ty for the answer! Last question: Will Skarner come before the marksman since Riot meddler says Skarner will come fairly early next year
He will not be before the marksman! We are still finishing off his skins! End of year gets tough for moving significant needle on production.
Hey Lexi can you possibly be more evil in your vids, i liked how reav3 tormented players for months in his dev blogs
Unfortunately the next one was filmed already. I’m not more evil but my hair was out of control. I woke up with really terrible hair day hahahahahaha
The problem isn't where human resources are spent, its where monetary resources are spent.
Riot is paying people to work on these things, and not paying enough people to work on gameplay, the client, the engine, etc.
And Riot already has far more funding than 99.999% of games will ever get, while doing less than many. Saying they need to nickel and time everyone even more for the game to stop its tailspin isn't really helpful.
Riot has had the money to make improvements that needed to happen 7+ years ago for nearly a decade. Its silly to think money at this point is the reason why things don't happen.
Its intentional that the game isn't actively improving anymore because it makes money whether it does or not.
(Speaking from honest personal view because I’m not the expert on this) The problem with being one of the largest, also mean you are one of the most expensive to just run. It’s not often people gets to see behind the scene costs. I worked on Client, Skins and Champs side previously and it does surprise me where hidden costs are 🤔 Not all regions are equal in terms of profit vs cost.
Hello Lexical, I enjoyed the 4 champs this year, will there be 4 too next year? And are there any plans to do an Arcane collab again or something special for the big anniversary for league?
Stay tuned! We will have more info in the new year :)
The problem isn't where human resources are spent, its where monetary resources are spent.
Riot is paying people to work on these things, and not paying enough people to work on gameplay, the client, the engine, etc.
And Riot already has far more funding than 99.999% of games will ever get, while doing less than many. Saying they need to nickel and time everyone even more for the game to stop its tailspin isn't really helpful.
Riot has had the money to make improvements that needed to happen 7+ years ago for nearly a decade. Its silly to think money at this point is the reason why things don't happen.
Its intentional that the game isn't actively improving anymore because it makes money whether it does or not.
Humans are the most costly monetary resource in game dev.
Then you aren't the target market for the $200 skin, and that's fine. There's no way in hell that I'd ever touch one. However, if someone does want to show off that they are willing to dump $200 into a not-particularly-special skin, it doesn't hurt me any. I mean, I guess it's dev time and money spent on a skin I don't want. However, riot constantly releases skins that I'm not interested in for one reason or another, so I can't say I give a shit.
Skins team and Gameplay teams don't really mix headcounts! So personally (as someone on a team that doesn't bring in the bread), I'm thankful for Skins team trying to figure out how to get more bread and bacon with the team they have, so us gameplay teams never have to worry about money :D
In fact, the more that they do, the more likely we are to get more funding the years after so that we can do more things.
I have another gripe, why are ‘Young and Hip’ people only hired to speak on the game discussion videos? Meddler, etc are camera friendly is why, and I think aesthetics < talent needs to be looked at more
LOL omg.....
I wish I was more camera friendly. Fun fact, we do the videos because it was our jobs to make those decisions, thus we can speak on it truthfully.
Most of my videos comes out disastrously (my own fault) and I can't stand watching them/hearing them (so I don't).
Def not professionals... I think I'm getting a bit better with practice!
I personally: Sometimes muddles my pronunciations, blinks waayyyy too much because of dry eyes, annnnnd realizing irl expressiveness doesn't translate well on camera.
But I'm glad others are not picking this up and think we do good aesthetics <3
It's terrible for gameplay clarity and he's not native to SR, he's from Ixtal so if anything he should be a more vibrant green.
We will make sure that there is good game clarity on Skarner! What we shown is the WIP.
Well... hopefully the Skarner VGU will come before 2029.
I can confidently say it will 😊
which is the base Skarner? The one in the vid or the one on top in the blog?
The one shown chucking a rock :)
Team is looking into it along with rest of the bugs that were noted by Huzzl3.
It really feels like Riot got new managers in who all asked "But why are we doing that?" at every level of producing League, and when given an answer that didn't outline how that effort made the company more DIRECTLY profitable, they cut it.
Reminds me of every time I was at a company that got bought out and brought in new managers who didn't understand the product, culture, or customers and only understood the bottom line.
Cinematic? How's that profitable? Cut.
Lore? How's that profitable? Cut.
Season changes? How's that profitable? Cut.
Gentle reminder that a lot of decisions are almost made a year in advance, because it takes time to do work. 2023 is a result of 2022 etc
Hello /u/neolexical
August just said on his stream that most likely, Briar might be his last champion. Like this is so unfortunate. The champ team has already lost CertainlyT, and if you guys lose August, honestly I think the champ team is pretty much done.
I already sense that a lot of new champ releases have not been a success, I could be wrong, but I do have think that innovation has extremely dipped. You've been very communicative and transparent so far and I would really love to know your thoughts. Under /u/Reav3 the champ team felt prestigious and "serious-like". Now, I feel the team is pretty drained creatively, and just struggling to find inspiration.
Champions are SUPER important for the longevity of League as they perpetually increase the pursuit of Mastery and inject freshness into the game.
