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The joke that is the "Clarity" design value

DrCyanide··257 votes·11,122 views
LoL Design Values: In-depth with Clarity

So six months ago, Riot made a big post on Clarity. Since then, many aspects of the game have remained unclear, and many new things have been added which are unclear. I want to take a look at some of my favorite examples, and will likely edit this post to include good ones people leave in the comments.

We absolutely welcome your feedback on all of these points – and call us out when we fall flat!

Gladly. Lets get started.

Cleanse summoner 1 "Removes all disables and summoner spell debuffs affecting your champion and lowers the duration of incoming disables by 65% for 3 seconds." - Riot Games

Does not remove or reduce Suppression (a disable), knock-ups (a disable), knock-backs (a disable), grabs (a disable) and flings (a disable), or the Grievous Wounds inflicted by Ignite (a summoner spell debuff). The description flat out lies to players, and needs to be fixed.

Death Recap {{summoner:10}}

If you've played the game enough, you've probably noticed that Revive has an unlisted ability to do damage, even when no one in the game took it. That or the death recap lies to you.

The problems plaguing the Death Recap screen are numerous and have their own topics. It's sufficient to say that its current state is probably among the worst clarity offenders. "Mixed Damage" is incredibly vague (how much was Physical/Magic/True/Pure/Other?), champions assisting in their own death (but not getting the gold for it), damage not totaling correctly, etc. This needs to be fixed.

Summoner Spells in General

There is no way to tell how long the cooldown on a summoner spell is before you get into a game. Using the resources Riot provides, a player must enter a game with a summoner spell and mouse over it to see the cooldown. They must remember the answers to questions like "Does Barrier have a shorter cooldown than Heal?" for the rest of their time playing.

Airborne Yasuo

"Adjective - flying; in the air" - Dictionary

"Something potentially including but not limited to the dictionary definition" - Riot Games

"Airborne" is never defined on the League of Legends website "Game Info" section, client, or game. To figure out the Riot Games definition of Airborne, players must buy Yasuo, then proceed to pay close attention to every champion and spell in the game. In doing so, they'll realize that champions like Anivia and Kayle, who are always flying, are not in fact "Airborne". Dragging someone across the ground however renders them "Airborne". Someone having a pillar of ice rise up from under their feet, making them sidestep, renders them "Airborne".

The better word to use here is "displaced". If you're going to use Airborne, make it match the definition given by a dictionary or define it yourself somewhere.

Unstoppable vs. Wall Sion Azir

This one should never have been allowed to happen.

Azir is released. It's stated multiple times that his wall will not stop unstoppable movement. One particular examples in the game is Malphite's Unstoppable Force, which is referenced in the Champion Spotlight video.

Two patches later Sion is reworked, with an ultimate called Unstoppable Onslaught that stops early if he hits a wall.

This is an Unbreakable Shield means a Spear that can pierce anything scenario. This is horrible from a clarity stand point, and the worst part is that to get around it all you needed to do was replace the word "Unstoppable" from the name of Sion's ultimate. Either fix Sion so he can charge through Azir's Ultimate or rename Sion's ultimate.

Poison vs. Poison Cassiopeia Teemo Singed Twitch Gangplank Shaco

Cassiopeia's Twin Fangs says "If the target is poisoned, the cooldown of this spell is refreshed", but neglects to mention that it's only counts for three other champions, Teemo, Singed, and Twitch.

"Gangplank's basic attacks and Parrrley apply a poison [...]" - Passive description on website and game.

"Two-Shiv Poison" - name of Shaco's E ability.

Gangplanks can be changed with a simple tooltip, but I have no idea how Riot intends to work around the lack of clarity with Shaco's E.

Wild Card TwistedFate

Even if you've never played as Twisted Fate or read his description, you catch on pretty quick that the different colors of Pick a Card do different things. It's also easy to see that the colors of the Pick a Card are re-used in Wild Card. As a new player, I was terrified of Wild Card because I was convinced that the different colors on the cards meant they had different special effects. You can imagine how desperate I was to dodge when I saw three yellows heading my way.

As bright and as fun as the Wild Card colors are, they probably need to be changed for clarity's sake.

