Lyte

Meddler on experimental Mordekaiser Changes in testing

Meddler

"We're testing some really experimental changes for him at the moment that involve making it much more dangerous to be directly next to him. We have talked a lot about whether Morde should have some CC or more mobility. We concluded however that his lack of those tools was pretty definitional to his playstyle and an opportunity to potentially give him some effects we wouldn't be able to do on a more mobile champion (in the same way that Nasus for example's only allowed to have his stacking Q because he has trouble getting onto the targets he really wants).

Time wise within a month or two we should either be ready to talk about those changes in detail or be ready to say they didn't work out and we've scrapped them. Worth noting that if we do them they'll be very gameplay driven, so would only include visual changes as needed to support ability modifications. We would love to give Morde a visual upgrade in general, but have other champs that are before him in line for full overhauls."

"What we're currently testing is a more bruiser ish version of Morde, that builds somewhat tankier and doesn't have as much front loaded damage. In playtests so far he's still been able to put out quite a lot of damage in a short time frame, but he's had to ramp up to it a bit first."

"Morde's Ult will likely remain very similar to its current form."

Meddler

"We did have a go at a similar approach when we were removing DFG. At that time however we only had a very brief period (one patch's worth of development) to investigate and test changes. That wasn't enough time to fix the issues we saw come up, or even investigate a decent range of approaches. We weren't confident in the results of that work as a result, so ended up pulling almost all of it. This time we're putting a solid amount of time aside for both experimentation and testing, so feel it's worth taking another swing at that direction."

Meddler

"Quote:

I wonder how this'll turn out. Pretty hyped hearing about Morde changes, even though it'll probably turn out like WW and never heard from again. Yeah, our bad on WW. For what it's worth I'm very confident we'll be either talking through the details of Morde's changes or telling people they're not happening within at most a couple of months."

Meddler

They've been put on hold, with no currently scheduled plans to revisit them. We would like to do some work on WW someday, there are a lot of other champions we feel are higher priority though. Additionally, it's also been long enough since that WW rework was put together that the state of the game and our understanding of it has changed. We'd want to redo some of the rework as a result, rather than just picking up from where it was.

Meddler

"Quote:

You know people say riot ignores boards but I've just realized almost every piece of champion update context comes from there. The only thing rioters do with us here is interact when people visit lcs, explain drama on the caster desk, and smite people. Good to know there's the questions being asked and answered on the boards where it'll just be buried with downvotes here

Speaking for game design at least most of us read both Boards and Reddit. Who posts where depends on personal preference quite a bit. I tend to favour Boards a bit more myself, others like ZenonTheStoic seem to have a liking for diving into Reddit threads by contrast, with some Boards posting mixed in on the side."

Update

Riot Scruffy

"This time around he wont be getting the full shabang (like sion or GP) but he will be getting some small visual love to represent some of the new gameplay that he's getting. Overall it'll be mostly upgraded spell VFX."

"Yea those VFX changes got rolled into this champ update project so we can release them together."

Scruffy on Darius Changes

Scruffy

"We've actually come back around to the work that started 2 years ago and will have something to show very soon. Statikk picked up the darius project after he finished working on Gangplank, and it turns out we can make a lot of improvements for him without too many dramatic changes.

When it's all done, he should have a more healthy + satisfying + some new unique stuff in his kit."

"Bleed is staying and stacks will still only go to 5."

Preseason Ranked Changes Planned

Riot Mirross

"Quote:

Many players have suggested that their least favorite part of the ranked experience is the existence of promotion series. We've all heard the stories of players who consistently fail a promotion series upwards of 10+ times.

This post isn't about the removal of the promotion series, but a tweak to how they work. Currently, when you complete a promotion series you are protected for a couple of games from being demoted. However, its very easy to slip back a division if you go on a short losing streak (~2 games) while at 0 LP.

I have no problem with this outcome, and I suspect very few people do. However, the resulting scenario becomes less than desirable. You find yourself at ~75 LP in the division you started with. This requires you to win 2 games to trigger a promotion series, and to win 2 of the 3 games to succeed. Its a fairly frustrating experience knowing you have to win 4 of your next 5 games just to return to the division you just unlocked.

My suggestion (and I'm sure its been said before), is to remove the promotion series requirements for divisions you've already unlocked and let you move freely between these tiers. Keep the promotion series to "unlock" a new division/tier for that feeling of progress or accomplishment.

These ideas are good. We're looking at making some changes like this at the end of this season. We'd like to reduce ambiguity around when demotion shortly after you're promoted, as well as the pain points when you're climbing back to a division you've already reached."

Mirross

"Yes. We decided not to make any mid-season changes, but this is something we're planning to do."

Riot Socrates

"This is a cool idea. We will be making some changes to promos at the start of next season or in the preseason.

Changing the rules mid season would create a pretty lame situation for players who already played through promos with the existing rule set."





Champion Mastery Emote visible to enemies

Mirross they are still planning on adding the change: When asked what happened to champion mastery emotes being visible to enemy champions as mentioned in the 5.11 patch notes explained they are still planning on adding the change:

"We're are going to change this soon (not next patch, that's already locked, probably one after) - it was mistakenly in a patch note, which caused the confusion. We're going to slightly increase the cooldown and make it respect muting before we make that change though."

