General QoL Changes Needed

Ice Weasel X·7/23/2019, 3:22:56 PM·1 votes·534 views

Yes, there are a lot of problems with RNG and balance. No, I'm not going to state my opinions on those since other people have done so in depth and with more fervor. My issues are primarily with playability, because the interface directly makes the game unpleasant for me.

Game Settings

League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics are not the same game. They launch from the same client and share some assets, but that's it. Champions, abilities, and items differ between the games. Gameplay is completely different. Settings in TFT should not affect LoL, and vice versa. I click on the minimap in LoL to move my character around. I don't do that in TFT because I want my Little Legend's wandering kept to a minimum (more on this later). Clicking on one of the islands changes the view to that island, and that's fine. It shouldn't also control the Little Legend. There's literally no need for minimap movement in TFT because each area is so small that there's no advantage to it.

Inventory Visibility

Carousel stages often give such a short time for you to decide on a pick, so trying to find your island to check your stocked or equipped component items can make you miss an opportunity. We should be able to check our items quickly and intuitively.

Possible methods:

Permanently highlight the player's island on the minimap. Give it a noticeable glow separate from the camera indicator.
Display a footer/sidebar with currently owned champs and items while on the carousel island.
When on the carousel island, make it so clicking a name in the player list goes to that player's island. This is intuitive, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who tried this, assuming it was how it worked. Since we're all on the same island, showing the player's location (like it currently does) is completely worthless.

Movement and Camera

For Teemo's sake, clean this up! When I'm clicking to buy and sell champs or place items, I do not want my Little Legend to march toward that clicked location!

Give us the option to disable movement commands when clicking items, champions, and any menus. Having the Little Legends move around too much is detrimental, because it often moves the camera view.
Give us the option to snap camera views to island centers! I have absolutely zero reason to pan my camera around a single island. When the camera moves, it interferes with champion and item placement. It's infuriating to drop component 1 on a champ, and then just as you're dropping component 2, the camera moves with the Little Legend and places it on a different champ. Since we can't unequip items, that's a huge waste and possible thrown game.

Item and Ability Details

Don't make players rely on external sites and unofficial infographs for information. Whatever happened to clarity? State the % chance of item effects. If a champion has a cast time, quantify it rather than calling it, "a long channel."

Missions

Tone them down. Seriously. Each week so far has included:

Play 5 Games of TFT to Round 20
Play 8 Games of TFT to Round 20
Play 10 Games of TFT to Round 20

Round 20 takes ~25 minutes from the game's start, not including the queue and load times. At bare minimum, this line of missions is asking players to play 23 games of at least 25 minutes per week. That's 575 minutes, or 9 hours and 35 minutes. That doesn't sound too bad for a serious gamer, right? Except it's not that simple.

Failure: Despite what some "gaming journalists" claim in their "guides" to the game, you can be eliminated before Round 20 (the final PVP round of the 4th stage). It happens very easily if you don't get your champs before others grab them or if RNGesus deems you unworthy of items. So that means you can spend almost 25 minutes in a game and not meet the mission requirement.

Success: Even if you do make it to Round 20, the game isn't likely to end immediately. Players who get that far are likely to survive for a few more rounds, so that could be another 5 to 15 minutes unless they surrender. Furthermore, the missions don't always show the next in line until you've cleared all of the same-value missions first (sometimes they do, so that may be a bug?). That means that even if you fulfilled the Round 20 requirement in every game, you still might have to play more games before the next "Play # Games of TFT to Round 20" mission becomes available.

See where I'm going with this?

Clearing the weekly missions potentially requires an unhealthy amount of time spent playing. For people with jobs, school, or (holy shit) a life, 10 hours in a week can be rough. In practice, the time needed is likely to be several hours more than that since most people will be unable to clear the weeklies in exactly 23 games.

We get it. You want people to play long enough in a game to prove they're actually playing it rather than connecting and losing ASAP. You're probably also still getting a good stress test out of this beta run, along with player numbers you can use in marketing reports. You can accomplish this almost as well by lowering the minimum Round/Stage for those missions. Round 15 is the Stage 3 PvE/final battle. It's still possible to lose by that point, but it's not mind-numbingly frustrating to reach consistently.