Meddler's

Table of Contents

Balance Micropatches

Maple Nectar

"We're aiming to micropatch a few champs that are struggling on Runes Reforged (or are a bit too dominant) today/monday:

Buffs: Ivern, Taliyah, Nunu, Ornn (he missed on base stat adjustments to his E when he lost armor mr from runes)

Nerfs: Sona"

"Both of these bugs had gameplay implications, and we want to get a clear read on champions as we head into a Runes Reforged world.

Diana

Moonsilver Blade no longer applies a stack of Moonlight for 0.1 second after the third auto-attack.

Rumble

Rumble no longer gains the bonus shield twice for using Scrap Shield while on danger-zone"

"Now that Runes have been live for some days, we have a better understanding of what Champions still need some touch-ups to better adapt to this new Runey Runey World. If you want to understand our philosophy around balance during this Preseason, read this post!

Ivern

Ivern doesn't have any Keystone that's particularly amazing to him, and more than most, he's feeling the lack of Windspeaker's Blessing.

TRIGGERSEED SHIELD 70/100/130/160/190 ⇒ 75/110/145/180/215 Nunu

Nunu also took a hit moving away from Stoneborn Pact, so we're giving him a little bit of extra vitality early on

Base Stats

HEALTH 540 ⇒ 590

Ornn

We didn't account for all the bonus damage Ornn gets from bonus armor and magic resist - woops!

Base Stats

SEARING CHARGE DAMAGE 20/40/60/80/100 ⇒ 30/50/70/90/110

⇒ 30/50/70/90/110 SEARING CHARGE SHOCKWAVE DAMAGE 40/80/120/160/200 ⇒ 50/90/130/170/210 Sona

Sona's been having a blast on Runes Reforged, and while we want her to keep discovering new routes to be successful, having all paths leading to her victory seems overbearing.

Base Stats

ARMOR 30 ⇒ 28

⇒ 28 BASE ATTACK DAMAGE 50.04 ⇒ 46

⇒ 46 ARIA OF PERSEVERANCE BASE HEAL 35/55/75/95/115 ⇒ 30/50/70/90/110

⇒ 30/50/70/90/110 ARIA OF PERSEVERANCE SHIELD STRENGTH 30/55/80/105/130 ⇒ 25/50/75/100/125"

Maple Nectar

"I may have bamboozled some folks earlier today, new data showed rather substantial growth in Taliyah's performance. She's still not doing incredible by any means, but she's out of micro patch territory for now. Will re-evaluate post weekend."



New Merch Store Items





Leveling and Rewards - Early Impressions and Adjustments

Riot Cactopus

"Hey guys! Over the last few days, we've gotten tons of questions and good feedback about the new leveling and rewards systems.

TL;DR for this post:

In response to your feedback, we're converting some of the XP in the FWotD bonus into Blue Essence.

We'll talk about how 1–30 leveling works now and how we've made leveling easier for everyone.

We'll examine the 30-and-Beyond leveling curve and make the leveling earn rate higher in the long term so it won't feel like you're being punished for reaching a high level.

We also already made one change: Earlier this week we raised the minimum value on loot boxes. The lowest possible drop used to be worth 720 BE, but now it's 810 BE.

Let's jump into the specifics.

FIRST WIN OF THE DAY

First, let's talk about tweaks to the First Win of the Day (FWotD) bonus. We've seen more than a few of you asking for some way to gain blue essence while you’re in-between levels so you can buy champions that would otherwise be just out of your reach.

Our plan here is to convert some of the XP from the First Win of the Day boost into straight up blue essence. At system launch, FWotD granted 575 XP. When we ship this change (aiming for sometime during patch 7.23) it'll instead grant 50 BE and 400 XP.

1-30 LEVELING SPEED

Now let's take a look at how we're making 1–30 leveling faster for just about everyone. We've seen some concerns about the leveling curve for new players and their experience when leveling from 1–30. It's true that it takes more XP to climb between certain levels in the new system, but even with that change, leveling is still faster. To understand how it works, let's look at it in detail.

