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RGM brain dump Star Guardian sparkle edition

RiotL4T3NCY·9/12/2017, 8:45:01 PM·1 votes·17,007 views

Heya guys, I've seen lots of cool questions/thoughts floating around RE the new Star Guardian Invasion mode and League PvE in general. I'll collect some of my thoughts here but feel free to ask any other sparkle questions if you want. I'll lurk in thread here during today. Shining Bright ～♪

http://i.imgur.com/Q3MqMCt.jpg

"The premade missions for Star Guardian feel bad. :( I'm a solo player and just want to get the ward skin/random champ.."

TL;DR: You can earn either of the Star Guardian rewards as a solo player, no premades required. If you want to collect 'both', you'll also need to complete the premade missions.

We've seen a fair bit of confusion on these missions and that's totally on us. The way we laid out the missions in the tab makes it hard to see what is part of a chain, which ones are solo/premade and how many tokens each one gives. We can do better here for future events.

RE premade missions in general, we'll look at the aftermath of Star Guardian and decide if we want to do them again in the future. We DO like the things to do inside the missions (complete with the original/new Star Guardian team, crazy comps, etc), but there's a discussion to be had about whether or not that should 'require' a premade. The premade requirements even prevent some cool emergent moments where you PUG a group, complete a mission and then don't get credit for it... #feelsbadman

"The HARD missions are like.... hard.."

Yeah... git gud? :3

"I want to play Invasion using "Champion X". Will I ever be able to?"

We're not against this idea at all. For modes that have a smaller champ pool initially (Blood Moon, Star Guardian), we're quite interested in swapping out those champ pools to add new flavour as the modes return. We actually wanted to do it for Blood Moon just past recently, but didn't have time due to Star Guardian creeping up on us. :P

Hopefully for the next runs of some of these modes, we can look at shifting or changing the champ pools. It comes at the cost though of needing to make sure each champ works or makes sense in the mode. Each champ in Star Guardian has a place and their abilities do something useful (Poppy blocks monsters, Soraka silence, Janna Whirlwind to cancel channels) so we'd need to think carefully each additional champ. EG: Without substantial effort, champs like Ivern, Kindred, Rengar, etc would be unable to execute on their core fantasy.

"Will you guys do more PvE now?"

We've been dabbling in PvE since the first Doom Bots, and refined it again for The Teemoing version of that mode. Star Guardian is a different take on PvE in LoL, and I think there's probably even more angles or facets to explore, still lurking within League's superstructure.

Questions like "Would you ever do an adventure mode?" or "Will you make a Diablo style dungeon?" are su~uper lofty. Those are often entire games made over many many years with gigantic teams of talented people. I think there's certainly interesting elements within those games/genres that would be fun to boil down and play with inside a League ecosystem, but it's too early to make any kind of commitment to something as huge as a "dungeon mode". For now, we hope you enjoy Star Guardian Invasion, and we're in there defending the city alongside you guys! :D

"Should I focus the Vel'Koz?"

(••) ( ••)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■) YEEEEAAAAAHHH!!

75 Comments

Death Rex9/12/2017, 9:25:38 PM19 votes

Riot should create a PvE modus where you pick either Demacia or Noxus and play on a battlefield against the other fraction. First against normal soldiers, then with each level stronger soldiers and generals (for example Garen when you fight for Noxus).

Same would work on Frejord; there was once an event with Lissandra, Seju and Ashe, but a new one should be made on Aram map (how convenient, we even have already a map for that!). The battle could be around a crown, which is pickupable in the middle and must be brought to the base, like a "capture the flag" game. While this idea is more PvP, it could work as PvE as well: You have to fight towards the other base, while dodging Ashe arrows for example.

I think in general that Riot should support fraction fights, since its kinda what league's story is / was all about. Champion interactions within fractions are so cool. I like Demacia for example and am dissapointed that Garen has so few interactions with Noxus.

Jeddy0179/12/2017, 8:55:16 PM8 votes

but there's a discussion to be had about whether or not that should 'require' a premade.

Can we at least set a minimum instead of it being a 5 man premade only next time? Like a duo minimum (obviously including you) or something. Getting one friend to play with you is much easier than grabbing 4 people (Some might be busy with life or not even interested in playing).

Mysticman899/12/2017, 9:32:43 PM7 votes

Is there any need to have the missions in chain compared to all at once? It felt pretty bad that I got my first S(+!) rank in invasion before I actually had the mission available to get credit for it.

If it's progressively harder version of the same thing (Kill X critters, kill 5X critters, Kill 10X critters!) sure a chain makes sense since theres no chance of 'wasting' a run, but not getting credit for an unrelated challenge feels pretty bad.

Have any strategies emerged in invasion that you didn't anticipate and maybe make things easier than first expected? e.g. on-hit builds (esp combined with an ardent user) seem to be the dominant strategy, as opposed to more conventional crit builds.

Also I agree that premade requirements should not be a thing. Difficulty levels that implicitly require a premade are fine, but if I happen to get an S rank with 4 randoms, or just happen to get the right comp (perhaps through champ select organization), it's again lame to not get credit unless I want to leave the match and then try to invite everyone into a proper premade.

FenricsShield9/12/2017, 10:36:01 PM7 votes

Thank you so much for working on a PvE mode. It really helps me pull in my friends who are embarrassed about their lack on Moba experience. It also teaches them useful skills, like how to dodge skills shots, how to deal with assassins, how to focus ADCs, and how to avoid tanks and save them for last.

Great job!

