Boards›Dev Corner

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: June 20

RiotMeddler·6/20/2019, 2:50:07 PM·1 votes·146,126 views

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

TFT

At time of writing TFT's been out on the PBE for nearly 24 hours. It's been exciting and a little tense watching to see what you folks will think and how the PBE server will cope with so much more demand to play than it normally gets. Very grateful for all your feedback so far, whether you've had a chance to play yourself or have checked it out on a stream. Wanted to run through a bunch of things we're planning and things we're considering doing so notes on those below. We'll also have a dev blog going out tomorrow that covers some of our thinking around design principles for TFT and some longer term plans.

Things that will be in upcoming patches (some first patch post launch, some a bit later):

  • DPS meters.
  • More detailed unit stats when you Right Click a unit to inspect them.
  • More bug fixing, though we're hoping to hit all the big stuff at least before it leaves PBE.
  • A ranked queue.
  • Improved clarity around unit positioning on the board. Likely involves further work on the ground textures to make movement easier to track, could well include an toggle option to show a subtle hexgrid overlay all the time.
  • Refinements to PVE rounds including difficulty tuning.
  • Ways to get more information about what items will build into without having to commit them to units first.
  • Additional balance and bug fixing (these should be in every patch for a while).

Some things we're discussing based off feedback so far:

  • It's a common point of feedback that players feel like the board is too small. We're happy with it as it is currently and want to give it a bit more time to see how positional play does or does not develop with the currently available space. We're open to revisiting though if the feeling persists with players, especially if it reduces depth in the game.
  • Similarly we think a maximum unit cap of 9 is the right place to be, especially given things like Force of Nature that let you exceed that cap and other items that let you add additional synergies. Again, open to revisiting though once things have had a bit of time to play out.
  • What our options are to make two and three star units more distinct and more satisfying. We'll likely refine the existing silver and gold visual effects further regardless, especially given we think they're looking really good on some champs and not others at present. Discussing other angles as well.
  • What additional information to next work on conveying through the scoreboard on the right hand side of the screen. It currently just shows player name/health, should we make adding things like loss/win streaks to it for example a priority ahead of other TFT work?
  • Whether we’ve got the tuning right on how much damage a player who loses a round takes. For the first day of PBE that calculation was bugged and often higher than intended. Watching to see whether the intended values are appropriate or whether we should also make some adjustments so that games don’t resolve too suddenly or drag on forever.
  • Whether item drop rates are too high or too low and how much we should or shouldn’t be controlling variation in items earned from PVE rounds for different players.

Little Legends

In addition to their role in TFT we're also looking to bring Little Legends to other game modes. We want to make sure we're not damaging combat clarity by doing so though and a lot of extra units running around in the middle of a fight can make things quite a bit harder to follow. We've got some behavior in place for them as a result where they'll show up in ARAM games but hang back from the action. They'll be visible, but not in prime combat areas and will run towards the Nexus when an enemy champion gets too close. Play-testing so far's suggested that's a promising approach for making them still appreciable but avoiding them feeling underfoot and in the way. Plan is to see how that goes in regular games, refine the approach further, then see whether there are appropriate ways to get them into SR games as well, using both lessons from ARAM and potentially other techniques again.

Sona

Sona’s been a really interesting champ to track the playrate and performance of recently, with the emergence of Sona plus a tanky support (usually Taric) bot lanes showing a lot of strength. Some thoughts on her as a result:

  • Our starting point is that it’s good to see new picks getting used in different positions provided they’re not crowding other options out.
  • From a power perspective Sona’s stats in various skill ranges are on the border of what we’d generally consider overpowered. Digging into the numbers more however it looks like Sona + support is stronger than those averages suggest. There’s still a lot of support Sona data mixed in in solo queue, with Sona + Taric for example being dramatically stronger than Sona as a support statistically. In pro some teams have a very high pick or ban rate with Sona + X and we believe that that would be the case for most other teams as well if she remains in her current state for an extended period.
  • We’re confident Sona’s too strong as a result and will be taking some power out of her. We’re targeting her AP scaling on Q and E, rather than her bases, looking to bring down Sona’s power with higher income/more aggressive (AP) builds than with more utility item and/or lower income builds.
  • Goal here isn’t to push Sona out of the ADC position necessarily, but to address overall power. It’s possible that does end up with her no longer seeing ‘ADC’ play if that’s something that only happens when her numbers are out of line.

