More on Sivir's VU, Xerath changes, and more.

Ready for a nice batch of red posts to kick off the day?

Continue reading for more from IronStylus on Sivir's future visual update, Xelnath talking more about the Xerath changes he's currently working on, and Morello commenting briefly on MR itemization.

More on Sivir
As a follow up to all the Sivir visual update discussion that's been floating around the past few days ( First post here, second post here ), IronStylus is back with even more discussion about Sivir's aesthetics!
"Thanks for the interest in the thread and the kind words, I've seen a lot of them over the last couple of days and it's helped give me a bit of a jolt ;)

On the idea of maintaining/further pushing the mercenary angle I'm quite on board. I really like the idea that she is a gun (blade) for hire, that she's compelled by wealth, or the acquisition of wealth, possibly even a treasure seeker of some sort, someone who enjoys collecting the spoils of battle, or the wealth to be gained by a adventure. She's already ripe for that sort of story, let's capitalize on it.
I can see her solo or even at the head of a mercenary band. I think there's aspects of a leader in her. Something involving possibly her the boastful and powerful mistress of battle at the head of a band of scoundrels, or opposite, honorable friends, seems fun.

Tropes that resonate I feel are, of course, the Xena one, possibly Sinbad, in the adventurer/seeker of wealth.
There's been discussion about "why introduce story?" when we've created loose ends, or haven't yet continued stories in a meaningful way. I'm not going to go to far into it, but part of setting up an IP for further storytelling in the form of comics, shorts, animated series, live action movies, narrative driven game spin-offs, whatever, an IP must establish that groundwork of compelling stories with creating compelling characters. So when the time, if that time does arise, where suitable and deliverable vehicles can be spun up, we have a wealth of compelling characters that are primed to be introduced into a narrative format."
He continued:
"I like this a lot. I also like the idea of a Lara Croft angle. LC very much has her basics taken care of.. (at least in the movie, bleh, I know) but she's in it for the thrill. She's also boastful and attracted to beauty.
I see a parallel in Sivir as well. An attraction towards baubles, opulence, the finer things. Also adventure. Facilitated by the fact that she's pretty well taken care of. I think she could even have a streak, as someone mentioned, of protecting a band of comrades, or tribe, or whatever. This ties her in and gives her purpose, on multiple levels. She needs options is how we see it.

I will say that the direction we will most likely take her is one which gives her weapon significance. Not necessarily significance as Sivir might realize at first. We want her at the surface to be interested in spoils/treasure/bounty, whatever rewards seem fit. We want her to regard it as a befitting trophy, weapon of choice, and item of ostentation. Whether some hidden significance of the weapon is apparent to her is something up for debate. I would prefer that people who posses something unique might not be privy to just how special it is. Not everything has to be Excalibur, handed directly to the character by the Lady of the Lake, but weapons/tools that have significance, based on the construction, choice, or power of the user (Jayce, Draven, Leona, etc) is compelling.

On the other hand, sometimes, like in the case of Darius, an axe is straight up just for dunking ;)"
As for the weapon in game, he also commented on how Sivir's weapon gets back to her.
"I'd love to figure out a logical way for the thing to get back to her. We're discussing possibilities with animations, but timing, especially if you build attack speed, probably wouldn't allow for a physical return at a fast enough pace. Not sure though. Maybe we'll come up with something inventive."
IronStylus also replied to a summoner who was concerned all this focus on the weapon is going to leave Sivir herself a little plain.
"We're of the opinion that it's Sivir herself that is the driving force over a weapon which only she commands. The weapon isn't what makes her, her. Sivir makes Sivir Sivir.

Some significance could also be derived from a unique weapon to give her spell shield an interesting reason to be, as some have suggested."
Lastly, he rounded things off by mentioning that, just like the other VUs, her skills will all be updated.
"As per usual, all the skins will get a pass. I'm actually using a couple to stretch my 3D skills. I think Spectacular Sivir will certainly need some love!


Obviously we're going to have to change a few things here and there to fit any new base geometry. I think also we can have some fun with the basic designs of the skin, get them feeling a little more special and polished."
More on Xerath Changes
Xelnath stopped by the forums again, talking more about the Xerath changes he introduced to the yesterday.

He started by discussing Xerath's visual connection to lightning as yesterday's peek at his upated particles were more beam-y then lightning-y.
"You know, the attachment to Lightning is a fair one. Let me elabourate on why we didn't keep the electrical theme.
Xerath is a mage about overwhelming power. Destroy from from hopelessly far away, with erupting internal energy that is all about raw magic. However, when the character was initially created the particle artist who worked on him didn't know the engine well yet and could only make lightning.
However, here's the important thing here: None of Xerath's abilities are mechanically connected to lightning. This means that while Xerath exists in this form, he's consuming a lot of the creative design space for a true electrical/storm mage.

My initial pass at Xerath actually involved making his Q arc between, replacing locus of power with a ground-placed relay beacon that bounced the lightning around, etc. However, we univerally agreed that wasn't Xerath. Xerath is not the ultimate lightning mage for league of legends. Xerath is about unleashing the raw power of magic.

I totally understand the attachment to his current VFX theme. However, we gain a ton of future opportunity by upgrading Xerath to electrically hinted plasma attacks."

When asked if Xerath's Q will give vision when shot into dark areas, he commented:
"Probably not sight, but I will at least give some audio feedback if you clip someone with Q."

Xelnath also shared that he brought in an experienced Xerath player to try out the changes early.
"I understand how nervous a lot of you guys are about change. It's healthy and natural to be afraid. I was very nervous about this rework too.


Then we brought in Morgaggeddon, a Xerath player with > 100 ranked games played on him to give some initial feel feedback on the revised Xerath by playing him against other Rioters in our daily playtests. If he's around, perhaps he'll feel comfortable talking about how the new Xerath felt as a player"

If you are interested in reading Morgaggeddon's, the summoner mentioned above as helping test out some of these changes, click here. It's rather lengthy and comprehensive.

Xelnath also reiterated his comment from yesterday:
" Please keep in mind, numbers tuning and balance have a long ways to go guys, so let's not fixate on those details yet."

Morello on MR Items
Morello had a few thoughts to share on the current lack of effective Magic Resist items, mentioning both his reservation to add more now that HP is more prevalent and his feeling that we currently lack a big ticket Magic Resist item.
"Xyph and I have been debating this one a bit. While I'm still considering a lot about MR (with Health being better, it does a lot to deal with many traditional mages), I think there's one definite problem at least; even if balanced, MR doesn't have any real big-ticket items to go "ya know, their Akali is really big and I need to deal with it" style items like Randuin's Omen.
So, we're still talking about the raw balance (likely at least close), but I do agree MR doesn't feel as good as HP or armor."

He continued, agreeing with a summoner's statement that Void Staff is just very powerful at the moment.
"Agreed - it's not just an MR counter, but a solid straight damage item against lower MR teams"
When comparing Void Staff to Last Whisper, Morello commented:
"I'd say Void Staff is a bigger offender as MR is also less robust."

TPA SKINS AND BUNDLE SALE EXTENDED

Riot has extended the time that the limited TPA bundle will be available in the shop by three days!

Here is RiotWenceslaus with the good news!

"The TPA commemorative skin sale has been extended! Players around the world requested an extension, so we're keeping the TPA skins and bundle available in the store for a little longer. TPA Shen, TPA Orianna, TPA Ezreal, TPA Nunu, TPA Mundo and the 25% off TPA Team Bundle will remain in the storeuntil 11:59 PM PST on June 4. 

After June 4, these five skins and their bundle will be retired to the legacy vault."

5/30 PBE UPDATE - JUSTICAR AATROX AND WOAD KING DARIUS SPLASHES.

The PBE has been updated! With the exception of a handful of new changes, everything is back to to how it was before the 5/28 PBE rollback.

Continue reading for a look at the awesome new splashes for Justicar Aatrox and Woad King Darius, as well as some tentative buffs for Maw of Malmortius!

New Splashes

Justicar Aatrox

( Miss the original unveiling? Click here for an in game preview )

Woad King Darius

( Miss the original unveiling? Click here for an in game preview )

Balance Changes
All the previous changes, that is the ones rolled back during the 5/28 patch, have been readded.

