Can we accumulate champion mastery in this mode just like in the arena? I hope so because otherwise it feels like a wasted game.
Yes, we made sure that champion mastery is enabled in this mode!
Sona will be broken on release with her kit and accelerated gameplay
I'm convinced with 100% certainty that your team will miss the mark.
Please prove me wrong!
Sona is one of the champions we're considering preemptive balance on. We're also quite sure we won't get everything correct on release, but we're also confident that the mode is already fun and we can improve it with further changes. Please look forward to it :)
As someone who has poured alot of hours into Smite and at a relatively high level, I have 1 large concern and 1 smaller question regarding Brawl. The first being, what other measures are in place/being considered to prevent stalling and second, when will be able to see champion specific buffs/nerfs within a game mode in the client?
My main concern is what is in place to prevent stalling. In lower elo leaning games in Smite, players tend to play what they want irrespective of team comp, and people tend to play more to not die. I think these 2 issues are unavoidable, you can't (and shouldn't want to) dictate what people play, nor can you flip a switch in someone to fight to the death. This occasionally resulted in games stalemating due to the abundance of safe clear on ranged champions (Admittingly a larger issue in Smite's god design than League), and how easy it was to reset and heal in between waves. In higher elo games, people realize there is no punishment for staying closer to your fountain as it made it easier for you to heal and rejoin your team resulting in a similar issue where teams sort of just wait for someone to overextend/make a mistake.
I'm happy to see that the minion portal is not directly in front of the base, something that really bothered me in Smite Arena, but I was wondering what other measures have you guys considered taking to reduce the possibility of stalling? For example, your minions getting a movement speed buff depending on how many opponents are in base healing, or slower ticks of healing forcing you wait a few seconds longer in base?
My second smaller question revolved around, when can we get something implemented into the client that tells the player what is buffed/nerfed on a particular champ. I presume with accelerated gold gains, you'll be forced to make champion specific nerfs within the game mode, but with Arena changes and Aram specific changes, it's pretty hard to keep up every single change each champion has undergone.
That being said, I'm still excited to see a new game mode and testing to see how it plays!
The side camps are very powerful in terms of gold/xp value, so playing defensively is typically a losing play in our tests so far. We've had a lot of lower skill tests, and also had the Game Analysis Team do some focused testing, and in both the games were typically aggressive and bloody, even if individual players are more risk-averse. More optimized play typically resulted in shorter games with more decisive skirmishing around the edges of the map. I do think there are some comps that lend themselves to stalling, and if we see that emerge as a very common playstyle I expect we'll want to take action.
I don't have an answer for the champion-specific buffs/nerfs visibility, sorry.
Read moreDo you think there will be unique balance changes for this mode like there are for aram and arena?
We designed the mode to be closer to Summoner's Rift gameplay than ARAM (being able to recall and heal makes a huge difference), so we expect fewer extreme balance outliers. We do plan to balance similarly to ARAM, and we're considering which champions are clearly powerful enough to pre-emptively balance.
It's like ARAM but faster, with more fighting, and without structures!
And you can pick your champion!
I heard each game would be around 10 minutes long. How fast will someone get to late game items and levels, like if I pick kayle or kassadin will I just be useless the whole game since it ends so fast.
Gold and XP are greatly accelerated, and some late-game champions (e.g. stackers) will have manual tweaks so they fit the pace of the mode. We've found late-game champions effective, but if they end up being weak we'll buff them.
Is there any new spicy items coming to Brawl?
No, we felt the format and new map were the main draw and wanted to focus on that. We talked about those early on, but didn't feel like this was the right place, especially given one of the goals of helping new players have a safer, more fun place to learn.
I heard each game would be around 10 minutes long. How fast will someone get to late game items and levels, like if I pick kayle or kassadin will I just be useless the whole game since it ends so fast.
Gold and XP are greatly accelerated, and some late-game champions (e.g. stackers) will have manual tweaks so they fit the pace of the mode. We've found late-game champions effective, but if they end up being weak we'll buff them.
What makes Brawl a better game mode for new player ?
I've tried showing League to a few friends and the experience was so miserable for them despite my best effort
To add to Sirhaian's answer with some more nitty-gritty design...
It's critical that new players can understand why learning the game is worthwhile and experience a sample of that first-hand. ARAM actually does a pretty good job on both of these, but the inability to pick a champion undermines new players' ability to find their fave and have a familiar foundation going into each game. We believe that an ARAM-adjacent mode like this with free champion pick, stronger acceleration (you WILL get to play a strong version of your champ) and a lower-stakes vibe can be more successful for new players.
Read moreFirst of all: I want to thank you sincerely for bringing this game mode to life (before I've even played it). Based on description, this is the exact league experience I have been wanting for YEARS now. I mainly play aram because I want fast, action packed games where I don't have to suffer through laning phase or draft before I get to have fun, but I have always wished there was a game mode that l could play the champions I actually want to play and still have that same experience. I am SO excited for this game mode, and I sincerely hope that the team will push to make this a permanent mode (yes, all of this hype before I've played it. I CANNOT WAIT!!!!)
Second: actual questions!