Briar is probably the last champion he will own fully for awhile! He is not leaving the gameplay team, but there are other areas that also need his expertise. Other champions around this time are also oversight by August on the design craft. This is just how you grow talent. They go from doing individual contributor work to owning the oversight on projects! That's how people get promoted and be able to have more impact.
There was a period where we were onboarding lots of folks. But now, we actually have a pretty fully stacked team at the moment and can't wait to showcase some of their work.
If you are a fan of August's work, just remember he is just a desk away and does contribute in other ways :)
Thank you for your reply /u/NeoLexical
Not sure what to make of your answer. He's going to help other areas of SR League? Or is he being poached like the other important members of the Champs team to help on Modes? zzzz :p
I just feel SR League gets treated unfairly internally at Riot now, feels like its "old news". I just feel the Champs team in specific is so delicate, and I could be wrong, but its super difficult to replace people within the team when turnover happens.
Overall, and as I said earlier, I feel the quality of champs (to me) has dipped. Is there anyway you can share that one play rate chart that Yasuo dominated for years? How are the depth and breadth stats of the newer releases? Are they matching, exceeding, or failing expectations?
Not too sure what you mean by quality.
In terms of B&D, we don't solely use it to benchmark success or some champions will probably not exist.
However, for the champions I can speak to, Milio and Naafiri, both have exceeded expectations! Asol was also one of the more popular reworks that we have done to date.
btw Lexi thanks alot for your replies both here and twitter, sucks that you became lead producer of champs in troublesome times
I want to ask if older/recent VGUs are kind of considered as risky projects and that's why the team moved resources from them and into ASUs meaning they don't always have positive outcomes, yes they always have the benefit of modernizing the roster but it is kind of apparent that they won't always increase the playrate of the champion compared to ASUs:
Udyr has same playrate he had before his VGU 1 year ago, Mundo has almost same playrate as before his VGU
. (I don't mean to criticize the awesome peeps who worked on them, just an observation and I believe you were still in LoR back then)
ASUs on the other hand are always a success, Ahri's playrate increased by 50% after her ASU earlier this year and she retained that playerbase
So my question is Did you guys shift priorities away from VGUs due to that? Small increase in a champion's playrate at the cost of so much resources wasn't worth the effort?
Also this applies to "newer" champions, Renata for example has been bottom 5 pickrate champ for months despite a positive winrate
Playrate is often tied to winrate I know but there are many champions old and new who retained high playrate even with negative winrates (Lee, Kai'sa, wind bros, etc.)
TLDR: Do you consider new champions /VGUs who failed to retain the playrate to be not successful projects? Is it the reason why VGUs and new champs resources were diverted to other projects (ASUs and modes)?
ASUs are done by the Skins team so we generally have nothing to do with those projects aside from supporting them on the QA, design, game clarity side.
Personally, I think there are still good reasons to maintain the cast of league roster with updates to have them brought up to modern standards. Playrates are not necessarily the highest priority we have. Sometimes depth, players who mains and deeply care about a champion, is also important. If we keep pursuing playrate, we will end up making a lot of similar champions.
We haven’t diverted any resources to other projects besides helping out on modes.
Udyr was just an extra large project in a turbulent time. It will take time to catch backup.
Is there a champion concept you or the team is really excited about but you can't quite make it right and have to pause it?
Yes! There was a project that involve heavy AI that we just don’t have the tech to do yet :)
Hi mentioning midscopes, can we get an update on them at all?
We haven't been given any info on if there are any new ones in production or if they've been paused for the time being.
I think midscopes have been/are some of the best things the team have done in the last few years, and as far as track record go I'd say about 90% of them have landed really well.
Itd just be nice to get some info on them, since we haven't heard anything since Rells landed (crashed?).
We tend to pick midscopes up when design team has the free cycles. Between helping out on modes and other projects, I don’t think there were alot of free cycles lately. I think we were exploring 2 pretty recently but they may or may not work out. We tend to do them pretty opportunistically. Try something and if it doesn’t work we will just not ship it.
Can u tell us how hard the creature marksman will be? Will he be hard or easier? 2) will u make a new AP toplaner in the future?
Stay tuned for the next roadmap!
Hey guys! Want to provide some context here! Reworks are extremely costly and taxing on the team due to the amount of affinity that players built over the years with the champions, sheer amount of art assets and how tangled narratively champions are to each other. This takes effort and time to get right. Research and development sometimes cannot be tied to a specific timeline, unless we are willing take a hit on quality.
The polls last year was quite painful for the development team and players alike. By sending out the polls on a deadline time, we signed up a team of devs to work while player expectations are building up with time. When Udyr wasn't even completed. Players are left wondering what is taking so long while pressure to release is building within the team. Tbh, though we try to keep a clear head and do what is right for Skarner, it is hard to not be affected. Because we very much want to delight everyone and get him in front of everyone!
At this time with Skarner s...
Read moreRiots end goal will be a new champ that has an ultimate that can only be used once, but it wins the game immediately at like 30 minutes
Waiting on Pingu
ngl... this was a pitch for early asol CGU. Not 30 min but at 55 min, he just wins the game with a cataclysm to the nexus. Surprisingly, not alot of games last that long :D Though it fit the theme of our start dragon very well though.