Ability Descriptions: Colors

Orange, Green, Blue, Pink, Yellow, Red, and probably others I'm forgetting or don't know about. Take a new player and ask them what any of the mean and you'll probably get a shoulder shrug. Take someone who mains one type of champion and ask them about the others and they'll likely get them confused too.

If you don't know what the colors mean, how in the world can you be expected to buy items that have stats that boost your abilities?

A possible fix here is in the store. If you highlight "Ability Power" in green, it will be at least a little clearer that items bought here will increase the stats of any ability with green text.

Ability Descriptions: Scaling

Lets say a champion had an ability that scaled 5% off of AD and 200% off of AP. What hint does the Client or Game give that you should build AP instead of AD? You start out with a bonus from AD and 0 bonus from AP, implying that AD is the stronger scaling stat because it at least gave you something.

While the League of Legends website does list scaling on abilities, the website is horribly slow and inconsistent in updating. Right now every champion in the game has +X Per Level base stat boosts, instead of the growth modifier that was introduced in 4.20, which was released over a month ago.

When fan-made Wiki's get updated to have more correct champion stats than Riot's own website, players can not rely on on Riot's website. Add the percentages to the Client/Game, update the website to be accurate.

New: Snared, Entangled, Rooted, Bound

Are there differences in what these effects actually do? If so, I haven't noticed them, so they probably need to be emphasized more. If not, these names can probably be replaced with just one word to describe the crowd control.

(Thank you ShardWintreswolf)

Conclusion

Like I said, I'm sure there are more that I'm forgetting, but these things stick out like a sore thumb to me. I have a hard time believing that Riot actually believes in clarity, and will continue to until these issues are 1) talked about and 2) at least a rough timeline is given for when we will see them implemented.

Feel free to leave any other offenders in the comments. I'd very much like this thread to be the to-do list for the "Clarity" team.

162 Comments

Celeste Benal60 votes

Supported, especially the part about listed scaling.

DrCyanide13 votes

Thanks. I feel like I'm still forgetting somethings though, any chance you can think of something I'm missing?

OrangesSC18 votes

Oh yeah, I think that the inhibitor and nexus turrets beam's slow, but it doesn't say that they do.

Bubble Bèé12 votes

Are you going to ignore that Vlad's pool gives him increased movement speed despite not saying anything about that anywhere?

DrCyanide10 votes

Didn't know that.

Bubble Bèé10 votes

Explains why you wouldn't add it, but also further proves your point that there needs to be actual clarity rather than just riot posts talking about how important it is.

ImHerVoice2 votes

[deleted]

Bubble Bèé8 votes

Tested it in game right now, level 1 with no movement speed modifiers Vlad has 335 movement speed, with pool my movement speed increased to 452 and decreased over the duration of the pool. Stop spreading misinformation.

ImHerVoice2 votes

[deleted]

Bubble Bèé12 votes

Tested it IN GAME right now,

when I had ghost activated without any other modifier (yes I know what that means) I had 432 movement speed, with ghost + pool I had 506 movement speed.

This proves both that his pool does not have a fixed movement speed and that that increases movement speed even if above a certain movement speed when using other modifiers.

Stop posting misinformation, especially while making 'retorting' and 'uninformed' an insult, while you're doing and are those two things, it's OKAY to be uninformed, but ignorance isn't, remember that the OP made this because things were unclear with certain abilities and such, this is one of them.

All the points you just made were made invalid, and I provided more than enough data that you can go test yourself.

Also, Modifier - Something that changes something else, Vladamir's pool changes (increases) movement speed, therefore making it a modifier.

EDIT: Multiple other websites such as MobaFire, which Riot has officially used to help new players with itemization in the past confirm that vladamir's pool does indeed give movement speed,

40% increase to be exact,

Plus, another set of data I tested, I got 500 movement speed with boots + homeguard at the beginning of the game and no other modifiers,

with ghost it went up to 549,

with all those combined + pool I got 616 at the beginning of the cast which decayed over the duration of the ability, back to 549, further proving my point.

