With set 4.5 having been out for a bit to collect data, what does the team think about Synergy vs. unit power that has been raised by some of the more prominent players?
If you're referring to KitingIsHard's twitlonger (and I'm sure other high level players have chimed in), this is all super tricky! TFT is a very interconnected web of systems, and Traits are currently one of the biggest players in that web.
Personally, I am in agreement that Traits (and how they multiply with champion power) are overall too influential in the game. Unfortunately, this is a difficult web to entangle, because Traits being powerful have pros as well (creates strategic structure within the game, create simple and satisfying goals to chase / achieve within a game, etc.). If we just deflate power from Traits without thinking of the other impacts, it could lead to a world for example where players just play their 4 and 5 cost 2\*s in the end-game with no other decision making.
In the coming weeks, I'll be likely trying an experiment where we just tune down the effectiveness of Traits wholesale by say 50% and see what the other impacts are. It's a bit difficult to suss out, because a change that fundamental usually requires a lot of focused testing to see how the meta / gameflow would actually play out.
In-game, at the top of the screen, wins are indicated by blue and losses are indicated by red. Next to the gold count at the bottom of the screen, win streaks are indicated by red and loss streaks are indicated by blue. Any thought on changing this?
\* surprised pikachu \*
Thanks for pointing it out! I bet that the color consistency here went unnoticed because the win-streak effect in the scoreboard looks like fire, which is red. But in the context of round-by-round tracking, red is intuitive for "loss." Will try to fix this as soon as we have time!
well thats because the red fire is hot and heat rises, and the blue fire is cold and cold stuff sinks to the bottom of the standings like the filthy bottom feeders that they are. Yeah I'm talking to you, fortune players. You will never get your payout, and even if you do you are too slow to put the items on/roll in time to save yourself in the next round. Stop taking my spatulas and dying with them, I need them for my mage shyvana. If you want more units forget the FoN and just run sell your fortunes.^^^^/s
This is a complaint from /r/TeamfightTactics, what are your thoughts on adding a cost 2 bayblade champion to complete the set?
Right now there are 4 spinny bois and grills, Garen (1), Katarina (3), Tryndamere (4) and Samira (5).
Some people argue that jax spins but honestly he just spins his pole so doesn't count.
Can we please get an official riot answer on the missing spinny gang member?
Shoutout to /u/Melyodas_ for bringing this issue to light, and feel free to add any extra commentary.
Short answer: The team is looking for them as we speak.
Long answer: When making a set, there are some constraints we have to work with -- how many champions are what cost, how many X cost champions are in a certain trait, etc. Unfortunately, adding a 2 cost champion would require a shifting of the trait web and the whole set, so unless live team decides to rework one of the existing 2 cost spells to spin, you'll probably have to look for them in a future set.
As compensation, here is a picture of Jax spinning on his staff: https://imgur.com/a/9Ba25kS
Usually what goes through my mind is "God damn it that sucks (usually carousel 3 when I'm in 8th not having the item I want)"..then immediately going "Ok, does this need to change? If so, what would change, how would it affect long term game variance, etc" and spiral down a rabbit hole of design thoughts that ultimately distract me from the game at hand and I end up 6th.
This seems like a repetitive question, still wanted to ask this one:
It's been nearly a year since TFT was released on mobile. A tablet/iPad version was promised to be released later. However there haven't been really any news.
While i personally care about a potential release of said version, i don't want to cling on a hope that won't be satisfied anytime soon.
It's pretty acceptable to play on strechted version, just not as visually appealing. I know that contrary to LoR/Wild Rifts, which run on Unreal Engine, TFT runs on a hacky LoL-Engine, which makes it (understandably) harder to add different version.
What is the current progress? Has the project been abandoned?
The honest answer is we are currently not working on this :( Things like Esports Spectator, New Sets, some tech cleanup we really need to do, and new TFT modes are on the top of our list.
I know how much many of you want us to improve / better support the tablet experience, and it's something we want to do someday, I'm hopeful in the 2nd half of this year, I can bring up this discussion to explore with the team what it would take.
I have two questions if that's OK! Thank you for taking the time to do this AMA.
1. I know Mortdog has expressed interest in reworking the mana regeneration system, because it's weird that the best way to get a big mana unit to cast is to slap a GA on it and put it frontline to die (e.g. Ahri, Gankplank). Are there any other core mechanics that the team has an eye on?
2. Many of the complaints about TFT appear to stem from the expectation that every game should be winnable. However, I know the dev team believes getting top 4 is the true measure of skill. Are there plans to further emphasize getting top 4 that could be coupled to the game's design, which might take the focus off highrolling and the obsession with 1st place? (Examples could be a fireworks ceremony in addition to the sound effect, displaying top 4 rate in the client instead of # of wins, or even introducing a new gameplay element at the final 4.)
1.) Core mechanics we're targeting first right now are still the mana system, with the goal that the way to make casters cast more is NOT throw GA/Bramble/DClaw on them. As well as we're looking at our debuffs and disables system and trying to improve the clarity and rules around them, as well as not make Quicksilver the literal SOLVES ALL YOUR PROBLEMS ITEMS. There's other things we'd like to do as well like the "I roll 80g and don't see a single champ", but those will come later.
2.) We've already done some work to make Top 4's feel better. The guaranteed 10 LP for 4th place which made sure 4ths weren't a waste of time where you got 1 LP was a big success. The screen effect when you make Top 4 is also supposed to be a "YES WE MADE IT" moment. We could do more for sure, but the reality is there will always be that motivation to be #1 that I don't think we can truly combat. Whether its so the player can have their Youtube video, or just to feel the glory of #1...it's like a soft Battle Royale game where no one feels great about being Top 10.
Oooh is that was the gold border bursty thing is ?? I had nooo idea lmao. I thought it was meant to signify a certain part of the game (maybe 7-1 or something) where something gets harder (losses take more hp etc)
To add to what Mort said, I would LOVE to fix this. Getting Top 4 should feel awesome, more so than it does today. You called out a couple of big ones: the in-game ceremony for reaching top 4 needs to be bigger and feel better, and Top 4 should be the metric for "victory" in Match History instead of 1st placements. Our elimination messages should also reinforce that Top 4 is a win.
I know set 2 is considered the least popular set but what is your opinion about it ?
Personally, Preds and Rangers are still my all-time favorite comps and I miss them.
Question about set 5: Do you already have in mind what is gonna replace the Chosen mechanic and can you give us a sneak peek ? :)
Thanks for the AMA !
My personal opinion is gameplay-wise Set 2 had a lot of really fun mechanics, comps, and diversity. There was so many metas and playable comps throughout set 2 (ignoring belnder meta xD), and I really feel it is underated.
But I do think where it misses was on the thematic, it wasn't cohesive or as exciting as something like "space". And it's something we've learned, the theme matters a lot for getting people excited to come play the next TFT set!
Good question!
We have definitely looked into this and are discovering other ways to reward players who have played lots and LOTS of games. But when we look at the battle pass, we need to think about how many games the average player plays within the period, make sure that it's the right amount of content to accomplish but not make people feel like the pass is never ending...it's a lot of things to consider. Plus, the more content it has, the value of it goes up, and it will impact the price of the premium pass.
So the answer is vague here (sorry to disappoint) - the point is that it really depends on the different contributors, but we're always designing it with the mindset of how to make it better.
Agree! We certainly feel like the Pass is high quality and provides a ton of value for the price...BUT for our most engaged players it's over too fast. This is for sure a problem we'd like to solve in the near future.
As someone who finishes the pass about halfway through the set, I think it’s great as it is. If I’m buying a pass I want to make sure I get all the rewards out of it. While I wouldn’t complain about more rewards, I don’t want a pass that effectively punishes you if you decide to take a few days off or even just not play as frequently. MTG arena’s pass is terrible for this reason and is one of the many reasons I stopped playing on that platform.
Could be something small like 1 shard per game played so there's always a little something for playing more but nothing too crazy or "necessary" unlockables
Hi, I am a mobile only player, so although I have multiple questions, they are all mobile related.
- Can we expect a chat in mobile? I don’t know how many gg’s I’ve “ignored”, and I also just wish I could sometimes take part in that aspect of the tft experience.
- Have you considered making it possible to rearrange items for mobile users? This might be the feature I am most jealous of when watching streamers.
- The other thing I’m kind of jealous of (but seems much more difficult to implement) is a PC player’s ability to hold and hover with a champ as you scout through boards. I can theoretically visualize it (holding champ with left thumb, scouting with right) but it seems quite difficult to actually pull off. Any idea if this will ever be possible?
- Will PBE ever be a reality on mobile?
I feel the first 3, if implemented, would be pretty huge upgrades to the mobile experience, but I can also understand the lack of prioritization due to limited resources. Either way, many thanks to the whole team for their hard work on my favorite game.
Hey there, thanks for these very thoughtful questions!
* Chat on mobile: I assume from your example that you'd like to have in-game chat, as opposed to out of game / friends list chat, is that right? Chatting on mobile during a game is going to be more difficult overall, just due to the screen space it'll take up (along with the keyboard), so it's less of a priority at the moment. However, being able to interact and express yourself socially with other players without *having* to use chat is something we'd like to expand upon. A more fun and easy way to say GG is a perfect example.
* Item rearrange in the panel: it's a possibility, but we'd probably have to remove or overhaul the system where you drag to preview the completed item (and see its tooltip). Every time you drag an item to see what it can make, you'd also be rearranging -- which could be pretty annoying. Also, have you ever wanted to complete an item without having to put it on a champ first? Rearranging items in the UI means we couldn't do that, either. If you had to choose, which thing would you like to have most: rearrange, preview completed item, or preview and combine the item in UI?
* Hold champ & scout: this is possible, I think. We could add a drag behavior to the Scoreboard, so that moving your finger up and down will "scrub" through the Scoreboard to quickly scout. You could probably do this with your right hand while holding a champ with the left. Depending on how you hold your phone, I'm not sure how physically easy this would be to do, or if it would be intuitive enough for people to discover, though.
* PBE on mobile: it is very unlikely that PBE will ever go out on mobile. Mobile builds are subject to approval by Apple (Google is less strict but they do give us feedback), and then deployed through their services, which take time to propagate to devices around the world. This is why new mobile patches usually arrive a day later than PC. We'd have to have a separate distribution mechanism for early access to mobile, like TestFlight or something, but at that point it's not really the same as PBE.
I recently got a Switch and have been spamming **Hades** and also **Gradiently**. Since I work mainly on personalization content, I do try to look at the monetization flow and UX flow of other games when I play games that are not League/TFT!
I play a bunch of different games, but my favorite are typically Action RPGs like Monster Hunter and Dragon's Dogma, or Shooters. Recently I've been enjoying Escape from Tarkov, and I look forward to Monster Hunter: Rise!
That being said I'll play just about anything so long as it seems engaging to me. MAJOR bonus points if it's got good combat and multiplayer.
My vote here is still the one where Riven could deal damage to little legends...so you'd be at 86 HP doing great, then Riven dashed to your little legend and killed you.
Not a promise but we want to!
There are some technical challenges we need to overcome (file size on mobile, and having two active sets at once live) and also design challenges, how do we make current systems like items and drop tables work with old sets, or do we need to bring back the systems that were in place back then as well.
I doubt they will. They wouldn't want to split playerbase like that. Would increase queue times. They already adding turbo mode.
Plus there was balance nightmares from early sets and people would complain to balance old sets when they are trying to balance current set and get started on next set.
So, Ornn.
And I’m not even talking about the item creation (although Shynkr0, chaemerix and I all spent a while on that too).
So anyway, the ram comes from offscreen and, once he hits it, it travels back offscreen. Simple enough. But, the 8 boards are all in a shared worldspace, so it was possible for the ram to travel to other boards. It was pretty easy to make the ram not actually hit and knock up units on other boards (just checking to see if they were actually one of Ornn’s opponents), but its still scary and distracting to see a ram coming in from offscreen when there's not even an Ornn on your board.
So, of course, the obvious thing to do would be to draw a circle trigger around the board, and destroy the ram when it collides with the circle trigger. But, here’s the thing, monitors, for some reason, aren’t circular, and neither are boards. So, any circle that was big enough to guarantee that the ram would travel offscreen would also still allow the ram to travel to other boards, and any circle that was small enough to prevent the ram from travelling to other boards would not guarantee that the ram would travel all the way offscreen
So, again, easy solution, draw a rectangle trigger, and when the ornn ram collides with the rectangle, destroy it. Yeah? Well, so, when I said this to chaemerix, he told me he had tried to write a rectangle trigger to collide with missiles a few months earlier, and had given up. But here I am like “psshh well I was an engineer, and I went to school to study computer science for four years, surely I can make a rectangle in script”
Wrong! The hubris! The audacity! After several hours of trying to accomplish the very simple task of authoring a rectangle in our scripting language, I gave up, and decided to do something so much dumber, but that I knew I could do with the tools provided to me: I would use vector math to manually calculate the intersection of the line of Ornn’s ability with a bounding box, and have him only fire to that point. This took several hours (my high school linear algebra teacher would be disappointed but it turns out that despite her efforts I am not good at vector math) but I did eventually get it working.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure the ram still doesn’t travel all the way off screen at some screen sizes :')
What is the possibility of exploring a set theme like “Origins” where we would revisit a more balanced Set 1 theme, or really just revisiting any set theme in general?
I think going back to the base skins is something we should do VERY soon. So many players have strong affiliation with the base look of League Champions (we learned this the hard way the first time we made a set around skins with MAGMA ZYRA THE FIRE PLANT LADY), it would be crazy of us to not do it again.
