@ Riot: Please don't make the same mistake.

CaptainMårvelous · 2016-10-13T05:37:06.606Z

One of the major criticisms/main criticism of Season 6 was the forced implementation of Dynamic Queue. It stuck with the community for a whole season despite some fairly severe backlash. It tainted the whole season for many people and the problem was that Riot was slow on the draw. They tried to make it work as hard as possible, despite many people saying it wouldn't, and it made the game crappy for those people. Now, we have plants. The initial feedback and one of the major problems people have with it is that it's too much RNG added. It adds too much variance in an attempt to spice things up. If you go on the dev thread, you'll find many high ranking players speaking out against it. Now, if you wanna try it out? Sure, fine, go ahead. Your game, I can't tell you no. But PLEASE give us your word that if the changes flop in the preseason, you'll pull them. I'm not even saying scrap them entirely. Pull them and go back to the drawing board. Get pro junglers in your office and talk to them about it. Improve on the idea before your ship it. However, don't put an idea that clearly has a lot of flaws out and force players to stick with it for an entire season. Tone down the RNG aspects, try different plants, make them spawn in specific locations, whatever you gotta try to make them work. Just please don't make the same mistake of Season 6 and force a change that clearly needs more time to gestate and evolve into the beginning of the season.

beanyOct 13, 20163 votes

Okay, few questions. How long does the vision last? Is the "hawkshot" range global? What is the healing paradigm of the fruit, is it flat, scaling with hp or any other? For what its worth I reserve judgment on plants, and i think all this disagreement is really just the good ol' "wahhh change" as with dragon.

Will you also be detailing new one pointer masteries for the trees that are still missing them soon?

RiotMeddlerOct 13, 201610 votes

Note: All these values are still going through testing, so subject to change. They're also what I can remember, not numbers I've checked in game tonight given the time now They should give a general idea of current functionality though.

Scryer's Bloom:

Around 4000 range
Reveal lasts for about 15s on stationary targets (wards/jungle camps basically, giving you time to move to them and, for the ward, potentially destroy it). Lasts a fair shorter period on moving targets hit (metaphor's pollen that falls off as the unit moves, with visual effects that represent that)

Honeyfruit:

A mixture of flat (scaling by champion level) and % missing health/mana restored. Not certain on exact numbers, collecting all the fruit from a single plant probably offers you 30% health or something along those lines if you're really low though (and therefore often taking a risk getting it in the first place).

I think Masteries details should be going out early next week if memory serves.

beanyOct 13, 20162 votes

Thanks for the reply.

Malicious MetalOct 13, 20161 votes

If Masteries are going to get a discussion post next week does that mean we have to wait just as long for Rylais news?

RiotMeddlerOct 13, 201612 votes

We can certainly talk about Ryali's too next week. In terms of concrete 'here's what we're planning to do' details those are probably further off though. We're still talking about different directions for Rylai's, with different designers arguing for different approaches, each with their costs and merits. Given how close to pre-season we are that might mean that we either don't change it in 6.22, and instead hold changes until they're ready (6.23 perhaps?) or that we ship some smaller numbers nerfs only in 6.22 and then continue to investigate bigger changes (different stats or modified passive) for a later date.

Malicious MetalOct 13, 20169 votes

Wouldn't testing the tweaked stats you mentioned before (less Ap, more hp, less slow) allow you to get sone data on how simple changes would affect the Rylais users? It's a whole three weeks of PBE, wouldn't that be somewhat beneficial to gauge the situation at hand?

Or just ship three changed Rylais at once and watch the PBE burn and sink into chaos? ^^

RaamEsiroteOct 13, 20167 votes

Is there concern that they favor ranged champions over melee, do to them being activated on basic attacks? Like a melee champ is trying to escape in the jungle and steps on a blast cone plant, but before he can activate it the enemy adc attacks it knocking him back into the enemy team?

RiotMeddlerOct 13, 201616 votes

For the healing plant there's not much worry, given the need to be next to the plant to collect the healing fruit in the first place. Vision plants are usually an out of combat thing, so concern there's pretty low too.

Blast Cone does have some risk of being too ranged favorable though certainly. We think that'll probably be ok, in part given they can be useful initiation or flanking tools which is often more valuable to melee champs and because their spawn points are near brush, which cuts down on the ranged/melee discrepancy somewhat. Situations like the one you describe mean watching for ranged/melee differences will be one of the things we specifically track with Blast Cone in particular though.

RaamEsiroteOct 13, 20161 votes

Thanks for the reply :) I was also wondering how will they interact with the attack move command? Will adc mains have to pay more attention to plants in the jungle when chacing

RiotMeddlerOct 13, 201613 votes

Attack move won't cause you to automatically attack plants you get near. They're like non agro'd jungle mobs in that regard. They've also got a neutral looking health bar (currently a sort of biege tone, but we're still adjusting that) so that they don't read as hostile for a moment when you first see them.

Photos of GhostsOct 13, 20166 votes

Can you make fleeing scuttle targetable by attack move? It's very annoying to try and use it to train Kalista mechanics.

LankPantsOct 13, 201612 votes

Blast Cone does have some risk of being too ranged favorable though certainly. We think that'll probably be ok, in part given they can be useful initiation or flanking tools which is often more valuable to melee champs and because their spawn points are near brush, which cuts down on the ranged/melee discrepancy somewhat. Situations like the one you describe mean watching for ranged/melee differences will be one of the things we specifically track with Blast Cone in particular though.

The ranged to melee difference in LoL is already gigantic. Melees get fucked on almost every front. That's why this plant in particular is a terrible idea, you're giving another advantage to ranged champs which they shouldn't have.

I'd suggest, before you even put it on the PBE give it 2-3 HP and make ranged AAs deal 1, with melees oneshoting it. Rather than giving ranges another obnoxious advantage use this opportunity to give melees a single one.

RiotMeddlerOct 13, 20169 votes

I could see something like that as potential solve if there's too big of a ranged versus melee discrepancy when it comes to Blast Cones. So far in testing that hasn't been too much of an issue, given the way they can enable melee champs as well (kind of like the way Snowball on ARAM aids some melee champs play patterns). Certainly possible issues might get revealed in larger testing that we'd want to address if so though.

Packun FlowerOct 13, 20167 votes

Will plants appear on the minimap or in the fog of war when they spawn?

RiotMeddlerOct 13, 201627 votes

They will not. We're looking for plants to be more something to react to when you encounter them rather than things you have to constantly track across the map as a whole. The minimap's also pretty cluttered at least point and we'd like to make it easier to identify key things like champion movement on it (side note there: we've got some more minimap clean up coming in the pre-season too, cleaning up icon shapes and only showing stuff like Corki's missile's in base to players they're relevant to).

Nameless VoiceOct 13, 201618 votes

Doesn't this mean that, rather than being able to make a quick decision on which route to take based on the presence of a plant, you might end up randomly losing out because it happens to be there?

Example, you are a mêlée champion, and you are behind the dragon pit and low on health after a fight, while being chased by Ezreal. You can choose to either flee upwards, towards raptor camp, or downward, through the gap between red and krugs. You decide to take the upper route, but, unknown to you, a Blast Cone plant has spawned there. Ezreal uses his E to shift into range and hit the plant, throwing you back towards him and to your death. Meanwhile, if the plant had not randomly spawned there, Ezreal would only have been able to shift and attack you, which you might have survived and escaped. In this case, taking the downwards route would have been the tactically correct choice, but you had no way to know.

If you knew where the plant was, you could make a tactical decision as to which way to go, but since you have no way to know if a plant is spawning there until you've actually looked, you don't have the information needed to make the right decision.

Hinagiku33Oct 13, 201615 votes

...or you could play with an unlocked camera and just be aware of your surroundings.

I get your concern. I do. But this just seems like it's pretty avoidable already without the need to clutter the minimap.

MorkaskogOct 13, 201622 votes

Playing without locked cam doesn't reveal fog of war. There's no way of telling where the plant spawned, so it's up to RGN if you die or not basically.

Sailor MintOct 13, 20166 votes

[deleted]

banned shecklesOct 13, 201615 votes

In the example he is getting chased by an ezreal into his jungle

Nameless VoiceOct 13, 20163 votes

Exactly.

