Red Post Collection: 1/25 TFT Mid-Patch Update, Ask Riot: Lessons from Dev, & More

Today's red post collection includes a TFT mid-patch update, a new Ask Riot, including details on the Aatrox VGU, why most skins are part of thematics, and an update on the VGU vote, and more!

Continue reading for more information

• Red Post Collection: Shan Hai Scrolls launching Jan 28th, New Void Merch, and more!
• Champion & Skin Sale: Week of January 25th
• 1/25 PBE Update: Loot Assets & Tentative Balance Changes
• Free Champion Rotation, Week of January 26th
• 1/26 PBE Update: Tentative Balance Changes
• 1/27 PBE Update: More Tentative Balance Changes
• Shan Hai Scrolls Skins Now Available

Table of Contents

• 1/25 TFT Mid-Patch Update
• Ask Riot: Lessons from Dev
• Miscellaneous

1/25 TFT Mid-Patch Update

Here's a look at a TFT mid-patch update that went out on January 15th:

"1/25/2021 Balance Changes

Thanks for joining in on the party and providing ample feedback along the way. Most of these mid-patch balance changes should come as no surprise, cause y’all are the ones rooting for them. We’ll check in again soon, but for now let’s pull the feathers out of our clothes and get back to the party!

Champions

• Diana Pale Cascade Orbs: 4/5/7 ⇒ 4/5/6
• Rakan: fixed a bug where Rakan could start to gain Mana while his shield was still active near the end of its duration.
• Rakan Mana: 40/80 ⇒ 60/120
• Rakan Disarming Diversion Shield: 300/550/950 ⇒ 200/400/800
• Zed Contempt for the Weak Attack Damage Steal: 20/30/40% ⇒ 20/25/30%
• Aurelion Sol Voice of Lightning Damage: 350/550/1750 ⇒ 325/500/1750
• Xayah Mana Lock after spell cast duration: 1 second ⇒ 1.5 seconds
• Yone Seal Fate Armor/Magic Resist Shred: 40/40/40% ⇒ 60/60/80%

Tooltip Fix

• Katarina’s Tooltip has been bugged for a few patches, oops. The correct damage numbers for her spell, Death Lotus will now be accurate on the tooltip: 600/900/1650"

Ask Riot: Lessons from Dev

Here's the first Ask Riot of the year - "The Aatrox VGU, why most skins are part of thematics, and an update on the votes.":

"Welcome to Ask Riot

After a brief hiatus, we’re happy to say Ask Riot is back in session. So… let’s kick off the year with some questions about champions, VGUs, and skin thematics.

Also, please send us all your questions! It’s how we know what you care about. And it makes us happy.

Why are all of the skins you make now in a line (like Battle Queens) instead of unique ones for each champ?

There are a number of reasons why we've had more releases that are a collection of skins within a single thematic. One is that we're investing more into the world building and visual development of our thematics. Spirit Blossom is a great example of this, where we develop the thematic for some time, invest a lot of effort to build a creative foundation, then want to build more than just a couple skins in order to make sure we explore the thematic sufficiently for its initial release. Doing bigger "drops," or more skins per thematic release, also gives us more opportunities to bring lower playrate champions into major or new thematics—Spirit Blossom Kindred is a great example here.

This doesn't preclude us from making one-off skins. Sometimes there will be champs that just don't cleanly fit in the thematics we're developing, and we'll be keeping an eye out for single skin opportunities that we think players will really dig.

Riot Eggo McLego, Product Lead, Skins and Personalization Content

What happened to the VGU you announced that was going to come after Mundo? 

We ran into some unexpected delays and never really got started on the VGU we announced in September’s Champion Roadmap. As such, we decided to make good on our original promise, which was to let you all decide which champion we should update next.

The poll results are nearly in, and we’re excited to announce the winning champion—who’ll receive the next VGU after Dr. Mundo—next week. The winner of the thematic vote will also be revealed then.

Reav3, Lead Producer of Champions Team

What is one experience with creating or reworking a champion that led to a drastic change in how all champions were handled?

I don't know about a specific champion that led to a drastic change in how we handle ALL champs, but there was a VGU that changed how we handled all VGUs, and that was Aatrox.

