<3 I'll still be around, spamming games, building something great (I hope), and lurking the sub.

Also - like others mentions we have some plans for future coms, I'll share more next week.

ketzo

As it's his last Patch Preview tweet, I think it's worth saying a MASSIVE thank you to Mark Yetter aka /u/RiotScruffy.

I've played quite a few games over the years, but very very few of them have been willing to openly and honestly engage with their players about their ongoing balance process; none of them have gone so far as to post their work-in-progress for feedback every two weeks.

If you haven't seen the tweets and reddit comments that Scruffy gets, well, take my word for it; shit can get vile. But he's been doing these tweets anyway for years, as well as running the "Gameplay Thoughts" Blog for even longer, purely for the benefit of the most engaged and dedicated players.

So, as someone who loves League: ty mr yetter.

<3 I'll miss you all (but see you again in the MMO threads some day)

RayliOtter

Who will be in his place in the future?

What i always loved about him is that i could follow him on twitter for the balance changes and nothing else. No breakfast pictures or shit like that.

good luck for the future!

Small Edit: I hope its not because People meme you so much, more than any other person on the League Team

Don't worry its not from the memes, for every meme or angry response there are helpful and kind ones too.

I'm ready to be memed to death on the MMO, been building meme resist for years.

bz6

Man idk, from the outside looking in it just feels League is getting it's resourced siphoned without adequate replacement. I am happy for him of course, but he set the standard for transparent communication while he was at the helm. Is that a fair assumption to make /u/RiotScruffy ? Is the League team just getting smaller?

Best of luck.

It's normal course for a long lived game like League. People come on and off the project over time. It's healthy for the team to have fresh talent, ideas, and to let the old guard move on after many years.

Specifically I can say that the league team isn't shrinking for sure (they're growing in 2021 with lots of big plans).

ThisIsSnake

Hi /u/RiotAether,

Could we please get someting like a 'small updates target patch' list that is official and also totally subject to change?

It feels like Riot has MANY parallel 'small updates' around all kinds of champs, items, and runes in the works RIGHT NOW. These are always exciting and interesting, to look forward to and watch unfold. For every champion update, or new item, or rework, or rune change, scores of players are looking forward to them! The evolving game with communicative devs is one of the best aspects of League. It adds to the experience, frankly,

I just wish we had some clarity on when we might see the changes. I fully respect that we won't get the actual changes until they are fully baked and ready to go, and patch targets are subject to change. It would be nice to have an official update every month or so, just a simple list of 'when' things may show up, or if they are in development. That's all.

As an example, it really sucked waiting 2 years in the dark for the new AP Bruiser items to finally show up. I'm super happy they are in the game now. Yes, they could use tweaks and additions, but they finally exist. I just wish I knew when the tweaks/new mage items may finally show up, even though it doesn't actually matter when. Its an optics thing.

Riot Scruffy (Mark Yetter) said that they want to formalize and increase the output of these small updates here as a sort of new dev pipeline:

https://twitter.com/MarkYetter/status/1360295871758274560 https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/quick-gameplay-thoughts-feb-12/

That was great to hear. I would appreciate simply knowing what is in the works and when we may see it. That's all.

This is not meant to be a 'Hate on Riot balance thread'. I'm excited for the future and how the game will change and improve. Signed, a filthy casual player who likes the game and accepts that is a continual work in progress.

Hey this is a good question. The main reason why we end up keeping it more vague with these types of projects is because of the way they are developed.

Most of our work (patches, champs, preseason, skins, etc) are staffed and planned for in a very long term way. We have the full set of people needed and plan around a release date that we can almost always hit.

These smaller emergent updates are the opposite - we look at problems we would like to solve in the game and try to fix them in a more responsive way. Because of the uncertainty of the work it's not possible to have consistent staffing around them - for example one type of project might need a lot of VFX and sound but no animation, but another might need a ton of animation but no VFX. So the way we usually ship these is on a flexible timeline where we catch the spare time of an animator of VFX artist who is inbetween large projects.

This isn't a super satisfying answer because we probably still wont be able to promise clear...

This is a good suggestion, I think a lot of players would love this feature. Also this functionality for Item Sets should be fixed in patch 11.2.

We're working to add higher resolution versions of the icons for next patch for the rec tab where they have larger space. We totally agree, thanks for the feedback too.

Holy cow, this is very awesome. I cant stop watching the little GIF animations you did of the spells.

You definitely have a bright future making games!

sarcasticchan

Can you make the shop able to scale up or down to different sizes :(
For me, my shop is very large and it takes up way too much of my screen!

This is coming soon, it will scale to the right size for every resolution.

Hey everyone, The massive item system overhaul is coming to PBE. This is the thread for all feedback related to:

• Updated stats (like Ability Haste)
• Mythic items
• New Legendary items
• Updated Legendary items
• Other systems changes like Runes, the Jungle, etc

Some of the new items don’t have final VFX or SFX yet, so if you see something that looks placeholder expect it to be updated soon. We most appreciate feedback around item choice and satisfaction. We won’t turn away any balance feedback, but PBE isn’t the best environment for balance reads because most players haven’t played enough games for matchmaking to be accurate.

There is a lot to absorb, so take your time playing and give us as much feedback as you can. We’re reading and absorbing all of it.