"Hey dudes. The patch note for this went out early. Our bad. When we tested this on pbe it could get a little spammy when abused. We decided to increase the cool down before going live with it. It will be appearing in one of the coming patch cycles." As for the general rewards for hitting level 5 champion mastery on a particular champion, Socrates noted:

"We agree the rewards are probably too light atm for these achievements. We think we can do better than ip. Can't share too much on this yet but it is something we are looking at."

IronStylus on Poppy Update IronStylus also charged on to the boards to

"Quote I'm gonna start this discussion by saying that not a lot of people play Poppy. Now that may sound a bit untrue to some people who main her, are high enough rank that they don't really notice, or they see a lot of players who see her potential and use her, however to someone who recently got to silver this is very obvious. Especially in Normal non-ranked games Poppy is rarely played if ever. I think that one of the main things about this is her character design. I mean just look at it . A lot of newer players don't buy champions based off of their kit but off of their visual appearance. For someone like Jinx, Echo, and the like this is easy, but for someone like Poppy who hasn't had a visual update in months or years, almost no new people buy her, even if she's only 450ip. As you may well know most people main one of the first champions that they buy when they're below level 10. This makes it hard for many people to be introduced to Poppy. I'm not saying this just for people who might want to play her, I'm also saying it for people who might have to go against Poppy that would never want to try her kit. I don't mean to offend anyone by saying that they can't deal with facing champs you don't know. What i'm saying is that it would be a lot easier if you already knew what to do beforehand. This is why I am suggesting to Riot to give Poppy a visual update to allow newer players to see her potential. Please consider doing this update as I think it would help a lot Well, so good news and bad news:



Good news: Poppy will get a visual update. She's in the same camp as Sion, Taric, Urgot, etc which will recieve complete overhauls which will not only increase fidelity and introduce a newer and cleaner design, but also will aid in clarify and mechanical expression. We did a lot exploration on Poppy and are happy with what we've got. She's currently in the art production pipeline as her kit has been locked for some time. Now it's a matter of time and the technical work of getting that new character to live in game.



"Bad" news: Poppy is shipping with a complete kit overhaul which will retain the spirit of Poppy, and utilize some signature abilities, but will probably vary pretty significantly than current Poppy. Think of the same way which we wanted to retain the "feeling" of Sion while keeping virtually nothing of his existing kit. I'e played her, and she's really, really fun. I think players old and new will find a home with her. I think that's what's going to bring her into a place where she'll be loved by passionate players but also new players alike.



So shipping the visual update probably isn't going to turn people onto existing, present-day Poppy as much as it will excite people to try what is fundamentally a brand new character which takes what we love about Poppy, amplifies it, and makes her more cohesive. Our goal on ChampUP is to excite enthusiasts, to get at what the real and visceral emotional attachments that bind them to a character and hone them, making that feeling more clear, maybe even stronger. Often that means pretty substantial change, for multiple reasons. Unique identity, clear role and play pattern, character/kit/art cohesion, among other things. A sub-goal is to bring that character up so at the very least new players are aware of the character and can approach it comfortably. To bring that champion back into some rotation even if it's with a smaller but dedicated slice of players.



The team is very excited about Poppy. I'm happy to have been part of her development and can't wait for people to get a hold of this take on her. Though things change, the spirit is there I feel."

Yorick Update in the works Scruffy dug into the boards to Yorick update that is currently being worked on:

"I feel you on this, and agree that he is in dire need of an update. That said, we want to take the time to do him right and he is in early stages of gameplay design, concepting, and lore work. Don't expect him to come out before Poppy/Taric (both are much farther along), but do know that we are working on him and we are not gonna put it down until we finish. Yorick can be soooo much more than he is and I hope that you will like the results when he's finally rebuilt from the ground up." He

"After Xelnath stopped working on yorick we didn't end up picking it back up until very recently (march ish if I remember correctly, ah you linked it too). We definitely used some of his work as a starting point and have continued iterating from there."

Continued Shurima Stories Sivir, WAAARGHbobo noted:

"Hopefully the rest of the Shurima stories will be released shortly. The team wrote these new chapters over a year ago. Sivir's story was mine and I assure you I'm probably waaay more anxious for you to see how she was changed by the Shurima events than anyone." As for the general rewards for hitting level 5 champion mastery on a particular champion,also charged on to the boards to comment a bit on the Poppy champion update that has been in the works for quite some time: While we've known they've been working on him,dug into the boards to comment on theupdate that is currently being worked on:He continued When asked if we'll ever see more on Shurima storylines such as

has also been very active on his recently created last.fm page , answering all sort of questions related to the player behavior team, features, and more. Check it out here. In a board thread inquiring about future plans forHe continued He also noted As for why the previous set of changes around the time DFG was removed from the game didn't quite pan out,In response to a comment about concerning over these changes being similar to the now iceboxedchanges from last year,When asked if thechanges are still in the works or were scrapped,As for why some Rioters pop up with this sort of information on reddit instead of the boards,He also mentioned that theVFX changes mentioned in the visual effects dev blog are being rolled into this project:When asked if there are anyplans in the works,He also added In a reddit thread inquiring about potential changes to how demotions work and re-promoting after failing down a division,As for if they are still looking into making replaying series you've already failed starting with 1 win already,