Prior to Aatrox, new champions and VGUs had the same primary goal, which was to drive engagement. In other words, both VGUs and new champions were designed to get lots of players to play them, that way League consistently has fresh new gameplay, whether you're playing with, as, or against the champion. This doesn’t mean every champion has to be super popular—we sometimes create champs who we know will be niche but who we hope will have a dedicated player base.

New champions and VGUs had very different secondary goals though. For new champions, our secondary goal was (and still is) to expand League’s IP. For VGUs, our secondary goal was to build player trust in our dev team and keep League feeling up to date and modern.

Because our primary goal for VGUs was getting people to play the champions, we’d sometimes make choices that we felt would make the champs more engaging and exciting to the broader playerbase, even if it sometimes meant we had to make drastic changes to the champion’s play pattern or style. It’s easy to see fault in this approach now, but those were the goals that we thought made sense at the time. In any case, this is how we approached Aatrox’s update.

As such, we ended up with a champion with a much higher playrate amongst a dedicated playerbase, and if we were judging success solely based on our primary goal, then Aatrox was a success. However, the new engagement came at the cost of alienating a lot of old Aatrox players. It also made many players afraid for their favorite champions to get a VGU, in fear that we’d change them so far from what they love, they wouldn’t love them anymore.

After Aatrox’s update, we swapped the primary and secondary goals for VGUs. Player trust became (and remains) our primary goal—even if that means the champ ends up being a little less engaging or exciting for the broader playerbase.

In some ways, when we update a champion, we’re really updating something that’s no longer ours. It’s a character that sometimes millions of players have grown to love globally, and we want to make sure we do good by you all first and foremost.

This is part of the reason we’ve begun doing VGU polls. It’s also why we release multiple dev blogs throughout development so we can get earlier feedback from more players on the direction we’re headed, and make adjustments based on that feedback. We hope this new approach is something that can be felt in our most recent updates, and we hope that we can continue building trust between you all and the Champions Team.

Reav3, Lead Producer of Champions Team

Have a question? Head here, drop your question in the box, and ask away."

Miscellaneous

• Here's the Post-PBE cycle notes from the QA team for each skin on the PBE this cycle :

Chromas (1 / 2)

"Post-PBE cycle note:
- We decided to not make notable changes"

Withered Rose Talon

"1/22 update: Armblade is being made bigger on Tuesday, we're talking to the splash team about getting it tweaked. Thank you for your feedback!"

Withered Rose Syndra

"1/22 update: We heard you and we'll be adding a little flair to the unempowered E similar to what Pool Party Syndra has. We'll also see if we can add a smol glow to her dance!"

Crystal Rose Swain

"UPDATE

Thanks everyone for the feedback! Team had a look and we were able to make the following adjustment:

Crystal Rose Swain's Nevermore (E) VFX have been adjusted to deviate from Coven Zyra's Grasping Roots (E) VFX."

Crystal Rose Zyra

"UPDATE

Thanks everyone for the feedback! Team had a look and we were able to make the following adjustments:

• Crystal Rose Zyra's Garden of Thorns (P) seed VFX and Rampant Growth (W) seed VFX has been pushed to further differentiate between the (P) and (W) from both the Ally and Enemy POV.
• The issue that attached Crystal Rose Zyra's brow to her hair fringe, noticeable during Taunt (Ctrl+2), has been fixed.
• Crystal Rose Zyra's Deadly Spines (Q) plant model, coloring, and animation has been adjusted to address the "phallic" association."

Lunar Beast Aphelios

"EDITED TO ADD POST PBE NOTES

Aphelios Post-PBE Notes
Bugs & Bugfixes:

• Alune's portrait will be present on the HUD!
• Aphelios tooltips are crazy. There are some grammatical issues. They wont be fixed in time for his release.

Feedback:

