A look inside riots internal testing team

SwiftKitten88·May 20, 2018·137 votes·19,904 views

this

is from Riot Novalas https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/MQob4lFt-upcoming-jungle-changes-for-810?show=flat&comment=000b0000

While testing these changes, we've felt that there's adequate agency playing against for the first scuttle. Myself and the other jungler on the Playtest Team determined that ceding the scuttle is a solid option - Taking the first scuttle actually opens you up for a level 2 invade from the enemy jungler and can cause a jungler to get 3-buffed.

You can defensive ward against it, ofc, but then you have a player advantage since their jungler is on the opposite side of the map taking scuttle.

now let me zoom in

Myself and the other jungler on the Playtest Team

so.. let me get this straight.. the two of you thought this was best?

#THE TWO OF YOU?

#TWO???

You literally have HUNDREDS OF PLAYERS

telling this is a horrible idea.

your post has OVER A HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOWNVOTES

but no.. the TWO of u think its "ok"

like what did you try this in and one game each?

63 Comments

LVL99 Helper TKMay 20, 201849 votes

but riot is just a small indie company

they cannot afford to hire a balance team so the engineers randomly make up stuff on the fly

Lil Homie bustaMay 21, 20181 votes

But with DA MoNEI, riot hire good balance team With DA MoNEI, riot hire at least more than 2 test guys to decide a role-changing-change With DA MoNEI riot make more balance than skins

ParoeMay 20, 201838 votes

What if riot tested their large, late-stage changes by raffling invites to non-pro challenger/master players for a special pre-veiw testing tournament in order to get non-pro, very high tier opinions on said large changes?

Like... Get enough people who main certain positions (these ranks are small enough to track to) and make something like 8 teams, then have them compete against each other with the new changes... THEN have them fill out an experience form about the changes to see how it effected each role.

AirKingNeoMay 20, 201814 votes

yeah but Riot would actually need to listen to their feedback in the first place

ParoeMay 20, 20182 votes

{quoted}

yeah but Riot would actually need to listen to their feedback in the first place

Not really. They would just need to take the bulk of their feedback as a whole into consideration. For example, if every marksman and support said that turret first blood and bot lane being the weakest turret was terrible because it forced early teamfights and gave extreme snowballs, and every other lane had comments about how it negatively impacted them, im sure riot would take the feedback as a whole to mean; "This tower being weak and high tower first gold isnt that good a change guys."

But plants? "These plants have a lot of strategic and defensive uses". Rito would keep that as a good thing.

AirKingNeoMay 20, 20184 votes

again, that would require they listen to feedback at all to begin with.

MAGA MAN X 2020May 20, 20185 votes

Listening to feedback was the problem. People bitch and bitch and bitch about the jungler ganking them early so they completely screwball fucked junglers.

AirKingNeoMay 20, 201823 votes

??? That was the good change.

The bad change was Scuttler.

MAGA MAN X 2020May 20, 20183 votes

So what should junglers do? Just farm passively for 20 minutes and maybe show up on the map here and there? Maybe the role shouldnt exist and top lane should have a support too? The whole point of junglers is they are that random variable that can pop up and ruin you if you over extend.

AirKingNeoMay 20, 20188 votes

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white

Black or White Fallacy. You failed to consider other possibilities. There is an ideal possibility where junglers still gank, but only do they do it less and at a more fair rate. An ideal world where someone powerfarming and counter jungling you at the same time is punishing.

SooFr0styMay 20, 20182 votes

How long have you played this game? It's not sarcasm or an insult, because throughout leagues history, you can only have one dominant dorm of jungle.

Either farming or ganking, I suggest finding a YouTube of jungle metas throughout the years.

There is always a trifecta of junglers that dominate and tend to warp the meta around it.

AirKingNeoMay 20, 20183 votes

that's just do to shitty balancing

middle grounds do exist by how numbers simply work

SooFr0styMay 20, 20182 votes

No, one strategy will always be better. Risk reward factors is a huge thing.

woodvsmurphMay 21, 20182 votes

That doesn't make the other type less viable or unviable in every case. If it's a farm heavy style, a good lee or elise snowballing his/her laner(s) far ahead can negate early farm advantages of the other jungler. Which let's their team win while they afk catch up on farm as well as make invades to steal camps from the other jungler off the back of their laner's lead that they earned them via ganks.

