Reign of Gaming

What is /equalize?

Yesterday we uncovered a few new strings in the game client about a new feature "Equalize". Xelnath hit the forums giving some information behind this

I've been running some development playtests on the PBE recently. Something I noticed is that while a lot of the test games start out really solidly, they occasionally snowball into stompfests. 

This isn't particularly helpful for testing new features, so I am adding the /equalize command to let players on the PBE "catch up" the struggling team's gold and XP to their current values. This means if you're having a good match, but lose a couple key teamfights, you can help us out by using /equalize. 

/equalize is not enabled on the PBE right now and will surrender the game.

I'll let you guys know when I've worked all of the kinks out of the /equalize system and you can help us make our tests even better. 

p.s. I've noticed a few of you guys throw around the idea of allowing it in custom games on live. That's not a bad idea... but it needs a lot more work first.

EUW/NA Server Transfers

We're actually actively working on this and have been for a while, there's a technical blocker we need to get past before it can be there 100%, but we've always said that we want to do this for you.

It's not as simple as switching it on or off, there's a lot of behind the scenes work needed. Estimated time? Soon, but not that soon as there needs to be more done, and it may be pushed back again.

Do you have any information/idea on how transfers to NA/EU will work when the summoner name is already taken?
Funny you should say that, as it's actually something we're discussing. I'm really not able to say much more right now as things may change, we're just a lot closer than last time we said we were working on it.

 Knockback Changes

Hey guys, 

Back in December, I did some work to clean-up all knockups and knockbacks in the game. Knockups should no longer make you forget your move command and are now easier for designers to setup correctly.

We sent it out for some extensive testing and caught most of the issues, but clearly a couple slipped through. These are my fault, so I apologize and want to fix them. 

Here's the ones I know about:

• Jarvan IV's Q knockup is 0.5 sec instead of 0.75
• Lulu's R is graphically knocking up too high

Here's the ones I've heard about, but haven't confirmed:

• Zyra's R is graphically knocking up too high, but the duration is correct

In addition, I found a bug on Alistar's Headbutt which caused players to be stunned for a long time if punted into a wall. I fixed it after a short discussion with some members of the design team. 

Naturally, it's not cool for a changes like this to happen without getting patch noted, so I've setup a hotfix to do the following:

1. Add 0.25 sec to Jarvan IV's Q knockup
2. Reduce Lulu's R knockup height back to its pre 3.01 value
3. Add a flat 0.5 sec stun back to Alistar's Headbutt

Because it is the weekend and we want to test any changes, the hotfix won't happen right away. However, I wanted to take a moment to publicly acknowledge these changes and ask you guys to look for any other knockup issues you feel have cropped up since this patch. 

Thanks for your patience,
Alex

So what other things were cleaned up in these fixes? Will we no longer have people launched into orbit? Will corpses no longer knock up every time they leave and reenter your vision? Will Lee Sin's kick now continue to launch back the champion even if they die to the ult?

• I have another fix coming soon for knockups failing to work when the enemy is near a wall.
• Launching players into orbit is hilarious, imho, but I didn't have time to fix that one.

... and Lee Sin doesn't punt corpses, because when their heart stops beating, he can't see them anymore.
... and Lee Sin doesn't punt corpses, because he won't kick a man when he's down.

... and Lee Sin ... is about to punt me for making bad jokes. 

Thanks for looking into the issue and being open about it. Friday code patches are never fun when something goes wrong.

A question though.

I thought that Alistar's headbutt would wallstun someone flush against a wall for up to a full second. This allowed for the headbutt wallstun autoattack pulverize autoattack inescapable combo. The extra autoattack inbetween CCs, not to mention his passive trample damage, was a bit part of his combo. Would this still be possible with a flat 0.5s stun?
I just tested this. You headbutt, get your auto attack off (auto attack animation is < 0.5 sec), then you knockup into the air (1.0 sec stun), during which you get to do your 2nd auto-attack.

This means you should get your full combo off.

Thanks for the updates Xelnath.
Just to be sure... displacement moves (signally knockups) are still unaffected by Tenacity and CC reduction masteries and abilities, or this got changed?
Knockups are currently unchanged by tenacity, but I did add support for us to enable Tenacity to work on them in the future. 

We debated about this internally and decided to leave it disabled for now. However, we may try it out in the future on PBE with the new loss of control UI or if knockup stacking comps start dominating.

How about Nami bubble? It is going up faster after this patch.I am not sure if the duration it the same.
Looking at this, Nami's Q bubble is setup differently - it is a 3 second knockup that gets "popped" after 1 second and drops you to the ground. Should be the same duration.