• SFX on the Q & Auto-attack have been softened.
• Severum auto attack 'squeaking' fixed.
• We hear that you would like to hear a more satisfying sound on the Chakrams on Crescendum, however our audio peeps don't have the capacity to redesign this.
• We agree with you that the crit strike lacks some "oompfh", however this isn't a simple asset tweak for our audio team as the crit sound is shared across all of the guns. Due to this our audio folks don't have the bandwidth to experiment with the implications of changing this.
• After checking Alune's face on her ult we can confirm it is in the same position as on her default. So we wont be making any changes here.
• Also the horns, we are so sorry but we cant make them glow even though we know they would look super awesome. We really don't want to take away from the visual read of the guns. They are the most important read for Aphelios.
• We would like to maintain consistency across the Lunar Beast skinline with the scanline effect in his VFX. Due to the lower number of players that would actually see the distortion effect too, we would prefer to keep this as is.
• I'm still awaiting a final answer on the whether we can move Alune inside the portrait more in the loading screen. I wanted to give you a more definitive answer on this today, but I also didn't want to keep you waiting. The folks are busy working away on other splashes right now, but as soon as I can get an answer on this ill update this thread.
• I admire your post about adding more color to the Calibrum. The dedication to adding more color's to his kit made me chuckle (and almost cry)! The team agreed this would be information overload, but we commend you for trying!

I hope that we were able to offer a bit more clarity around our thought process and goals for our skins in our response to your feedback. We aim to do this with all of our PBE feedback going forward.

Thanks, GL and HF!

Riot Dead Thief"

Lunar Beast Alistar

"Post-PBE cycle note:

- Added firework particles on Pulverize (Q) and Unbreakable Will (R)"

Lunar Beast Annie

Post-PBE cycle note:

- Added firework particles on Disintegrate (Q) and Summon: Tibbers (R)

Lunar Beast Beast Darius

"Post-PBE cycle note:

- Added firework particles on Noxian Guillotine (R)"

Lunar Beast Fiora

Post-PBE cycle note:
- Added firework particles when procing Vitals from Duelist Dance (P) and all 4 on Grand Challenge (R)

Lunar Beast Fiora Prestige Edition

Post-PBE cycle note:

- adjusted Riposte (W) indicator colors to be easier distinguishable between empowered an unempowered states
- Added firework particles when procing Vitals from Duelist Dance (P) and all 4 on Grand Challenge (R)"

Lunar Beast Jarvan IV

Post-PBE cycle note:
- Added firework particles on Martial Cadence (P) proc and Cataclysm (R)"

• Riot Scruffy tweeted a changelist for patch 11.3:

"Updated 11.3 preview with almost finished changes.

Credit to the team that does these, they work tirelessly to deliver better and better patches every 2 weeks. These are really the lifeblood of League, constant attention to keep things balanced and fresh."

• Riot Captain Gameplay shared a full Jinx changelist over on twitter:

• Some of the TFT dev team hit up r/CompetitiveTFT for an AMA - "Set 4.5 AMA with the TFT Devs and Friends!":

"Welcome to the Festival!

We’re (part of) the team behind the Fates Mid-Set: The Festival of Beasts. We're taking some time out from all the festivities to answer your questions about the set’s design, mechanics, arenas, little legends, and all things TFT. But first off, let me introduce you to the squad who’ll be answering your questions:

• AliceOfClubs - Technical Game Designer; Not quite a Game Designer, not quite an Engineer, designs and implements traits, spells, and developer tools.
• Chaemirix - Game Designer; devs are like dolphins, and this one leads the set 4 pod.
• RiotStatikk - Game Designer; your live balance lead who cosplays Thanos in spirit only.
• Shynkr0 - Technical Game Designer; on the edge of engineering and design, they improve systems and tools for all dev pods throughout the sea.
• Riot_Mort - Lead Game Designer; if devs are like dolphins, Mort is the Ocean, keeping tabs on all sets at all times, even when you’re sleeping.
• firenrain20 - Game Producer; herds cats to ensure new content is delivered and makes sure the team is doing well! Waiting for a boba sprite to come along...
• RiotGreenTeej - Producer of Producers; Famous Set 1 Challenger player and tea enthusiast.
• Leelor - Our fearless User Experience (UX) leader making sure you know the chances of hitting a Chosen for each cost at each level. They empower your 'just hit' vibes with a mastery of UX!

This ensemble of our favorite people will begin answering questions at 11:30 AM PST, but you can add your questions to this post right away!

Links for general information about the Fates II Pass or a Gameplay Overview.

Edit: Wow, this has really BLOWN up to the point where our pages are taking forever to load. We're having a blast answering your questions so we'll stick around a bit longer (till 2:30 PM PST).

Edit: It's 2:32 here and we gotta get back to the Festival. Thanks for all your questions, passion, and excitement! Till next time!"

• Prime Gaming loot for January 25th is now available, with more coming February 4th and beyond!

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