Raxistaicho9/12/2017, 8:58:23 PM6 votes

Questions like "Would you ever do an adventure mode?" or "Will you make a Diablo style dungeon?" are su~uper lofty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBrNGYE0n4s

It's super lofty guys, Riot's just a small indy company. You have to be as badass as Hi Rez to do something like that :( Please understand.

DCYOUNG8889/12/2017, 9:35:24 PM5 votes

If you're making more star guardian skins for this mode in the future I would like to see more bruisers or tanks able to be played (e.g. Leona, Sejuani) since the only tank you can play in this mode is Poppy.

Spideraxe9/12/2017, 8:49:37 PM4 votes

Hey L4T3NCY can i ask if you guys started any exploration on how to patch out the Pacifist Ascension strategy

KoKoboto9/12/2017, 9:29:40 PM4 votes

Git Good. Thank god people are finally learning and there's no more "omg so fuckign hard v3l'koz spanks the butth@le" all over the boards

C9 Squeeky 9/12/2017, 10:29:05 PM3 votes

I am a solo/duo player (insert Amumu cry emote here) so I understand the pain of the requirement of a 5-man premade but in the case of Star Guardian lore/theme, I understand having a 5man premade is like having your own Star Guardian team which I think is pretty cool, even if I personally have to miss out on it or try to make some friends on the boards and stuff.

mikeov9/12/2017, 9:07:28 PM3 votes

I apologize in advance for a question that isn't related to Invasion, buuuuut I really want to ask: is there still no ETA for the eventual comeback of Hexakill and One For All?

Kloqdq9/13/2017, 3:00:10 PM2 votes

I really hope Riot will consider doing more PvE modes in the future. They are just so refreshing to play and really allow for a different change of pace. I know a lot more MOBAs are trying to mix PvE into their games as it allows for 2 different groups of players and it just allows those groups to swap when they want to try something different.

It's just such a different and rewarding experience to do something like beat the Big One or kill Teemo in these game modes. (Do that with Baron you here ;)!) Just hoping you guys keep these modes up and support them just as much as the PvP!

Fisherman Fizz9/13/2017, 12:52:26 AM2 votes

Any possibility of making a full on raid fight sometime? The Rift herald boss fight was pretty cool and I feel like there's potential for a full on, longer fight with more complex mechanics to it.

Shuyin1789/12/2017, 10:44:42 PM2 votes

I think part of the problem with the missions wasn't so much the requirement for pre-mades, but the fact that we only got 1 solo mission at a time while we got 2 premade missions at a time (which we couldn't even do at the same time because one prevented progress on the other), meanwhile I got an A rank during Onslaught, but it was before I got the A rank mission. So if we had 2 solo missions instead of 2 pre-made missions (one being the initial complete Onslaught with every role and the A rank at the same time) then they both could have been completed together and real progress could have been felt.

Corriandr9/12/2017, 9:59:05 PM2 votes

Is Invasion going to be permanently added to the RGM roster? Would seem like a waste to put forth all that effort to create it otherwise, and then not have it included. Especially since more modes are desperately needed.

Flemman9/13/2017, 5:53:47 AM1 votes

If I had to choose, I wouldn't remove the 5 man premade condition, just icebox the idea for a bit.

Those was already used in the past (poolparty event, ip weekend, community event) and it was fine, nobody really complained about it. The main reason for it was that for poeple with short friend list/who couldn't find 5 guys at the same time, public chat room was there for them.

That was the safety valve for premade achievement, every player could default to the chat room and find a premade in the game really quickly.

Since the new client is live, that fonction was removed and is replacement isn't there yet. Sometime there is a mention of it but no real stuff, only the "we work on something different that what you used in the past"

So, to me, premade mission shouldn't had been live before this new "chat" was implemented in the client. Along the line, as you didn't wait for it and with the lack of info about it (no client roadmap since a lot of time), I start to think that we will never get the successor of public chat :(

Nightmist0019/13/2017, 3:03:26 PM1 votes

Any one want to help me with the premade missions?

Purple Nim9/13/2017, 7:30:21 PM1 votes

Why are we not allowed to have access to these awesome game modes atleast in custom games? I know you've said that you don't want to split the community but frankly that is a stupid reason seeing how big of an audience you have and you seemingly trying to shoehorn it in to playing the mode you want them to play. The idea about rotating a single game mode while restricting your access to the 1-2 that you really enjoy for sometimes a month is very silly. Hell I'd much rather play murder bridge than howling abyss in aram and have GP as announcer for my games... and the music... now that brings an entirely different question to mind: Why do you even spend the time, effort and resources on content that we are gonna experience for a very limited time or sometimes never again when you can just stop doing this and focus on a more permanent addition to the game.

Please Riot, we need variety in terms of game modes.

LA7739/16/2017, 9:09:05 PM1 votes

Can't wait to see what blood moon with tanks would look like...[slayer-pantheon-popcorn]

Trash19/12/2017, 9:04:50 PM1 votes

How difficult is it to make a whole new game mode in the current leagu engine?

Proxyo9/13/2017, 3:44:37 AM1 votes

I do think alot of players actually highly enjoy PvE content in this game and anything added that could be a perma feature would be incredible and hopefully worthwhile

PopcornBunni9/13/2017, 4:41:41 AM1 votes

In the future, have an intermediate mode for these kinds of events, and have missions be based around completing that difficulty or higher.

Hell, it could even allow onslaught to be made even more challenging if there was something a step above normal without needing to pray to RNG that you get doable maps.