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

246 Comments

Hadriel6/20/2019, 2:59:40 PM53 votes

To be honest, I'm disappointed with the decision you made on Sona. Pro play is convulsing against Sona because teams refuse to acknowledge that they must go out of their comfort zone to beat her. Isn't Sona doing exactly what you guys hoped to accomplish RE: opening up botlane for champions other than marksmen without the heavy-handed measures you took last year which simply suppressed ADCs?

You can say the goal isn't to take Sona out of botlane, but you can't seriously believe that the changes on PBE won't do just that. This was a great opportunity of letting pro play evolve around a pick without it coming at the price distortions in casual play and instead you're caving to an extremely resistant pro environment that will always thwart your efforts to diversify botlane simply because of establishment.

1blackdragon26/20/2019, 2:58:53 PM13 votes

Does solo lane pyke need to be removed? Can't his numbers be tweaked like with sona instead of removing all his waveclear from his kit?

i like wafffles6/20/2019, 3:03:35 PM10 votes

Hey meddler, Seeing the experimental changelist for akali from riot's repetoire twitter. I think its a step in the right direction, however the w feels so clunky after all the nerfs it received for having the obscurity effect,wouldnt it be easier to turn it back to giving normal invisibility and revert some of the many nerfs It had to suffer from in order for it to maintain that broken for the game mechanic? Are you guys considering removing it?

ModThe Djinn6/20/2019, 3:03:22 PM9 votes

Our starting point is that it’s good to see new picks getting used in different positions provided they’re not crowding other options out.

As someone who wholeheartedly supports this, may I ask what the bar is? Because a lot of the interesting bot laners we've seen in the past (Ziggs, Sona, etc.) tend to get knocked down to the point where they're no longer really useful. My suspicion is that this has more to do with the current meta and the design of traditional bot laners (who are largely reliable, and so difficult to justify replacing unless something is overtuned in comparison, not to mention that Marksman struggle places other than bottom lane currently), but it is a little frustrating to see repeated statements that off-picks are cool but balance decisions that -- although often justified -- make it seem like nothing that really shakes up the meta is allowed to breathe.

Now, I understand the potential for damage/frustration here, especially if people don't try to break the mold in response and find counters to that sort of lane (Would hard dive on both champions break it? We don't see enough experiments to check...and would a shift of that magnitude result in no healthy place for Marksman players? Maybe.), but I think there's some community interest in seeing precisely where/why the line gets drawn, and what longer-term plans Riot may have to look into greater bottom lane diversity (and Marksman position diversity) in a healthy and sustainable manner.

Sorry for the more in-depth question, since I know it's easier to address more compartmentalized topics on these threads!

Zhadar6/20/2019, 3:31:27 PM8 votes

Regarding TFT

Ive played several hundres hours of DAC and Autochess Mobile and now 2 days of TFT.

    • TFT definetly needs a bigger board. 3x7 feels super unnatural and limits game depth a lot
    • items are OP in TFT + the droprate is super inconsistent
    • we need board overflow with autosell feature just like every other Auto chess
    • i want to see how much gold and which lvl every enemy has on the sidebar
    • several classes/origins feel super lackluster and their synergy combinations is underwhelming (esp. Gunslinger and Blademaster)
    • we need way better visual upgrades for 2* and 3* units (i want a "wow, that upgrade was really worth it" feeling | it feels so awesome in DAC (thats also one of the main complaints in Autochess Mobile and why people dont like it that much)

Bugs i encountered so far:

  1. Lulu Ult still not working after the fix
  2. several ranged units stop autoattacking and just stay still
  3. items from carousel units disappear, when they get autocombined
  4. and the biggest bug of all: If you sell a unit from the carousel while still in the special arena, you get the unit again after backporting and therefore get free gold
Linna Excel6/21/2019, 1:28:44 AM7 votes

So riot intentionally makes a scaling support and then gets upset when people start trying to get that champ to scale as she was designed to.