In the old leveling system, an average game gave 115 XP. The chart below shows the total amount of games it took to get to Level 30:

It took an average of 178 games to reach Level 30 (this of course varies based on game length and performance).

In the new leveling system, an average game gives 192 XP. In addition, First Win of the Day starts giving XP at level 15. This is where it gets a bit tricky to compare. If you get more FWotD , then it will take fewer total games. Our estimates say that the typical player gets FWotD once for every four games they play, but let’s also look at what happens when you only get FWotD every six games and every eight games as well.

Data above assumes FWotD gives out 400 XP.

If you're a typical player who gets FWotD every four games, it'll take 152 games to reach level 30, which is much faster. If you get FWotD every six games, it'll take 166 games. If the rare, super-hardcore player who gets a FWotD once every eight games, it'll take you 174 games to level up from 1–30.

So. This means that leveling from 1–30 is faster in the new system for just about everyone. The only way you'd be going slower is if you’re playing more than nine games before getting FWotD on average. Even then, we're talking about a difference of just a couple of games.

1–30 REWARDS

Okay, so what about rewards? In the old system, you earned between 13,000 IP and 18,000 IP when leveling from 1–30 depending on how often you got FWotD.

So let's compare that to the rewards you get from the new system. Unlike all of the boxes after the level 30, the boxes you get in the new system when leveling from 1–30 are NOT random. Instead, every time you level up we give you either a specific champion or a set of champion shards worth a predetermined amount of blue essence (assuming you disenchant the shards).

Here is the blue essence value of everything you get from 1-30:

So this means you're guaranteed to get Ashe, Garen, Brand, an Icon, a Ward, and 20,312 blue essence when leveling from 1–30 in the new system. Keep in mind that this is all assuming you're disenchanting every champ shard you got. If you upgrade them, the value increases even more.

That 20,312 blue essence total also isn't counting the new 50 BE per FWotD that you'll soon be getting, so the real total is even higher. Then consider that runes are now also free—it's just easier for new players to unlock champs in the new leveling system.

So, to review how the new leveling system impacts level 1–30 players: The vast majority of you are completing the journey faster (some MUCH faster), and all players end up with more rewards, no matter how you split it.

Alright, so that's 1–30 leveling. Time to talk about leveling beyond 30.

THE 30-AND-BEYOND LEVELING CURVE

Okay, so now let's talk about what happens once you get very high-leveled in the new system. This part gets a little math heavy, but stick with us.

In the new leveling system, leveling gets harder the higher you climb. Beginning at level 30, the difficulty curve starts doing a sort of "staircase" effect. It gets harder as you approach milestone levels (every 25 levels), and then it goes back to being easier until you get closer to the next milestone level. In the current version of the leveling system that we shipped with preseason, the length of the journey between each milestone also gets harder on the whole until you reach level 150. From that point on, the staircases stop getting higher.

Because we got some early feedback that players don't want to feel punished for being high-leveled, we're going to go ahead and tweak the leveling curve to make high-level grinding easier. In the chart below you can see the leveling curve as it exists today (represented by the blue line) as well as what it'll look like after we change the system (represented by the orange line)—this change should ship during patch 7.23.

With the changes we're making, leveling will now stop getting harder overall once you reach level 50. As before, leveling will still get more and more difficult before speeding up again after you pass each leveling milestone. After we ship the change the leveling as a whole stops slowing down at level 50 instead of at 150.

COMPARING THE REWARDS SYSTEMS

Okay, but here's the question that's actually on everyone's minds: Do you get more or less overall BE from leveling compared to the IP you got from playing games in the old system? The answer is that on average, you will get more, no matter what level you are. And the only way you'll ever get even slightly less from the new system is if you're playing a truly crazy amount of League every day. Time to back up that claim with data.

Note that all of the following examples are accurate after we make the aforementioned changes to FWotD and the post-30 leveling speed.

In the chart below, we're comparing the total currency you will earn upon reaching specific levels in the new system to the IP you would have earned over the same number of games in the old system. The new system is represented by the orange bars. The old, IP-based system is represented by the blue bars.

