While /all chat can be the source of fun social interaction between teams, as well as some good-hearted banter, right now negative interactions outweigh the positives. We'll evaluate the impact of this change through verbal abuse reports and penalty rates, as well as surveys and direct feedback from you all.
/All chat is the only thing being disabled. Enemies will still be able to hear and see your emotes and champ mastery (unless muted), as well as CTRL+1/2/3/4 spam. End of Game chat will still be cross-team. Allies will still be able to coordinate with each other in team chat.
Regarding that last one, we're aware that verbal abuse happens in team chat too, so disabling /all chat won't get rid of abuse altogether. But team chat also plays an important team coordination function, so the potential value it brings is much higher, even if it can also host some negative experiences.
We know this sucks for those of you who just want to compliment your lane opponent's skin, or ask for a dance party in Baron pit. But we believe the tradeoff is worth it to cut down on the growing negativity /all chat has been creating in your games."
PBE Clash: TFT Gizmos & Gadgets
"TFT’s latest set, Gizmos & Gadgets, goes live with patch 11.22, but before it hits live, the set’s got one more—PBE. The Public Beta Environment (PBE) gives the devs some time to test for bugs, and continually balance the game. It’s also the environment where players of all skills invent and then reinvent the meta. And while we’re all tinkering with the new set mechanic, traits, and champions, why not also throw a little tiny super high-profile competition?
That’s why we’re partnering with Wisdom Media to bring you PBE Clash: TFT Gizmos & Gadgets! Taking place on October 21-24 on PBE and the not-yet-live Gizmos & Gadgets set, this competition features your favorite TFT content creators and top players from around the world. These players will be busting out their lab coats and safety goggles to dream up and meme up the best team compositions in a competition that may just break the set, but don’t worry the devs will fix it. The last two days of the event will be broadcast on Twitch, so tune in on October 23-24 to watch the remaining competitors battle it out for the title of Innovator Supreme and $5,000 in prizes!
We can’t wait to see what combos and strategies the competitors are able to ride to glorious victory...or spectacular defeat. This will be the first true test for Gizmos & Gadgets competitive play, so the TFT team will be watching closely right along with you to see how the set is shaping up!
Format & Players
This competition will bring together 16 of TFT’s biggest personalities from around the world, but we’re looking for more highly skilled and accomplished TFT veterans to join them! You can apply for one of 64 spots for the tournament here. Sign-ups will be locked on at 11:59 PM PT on October 17.
PBE Clash: TFT Gizmos & Gadgets will run from October 21-24, with each day starting at 6 AM PT.
Day 1: Play-ins
64 selected applicants play 3 games, with the top 4 from each lobby advancing. The top 32 then play 3 more games, with the top 4 from each lobby advancing to Day 2.
Day 2: Play-ins continued
16 Players from Day 1 play 4 games in the same lobby, with the top 4 from each lobby advancing to Day 3.
Day 3: Group Stage
16 invited players will join the 8 qualifiers from Play-ins. Players will play 3 games, with lobbies rotating every game. Top 16 overall scorers advance to play 3 more games with a point reset between stages. The top 8 scorers move on to the Finals.
Day 4: Finals
8 players play 5 games, with the highest scoring player crowned Innovator Supreme!
Where to watch
You can watch Day 1 and 2 on participating players’ individual streams, and join us on Twitch for the Group Stage and Finals at 6:00am PT on October 23-24."
/dev: Teamfight Tactics: Reckoning Learnings
"Can you believe TFT is over 2 years old? As we approach the conclusion of Reckoning, it’s time for the traditional Learnings article where we look back on what we promised and delivered during Reckoning,and then talk about what we are improving on in the future with Gizmos & Gadgets!
TL;DR
In a rush to climb the ranked ladder, check out major beats below.
Looking Back
Looking Forward
- Set Mechanics: The set mechanic for Fates created a lot of game to game variance, but sacrificed player agency. For Reckoning we created a mechanic that was on the opposite extreme. Overall, we will continue to create set mechanics that provide more player agency to increase skill expression, but will do so without losing game to game variance. The set mechanic of Gizmos & Gadgets is an exact result of this.
- Mid-Set Expansions: Mid-set expansions need to be about supporting the players who are still around by bringing meaningful changes to the game. Reckoning’s mid-set was supposed to bring more new champions but pivots were required after problems with early iterations of champions alongside the need to make Radiant Items into a mechanic that could support the loss of Shadow Items.
- Power of Champs Relative to Cost: Fates struggled with balancing champions relative to their cost, and the first half of Reckoning did too. Thankfully we corrected a lot of this in Dawn of Heroes, but the reality is we need to improve our ability to deliver champs with power and fantasies proportionate to their cost at the beginning of the set, so we don’t have to course-correct later on.
- Fortune & Economy Traits: Fortune was really fun, and Draconic did not live up to the bar Fortune set with its daring payouts. So we’re focusing on the fun of economic traits, making sure they are exciting when you play them correctly. Expect lots of dice, treasure, and insane comebacks in Gizmos & Gadgets.
- Mechanic Complexity: We learned a lot from Reckoning’s set mechanics. Set mechanics need to add a layer of excitement and fun to the core experience without overburdening players with complexity, and without losing the spirit of existing core mechanics. But don’t worry—this doesn’t mean future mechanics will be simple and small, cause Hextech Augments are far from small. But unlike Shadow items, Augments don’t make the core experience of the game more complex.
- Balance Thrashing: Balance thrashing is the nerfing of an S-tier comp to an unplayable F-tier comp. It happened a lot in the first half of Reckoning and it’s something we must avoid. To avoid it in the future we will be balancing with much lighter touches, nudges, bumps—you get it. This may mean it takes a bit longer to get things in the perfect spot, but this is a necessary burden to avoid thrashing.
- Unique Traits: Reckoning suffered from having traits that lacked unique appeal. There was nothing like Shapeshifter or Mage to create unique high moments. So moving forward expect us to put a larger focus on making sure more of the traits provide unique and transformative experiences you haven’t had in TFT before.
- 5-cost Excitement: Reckoning’s 5-costs left players feeling underwhelmed with mostly utility based 5-costs. In the future we’d like to replicate what the Fates mid-set, Festival of Beasts, brought, with five big carry 5-costs in addition to three unique utility champions. Expect us to keep a framework similar to Festival of Beasts for 5-cost design which kept Fates exciting and fresh as we move forward to future sets.
- The Ranked Climb: There are some frustrating elements with the Ranked climb, but there is no easy solution. That being said, expect us to continue improving the Ranked climb experience set after set, starting with Gizmos & Gadgets where once you reach a new rank (Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum/Diamond/Masters) you will NEVER be able to demote from that rank for that half of the set.
- Hyper Roll: Even with some criticisms, Hyper Roll found an audience of passionate players. So we're going to keep Hyper Roll available for at least another set, and make some adjustments to continually improve the lab."
[Check out the full learnings article here!]
Other Games
Legends of Runeterra- Here's the latest from the @PlayRuneterra twitter:
Wild Rift
- Here's the latest from the @WildRift Twitter:
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