EDIT: Please respond, I do want to come to a conclusion with this, I really dislike people walking away misinformed whether it be me or you

ShardWintreswolf7 votes

There's also the lack of specification between what a "Root" is versus a "Snare" or if there is any difference at all

DrCyanide7 votes

I believe there are three or four words for the exact same CC. Entangle, Root, Snare, Bind all mean unable to move but able to attack and cast spells.

Edit: added this one to the main article.

killd0zer8 votes

Entangle, which is only found on Amumu's ult also blocks basic attacks but allows non-movement spells

DrCyanide6 votes

Really? Looks over at the wiki

Well, I'll be! I guess I didn't notice because I primarily play mages.

Part of me loves being wrong on these clarity topics, just because it emphasizes the problem.

Sachabot2 votes

There is no difference.

Wirius25 votes

You have some great ideas. But your post about clarity being a "joke", and then your attitude as if Riot is filled with morons and you are their intellectual savior, should be toned down if you want your post to be considered more seriously. Remember, its often not what you say, its how you say it.

DrCyanide22 votes

your attitude as if Riot is filled with morons and you are their intellectual savior

I don't believe Riot hires morons, but I do know that people often have a hard time seeing the flaws in something they've made/help make. Myself included, which may be why this came off too... aggressive? Condemning?

The title and the conclusion are perhaps the worst offenders, but the topics themselves are fairly neutral. I probably won't edit those parts in this post, but rather keep it in mind for future posts.

Saixos7 votes

I think without the title being as aggressive as it is, this post wouldn't have gotten as much feedback as it has.

Silmaril16 votes

I totally agree with just about everything (the Cass-Shaco interaction is stretching a bit, though), but especially the scaling.

But you left out what really aggravates me about ability scaling, though, besides the whole "not displaying ratios" bit is that with AD-scaling abilities, the game has no visuals cues to differentiate skills that scale with total AD from those that scale with bonus AD, and it can trick you into buying bad items because some lamesauce 20% AD ratio turned out to a really kickass 150% bonus AD ratio instead.

To be fair, for the most part, Riot's pretty good about letting the player know of their champ's non-standard ratios (pretty much every health/armor/mr/basically anything that isn't AD/AP scaling has the exact scaling and stat required listed in the tooltip, at least to my knowledge), but the total/bonus AD disparity has always stuck in my craw, especially on champs who have both, like Riven whose Q scaling can seem to be all over the place for those unfamiliar with her (not to mention her Q has level-scaling scaling on top of that, what a mess, although that, at least, is listed in her tooltip.)

Destínum12 votes

Then there's also the hitbox issues that literally everyone knows off, but Riot doesn't fix, like Morgana Q and Fizz ult.

Bubble Bèé7 votes

Don't forget Amumu Q, love it when that little guy tosses it to my side, completely missing, but still it snaps into position and he comes speeding towards me nonetheless. Amumu

PranksterDedenne10 votes

+1 For the bit about the death recap alone. It's ridiculous how many times something like this happens to me:

"Oh wow I died instantly there, that fight was so messy, what on earth killed me?" checks death recap

"Hmm 2k damage taken in 2 seconds, it's good to know that Sona's auto attack did 60 damage to me and the caster minion did 37 damage."

Pikmints8 votes

And then there are the QoL buffs that periodically roll-out on things, yet some champs still lack certain features that should be innate. Ex) Xin Zhao's W passive has him heal on each third attack, yet there is no counter for how close he is to getting that healing hit. Yi's passive has a counter and accomplishes a somewhat similar effect. Having to count the number of attacks you've done as Xin is like having to remember jungle timers, not too difficult once you start paying attention to it, but still an unnecessary wall of memorization that could get lost in a hectic situation.

Tapu Fini1 votes

Same deal with Diana, no counter for her passive. Kind of silly that these things aren't fixed yet.

Learn348 votes

Well in Diana's case the opted for a visual indicator. Her blade glows after the first hit and flashes after the second. Still harder to keep track of than a stack counter, though.

It Hertz When IP8 votes

Could establish a new set of DoT effects called "toxins". The difference is subtle, but poisons are toxins introduced to hurt to a target on purpose. If the blade is literally soaked in grog, the poisoning effect is likely an unforeseen but happy side effect of Gangplank 's alcoholism. And maybe rename Shaco's ability to Two-Shiv Strike and change the description to him physically attacking weak areas or something; remove the poison part altogether.