0.5s - tenacity
I should be more careful about my terminology. It will be a move+attack+spell disable effect for 0.5 sec of the knockback category, which means it will not be affected by tenacity.

Tenacity affecting knockups may be a bit strange thematically-- do you resolutely resist being in the air?

Does your will increase gravity by 30%?

If you resisted being hit has hard, why did you take the same amount of damage?

Naturally there's the "magic tenacity" explanation, but still-- there may be a better way to balance knockups. 
I'll go with "my boots magically make me lighter on my feet, which means I can pull my feet out of glue faster and I land more quickly because I'm more dexterous". This was a pretty heavily debated point, but I'm confident that we won't put something in the game that feels wrong to us.

please tell me knock up no longer turns your champion to the opposite direction they were facing. Its really dumb being turn around especially when you have directional based abilities like Nidalee's pounce or Riven's Broken Wings.
Is this new to this patch or did it happen before?

More specifically, did it happen *sometimes* before and it always happens now?

Just out of curiosity, are these two things related? I definitely remember hearing (and it says on the wiki) that Nami's q is a stun and not a knockup and can be reduced by tenacity. If her q is actually coded as a knockup, is having it treated as a stun related to the ability to make tenacity work on knockups?
Nami's Q is a 3 second knockup, with a ~1 second stun on top. This stun (like all stuns in the game) is reduced by Tenacity. When the stun fades, Nami's Q snaps the target to the ground.

This has always been part of LoL for as long as I can remember, and it was really annoying when playing with/against facing-relevant champs like Rumble/Shaco/Cassiopeia/Corki.
When I first started playing Rumble in about mid S2, I distinctly remember at least 1 occasion when someone got away by having an ally knock me up and aim my flamethrower to in the top-right direction.
Also, when I was playing blue-side, at mid lane their Alistar W+Q combo'd me, making me face towards their Cass who then ulted as I was drifting towards the ground. Also happened ~mid S2ish. Since then I haven't really payed attention to knockups nor had anything that ridiculous happen, but I'd assume its still there if no one thought to change it.
Okay, I am at home sick today, but I found the spot in the code that causes this. It looks like I can fix it for most knockup situations. 

I'll check it out on Monday. Are there any cases where getting your facing changed is the correct thing to do?

A quick update on this. 

After talking with Live Design, we've decided to upgrade the Alistar Headbutt stun to 0.75 sec minus the travel-time prior to hitting the wall. 

In addition, I will also be attempting to fix the knockups causing facing changes and Zyra's R vertical being too high in the upcoming hotfix. 

Working on an ETA now, depending on how much we need to do.

Would you mind emailing me a screenshot of what you're seeing?

Xelnath@riotgames.com

What about Tristana knockback into a wall? Is that working as intended? (Originally pseudo-stunned for same time as distance that they would have traveled, now it just pushes them into the wall and instantly ends the effect if they cannot travel further.)
Yes, Tristana has the standard 0.5 sec - travel time stun.

Oki, in the next hour or so though, cause EUW is screwed atm and I still need a bit of time to go to the NA one instead.

edit: sent
Thank you. The texture was fixed to remove the black, but this change didn't make it in time for the 3.01 launch. Expect it fixed in 3.02 



Hey guys, we are in the process of deploying this hotfix right now.

When the hotfix is live, I will unsticky this post.

Make tenacity reduce knockup durations!
If this is something you believe in, you should bring it up with the greater player base. We're conflicted on this decision, but we'd love to hear what more players think about a change like that.

This is now live on most of NA and is going worldwide soon. 

Thanks for your patience.

Janna ultimate knockback is 0.75 sec minus travel time. Its equal in power to Alistar's meta-stun.

Janna ultimate knockback is 0.75 sec minus travel time. Its equal in power to Alistar's meta-stun.
I heard you just got promoted internally to "Xelnath, the Wizardlock, right hand of the 7th order of the obsidian darkfire witchlords".

At least, that's what your title in outlook seems to be. Can you comment? Will you be moving off of this thread, and onto soul collection, or what?

I heard you just got promoted internally to "Xelnath, the Wizardlock, right hand of the 7th order of the obsidian darkfire witchlords".

At least, that's what your title in outlook seems to be. Can you comment? Will you be moving off of this thread, and onto soul collection, or what?
I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the Darkfire Initiates. Surely, if such a group existed, with me as their right hand, I would be indulging in wine and women like you, Lord Zileas.

 

 

LP Clamping

I believe Yegg has explained this many times, but I'll try to explain again.

The LP clamping that happens at Division I is due to your MMR being much lower than needed to be in the next tier, as tiers earned are permanent. So in order for the system to be sure that you belong in the next tier, it'll clamp your LP gains when you are close to promotional series to make sure that you can consistently win your games and not just due to a lucky streak.

If you keep winning more than you lose (aka your MMR slowly moves up to the expected level for the next tier), the clamping will go away. Unfortunately, the current implementation makes you feel like you are closer to the promotion that you actually are, then it suddenly slaps you in the face by clamping your LP gain when you reach 90+ in Div I. They have already eased the clamping since Leagues came out and I believe Yegg and his team are working on a smoother LP gain so you can have a better gauge at how far you are from an actual promotion instead of losing more LP than you gain when the clamping happens. 

To give you guys a clearer picture of this, I'll use my personal experience from this weekend. 
I was 1900 seaon 2, and about 1730 in s3 when Leagues happened. I was placed in Gold Div I.
At first, I was gaining anywhere form 17-25 LP from a win and losing about the same amount unless I had a leaver on my team which made me lose less LP than usual (new system compensates for leaves). Which means that in 4-5 wins I'd be at 100 LP playing my promotional series. However, when I reached around 85 LP, I was suddenly gaining around 3 LP instead.

I agree it felt bad at the time that when I thought I only need one more win to get my promo series instead turned into possibly 5 more straight wins. I got to about 96 LP then lost a game and dropped back down to about 80, wiping a bunch of wins that I acquired. You bet I felt discouraged at the time too. But if you think about it, I was trying to permanently qualify for Plat tier. Assuming 1850 is plat, and my MMR was at 1730 when I started. After 5 wins and 2 loses, with max of 14 Elo per win and losing 11 in the ideal case, my MMR would only sitting at 1778 yet I was already at 85 LP. If I gained the same amount without the clamping I'd only need one more game to qualify for promo series, but in the old Elo system, I'd have needed (1850-1778)/14=6 straight wins and the Plat earned wouldn't even be permanent!!! (keep in mind all the values are in the absolute ideal situation too, I'd possible need more wins in reality) So it became clear to me why I was being clamping and only gaining 3 LP. It was because my MMR was too far from the expected MMR. So in order to permanently earn the Plat tier, I needed to prove myself. 

After understanding that, I just kept playing, expecting to have at least 6 wins over loses for the system to no longer clamp me. However, after hovering a couple times around 90LP (losing more than gaining of course), I qualified for my series from winning one game after dropping to 85 LP. I gained 15 LP from that game, which I assumed since I was winning more than I lost, the clamping went away. I eventually went on to winning my series 3-2 now I'm in Plat Div 5. You could tell how tense I was in the last game when Sivir was 0-7 and Teemo was 0-5 and I was losing top. But no one raged and eventually we pulled through and won. It was a great game and the plat now feels well earned knowing that I won't lose it.

Hopefully this clears it up for you guys and give you a little more hope about the new system. I agree the way it's implemented right now can make you feel discouraged because it kinda gives you a false sense of hope then suddenly takes it away. But rest assured it is much better than the volatile Elo system before IMO.

Champion & Skin Sale: Penta Agent

• It has finally happened, summoners. Secret Agent Miss Fortune here, reporting that we have finally reached the ultimate in treachery. We have discovered a penta agent in our midst. This tale of multi-perfidy has more layers than Gragas’ gut. Maybe you can help me unravel this mess? 487 RP
• At first I thought Muse Sona was the one behind this deception, but she refused to say a word during even my most persuasive of… “chats”. If she knew anything, she’d have spilled the beans by now. 487 RP
• Then we brought in Runeborn Xerath. The maniac laughed in our faces as we broke him apart time after time after time. Maybe he’s the one, but then why would an ascended arcane being with infinite power at his fingertips engage in espionage? 487 RP

• Hmm, maybe Orianna? No… her mechanical mind lacks the capability for such complexity. I assigned her the simple task of assassinating a Demacian general’s Noxian mistress in an effort to gain his trust and find out if a spy we’d sent to work as his cook had turned on us. The poor Lady of Clockwork started steaming. 440 RP
• Could Cho’Gath be our traitor? We had the beast training with our special ops team until he decided to eat the whole damn unit. Maybe it wasn’t an accident after all. Hmm. 292 RP
• Ah! Elise! The Spider Queen slinks off alone with great regularity, but could her spun webs be more than silken? I will have to keep tabs on her, though her eight eyes will surely notice my efforts. 487 RP

We have to act fast, summoners! My intel tells me that we will only have from February 5 toFebruary 8 to uproot this turncoat. After that, we’ll lose them forever. Think fast, and act faster!

Which of the following games do you plan to buy this year?