Vice versa, if laners don't feed early by respecting a gank heavy jungler, a more farm intensive jungler can scale and be stronger 1v1. Which allows them to invade and kill the enemy jungler in their own jg... take their jg, and put them behind to the point of being useless. Or they can reach a stronger point than the other jungler and then just devastate the other team with counter-ganks. Sure it might be "less risky" or "easier" for one style, but properly executed the other style can succeed just fine - unless balance is WAY out of whack for farm vs gank.

You can look back at some of the pro's like Xmithie in farm heavy meta's and watch them turn getting 3 buffed into massive gank pressure and lane advantages for their team that ultimately put them ahead despite being seemingly screwed by counter-jungling early in a farm heavy meta for junglers. And that leads to them actually being AHEAD in farm later into the match...because they look for and find OPPORTUNITIES out of problems. Too many junglers AND laners miss stuff cuz they are so focused on THEMSELVES and what's happening only in their little bubble.

We miss the easy gank onto a 200hp enemy lvl 3 because "I can't tower dive that early" without realizing you kill them with one aa and one ability. We miss the chance to rotate and secure our team a winning skirmish or dragon because we're only looking to punish our lane opponent. We fail to help our jungler when we could counter-jungle or stop an enemy from doing so because we don't want to delay our recall for 10 sec to secure our teammate an big advantage. I'm not saying the jg has never been grossly overbalanced to one side or the other, but that it CAN be balanced to allow for BOTH types to find success on fair grounds.

AirKingNeoMay 23, 20181 votes

Intermediate Value Theorem. If a function can reach two values, f(a) and f(b), by a and b, then values between a and b can be any value between f(a) and f(b).

Translating this to balancing, if situation A results in power farming being strong and situation B results in gank spam being strong, then a situation between A and B must exist where neither is too strong (or as ideally close).

MAGA MAN X 2020May 23, 20181 votes

So I'll ask you this then: What would you consider a fair rate of ganking? 10 times pre 20? 5 times? Also if you try the power farm strat and your opponents have even one successful gank its "GG USELESS JG!" type of flame all day from your teammates.

AirKingNeoMay 23, 20181 votes

Also if you try the power farm strat and your opponents have even one successful gank its "GG USELESS JG!" type of flame all day from your teammates.

I didn't realize the entire game is low elo. I guess you should see high elo Shyvana.

Tik115May 20, 20182 votes

What Riot should of done is just lower the xp of the first camp to delay the level 3 for a bit

That is ALL they needed to do!

woodvsmurphMay 21, 20182 votes

That would leave jg level 1 after doing first camp. Which would require earlier use of smite or potions by the jungler and actually probably change a lot of jungle routes early game due to being low hp and not having a 2nd ability to rely on to increase damage or durability while taking the 2nd camp. Not that current changes haven't done that anyways...

sKz Aaron DMay 20, 20188 votes

There needs to be the option for junglers to either focus on ganking or farming. But because the camp respawn timers are more than twice as high as they used to be, this currently forces even the traditionally farm oriented junglers to gank often purely for the sake of efficiency.

I can recall a time where Rek'Sai, Yi, and Shyvana simply didn't gank at all, while Lee Sin and Zac did. Then when they popped up 12 minutes in, they had double their CS at the trade off of no kill participation and a lack of pressure on the map. But then Riot changed the camp timers to 2.5 minutes. When they used to be 1 minute. That was nothing more than a massive nerf for farming junglers, and forced junglers to be more interactive with the lanes - probably for LCS if we're being honest.

Risen29May 21, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=sKz Aaron D,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=7knEYsKF,comment-id=000100000001000000000002,timestamp=2018-05-20T17:17:57.569+0000)

There needs to be the option for junglers to either focus on ganking or farming. But because the camp respawn timers are more than twice as high as they used to be, this currently forces even the traditionally farm oriented junglers to gank often purely for the sake of efficiency.

I can recall a time where Rek'Sai, Yi, and Shyvana simply didn't gank at all, while Lee Sin and Zac did. Then when they popped up 12 minutes in, they had double their CS at the trade off of no kill participation and a lack of pressure on the map. But then Riot changed the camp timers to 2.5 minutes. When they used to be 1 minute. That was nothing more than a massive nerf for farming junglers, and forced junglers to be more interactive with the lanes - probably for LCS if we're being honest.

They shot themselves in the foot. The forced players to play high gank playstyles because there was nothing else to do.