New Changes

( This changes new to this PBE cycle and are relative to live server numbers )

Maw of Malmortius

• Attack Damage increased to 60 from 55.
• Magic Resist increased to 40 from 36
• Unique passive changed to +1 attack damage ever 2% missing health up to 35 AD max from +1 AD for every 2.5% missing HP.

NEW CHAMPION AND SKIN SALE 5/31 - 6/3

POSTED ON THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2013 BY MOOBEAT

A new champion and skin sale starts tomorrow! Between May 31st and June 3rd, you can pick up Arclight Varus for 487 RP, Deep Sea Kog'Maw for 487 RP, Junkyard Trundle for 375 RP, Vi for 487 RP,  Maokai for 440 RP, and Sona for 395 RP.

Continue reading for video previews of the discounted skins!

Arclight Varus

487 RP

Deep Sea Kog'Maw

487 RP

Junkyard Trundle

375 RP

RIOT PWYFF RESPONSES TO EUW'S CONCERNS ABOUT BEING COMPENSATED FOR SERVER PROBLEMS.

EUW has been in quite the rut lately. Severe server problems have left the many EU players dissatisfied with the game and angry at Riot. Things were blown wide open after the Korean servers, who have been having similar troubles, announced that Korean LoL players will all be getting a free champion, skin, and some other goodies as compensation for all the server problems. This, of course, left EU players very upset and feeling as if they are being ignored and forgotten by Riot.

Here is a short snippet from Riot Pwyff, taken from a larger conversation, on EU players receiving compensation for all these recent server problems.

"Ultimately, to stay on the safe side, we opted to refrain from promising any concrete compensation until after we fixed the problem and knew absolutely what we were dealing with. 

Unfortunately I think this really hurt your trust in us because you filled in the blanks where we didn't fully communicate that. There were also places like Korea announcing their compensation for players before a fix had been implemented, and the assumption was that because we didn't announce anything, we didn't have plans."

Continue reading for the full discussion.

Riot Pwyff jumped in to the heated forum conversation, saying:

"LION'S PIT HERE I COME.
Lot of angry people here and I understand - these server problems hit us across the board, so I figured I'd jump in here to lead some discussion.

First... Saying we'll be compensating players before we have a fix is a bit of a tricky subject just because that uncertainty of time (that we literally did not know up to today) can really mess us up. If we say, "You get a 4 game IP boost!" but then our problems extend beyond expected, players can get more angry about the small 4 ip boost for down time that extends beyond what 4 ip boosts can make up for. In other words, we want to make sure our apology is the right apology and we are apologizing for exactly how much we screwed up, rather than promising an apology before we even know what we're apologizing for. 

That was convoluted. Sorry. 

Ultimately, to stay on the safe side, we opted to refrain from promising any concrete compensation untilafter we fixed the problem and knew absolutely what we were dealing with. 

Unfortunately I think this really hurt your trust in us because you filled in the blanks where we didn't fully communicate that. There were also places like Korea announcing their compensation for players before a fix had been implemented, and the assumption was that because we didn't announce anything, we didn't have plans. 

At this point in time there's just a difference in communication philosophy here, but at no point was there the intention to make you feel like second-class citizens. We want you to be happy and we are deeply. deeply apologetic for these server problems. We will be compensating you, but we wanted to make sure we fixed the game before we even started that other discussion. Once again, we wanted to make sure our apology was to scale and maybe, in this case, we shouldn't have done that. 

We'll keep working on this and we're blitzing as hard as we can to fix this. And we're really sorry it's taken this long."

In response to someone claiming that the Philippines server was a "guniea pig" for fixes and NA got fixed first,Riot Pwyff replied:

"On this particular point, I'll just say that testing with NA was because of its large server loads - something we couldn't test with PH because it was deployed during off-peak hours (and we used PH as our first test for this fix overall). EUW is a huge server and the worry was that if we went straight to EUW from PH, we might run into incredible problems when dealing with the server loads and we'd give you an even more negative experience. It's one step at a time - literally."

As this post came quite late at night, some of the EU summoners questioned why Riot Pwyff, one of the first Rioter to comment on the topic of compensation, did so so late at night and was the only person addressing these complaints:

"Because I'm currently posting from our LA offices.  