Let's take a moment to explain what we're looking at in this chart. It makes a difference how many FWotD bonuses you get when playing. The chart above assumes that you get a FWotD bonus every four games. This is pretty much the typical player.

But plenty of you play more than four games in any given day. In that case your chart might look more like this:

Here's a player that plays six games for every FWotD that they earn. This person plays League more than the typical player. Even at the highest level, this player will still earn more BE on average than they would've gotten in IP in the old system.

Just so we're covering all our bases, let's look at an exceptional example: a player that plays eight games on average for every FWotD that they earn. This person puts in serious work on League, regularly putting in eight games in a row. How do they fare in the new system compared to the old one?

Even in this case, it's pretty close. How close? It's a total of just 2,300 BE less after 2,200 games. This disparity in earn rates between those who play many games per day and those who play slightly fewer is not new to League—we've always thought the FWotD bonus was worth including because it incentivizes players to regularly log in and jump into games. Players like this are still leveling faster than anyone else in the new system, and they'll get the new unique leveling rewards before anyone else (and the swag factor that comes with them).

It comes down to this: For the vast majority of players, this system will give out more currency on average than you would've gotten in the old IP-based world.

CONCLUSION

Holy hell, that was a lot of charts, guys. This might sound weird, but we knew a system change this big wasn't going to be perfect out the gate. Preseason is a time for big changes, and we knew we'd need your feedback to get things right for everyone. So all we can ask for now is for you to keep it coming. We genuinely appreciate it.

We've heard a few other concerns about the new leveling and rewards systems, (especially around Mastery 6 & 7 prices and RNG in the loot system) but the changes announced above are the only ones we're ready to commit to today. For now, we're going to focus on tweaking just a few things at a time with the system so we can see the effects clearly.

Please keep playing and letting us know how the new system feels—we're listening. Hit us with any questions you have in the comments below!"

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: November 10th

Meddler's

"Morning folks,

Usual Disclaimers

These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get put delayed or even stopped.

If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler

Pre-Season Balance assessment so far

So, pre-season's here. We've been poring over games, discussion, stats etc to build up an understanding of the state of the game, it's still really early days though with a lot of experimentation going on. Collection of things on our minds below, most of this is more of a watch list than an action list though.

Nothing's too crazy

Some stuff's quite strong or quite weak, nothing that's been on fire enough to need day one attention though, which is a relief with a patch this big. Some bugs that will get hotfixed, or have already been so however and we’ll potentially do a bit of champion balance hotfixing today or Monday. Strong Keystones

Some keystones are performing quite well, with Aftershock, Guardian and Summon: Aery being ones we're watching particularly closely. Aftershock goes really well on some champs for example (those with pick/lockdown combos). Aery seems to outperform Comet on some champs who should be good Comet users, assumedly because of its higher reliability.

Unsealed Spellbook

Unsealed Spellbook's showing a really wide range of outcomes, from looking pretty powerful to not contributing much depending on the player and champion in question. Makes sense given it probably got one of, or the highest, learning curves of a keystone, so wouldn't want to judge too quickly there, definitely one to watch though.

Non Keystone Runes

Nothing to note here yet beyond that nothing seems crazy or useless so far.

Strong Champs

Yorick's potentially too strong. That's more likely a result of Q affecting towers adding more power than expected, rather than anything Runes specific.

Sona's looking really dominant with a range of different keystones. Not yet clear at time of writing if there's an issue with her, or just that she's taking better advantage than most of keystones that might be too strong.

Weak Champs

Nunu and Ivern are both struggling quite a bit, assumedly in part due to a lack of obvious keystone they do well with as a default. Guardian seems to work fairly well on them, especially relative to the alternatives, but it's also stronger again on other Guardian users. Might need to buff them soon if they continue to struggle as much as they are.

Rune Path Popularity

For anyone interested we're seeing some pretty strong trends in terms of what players are using so far. Precision/Domination and Domination/Precision are the clear favorites, though generally not the most effective on many champs. Lot of people seem to be avoiding Resolve/Inspiration as secondaries when they'd be great choices (e.g. tough lanes). That's not surprising though, we figured there'd be a lot of double damage tree use early on given that looks fun and with the ranked season over people aren't playing quite as competitively. Inspiration's the least popular primary path, which is also unsurprising given its got a lot of stuff that's not to everyone's taste and for some champs just doesn't work too well.