DrCyanide6 votes

I think that would work.

Sammystorm6 votes

I still have no idea what pink or yellow text are for....

BaIIsOfSteeI6 votes

I've been playing with friends new to the game recently and I've had to explain quite a few abilities that don't really match their descriptions. I can't think of any abilities that I would want to change, but there are several descriptions that a touch of clarity would help.

Fizz The description for his E says he is untargetable, when he is really both untargetable and invulnerable.

Fiora Many people think her ultimate is OP because she is invulnerable while using it, which is not true. She is still affected by DoTs and AoE damage. Additionally, her Q makes her ignore collision while traveling to the target, which includes skill shots.

Mordekaiser I've been playing a lot of Morde lately and one thing that bothers me is his ult's description. "The ghost's stats are enhanced." Enhanced how? It very clearly explains the buffs Morde receives if his target dies, but not the buffs of his pet.

Tryndamere It does state how much base health you gain with 0 fury, but it could probably be a little clearer. I see people all the time who won't use it when they are low health and I could not figure out why. Then it hit me, the description says "consume fury" and they had none.

Morvrannis4 votes

The Fizz one bothers me. I saw an excellent suggestion that says that Fizz shouldn't be targetable by single attack spells (and auto-attacks, and skillshots), but if he should still be able to be hit if he is inside an AOE field. That makes a ton of sense to me and I think would make his matchups far more interesting as he would have to trigger his E again at the appropriate time to dodge out of an AOE attack.

As it is, he basically gets a move every 10 seconds that is not unlike Kayle's ult. Ridiculous.

The Red Warden5 votes

Add this on:

summoner 14 does not show the exact amount of damage it will do when you mouse over it. This lack of clarity can cause the player too miss many possible kills.

summoner 11 does show the exact amount of damage it will do so we know that it is possible.

Guy Fox Teemo5 votes

Sadly Zero Rioter comments yet this is a very important topic >.>

DrCyanide2 votes

I know some Rioters have posted that when a good thread is going they don't want to post in it for fear of hijacking the comments. You've probably seen it yourself, the comments go from being topic based to trying to have a one-on-one discussion with the Rioter.

If I see some of these changes hit the PBE/make it to live in the next few patches, that will be just fine.

MrSexyHobo4 votes

i dont like how when im thinking about buying a champ i need to go to another website to find out ability ratios and base damage/stats per lvl etc....

NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION ON CHAMPS IN THE CLIENT!!!!

Stephenizgod4 votes

I agree with a lot of your points.

The only thing i can think of clarity-wise is Garen's Demacian Justice. It does around 30% of their missing health (which doesn't make sense to me, why is it Justice to inflict more damage based on how much damage you have done to them? Why not have it based on the damage they have done to Garen, then it fits the Justice part...) which isn't hard math, but in the heat of battle it is hard to tell which enemy your ult will actually kill. Its the same as Jungle timers, its not hard to keep track of them but why should you have to?

It kinda sucks to see two carries low on life and to do quick math to find out which one you should ult only to be off by like 30-40 hp. A simple and easy fix would be for people to glow when the ult will kill them. A better but harder balance-wise fix would be to base it off his missing health, that would help him stay reliable late game as he builds tanky normally, would also fit the Justice theme better.

Raptamei4 votes

In other games, you can hover over those coloured numbers to see what they stand for.

Also, physical damage and magical damage are assigned haphazardly and make no sense. The giant bug's exploding purple plasma energy bolts are physical damage. This makes sense because:___ The smurf's hammer blow is magic damage. Giant light bullets are physical damage. Hitting someone with a hook you wield as a weapon is magic damage, and so is throwing the anchor you hit people with. Spinning your flail is magic damage, spinning your staff is physical damage.

Burden of knowledge to the extreme.

Centuros3 votes

What does Sion Ult do vs Azir ult currently? Since it IS A WALL (which is stated to stop Sion, regardless of the name of his ability), I would expect it to stop him.

Of course, I remember when he would just bounce off of it over and over and over again...