[slayer-jinx-unamused]

Do you ever read Mark Rosewater? He did a GDC a few years back on 20 years 20 lessons. One of those lessons was that players will do what you reward them to do whether it is fun or not.

Small Boobs Ahri6/20/2019, 2:55:59 PM6 votes

You don't think Draven is a little too strong in TFT ?

Crow Nebula6/20/2019, 4:05:46 PM6 votes

Hey Meddler, Aurelion Sol is currently the least played champ in the game (according to League of Graphs), which is extra shocking considering that he's a relatively recent champ. Visually and thematically, he is my favourite champ, but despite my best efforts I cannot bring myself to play him because I find his gameplay so boring and one-dimensional. Do you have any plans to rework him at some point? Please say yes.

Turtles King6/20/2019, 4:19:57 PM6 votes

What about Galio? Are you seeing him in a good spot atm? Because as a Galio player I feel so weak in both damage band tankiness

Fajerk6/20/2019, 5:33:53 PM6 votes

At what point is Riot gonna address SUPPORT ITEMS instead of nerfing champion after another champion and another champion.

Seriously, nearly all of the "out of place picks" were and are being enabled by support items being abused.

This feels like ARDENT 2.0, Riot keeps ignoring the real issue and instead just removes one champion at the time.

And if you want to know why Sona is so dominant in proplay and still strong in soloQ, it is mainly because champions that would be her nightmare like hard engage tanks were removed from the game.

Does live gameplay team ever look at the past patches or are we about to witness history repeat again?

I Miss Every Ult6/20/2019, 3:18:22 PM5 votes

Hello Meddler, why not take an approach of fixing support items instead? The Frostfang + Relic Shield lane is ripe for abuse, if Sona + X won't be the prime lane to use it, some other scaling mage will inevitably take it. People just seem horribly uncreative so far, despite the interaction being busted.

Of course, Sona needed a nerf anyways in general, but you're not fixing the real busted stuff here. Just make Frostfang disable from receiving relic shield procs, just like it disables from minion kills, that's the most simple solution.

ModAcademy Kayn6/20/2019, 3:07:56 PM5 votes

How are you feeling on the Dark Seal + Corrupting Pot + Biscuit delivery strategy, after the initial nerfs to Corrupting pot have gone through? In my personal experience, I don't think the combination is healthy at all, but I've hated the sustain-with-pots game ever since Crystaline Flask was a thing. It was especially irritating when a Kayle built two Dark Seals.

TitanCrit6/20/2019, 10:58:56 PM5 votes

Can we get a quick game-play thoughts for Twisted Treeline in the future? That mode has been around for years with zero updates. At this point you should get rid of it since TFT is coming out or let us know you're reworking it again.

swampert9196/20/2019, 4:28:43 PM5 votes

In regards to the Little Legends appearing outside of TFT you could do something similar to the clash banners, where the little legends can appear outside of the field of battle to cheer your team on, or have them hanging around the spawn platform. That would let them venture out of TFT without interfering with gameplay

GoldenFrog6/20/2019, 6:35:44 PM4 votes

Quite disappointed with the upcoming Pyke changes. The vast majority of players agreed that solo lane Pyke brought a fun and unique playstyle to the laning phase with counterable weaknesses (weak waveclear pre-tiamat, unable to fight bruisers/tanks/juggernauts 1v1, weak late-game). I agree nerfing waveclear is a good idea to hurt solo lane Pyke, which is currently a bit overtuned, but I think the current changes overdo that.

As a Pyke OTP that mostly plays support, losing the aoe and damage bonus on Q stab makes the gameplay choices more linear (no drawing enemies near each other for aoe stab, no stabbing for extra damage). The W and Q CD buffs are nice, but I don't think they compensate enough to prevent a drop in support Pyke wr (which was in a balanced place). At the very least I think the Q stab should still be aoe vs champions.