None of the primary/secondary pairings are looking too dominant power wise so far at least, it’s just popularity that’s varying a lot. If power does become a concern we’ll then use the stat bonuses particular pairings offer to bring them up or down in effectiveness as needed.

Skin Portrait Updates

Patch 7.23's going to have tweaks to quite a few of the skin specific portraits on the in game HUD, zooming some of them out mainly that are too close to the face at present. Those are on PBE already, thoughts on how they now look appreciated."

Meddler

"Quote:

Any info or news on Swain? How is he coming along and feel?

Btw what a great success with these rune changes! He's getting there. We're still getting some of his abilities sorted out, visually he's looking really sweet IMO."

Meddler

"Quote:

Thanks for the update and what a great theme he is to be working on!

Is there any specific struggles he's currently facing? A lot of it's the usual VGU challenge - trying to keep as many of the good aspects of the old kit as possible, while at the same time solving the gameplay problems that are one of the reasons for doing the VGU in the first place.

Meddler

"Quote:

How many smaller reworks are you able to work on at a time? Depends on what else is going on. Over the course of this year we've generally had a couple being worked on at any one time, not everything works out though of course so some don't ship."

Meddler

"Quote:

There was a gameplay thoughts posted 2 months ago (here) where you mentioned that after LeBlanc rework Rengar will probably get one after her. On reddit leblanc mains Rioter showed up and asked for mains to come to Riot office for testing LeBlanc rework, so as there is already work on LeBlanc, will Rengar be your next one? We'll want to get back to looking at LB again once pre-season stuff's been stabilized enough. Not certain yet who'll be next for a smaller update after her. Rengar's one option some people have suggested, I think there are also good cases for a range of other champs too though (Kalista, Karma, Ezreal with a focus on his W etc)."

Meddler

"Quote:

I heard you guys just tested a new iteration of LeBlanc. Since it qualifies as "contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship", I'd like to ask:

How did that go and what can we expect? It didn't go great. Resulted in an interesting playstyle we might want to use on a new champ at some point, didn't feel like LB though. We need to figure out what to do instead as a result as soon as pre-season stuff's been dealt with a bit more. Given LB work's been going on a while that probably means prioritizing something faster over trying for a larger overhaul."

Meddler

"Quote:

AP supports in general are really strong due to no more flat magic resist on adcs. Same deal with AD assassins in mid lane and mages not getting armor. Any plans to address these? Early damage due to lack of mitigation's one of the things high on our watch list. Things we're looking at there include:

Are defensive options available (Resolve, plus things like Taste of Blood or Celestial Body elsewhere) effective enough?

If they are, or are at least close, are players taking them in the right circumstances or, given it's pre-season, just going double damage more often than is optimal because double damage sounds more fun?

Was the Spellthief's buff unneeded?

How are champion base stats looking?

Etc"

Meddler

"Quote:

For this preseason, should we expect buffs and nerfs as a result of the new rune system (ie yorick and sona being too strong)? Or will there be a mix of general balance issues and nerfs/buffs due to the new rune system? We'll be buffing and nerfing both champions and runes. Likely we'll micropatch some champs today and/or Monday, that'll only be a few outliers though, with more stuff in 7.23 proper once we've had time to see how things play out more and tested some runes changes too."

Meddler

"Quote:

Hey Meddler, what do you guys think of Phase Rush at present? I used to be a Stormraider's Surge user, so I was really looking forward to using Phase Rush, but it seems very lacking, not because of the 3 unique hits, but because it doesn't give as much movement speed or a slow resist. Any plans for it? Early days, so it's hard to say with too much certainly yet. We're seeing some champs use it really effectively though and we believe some of that's because it's a much more reliable trigger in many cases (can get it against any target, even really tanky ones, with a consistent combo).

The ranged/melee distinction's also looking like it'll be a really useful balancing tool there so far too."