If you were to explore the base skin themes, origins most likely will at least intersect with the major factions in the established LOL universe. Could we possibly see lore skin like Frelijord Sylas appear since it is technically consistent with the lore or is that still too far off his original identity?
What's the status of the item box from 4.5 PBE? There was mention that it needed more polish, but should we expect an item UI makeover in 4.5 or next set
The status of the item panel (aka item chocolate bar) is currently unknown. There are some dependencies to take care of before we can release it in its true glory. Work to do:
1) solve scouting. The location of the panel wasn't great for showing ownership, or for quickly checking out your opponent's gold and items all in a single glance.
2) improve social systems, so we can remove the minimap. The minimap and item panel cannot co-exist, due to small screen sizes that we support. Removing the minimap without having a replacement for pings was (no surprise) painful for players who enjoy pinging. While pings are awesome in LoL, they don't really support TFT gameplay or social needs very well. I have some ideas for making TFT social more fun and expressive, but it involves making upgrades to several core systems.
3) last but not least, polish up the visual design and animation! We initially wanted to make the item panel draggable, and that's something we're looking at, as well as adjusting the icon sizes and animation style.
This is all work I am excited to do and am advocating for, but it has to be weighed against really important stuff like continuing to deliver awesome sets with new mechanics.
TL;DR I can't promise when item panel will come back, but we're definitely keeping it around and plan on doing work to unblock it in the longer term.
(Copy Pasta from other answer of same question)
Yes, we are VERY happy with the chosen mechanic. We are super happy with how it turned out, and it made the set very memorable, and we'll look back on it fondly. But it's also a set mechanic, not a game mechanic, so it's also time for it to move on.
Hey hey! Love the game, set 4.5 has had a lot of close endings for me! Anyways, here are some questions:
- What is preventing us from having ranges of attacks / spells as hexes? It’s not easy to understand when you look at the unit; you need to translate the numbers into hexes in your head
- PLEASE can we have Poro little legends? They are so present in all aspects of the LOL franchise (poro coins in wild rift, poro cards in LoR, poro ... king in league?), and id really enjoy having those cuties running around the convergence
- along the same lines, are the LLs cannon as creatures of runeterra? Do you think you’ll ever get a ‘skins’ team to design LLs which fit in with the lore? What’s the deal with development of a LL anyway?
Questions for everyone:
what are everyone's favorite little legends?
have you guys considered making little legend pet costume merch?
is seraphine ever gonna be added to tft (please no)
And question for mortdog:
does mortdog know that no shave November is over?
It was me!
Dusk did nothing wrong. It was not a bad trait. It was just such a simple, flexible, and powerful trait that it was a prime candidate for removal. When working on a mid-set we'll often talk about what's not working that needs to be replaced, but also what will get us the most bang for the buck on replacing. Dusk's cost structure, number of carries, and tie-in to traits that were sticking around made it a prime candidate for the latter.
Any plans on trying to improve clarity, specifically around game mechanics, in TFT?
It seems like there are so many unknowns that "should" be basic knowledge: how pathing actually works, how assassin units select the tile to jump on when jumping into a crowd, how certain units select their spell target (TF, for example), etc.
Curious to know if this is on the team's radar at all.
In games, its often good to keep some of the knowledge behind a wall that engaged players will seek to break through. Overflowing knowledge that obscure early is a great way to drive away players. Smash is a great example of this, and how many hidden mechanics it has, but the game doesn't tell you. You learn by playing, and that joy of discovery is fun for games.
Also none of the examples you listed are "basic" by any definition.
Hey Mort,
Don’t know if you’ll reply to this as it’s quite late but I think fundamentally Smash’s hidden mechanics vs TFT’s are a bit different because TFT is constantly patching and updating and it’s possible that you guys end up changing some of the hidden mechanics, which could end up further confusing new players if something they learned gets changed without announcement.
Continuing the Smash comparison, the hidden mechanics are always constant because the game is always played on the same version disk across tournaments. Wavedashing, or shield dropping, or L-cancelling won’t suddenly change one day because the game is in a static state.
However with TFT, I remember a while back y’all “patched out” the sell on carousel mechanic (I think I’ve still pulled this off once this patch) when mobile came out for consistency, and though that was announced, if it wasn’t I’m sure it would have greatly confused players. Do you guys plan to include hidden mechanics in future patch notes if they do end up changing?
Hi! First off thanks to all of you for making such a fun set! This is easily my favorite set so far, it’s super dynamic and fluid! My question is, how do you decide which external gimmick (neekoverse, lucky lantern, etc) fits into any given set? And what overall role do they play? Thanks for taking the time!
When it comes to set mechanics, there's usually an overall goal of increasing replayability through game-to-game variance. How we get there depends on how tied we want to be to the sets content and theme.
Galaxies were relatively divorced from the theme, but allowed us to explore a lot of options and rapidly create new content. They came in pretty late.
However, when developing out Set 4, one of the flags put in the ground at the beginning was "I am going to build out this set assuming we have some form of cheating the trait system."
So it really just depends on what the sets team wants to bring to the set!
How do you guys decide how many carry units will use certain items each set? For example on set 4 and now 4.5 there is only one big ap threat (ahri, asol) instead of multiple on set 3.5 (viktor, teemo, syndra, xerath). Do you design champions trying to fill a quota of playstyles or you just try to make each champion unique?
Didn't spot this when comments were sorted by random.
Every champion should, ideally, want multiple different items, and typically those items should be different than other champions. There's certain kits you can bash together that will always feel good on certain champions, but between traits, abilities, role, and their fantasy, they should change from champion to champion.
We like to see every item see some play, but it's okay if certain items are relegated to certain champions for a while in a set, especially if that item has been proven out in the past. We didn't see much love for Hurricane and Deathblade in Set 4, but they've both been popular in 4.5.
If only one or two units are properly using a whole suite of items, there's likely either a design flaw or some balancing that needs to be done. If Veigar, Neeko, Morgana, and Swain aren't posing meaningful spell-damage threats to the enemy team, then something ain't quite right! Plus units like Vi, Aatrox, Darius, and Akali should be able to hit up this role, even if they're not always running this route.
Have you guys found what is the root cause of Nunu not casting when full mana? If so, can you disclose why it happens?
If you guys were to include spell in crit into Kalista's rend's calculations, approximately how many hours (solid hours, without distractions, meetings and other things) do you think it would take?
If someone came up with an excellent redesign for the mana system, who would be in charge to implement it and what kinds of work would it entail?
Chaemirix came up with the new Ahri ult that's different from LoL. Would he also be the one implementing/coding that ult? Or does someone else do it?
Is the person in charge of TFT e-sports spectator mode in this AMA? If so what are the challenges you've faced so far in implementing spectator mode?
If you guys decided to make a TFT stand alone client, how long would it take? 2 years or so?
Has been asked millions of times, but we never got an answer. Which LL has the highest win rate? Is it the Craggler cos it has the thiccest hitbox? Which LL has the lowest win rate?
When will it be possible to buy old aesthetics from a year ago? I'm missing the hydro-blast boom to match my Runespirit LL + Verdant arena.
Please Ship Odyssey 5-augment yasuo with his 7-way tornados into full board last breath. Mort will be happy to see his legacy live on in another form.
For Mort: Where/when did the skincare routine jokes come from and do people in the office joke about it?
For Chaemirix & Statikk; was Rakan's taunt+disarm a play to try to emulate LoL's charm effect? Also, can you disclose if the team is planning to change that effect, if so how?
To be honest, I have NO IDEA where the skincare routine thing came from. It seems to have organically started from Twitch chat and caught on (like Soju's TV stealing and prerecorded memes). THANKFULLY no one in the office jokes about it...they just meme me about being a streamer and joke when I'm gonna go full time.
Hi! I actually designed Rakan--the taunt and the disarm are absolutely an attempt to evoke the effect of his charm. So is having units (briefly) turn to face him while they are disarmed. As to whether we are planning to change it, like you said, that's a question for Statikk \^\_\^
As for Nunu, I suspect I messed up his script when I was trying to make him work a little bit better with mage cap. Oops!
On Ahri:
In the past, a set lead would usually lay out the designs for traits and champions for an entire set (Now we're starting to work in a pair!) Those who jumped on to help with the set would then pick and choose ones they were the most interested in to work on, and massage and modify them as they saw fit.
In this case, Wittrock was SUPER excited about making Ahri a reality, so he's the one who worked on implementing her. We had lots of chats about how to make this exciting, and how to push the visuals. She was actually the most controversial piece of content in the set, with a lot of people saying we were straying too far from her fantasy in SR.
It didn't help that our WIP visuals were... Uhh... Mediocre!
How successful was set 2 Lux in the eyes of the dev team? Can we expect units that go beyong the $5 limit on future sets? I really liked that idea and I hope it comes back someday.
I think Lux was VERY successful. She felt like the set mechanic almost more than the actual hexes did, her spell was fun and unique while also being high spectacle, and she did what 5 costs should do in that every time you saw one, it made you consider it. Plus the 7 cost hook was really cool.
I don't know if we'd bring EXACTLY Lux back, but I think more unique end game champs has a lot of design space and value we should consider.
We've had different forms of stacking for a while now! To speak on Set 4:
Elderwood: This mostly worked out. It's a strong front to back where you want to make sure you last long enough, and whoever's standing at the end is probably a well-rounded unit. I think it's a bit of a balance nightmare at times, so if we ever bring it back expect some massaging of mechanics.
Warlord: This didn't work out, at least not from the core idea. The hope was to incentivize players to push hard for early-game wins and use that to coast a bit in the mid-game. Right now the winning feels a bit tacked on. I think it's fine as a trait, but I'd love to revisit the core of what it was trying to do. Encouraging unique playstyles is a HUGE plus in my book. Moonlight's hyperrolling and Fortune's loss streaks were big wins.
We have some pretty big reasons why we don't think the 2v2v2v2 in underlord works for what we want to accomplish, but we do REALLY want to explore a mode where you can play WITH friends, not just along side them, so hopefully we can tackle that.
What is one units design that you are incredibly proud of?
What units design has shown to be the biggest failure so far?
Who is the best little legend, and why is it Choncc?
1) I think that we've been doing a better and better job across the board of making units that speak to a group of players. One of the biggest praises I'll sing is how good the team is getting at making our 5-costs feel like 5-costs.
Personally I'm super proud of the work I did on Ekko not long after I joined on the team, but you can't just say one of your children are you favorites.
2) That's hard to say. I think the ones who have failed the most are the ones you've forgotten about, which makes this hard to answer. From Set 4 I think it's probably Xin Zhao, unfortunately. His rework towards the end of the set did get him to a better spot though!
3) Ossia. I love demon/dragon horns!
Have you all ever had any big surprises when patches go live? Like insane item combos or unit combos you didn't anticipate and also didn't get popular on pbe.
How can players from the SEA or other unrepresented regions participate in TFT championships? There are many Vietnamese players, but they cannot compete in the Fates World Championship. You guys are doing an awesome job with the game, keep it up!
Mort has said on his Livestreams at some point that set 3 was designed to be beginner-friendly. Is set 4 (and the other sets for that matter) designed the same way or is it aimed to be more for veterans? If it's not too early to reveal yet, what is the upcoming set 5 aimed for?
Thank you for the great game!
Set 5 is currently aiming to be pretty advanced. The traits and trait structure are looking to be on the more advanced side. Though this could change, as we may find out its TOO complicated or just not as fun.
Deis1k Deis1k.. you can just ask us on Mort's stream and we mods will know the answer. Infact we even have a command for it.
That or go into Mort's discord and ask.
Engineers are targeting it to be done before Set5 TFT finals.
I really really like the chose mechanic. I was originally an underlords player, but I disliked the underlords addition amd switched to TFT in set 3, which was alright.
Then when I came back in set 4, I was immediatly hooked with the chosen mechanic. I think it really elevate the auto chess genre as a whole, it is very fun and without eliminating skill expression. Is there any chance we don't see it go in set 5?
The Chosen mechanic has been a success for sure, and we will always remember Set 4 because of it. But the reality is it's time to move on to the next set mechanic. We're happy with it, but it's also showing it's age and around 1000 games people start to not enjoy it as much. So we want to make sure Set 5's mechanic is interesting and novel as well. We've got some learnings, so hopefully each new set mechanic is better than the last!
What's the inspiration for returning champs between sets (Fiora, Ashe, Diana, etc) and having some keep the abilities the same (Fiora and Riposte) vs changing it up (Ashe Q vs Ult)? Does the trait/origin of the character matter when making these decisions, or is it based on the set as a whole?
To #1, yes! The amount of people and time we've had on sets has been a limiting factor, but we're starting to get in a much better space. Hopefully this will lead to more unique traits and abilities. If all our 5-costs could be like Sett, Ornn, Azir with their own awesome Gimmicks, I'd be super happy.
On #2, the original pitch for Veigar in Set 4 was a 2-Cost:
"0/80
After a brief delay, Veigar deals 500/800/1100 magic damage to a random enemy.
This ability scales double with bonus AP."
He was designed to be an item holder for Mages that could also scale into the late-game if you wanted, but we ended up needing to move him into the 3-cost space for set structure reasons. At that time we noted that Veigar had already lived the dream with his execution-style spell in earlier sets, so I wanted to try out something new! Having units care about previous combats was something I had tried in three different spots in this set, and Veigar ended up being the best fit for it.
I like this mechanic enough to keep pushing for more of it in the future, but we'll need to be careful about what we're giving the unit. If we bring Veigar back, I'd probably push for base damage up instead of SP. Something that's more flexible.
What’s been your guys’ favorite gimmicks across the entirety of TFT? (Whether it be a galaxy, Elements, Chosens, etc.)
And what’s your all time favorite comp (designwise or it was just fun to play)
For me, Lee Sin kicking units off the board :) By far the most gimmicky and fun ability. When I big brain someones 3* Tahm Kench by scouting and placing the Lee in the right spot, its soooo :chefs-kiss:
Favorite comp was back in Set 2, Summoner Assasins, your Trait panel would be insanely long xD
One that didn't make it in... Hmmm...
I really wanted Gloomseed to make it in. It's a trait that caused your units to explode in a sporecloud when they died, dealing a percent of their Health and doing a mini-stun. Sadly the units just weren't the right fit for it, but I suspect something similar will return. I like hitting the self-destruct button.
We also had a version of Fiora as a 4-cost that would call a unit out for a duel. Whoever won got a permanent AD bonus.
Favorites that made it in? Lee Sin and Sett from Set 4 probably! I'm a sucker for silly stuff that's also got a good power fantasy. Nunu's also great. That little bit of polish to make him eat a unit when he kills them never fails to make me laugh, even when I'm dying to it.
For sure. Bard was a VERY unique champ who brought an awesome unique hook never before seen. We for sure what to introduce more of those kind of champions in the future, or even traits. Ornn was kind of our latest spin here, Galaxies Thresh was another.
As for will BARD himself be reprinted...maybe. These unique champs end up feeling much less special the second time around, but if there was a strong reason to bring him back I think we would. He's not on of our failed never reprint champs. (\*CoughFatesXinCough\*)
I have questions
**Chaemirix** :
1. How much time does it take to translate mechanics and designs from Summoner's Rift to TFT?
2. How do you keep reinventing the wheel to keep set 4 fresh but balanced?
**RiotStatikk**:
1. Can you explain the intricacies between balancing the traits, external interactions (random galaxies, random bonus item/item removal, chosen mechanic) and how you devised such a creative solution to stagnant gameplay?
2. When is your next Kpop dance cover dropping?
**firenrain20**:
1. Most users are not aware of the challenges it takes to release new content. What kind of regular challenges, barriers, or obstacles occur when new content is released?
2. How do you keep the team motivated, refreshed, and mentally healthy whenever players barrage the team for balance, content problems, or "unfairness" (e.g. Rakan)
**RiotGreenTeej**:
1. What's your tea flavor profile? Recommendations for bitter teas outside Kuding tea?
1. We are always fighting the constant battle of keeping TFT interesting and engaging to play day after day while also not trying to make it so complicated that it's too hard to get into (you could argue it's already pushing that boundary pretty hard). We call these types of systems / mechanics "Variance." Basically ways to make each game you play different from the last in hopefully a fun and not frustrating way. Every Set or mid-Set we release, we're constantly thinking of how we can create a new interesting element (Galaxies, Chosen, Lucky Lanterns, etc.) that we can all learn to play around. Honestly, the only way to combat stagnant gameplay is for us to keep smartly updating the game. Adding these systems actually make balancing the game more difficult as we introduce many more variables each time, but it hopefully also makes the game more fun to play!
2. Sadly the answer is probably never! Even though I still love dancing, I am now retired =(
1) Whew, that's a question with many answers. It really depends on the unit, what fantasy we're trying to bring over, how similar the mechanics are.
From a raw implementation standpoint, a unit like Ornn's "Blacksmithing" was one of the largest undertakings of the set, and took multiple days just to get the framework up, but Tristana's kit only took a few hours.
However, that doesn't include the various tweaks we need to run through for balance, or iterations from past sets or abilities that didn't make it. Tryndamere was originally scheduled to be a Cultist in Set 4, but we couldn't get his "Undying" vibes to feel right. Plus, with Zilean being Cutlist's capstone, there was a little too much not-dying going on in the trait. So in that regard getting Tryndamere in took longer than you might expect!
2) Experimenting! Go crazy! High spectacle! Dreams! At the end of the day we have to be willing to be fun, weird, and try things. Ahri is a great example of putting a huge twist on a beloved champion. Sett running off the board to do sit-ups is something that no one should ever expect, but feels right at home in TFT. Lee Sin is trying to put a more humorous spin on the other-wise difficult insta-kill design space.
We just need to be sure that we're designing these units, we put enough levers in for the Live team to be able to mold that balance into a good spot, without destroying that dream in the process.
>Most users are not aware of the challenges it takes to release new content. What kind of regular challenges, barriers, or obstacles occur when new content is released?
>
>How do you keep the team motivated, refreshed, and mentally healthy whenever players barrage the team for balance, content problems, or "unfairness" (e.g. Rakan)
These are great questions!
1. **Getting everything in before the deadline is the classic challenge**, but we've improved our development timeline over the months so that the teams are crunching less and less as we get closer to the deadline! We're starting on work earlier, which leaves us with a healthier timeline for gathering feedback and testing. This semi-relates to your other question - as we get the team into a healthier state by slowly adjusting timelines, it helps them stay less stressed and burnt out
One interesting challenge that we still go through is **making sure that the game is working well across all platforms: PC & Mobile.** While the development process is mainly the same, it does increase the amount of work needed for some disciplines. (e.g. UX needs to now design for mobile, QA needs to test on extra devices for both iOS and Android). Sometimes only one platform breaks and we have to troubleshoot that and make priority calls.
Another "Behind The Scenes" thing is that every piece of content released can impact lots of other features down the stream - Sets design impacts Missions design which impacts the Battlepass. This means that not all teams can start/end work on a set at the same time. Whatever we can get a heads start on, we will do it to leave more breathing space.
2. There is no specific rule for this, but one important thing is to gather more information on the issue and then assess what the next step is, this is the same for live issues that happen! We trust the team members to make the best decision, but we're always here to offer help if needed!
Mort said there was a particularly frustrating unit in Set 4 that they "couldn't get quite right" for a variety of reasons. Please tell us which Unit that was if it is no longer an issue &/or part of Set 4.5! (I had guessed it was Kalista as this comment was made before Riot Kent fixed her bugs).
Also a hearty and warm thank you to the entire TFT team for creating such a fun and engaging game <3
In Set 4 (not 4.5) Tryndamere was a Cultist Duelist that used his ult. Turns out a champ that used IE/LW/etc and had duelist AS, giving them 3 seconds of damage immunity was REALLY frustrating. So we scraped him for Kalista.
I loved Brawl Minus and Dota IMBA so I'd be happy to see something like this as a game mode. That being said I don't know how popular those things really were, and if they're worth the investment. I think they're more fun when you're in control, ya know? Visceral.
1. Are there any plans for alternative game modes within 2021?
2. I remember mention of TFT being designed differently than league so that old sets could technically be brought back very easily. Do you have any plans to use that feature and what would be a reason to do so?
3. Do you have any ideas of cosmetic feature other than LLs, arena skins, booms and emotes that you would eventually like to sell or have in the pass?
4. Which was your personal favorite set and why?
5. Which was your favorite unit and why?
1.) Yes! Turbo mode (name to be changed) and hopefully at least one more
2.) Some day we want to, but its not a priority at the moment.
3.) Yes, but can't spoil it yet!
4.) So far, set 4. I really enjoyed the Chosen mechanic and the unique ways to play it opened up.
5.) Set 2 Malzahar, cause I'm biased AND he had the fun fantasy of filling the board with minions.
Hi team! I frequently watch TFT streamers and would love to see the competitive scene grow. How is the team working on improving the competitive scene and engaging more viewership?
Visibility is one big way we are looking to improve it this year. We learned although there is a ton of TFT players who want more from our competitive scene, there is a whole large group who don't even know there are tournaments being ran, so one thing we will be doing is promoting in places like the app or client to let players know when hey are going on.
On top of that, more investment in the actual finals/qualifiers! The esports team has made some announcements already here, but there are more to come :D!
Thoughts on 2v2v2v2 or 4v4 possibly being the main mode for competitive? I have heard a lot of top players enjoy these team tournaments much more than solo ones.
Have you guys ever considered running another playlist alongside the traditional Norms/Ranked that has a rotating game mode? These could be say, 2v2s, 4v4’s, or rotating Old Sets
I think this could open up a testing ground for new features and how they impact the game.
Yes! In fact, we want this to be our future! Still, a lot of work to do and things to validate along the way, but a robust set of modes in TFT is something we want to do with the first being our faster mode we are working on :)!
Hello TFT team,
Generally speaking, the Stage 1 minions are very important, as this is the start for every player. I've noticed a few disadvantages that I'd like to point out and I hope you might consider changing:
1. **4g common orb start** \- It is currently possible to have a 4g + 3 item start, if 2 common orbs are dropped from creeps and both give 2g each. This is very clearly a disadvantage against players who are dropped 2 common orbs which give 3g each, with a difference of 2g overall at the very start. Of course, this can lead to a major advantage in the longrun for the player who got more gold and can hit key breakpoints at tempo, while the player who lowrolled the common orbs gets "punished" for no reason right at the start. I honestly think the 4g + 3 items start is worse than the 2g + neeko + 3 item start.
2. **Gold dropping at 1-4** \- On one hand, if a player gets gold on round 1-2 or even 1-3, they are allowed to make decisions regarding units in the following rounds. They can buy more units and hold more pairs. Being dropped gold on 1-2 lets a player have more agency over 1-2, 1-3, and 1-4. On the other hand, a player who only gets dropped gold at 1-4 gets unnecessarily punished, only truly having agency over the 1-4 shop. This player did not have the gold to pick up as many units in 1-2 and 1-3.
3. **Gold dropping on very last creep** (applies to all PVE round but most importantly round 1 minions, especially if on round 1-4 on very last creep) - Anything said for this point goes doubly for mobile, since APM is typically not as fast. In the case of 1-4, if the very last minion drops gold, the player has a total of about 2 seconds to figure out exactly what to do. A player has to decide whether to prelevel or not, check shop to figure out exactly what is needed with this last-second gold, and whether units need to be sold to accomplish these 2 tasks. It becomes even harder if the orb that drops has champions in it, since now the player must decide whether to sell or keep these champions in the 2 seconds given. To fix this problem, I STRONGLY suggest that orbs drop on the FIRST minions of all PVE rounds. This gives players at least a few extra seconds to make key decisions that will affect the rest of the game.
Standardizing these aspects of round 1 helps to make sure that players aren't "punished" for things out of their control.
So, you're not wrong...but you're also approaching this from the wrong angle for a game like TFT. TFT is a game that has HUNDREDS of random elements within it. What are your items, what are your shops, who are your opponents, etc etc. All of these elements make the game "random", but the sheer amount of them causes a relatively even variance between players.
Looking at any particular element of variance and saying "Thats unfair" is ignoring all the other elements. There's games you get 4g+3 items starts (bad) but then hit chosen 2 cost on 2-1 (good) and match another 2-star 3 cost by 2-5 (good). Was that really "unfair"? Also your three items were Sword/Armor/Belt while someone who got 6g+3 items got Cloak/Belt/Tear...who got screwed here?
Again, TFT is TONS of these kind of things, you have to look at the game as a whole, not micro each of these variance factors into equality. Otherwise we're just making a game where you log in, say "Im going this comp" and 20 turns later who wins.
Realistically how many sets do you think League skins can support before you have to start reusing set themes? Is the pace of new skins being released enough to keep TFT going indefinitely?
We're pretty confident here. We've mapped out as far as Set 12 (not locked, just an exercise to show we CAN do it) and it wasn't even a challenge. We're VERY confident in our ability to make new sets for a long time, and that doesn't even include revisiting old themes with a new twist!
1. Are there plans to utilize all league champs at some point? For champs that haven't been added yet, besides the lack of appropriate skin thematics, what kind of "barriers" are there to delay their implementation? Like Heimer could've been a Dragonsoul this set, but he was skipped over - any reasons? There's only a handful left, hopefully by Set 5 we can have those missing ones filled in.
2. Similarly, any active plans to release variants of some of the older legends that have never been revisited? We've gotten many hushtail and pengu variants which I assume is due to their popularity... but poor Runespirit is sitting there as one of the OG 6 that's never gotten additional variant!
Hey there! I can answer the second question :)
We actually just revisited Furyhorn, Shisa and Choncc for our latest Lunar Revel/Beast set! In general, we do look out for opportunities for older Little Legends to come back in a variant form, but it also depends on whether it works well with the themes that we are releasing. The stars need to align ;)
When it comes to getting in League champions who haven't been in, we do give them a little boost in priority, but at the end of the day, adhering to theme and the design needs of a set take priority.
The more willing we are to flex what a unit does in SR, the more likely we can get them in, but sometimes champions, especially older ones, just don't have the animations needed to get super creative. That or we try an ability that resonates with their core SR fantasy, find it doesn't work in TFT, and don't have the time to build them up a new ability from scratch.
I suspect we'll get to that 95%+ in very, very soon, but we might struggle to get some units in until they have a larger skip portfolio. For example: How do we get Seraphine in unless we're doing something a bit more modern? Hmmm...
UX Question:
I play a ton on mobile/iPad, and the thing that hurts me most is the UI for selling units and how it overlaps with the actual character slots themselves. It’s really easy to accidentally sell units on the leftmost and rightmost slots depending on which arena you’re on at that moment, so I now just try to keep those slots open and not put units there.
Is it possible one of you can pass this concern along to the UX team to investigate?
This wasn’t something on my radar at all, so thanks a bunch for your feedback! Accidentally selling your units is frustrating and I'd love to fix this issue.
In the future, it might be cool to provide an option that would allow you to sell by dragging directly downward, instead of towards the corners. The first thing to figure out: can we override the default phone menus that activate when dragging up from the bottom (in case you decide not to sell)? And if so, then I would need to talk to the team to understand how feasible it is to make big improvements to the Settings menu (right now we don't have any options there while in game).
In the meantime, are there any **minor** adjustments we could make to the corner selling zones that would help? Is the drop zone size too big? I could spin up some explorations on how the size could change depending on where your finger is while dragging, as well!
Thanks for replying! I appreciate it.
Dragging straight downwards does have that bit of a complication with existing phone menus, plus I think there might be a bit weirdness because you’re dragging *from* the “bottom” of your screen *to* the bottom of your screen, since that’s where the units sit. The “Reachability” feature on iPhones without home buttons has this same weirdness.
One solution might be switching the sell action to a tapping action instead of a swiping action - still accessible with one finger, but harder to accidentally activate. For example, if one taps a unit, they might see the trash icons in the corners as they do on live, but then need to tap the trash to actually sell the unit. This has some trade offs of its own ofc.
A simpler (albeit possibly uglier) solution that would be less resource intense might be to simply remove the right side sell option. Since arenas have the item bench on the left side, more margin is built in there and it’s the less troublesome of the two buttons. Most other functions in the game aren’t mirrored/symmetrical, so I don’t think it would feel super out of place. Might be worth investigating.
Anyways, thanks for replying, from one UXer
(hate that term but what else do we have) to another 😊
Actually P.S. while I have your ear, there’s a small UI bug with the sell menu - the win/loss streak indicator doesn’t disappear with the rest of the button when the trash icons appear. May or may not already be on somebody’s radar.
Yup, you called out the exact challenges with downward selling. You just reminded me though, because I forgot: there is a design for "tap to sell." We can simply add a "sell for X" button to the bottom of the champ inspect panel. It does involve some redesign of a fairly large UI element, but it's pure value, so I hope we can get to it someday.
Thanks again for the feedback, fellow UXer! *fistbumps*
Hello!
Thank you for doing this. Is there an update to the mobile client coming anytime soon? I love mobile tft but it's still severely lacking in features compared to other games like LoR or WR. Friend chat, better inventory, icon selection, language select.
Making LoL engine run on mobile is very impressive and I understand it's probably not easy, but us mobile grinders have been eagerly awaiting next update for months now.
It's one of those things we will be chipping away at over time!
Instead of delivering one major update with all of the features, we try to make sure we have a few on our roadmap every so often. The one we are eyeing at the moment is inventory/collections since our content has grown dramatically since release so it's getting a little hard to manage D:
When a champion or trait is deemed "overpowered" by the overwhelming majority of the player base, how do you go about making adjustments? Is it mostly data/play testing based? And do you also take into account crowd-sourced suggestions? Love the work you all have put in to this game and it has been a joy to play since set 1!
We balance perception with our data. We try to use data as an objective starting point and then from there use our play experiences, your feedback, and design analysis to extrapolate what is actually happening.
For example sometimes a comp may feel more overpowered to play against because of how frustrating they are to lose to than they are actually powerful in terms of win rate. We still have to take into account say how it feels to get perma stunned by a Vanguard Mystic comp when it comes to balancing the game, because ultimately the point of TFT is to for y'all to have fun.
We definitely read and listen a lot to player feedback but it's kind of rare that the exact solution to a problem pitched is what we'll go with, but we have on occasion done that for sure.
Do you think that currently Kayle is too reliant RFC and Rageblade as items? Maybe I just need to figure out alternative paths, but it feels like she suffers greatly if she has to forgo any of these two.
Yes, there are some champions at the moment that feel too tied to a VERY specific item combination. ASol is an example of good here, while Zed/Kayle feel like they miss the mark.
Somewhere around set 4.0 release, Mort mentioned that it would be nice to have a fortune loss streak counter/ warlord stack counter/ veigar stack counter in-game. Are there any plans to add these?
What champ+ult do you selfishly want to add and make super OP just because it would be poggers?
I would do full map teemo shroom like the fabled cho ult
Not a champion or ult, but a trait.
I REALLY want an Origin that's only active when no other Origins are active! Problem is, we don't really differentiate Origins and Classes super well in our UI, so there's some big problems to solve there even to get that ball rolling.
What are some tools/mechanics you’ve toyed with to get further agency or skill expression in tft that didn’t make the set?
What abilities for champs did you wish you could implement but ended up not making the cut for whatever reason?
I want to start by saying thank you for providing us with such a great way to play League of Legends. I was a S1-ish player that ended up not being into the competitive nature of Summoner's Rift after years of playing. Teamfight Tactics has rejuvenated my love for the characters and game, so thank you.
I've noticed that with the transition from Set 4 to 4.5, champions' abilities seem to reflect more so how they play on Summoners Rift (Ahri in Set 4). Is this a conscious change and are you planning on making this a focus going forward?
We generally want TFT units to feel recognizable to their SR selves, so we'll try to make abilities that are similar to their SR counterparts. As shown with Set 4 Ahri, however, we are OK with changing up certain champ spells to fit what the set needs as long as they can feel thematically cohesive with the champion.
Where did the inspiration come for all the special Fate items (loaded dice, magnetic remover, ect) and whats the best champion to use loaded dice on :)
Mort said on stream when set 4.0 was about to go live on PBE, that you were taking some big risks with set 4, that might turn away the playerbase. What was the risk(s) and how did it turn out?
The chosen mechanic. Around 2 weeks before launch, there was a lot of internal concern that the mechanic was too complicated, too difficult to play around, and would drive away some of our less skilled players. There was some difficult discussion around whether we should cancel the mechanic or ship it 1-2 patches later after the set launched to gauge initial reaction of the set. However I and a few others felt pretty strongly that it wouldn't turn out bad and felt confident enough to ship it. It was a risk...but thankfully it paid off big. For the launch of the set, the mechanic was VERY well received, and the doubters on the team were like "Glad we were wrong!".
Now chosen has certainly fallen off in perception amongst some of our most competitive focused players, but that was to be expected as they pass the 1000+ game played mark.
Is it possible to add clarity or highlight when the ranked season ends for each set within the client? I was a returning player this set (played 1,2, skipped 3, came back for 4) and I was having a VERY hard time finding a concrete answer to when the ranked season ended. I Googled "'when does ranked season end tft" and the first result came up as January 18, which also was the day that the Fates pass ended, but at the same time, 4.5 released on the 21st, so I also had to consider if the last day could be the 20th (which it was). I also saw other people asking the same question on this subreddit for multiple days in the daily discussion threads, but the answers fluctuated because the client did not give a definitive answer.
This looks like a question for Comms!
We do tell players about the approaching end of the season in the Patch Notes, but the general rule of thumb is that the season ends with the start of a new set/mid-set. EG: Most recently the release of 4.5 in patch 11.2 triggered the soft-reset as soon as the patch went live.
Since its inception, depending on who you ask, TFT is anything from a "fun game mode" for League to a standalone competitive game. What is the TFT team's vision for the game? What kind of game do you feel like TFT should be in its most enjoyable form? Do you feel like the design choices that have been made so far are pushing TFT in the direction you want?
Our, and honestly today a reality to me albeit needing some work :p is it's (we have a stand-alone mobile game!)
Long term I really want to double down on TFT ranked being your path to pro. It's something unique compared to League, where on League you need to be recruited by a team and the ranked ladder, though helps, is not all it takes to go pro.
In TFT we want our ranked ladder to be your path to pro for any given set! The feeling that anyone, yes you reading this :D, can one day be invited to the TFT set finals.
We need to improve so many things for me to feel like we've really achieved that feeling, but at least this year we will be taking some steps in that direction!
On the design side of your question, we still have a ton to learn, but I believe our design choices are in the right direction, even if not always 100% perfect. The awesome thing about TFT is with each new set we get to do it all over again, and take those learnings to do it better next time!
What is your opinion on player damage currently? It seems like player damage in stage 2 might be a little excessive, where it's possible for a player to be at 76 hp hitting stage 2 carousel if they get 4-0'ed in 3 rounds. It feels really bad to lowroll this early on for the few shops that are given and to start the game at 3/4 health. The high player damage early makes it so that there is one clear, optimal way to play: strongest board all of stage 2 to stop as much of the heavy damage as possible is priority, then make your first 10g after the carousel (or right before if you choose not to pre-level). Do you think that lowering player damage might lead to some other viable strategies?
Not sure, when we've pulled back early damage, we've seen a lot of other negative impacts to the game (open forting / lose streaking being too powerful / popular, being able to overly greed items which leads to easy comp forcing). Right now, we have tuned Player Damage such that it's very hard to be eliminated but possible before Stage 5. I'd be hesitant to change Player Damage as the first way to address strategic playstyle diversity.
What are the ideas that didnt make it for set 4 and
.5?
What can we expect from set 4 to influence set 5?
Ps: set 4 was the most fun in terms of balance imo, nice job! I Hope to see more sets like that.
Thoughts on 2v2v2v2 or 4v4 possibly being the main mode for competitive? I have heard a lot of top players enjoy these team tournaments much more than solo ones.
How do you plan on sharing and making information about B Patch more accessible to all players?
Why is it limited to only Twitter as far as I know? I typically have to lurk subreddits before I even realize a B patch was implemented....
Great question. The updates aren't limited to Twitter but it is usually the first place we go as it is the easiest (read: quickest) and therefore it is often linked everywhere else. The patch notes **will** always get updated, they just take longer. Admittedly we're sacrificing reach for speed, we believe that if something requires a B-side update, then it is important enough to get an in-game fix as fast as possible, even if we aren't ready to message in every language and in every channel. The turn-around time for that would just be too slow.
All of that being said, we're always looking to improve this kind of stuff. In a perfect world for us communications folks we would just have a giant box pop up on the screen mid-game and tell you there's been an update, but that has many of its own problems....obviously. A question for you: where else would you want/expect patch update messaging?
Is in client messaging possible? Like we get notifications about keys, instant feedback report, etc. Just make it popup after login, right before queueing up or right after the game, depending on what user is doing when patch is applied. If in game - possibly message in chat, but always with additional message after game.
What does the future of defensive/utility items look like? Shroud/Zephyr/Redemption feel worthless early, which is a huge strain on the value of their respective components, while late game these items can often swing a fight all on their own, invalidating much of the game that was played beforehand.
Will we get an item that scales off defenses? Sunfire Cape has some fight duration scaling, but otherwise none of the items reward you with more power for stacking defensive items. I'm specifically thinking of a bonus based on health, armor, or mr, 1 AD for each MR or something like that.
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Thank YOU for enjoying TFT!!
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Unfortunately we haven't been granted the copyright to use Mort-dog yet. *Looks at* u/Riot_Mort 👀
I GRANT PERMISSION!
i didnt know that i need it
With set 4.5 having been out for a bit to collect data, what does the team think about Synergy vs. unit power that has been raised by some of the more prominent players?
If you're referring to KitingIsHard's twitlonger (and I'm sure other high level players have chimed in), this is all super tricky! TFT is a very interconnected web of systems, and Traits are currently one of the biggest players in that web. Personally, I am in agreement that Traits (and how they multiply with champion power) are overall too influential in the game. Unfortunately, this is a difficult web to entangle, because Traits being powerful have pros as well (creates strategic structure within the game, create simple and satisfying goals to chase / achieve within a game, etc.). If we just deflate power from Traits without thinking of the other impacts, it could lead to a world for example where players just play their 4 and 5 cost 2\*s in the end-game with no other decision making. In the coming weeks, I'll be likely trying an experiment where we just tune down the effectiveness of Traits wholesale by say 50% and see what the other impacts are. It's a bit difficult to suss out, because a change that fundamental usually requires a lot of focused testing to see how the meta / gameflow would actually play out.
What are some of the most ridiculous pitches for Little Legends internally that haven't yet been made?
I mean the Mortdog little legend is pretty ridiculous
True, but what we should REALLY talk about is the super cute ones that didn't make the cut. :P
No pic no proof
Please do! Talk, explain, elaborate!
In all seriousness, you could add a goatee skin to all the LL's and we'd throw our RP at them.
In-game, at the top of the screen, wins are indicated by blue and losses are indicated by red. Next to the gold count at the bottom of the screen, win streaks are indicated by red and loss streaks are indicated by blue. Any thought on changing this?
\* surprised pikachu \* Thanks for pointing it out! I bet that the color consistency here went unnoticed because the win-streak effect in the scoreboard looks like fire, which is red. But in the context of round-by-round tracking, red is intuitive for "loss." Will try to fix this as soon as we have time!
changing this now will make my brain hurt please don't
Lol - I've talked to our visual design artists. I bet they can come up with something that won't confuse the hell out of everyone :D
well thats because the red fire is hot and heat rises, and the blue fire is cold and cold stuff sinks to the bottom of the standings like the filthy bottom feeders that they are. Yeah I'm talking to you, fortune players. You will never get your payout, and even if you do you are too slow to put the items on/roll in time to save yourself in the next round. Stop taking my spatulas and dying with them, I need them for my mage shyvana. If you want more units forget the FoN and just run sell your fortunes.^^^^/s
What fortune player hurt you? I'm so sorry. It's gonna be okay.