If I were to nerf Pyke I would just hit his damage to minions with Q and E so this weakness is even more pronounced. Making them unable to do damage completely kills the unique diversity that he had in the meta. The whole Pyke community and I are just very dissatisfied with the proposed changes.

Thighonia6/20/2019, 3:40:48 PM3 votes

what is the team's thoughts on Ryze? seems like the prevailing opinion isn't that he's bad no so much as it is just a far more boring playstyle than what he had and kind of a different identity entirely. Doesn't mean that necessarily lines up with your data though so I'm curious of your thoughts.

Erulus6/20/2019, 4:59:58 PM3 votes

Hiya Meddler! I was just wondering about Diana, there were a few changes in the past month that made it to the PBE, and I was curious as to what approach you have when confronting her play style and kit. Thank you in advance :)

RekSai CoffeeCo6/20/2019, 5:54:17 PM3 votes

There is a bug that hasn't been fixed for a long time that needs permanent fixing. I suggest Nexus Blitz.

(https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-m8-KuNv8_eQ/XL3cjkyGxiI/AAAAAAABRxU/MceUiD3aDVg8d74CTlD8cJCbm5Snaj_jgCLcBGAs/s316/rotating%2Bgame%2Bmode%2B3.jpg)

minimite16/20/2019, 6:07:42 PM3 votes

Drops from PVE should definitely be a #1 focus. Yeah some units are powerful.. yeah it'd be nice to not need a cheat sheet.. but that doesn't even matter when you're 1 round in and someone has 2 full items, while you have 0 drops.

SiG DxD6/23/2019, 10:14:32 PM2 votes

any reason syndra has and will have even more hp than garen ?

makes not much sense to me

garen 84 hp lvl syndra 90 ,and soon 95/ lvl

Seviel Vorose6/20/2019, 4:25:35 PM2 votes

What are your plans for Syndra?

La Belle Sauvage6/20/2019, 3:17:47 PM2 votes

HI Meddler,

Low Elo player here and Sona main.

While I suppose "targeting her AP scaling on Q and E,..." Is needed when she is in the ADC role, you'd be potentially affecting her utility build a lot.

It will be interesting to see by how much. With the exception of this year I had a lot of success building Sona mostly Utility. And I'm worried the build path may be less viable after this change.

  1. Spell Theif's edge (into Frostfang)
  2. Mikael's Crucible
  3. Athene's Unholy Grail
  4. (Pending matchup - though a lot of times IBG)
  5. (Pending Matchup)

A large part I can build this way is her Q. And by reducing (and her E) it it makes me wonder the potential viability of all utilities sort of builds.

And I'm curious why you wouldn't give her Auto a slight increase (to help with wave clear & in top of the one you already gave) since your removing the scaling on Q & E.

I'm mostly concerned with Support Sona in the end. Her Q poke is a large part of her viability support wise.

And to be clear I'm not opposed to a change nor will I be upset, I'm willing to experiment with new build paths if need be, just concerned in general, since She's being nerfed due to an off role situation. She's has been a solid support pick for a long time now and you haven't touched her until now, which is mildly concerning.

There was a good post by chip (forgot his summoner's name) recently about this very topic. If you haven't read it I'd encourage you to, I'd love to know your thoughts.

Support Position6/22/2019, 11:24:21 AM2 votes

OR just get rid of Kleptomancy as that's the ACTUAL problem with Sona and everyone who abuses it.

[zombie-brand-facepalm]

Always nerf the champion never the thing that makes them strong.

Mctiguy6/22/2019, 3:27:38 PM1 votes

What about the incoming nerf on Pyke ? The champ will be totally useless after it , Solo lane or Sup he'll just die . Why don't you want him to play somewhere else than Sup ? He's an assassin after all ;-;

Flemman6/20/2019, 4:08:08 PM1 votes

Is the riot Pls that was released today the article you mentionned some time ago (about alternative mode like TT and the future) or is it another one?

Also, any chance for klepto fonctionnality change during preseason (breaking the range vs melee bias)

Finaly, what are the plan for yuumi. One of the initial concern was balancing her so she will not end up to safe, but as of now she seems like she lose nothing from taking no flash no boots ("free" item slot and quicker powerspyke).