Quick Gameplay Thoughts: August 24

Hi folks,

Usual Disclaimers

These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get delayed or even stopped. If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler

http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/6.24.1/img/champion/Ziggs.png

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Looking into game loading bugs

We're looking into some issues with how long it's taking to load into game at present, including a bug where one player won't start loading until everyone else has finished doing so. Not sure on timing or details of a fix yet, but wanted to share that it was being actively worked on.

When we're prioritizing work bugs get bumped up the priority list if they're really impactful or if they're really common. Things that are both at once, such as this, get prioritized over most things as a result, given the combination's especially bad.

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Mastery Curves for Recent Releases

Not too much new to talk about today in terms of what we're working on, given a lot of time's going into things like Preseason, Ranked and Nexus Blitz where we've already talked about the details or things aren't yet ready to be shared. Figured it would be a good time to look at some more Mastery Curve graphs as a result. Let us know if data like this is something you're especially interested in and I'll try and include a bit more of it if so.

For anyone unfamiliar with mastery curves, or wanting to see a few more, they were in a couple of posts earlier this year:

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/1czrgEgw-quick-gameplay-thoughts-february-21 https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/X3P0v1Vh-quick-gameplay- thoughts-february-23

TLDR is they show how much a champion's winrate increases as a player plays more games on them and they're a useful tool for us when it comes to making balance decisions.

Looking today at mastery curves for some recent releases with Pyke, Irelia, Kai'Sa and Swain, plus Rengar, Jax, Vayne and Karthus provided as comparison points from similar (ish) champions. This data's taken from games over the last three months, at all MMRs, from most regions. Curves do change a bit at high MMR versus low, but usually not very dramatically (same trends). Aatrox and Akali aren't included here because their updates were recently too recently for us to have enough data to populate these curves well enough (not enough people have reached the 30+ mark in particular).

https://imgur.com/a/nO8lc53

A few things I think are worth noting:

• This is average data over a few months, so doesn't necessarily reflect current power level.
• Pyke and Rengar make for an interesting comparison. On one hand they're both champs that get quite a lot of benefit from being played a lot, with a 9% climb over 50 games being notably above average. That's fairly common for non tanky melee champs, who tend to have high curves based off the demands on when they go into fights, how they position etc. The contrast in how front loaded Pyke is (lot to learn, but comes quicker) versus Rengar's more steady curve's noteworthy though. Somewhat front loaded curves have tended to be easier to balance, given the discrepancy between moderate and heavy play isn't so high. Rengar's certainly been a balance challenge over the years but, while it's still early days, some suggestion here Pyke might be a bit less of a problem.
• Irelia and Jax also make for a pretty interesting contrast. From about 15 games onwards their curves are quite similar, ending at around the same power level too. Irelia's starts off low and steep though, assumedly reflecting initial challenges learning how to combo and execute on her abilities, then transitioning into the same sort of mastery that Jax is testing beyond that point (some shift of focus to things like match ups, building timings etc, with less on mechanical execution and kit comprehension).