Quick Hits

The Merrill Reforged - Marc & Pros take on Runes Reforged

Join Marc “The Merrill”, Scarra, Dyrus and Meteos today at 1:00 PM PST (9:00 PM UTC) as they experiment with new Runes on Twitch.

Riot Mort noted that they are moving away from having to use summoner icons during events:

"Replying here for visibility.

The next event will still require specific summoner icons. However we're working hard towards making this the last event with required icons. We've heard the feedback and are moving towards alternative solutions :)"

Ghostcrawler responded to a boards thread and talked a little on League's long-term strategy:

"Hey there.

I don't really want to use this as an opportunity to defend my record. (Spoiler: I think it's fine).

However, I'd love a chance to talk about how we view League's long-term strategy, which may be a topic that not every player often thinks about.

The traditional way to make a game was to package it in a box for 60 USD or whatever and put it on the shelf in a Gamestop, or going way back, an EB or something. You wanted players to love your game, but you also wanted them to finish your game, because you only made money on the box, and you needed them to not only value that box, but to want the next box, and the one after that. We sometimes talk about this consumer product strategy as "planned obsolescence."

The first game I worked on that didn't follow that strategy was an MMO, where much of the revenue came from a subscription. The strategy was to keep players so engaged that they never got bored and risked unsubscribing. Turns out this is pretty hard to do. Players do eventually move on to other games, so to keep your revenue constant, you need to keep bringing in new players.

This model tends to be even more extreme in microtransaction games, especially mobile ones (and especially low quality mobile ones) where players may quickly get tired of your nonsense and paywalls and running out of resources. The business model here is to constantly get new players (or rope current players into bringing in their friends) because if you ever run out of new players, you quickly run out of money.

The reason we think League can be evergreen and last for many years is that it works really differently. The game is free to play and there is no subscription. Much of League's revenue comes from optional cosmetic content. This creates a situation where players don't often feel the need to formally quit - there is no unsub moment or anything. The icon is still sitting there on your computer when you want to go back to it. So compared to many games, our churn rate is really low. Players may take breaks, but many come back. This also means we are less dependent on new players. Our strategy is to keep current players engaged and happy. Historically we've made very little effort to attract new players.

In terms of evergreen games, I often use examples like Magic, D&D or possibly Pokemon. Those are games that you can drift in and out of for years. They evolve.They release new products. But they are still recognizable over time and have been around for decades. Will they last forever? I don't know. But they last a lot longer than most games. That's what we aspire to do with League (and no, we're not there yet).

Riot as a company invests heavily in esports, but on the League team it is not always forefront in our minds. Our balance philosophy for example focuses on players in the high Plat / low Diamond skill level. Balancing only for esports is a little short-sighted because you are tuning the game literally for a few dozen people, while probably making the game worse for tens of millions. When we do make changes specifically for esports, it tends to be right around Worlds and is also focused more on esports viewers than pro players. In other words, we don't make a ton of changes just for esports, and those we do make are often targeted on making a game that is fun to watch.

The vast majority of our features (things like missions, champion mastery, matchmaking, Star Guardian Invasion) have almost no impact on esports at all. They are for the rest of us.

As a company, esports does have benefits and that's why it's an important part of our company strategy. We don't spend much on traditional marketing, and in a way esports is part of our marketing. Pro games also provide a way for players to stay connected to League if they're taking a break from the game as I mentioned above. Esports can also be aspirational because it's inspiring to see players playing the exact same game as you but doing things you didn't know were possible. It's an opportunity for the community to come together. It's a celebration of League.

Does Riot want additional games? Absolutely. We want to be a game company that stands the test of time, and we know we need a whole library of games to do that. But we aren't willing to shift so many resources away from League and towards new games that we hurt the one successful game that we do have. Remember, we don't need that planned obsolescence model that I mentioned above. More games will come in time, and we have time.

I know that was long, but I hope it helps provide a little more perspective about how we think about product strategy."

