Reign of Gaming

Hello Summoners, here are your daily interesting reds! To stay up to date on all Riot related posts about League of Legends be sure to check back at ReignofGaming.net daily!

Quality of life changes

No, seriously - I mean, I just did Ori/Malzahar/Sona/Hecarim/Veigar/Pets and I'm doing Nidalee/Garen right now. I mean, there wasn't additional releases for the other QoL fixes on champions that I just did - but when one syncs up suddenly the conspiracy theories go out again.  

I kind of wish I could work on whatever QoL stuff for champions I wanted without these things going up every single time it syncs up but I guess it's kind of inevitable. The discussions could get kind of ridiculous - 'You mean I shouldn't release these changes because people think it'll coincide with a skin? What kind of crazy argument is that?'

Are you looking into changing the way pounce works to be more like other, newer, dashes?
 

I sync'ed with Brackhar on this - and until we get additional tech to make you switch between targetting types at will - I think we'll just go with mimic'ing how Riven's Q works for now. It's not perfect and far from ideal - but for now it'll be at least a good improvement on the current one.

Hecarim changes

It caps the distance they can run from Hecarim if he doesn't chase them additionally. The cap is similar to what happens in the current distance but solves for edge cases like super high move speed characters such that Hecarim has a little more fine control over the people he hits with the dread effect.

It also gives Hecarim more control in deciding who he wants to displace - as he can then manipulate the distance between the two by running at the person he wishes to push.

• 'E' now pushes them on collision with them, rather than when the animation ends, giving you finer control of which direction they get pushed. Especially with the 'E' run past and knock back maneuver.
• 'R' now limits their total flee distance to 300 - unless you decide to chase them, in which case you can push them for as far as you can move in that one second, whereas before they were just slowed by 50%.

 Zyrah lore Q&A

Skribbles, one of the creative designers of Zyrah is currently hosting a lore Q&A on the league forums. He has already answered a lot of questions. I have listed some of the answers that i personally found the most interesting.

What is Zyra's opinion on Maokai and vica versa

I think Zyra would look down on Maokai, although I could see some interesting interaction between the two in their futures. Personality-wise, Zyra is a predator, a killer, the wild fury of nature, whereas Maokai is the sturdy, defensive, protective force of nature. Zyra loves the power that her new "animal" form gives her, Maokai laments it. I think they might be the only ones able to show each other the merits of either form.

Is Zyra's passive her in her original plant form?

 I don't think so. You could say it's derived from the same plant, but I saw Zyra as being a much larger, expansive plant. Possibly even a network of plants/flowers, growing from the same set of roots.

What can you tell us about the Plague Lands that she hails from?

I can't tell you much, we're actually doing some internal explorations about some of these regions and right now we're thinking Zyra's location may change as a result. Hopefully more information about the various regions will be forthcoming.

Has the remainder of Zyra's original plant species died off?

 As far as Zyra is aware, all others are dead.

What are her goals now that basic survival needs are less of an issue?

Her goals are to experience the world from this new perspective. For a being so ancient to suddenly change in such a dramatic fashion, it's like a complete rebirth. In this way, basic survival is still an issue, because she is experiencing the world anew.

She doesn't seem to have the ability to empathize or feel emotions on a human level, is she just driven towards maintaining her own survival or driven towards gaining more power, kind of like Xerath? I don't see what her goals are, and if she has values like normal human beings have, or if the plant aspect of her still reigns supreme in that respect.

- Initially, I think, she didn't have much more concern for people than we tend to have for the cow that provided the cheeseburger, but I can see her developing a certain curiosity, the more she learns. For the time being though, life on her own two feet, free of roots, should provide quite a bit of new experiences for her.

Does she have an inner struggle between her human side and plant side now that she's merged the two together?

There can be some question about whether or not she gained humanity from the sorceress, but at least for now, I don't see there being much of that present. The sorceress was a means to an end that, if anything, would only have planted a small seed of humanity in her. So no struggle yet, I imagine.

Soraka rework

She's gone through a whole pile of overhaul. Okmikegoodness was her animator and Bitsplosion was her particle artist. They've both invested a ton of time into a very elegant visual rework. She has a new model obviously, but the animations that were done required a significant remake of her rig, just like Ashe (another Ohmikegoodness production).

The skins aren't the issue, it's the fact that the new rework is so tuned at such a higher quality that it's taken a decent amount of time.

Kassadin skin bugfix

Heyo! The work for this is completed, so once QA puts it through the ringer it'll be on its way to you guys, so probably within the next couple patches [don't quote me on that!] 

I adjusted the blade to project from its usual place on his wrist, aligned the glow to the blade, thickened the blade up a bit so it won't vanish when you look at it edge-on, and last but not least fixed the nether blade toggle particle to match up with the shape and the new orientation.

Lux's ultimate name change

Hey Guys,

I've got some more information to share with you after talking this over with our guys. In a vacuum, this change seems confusing and perhaps alarming – “why the f*** does Riot care about the name of one random ability?”

Let’s shed some light on that. 

League of Legends is an evolving service – it’s not a finished product. It’s never going to be ‘done.’ This constant evolution means we also need to revisit older content on an ongoing basis – take the Ashe visual remake, for example.

The creative design team is in the midst of making some quality of life improvements to the story and characters of League of Legends. With over a hundred champions, the various factions they belong to, and plenty of other backstory to dive into, this is actually a pretty massive undertaking. More on that in the future, but for now, please understand this small change is in the context of a bigger project.

If we were making Lux today, we’d never name her ult ‘Finales Funkeln’ today. Here’s why:

It’s an incomprehensible in-joke that’s an obscure reference.
It’s a tip of the hat to another character’s ability from another game that’s been translated into German. This is unintelligible to most people, because they don’t get the joke. This is not pandering to the lowest common denominator – we’re talking about the vast majority of our players around the world here.

It’s hard to pronounce.
No, not just because it’s German. Once again, this isn’t about the lowest common denominator.

It doesn’t even come close to conveying what the ability does.
And Infinite Light does. Yeah, yeah, it’s not a global ability, but it's a pretty big ******* laser. A little hyperbole is just fine by us. We considered translating the name directly from German to English as “Final Spark,” but felt reference to electricity didn’t feel like Lux.

Is ‘Finales Funkeln’ original? Sure. But that doesn’t make it good for every player. This isn’t coming from a place of xenophobia. It’s a combination of the above problems that contribute to making the original name clunky and confusing.

We’re not going to change Udyr’s name just because it means “beast” in Norwegian. Udyr is four letters, fairly pronounceable in many languages, and the reference isn’t made at the expense of the majority of our players.

We know you guys care about lore in League of Legends, and that’s awesome. Don’t stop telling us what you think. Jayce was a great example of where we slipped up, and your feedback straight up made the game better. This situation is different: the name of Lux’s ultimate was something that we needed to change for the sake of readability and overall player experience and we feel the new name is appropriate

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