Category: Current Affairs (Page 14 of 17)

      Renekton was stealth nerfed after his spotlight

      January 21, 2011 /

      Outback Renekton.

      One of the readers here pointed me toward some very interesting information regarding the Renekton release. Apparently he was nerfed after the Champion Spotlight was recorded, but they still posted the video without mentioning the changes. Now I understand why he doesn’t feel quite right.

      When I was watching the Spotlight, I was initially shocked by how much Renekton could heal with his Q. If you watch the video at the 3:30 counter, you’ll see Phreak hit level four, dash into a pack of minions, hit Cull the Meek to heal for something like 250 hp, and dash out. I’ve tried that same move probably 40 times in my games with him, and it has never healed for that much. Well, that’s because they nerfed it.

      Here’s what Xypherous, an Associate Technical Designer, had to say about the change:

      What happened was that, very late in development, we decided to take a gamble to make his kit more cohesive. It paid off, because his abilities are now better, but the normal process of balancing took a major hit so his numbers were in a state of super flux. 😡

      So yeah, we decided to sacrifice a lot of things to make a solid champion a better one. I think I lost something like 40 hours of sleep the last week due to it. ~.~

      While I don’t think the nerf killed Renekton – he seems okay for melee, but definitely not the beast he could be – I do think it bred some bad blood between Riot and a lot of the community. Obviously I play the game a decent bit, so I usually have enough IP to buy whatever champ releases without spending real cash. For a lot of players, though, that’s not an option, so they wait on what information Riot gives prior to the champion release to make a decision about spending Riot points. There’s a big difference between the way Renekton looks like he’ll play and how he actually plays. He requires a very cautious touch, or a strong lanemate to be successful. Without those things, he’s going to struggle to stay on top of a game. That’s definitely not a champion I would spend $8 on.

      I’m not saying he should have been released as some crazy whirlwind of doom, rather that Riot should have either taken the time to change the Champion Spotlight, or delayed his release by a week in order to balance the champion. It would have been really easy to add a note to the YouTube video describing the changes in the appropriate place. Would it have looked as nice as the current video? Probably not, but it would have been an accurate representation of a product that people will spend money on. That’s really not so much to ask.

      Champions, Current Affairs, league of legends, News

      Riot to allow players to participate in the ban process

      January 17, 2011 /

      Tribunal.

      As I mentioned in yesterday’s post about Renekton, it’s been a busy few days. I finally got to catch up on the forums a couple days back and found a strange post in the Announcements forums. The post gave us the first look at Riot’s newest disciplinary strategy: crowdsourcing.

      Here’s the gist from ByronicHero:

      Permit me to introduce the Tribunal, a revolutionary system by which you, the players, are empowered to evaluate cases of bad behavior. Soon, when you log into your account on the League of Legends website, you will be presented with the option to review random player reports. Bundled with each report will be supporting information relevant to the case, such as chat logs and game stats. With these materials at your disposal, you will be asked to vote to either punish or pardon the reported player. Once a case receives enough votes in either direction, the case will be resolved. In accordance with the verdict, the reported player will receive either a pardon or be subject to disciplinary action.

      So why should you take part in Tribunal? Well, for starters, you will have the opportunity to help clean up the League of Legends community by ensuring that reports of player harassment are handled in a quick and timely manner. But if civic virtue isn’t incentive enough, we’re going to throw in an IP reward for each case in which you’re part of the majority vote.

      This is a strange system, though I’m not quite ready to pass judgement. This is definitely the most direct way I’ve seen a company deal with the complaints about disciplinary panels. Has anyone played another game with this type of system?

      There are a couple potential problems. First, by rewarding IP for the majority vote, it doesn’t necessarily encourage people to act fairly, just to act in groups. Granted, the easiest way to do that would be to vote on the evidence, but it wouldn’t exactly be difficult to organize large groups of voters to farm up IP. If the reward is large enough, I could easily see people doing just that.

      Then there’s the simple fact that you can grief players you don’t like. I’m hoping there’s some sort of pseudonym system, whereby reported players are given an alias for the review. Without that, it seems like your’e really asking for people to abuse the system.

      Those problems aside, though, it might be a decent way to get things done. The ban process is notoriously long and seems a bit useless when the bans don’t happen for several weeks or even months. This could make a things much quicker, which means players feel the penalty for poor behavior close enough to the behavior that, hopefully, they’ll wise up.

      Current Affairs, league of legends, News

      Ionian Boots of Lucidity are too much good for too little cost

      January 9, 2011 /

      chronokeeper_splash_2

      I spent a lot of my post on the caster item changes trying not to say anything definitive. This post is different. For this post, I know exactly how I feel and what needs to be said. The Ionian Boots of Lucidity are way too damn good for their cost. Period.

      My philosophy on AP used to be pretty simple; build spell penetration before AP. It was a more effective way to increase your damage output and the spell pen items were cheaper, in most cases, than the high-tier AP items. Basically, building a caster was always some sort of tradeoff, just like an AD toon. Instead of attack speed, damage, and armor pen, you want CD reduction, AP, and magic pen. Some people would say that the boots just balance out casters against AD toons, but I really think they’re too strong.