I'm very curious about the choice of Bandle City as a setting! I've always pictured Bandle City as this massive, unimaginable metropolis that spans an unfathomable amount of land/area. But this new mode seems to be quite a small map, perhaps something more akin to a ravine in the middle of terrain, so why choose Bandle City?
One experience that I think players like me, who are hyped for this game mode, might agree could take away from the fun is scaling and laning phase. It's not really fun to play a game where you're completely useless for a while before you scale and THEN you get to play the game. Is there any consideration for implementing (in this game mode or even future game modes) gameplay that bypasses scaling? Perhaps a game mode where you load in with infinite gold and get to set up your build at the beginning (or even just using runes)?
It's super cool to me that this game mode came about from the "Thunderdome" - I've always loved doing game jams myself and seeing some of the cool ideas that come out of it. I'm sure you can't dive into specifics, but are there any other cool ideas that have come out of these game jams that you have considered or are considering adding to the League experience in future?
Can't wait to try out Brawl and I hope that the team will consider making this a permanent gamemode!!!!
To answer the second question, I think that a mode where you start at full build could work, but would need a lot more design work to make it interesting throughout. Scaling up from weak to strong is a core part of League's gameplay fantasy and results in different combat outcomes over the course of the game (fighting someone at levels 4, 8, and 16 will have dramatically different texture and outcomes). The pitch for Brawl was closer to "the teamfight and skirmish action of Summoner's Rift, without the macro," so we opted to keep all of that power growth in for this mode.
Read moreAll the pvp maps that have been released have been small in size compared to SR. Would you ever consider releasing a map larger than SR?
It's not off the table, but we would need a really good pitch for a mode that absolutely has to be big. Making bigger maps at similar quality is going to be more expensive and take time, and we'd typically prefer to focus on using our resources to deliver more new modes instead.
How much of Arena in Smite have you guys played? Someone said Brawl was like that and I got SUPER excited.
The only thing that's taken time away from me playing league well over a decade is Arena in Smite.
A fair amount, way back in the day. Was definitely my favorite part of that game.
Fixed because Shakarez pinged you, or fixed because the fix was coincidentally underway already?
Edit: I just read up on the comment chain. I assume you caught the part where the 'cast' trigger for spellbinder and co was in the wrapper, not the actual spell, too?
I fixed this one earlier this week coincidentally, and I should have the spellbinder bit sorted out for 10.5 since 10.4 is already locked.
Alright this is a pretty old one, and afaik happens to all allied shields spells that use 'spell wrappers', ever since Guardian was introduced. Targeting an ally with Rakan's E2 puts some allied buff on them which allows Guardian to trigger, even if the 'actual spell' never actually started casting on them.
It appears to be decently well known for Rakan mains, so the Rakan in this clip probably used the bug deliberately. +1 for soloQ map awareness!
The fix here would be to stop Guardian from using the engine level targeting thing it uses right now, and have it be managed on script level like literally any other effect does.
Fixed for 10.4! Lots of our older wrapper spells aren't very precise about what you can target with them, since afterward the script interprets the command and actually triggers the spell correctly (and sometimes we still want to allow you to target someone out of range, so that we can then let you know that you're out of range or display a range circle or similar). The real culprit here was that Guardian never cared whether you cast something tagged as a buff or helpful effect—it triggered when you targeted an ally with anything, including totally untagged "spells" that have no gameplay effect, like wrapper spells. So, Guardian now correctly only triggers on helpful ally-targeted effects, similar to Summon: Aery.
Read morewait no stop. ive been using this for months to save people D:
edit: also it works with spellbinder. rakan can stack a spellbinder in 2-3 e, if you e1 to an ally and spam e2 to someone far away. (if you are gonna mention one might as well mention it all)
Oh ffs
Oh ffs
/u/RiotKingCobra make me fix this please
is that a ffs for “thats a different bug that shouldnt exist” or a “why does that also work?” lmao
I want to say I can't believe it triggers Spellbinder...but I can believe it
and I'm not happy
Thanks for sharing your story. It's always great to get reminders like this of why positive representation is so important, and I'm super happy that you found your acceptance right away. Hold those friends close!
I'm also gay, and, when I first started at Riot, this was shown during our orientation as a sneak peek of cool upcoming stuff. That was definitely a reaffirming moment for my decision to work here and made me more comfortable with my identity in the workplace.
now its "i guess we are glued together with a demon. welp im angry man now."
A classic trope, really.
Alright, that explains everything left I was still wondering about (although, pretty sure at least on 9.24 when I shot the video for my bug report he just kept shooting crits, not 4th shots)! Thanks for tackling the initial thing and this follow-up, in any case. Next patch, another classic bug will officially be history.
...please do make sure to put it in the patch notes this time, though! :^)
Edit: typo
Kinda late, but we put bugs in the patch notes in a pretty ad-hoc fashion. Like, if we think it's either a big bug that's important to let players know about or if we think it'll make players happy to know it was fixed, we'll let Shio Shoujo know so she can include it. We fix a lot more bugs every patch than make it into the patch notes, which is why things like "When Jhin runs his very suboptimal keystone, he will no longer very occasionally become unable to 4th shot" didn't make the grade for me.
Thanks for everything you do, btw. I always appreciate finding your repro steps when I'm trying to stomp a bug.
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