RGM, IP, and tons of damage in Ask Riot
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This is a space where we focus on your questions and give you answers.
What is next with Rotating Game Modes, what to do with all that IP, and why we use percent health damage are up for this week.
Have a question (or two...hundred) yourself? Head over ask.leagueoflegends.com and sign into your League account. Check out the Do’s, the Don'ts, and then ask us something. We’ll archive the answers once we’ve accumulated a few of them.
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When will we see new game modes in RGM?
We're still forging the path at the moment with our current stable of modes, and we’re carefully looking at how each one is received and how people are engaging with it. Unfortunately, we can’t tell you exactly when your favorite mode, like say Doom Bots, is coming back but we can talk about how we’re selecting each mode to include in RGM.
So far the modes we’ve included in RGM represent the widest spread of gameplay with strong engagement, URF for example, is a mode we consistently hear about from players, which is why we chose it among our first releases. That doesn’t mean RGM is a popularity contest. Any game mode that we've previously released is a potential candidate for the RGM queue. If your favourite mode isn't in there yet, there's a chance it will be eventually.
We also want to try and offer something that’s updated, so as we look at other game modes, it’s important we deliver something more than nostalgia. As you’ve seen with Definitely Not Dominion, we don’t just want to throw old modes into the queue. We try to keep everyone updated on what modes are coming in the near future - so make sure you check in weekly to see what’s coming up. – L4T3NCY
Have you thought of alternatives to spend our excess IP? (something different from champions and runes)?
We are definitely looking for opportunities to add new ways to spend IP. We frequently release limited-time summoner icons for IP, and recently added a major new outlet for IP that we believe will be compelling for many.
Our latest foray was champion mastery levels 6 & 7, which grants players new mastery badge emotes, new loading screen border flags and announcement banner upgrades. This enables players to show off their favorite champions through a combination of skill and investment. We wanted to make sure the rewards were accessible to all of you so we added the ability to use IP to get them.
Additionally, we know that for many newer players, the challenge is earning enough IP for everything you want to spend it on. To address this over the past year, we’ve permanently reduced the price of many runes, held rune and rune page sales, and added Party IP weekends. We will continue to look for ways to make things better for players across the full spectrum of IP wealth. – Wingfield
Why include percent health damage in a champion’s kit? Is it simply a response to the tank meta? Or do you want to design every champion to always feel like they can do at least a bit of relevant damage even if they are full tank or utility because you have found this to be more satisfying for the player?
We have four primary mechanics and we use them individually with the intent to help champions excel against different types of opposing champions. These mechanics deliver damage based off of:
- Current health
- Max health
- Missing health
- Scaling damage (based off of a percentage of missing health)
Let’s break each of these down.
Current health is typically used on tanky champions we want to soften up targets and set up allies for success (think Jarvan). Missing health works best when we want champions to deliver the final blow – assassins fit well here – such as Fizz. Maximum health is when we want a champion to be a threat to all enemies. Think of a fighter or skirmisher like Fiora, or for a specific ability that should always be a threat, Tahm Kench’s Devour.
A similar-looking but very different mechanic is used with abilities like Veigar’s ultimate that multiply the ability’s damage with the percentage of the enemy’s missing health – but don’t actually consider the enemy’s raw health values. This is a big difference because this ability won’t scale in damage as an enemy’s max health increases.
It’s worth noting this is a less-powerful mechanic as the ability has a hard cap on how much damage it can deal, such as double or triple the base damage. We like using this when we want an ability to feel great as a finishing move, but don’t want to be drastically changing who the champion is strong or weak against. Veigar and Riven both use this mechanic on their ultimates. Veigar excels at blowing up squishy targets (hence why marksmen so frequently flee the scene when he’s around) but struggles versus super tanky champs who can shrug off his ult. The amplified damage means he can more likely get the final blow on a champion but he’s still incentivized to use it on squishy enemies because at best, you are dealing twice the base damage which a tanky enemy simply won’t care about as much.
You also specifically asked about how we create kits against an existing meta. We don’t design champions based on a current meta. Why not? Well, champions take a while to develop, so when a champion is released, it’s a different landscape from when it’s originally created. – FeralPony
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