      The casters in the game have been balanced around the difficulty of obtaining cooldown reduction for a long time. Most of the CDR items were niche tools, designed to help against certain comps but not so great against others. The bread and butter of a CDR build used to be Frozen Heart, but it was only good against AD-heavy teams. Soul Shroud is a support item and wastes a lot of stat points for most casters, and Deathfire Grasp could typically be bypassed for a better AP item. Most casters I saw sat around 20-30 percent CDR and stacked AP. Now, I can have 30 percent CDR as soon as I make 900 gold, which can be as early as level four or five.

      For any champion who relies on a rotation of spells – Annie, Ryze, Zilean, to name a few – the boots are insanely good. If CDR is to AP what attack speed is to AD, then these boots are supposed to be equivalent to Berserker’s Greaves. The difference is that mages are built for a big burst and then a period where they don’t do a whole lot of damage before that big burst comes back up. Physical damage dealers rely on individual attacks for nearly all of their damage. Early in the game when their damage is low, Berserker’s Greaves don’t do so much. The Boots of Lucidity, on the other hand, do a lot.

      The changes to high-tier caster items already brought the mages in LoL in line with the AD carries for the most part. There are still a couple AD carries with kiting abilities that a mage can’t quite match, but for the most part, a mage’s damage output is just fine without giving them cheap access to cooldown reduction. I’ve lost one game as Zilean since the new boots released, and even in that loss I was better than 2:1 on my K:D ratio.

      Current Affairs, Editorial, league of legends

      Riot’s mum on new features for fear of stolen IP

      January 6, 2011 /

      Magma Chamber.

      Back in September, Riot teased a new map known as Magma Chamber. Since that teaser, which was basically just a name leak with a little concept art, we’ve heard next to nothing about the map’s release. Players have been getting restless recently, wondering when we’d see the new map, or any new feature for that matter. Just look at the forums. There are seemingly countless threads detailing some manner of unrest with the game.

      Even high-tier players feel the game growing stagnant. Elementz made a thread asking for information on Magma Chamber and other upcoming features. Here’s the response he got from Phreak:

      Because we’re doing other things that are awesome aside from just Magma Chamber. And when you’re kinda the biggest deal in a genre, people want to steal your ideas, kinda like how HoN 2 has “casual mode” with deny removed. I wonder where they got that idea from?

      We don’t want to give free ideas to our competitors if we have the chance. This doesn’t change our release plans for releasing awesome features for you guys, but it does mean you get left in the dark a bit longer than we’d like. We’re sorry for that, because we’d love to be “Here’s these awesome things we’re working on and here’s how they’re progressing.” But as tired as this refrain gets, trust me, it’s going to be freaking awesome and some of it’s coming really soon. I want so badly to tell you just how soon it is and what it is, but… oh man it’s really cool and you should be hearing about some if it shortly.

      Gah I hate having to use vague terms with you guys. Please just trust me <3

      Obviously, there’s not much to glean from that. Phreak is being intentionally vague and also intentionally personal – “Gah…<3" - presumably in the hope that it won't spark more controversy. I wouldn't count on it.

      Current Affairs, Development, league of legends

      The importance of community involvement

      December 30, 2010 /

      Tol Barad.

      If I had to pick one thing I love about Riot, it wouldn’t be the frequent champion releases, the skin sales, the contests, the fact that they provide a free game, the commitment to not sell power, or the long overdue Garen nerf (I am really happy about that last one, though). Out of all the things Riot does to give us a great game, the thing I love above all else is community involvement.

      Of all the developers I’ve seen, I can comfortably say that Riot does the best job of staying involved with the community and using the forums to quickly and consistently address player concerns as soon as they’re on the radar. Sure, there are a few places the Riot staff has dropped the ball, and the occasional trolling still upsets me, but by and large, Riot’s pretty great about keeping the player base informed about the design that goes into a game.

      The reason I decided to write this post today is actually because of Cataclysm. I know not many of you are playing, so I’ll try to cover the issue as briefly as possible. Blizzard made some major adjustments to the PvP system, most notably the way that you progress and earn gear. The honor system still exists but, unlike every other number system in the game, there has been point deflation. Items that used to cost tens of thousands of honor now cost 2200, max. A five-piece set of PvP gear now runs a total of 9900 honor. Obviously, battleground rewards have been scaled back, so players are earning less total honor, but about the same percentage related to gear as was the case in Wrath.

      Cataclysm also introduced another world PvP zone named Tol Barad. Like Wintergrasp before it, Tol Barad offers raid access to the faction that controls it, a fight for which is waged every two and a half hours. When it launched, the defending team had a massive advantage and was able to win nearly 100 percent of the battles. To counteract the issue, Blizzard increased the reward for successfully attacking Tol Barad by a factor of 10, literally. The assaulting faction now receives 1800 honor (more than the cost of several of the pieces of gear) for a victory instead of 180. It’s a big problem because it has artificially inflated the gear level for a lot of PvP players and made running battlegrounds seem paltry by comparison.

      The design issues this change raises belong to another post. The interesting part for the purposes of this post is that Blizzard hasn’t responded to the change at all, despite the fact that it just went live this past Tuesday. The latest blue posts are a full two and a half days old, one of which says we should look for a blog post after the new year discussing the design direction for Tol Barad. I realize two and half days isn’t that long, but this is prime playing time for a lot of people with the holidays in full swing and this change has already had major impact on the game, an impact that might be compounded if the fix is to re-nerf the rewards. It basically nullifies the gear reset for anyone who makes it to 85 after the change gets reverted.

      I have never wished Phreak was a Blizzard employee until now.

      Current Affairs, Editorial, league of legends, world of warcraft

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