Riot Scruffy

Hey everyone, This is the thread for feedback on the new shop interface and the update to item icons. We’re most interested in how you are learning the new interface and starting to see the increased speed and intuitiveness of finding the items you need. Feedback on any of these features is welcome:

• Recommended Items Tab
• All items Tab
• Popular Items
• Quick access sidebar
• Item search
• Item icons

There are a few features still coming that aren’t yet in the build, expect these coming in the next few weeks:

• Stat filters (AD, AP, Ability Haste, Armor, etc)
• Item sets
• “Good against” champion recommendations for items
• Enhanced Mythic item visuals
• 100% icons updated (unfinished icons have a silly pink border right now)
• Enhanced tooltips (shift functionality)

We know that this is a big change, so don’t freak out if it’s not immediately clicking in your first game. Thanks for testing all of this stuff, we’re excited to see your feedback, solve problems, and polish the shop to 100.

Riot Sc...

bz6

/u/RiotScruffy

Hey boss hope you had a great week off.

First off great post, one of the better ones. Covers a lot of topics I care about when it comes to LoL. But the most important one at the moment in my opinion relative to the preseason changes is:

With the curtain starting to get lifted around the pre-season item changes for next year, do you think the changes will heavily impact the power postion philosophy you outlined a while back? On a related yet more specific note, how will the item changes affect scaling? We are seeing early iterations where tanks are getting a "dcap" item. Is the goal to homogenize scaling across champions, roles, and sub-classes an intended target or?

Because that would be really boring and take away even more of the strategic nuances the game has been losing for years now.

Yea this is a great question. We still want different classes and different champs to have distinct power curves.

Even with a "capstone" item, tanks should still be more of a midgame spike and ADC will outscale at 6 items.

There will definitely be a few small shifts in power curves, but homogenization is not a goal and we're going to be making these shifts intentionally.

Hobbsgoblin123

Do you still view the Aatrox rework as a failure? Is there any talk of a mini/major revert to make him similar to his old playstyle? Or just any talk of him at all? (While I don't think a revert is realistic, I can hope)

Pre-rework Aatrox was easily my favorite champion in the game and New Aatrox just doesn't do anything for me. I just wanna play my boy again :/

Overall in my eyes Aatrox wasn't the perfect rework but not a failure, actually overall a good one. Don't expect a revert.

Things that went well -Super fun and iconic new playstyle weaving sword attacks and dashes -More deep and sticky playstyle has created a larger and more sticky set of Aatrox mains (we see this in the data) -More clear counterplay for opponents

Things we would do better if we could go back in time -Keep more of the oldtrox gameplay fundamentals there (aa based etc). We made something new and fun but unfortunately a lot of old mains feel left out. -He ended up not having enough weaknesses at super high skill play, making him dominant in pro while not really being viable for normal players

ENIG0R

How many more VGUs until every champ is updated to modern standards?

145

Texual_Deviant

The Garen update has been out for about a week now. He's getting some nerfs soon, but in terms of gameplay goals, do you think the update has been a success in giving him some new build paths, damage and lane priority?

Also, in the past, it was floated that there could be some mechanical changes for Aatrox to add some more power after his knees were broken. Any word on if that's still the plan?

And lastly, who are your favorite characters, be it lore, kit, or attitude?

Thanks!

Currently Garen changes seem to be going well - we simplified and cleaned up the villain mechanics (which no one seems to miss).

We're having to nerf him some but he should still have the profile that we want - even though we're puling some early game damage he's still a lane bully (just not an unstoppable god)

Team_Super_Mald

How do you decide when to go with energy vs mana as a resource for champions?

Default we go to mana - it's generally good to have the long term attrition.

When we have something special like rage or in the few cases where we want a more spammy "action spell" champ (usually melee).

Gabcpnt

As for champions like Bard and Kindred, who have skills that work both on enemies and allies sort of like the same way, could we expect more troll ideas like that in the future?

These type of abilities are hard to master and risk the "my teammate screwed me" downside, but they are very unique and add interest to all other 9 players when we do them right.

A key component to doing theses type of spells right is allowing allies to see them coming and react to them. So bard R is also dodgeable for allies - similarly kindred R has a clear timer that allies can learn and play around.

[deleted]

[deleted]

Minions affecting player pathing at the high level as a game feature is a good thing and something we will probably keep in the long term:

-It adds context and different playing fields to champ ion combat
-It helps to make the world feel more physically real (things get really floaty fast when everyone just glides around from point to point)

That said - there are a few cases that lead to a shocking/unintuitive/frustrating caused by our current execution of pathing around minions
-Minions are forming a "wall" that doesn't really read visually as a full block
-Minions shifted while I was in progress, so my initial move would have brought me through but now it fails. This is especially bad if things keep shifting causing my character to get trapped and repeatedly change paths.

In conclusion - fundamentally minions will probably affect pathing in the long term but we could do work in the future to make it more predictable, consistent, and match your expectations as a player.

cyberrobocop

Should rename Klepto to something else then as the new effect doesn't match with the current name

We plan to re theme it with a new name and icon.

S890127

So the "showing Aphelios's second wapon icon next to the first one" thing didn't went live?

Still in testing internally. May come to live in a later patch.