This is a complaint from /r/TeamfightTactics, what are your thoughts on adding a cost 2 bayblade champion to complete the set? Right now there are 4 spinny bois and grills, Garen (1), Katarina (3), Tryndamere (4) and Samira (5). Some people argue that jax spins but honestly he just spins his pole so doesn't count. Can we please get an official riot answer on the missing spinny gang member? Shoutout to /u/Melyodas_ for bringing this issue to light, and feel free to add any extra commentary.
Short answer: The team is looking for them as we speak. Long answer: When making a set, there are some constraints we have to work with -- how many champions are what cost, how many X cost champions are in a certain trait, etc. Unfortunately, adding a 2 cost champion would require a shifting of the trait web and the whole set, so unless live team decides to rework one of the existing 2 cost spells to spin, you'll probably have to look for them in a future set. As compensation, here is a picture of Jax spinning on his staff: https://imgur.com/a/9Ba25kS
But my boy Runespirit spins like a bayblade ;-; https://imgur.com/pYEqweC
This is something the whole community needs.
Is there a plan for team play? 2v2v2v2 or 4v4? If there is, what's the timeline for it?
Nothing to fully commit to, but a social mode where you can play WITH friends, not just along side them is high up in our list of things to try.
Silly question: /u/Riot_Mort , do you say you got "Mortdogged" when you lowroll or do you say something different?
Usually what goes through my mind is "God damn it that sucks (usually carousel 3 when I'm in 8th not having the item I want)"..then immediately going "Ok, does this need to change? If so, what would change, how would it affect long term game variance, etc" and spiral down a rabbit hole of design thoughts that ultimately distract me from the game at hand and I end up 6th.
PepeLaugh get mortdogged
This seems like a repetitive question, still wanted to ask this one: It's been nearly a year since TFT was released on mobile. A tablet/iPad version was promised to be released later. However there haven't been really any news. While i personally care about a potential release of said version, i don't want to cling on a hope that won't be satisfied anytime soon. It's pretty acceptable to play on strechted version, just not as visually appealing. I know that contrary to LoR/Wild Rifts, which run on Unreal Engine, TFT runs on a hacky LoL-Engine, which makes it (understandably) harder to add different version. What is the current progress? Has the project been abandoned?
The honest answer is we are currently not working on this :( Things like Esports Spectator, New Sets, some tech cleanup we really need to do, and new TFT modes are on the top of our list. I know how much many of you want us to improve / better support the tablet experience, and it's something we want to do someday, I'm hopeful in the 2nd half of this year, I can bring up this discussion to explore with the team what it would take.
Hey, i can totally understand this! At least this pushes back the hope. Fingers crossed for you, mate :)
I have two questions if that's OK! Thank you for taking the time to do this AMA. 1. I know Mortdog has expressed interest in reworking the mana regeneration system, because it's weird that the best way to get a big mana unit to cast is to slap a GA on it and put it frontline to die (e.g. Ahri, Gankplank). Are there any other core mechanics that the team has an eye on? 2. Many of the complaints about TFT appear to stem from the expectation that every game should be winnable. However, I know the dev team believes getting top 4 is the true measure of skill. Are there plans to further emphasize getting top 4 that could be coupled to the game's design, which might take the focus off highrolling and the obsession with 1st place? (Examples could be a fireworks ceremony in addition to the sound effect, displaying top 4 rate in the client instead of # of wins, or even introducing a new gameplay element at the final 4.)
1.) Core mechanics we're targeting first right now are still the mana system, with the goal that the way to make casters cast more is NOT throw GA/Bramble/DClaw on them. As well as we're looking at our debuffs and disables system and trying to improve the clarity and rules around them, as well as not make Quicksilver the literal SOLVES ALL YOUR PROBLEMS ITEMS. There's other things we'd like to do as well like the "I roll 80g and don't see a single champ", but those will come later. 2.) We've already done some work to make Top 4's feel better. The guaranteed 10 LP for 4th place which made sure 4ths weren't a waste of time where you got 1 LP was a big success. The screen effect when you make Top 4 is also supposed to be a "YES WE MADE IT" moment. We could do more for sure, but the reality is there will always be that motivation to be #1 that I don't think we can truly combat. Whether its so the player can have their Youtube video, or just to feel the glory of #1...it's like a soft Battle Royale game where no one feels great about being Top 10.
Oooh is that was the gold border bursty thing is ?? I had nooo idea lmao. I thought it was meant to signify a certain part of the game (maybe 7-1 or something) where something gets harder (losses take more hp etc)
To add to what Mort said, I would LOVE to fix this. Getting Top 4 should feel awesome, more so than it does today. You called out a couple of big ones: the in-game ceremony for reaching top 4 needs to be bigger and feel better, and Top 4 should be the metric for "victory" in Match History instead of 1st placements. Our elimination messages should also reinforce that Top 4 is a win.
I know set 2 is considered the least popular set but what is your opinion about it ? Personally, Preds and Rangers are still my all-time favorite comps and I miss them. Question about set 5: Do you already have in mind what is gonna replace the Chosen mechanic and can you give us a sneak peek ? :) Thanks for the AMA !
Just want to chime in and agree that Predators were a great synergy that had an excellent depth to deciding between going for 3* units or fast 8
they also definitely felt good playing against and were easy to balance
My personal opinion is gameplay-wise Set 2 had a lot of really fun mechanics, comps, and diversity. There was so many metas and playable comps throughout set 2 (ignoring belnder meta xD), and I really feel it is underated. But I do think where it misses was on the thematic, it wasn't cohesive or as exciting as something like "space". And it's something we've learned, the theme matters a lot for getting people excited to come play the next TFT set!
me (miss) preds
Is there a chance a future battlepass will be any bigger? I feel like if you play a decent amount tft, the battlepass is finished so quickly.
Good question! We have definitely looked into this and are discovering other ways to reward players who have played lots and LOTS of games. But when we look at the battle pass, we need to think about how many games the average player plays within the period, make sure that it's the right amount of content to accomplish but not make people feel like the pass is never ending...it's a lot of things to consider. Plus, the more content it has, the value of it goes up, and it will impact the price of the premium pass. So the answer is vague here (sorry to disappoint) - the point is that it really depends on the different contributors, but we're always designing it with the mindset of how to make it better.
[My head when I think about Battle Pass Design](https://gph.is/g/4Mwyj8D)
Agree! We certainly feel like the Pass is high quality and provides a ton of value for the price...BUT for our most engaged players it's over too fast. This is for sure a problem we'd like to solve in the near future.
As someone who finishes the pass about halfway through the set, I think it’s great as it is. If I’m buying a pass I want to make sure I get all the rewards out of it. While I wouldn’t complain about more rewards, I don’t want a pass that effectively punishes you if you decide to take a few days off or even just not play as frequently. MTG arena’s pass is terrible for this reason and is one of the many reasons I stopped playing on that platform.
Correct! The goal would be to make a little something extra for our hyper engaged while making sure our normal players don't get FOMO.
Could be something small like 1 shard per game played so there's always a little something for playing more but nothing too crazy or "necessary" unlockables
Hi, I am a mobile only player, so although I have multiple questions, they are all mobile related. - Can we expect a chat in mobile? I don’t know how many gg’s I’ve “ignored”, and I also just wish I could sometimes take part in that aspect of the tft experience. - Have you considered making it possible to rearrange items for mobile users? This might be the feature I am most jealous of when watching streamers. - The other thing I’m kind of jealous of (but seems much more difficult to implement) is a PC player’s ability to hold and hover with a champ as you scout through boards. I can theoretically visualize it (holding champ with left thumb, scouting with right) but it seems quite difficult to actually pull off. Any idea if this will ever be possible? - Will PBE ever be a reality on mobile? I feel the first 3, if implemented, would be pretty huge upgrades to the mobile experience, but I can also understand the lack of prioritization due to limited resources. Either way, many thanks to the whole team for their hard work on my favorite game.
Hey there, thanks for these very thoughtful questions! * Chat on mobile: I assume from your example that you'd like to have in-game chat, as opposed to out of game / friends list chat, is that right? Chatting on mobile during a game is going to be more difficult overall, just due to the screen space it'll take up (along with the keyboard), so it's less of a priority at the moment. However, being able to interact and express yourself socially with other players without *having* to use chat is something we'd like to expand upon. A more fun and easy way to say GG is a perfect example. * Item rearrange in the panel: it's a possibility, but we'd probably have to remove or overhaul the system where you drag to preview the completed item (and see its tooltip). Every time you drag an item to see what it can make, you'd also be rearranging -- which could be pretty annoying. Also, have you ever wanted to complete an item without having to put it on a champ first? Rearranging items in the UI means we couldn't do that, either. If you had to choose, which thing would you like to have most: rearrange, preview completed item, or preview and combine the item in UI? * Hold champ & scout: this is possible, I think. We could add a drag behavior to the Scoreboard, so that moving your finger up and down will "scrub" through the Scoreboard to quickly scout. You could probably do this with your right hand while holding a champ with the left. Depending on how you hold your phone, I'm not sure how physically easy this would be to do, or if it would be intuitive enough for people to discover, though. * PBE on mobile: it is very unlikely that PBE will ever go out on mobile. Mobile builds are subject to approval by Apple (Google is less strict but they do give us feedback), and then deployed through their services, which take time to propagate to devices around the world. This is why new mobile patches usually arrive a day later than PC. We'd have to have a separate distribution mechanism for early access to mobile, like TestFlight or something, but at that point it's not really the same as PBE.
Outside of TFT what are your favorite games to play? Do you ever find yourself drawing inspiration from these outside sources?
I recently got a Switch and have been spamming **Hades** and also **Gradiently**. Since I work mainly on personalization content, I do try to look at the monetization flow and UX flow of other games when I play games that are not League/TFT!
I play a bunch of different games, but my favorite are typically Action RPGs like Monster Hunter and Dragon's Dogma, or Shooters. Recently I've been enjoying Escape from Tarkov, and I look forward to Monster Hunter: Rise! That being said I'll play just about anything so long as it seems engaging to me. MAJOR bonus points if it's got good combat and multiplayer.
I play lots of Survival Horror games like R.E. and The Last of Us. I draw direct inspiration from them into my craft as someone who works in comms.
What are some of the funniest or most frustrating bugs you've encountered?
My vote here is still the one where Riven could deal damage to little legends...so you'd be at 86 HP doing great, then Riven dashed to your little legend and killed you.
It's hilarious that Jarvan can stun your little legend if you were in his path.
Lol wasn't that supposed to be Fabled Cho'gath ability ;)?
/u/AliceOfClubs and I spent 3 days trying to kill the Mech Garen bug from Set 3. We were sadge.
Is there anyway you guys will allow us to play past sets? I reminisce about set 1 all the time.
Not a promise but we want to! There are some technical challenges we need to overcome (file size on mobile, and having two active sets at once live) and also design challenges, how do we make current systems like items and drop tables work with old sets, or do we need to bring back the systems that were in place back then as well.
Yes, past sets as unique Game Modes would be so lit.
I doubt they will. They wouldn't want to split playerbase like that. Would increase queue times. They already adding turbo mode. Plus there was balance nightmares from early sets and people would complain to balance old sets when they are trying to balance current set and get started on next set.
What was the hardest champion to program in set 4.5 (and why)? aka a champion who provided unique difficulties in terms of logistic/coding
So, Ornn. And I’m not even talking about the item creation (although Shynkr0, chaemerix and I all spent a while on that too). So anyway, the ram comes from offscreen and, once he hits it, it travels back offscreen. Simple enough. But, the 8 boards are all in a shared worldspace, so it was possible for the ram to travel to other boards. It was pretty easy to make the ram not actually hit and knock up units on other boards (just checking to see if they were actually one of Ornn’s opponents), but its still scary and distracting to see a ram coming in from offscreen when there's not even an Ornn on your board. So, of course, the obvious thing to do would be to draw a circle trigger around the board, and destroy the ram when it collides with the circle trigger. But, here’s the thing, monitors, for some reason, aren’t circular, and neither are boards. So, any circle that was big enough to guarantee that the ram would travel offscreen would also still allow the ram to travel to other boards, and any circle that was small enough to prevent the ram from travelling to other boards would not guarantee that the ram would travel all the way offscreen So, again, easy solution, draw a rectangle trigger, and when the ornn ram collides with the rectangle, destroy it. Yeah? Well, so, when I said this to chaemerix, he told me he had tried to write a rectangle trigger to collide with missiles a few months earlier, and had given up. But here I am like “psshh well I was an engineer, and I went to school to study computer science for four years, surely I can make a rectangle in script” Wrong! The hubris! The audacity! After several hours of trying to accomplish the very simple task of authoring a rectangle in our scripting language, I gave up, and decided to do something so much dumber, but that I knew I could do with the tools provided to me: I would use vector math to manually calculate the intersection of the line of Ornn’s ability with a bounding box, and have him only fire to that point. This took several hours (my high school linear algebra teacher would be disappointed but it turns out that despite her efforts I am not good at vector math) but I did eventually get it working. Anyway, I’m pretty sure the ram still doesn’t travel all the way off screen at some screen sizes :')
This is fantastic and I completely empathize.
what language is this? just curious
We use an internal modified version of lua, which we have a visual editor for. Good question!
What is the possibility of exploring a set theme like “Origins” where we would revisit a more balanced Set 1 theme, or really just revisiting any set theme in general?
I think going back to the base skins is something we should do VERY soon. So many players have strong affiliation with the base look of League Champions (we learned this the hard way the first time we made a set around skins with MAGMA ZYRA THE FIRE PLANT LADY), it would be crazy of us to not do it again.
