This afternoon's red post collection includes a heads up the 2015 ranked season is ending on November 11th plus an FAQ on the rewards, the unfortunate news that Kindred's release is delayed until 5.20, Meddler discussing potential Teleport changes in preseason, and more!
Red Post Collection: Be Victorious, One for All returns, Worlds Hub & Merch, new /ALL Chat, & more!
Chat with L4T3NCY on 10/7!
As mentioned in the BE VICTORIOUS teaser last week, the ranked season is coming to a close on NOVEMBER 11th!
Check out this post on the end of the ranked season and the various rewards, including the Victorious Sivir skin, new ranked division marks atop the loading screen borders, and more.
Over the course of the season, you felt both sides of a stolen Baron. You carried hard and took the occasional ride in a teammate's backpack. The struggle is real, but victory is sweet. Now it's time for one last push.
Ranked rewards return with Victorious Sivir, new division markers atop loading screen borders, and an evolving ward skin for ranked teams. Make your mark and be Victorious before November 11.
Ranked rewards based on your end of season ranking, not peak ranking.
A new evolving ward skin unlocks exclusively for those who hit their squad goals and rack up wins as part of a ranked team.
Keep in mind, you play in the win to earn the point(s)—just being on the roster won't score you anything.
The 2015 season wraps up at the end of day (in your territory) on November 10—technically this means 12:01AM on November 11.
When do rewards hit my account?
Rewards will arrive by end of day on November 17.
If you're Gold+ and don't own Sivir, the champion will be unlocked alongside your new skin.
Are ranked borders queue specific?
Can I use my borders from previous seasons?
Nope. Borders reflect your most recent seasonal ranking.
Will I still decay in the pre-season?
You won't! We'll disable decay alongside the season's end. We'll turn it back on once the 2016 season begins!
Are there any eligibility requirements for these rewards outside of ranked results?
Players banned for seven days or more in the three months prior to the end of the season (August 10) are ineligible for this year's rewards.
All players will have another chance at future ranked season rewards.
Do wins from different teams count towards my point total?
Yep! As long as you participated in the win, you'll earn the point(s).
I transferred servers, do I keep the points I earned on my old server?
Do my ranked team's placement wins count toward my point total?
While the Kindred champion spotlight was released yesterday, Kindred intended 5.19 release is unfortunately pushed back until the next patch (5.20) due to last minute issues.
Despite being in the 5.19 patch notes and just having their champion spotlight released, I have to share the very sad news that Kindred will not be enabled until 5.20.
We found an important, gameplay-impacting issue that we can't release, specifically related to Kindred. Rather than rush a fix out the door, we are going to take due diligence to maintain the integrity of the game and release Kindred (all fixed up) next patch, once it has had adequate coverage. Until that time I hope Worlds can sustain your hype train. We really can't wait to get this champ in your hands and see what you can do with them. They are (still) coming!"
"5.20 is scheduled to come at our usual patch times next week (different per region based on release schedules)."
"There are a few that we're concerned about, but the major one - sometimes a player could lose wolf, and if that happened, you would not get him back until you died. This means you cannot use W or proc your E. Pretty bad stuff. As for why we don't hotfix - checking in and verifying a fix takes several days. By that time we would be very close to 5.20. I know a few days means a lot and may seem worth it, but there are a ton of huge costs involved in doing a patch, including kicking players out and forcing them to patch, sometimes in the middle of a game (if they disconnect for any reason, for example), and many other costs that may be invisible to you. Trust me it's not easy - I really want to watch some streams of Kindred!"
"Miscommunication about the spotlight; it shouldn't have gone out. We found out this info this weekend and just made the call this morning. My fault."
"We've been talking about possible TP changes for the preseason. It's a spell that creates some really cool amounts and allows a range of additional strategies. Current thinking is that it may have become a bit too mandatory in many cases however, which then ends up reducing overall diversity rather than creating it. If that's the conclusion we settle on we'll probably make some small nerfs to it (CD at a guess)."
"Putting power into other Summoner Spells is a possibility, if putting more overall power into Summoner Spells, and therefore less into other game elements like champion kits, items, masteries etc, is the desired direction (buffing any system shifts effective power to it from every other system).
Other thing we need to do is evaluate how often Teleport should be up. How often champions with teleport should be able to quickly put themselves in an unexpected location is something we're also looking at. At present for example we regularly see 4v2s bot, with top laners teleporting down as their jungler goes in. That can result in bot lane feeling like a punching bag, with the risk that aggressive plays to establish lane dominance may be too frequently punished, leading to a loss of bot laner agency and a frustrating laning experience. Potentially a strong argument there for increasing the cooldown on teleport (possibly with the cooldown reducing with level, item purchases or some other method if a shorter CD later on is still desirable)."
Featured Game Modes Lead Designer L4T3NCY will be headed to the boards to host a Q&A on 10/7!
"Join us tomorrow for the latest installment of Between Two Turrets, a Q&A series through which we connect you with various Rioters to chat about League, life, and anything in between. You can expect an installment every couple weeks or so, with Rioters from all over jumping in to spend some time with you on the Boards.
This week, we've got Featured Game Modes Lead Designer Rowan "L4T3NCY" Parker - come chat with him on the Boards October 7 starting at 1 PM PDT!"
This week, we've got Featured Game Modes Lead Designer Rowan "L4T3NCY" Parker!
My name's Rowan and I'm the Lead Designer of our Featured Game Modes in League of Legends. I've helped ship all our game modes from the Doom Bots of Doom onwards and also driven various other experimental LoL features (Finishers in URF, Poro Skins in Poro King, Mark/Dash in ARAM, Skin boosts in ARAM, Perfect Ascension icon). If you're interested in more detail of how we design and build featured game modes, I've written a couple of dev blogs in the past.
As for non-Riot stuff, I'm Australian, but have actually lived most of my adult life in Japan, working in games. I usually play a heap of stuff at once in parallel. Right now it's Final Fantasy XIV (PC, Faerie), Secret of Mana (SNES), Sengoku Basara 4: Sumeragi (PS4) and of course LoL (One For All testing on PBE).
Non-game stuff, I've been training parkour for about 9 years. I got into it back in 2007 in Tokyo and haven't stopped training since. A highlight would have to be when our crew helped facilitate the Red Bull: Art of Motion Yokohama in 2011 (those guys were inspiringly good). o.O. In LA I often go to the Tempest academy for some funtimes or just train down by the beach on weekends.