Now they have only made it worse on the laners by forcing junglers to not just play a gank heavy playstyle, but to use hyper aggressive early dueling junglers to do it with.

So now not only are you still getting ganked before 4 minutes, and regularly ganked throughout the lane phase, but your jungler is so far behind thay he cant hope to contest it.

DeusVultMay 20, 20182 votes

you would have to get reasonable non-biased info from these players too, and they would have to have a reason to play on what essentially is an Alpha of PBE, instead of streaming or practicing for teams.

Which I don't really think would happen. Or you would get Hashashin balancing Jax at the expense of the game

ParoeMay 20, 20183 votes

{quoted}

you would have to get reasonable non-biased info from these players too, and they would have to have a reason to play on what essentially is an Alpha of PBE, instead of streaming or practicing for teams.

Which I don't really think would happen. Or you would get Hashashin balancing Jax at the expense of the game

The idea would be to get a broad and varied amount of information about large-scale changes and how they effect the game as a whole, so outliers like crybaby hashinshin wouldnt affect things much. And theres enough players in challenger and masters who arent part of LCS who would love to do this kind of stuff; They wouldnt need much more reason than "Hey i got invited to a preview tournament!". But i mean... If they wanted a prize, perhaps automatic entry into the next tournament?

There would be at least three games, so thats at least two teams who get at least some feel for any of those large changes they make. Experienced players would be able to pick up on and make an opinion on changes pretty fast.

SociopathFriendMay 20, 20181 votes

They do test changes by inviting non-pro players to play it. Just the other day I saw a Professor Akali video where he said he was flown out to play the new one. In several videos before that I believe he was talking to another player who had likewise played the "new" Akali.

LeonerdoMay 20, 20182 votes

They kinda already do this, but not in that exact format?

The Playtest Team is made of Challenger/Master players (who are actually good at giving feedback). It's not a big team though, as the OP points out.

But Riot also gets feedback from the Boards and Reddit, and non-officially from streamers and YouTubers. (Rioters are people too, they can watch Sneaky or Scarra or whoever just for fun if they want; and if the streamer happens to be talking about upcoming/new changes, well that's free feedback.)

AND they have "player labs" where they bring in regular players (of various ranks) to get direct and detailed feedback from a representative sample of regular players, rather than just from "trained" employees, angry redditors, or entertainers (groups that could have their own biases). Although, I don't know if they had a player lab for the recent jungle changes. I could understand if they thought the changes weren't big enough to warrant a player lab. Flying a bunch of people to Riot HQ and playtesting with them all day ain't easy or cheap. They can't do it for everything.

Oh and don't forget that Riot did at least partially listen to the negative feedback on Scuttle Crab (by including both Scuttlers on the first spawn). It's just that the tuning is pretty out of whack right now. I'd expect a lot more changes (based on feedback) to things like experience distribution (they are already planning to shift some XP from Scuttle to other camps) and probably to individual champions as well.

GigglesOMay 20, 201820 votes

LCSBIGPLAYS

TeCoolMageMay 20, 20189 votes

depends on whethere 'determined' means "looked at the data, went through the design, etc", or "playtested". Former is okay, latter isn't.

But in what world does Riot deserve the benefit of the doubt and to not have every single word analyzed to an extremely literal level, this dev team sucks, revert to beta, give 10k HP to tanks because tank meta is good btw remove all true damage and penetration ty.

Seriously though, for all we know the playtest team has multiple junglers and these two rioters just collated and went through the feedback

NymzoMay 20, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Seriously though, for all we know the playtest team has multiple junglers and these two rioters just collated and went through the feedback

Even so, you could put a hundred of these playtesters all together, I still wouldn't trust them for say the like of Scarra.

Snowman ArcMay 20, 20183 votes

Scarra is a has-been pro, who never achieved anything with any team.

HibekiMay 21, 20181 votes

More than you can say, but you still think you should have a voice yes?

Snowman ArcMay 21, 20181 votes

{quoted}

More than you can say, but you still think you should have a voice yes?

I mean, he has indeed done more than me, and he can voice his opinion, for sure, but I'd trust a Korean coach or pro much more than his.

Tuition FeeMay 20, 20188 votes

"Pros think it should be changed, so it should be changed. Low elo players? Never heard of 'em."

-Riot every single patch now basically

According to https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/rankings/rank-distribution/oce , pretty much 90% of the league players are below plat. Just like the government, Riot favors the elite.