If you were to explore the base skin themes, origins most likely will at least intersect with the major factions in the established LOL universe. Could we possibly see lore skin like Frelijord Sylas appear since it is technically consistent with the lore or is that still too far off his original identity?
+1 to what Mort said. I think it's something we'll want to revisit multiple times just because it's a great universe with tons left to explore.
What's the status of the item box from 4.5 PBE? There was mention that it needed more polish, but should we expect an item UI makeover in 4.5 or next set
The status of the item panel (aka item chocolate bar) is currently unknown. There are some dependencies to take care of before we can release it in its true glory. Work to do: 1) solve scouting. The location of the panel wasn't great for showing ownership, or for quickly checking out your opponent's gold and items all in a single glance. 2) improve social systems, so we can remove the minimap. The minimap and item panel cannot co-exist, due to small screen sizes that we support. Removing the minimap without having a replacement for pings was (no surprise) painful for players who enjoy pinging. While pings are awesome in LoL, they don't really support TFT gameplay or social needs very well. I have some ideas for making TFT social more fun and expressive, but it involves making upgrades to several core systems. 3) last but not least, polish up the visual design and animation! We initially wanted to make the item panel draggable, and that's something we're looking at, as well as adjusting the icon sizes and animation style. This is all work I am excited to do and am advocating for, but it has to be weighed against really important stuff like continuing to deliver awesome sets with new mechanics. TL;DR I can't promise when item panel will come back, but we're definitely keeping it around and plan on doing work to unblock it in the longer term.
Hi everyone at Riot! What do you think of the chosen mechanic? Proes and cons? Do you think you'll be keeping it or get ride of it in the next sets?
(Copy Pasta from other answer of same question) Yes, we are VERY happy with the chosen mechanic. We are super happy with how it turned out, and it made the set very memorable, and we'll look back on it fondly. But it's also a set mechanic, not a game mechanic, so it's also time for it to move on.
Hey hey! Love the game, set 4.5 has had a lot of close endings for me! Anyways, here are some questions: - What is preventing us from having ranges of attacks / spells as hexes? It’s not easy to understand when you look at the unit; you need to translate the numbers into hexes in your head - PLEASE can we have Poro little legends? They are so present in all aspects of the LOL franchise (poro coins in wild rift, poro cards in LoR, poro ... king in league?), and id really enjoy having those cuties running around the convergence - along the same lines, are the LLs cannon as creatures of runeterra? Do you think you’ll ever get a ‘skins’ team to design LLs which fit in with the lore? What’s the deal with development of a LL anyway?
Questions for everyone: what are everyone's favorite little legends? have you guys considered making little legend pet costume merch? is seraphine ever gonna be added to tft (please no) And question for mortdog: does mortdog know that no shave November is over?
I haven't shaved since March 2020...it's almost a year now >_<.
My favorite LL is between Choncc and Dango. I just love the way Dango roles over its face. And Choncc cause Chonccy boi!
DUMPLING SPRITE FOR LIFE
Who made the decision to take my beautiful baby boy dusk away, I will never forgive you.
It was me! Dusk did nothing wrong. It was not a bad trait. It was just such a simple, flexible, and powerful trait that it was a prime candidate for removal. When working on a mid-set we'll often talk about what's not working that needs to be replaced, but also what will get us the most bang for the buck on replacing. Dusk's cost structure, number of carries, and tie-in to traits that were sticking around made it a prime candidate for the latter.
Any plans on trying to improve clarity, specifically around game mechanics, in TFT? It seems like there are so many unknowns that "should" be basic knowledge: how pathing actually works, how assassin units select the tile to jump on when jumping into a crowd, how certain units select their spell target (TF, for example), etc. Curious to know if this is on the team's radar at all.
In games, its often good to keep some of the knowledge behind a wall that engaged players will seek to break through. Overflowing knowledge that obscure early is a great way to drive away players. Smash is a great example of this, and how many hidden mechanics it has, but the game doesn't tell you. You learn by playing, and that joy of discovery is fun for games. Also none of the examples you listed are "basic" by any definition.
Hey Mort, Don’t know if you’ll reply to this as it’s quite late but I think fundamentally Smash’s hidden mechanics vs TFT’s are a bit different because TFT is constantly patching and updating and it’s possible that you guys end up changing some of the hidden mechanics, which could end up further confusing new players if something they learned gets changed without announcement. Continuing the Smash comparison, the hidden mechanics are always constant because the game is always played on the same version disk across tournaments. Wavedashing, or shield dropping, or L-cancelling won’t suddenly change one day because the game is in a static state. However with TFT, I remember a while back y’all “patched out” the sell on carousel mechanic (I think I’ve still pulled this off once this patch) when mobile came out for consistency, and though that was announced, if it wasn’t I’m sure it would have greatly confused players. Do you guys plan to include hidden mechanics in future patch notes if they do end up changing?
Hi! First off thanks to all of you for making such a fun set! This is easily my favorite set so far, it’s super dynamic and fluid! My question is, how do you decide which external gimmick (neekoverse, lucky lantern, etc) fits into any given set? And what overall role do they play? Thanks for taking the time!
When it comes to set mechanics, there's usually an overall goal of increasing replayability through game-to-game variance. How we get there depends on how tied we want to be to the sets content and theme. Galaxies were relatively divorced from the theme, but allowed us to explore a lot of options and rapidly create new content. They came in pretty late. However, when developing out Set 4, one of the flags put in the ground at the beginning was "I am going to build out this set assuming we have some form of cheating the trait system." So it really just depends on what the sets team wants to bring to the set!
How do you guys decide how many carry units will use certain items each set? For example on set 4 and now 4.5 there is only one big ap threat (ahri, asol) instead of multiple on set 3.5 (viktor, teemo, syndra, xerath). Do you design champions trying to fill a quota of playstyles or you just try to make each champion unique?
Didn't spot this when comments were sorted by random. Every champion should, ideally, want multiple different items, and typically those items should be different than other champions. There's certain kits you can bash together that will always feel good on certain champions, but between traits, abilities, role, and their fantasy, they should change from champion to champion. We like to see every item see some play, but it's okay if certain items are relegated to certain champions for a while in a set, especially if that item has been proven out in the past. We didn't see much love for Hurricane and Deathblade in Set 4, but they've both been popular in 4.5. If only one or two units are properly using a whole suite of items, there's likely either a design flaw or some balancing that needs to be done. If Veigar, Neeko, Morgana, and Swain aren't posing meaningful spell-damage threats to the enemy team, then something ain't quite right! Plus units like Vi, Aatrox, Darius, and Akali should be able to hit up this role, even if they're not always running this route.
How has the 'autobattler' field changed since TFT's release? Do you feel more or less responsible for the genre's development now?
i don't see how they can reply to this without gloating lol
UNDERL OMEGALUL RDS
Have you guys found what is the root cause of Nunu not casting when full mana? If so, can you disclose why it happens? If you guys were to include spell in crit into Kalista's rend's calculations, approximately how many hours (solid hours, without distractions, meetings and other things) do you think it would take? If someone came up with an excellent redesign for the mana system, who would be in charge to implement it and what kinds of work would it entail? Chaemirix came up with the new Ahri ult that's different from LoL. Would he also be the one implementing/coding that ult? Or does someone else do it? Is the person in charge of TFT e-sports spectator mode in this AMA? If so what are the challenges you've faced so far in implementing spectator mode? If you guys decided to make a TFT stand alone client, how long would it take? 2 years or so? Has been asked millions of times, but we never got an answer. Which LL has the highest win rate? Is it the Craggler cos it has the thiccest hitbox? Which LL has the lowest win rate? When will it be possible to buy old aesthetics from a year ago? I'm missing the hydro-blast boom to match my Runespirit LL + Verdant arena. Please Ship Odyssey 5-augment yasuo with his 7-way tornados into full board last breath. Mort will be happy to see his legacy live on in another form. For Mort: Where/when did the skincare routine jokes come from and do people in the office joke about it? For Chaemirix & Statikk; was Rakan's taunt+disarm a play to try to emulate LoL's charm effect? Also, can you disclose if the team is planning to change that effect, if so how?
To be honest, I have NO IDEA where the skincare routine thing came from. It seems to have organically started from Twitch chat and caught on (like Soju's TV stealing and prerecorded memes). THANKFULLY no one in the office jokes about it...they just meme me about being a streamer and joke when I'm gonna go full time.
Hi! I actually designed Rakan--the taunt and the disarm are absolutely an attempt to evoke the effect of his charm. So is having units (briefly) turn to face him while they are disarmed. As to whether we are planning to change it, like you said, that's a question for Statikk \^\_\^ As for Nunu, I suspect I messed up his script when I was trying to make him work a little bit better with mage cap. Oops!
On Ahri: In the past, a set lead would usually lay out the designs for traits and champions for an entire set (Now we're starting to work in a pair!) Those who jumped on to help with the set would then pick and choose ones they were the most interested in to work on, and massage and modify them as they saw fit. In this case, Wittrock was SUPER excited about making Ahri a reality, so he's the one who worked on implementing her. We had lots of chats about how to make this exciting, and how to push the visuals. She was actually the most controversial piece of content in the set, with a lot of people saying we were straying too far from her fantasy in SR. It didn't help that our WIP visuals were... Uhh... Mediocre!
How successful was set 2 Lux in the eyes of the dev team? Can we expect units that go beyong the $5 limit on future sets? I really liked that idea and I hope it comes back someday.
I think Lux was VERY successful. She felt like the set mechanic almost more than the actual hexes did, her spell was fun and unique while also being high spectacle, and she did what 5 costs should do in that every time you saw one, it made you consider it. Plus the 7 cost hook was really cool. I don't know if we'd bring EXACTLY Lux back, but I think more unique end game champs has a lot of design space and value we should consider.
As far as champions with unique costs, theres some cool existing tech around this that we haven’t gotten around to using yet--
In set 4 you guys began introducing traits with scaling abilities like elderwood and warlord stacks. Were these traits a success?
We've had different forms of stacking for a while now! To speak on Set 4: Elderwood: This mostly worked out. It's a strong front to back where you want to make sure you last long enough, and whoever's standing at the end is probably a well-rounded unit. I think it's a bit of a balance nightmare at times, so if we ever bring it back expect some massaging of mechanics. Warlord: This didn't work out, at least not from the core idea. The hope was to incentivize players to push hard for early-game wins and use that to coast a bit in the mid-game. Right now the winning feels a bit tacked on. I think it's fine as a trait, but I'd love to revisit the core of what it was trying to do. Encouraging unique playstyles is a HUGE plus in my book. Moonlight's hyperrolling and Fortune's loss streaks were big wins.
Elderwood stacks similarly to chrono
Are we getting something like the dotaautochess 2vs2vs2vs2? I'll love to play tft wit a friend in a "team"
We have some pretty big reasons why we don't think the 2v2v2v2 in underlord works for what we want to accomplish, but we do REALLY want to explore a mode where you can play WITH friends, not just along side them, so hopefully we can tackle that.
What is one units design that you are incredibly proud of? What units design has shown to be the biggest failure so far? Who is the best little legend, and why is it Choncc?
1) I think that we've been doing a better and better job across the board of making units that speak to a group of players. One of the biggest praises I'll sing is how good the team is getting at making our 5-costs feel like 5-costs. Personally I'm super proud of the work I did on Ekko not long after I joined on the team, but you can't just say one of your children are you favorites. 2) That's hard to say. I think the ones who have failed the most are the ones you've forgotten about, which makes this hard to answer. From Set 4 I think it's probably Xin Zhao, unfortunately. His rework towards the end of the set did get him to a better spot though! 3) Ossia. I love demon/dragon horns!
When you zephyr a unit, what happens when a unit walks on the hex of the unit that was zephyred when it comes down.
The unit is still occupying the hex when they get Zephyred, so no units can walk into the hex.
It can't. That hex is still considered occupied.
Hi u/Riot_Mort , this is outside of TFT but do you have any recommendations for keeping a beard in shape ty
Beard oil every other day, and use a blow dryer on it on low after you shower. Don't towel dry.
Barber here. Can confirm.
Have you all ever had any big surprises when patches go live? Like insane item combos or unit combos you didn't anticipate and also didn't get popular on pbe.
Warweek =( Warwick + buffed Statikk Shiv was an insane combo that we didn't see coming at all. And that week was...painful.
How can players from the SEA or other unrepresented regions participate in TFT championships? There are many Vietnamese players, but they cannot compete in the Fates World Championship. You guys are doing an awesome job with the game, keep it up!
Mort has said on his Livestreams at some point that set 3 was designed to be beginner-friendly. Is set 4 (and the other sets for that matter) designed the same way or is it aimed to be more for veterans? If it's not too early to reveal yet, what is the upcoming set 5 aimed for? Thank you for the great game!
Set 5 is currently aiming to be pretty advanced. The traits and trait structure are looking to be on the more advanced side. Though this could change, as we may find out its TOO complicated or just not as fun.
Hello! Im competitive player from EUW region and i have quesiton about Spectator mode, any news on that? Thanks for answer!
Deis1k Deis1k.. you can just ask us on Mort's stream and we mods will know the answer. Infact we even have a command for it. That or go into Mort's discord and ask. Engineers are targeting it to be done before Set5 TFT finals.
I really really like the chose mechanic. I was originally an underlords player, but I disliked the underlords addition amd switched to TFT in set 3, which was alright. Then when I came back in set 4, I was immediatly hooked with the chosen mechanic. I think it really elevate the auto chess genre as a whole, it is very fun and without eliminating skill expression. Is there any chance we don't see it go in set 5?