Admittedly, it would be fairly rare to be fighting at dragon without having first come through the raptor camp, but not impossible if (for example) both teams rushed there directly from a long siege at the enemy base.

EfflyOct 13, 20163 votes

So. These are supposed to be objectives which have "pre-determined possible spawn points" but you guys aren't going to put them on the mini-map? Things which have supposedly non RNG elements to them, but are to be reacted to when you encounter them?

Here's the problem I'm having. It seems as though you're saying here that these mini objectives are not supposed to be random enough to dramatically influence the outcome of impactful situations in a negative way that would preclude skillful forethought. However, you are also saying that you do not want to have them be things to "constantly track across the map as a whole." If the latter is the case, it would suggest that either a) these plants really DO have a random aspect to them which can most definitely factor into a gameplay element which cannot be controlled in a meaningful sense and thus are not necessary to include on the map because you don't have the information to plan accordingly, or b) the plan is to incorporate a pattern of plant spawning which is trackable, but lacks clarity in a way not unlike when buffs and camps did not show up on the minimap or as timers.

What I'm trying to say is, if you are discouraging the idea that these plants are random interactions, why make them entirely reactionary and discourage skillful forethought into how they might be incorporated into gameplay by way of tracking them across the map? You're basically recreating a lack of clarity on objectives which was present for an extraordinarily long time in this game before very recent improvements.

The argument could be made, similar to the one made /against/ buff timers, that players would incorporate the pathing and spawns of the plants in their decision making, but I thought that the dev team's stance on this was to provide as much clarity to the gameplay as possible--which was the entire reason for even implementing global timers.

Please correct me if I have misunderstood the implications of what you're saying here.

SinlaireOct 13, 20162 votes

I think you understood and failed to let the words steep until you truly understood what he said.

For example, he said that plants would have a random element to them. This random element would be in both a variable spawn time (also said between 90-110s currently) and a variable spawn location. He also said that wouldn't be something he wants you to attempt to track on the minimap due to the changing time and place.

but let me ask, if we had only 1 red bramble back instead of two bramble backs in game, but he only spawned in one of his two pits every time he spawned, would that really be all the pain in the ass everyone is making this out to be? no one cares about the small camps having a timer tracker because the cooldown is low as well as the impact. everyone knows where they spawn even if they dont know exactly when and thats fine.

If the bramble back showed up in one of two places, in roughly 2 minutes after every spawn, then if he's not in one spot after a certain amount of time he's probably in the other. that is literally all of the difficulty and decision making of this RNG plant system.

is it up from the last time you saw it picked up? no? dont worry about it. probably? move to step 2.
Is it in one of the two places it normally spawns? yes? take it and go. No? then its probably at the other spawn. mystery solved. go find it or leave it.

2 step process with almost no effort.

RiotMeddlerOct 13, 20165 votes

Quick update: Talking to the team working on plants today my comment there's wrong in some regards. Current plan is for plants to show up on the minimap once you've seen them (growing or ready) and then remain on the minimap until you get vision of that location again (like buildings in an RTS or small jungle camps, so you can't track enemy champions by the plants disappearing). Depending on how noisy that is or isn't, or how players plan/don't plan around them, that might be tweaked.

B0OMOct 14, 20163 votes

{quoted}

Current plan is for plants to show up on the minimap once you've seen them (growing or ready) and then remain on the minimap until you get vision of that location again

FTFY?

RiotMeddlerOct 14, 20164 votes

Crap, yes (note to self: say the intended thing, not the exact opposite).

DecritOct 13, 20162 votes

I feel like that while berries can be an integral part of the game, the current iteration feels a bit too much "tacky" to me. What kind of strategical niche you want them to cover exactly?

The blast berry has got me weirded about - seems that it will be cause of much hate from different champions xD But mind if i ask you why make it instant? I agree it is more reactive and more flashy, and i also agree that if you manage to survive a duel and to get to a berry you need to be rewarded, but would not a delay on blast make it more intesting and fair too? It' s a thing that many character have access to after all.

KeevalroyOct 13, 20166 votes

If plants flop and we can't find a way to make them work we'll pull them.

