Hey, everybody.
I'm Jeremy, also known as Riot Brightmoon.
Heya folks. I'm Andrei, also known as Meddler.
And we're back today with another Dev Update.
So today is Thursday, May 25th.
And we're going to be joined by Stephanie Leung, the lead for the Skins team.
Stephanie is going to cover some updates on Lee Sin and Teemo’s ASUs,
the Star Guardian skins that we're bringing over from Wild Rift,
and some news about an upcoming Ultimate skin.
Before that though, let’s talk about a few updates
to Ranked and Clash.
So, earlier this year we made some changes to Ranked,
including changing promo series from five games to three,
removing visible ranked from matchmaking,
and splitting the year into two separate Ranked climbs.
We're happy with how those changes have gone so far,
and we've got some additional updates
coming to Ranked during the Midseason in July.
First off,
right now the majority of Ranked players are Silver and below,
with only a small proportion of the playerbase above Gold 4.
We think that distribution is too skewed towards the lower end of the spectrum.
You know, we should be making better use
of a wide range of ranks
to reflect how different skill levels actually are in there,
depending on the player,
rather than clustering players in such a narrow band.
So, we're going to be changing our Ranked distribution.
At the same time, though, but we also don't want to
just put a whole bunch more people into Diamond and above.
So what we're doing is adding a new tier, Emerald, between Platinum and Diamond,
but keeping the skill requirements for Diamond+ the same as they are today.
Now, if you want to hear more about that,
we’ve got a dev blog out right now that goes into a lot more details.
Another common frustration point is promos.
Promos have long been divisive,
and removing them between divisions was well received a while back,
as was the removal of promos entirely from Wild Rift,
and the lack of promos and Teamfight Tactics.
Y’know, we still see Ranked systems
have a lot of excitement and goal chasing and so on going on there,
without the downsides of the promo system.
So, we're going to be completely removing them from League as a result.
- Wait, so no more promos in League? - No more promos.
Okay, I know it's been a minute since we've talked about Clash,
so let's just jump in.
For many players, Clash is the pinnacle of competitive League.
You know, you have a dedicated team,
you can scout your opponents,
there are extra stakes on the line.
But there are also some clear pain points with Clash
that we just have to address.
So, we've got some short term changes in the works
and some longer term changes planned.
But today I'm just going to cover the short term stuff.
So, in the near term, we’re targeting improvements to 3 major issues:
teams who forfeit when they lose the first round,
Clash’s overall reliability,
and making Clash an experience worth planning around.
So to address these, we're changing the reward system to be based on
how many games you win or lose to encourage playing out the full tournament.
We're changing tournaments to be held monthly instead of biweekly,
and changing how we monitor and support clash servers and code
to provide more stability.
In addition, ARAM Clash last year was really well received,
so we're going to be hosting a few non-Summoner’s Rift Clashes this year,
starting with another ARAM Clash in August.
You can read more about the Clash changes in a dev blog that's out today.
Okay, that's it from us for now.
We're going to hand things over to Stephanie,
who’ll give you some updates on skins.
Hey, everyone.
I'm Stephanie “100 pc nuggets” Leung,
the new lead for skins and former insights human on League.
I'm super excited to talk to you all about what's happening
on our team these days.
As you know, we have ASUs in progress for Lee Sin and Teemo.
And I wanted to give you guys an update on them today.
For Teemo, we're aiming to bring him up to modern standards
by updating his spell animations and giving him a more expressive face.
We're also going to be updating his voiceover, lore, and recalls.
For Lee Sin, our goals are to make his power source of dragon spirit magic
a bit more apparent and to increase his gameplay clarity
by giving him a more unique silhouette.
We also want to ensure that he has modern animations and SFX in this, too.
And of course, finally putting those neck memes to rest.
So while we still have a lot more work to do,
we're making good progress on their bases, and after that,
we're gonna start working on their extensive skin catalogs.
As for their releases, Lee Sin is scheduled
for the first half of 2024,
and Teemo in the second half.
For a more detailed look at their progress,
check out the dev blog that we published today.
I also have a quick update on the Star Guardian skins
we're bringing over from Wild Rift.
We've been making a lot of progress on Seraphine, Orianna, and Senna,
and I'm proud to announce that Seraphine and Orianna
will be available in patch 13.13,
with Senna coming one patch later in 13.14.
We haven't forgotten about Redeemed Xayah and Rakan,
and they will be coming towards the end of the year.
Legendaries are just taking a little bit longer to adapt than the epic skins.
Crystalis Motus Leona is officially out on PBE.
She’s the first skin in our latest mythic thematic.
And hopefully now that you've gotten your first look, we wanted to share that
Taliyah and Ashe will also be receiving the next Crystalis Motus skins later this year.
Lastly, I'm happy to share with all of you
that Samira will be recieving an Ultimate skin as part of this year's summer event.
For some background, we started out making Samira’s skin
with a concept in mind and quickly realized
that we wanted to take her design beyond the scope of a Legendary.
So, we decided to keep adding more and more and...
we're really excited about how she turned out.
So we'll be sure to keep you updated on all this in the coming months.
For now, you can find more information
on skins and Samira’s Ultimate and the accompanying dev blog.
That's all from me, so
I'll hand things back over to Riot Brightmoon and Meddler.
All right, that's it for us today.
By the next time you hear from us,
you'll have a lot more info about the new champion Naafiri
and the 2v2v2v2 game mode because they'll be on PBE!
We’re also still hard at work at the moment on the Jax and Skarner updates,
but we don't have anything more to share on them right now.
Also, don't forget that the first Ranked split ends on July 17th server time
and then Ranked will open back up again on July 19th.
Be sure to check out all the dev blogs that released today if you're interested
on Ranked, Clash, the ASU updates, and skins.
Now, we're also trying something else a bit different this time
with a separate little video... that’s a rapid fire question and answer format
that’ll be linked somewhere, wherever you're watching this video.
Let us know what you think of it.
It's something we're considering doing regularly,
if that turns out to be a useful thing.
Thanks so much for watching,
and we'll see you next time.
See ya!