Quick Gameplay Thoughts: September 1
Morning all,
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
Tweaking Champion Voices
We get a lot of good feedback on ways to tweak and improve champions in terms of how their abilities work, loading screen art, visual effects in game, ability audio etc. Generally we can act on that feedback, especially in cases where it's a small change that's quick to do and a clear. Champion voices (VO) are usually an exception to that unfortunately and I figured it would be useful to talk about that a bit.
With almost every other part of the game we can adjust stuff pretty easily ourselves and in multiple languages. Visual effects artists who work at Riot can adjust spell effects, writers can change champion bios, designers can tweak balance etc. With VO however it's not that simple a process unfortunately, since we're using voice actors who don't work here and have other commitments. That means it's comparatively difficult to something as simple sounding as one new line. We need to find a time that works for the actors in question and then get them into a recording studio. That's made much more difficult because there are a lot of voice actors per champion since there's usually a separate one for each language the game's in. Sometimes it's still practical to add or adjust one off lines (e.g. if we're recording a number of extra lines already for a champion release trailer or something similar it's easy to add a bit more in too). Generally though it's not doable, even if the idea's really cool, which can really suck when somebody suggests a fantastic idea.
Possible change to how we do gameplay patches next year
Something we've been talking about recently is whether to try a slightly different approach for a while early next to year to how we release gameplay patches. At present most patches are very similar to each other. We've been considering trying an alternating large gameplay patch/small gameplay patch cycle however. The small patches would only contain balance changes that are for things in dire need of a change (e.g. very strong or very weak champions), or extremely simple changes that aren't too disruptive and don't need as much testing (e.g. base stat tweaks). The large patches by contrast would then contain larger balance changes, mini updates, item changes, Runes adjustments etc. Total amount of change over time would likely be fairly similar, though more concentrated. One of the biggest possible benefits there is that that would allow us to spend more time on longer term fixes for things, and less on short term adjustments that don't always fix fundamental problems. One of the biggest downsides is some things would potentially get addressed slower than they currently do. Curious as to people's thoughts on such an approach?
Xin Zhao update probably in 7.19
As per the title there it's likely the XZ update ships in patch 7.19. For anyone unfamiliar with context on it it's a smaller update, so will involve tweaks to some of his skills and stats while keeping most of his kit very similar to its current functionality. A few spell/character animation updates, but in terms of art and audio generally very similar to (small gameplay update, not full VGU).
Azir update almost certainly in 7.19
Azir's changes have continued to test well so we're pretty confident they'll be in 7.19. They don't involve replacing any of his abilities, so sit somewhere between a really heavy balance/tuning pass and a small update. As previously mentioned a lot of the focus to the update is reducing his ranges to create better counterplay and more risk taking, then putting power elsewhere. We've read through a fair bit of feedback from some people who feel that's the less thematic fit for an emperor, and understand where that's coming from, but feel that leaving his range as is and instead removing mobility both fails to fix needed issues and leads to a flatter playstyle, hence this direciton.
Le Blanc update's quite a while away
Not too much new to say here, mentioning it though since it's a topic that seems to get raised constantly and figure it's better to talk about it visibly here rather than less visibly in the replies every single time. Le Blanc's update hasn't hit a good point yet, so it's going to be quite a while before it's out - she's got a lot of problems that need to be solved, with the core being desire to do assassin things without taking assassin risks. Extremely unlikely it'll be before pre-season (November) at an absolute minimum, more likely sometime next year. We don't have any current plans for balance changes to her between now and whenever the update comes out, though if circumstances change (e.g. if new Runes make her dramatically weaker or stronger) we'd reassess that of course.
?
or 
Begs to differ.
ADC is currently her worst role (many people say that, among them Challenger players) and to no surprise. E works well if you're an assassin but not that well for an adc who wants to stay safe and use basic attacks(it works that way if you use it at melee range which you shouldn't be in the first place). Same with ult (mobility is nice but the other parts not that much; at least made more sense when it functioned like an execute). Don't you think this translates to design and/or update (during the marksman update) failure? Not bashing, just expressing. Wouldn't she need work (big or smaller) at some point to cement whether she should be classified as adc or not?
Would you say he could use a VGU? I'd think so.
You've been kind with her recently and I'm grateful for that. Do you think she could use some more small buffs and/or quality of life changes in order for her to be pushed into pro play material?
got an insanely large new VO, both basic and in his Captain skin while MF 
nothing to reflect that big story she went through (not even a specific taunt towards GP feelsbad). Many people call her bimbo with guns which isn't the case- at least, not anymore. I understand that it can be hard if you want to do everything with the original voice actor(s) but technology allows for some great facilitations nowadays. For example, with some sound editing, I believe you could make new lines sound as close to the source material as possible (even the exact same).
a small buff before her rework? She seems to be doing worse than Ryze and Azir in Solo Q.
not being worth the cost and the ease in being able to itemize vs AP as opposed to being able to itemize vs AD. Examples being the power difference between 
and 
and how 
is really ap users (mages and ap assassins) only defense vs the abundance of AD users right now. Is this something you guys have at least talked about?
change going to happen?
and the introduction of the Gathering Storm rune, will likely require a AP rebalance at some point.