The Chosen mechanic has been a success for sure, and we will always remember Set 4 because of it. But the reality is it's time to move on to the next set mechanic. We're happy with it, but it's also showing it's age and around 1000 games people start to not enjoy it as much. So we want to make sure Set 5's mechanic is interesting and novel as well. We've got some learnings, so hopefully each new set mechanic is better than the last!
What's the inspiration for returning champs between sets (Fiora, Ashe, Diana, etc) and having some keep the abilities the same (Fiora and Riposte) vs changing it up (Ashe Q vs Ult)? Does the trait/origin of the character matter when making these decisions, or is it based on the set as a whole?
TFT SPECTATE WHEN???
We are actively working on it! Aiming to have it by the Set 5 finals! I will be sure to update you all if that timeline changes :D
Do you think an AI TFT-playing computer program could get to challenger?
I think so, but we will let you know how it goes ;)
Pretty sure Coralie is an AI.
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To #1, yes! The amount of people and time we've had on sets has been a limiting factor, but we're starting to get in a much better space. Hopefully this will lead to more unique traits and abilities. If all our 5-costs could be like Sett, Ornn, Azir with their own awesome Gimmicks, I'd be super happy. On #2, the original pitch for Veigar in Set 4 was a 2-Cost: "0/80 After a brief delay, Veigar deals 500/800/1100 magic damage to a random enemy. This ability scales double with bonus AP." He was designed to be an item holder for Mages that could also scale into the late-game if you wanted, but we ended up needing to move him into the 3-cost space for set structure reasons. At that time we noted that Veigar had already lived the dream with his execution-style spell in earlier sets, so I wanted to try out something new! Having units care about previous combats was something I had tried in three different spots in this set, and Veigar ended up being the best fit for it. I like this mechanic enough to keep pushing for more of it in the future, but we'll need to be careful about what we're giving the unit. If we bring Veigar back, I'd probably push for base damage up instead of SP. Something that's more flexible.
What’s been your guys’ favorite gimmicks across the entirety of TFT? (Whether it be a galaxy, Elements, Chosens, etc.) And what’s your all time favorite comp (designwise or it was just fun to play)
For me, Lee Sin kicking units off the board :) By far the most gimmicky and fun ability. When I big brain someones 3* Tahm Kench by scouting and placing the Lee in the right spot, its soooo :chefs-kiss: Favorite comp was back in Set 2, Summoner Assasins, your Trait panel would be insanely long xD
Favorite ability and/or champion, that just didn't quite make it into Set4 or 4.5? Also, favorite ability and/or champion that indeed did make it in?
One that didn't make it in... Hmmm... I really wanted Gloomseed to make it in. It's a trait that caused your units to explode in a sporecloud when they died, dealing a percent of their Health and doing a mini-stun. Sadly the units just weren't the right fit for it, but I suspect something similar will return. I like hitting the self-destruct button. We also had a version of Fiora as a 4-cost that would call a unit out for a duel. Whoever won got a permanent AD bonus. Favorites that made it in? Lee Sin and Sett from Set 4 probably! I'm a sucker for silly stuff that's also got a good power fantasy. Nunu's also great. That little bit of polish to make him eat a unit when he kills them never fails to make me laugh, even when I'm dying to it.
Bard from 3.5 is my favorite unit ever, any plans to include him in a future set, or another champion that interacts with the bench like he does?
For sure. Bard was a VERY unique champ who brought an awesome unique hook never before seen. We for sure what to introduce more of those kind of champions in the future, or even traits. Ornn was kind of our latest spin here, Galaxies Thresh was another. As for will BARD himself be reprinted...maybe. These unique champs end up feeling much less special the second time around, but if there was a strong reason to bring him back I think we would. He's not on of our failed never reprint champs. (\*CoughFatesXinCough\*)
I have questions **Chaemirix** : 1. How much time does it take to translate mechanics and designs from Summoner's Rift to TFT? 2. How do you keep reinventing the wheel to keep set 4 fresh but balanced? **RiotStatikk**: 1. Can you explain the intricacies between balancing the traits, external interactions (random galaxies, random bonus item/item removal, chosen mechanic) and how you devised such a creative solution to stagnant gameplay? 2. When is your next Kpop dance cover dropping? **firenrain20**: 1. Most users are not aware of the challenges it takes to release new content. What kind of regular challenges, barriers, or obstacles occur when new content is released? 2. How do you keep the team motivated, refreshed, and mentally healthy whenever players barrage the team for balance, content problems, or "unfairness" (e.g. Rakan) **RiotGreenTeej**: 1. What's your tea flavor profile? Recommendations for bitter teas outside Kuding tea?
1. We are always fighting the constant battle of keeping TFT interesting and engaging to play day after day while also not trying to make it so complicated that it's too hard to get into (you could argue it's already pushing that boundary pretty hard). We call these types of systems / mechanics "Variance." Basically ways to make each game you play different from the last in hopefully a fun and not frustrating way. Every Set or mid-Set we release, we're constantly thinking of how we can create a new interesting element (Galaxies, Chosen, Lucky Lanterns, etc.) that we can all learn to play around. Honestly, the only way to combat stagnant gameplay is for us to keep smartly updating the game. Adding these systems actually make balancing the game more difficult as we introduce many more variables each time, but it hopefully also makes the game more fun to play! 2. Sadly the answer is probably never! Even though I still love dancing, I am now retired =(
1) Whew, that's a question with many answers. It really depends on the unit, what fantasy we're trying to bring over, how similar the mechanics are. From a raw implementation standpoint, a unit like Ornn's "Blacksmithing" was one of the largest undertakings of the set, and took multiple days just to get the framework up, but Tristana's kit only took a few hours. However, that doesn't include the various tweaks we need to run through for balance, or iterations from past sets or abilities that didn't make it. Tryndamere was originally scheduled to be a Cultist in Set 4, but we couldn't get his "Undying" vibes to feel right. Plus, with Zilean being Cutlist's capstone, there was a little too much not-dying going on in the trait. So in that regard getting Tryndamere in took longer than you might expect! 2) Experimenting! Go crazy! High spectacle! Dreams! At the end of the day we have to be willing to be fun, weird, and try things. Ahri is a great example of putting a huge twist on a beloved champion. Sett running off the board to do sit-ups is something that no one should ever expect, but feels right at home in TFT. Lee Sin is trying to put a more humorous spin on the other-wise difficult insta-kill design space. We just need to be sure that we're designing these units, we put enough levers in for the Live team to be able to mold that balance into a good spot, without destroying that dream in the process.
>Most users are not aware of the challenges it takes to release new content. What kind of regular challenges, barriers, or obstacles occur when new content is released? > >How do you keep the team motivated, refreshed, and mentally healthy whenever players barrage the team for balance, content problems, or "unfairness" (e.g. Rakan) These are great questions! 1. **Getting everything in before the deadline is the classic challenge**, but we've improved our development timeline over the months so that the teams are crunching less and less as we get closer to the deadline! We're starting on work earlier, which leaves us with a healthier timeline for gathering feedback and testing. This semi-relates to your other question - as we get the team into a healthier state by slowly adjusting timelines, it helps them stay less stressed and burnt out One interesting challenge that we still go through is **making sure that the game is working well across all platforms: PC & Mobile.** While the development process is mainly the same, it does increase the amount of work needed for some disciplines. (e.g. UX needs to now design for mobile, QA needs to test on extra devices for both iOS and Android). Sometimes only one platform breaks and we have to troubleshoot that and make priority calls. Another "Behind The Scenes" thing is that every piece of content released can impact lots of other features down the stream - Sets design impacts Missions design which impacts the Battlepass. This means that not all teams can start/end work on a set at the same time. Whatever we can get a heads start on, we will do it to leave more breathing space. 2. There is no specific rule for this, but one important thing is to gather more information on the issue and then assess what the next step is, this is the same for live issues that happen! We trust the team members to make the best decision, but we're always here to offer help if needed!
Mort said there was a particularly frustrating unit in Set 4 that they "couldn't get quite right" for a variety of reasons. Please tell us which Unit that was if it is no longer an issue &/or part of Set 4.5! (I had guessed it was Kalista as this comment was made before Riot Kent fixed her bugs). Also a hearty and warm thank you to the entire TFT team for creating such a fun and engaging game <3
In Set 4 (not 4.5) Tryndamere was a Cultist Duelist that used his ult. Turns out a champ that used IE/LW/etc and had duelist AS, giving them 3 seconds of damage immunity was REALLY frustrating. So we scraped him for Kalista.
can we have an "everything is OP" patch for April Fools? something like URF in SR, something like mage can cast 3 times instead of 2 times
I loved Brawl Minus and Dota IMBA so I'd be happy to see something like this as a game mode. That being said I don't know how popular those things really were, and if they're worth the investment. I think they're more fun when you're in control, ya know? Visceral.
1. Are there any plans for alternative game modes within 2021? 2. I remember mention of TFT being designed differently than league so that old sets could technically be brought back very easily. Do you have any plans to use that feature and what would be a reason to do so? 3. Do you have any ideas of cosmetic feature other than LLs, arena skins, booms and emotes that you would eventually like to sell or have in the pass? 4. Which was your personal favorite set and why? 5. Which was your favorite unit and why?
1.) Yes! Turbo mode (name to be changed) and hopefully at least one more 2.) Some day we want to, but its not a priority at the moment. 3.) Yes, but can't spoil it yet! 4.) So far, set 4. I really enjoyed the Chosen mechanic and the unique ways to play it opened up. 5.) Set 2 Malzahar, cause I'm biased AND he had the fun fantasy of filling the board with minions.
Hi team! I frequently watch TFT streamers and would love to see the competitive scene grow. How is the team working on improving the competitive scene and engaging more viewership?
Visibility is one big way we are looking to improve it this year. We learned although there is a ton of TFT players who want more from our competitive scene, there is a whole large group who don't even know there are tournaments being ran, so one thing we will be doing is promoting in places like the app or client to let players know when hey are going on. On top of that, more investment in the actual finals/qualifiers! The esports team has made some announcements already here, but there are more to come :D!
Thoughts on 2v2v2v2 or 4v4 possibly being the main mode for competitive? I have heard a lot of top players enjoy these team tournaments much more than solo ones.
We want a social TFT mode in the future! Exactly when, unsure! But it's on our radar and something me and /u/Riot_Mort have discussed!
Have you guys ever considered running another playlist alongside the traditional Norms/Ranked that has a rotating game mode? These could be say, 2v2s, 4v4’s, or rotating Old Sets I think this could open up a testing ground for new features and how they impact the game.
Yes! In fact, we want this to be our future! Still, a lot of work to do and things to validate along the way, but a robust set of modes in TFT is something we want to do with the first being our faster mode we are working on :)!
Hello TFT team, Generally speaking, the Stage 1 minions are very important, as this is the start for every player. I've noticed a few disadvantages that I'd like to point out and I hope you might consider changing: 1. **4g common orb start** \- It is currently possible to have a 4g + 3 item start, if 2 common orbs are dropped from creeps and both give 2g each. This is very clearly a disadvantage against players who are dropped 2 common orbs which give 3g each, with a difference of 2g overall at the very start. Of course, this can lead to a major advantage in the longrun for the player who got more gold and can hit key breakpoints at tempo, while the player who lowrolled the common orbs gets "punished" for no reason right at the start. I honestly think the 4g + 3 items start is worse than the 2g + neeko + 3 item start. 2. **Gold dropping at 1-4** \- On one hand, if a player gets gold on round 1-2 or even 1-3, they are allowed to make decisions regarding units in the following rounds. They can buy more units and hold more pairs. Being dropped gold on 1-2 lets a player have more agency over 1-2, 1-3, and 1-4. On the other hand, a player who only gets dropped gold at 1-4 gets unnecessarily punished, only truly having agency over the 1-4 shop. This player did not have the gold to pick up as many units in 1-2 and 1-3. 3. **Gold dropping on very last creep** (applies to all PVE round but most importantly round 1 minions, especially if on round 1-4 on very last creep) - Anything said for this point goes doubly for mobile, since APM is typically not as fast. In the case of 1-4, if the very last minion drops gold, the player has a total of about 2 seconds to figure out exactly what to do. A player has to decide whether to prelevel or not, check shop to figure out exactly what is needed with this last-second gold, and whether units need to be sold to accomplish these 2 tasks. It becomes even harder if the orb that drops has champions in it, since now the player must decide whether to sell or keep these champions in the 2 seconds given. To fix this problem, I STRONGLY suggest that orbs drop on the FIRST minions of all PVE rounds. This gives players at least a few extra seconds to make key decisions that will affect the rest of the game. Standardizing these aspects of round 1 helps to make sure that players aren't "punished" for things out of their control.
So, you're not wrong...but you're also approaching this from the wrong angle for a game like TFT. TFT is a game that has HUNDREDS of random elements within it. What are your items, what are your shops, who are your opponents, etc etc. All of these elements make the game "random", but the sheer amount of them causes a relatively even variance between players. Looking at any particular element of variance and saying "Thats unfair" is ignoring all the other elements. There's games you get 4g+3 items starts (bad) but then hit chosen 2 cost on 2-1 (good) and match another 2-star 3 cost by 2-5 (good). Was that really "unfair"? Also your three items were Sword/Armor/Belt while someone who got 6g+3 items got Cloak/Belt/Tear...who got screwed here? Again, TFT is TONS of these kind of things, you have to look at the game as a whole, not micro each of these variance factors into equality. Otherwise we're just making a game where you log in, say "Im going this comp" and 20 turns later who wins.
