Everyone. I'm Andrei, also known as Meddler.
I'm Jeremy, a.k.a. Riot Brightmoon.
Now, today is Monday, April 17th,
and we’re back for our fourth of these Dev Update videos.
We have a lot to cover today and to help us do it,
we're going to be joined by a familiar face to many of you,
Ryan “Reav3” Mireles.
He'll be talking about new champions and the upcoming 2v2v2v2 game mode.
But before we get to that, let's talk about midseason, Ranked reset,
itemization changes, and some quality of life updates.
Ok, for the first time, we're doing a partial Ranked reset in July
before starting the second Ranked split.
We've got a blog from last November where we go into all the reasons
why and details, and we'll link that in the description of this video.
But we'll use this midseason to make some adjustments to game systems and content.
Not at the scale of Preseason, like when we redo the runes or item systems.
Or the jungle, every time.
Or the jungle.
But it's going to be a bit more than a standard balance patch.
Now, the biggest focus of the midseason this time will be on itemization.
At a high level,
we're not very happy with the current state of Mythic items as an overall system,
and based off your feedback neither are a lot of you.
Therefore, we need to find a better direction for them.
So midseason we're going to be testing some stuff out,
and we're going to be trying that through changes to ADC Mythic items,
some overall changes to lethality, working on game health there especially,
and starting an update on enchanter items to be more satisfying and fun to use.
We’re then going to take the learnings from that work
to inform our future plans for the item system as a whole.
Likely meaning a bunch of other changes in Preseason.
If we're seeing a lot more promise in Mythic items after those changes
we'll commit to that, we'll continue to reinforce that, that newfound direction.
If that's still not working though,
we’ll then explore some much more divergent approaches.
You know, radical changes to how Mythic items function and why they're there,
or potentially just the removal Mythic items as a concept.
We'd keep a lot of the items around, but take out the restriction, etc.
and retune their balance.
Beyond that, a couple of other things to note for the midseason.
This is when the Ivern midscope update
we mentioned a little while back is going to come out.
And it's also very likely that we're going to ship
buff sharing for the red and blue jungle buffs.
For everybody, not just when Ivern’s in the game.
Now, if you want to hear more about the itemization side of things
there’s a dev blog out today that has more detail on our thinking there.
All right, now let's talk about bots.
And actually today we're going to talk about two kinds:
the bad kind and the good kind.
And the ugly.
I previously mentioned that we'd be investing in removing unwanted bots in your games.
We recently conducted a major bot banning wave,
so you should see less unwanted bots in queues, including in Ranked.
Now we do these bans quietly, and in waves,
so it's harder for bot makers to respond to.
So that's why we don't often talk about these,
but we're still working on it and working in this space.
We'll share more updates on that in the future.
Okay, now let's talk about the good kind of bots,
the kind that you actually want in your games.
We've brought a new team together focusing on improving our bot AI.
We want to build bots that will help new, and experienced players alike,
practice and get better at League in a lower stakes and less stressful environment.
Our improved bot AI systems
will also give our devs new tools to work with and open doors to new content.
We'll be testing these new bots on PBE later
this year and would love your feedback.
These new bots also can order pizza and have it delivered to your house
any time you want if you just ask them.
It's pretty cool, right?
Yeah, is there a dev blog... about the pizza?
There's a blog out today with more information
on our goals for bot AI and what you can expect.
Along with the bot changes,
we've also got some other quality of life type stuff coming out soon.
So first off, we talked previously about how we were deprecating 32bit OS support
in another video.
And one of the benefits of that is it's meant more memory is available
for other things.
One of those is the emote wheel.
As a first challenge are going to be expanding that from five slots to nine.
But we're also exploring some other further improvements to it
at some point this year,
which could include ability to favorite particular emotes or better ability
to search them or multiple emote pages, that sort of thing.
So if you have particular thoughts on what you'd like to see there,
please do let us know.
Another thing we've been working on
is reenabling a lot of champion dialog lines that have broken over the years.
We've identified about 4500 lines spread across 100 different champions and skins
that either used to function and don't anymore,
or were never hooked up properly in the first place,
or are there but get played over by other lines of dialogue.
So we're working through re-enabling those.
So on a range of champions and skins,
you should hear the occasional line of dialogue you haven’t heard before.
We've done about a third of them so far.
We've got the other two thirds coming over the course of the year.
Now though, we're going to hand things over to Ryan.
Hey, everyone.
I’m Ryan “Reav3” Mireles,
lead producer of gameplay on League of Legends.
So a long time ago, we promised a new creature champion,
and one that wasn't a cute cat, or with some humanoid features like Bel’Veth.
A champion for people that like dark and scary monsters.
Well, we're finally ready to release that champion.
Naafiri will be a new, straight forward,
easier to pick up and play assassin.
Or assassins.
I guess.
Technically a pack of assassins?
We also have a new jungler named Briar. being restrained in champ development,
but her bloodlust won't be contained for long.
And now for some sad news.
I know you're all super excited for the Skarner VGU,
as we saw a lot of positive reception for his new direction
in the last Skarner dev blog.
Don't worry, he's still in development, but we're going to need
some extra time to make sure we get his gameplay just right.
What that means is Skarner won't make it out this year
and is looking more like early next year.
But it's not all bad news
because as we take time to get Skarner’s gameplay right
the artists that were going to work on Skarner
have been working on a visual update that many of you top lane fighter players
will be very excited about.
So if you remember earlier this year
we released a small gameplay update to Jax.
Well, later this year, we're going to pair that
with a visual update to Jax as well.
I'm sure you're all wondering the same question
we were wondering when we started working on his new look.
I wonder if he had a real weapon.
We'll keep wondering, because we sure as heck didn't give him one.
We did give it more meaning, though.
Jax’s weapon is now a lamp post from his hometown of Icathia.
Before it was swallowed by the Void.
It's the last thing he has from home, so he never lets it out of the sight.
But that thing is huge, so he can't possibly hold it
AND a real weapon at the same time.
So he just uses it as a weapon instead.
Look out later this year for Jax to finally get
his long deserved visual update.
You can read more about all the champions
in the Champion Roadmap, which is out right now.
Now I want to give a little update on the 2v2v2v2 game mode,
which we're going to ship with the big summer event this year.
We're also building a completely new map from the ground up to support the mode.
We can't wait to hear what you think about it when you get to play it in a few months.
That's it for me.
Here's Riot Brightmoon and Meddler.
Now, before we go,
I want to remind you MSI is coming up.
And there’s an MSI State of the Game Esports video out today
with our Global Head of League Esports, Naz Aletaha.
She and I talk about everything we're doing for the event, including:
Inkshadow skins, info about watch rewards, and details on the event itself.
Beyond that,
if you're interested, please don't forget to check out the dev blogs
we've got on AI bots, itemization, and the Champion Roadmap.
And as always, we'd love any feedback you have on these videos
in terms of content we cover,
what we don't cover, overall format, etc., etc.
Thank you all. and we'll see you next time.
Thanks for listening.