Hey, guys.
I'm Greg Street.
I'm one of the designers on League of Legends.
And we're trying a new format here
to address some of the questions we're getting from players.
So let us know how it works
and if it's cool, we'll try to do more of them.
What I want to talk about was a question we're getting from a lot of you all, right now,
about the nature of randomness.
and how, as designers, do we think about
you know, we call it variance, or randomness, or RNG.
We've done some features, like the dragon changes for this season,
and now the living jungle plants in pre- season.
Some of you are coming back with "But...
what role does randomness have in a strategy game?"
Particularly, when you hear us talk about things like
"Hey, dodging was bad. We don't like dodge anymore."
And even crit might have some problems so...
Bear with me, I'll try to explain how we're thinking
and see if it makes sense to you.
So I think, you know, as gamers
we often have a visceral reaction to randomness as a bad thing.
I totally get it.
We've all been there when you're in some game
where it just feels like BS that you've done everything perfectly
but the game rolls a dice
and you fail in what you're trying to do.
That is super frustrating, and that is not at all what we're trying to recreate.
Designers will sometimes talk about the difference between
input randomness and output randomness.
Output randomness is the one we don't like.
That's where you've already decided what you want to do
and you try to do it
and then the computer rolls a dice and says
"Oh, sorry, you missed."
You know, there are some games that need that to function.
I wouldn't want to play a role playing game without, you know, a D20.
But, we think in a strategy game, particularly a competitive multi-player game like League
that that is super frustrating.
You've already decided what to do.
And now the game is interfering with your ability to carry it out.
On the other hand, the other type of randomness is input randomness.
This is where you're presented with a situation
and you have to make decisions based on what you're seeing.
The easiest way I can explain it is if you think about a board game like Settlers of Catan.
You start the game off by rearranging the terrain
and then everyone has to kind of adapt to what that board looks like.
Or, another board game, Carcassonne,
where you're kind of building the landscape as you play the game.
You're not exactly sure how things are going to come about
and you have to adapt.
That's really what we're going for with things like the way Drakes change over time.
You know what's coming up.
It's not that you discover the buff after you've killed the dragon.
The decision's supposed to be
given this information
do I, you know, does my team really want this dragon
or do we really wanna stop the enemy from getting it.
These should be like tweaks to your strategy, not the entire strategy.
And they in general shouldn't be the thing that allows
you know a weaker skilled player to dominate a more highly skilled player.
Another real world example is a game like poker
where, I don't pretend to be a poker expert by any stretch.
But if you think of Texas Hold 'Em
there are certain cards that you see
and certain cards that are face down.
And you don't know what those are.
And that element of randomness adds a lot of the depth to the game.
But it's, you know, it's a carefully calibrated number of cards that are down and number of cards that face up.
If there are like 20 cards down
you would have almost no control over the outcome.
And if there were no cards down
you would have perfect information about whether or not your hand is worth playing.
It's definitely possible to take even this form of input randomness too far.
That, you know, that's not the intention.
We view there being all these different components of mastery in a game like League.
Game knowledge, mechanical execution, being able to do things like skill shots
coordinating with a team
making good decisions about "Is it time to take that tower? Is it time to take that dragon?"
And dealing with incomplete information is a big part of that.
In a multi-player game like League
particularly given the way vision works in the game
you don't have complete information about where the enemy is.
Jungle ganking is all about, "I wasn't exactly sure where the guy was or when he was going to come out."
What we are trying to do with randomness is
create situations where you have to react to what's going on in the game.
You have to make decisions often on the spot.
You can't just be pre-programmed to know how you're going to execute
according to the things that happen every single game.
It may take us a while to get the tuning right.
Some of these features may not work, and we certainly introduce things to League
that ended up not playing out the way we hoped they would once they're out in front of all of you guys.
So let us know how it goes.
Please keep sending feedback.
We'd also love feedback on this format as a whole.
If it helps you kind of understand
where our head is at
so that then, you can help us give the feedback we need to evaluate whether or not
we're hitting those goals.
Thanks a lot.