ModWulf HelhammerMay 20, 201827 votes

Just going to point out that pro players hate the jungle changes, and these were mostly done out of complaints in the general playerbase of jungler having too much impact.

ShaolinToiletMay 20, 20183 votes

General playerbase is complete shit and needs to learn how to ward but riot decided to pander to the lazy players

Z3SleeperMay 20, 201810 votes

Except wards have cooldowns and you can only have 2 routes warded at a time when 3 standard gank routes exist and an extra 2 depending on the champion and lane.

Let’s use Sejauni in top lane as an example. You have:

Lane gank
Normal side gank
Over blue side wall (w/ or w/out blast cone) ganking blue side. 3.5. Over baron pit wall (or just walk around) ganking red side

This is fine though because noone is asking laners to be immune to ganks. We just wanted less ganks in general cuz camping was far too effective.

ZerenzaMay 20, 20181 votes

I'll give Evelynn as an example as well, in botlane.

Tri-Bush Gank
River Gank
Lane Gank(she's invisible she'll literally just walk at you.)
Blue-Side through Blast-Cone(though not to effective)

The most effective way i'v had someone ward against me when playing evelynn though is by placing the ward slightly behind them, so about 5 Teemo's away from your tower, it revels her from a really long way's away, and since she doesn't have an engage, it helps by revealing he early so you can just straight up focus her down. You can also put it in the Side-Bush closest to you and it's also pretty effective.

Note: 90% of the time the laner's i'm with don't use control wards at all when i play evelynn, though that's probably just my ELO, sometimes i have to clear control wards every couple of minutes.

Snowman ArcMay 20, 20181 votes

Low elo junglers never bought trackers knife for the extra warding. Basically nobody invests in control wards. That's why there's lack of vision in low elo soloQ.

LegendmakerGXMay 20, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name= Król Wilk Sam,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=7knEYsKF,comment-id=00050000,timestamp=2018-05-20T06:27:54.447+0000)

Just going to point out that pro players hate the jungle changes, and these were mostly done out of complaints in the general playerbase of jungler having too much impact.

Pro players hate a lot of changes that happen to regular because they know it was change to effect pro play.

Remember first turret gold? That never existed until pro players rotate back in the days 2015-2016? I forgot but when first turret gold was implemented was because of pro players.

Snowman ArcMay 20, 20182 votes

The first tower gold was a necessary change for pro play. It was unfun to watch lane swaps, and it favored lazy teams who didn't wanna have a 2v2 lane into an easy way out. I loved that change for pro play. For soloQ, it didn't change that much. Regular lanes were the same, it's just the first tower now gave a bit more gold. It wasn't the end of the world. Not until later on where access to first tower gold became so much easier.

HibekiMay 21, 20181 votes

No, removing the loss of Fortification on bot lane would have fixed the problem.

Snowman ArcMay 21, 20181 votes

{quoted}

No, removing the loss of Fortification on bot lane would have fixed the problem.

While it does help in taking it down faster than other towers, it's just there for the first 5 minutes of the game. For the most part, you are not even gonna touch the tower for the first 3 minutes, and even if you do manage to hit the tower, you're gonna do a maximum of what? 200 damage? Maybe 500 AT BEST if you force the enemy lane to back, AND have enough security and a minion wave to chip down the tower, but that's a big maybe. Fortification would block 250 of that, you still need to take down 90% of the tower.

Therefore, fortification wouldn't matter. The reason bot tower falls is that there are two people hitting it for the most part, while guaranteeing at least one AA ranged champion to safely attack it.

remakoroMay 20, 20182 votes

Thats you know... Some people... When you ask them to do something they do it in such way that you would never ask them to do that or ANYTHING again. On purpose. They wanted to show you how much of a bad idea was it to ask them anything. This almost feels like the same thing.

Oh you wont less impact from jungle early/mid? IN YOUR FACE!!!!!!

Instead of addressing things that most likely actually created this problem - removal of various sorts of vision options, buffs to vision removal, offensive options heavily out-scaling defensive with new runes. introduction of new items that capitalize on all newly created problems. They just go and straight fuck up everything. "oh well we just gonna take all that exp from camps and put it in some place where everyone can take it. If jungler will be 2-3 lvls behind he wont be as impactful, amirite?"