The same thing was said about Dynamic Queue and we're all painfully aware of how that turned out so I hope you'll understand if some of us aren't so easily convinced. This looks like more like the "change for the sake of change" that Season 6 was centered around.

DeathBurstOct 13, 20165 votes

Well, they didn't lie, that's exactly what they did with DynQ. Maybe you should read again the "if we can't fin a way to make it work" part...

KeevalroyOct 13, 201610 votes

Lol...Trynd himself said if DQ didn't work they'd bring the old system back. It never worked, it was never going to work, and wouldn't ever be acceptable. It took them a whole year to accept that DQ was a pile of shit, and now we have more of the same reassurance. Please...

DeathBurstOct 13, 20166 votes

It took them a whole year to get convinced that they could not "find a way to make it work".

You can think they are incompetent, you can think they took too long, that doesn't change that fact: they did exactly what they said they would do. They actually "pulled DynQ 'cause they couldn't find a way to make it work".

So they never lied, and they'll probably do the same thing again with this new change, it's easy to be convinced.

KeevalroyOct 13, 20163 votes

If you think that PR bullshit was enough to convince the public that they were completely truthful then I don't know what to say. I want to see the supposed "stats" they were going through. I want to see the "data" they were apparently collecting, I want to see how it was collected, I want to see who it was collected from, and I want to know why everything was hidden from us as they were desperately trying to defend the broken system we all knew was never going to work.

You were being spoon-fed this lie that their data showed them that people loved DQ, which in itself is a lie since every poll, every media outlet, every pro, anyone with any shred of integrity who wasn't defending it since they wanted to be boosted by friends all showed that this system wasn't welcome, meaning the data they reference DOESN'T EXIST.

Let's go back to the start of this shitshow when Lyte had the random, obscure poll on Reddit which was worded in a way that made people think: "Do I like playing with friends in ranked? Well sure, I don't mind ranked 5's once in a while." This was treated as: "I want to play with premades in solo queue." When people pointed out that this was poorly worded and not what they meant, showing Riot multiple surveys (on the same platform mind you) with clear prompts with results heavily suggesting that we don't want premades in solo queue, every one of them was dismissed because apparently third party polling wasn't reliable, completely ignoring the one they previously did and used it to fuel DQ production.

Their data was imaginary, and they defended themselves and the system with lies. Did they fuck up announcing that solo queue would be back at the start of the season? Yes, and as unforeseeable as it was that SQ couldn't come back (no it wasn't,) that's only an arguable lie. However, when it was obvious that this wasn't going to be even remotely healthy in the long run, they didn't fix the problem - they were too proud of their work to admit it was a mistake, and did everything they could to keep it alive, lying to us with fake statistics.

armroselundOct 13, 20162 votes

Dynamic Queue was serviceable or even good for a lot of people. I for one loved the ability to play with 2 other people in a competitive ladder that didn't involve me playing on Twisted Treeline. The only people that spewed such hatred to it were the ones who claimed they had "integrity" and that "ranks didn't matter anymore". I'm glad that they are now splitting up the queues for two separate ladders, but even now, I'm worried that the already long queue times for Plat+ will be accentuated by having two different ladders to split up the player-base with. Either way, don't assume that we're being "lied to" about people liking Dynamic Queue because a lot of people liked Dynamic Queue. It was just the extremely vocal minority that led to this recent change.

notmarkedOct 13, 20162 votes

{quoted}

If plants flop and we can't find a way to make them work we'll pull them.

that is not what he asked you, he asked will you guys pull them "in a timely fashion"

i don't know why people are upvoting you when you didn't answer the question.

MrWasjigOct 13, 20163 votes

If plants flop and we can't find a way to make them work we'll pull them.

I'm quoting it right here, right now! It's been said, the decree it made! There is absolutely no going back on your word this time, Riot! Unlike last year! (I don't necessarily WANT to see these fail, but I just can't get behind them :P)

DeathBurstOct 13, 20161 votes

It's good taking quotes for future use, but it's better to understand them... "if we can't fin a way to make them work", that gives them significant leeway regarding whether or not they should pull the change.

(And that's the same thing they said pretty fast about DynamicQ, just after the initial "we'll bring back SoloQ... Ups, not.")