Riot Sparkle took a deep dive into the Runes UI and some of the decisions behind creating it:

"Oh hai! Happy to walk you through our decision making and talk about the UI, as the Experience Designer for Runes. :) There are so many points here to address. I’m just gonna bold the important parts instead of doing a TL;DR so people can skim this if they don’t care about entire history of the UI lol. Absolute beast of an essay incoming, but I want to take the time to respond to your concerns:

“There is a lot of space taken up for visuals/they feature a lot of visual noise”: When we were first setting out to redo Runes and Masteries one of the big things that kept coming up was that players didn’t feel a connection to their pages. They wanted their pages to feel custom to them (and also actually BE custom for them on the gameplay side, so this couldn’t JUST be solved with visuals) and for the pages to reflect that. One of the downfalls of the old system is that we didn’t give you anything to attach to - players struggled to remember the names of masteries and most book-y rune pages looked prettttyyyy much the same as other book-y rune pages. We do a lot to make sure you’re focused on the UI when you need to be (nothing happens or moves on visuals until after you’ve selected everything, for example) but we find that a lot players actually care really deeply about the page visually and thematically reflecting the decisions they’ve made. The UI and the visuals have their own distinct space, and we think that we can hit both usability AND have a page be thematic and visually distinctive.

One of the downfalls of the old system is that we didn’t give you anything to attach to - players struggled to remember the names of masteries and most book-y rune pages looked prettttyyyy much the same as other book-y rune pages. We do a lot to make sure you’re focused on the UI when you need to be (nothing happens or moves on visuals until after you’ve selected everything, for example) but we find that a lot players actually care really deeply about the page visually and thematically reflecting the decisions they’ve made. The UI and the visuals have their own distinct space, and we think that we can hit both usability AND have a page be thematic and visually distinctive. Preset pages: Ok, it looks like there are a few things going on here. First, we’re going to let you hide the pages. Hopefully this will be coming in 7.23 Second, they are used as our last resort fallback to make sure you have a page in game, this is true. Third, preset pages are not used to create new pages. There’s a plus button and a big ol’ create new button in the right corner, the exact same way that old runes and masteries had it. It sounds like you’ve actually been creating all of your pages with what we call internally “the escape rope” or the option we put in preset pages to make sure you never get stuck there if you don’t understand that it’s locked (something we saw with newbies to the system, even with the big create new buttons). *I completely agree with your assertion that “Creating new rune page should be from scratch, and the preset runes only confuse players when they know what runes they wanna go for”, and this is how the system currently works if you hit “create new”. *

Second, they are used as our last resort fallback to make sure you have a page in game, this is true. Third, preset pages are not used to create new pages. There’s a plus button and a big ol’ create new button in the right corner, the exact same way that old runes and masteries had it. It sounds like you’ve actually been creating all of your pages with what we call internally “the escape rope” or the option we put in preset pages to make sure you never get stuck there if you don’t understand that it’s locked (something we saw with newbies to the system, even with the big create new buttons). *I completely agree with your assertion that “Creating new rune page should be from scratch, and the preset runes only confuse players when they know what runes they wanna go for”, and this is how the system currently works if you hit “create new”. * “It’s hard to compare across trees” - This is true and something we will noodle on for the future, especially since we may someday want to add an additional tree. This is an upfront pain that gets easier once you have some level of familiarity with the paths and their options, but it is very much still a pain. The “path preview” page gives you the spread of keystones and gameplay themes to get you a general overview but it’s certainly not the direct comparison of every option that used to exist.

and something we will noodle on for the future, especially since we may someday want to add an additional tree. This is an upfront pain that gets easier once you have some level of familiarity with the paths and their options, but it is very much still a pain. The “path preview” page gives you the spread of keystones and gameplay themes to get you a general overview but it’s certainly not the direct comparison of every option that used to exist. “Animations make it slow” - Yes, we want to improve the performance of animations, especially on lower end computers. BUT you can actually totally skip the animations slot opening clicks right now if you want. If you choose “grid mode” at the bottom of the page you can change your layout to have no animations and all options exposed, much like you have presented here. Right now there’s a bug where we don’t save your line/grid settings (or long/short desc) which we are trying to get fixed up for 7.23 but I expect a lot of folks will exclusively use grid mode when that’s fixed (which is great and why it’s there!)