DrCyanide12 votes

Sion is stopped. It's OK that Sion is stopped because it is a wall, but for clarity his ult should loose the "Unstoppable", since unstoppable has another meaning in the game.

It'd be like a champion having an ability called "Basic Attack". The ability isn't a basic attack, but the naming makes things unnecessarily confusing when you think about items that work with Basic Attacks (like item 3085).

Centuros1 votes

Is there actually anything anywhere else that says "unstoppable" except the name of Malphite ulT?

DrCyanide4 votes

No, but there are other unstoppable movement abilities, such as Vi ult and Nocturne Ult.

Wuju Lord3 votes

I especially loved the part about cassiopia's poison thing. That's kinda of important. I read it all and I agree with all of it. Well said.

TheKingDodo3 votes

summoner 13 is one of the most underused summoners in a way, you can call it a joke...

Flannel Mannel3 votes

All fantastic suggestions. I would also suggest a complete overhaul of the Death Recap screen. Maybe expandable tooltips when you hover over each ability or champion that participated in killing you. Example: "28% dmg, physical, Auto Attacks, from Vayne" could be hovered over to also show how many auto-attacks she did, how many crits, how much autos/crits are doing, and any other things that are public knowledge in game that I'm forgetting to mention right now. Basically Death Recap should be relatively concise, yet expand with tooltips to allow us to learn as much information as possible (Information that does not give an unfair advantage, simply because it is information currently provided in game if you go to your options menu, you just have to be fast enough to see it). Though less important, I would also enjoy allowing us to continue seeing the Death Recap screen after we respawn, seeing as how death timers are sometimes too short for us to accurately take in all information on the subject, particularly in early game.

I would work on fixing these tooltips and editing the content on the site into correctness if Riot wants me to.

Barnabas Quimsy3 votes

Seems like a great list of high value/low risk changes to the game. Riot please take a look at this!

Aurelius Maximus3 votes

some of these are really really nitpicky and common sense. the sion ult, ability scaling colors and wild card especially.

The death recap has been broken forever and imsure it's much harder to fix than you think it is, but it is a valid complaint.

Also you gotta work on presentation. If you are gonna be this dickish when you post you better be 100% right. Given the nit picky nature it just makes you seem like you are thinking everything you could to complain about when you left out more valid cases of non-clarity like armor pen mechanics and soft caps on movement speed bonuses

DrCyanide5 votes

These are things geared towards the new players, not people who have been playing since season 1.

In general, clarity items are nit picky, since there are ways to tell something exists or behaves a certain way without the clarity improvements. Granted, the Twisted Fate one is very minor and I could see it going either way. Sions ult I stand by, since it's caught between "stopped by walls" and "doesn't stop unstoppable abilities". You have to pick which one of those to honor. The colors are something people learn with time, but aren't really taught to beginners.

Completely right on the death recap. From various comments made by Rioters, I suspect it won't be fixable until the game is recoded, which will be a very slow process. It might be possible for them to fix the specific instance with Revive/Sunfire cape with a hard coded fix, but the other ones will likely take longer.

I'm starting to think the tone I was going for got lost while typing it. The title and conclusion are a bit aggressive, but the rest is mostly neutral. The tone was intended as a slightly snarky but good natured. I've gotten enough negative feedback on the tone I'll try and either avoid it in the future or have someone else proof read it to make sure it comes across right.

The pen calculations and soft caps are harder to explain in the game itself. As someone else pointed out, these are mostly low risk, high reward clarity improvements. If you have an idea for explaining those topics cleanly in the client or game I'd be very interested in hearing them, since it is a harder change.

WolfBV1 votes

I think I know what all other colors are, but pink and red? Guessing pink is Magic Resist and Red is Health? yeah, that sounds right.

DrCyanide6 votes

But here is the underlying problem. We're both level 30 players, and we have to guess what's right? We're only 95% sure without looking it up? It's a sign that there's a big problem with the color system as is.

Solahrity1 votes

Gangplank's attacks apply scurvy not "poison" but its still a dot like ignite, calling it a poison is like calling ignite poison.

DrCyanide5 votes

Riot called it poison, take it up with them.

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