MrWasjigOct 13, 20162 votes

Yeah and we all saw how long it took for them to pull that trainwreck from the game. (except that haven't even done that, just put SoloQ back). Which is better than that I guess...

DraqoneOct 13, 20163 votes

With the addition of Elemental dragons and now plants the Jungle is becoming increasingly more random. In a skill based game this is unacceptable.

I really dislike that approach since it doesn't allow the jungler to impact the game in a predictable manner.

Please give junglers a way to control the plants as well as the dragons!

RaxistaichoOct 13, 20166 votes

I just hope it doesn't take the entire season for you guys to decide they're not going to work out like how things turned out with Dynamic vs Solo this season.

DarkSunSovereignOct 13, 20163 votes

{quoted}

If plants flop and we can't find a way to make them work we'll pull them.

I'm quoting you on that!

Asylum ArchfiendOct 13, 20163 votes

So what you are saying is that they are mostly irrelevant and because you don't know where they are, it's just gonna feel like shit every time someone runs away from you because of one?

Do you guys even think before you make these changes?

Also, what the hell was with Fearless's post? It made them seem completely retarded while everything we have heard since just make them sound irrelevant

MoonBlade92Oct 13, 20165 votes

This is probably falling on deaf ears here ,but here goes.

My personal grievances with the Plant system is not the fact that "they are random", it's their lack osf synergy withthe things Junglers need. What are AS based jungers going to do for their clear now? I doubt you are going to give Kindred's W heal back just because Gromp doesn't give stuns (which make your clear healthier). Is there a plant which is going to make tanks ack of damage better like the frog? Of course not.

It's generalization AND it makes jungle a worse role to play. It's like the maximized verion of all bad thingd about jungle. Season 2's starvation for resources and difficulty to clear well, season 3's "anyone can go jungle!" and season 5's tuning without foresight, only this time we are stuck with garbage jungle items inbstead of overpreforming ones.

RocketRelmOct 13, 20167 votes

I hate to be That Guy, but…

Gromp never gave stuns.

ModCaptainMårvelousOct 13, 20166 votes

Now, Meddler, I appreciate that you say you're going to pull the changes if they don't mesh.

However, in my experience as a player who has played the game for around six-plus years, I'm somewhat unconvinced. Riot often says they'll pull changes yet they aren't. "Give us more time" "We have a fix for this" "Just needs a little more tweaking" and such.

I'll gladly be wrong but right now I'm rather skeptical. My fear is that Riot will say "Well a lot of people like them" or throw out some graphs and they'll stay, only to be changed/reverted way down the line. Here's hoping plants work out or they're quickly pulled if they don't.

MeritasOct 14, 20162 votes

And Riot shouldn't immediately pull the changes. Considering most of the community is pretty conservative, we would hardly see anything changing about the game if Riot pulls their updates back as soon as complaints arise.

One DeeperOct 13, 20164 votes

With all due respect, I think some of the problem is getting lost on the Riot employees. Firstly from what it looks like plants can have a significant impact on how the game is played and the outcome of situations, otherwise it would be pointless to include them into the game. As a result, now you will have to balance champions around potential interaction with plants. Take for example if I'm playing Nidalee, and the fundamental purpose of my champion is to invade frequently throughout the game. If I play it properly and make tactical invades but get screwed over because of a fortunate plant spawn for the other team, I'm going to feel cheated by the game. So now all junglers are either going to have to be relatively the same play style, or RNG will rear it's ugly head and determine how the game plays out which is ridiculous. One of the nice things about League is there isn't random BS that comes out of nowhere and punishes people who are making the correct strategic play.

Also it seems like they're being sold as controlled elements that will not ruin the game, but then to say they will not be revealed on the minimap contradicts this and makes it sound like you have no real effective way of playing around them. Picture if elemental dragons was being released, and part of your reasoning why it isn't unfair is you can strategically play around it, but there was no feature which told players what dragon was spawning next. It would defeat the idea of strategically playing around it because it would effectively be a surprise element every time.

I would really like it if these were tested in a separate "normals" queue for a few months before they are added to ranked play. I implore you not to do what you did with dynamic queue and force everyone to submit to a huge change immediately. That is how you lose players.

@ Riot: Please don't make the same mistake.

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