I generally like to post about 50/50 on EUW/NA but it's something I've made a conscious decision to do. In some cases it's actually very difficult to keep up with both. I do live and work in LA though, so just FYI. 

Anyway. 

I can't speak for any other red and I apologize if this doesn't speak to the bigger picture but I'll talk about this from a personal perspective. 

It's difficult for me to post on EUW for a number of reasons - the biggest of which is honestly just finding the right places to engage with players. If I enter into a deliberately negative topic, it's tough to have a good conversation because players just want to vent at that point. So my first goal is to find a good thread with a good title so I can try to drive discussion where possible. Believe me when I say it's harder than it sounds. 

Time zones are obviously a huge issue. I'm talking to players from across the world (POWER OF THE INTERNET YO), but their level of immediate engagement just isn't there for that VERY reason. It's 2am there as you say, so I'm literally talking to a small core group of players who have the luxury of staying up to 2am to chat with me. My usual posting hours on NA are anywhere from 12pm to 12am, although even then I get busy as all hell and it's tough to keep up posting. 

Final point, it's difficult to walk into the lion's den and I'm acknowledging that as someone who does so. While I was hired specifically for my ability to engage with players in a clear and concise way, I am an exception to the case. Almost everyone at Riot was hired to do a different job (art, coding, engineering, design, community, UX, and beyond) who were then told that they could also post on the forums and engage with our players. Driving a discussion and interacting with passionate forum goers is actually a nuanced skill that requires a lot of practice, and it's scary as heck. Speaking with so much authority can be disconcerting. 

Final point, as much as I love to engage with y'all in discussions on these forums, I'll also say that there is a propensity to spin things to the negative, and for anyone who doesn't know how to bring the conversation back, that's intimidating. The choices become either slink away quietly into the night or man up and try to right the course. Red posts have extremely high visibility, and it's not uncommon for even me to feel embarrassed when a high-post count conversation refuses to die. At some point you just become hoarse from explaining the same thing over and over. 

Regardless, I'll reiterate that these are my own opinions. I heavily debated even posting something like this because the end resolution is actually not there. I'm literally sitting here telling you why it's difficult to post on NA and EUW and then I got nothing at the end of the day. I'd really, really like for you to feel like there's a strong and clear communication line between you and Riot Games, and I will be working hard to act on that."

Another summoner posed the question, as this isn't the first time EUW has had lengthy server problems problems, "Why are there SO many problems on EUW?". Riot Pwyff responds:

"Because you are huge. Like mind-blowingly huge. At peak times we literally run out of internet and servers to provide you with a quality service. It's not something as easy as like "BUY MORE SERVERS," or "BUY MORE INTERNET," it's literally that the infrastructure is buckling under your weight and we're desperately trying to shore it up. Additionally because your population is concentrated in certain time zones, your peak times are incredible - NA has staggered time zones so this spaces it out a bit, but it isn't the case with EUW."

IRONSTYLUS SHARING MORE THOUGHTS ON THE SIVIR VISUAL UPDATE.

Following his posts yesterday, IronStylus continued to share his thoughts on Sivir's future visual update.

Continue reading for a few posts with IronStylus discussing sharing tentative plans with the community, delivering on expectations, and more!

To get the ball rolling, a summoner asked if there would ever be a chance for players to preview and share opinions on upcoming, major champion changes as they are coming down the pipeline. He cited Trundle changing from a Jungle troll to a Ice Troll with a totally new story as an example of something he didn't like and thought could be improved on.

Here is IronStylus sharing his stance on the matter and the problems created by running such things out the community early.

"This is pretty unlikely to happen. Things can always change. Things do always change. This comes back to setting expectations again. We don't want to put out something and have everyone become attached to it and then incur wrath when we have to change it for an emergent reason. 

If I do something like.. "We made Sivir a pirate because she's now from Bildgewater! *boom, concept*" some, or a lot, of people might really fall in love with that. Then let's say, oh snap, we think she's actually a better fit in Demacia, well then ****. We just pissed off everyone who was in love with Bilgewater Sivir.

