Runes Corner: The One About the UI

Hi hi! I’m Riot Sparkle, Experience Designer on Runes and welcome back to another Runes Corner!

We’re going to mix it up today. Instead of talking about any one particular rune, we’re going to talk about some of the UI that will accompany runes.

WIP DISCLAIMER: Runes (and their UI) are in active development. This means that names, numbers, icons, game rules, or pretty much anything you can see can change before release. Of course, if there’s anything that you really like in particular make sure to call it out.

So a lot of you have been asking - how am I going to keep track of all my new runes while I’m in a game?

https://i.imgur.com/g6TrIMm.png A dramatic re-enactment of me, juggling all these new runes

Sure, there are only 6 runes in your page, but all of them are more complex than a simple +1.0 Armor. If you don’t even know what you took on your “JUNGLE LUX BEST LUX” page, how are you supposed to judge how well they worked for you?

So, without further ado, let’s answer that question with the introduction of what some of you eagle eyed players have already spotted - the in game runes panel.

https://i.imgur.com/HfiGEQA.png No, the button won’t be a teardrop for launch. That’s WIP.

The runes panel is a new part of the HUD UI that you can use to remind yourself what runes you brought with you into game and track your performance with them. It shares space with the advanced stats panel, but savvy power users can use the already existing “C” hotkey to view both panels at once if desired.

https://i.imgur.com/95adnQO.png All the info at once

The panel is small, so we have a pretty strict limit on how much text can be in there per rune. We choose only one stat per rune to surface in the panel, but we recognize that some runes have more than 1 stat that’s important (ex: Perxie affects shielding AND damage).

https://i.imgur.com/TOyStzz.png Additional stats and info about the Sorcery keystone Arcane Comet. I cheated this screenshot for the example so you may notice some weirdness here ;)

That’s why you can also hover the runes in the panel to access more info to help you evaluate how something like Arcane Comet (formerly known as Meteor) is doing for you. You can see above that “290” is actually the damage done to champions with this keystone, but you can also see a host of other information that might be relevant to changing/ improving your picks for next time or your performance at the moment with a particular rune.

This aspect of personal evaluation is important for a concept we internally call “the feedback loop” in runes. Basically, this boils down to the following value: players should have enough information to learn about runes and decide if they want to change their runes or tactics for next time.

The in game panel is one place where surfacing this kind of info but the other natural place for this kind of self evaluation is the end of game screen. Now, spoiler alert, we’re currently working on the end of game screen for runes so it’s not as far along as the runes panel in game. We probably won’t have end of game stats ready for our PBE launch, but they should be along shortly after.

However, I can share an image of what some of it will look like, once we’ve put in all the work.

https://i.imgur.com/jqB9r4p.png This is a mockup, so all the names, numbers and icons are totally fake here

While this design only shows one stat per rune, just like the in game panel, we are hoping to eventually surface multiple stats per rune much in the same way that the runes panel does (hence the little expand arrow in the image above).

So, that’s it for now. Hopefully this gives you a better picture of how you’ll be able to track your runes and decide what’s working and what’s not. This is just a preview of the UI that's relevant to the feedback loop, but there's definitely more to see. See you in the comments!

You can check the previous Runes Corner posts here: Runes Corner: Runes Content Development Peek Runes Corner: Meteor Sneak Peek Runes Corner: Hunt of the Bloodmoon Sneak Peek Runes Corner: Domination Major Slot Sneak Peek Runes Corner: Stormlord's Mandate and Spellslinger's Surge Runes Corner: Guardian Soul Runes Corner: Summoner Specialist and Hextech Freezeray Runes Corner: Late-Game Focused Runes Runes Corner: More Precision Runes Runes Corner: Three More Resolve runes