Hey, folks, I'm Andrei, also known as Meddler.
Hey, everybody.
I'm Jeremy, also known as Riot Brightmoon.
And we're back for another Dev Update.
Today is Tuesday, July 18th.
Usually we just jump right into things.
But today, we're going to take a second to reflect on the year so far.
When we started this series of videos at the start of the year,
we recognized we needed to deliver on a number of things for you folks.
From game modes, to events,
to more consistent communication, to cinematics, to other stuff.
And the Soul Fighter event that's just gone live
is one of our big efforts in that regard.
We certainly don't expect it to address everything,
but we hope it's a meaningful step towards putting League in a better spot,
particularly when it comes to new game modes
or delivering more novel events or exploring new themes.
So we're very much looking forward to seeing what you all think of it.
So, by now, we hope you've all had a chance to enter the Arena
and test out our new mode.
So it's not live yet at the time we're recording this,
but so far we've seen a lot of excitement around it
and a lot of players hopping onto PBE to get early access.
So we wanted to take a moment to answer some of the most common questions
that we've been hearing from players about Arena.
Now we've seen the most popular question being
whether Arena is going to return in the future.
So this version of Arena was intended specifically for Soul Fighter,
and we want to take some time to hear your feedback
and gauge the mode’s popularity before we make any future decisions.
Now, assuming Arena does return in the future,
there are definitely some features we didn't get to in this version,
like custom lobbies and queuing with multiple friends
that we would like to get in.
Then when it comes to game balance, we're going to be putting out
Arena-specific balance changes over the course of its run.
Those will likely be a mixture of champion-specific tailored changes
and, where needs be, if we just need to change a lot of champions at once,
simpler percentage adjustments to damage dealt or taken.
We'll be looking at a range of inputs when considering balance,
including class performance, champion pairings,
champion plus Augment synergies, etc.
If you're looking for more info again on Arena,
we answered more of your questions in an Arena FAQ dev blog
that was just published today.
Or, if you're curious about how the modes team built Arena,
we've also posted a behind the scenes video on its development.
So do check that out if you want to meet the team and learn more about the mode.
I also want to mention Quick Play.
So just as a refresher, Quick Play will let you choose your role
and champion combinations when you queue.
So you'll skip Champ Select and get straight into the game.
This is intended to be a potential replacement for blind pick.
Now, we were hoping to get Quick Play out before the midyear patch,
but we had to put it on hold for a bit while we prioritized
some work for Soul Fighter, Arena, and the Ranked changes for Split 2.
However, we are still planning to have it ready for you later this year.
Also got a brief update on the Star Guardian skins
that we ported over from Wild Rift recently.
Now that some of you folks have Seraphine, Orianna, and Senna
in your hands, we've been really excited to see that
y’know, overall you’re loving them.
And as of this time that we’re filming,
Seraphine and Orianna have been two of the most popular skins this year.
So we're now working on getting Xayah and Rakan over for later in the year.
Okay, for an update now I know you're all interested in,
the return of the Blue Essence Emporium.
So it's coming back in Patch 13.17,
and we have plans to bring it back twice a year moving forward.
It'll look like what you've been used to in the past,
but we've actually made some big tech improvements under the hood.
We're also introducing mass disenchant before the emporium goes live,
so you can quickly disenchant unneeded champion shards
and make it rain blue essence in preparation.
Next, we’d like to talk a bit about
some updates we're making to ability icons.
This is one of the smaller details, but it's the sort of thing we want to keep
updating as part of our ongoing work to keep League modern.
We've got a range of champions underway at the moment and are currently aiming
to ship icon updates for Graves, Janna, Jarvan, Nami, Orianna, and Varus in August.
After that, we'll tackle a number of others over the rest of the year.
Then, looking to the future, in the next Dev Update,
we'll talk a lot more about how Arena has been going,
what we're hearing from all of you,
and what we're thinking about for the future of Arena and other game modes.
We'll also have some updates for you on Preseason,
which will include significant work on items and the item system,
a visual and audio update for Jax,
and you’ll have already met our newest champion, Briar,
so we'll talk about that a bit.
Thank you so much for watching and we will see you next time.
Thank you all.