but I expect a lot of folks will exclusively use grid mode when that’s fixed (which is great and why it’s there!) “Creating more than 2 custom pages is necessary” - We’ve transferred over all your existing rune pages into the new system. If you had no rune pages, we started you off with 2. You can grab more pages for Blue Essence if you’d like them but I know a lot of players prefer to set up a single page from scratch every champion select, so I do actually think this is a preference.

but I know a lot of players prefer to set up a single page from scratch every champion select, so I do actually think this is a preference. Just a general point - you’ve made the claim a few times that choosing runes isn’t quick. We found in testing that after the initial experience learning how the new system works (not being able to select 2 runes from the same row in secondary selection trips people up a lot at the beginning) players are/were actually creating pages empirically as fast or faster than masteries (when there are no champion select bugs that change your page and make your UX designers cry lol). Like I know me saying that means shit all to you if it’s slower for you personally, but we did some pretty extensive user testing with players with that focus, specifically to validate how fast you could pick runes in the UI. Okay, and now some of the downsides to the “everything on one page design” which we did actually explore and weigh earlier on in the project.

There are 60 options across 5 trees now, and we found that presenting them all at once was oftentimes very overwhelming and actually made it harder or slower to find what you needed. Like, it’s a significant bump from the amount of trees we had in masteries - and we’re considering adding more. Also, it would be VERY hard to scale this design for additional trees and runes (things would need to get a lot smaller to fit another path in the window), which we are going to explore adding.

(things would need to get a lot smaller to fit another path in the window), which we are going to explore adding. There are no names or descriptions listed. Some players don’t care about this at all (which is why grid mode exists!) but other players found this really helpful in remembering which runes do what. When looking at a completed page, many players found it helpful to remember have a prompt about what a rune does upfront without hovering over it.

Anyway, that’s why we made some of the design decisions we did. Design is always about pros/cons tradeoffs so I am not saying there’s a right answer here. The hardest part about UI design for Runes Reforged is that literally everyone has to use this system - Faker’s gonna use it, newbies are going to use it, folks in Bronze and folks in Platinum, etc. To this end, we included more options for player control over how they want the UI to look than ever before (again, check out grid mode if you don’t like line mode!) and carried that thinking through to tooltips as well but we recognize that not everything is going to be the preference of every player.

If you have more feedback on the UI, please do HMU. Always looking to hear your thoughts on any problems you’re having or things you love.

TL;DR I bolded the important stuff

EDIT: My formatting is butts.

Check out Summoner Showcase 130!

"This week on the Summoner Showcase we’ve got more spicy Evelynn art than you can shake a naked shadow succubus at. We’ve also got incredibly heart-warming tales of friendship, combined with one of the most impressive and detailed League of Legends fan arts out there, the Coronation of Ahri. Check it out!"

Reminders



With preseason comes a handful of missions to complete matchmade games and earn rewards based on things you've previously owned, time played, etc. Be sure to check your missions in-game! Tales from the Rift: Death Sworn is here! The three new Death Sworn skins will be available through 11/26! To round out this red post collection, here are a few reminders on current promotions or limited time events! [BACK TO TOP]

Tonight's red post collection includes some upcoming balance micropatches,quick gameplay thoughts for November 10th, a preview of new merch from the CN shop, and more!Continue reading for more information!noted we would see micropatches coming soon to correct some issues after the release of Patch 7.22:Here are the first set of changes patched to live:And a second set Onnoted:A few new merch store items have been added to the Chinese merch store, including a newfigure, aandfigure, as well as a limited editionfigure! There are also a few new plushies! These are only available in China at the moment.Here'swith a very detailed thread on the new leveling system, and some of the changes already in place for it:Check out quick gameplay thoughts for November 10th, including how champs are looking with the new runes, rune path popularity, and mmore:When asked for updates onWhen asked about timing on reworks,OnWhen asked about AP supports being too strong, also commented on balance and micropatches coming soon: provided his thoughts on Phase Rush: