Hey everyone!
Joe here again on behalf of the League dev team.
First of all - I want to say thank you
to everyone who jumped in and gave us feedback
on the last update.
We tried to read and respond to as many comments
as we could, and we really appreciate you
taking the time to let us know what you think.
Now that we're developing features on the new client
we hope to be able to move a lot faster.
Just because the client is live doesn't mean we're done with it.
We'll be continuing to iterate based on your feedback.
We're still working on performance and stability;
the Item Set tool is on the way; and there are many
other earflicks with the user experience
we're committed to fixing as soon as possible.
In this update I'm happy to finally go more in depth
about some of our other work in progress.
I'd like to share our detailed plans for
Runes and Masteries as well as the Honor Update,
and maybe even kill a few more memes along the way.
Just a reminder that everything I'll talk about
here could change.
This is gonna be a long one, so let's get to it!
Last time I talked about some of the common complaints
with Runes and Masteries, and there were a lot of
questions about what we might do here.
So this time I'd like to share more detail with you
about just what we've got planned.
Our current plan is to release a major overhaul
to Runes and Masteries for this November's preseason.
This is a big change with a lot of different pieces
that we're referring to collectively as Runes Reforged.
First, we're combining Runes and Masteries
into a single pre-game system.
Instead of many, mostly incremental choices about stats,
new Runes concentrate the power
down to a more focused set of choices
that have a greater impact on gameplay.
Similar to the current Masteries system,
your most important choice will be your Keystone Rune.
But in the new system a Keystone Rune
gets to be much more powerful than anything
we've had in pre-game before.
Keystones should feel like huge choices
that you can build an entire playstyle around.
Take Berserk for example.
After you've been in combat for a few seconds,
Berserk grants you a 60% attack speed boost
and raises your attack speed cap momentarily.
Another example Keystone is Perxie.
Perxie is a pet that comes with special abilities.
When you send her out, she gives a shield to allies
or does additional damage to enemies.
Your keystone is meant to be the focal point of your Rune build.
But you'll augment this build with
Minor and Major rune choices.
These give you flexibility in dealing with the enemy draft
or taking advantage of your team's composition.
For example, here's a Major rune called Overheal.
Excess healing past your max health
gets converted to a shield.
This is great if your champion has a lot of healing.
It's also great if someone on your team
picks Soraka or Sona.
To ensure that Runes help you adapt to each new game
of League, Runes will be fully editable in champ select.
We also believe that you shouldn't have to choose
between trying out a new rune build
and buying a new champion.
We know that the high IP cost for runes
has been a major pain point for a long time.
So we're super excited to let you know
that new Runes will be totally free for all players.
A side benefit of this change
will be the freedom to try riskier rune designs
and iterate on them more frequently,
something we were hesitant to do
when you had to invest many hours into unlocking them.
Of course, today, Runes are a significant portion
of what players unlock with IP.
Making runes free will have an impact on how
you unlock champions, icons and more.
But we also view this as an opportunity
to take a step back and revisit League's rewards
system as a whole.
So while we are reworking runes,
we're also looking at other improvements
such as making it easier for new players
to fill out their champion pools,
and giving all players more rewards to work towards.
Many of you guys have spent a lot of IP on runes already.
When we transition over to the new system,
we'll have a plan in place to take care of players
who've invested in runes and rune pages over the years.
More on the transition and improving rewards
as we get closer to preseason.
Obviously this is a big change.
One of the biggest core gameplay changes we've made in years.
Our designers will be sharing more details
on Runes Reforged this week.
We're talking about these changes early because
we want to get your feedback as early as possible.
So let us know - what do you think?
What are you worried about?
What are you excited about?
We want to make this as good as it can be
before it launches in November,
and we need your help to get there.
Now let's talk about the Honor Update.
Today, Honor is a quiet little set of buttons
in the end-of-game screen.
It's easy to forget these buttons even exist.
Our new approach is to integrate the Honor system
much more tightly with the game so honorable players
can get the recognition and the rewards they deserve.
When we update Honor, after the nexus explodes,
you'll see a new screen, where each player
can choose to honor one teammate.
There are three different categories meant to capture
different types of honorable playstyles.
If your top laner got camped early but refused to give up,
you can honor them for having kept calm
instead of tilting off the face of the earth.
Or, if your midlaner made an aggressive Baron call
the second they saw someone in bot lane,
you can give them the nod for great shotcalling.
For a teammate who was great to play with
and just made the game more fun for everyone,
you can honor them with a GG.
After voting, you'll go to the normal end-of-game screen,
where you'll be able to see what honors you received.
If you receive three or more honors,
you'll be recognized for the entire lobby.
You'll also have an honor level.
Your honor level will be viewable in your profile,
right next to your rank.
You'll level up just by playing hard
and earning Honor from your teammates.
If you have a few "less honorable" games,
you can actually drop levels and you'll have to earn back
your standing through consistently sportsmanlike play.
And your standing matters.
A higher honor level comes with real benefits.
Key fragments will now drop through the honor system instead,
and more honorable players can get additional rewards,
including exclusive content.
Honor is headed to PBE this week,
and we're aiming for a global release in patch 7.13.
The Honor team will be diving deeper into details soon,
so be sure to keep an eye out for that.
We continue to look for opportunities
to tackle quality-of-life features alongside
our big development priorities.
By now you've seen our update to Pulsefire Ezreal,
the addition of ping muting,
the highlights viewer,
and some minor enhancements to ARAM.
Soon we'll be implementing the 10 ban system,
which also reduces a lot of friction getting
into game in the new client.
Finally, because it came up a bunch
in the last video's comments, I also wanted to give
a quick update on voice chat.
Now that the client has shipped,
we are discussing voice chat designs for League.
Voice is a polarizing feature.
Some of you really love the idea and
some of you really don't.
When we do implement voice,
we want to make sure we do so in a way that
makes sense for as many players as possible.
Let us know what issues
you think we should focus on next.
As always, thank you guys so much for playing.
The team is so excited to launch these
and many other features to you
and hear what you think about them.
Feel free to leave comments or ask questions,
and we'll do our best to address as many as we can.
Thanks again, and see you on the Rift!