A facelift to Summoner's Rift, visual improvements to the game, matchmaking updates, and a new item are featured in this episode of the Patch Preview.
I'm Phreak and I'll be your host for the show, introducing the various topics in this episode.
For design input, we've recruited Morello, the Lead Champion Designer.
We're updating the look of Summoner's Rift.
While we're hoping all our players will like the new look of the map, the update is even more significant for players who use "Low" or "Very Low" settings.
In addition to the new look; most players will see better frame rates on the map, especially on low settings.
It will completely depend on your computer and settings, but we've seen as much as double the old frame rate.
With everything being redone, your current settings probably aren't optimal anymore.
Head over to the Video menu and set your options to what's best for your computer.
We rebuilt our Head's-Up-Display, or HUD, from the ground up.
All of our players will see a frame rate improvement on all maps, no matter what settings you're playing on.
We've also got some small visual improvements, too: You'll see new icons, more readable text, and some better-looking art.
We're also including Minion kills in the top right corner by your kills, deaths, and assists.
In addition to the updates with Summoner's Rift and the HUD, we're giving Ashe a visual upgrade, complete with model, animations, particles, splash art, and voiceover.
What can you tell us about this upgrade?
At the end of the day, we're players, too, and when we log in and see some of these older art assets that don't meet our quality standards today, we want to go back and fix that.
This is something you've seen before with Kayle's model rework and Gangplank's visual overhaul, and it's something you'll continue to see in the future with our older characters.
We made some improvements to how players see turrets, too.
Unless we're trying to hide information, like with the Fog of War, the game should inform players of everything going on so that they can make quick decisions.
In a big team fight, a turret could be the biggest source of damage output and players need to react to that.
So we're giving them the cues they need to do make attack or retreat decisions.
Now, whenever a turret targets a player, that player hears a sound and sees an icon over his champion and the turret so he knows what's going on.
We're updating Ranked Solo/Duo Queue by removing the Free-to-Play rotation from this game type.
Now players can only pick from champions they have unlocked.
However, Normal Draft and Ranked Teams are staying the way they are. Why are we making this change? 00:02:29.000,00:02:26.800 Ranked is designed to be a place where you can try your best and try to win, while the Free-to-Play rotation is there so you can try out new champions.
These are mutually exclusive goals because you want to try hard to win; you should be using champions you have some skill with already, not a champion you haven't used before.
We're not changing anything about how Free-to-Play works in Normal, so you can still use that to try out new champions or just play a champion you haven't unlocked that you liked.
Ranked Teams are typically made up of players who know each other and are "bought into" the experience they're going to have, to Free-to-Play isn't going to change at all for Ranked Teams.
To clarify really quickly, if you have a champion unlocked on your account during its Free-to-Play week, you can still play it in Ranked Solo/Duo Queue.
Normal Draft Games are seeing a change that our players have been asking for:
We used to give players in premade groups priority and always gave one of them the "captain" slot, with banning powers and first pick.
Now, whenever a player queues up for a Normal Draft game, he will have a 20% chance to be the team's captain every time, regardless of premades.
If he's not given the captain slot, an individual player will be given a random slot in the pick order instead of being behind all the premade players.
If multiple players group up before the game, their host absorbs all of their chances, meaning that the host of a 4-man premade has an 80% chance to be captain.
What are the goals behind all these changes to Normal Draft Games?
We wanted to make Normal Draft fair for solo queue players, and giving them a one-in-five chance to get any slot top to bottom really helps accomplish that.
Since premade groups can now pick a captain, they can choose who they want picking and banning champions so they can make more effective decisions as a team.
Chalice of Harmony is supposed to be this big "I need mana" item but gets ignored, because it takes up an extremely important item slot late game.
To help this, we're adding a late-game upgrade to Chalice of Harmony called Athene's Unholy Grail that grants Ability Power, Cooldown Reduction, Magic Resist, and a bunch of Mana Regeneration.
What effect do we think this item will have on the game?
This late game upgrade will let mana-hungry champions like Swain, Anivia, and Orianna to keep onto the Chalice of Harmony and upgrade it to something useful at the end of the game.
Another reason to do this is to improve caster item variety and build options.
Choice in your item build allow you to customize your play style and develop your own way to play your champion, which we always think is fun.
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