The forums aren't necessarily the best way to get opinions on stuff that's in production. We run internal labs and give surveys for that, showing players who have attachment, our planned changes. We then do... science... to get actionable data. Davin is the expert on this. He works with a lot of content creators to vet characters through channels that we can extrapolate meaningful data from.

Additionally, we're dealing with a ton of feedback through directed channels, internal review, and bringing in external data. Those are systems we can more easily and effectively cultivate, rather than a poll on the forums which only a small fraction of the player base is going to be exposed to. When we seek targeted data, when we review heavily internally with key people, and when we let teams iterate, work together, and execute, we get a manageable development. 

Believe me, there's nothing I like more than showing off art. There's tons of stuff we want to show because we're excited about. But simply throwing it out into the ether doesn't serve the purpose of effective discourse, targeted analysis, or provide conducive channels of feedback.

The discussions here are great for brainstorming, theorycrafting and inspiration. I personally get a lot of that on the forums, it's why I show up. But we have to take a more targeted approach when we pass our art through the vetting process. We need some standards of control in order to get info we can effectively act on."

He reiterated that point, saying:

"We've been bitten by being to assertive with promises and premature feature reveal talk in the past. We have to be cautious. We don't want to make a promise for something we can't deliver on."

In response to a few summoners discussing how they hope Sivir retains her bikini top look, IronStylus shared his thoughts on Sivir's attire.

"Here's the thing. I'm fine with cleavage, bustiness, whatever. But when you have so little space to work with in terms of visual storytelling like we do with Sivir, retaining a bikini top isn't as potentially impactful as clothing, decoration, or just some other cool form to create visual interest and give the character some life other than just a tabard, gauntlets, bikini top and boots. 

We always have opportunities to strip down, tear open, expose, pump up, or otherwise put emphasis on the female chest.

I get it. I really do. I think Eve is perfect to have overwhelming assets. I think it's great that Miss Fortune is a bombshell. I'm alright with Zyra being only covered up with leaves. Those are things that have some relevancy, even if only fleeting, to their character, or how their character is perceived.

With Sivir we have so many opportunities to make her into what people know her as but is currently not delivered in her current visual state. We can deliver on a fantasy that's holistic and compelling. We can make something out of pretty much nothing. And we can still make her really sexy and really powerful

I'd rather us not be held back creatively just to retain mere pixels of uncovered chest real estate."

When asked if he could elaborate on plans to make Sivir's weapon more prominent and unique, Ironstyluscommented:

"I think we can make it something very rich in terms of lore. But I'm absolutely not ready to elaborate on that yet!"

He continued:

"The thing is so damn big, it should hold more significance than, "Ey, it's my weapon of choice!" Also, it's screaming to hold some sort of significance other than "Ey, I'm Sivir's weapon of choice!" It's a lot of real estate that could be used to tell a story."

Lastly, he also reminded us that each skin will be updated.

"All the skins will get a pass on them. We're currently re-concepting the skins. It's the same pass that Nidalee, Annie and all the others got."

05/29 - CUSTOM ITEM SETS DISABLED AND AN UPDATE ON EUW SERVER PROBLEMS

Item sets are temporarily being disabled in order to help stabilize live servers.

Here is the Riot NOC announcement:

"Hey Summoners, 

Some of you may have run into server issues, and we apologize for that. We're currently investigating the source of the problem, but our first step is to make sure that our current environment is stable before we work on deploying more long-term fixes. Unfortunately, as part of the process we are performing, we will need to temporarily disable Custom Item Sets.

Once again, we apologize deeply for this inconvenience and we're working hard to get our servers stable – although we are unsure as to how long these repairs may take. We appreciate your patience through all of this!"

 ( Note: This announcement is currently only posted on the NA service status forums. Unclear if this will also apply to other server or not. Judging by all the  ) 

Additionally, there has been an update on all the recent EUW server problems.

Here is Riot tmx with the update:

"Wanted to give you all a quick update on where we're at. We applied some fixes to our client and successfully tested them on the Public Beta Environment. We decided to deploy it first to the relatively small shard in the Philippines and if everything goes smoothly, we'll roll this out here in EUW and elsewhere. I know this has been a real pain for you guys, but we're close to finally resolving this issue and when we do we'll have a much more comprehensive look at what happened for you and what are our further steps."