Quick Gameplay Thoughts: August 25

Morning all,

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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 put 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

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Final round of 7.18/Worlds Balance

We're approaching our final set of balance changes for Worlds at the moment. Before locking changes down we'll be assessing play over the next week, pro play on 7.16 this coming weekend in particular. We've got some potential targets we're already considering changes for as well though of course, quick run through on those below:

• Possible champion buffs - Azir, Ryze, Nidalee, Ivern, Fiora, Urgot
• Possible champion nerfs - Kalista, Tristana, Elise, Jarvan, Gnar
• Possible item buffs - Spellthief's line
• Possible item nerf - Knight's Vow

Again, these aren't guaranteed changes, just the things already being looked at. We don't have specific changes at time of writing for many of these either, though investigation's underway so we'll have something ready if we conclude they do need changes for 7.18 specifically. These are also in addition of course to other changes already in the patch on PBE already, not a complete list of 7.18 balance changes.

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Looking at gold/XP as possible pre-season projects

Speaking of possible work we're also starting to look into some secondary pre-season projects. The big focus of pre-season gameplay wise will be runes, and changes like balance adjustments to champs and items to compensate for the impact runes has. Pre-seasons and mid-seasons are also the best times to do various systemic changes that can be pretty disruptive at other times of the year however. We'll therefore be looking at gold and XP acquisition, some examples of possible directions. First step will be figuring out what definitely needs changes, rather than just being something to investigate. We'll then look at what it's feasible to get done in time without sacrificing needed work on runes. Some, or possibly all of these projects will not ship, so extra important to emphasize here this is visibility on things we're investigating, not a promised set of changes:

• XP gain - Jungle XP in general, XP from specific camps (Raptors start especially), XP reliability (how big a difference between a successful and an unsuccessful game should there be/is there?)
• Gold - Degree of gold that comes from inherent GP10, impact on support income from Bandit removal, degree to which gaining map control and then just farming lanes and both sides of the jungle may be over rewarding non risk taking play

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Getting games going quicker

Later in the year, potentially also around pre-season, we're aiming to have some further improvements to a few things to make it quicker to get to playing the game. Main things we're targeting right now are trimming a bit of time before minion spawn (with faster start of game homeguards at least to still allow jungle invades) and letting teams with two picks in a row in champ select do them both at the same time again. Matchmaking's also being worked on as usual of course, though that's often more a gradual series of improvements than an individual change to call out.