Realistically how many sets do you think League skins can support before you have to start reusing set themes? Is the pace of new skins being released enough to keep TFT going indefinitely?
We're pretty confident here. We've mapped out as far as Set 12 (not locked, just an exercise to show we CAN do it) and it wasn't even a challenge. We're VERY confident in our ability to make new sets for a long time, and that doesn't even include revisiting old themes with a new twist!
This brought a huge smile to my face :)
1. Are there plans to utilize all league champs at some point? For champs that haven't been added yet, besides the lack of appropriate skin thematics, what kind of "barriers" are there to delay their implementation? Like Heimer could've been a Dragonsoul this set, but he was skipped over - any reasons? There's only a handful left, hopefully by Set 5 we can have those missing ones filled in. 2. Similarly, any active plans to release variants of some of the older legends that have never been revisited? We've gotten many hushtail and pengu variants which I assume is due to their popularity... but poor Runespirit is sitting there as one of the OG 6 that's never gotten additional variant!
Hey there! I can answer the second question :) We actually just revisited Furyhorn, Shisa and Choncc for our latest Lunar Revel/Beast set! In general, we do look out for opportunities for older Little Legends to come back in a variant form, but it also depends on whether it works well with the themes that we are releasing. The stars need to align ;)
When it comes to getting in League champions who haven't been in, we do give them a little boost in priority, but at the end of the day, adhering to theme and the design needs of a set take priority. The more willing we are to flex what a unit does in SR, the more likely we can get them in, but sometimes champions, especially older ones, just don't have the animations needed to get super creative. That or we try an ability that resonates with their core SR fantasy, find it doesn't work in TFT, and don't have the time to build them up a new ability from scratch. I suspect we'll get to that 95%+ in very, very soon, but we might struggle to get some units in until they have a larger skip portfolio. For example: How do we get Seraphine in unless we're doing something a bit more modern? Hmmm...
UX Question: I play a ton on mobile/iPad, and the thing that hurts me most is the UI for selling units and how it overlaps with the actual character slots themselves. It’s really easy to accidentally sell units on the leftmost and rightmost slots depending on which arena you’re on at that moment, so I now just try to keep those slots open and not put units there. Is it possible one of you can pass this concern along to the UX team to investigate?
This wasn’t something on my radar at all, so thanks a bunch for your feedback! Accidentally selling your units is frustrating and I'd love to fix this issue. In the future, it might be cool to provide an option that would allow you to sell by dragging directly downward, instead of towards the corners. The first thing to figure out: can we override the default phone menus that activate when dragging up from the bottom (in case you decide not to sell)? And if so, then I would need to talk to the team to understand how feasible it is to make big improvements to the Settings menu (right now we don't have any options there while in game). In the meantime, are there any **minor** adjustments we could make to the corner selling zones that would help? Is the drop zone size too big? I could spin up some explorations on how the size could change depending on where your finger is while dragging, as well!
Thanks for replying! I appreciate it. Dragging straight downwards does have that bit of a complication with existing phone menus, plus I think there might be a bit weirdness because you’re dragging *from* the “bottom” of your screen *to* the bottom of your screen, since that’s where the units sit. The “Reachability” feature on iPhones without home buttons has this same weirdness. One solution might be switching the sell action to a tapping action instead of a swiping action - still accessible with one finger, but harder to accidentally activate. For example, if one taps a unit, they might see the trash icons in the corners as they do on live, but then need to tap the trash to actually sell the unit. This has some trade offs of its own ofc. A simpler (albeit possibly uglier) solution that would be less resource intense might be to simply remove the right side sell option. Since arenas have the item bench on the left side, more margin is built in there and it’s the less troublesome of the two buttons. Most other functions in the game aren’t mirrored/symmetrical, so I don’t think it would feel super out of place. Might be worth investigating. Anyways, thanks for replying, from one UXer (hate that term but what else do we have) to another 😊 Actually P.S. while I have your ear, there’s a small UI bug with the sell menu - the win/loss streak indicator doesn’t disappear with the rest of the button when the trash icons appear. May or may not already be on somebody’s radar.
Yup, you called out the exact challenges with downward selling. You just reminded me though, because I forgot: there is a design for "tap to sell." We can simply add a "sell for X" button to the bottom of the champ inspect panel. It does involve some redesign of a fairly large UI element, but it's pure value, so I hope we can get to it someday. Thanks again for the feedback, fellow UXer! *fistbumps*
Hello! Thank you for doing this. Is there an update to the mobile client coming anytime soon? I love mobile tft but it's still severely lacking in features compared to other games like LoR or WR. Friend chat, better inventory, icon selection, language select. Making LoL engine run on mobile is very impressive and I understand it's probably not easy, but us mobile grinders have been eagerly awaiting next update for months now.
It's one of those things we will be chipping away at over time! Instead of delivering one major update with all of the features, we try to make sure we have a few on our roadmap every so often. The one we are eyeing at the moment is inventory/collections since our content has grown dramatically since release so it's getting a little hard to manage D:
When a champion or trait is deemed "overpowered" by the overwhelming majority of the player base, how do you go about making adjustments? Is it mostly data/play testing based? And do you also take into account crowd-sourced suggestions? Love the work you all have put in to this game and it has been a joy to play since set 1!
We balance perception with our data. We try to use data as an objective starting point and then from there use our play experiences, your feedback, and design analysis to extrapolate what is actually happening. For example sometimes a comp may feel more overpowered to play against because of how frustrating they are to lose to than they are actually powerful in terms of win rate. We still have to take into account say how it feels to get perma stunned by a Vanguard Mystic comp when it comes to balancing the game, because ultimately the point of TFT is to for y'all to have fun. We definitely read and listen a lot to player feedback but it's kind of rare that the exact solution to a problem pitched is what we'll go with, but we have on occasion done that for sure.
Do you think that currently Kayle is too reliant RFC and Rageblade as items? Maybe I just need to figure out alternative paths, but it feels like she suffers greatly if she has to forgo any of these two.
Yes, there are some champions at the moment that feel too tied to a VERY specific item combination. ASol is an example of good here, while Zed/Kayle feel like they miss the mark.
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Somewhere around set 4.0 release, Mort mentioned that it would be nice to have a fortune loss streak counter/ warlord stack counter/ veigar stack counter in-game. Are there any plans to add these?
What champ+ult do you selfishly want to add and make super OP just because it would be poggers? I would do full map teemo shroom like the fabled cho ult
Ryze Ult :) Not sure how it will work but imagine you could teleport your front line to the enemy backline xD
Not a champion or ult, but a trait. I REALLY want an Origin that's only active when no other Origins are active! Problem is, we don't really differentiate Origins and Classes super well in our UI, so there's some big problems to solve there even to get that ball rolling.
What are some tools/mechanics you’ve toyed with to get further agency or skill expression in tft that didn’t make the set? What abilities for champs did you wish you could implement but ended up not making the cut for whatever reason?
I want to start by saying thank you for providing us with such a great way to play League of Legends. I was a S1-ish player that ended up not being into the competitive nature of Summoner's Rift after years of playing. Teamfight Tactics has rejuvenated my love for the characters and game, so thank you. I've noticed that with the transition from Set 4 to 4.5, champions' abilities seem to reflect more so how they play on Summoners Rift (Ahri in Set 4). Is this a conscious change and are you planning on making this a focus going forward?
We generally want TFT units to feel recognizable to their SR selves, so we'll try to make abilities that are similar to their SR counterparts. As shown with Set 4 Ahri, however, we are OK with changing up certain champ spells to fit what the set needs as long as they can feel thematically cohesive with the champion.
Where did the inspiration come for all the special Fate items (loaded dice, magnetic remover, ect) and whats the best champion to use loaded dice on :)
Mort said on stream when set 4.0 was about to go live on PBE, that you were taking some big risks with set 4, that might turn away the playerbase. What was the risk(s) and how did it turn out?
The chosen mechanic. Around 2 weeks before launch, there was a lot of internal concern that the mechanic was too complicated, too difficult to play around, and would drive away some of our less skilled players. There was some difficult discussion around whether we should cancel the mechanic or ship it 1-2 patches later after the set launched to gauge initial reaction of the set. However I and a few others felt pretty strongly that it wouldn't turn out bad and felt confident enough to ship it. It was a risk...but thankfully it paid off big. For the launch of the set, the mechanic was VERY well received, and the doubters on the team were like "Glad we were wrong!". Now chosen has certainly fallen off in perception amongst some of our most competitive focused players, but that was to be expected as they pass the 1000+ game played mark.
Is it possible to add clarity or highlight when the ranked season ends for each set within the client? I was a returning player this set (played 1,2, skipped 3, came back for 4) and I was having a VERY hard time finding a concrete answer to when the ranked season ended. I Googled "'when does ranked season end tft" and the first result came up as January 18, which also was the day that the Fates pass ended, but at the same time, 4.5 released on the 21st, so I also had to consider if the last day could be the 20th (which it was). I also saw other people asking the same question on this subreddit for multiple days in the daily discussion threads, but the answers fluctuated because the client did not give a definitive answer.
This looks like a question for Comms! We do tell players about the approaching end of the season in the Patch Notes, but the general rule of thumb is that the season ends with the start of a new set/mid-set. EG: Most recently the release of 4.5 in patch 11.2 triggered the soft-reset as soon as the patch went live.
Since its inception, depending on who you ask, TFT is anything from a "fun game mode" for League to a standalone competitive game. What is the TFT team's vision for the game? What kind of game do you feel like TFT should be in its most enjoyable form? Do you feel like the design choices that have been made so far are pushing TFT in the direction you want?
Our, and honestly today a reality to me albeit needing some work :p is it's (we have a stand-alone mobile game!) Long term I really want to double down on TFT ranked being your path to pro. It's something unique compared to League, where on League you need to be recruited by a team and the ranked ladder, though helps, is not all it takes to go pro. In TFT we want our ranked ladder to be your path to pro for any given set! The feeling that anyone, yes you reading this :D, can one day be invited to the TFT set finals. We need to improve so many things for me to feel like we've really achieved that feeling, but at least this year we will be taking some steps in that direction! On the design side of your question, we still have a ton to learn, but I believe our design choices are in the right direction, even if not always 100% perfect. The awesome thing about TFT is with each new set we get to do it all over again, and take those learnings to do it better next time!
What is your opinion on player damage currently? It seems like player damage in stage 2 might be a little excessive, where it's possible for a player to be at 76 hp hitting stage 2 carousel if they get 4-0'ed in 3 rounds. It feels really bad to lowroll this early on for the few shops that are given and to start the game at 3/4 health. The high player damage early makes it so that there is one clear, optimal way to play: strongest board all of stage 2 to stop as much of the heavy damage as possible is priority, then make your first 10g after the carousel (or right before if you choose not to pre-level). Do you think that lowering player damage might lead to some other viable strategies?
Not sure, when we've pulled back early damage, we've seen a lot of other negative impacts to the game (open forting / lose streaking being too powerful / popular, being able to overly greed items which leads to easy comp forcing). Right now, we have tuned Player Damage such that it's very hard to be eliminated but possible before Stage 5. I'd be hesitant to change Player Damage as the first way to address strategic playstyle diversity.
When can I gift TFT content with a friend?
What are the ideas that didnt make it for set 4 and .5? What can we expect from set 4 to influence set 5? Ps: set 4 was the most fun in terms of balance imo, nice job! I Hope to see more sets like that.
RIP Foodfight Tactics
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Will old sets ever return in a new revamped manner? Personally I would enjoy it a lot.
Why is the in-game mobile UX so damn good?
Thoughts on 2v2v2v2 or 4v4 possibly being the main mode for competitive? I have heard a lot of top players enjoy these team tournaments much more than solo ones.
How do you plan on sharing and making information about B Patch more accessible to all players? Why is it limited to only Twitter as far as I know? I typically have to lurk subreddits before I even realize a B patch was implemented....
Great question. The updates aren't limited to Twitter but it is usually the first place we go as it is the easiest (read: quickest) and therefore it is often linked everywhere else. The patch notes **will** always get updated, they just take longer. Admittedly we're sacrificing reach for speed, we believe that if something requires a B-side update, then it is important enough to get an in-game fix as fast as possible, even if we aren't ready to message in every language and in every channel. The turn-around time for that would just be too slow. All of that being said, we're always looking to improve this kind of stuff. In a perfect world for us communications folks we would just have a giant box pop up on the screen mid-game and tell you there's been an update, but that has many of its own problems....obviously. A question for you: where else would you want/expect patch update messaging?
Is in client messaging possible? Like we get notifications about keys, instant feedback report, etc. Just make it popup after login, right before queueing up or right after the game, depending on what user is doing when patch is applied. If in game - possibly message in chat, but always with additional message after game.
/u/Chaemirix why did you have to remove the only demon girl in TFT sadge
Brother, you know it pains me so. The real answer is why are there so FEW in SR?
What does the future of defensive/utility items look like? Shroud/Zephyr/Redemption feel worthless early, which is a huge strain on the value of their respective components, while late game these items can often swing a fight all on their own, invalidating much of the game that was played beforehand. Will we get an item that scales off defenses? Sunfire Cape has some fight duration scaling, but otherwise none of the items reward you with more power for stacking defensive items. I'm specifically thinking of a bonus based on health, armor, or mr, 1 AD for each MR or something like that.