JRobin31May 20, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name= Król Wilk Sam,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=7knEYsKF,comment-id=00050000,timestamp=2018-05-20T06:27:54.447+0000)

Just going to point out that pro players hate the jungle changes, and these were mostly done out of complaints in the general playerbase of jungler having too much impact.

Hrm, hopefully they will listen again when we say that this jungle change was a terrible idea. I don't know what rock this horrible idea crawled out from under, but it should just go back and hang its ugly head in shame. I wish I could give some sort of constructive advice here. I really do. But I'm just at a loss. I mean at this point I'm genuinely confused about what RIOT's design principles for the jungle really are. I mean I get they said they wanted to 'reduce early lane pressure from junglers', but that's not a design principle, that's just something they are doing and I have no idea why that wanted to do that... I mean 'complaints in the general playerbase'?!? People complain about ganks and that's why RIOT made this change?!? I feel really out of the loop here and this feeling of being out of the loop with how RIOT approaches the jungle is not a new feeling.

My advice to RIOT is to have some serious conversations internally about game pacing. Hold some meetings and really talk about what is and is not appropriate game pacing. The game should usually (but not always, obviously) feel like things are paced well. Players levels, player gold, and the significance of objectives (risk and reward). RIOT should talk about when and what kind of impact junglers should have in the game. For example, someone might say: junglers should be 'balanced' (loaded term) and what they actually mean is that junglers should feel equally impactful at all stages of the game. Well, that would be a crap idea. That would be like saying that ADCs should feel equally impactful at all stages of the game too and that's a crap idea. So when should jungler be most impactful? The answer is: early and mid game, when they are ganking or invading. And late game they have other responsibilities such as using their smite to secure Baron. Yeah, maybe you can have some junglers play differently than other junglers, that's fine. But how does crippling the level 3 jungler and forcing competition over 'valuable' scuttles really fit into the larger picture here? I don't see it. I just don't see it. So I am at a loss. How do I give constructive feedback on that? WTF is RIOT trying to do? 'valuable' scuttles?!? I thought they were put on the rift to give 'valuable' vision on Dragon and Baron pits! That alone already made them more valuable than Krugs most of the time!

Snowman ArcMay 20, 20181 votes

No. That's a completely stupid comparison. In League, everyone starts the exact same and the good players rise, while the bad fall. In real life, there are people born strong and wealthy, while others are born weak and poor. Different circumstances.

In life, you shouldn't cater to the rich, because they came rich for different reasons. In League, you should cater to the pros, because they reached that status because they know how to play the game.

SwiftKitten88May 20, 20184 votes

[{quoted}](name=Snowman Arc,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=7knEYsKF,comment-id=00050001,timestamp=2018-05-20T17:35:23.269+0000)

No. That's a completely stupid comparison. In League, everyone starts the exact same and the good players rise, while the bad fall. In real life, there are people born strong and wealthy, while others are born weak and poor. Different circumstances.

In life, you shouldn't cater to the rich, because they came rich for different reasons. In League, you should cater to the pros, because they reached that status because they know how to play the game.

that very assumption is elitist and assumed that EVERY lower player cant climb because they have no "game knowledge" when is it an indisputable fact that some players have better mechanics and click accuracy than others, and those can be slightly improved but are eventually limited by the human body.

i mean have u never heard of COACHES. just because a player cant do it themselves doesn't mean they don't know what is going on.

the example he gave was perfect.

RacoonHunterMay 20, 20187 votes

What makes matters worse, riot throws these changes on the PBE.. players ON THE PBE said this was terrible.. Instead of listening to the feedback on the PBE, they went ahead with this anyway. this is riots balance team. they put it on the pbe asking for our input, then ignores our input..

focuselfMay 20, 20183 votes

[{quoted}](name=Sythriel Iolas,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=7knEYsKF,comment-id=000c,timestamp=2018-05-20T23:41:21.754+0000)

What makes matters worse, riot throws these changes on the PBE.. players ON THE PBE said this was terrible.. Instead of listening to the feedback on the PBE, they went ahead with this anyway. this is riots balance team. they put it on the pbe asking for our input, then ignores our input..

management need to get fired to be honest. Filling in quotas instead of preserving the game's health.

BattalionMay 20, 20186 votes

If they had 5 for each role in Diamond+ I'd be ok with that. That's 25 testers instead of the small team there is now. Also with 5 you get a decent idea of what works across playstyles and champion pools.