LOL: PRESEASON EDITION, VOLUME 2

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This week, we’re back at it again, answering your questions on upcoming preseason content. Check out the previous Ask Riot on preseason here.

Q

I spent a lot of time and effort unlocking Runes, and didn’t focus too much on champs. In the new leveling system, it looks like we’re going to get a reward every time we level up. For those of us who are already lvl 30, what are we going to get, beyond blue essence?

A

Most of the capsules that you’ll get for leveling up will contain champion shards, which can be crafted into champions (at a discount) or disenchanted into Blue Essence. For those of you who already own all the champions you want, we’ll continue bringing back the Blue Essence store where you can spend your excess BE on chromas, icons, emotes and other rewards.

At special milestone levels, you’ll also get bonus cosmetic goodies. These include some exclusive rewards that you can only get through leveling, like a special high-level ward skin or various emotes. There are also some non-exclusive rewards, like icons, ward skins, or even gemstones at high levels.

AMIRELLE

Product Manager, Core Gameplay

Q

How will rune pages work in the new system?

A

Rune pages will work (mostly) like they do in the old runes system. You’ll have editable pages you get for free—currently you get two—and you can purchase more from the store. One difference from the old runes is that now you can edit or choose your pages freely in champion select.

There will also be a new kind of page. Everyone will have five “preset” pages, one for each Path, that are uneditable and don’t count toward your inventory total. These pages are good general options that ensure that players always go into game with a full page of runes—whether that’s because you had an unfinished/invalid page or because you’re new to runes and would like to start with something more templated. We will be providing the option to hide these pages if you like a tidy inventory, but not until after Runes launches.

Basically, if you have five pages in runes right now, you’ll have five editable pages in the new system plus the five uneditable preset pages.

DJANGO UNJANED

Product Manager, Game Systems

Q

In regards to being given a 1350 skin for every four rune pages bought with RP, will the skins be randomly chosen? Or based on something like my top 10 played champs? Also, I bought three rune pages with RP. Would I still get a skin?

A

The criteria for which 1350 skin you’ll receive is going to be randomly selected from eligible skins based on the criteria below:

It needs to be a 1350 skin for a champion you already own

It needs to be a skin you don’t already own

Yes, the rune pages will be rounded up, meaning if you unlocked between one and four rune pages with RP, you’ll get one epic skin. If you bought between five and eight rune pages with RP you’ll get two skins, etc.

RIOT BUBOBUBO

Senior Manager, Ecommerce

Q

With the new mastery and runes update, what will happen to champions who rely almost entirely on magic pen or armor pen? I play Zyra mid and support, and I run a full magic pen page, except for health seals. With the new rework, I won’t be able to do something like this. I’m really concerned. Please help ease my worries?

A

This is one example of a problem we’ve been working on throughout Runes Reforged. We’ve reduced the ability to concentrate a champion into a single focus. This isn’t a problem as much for Jinx or Ziggs, but we have definitely heard from Zyra mains, Riven mains, Malphite mains, and others how important that had been to their experience. This is a very complex space for us to navigate. For example, not every Riven main agrees how much CDR you have to have at level one, while pretty much every Kayle player agrees that you max out on every last point of attack speed that you can find.

This means that we don’t have silver bullets to fix this problem, and we’ll be using a mix of angles to add options back in. We’ve been adjusting champion’s base stats and abilities to accommodate where there are clearly individual problems. We’re exploring ways to add pen back into a handful of spots where it already lives, though this is a recent exploration and not guaranteed to ship. We’ve also shifted around the stats offered by particular Runes, so champions that are really hungry for a particular stat have some access to it in the system, even if they can’t stack it like they used to. Finally, we’re also watching champions most affected by changes, and will making changes as needed throughout preseason.

With changes this massive, we can’t have it all dialed in for launch, so we’re leaving lots of time to adjust after we ship. Once Runes Reforged is live, let us know how your champion feels. We look forward to talking about it.

RIOT FEARLESS

Senior Designer, Game Systems

Q

After merging the IP and blue essences systems, will you put out daily quests with rewards of blue essence (or something else)?

A

We’re planning on converting the First Win of the Day bonus into a daily mission that grants bonus XP towards your next level up.

At the moment, we don’t have any plans to offer blue essence directly through missions. We’d like to see the new leveling system in action first and we’ll make adjustments from there.

AMIRELLE

Product Manager, Core Gameplay

Q

Are we going to be able to see opponent’s runes in a match? With effects like the channel-blink or swapping out summoner spells, there is a potentially enormous information gap in-game unlike anything before. Many runes are things players need to know in-game, more so than previous stat-based runes or non-keystone masteries.

A

Repost alert! We’re answering this one more in depth after we saw that players had a lot of follow up questions on our last answer. : )

Our goal is to give players the relevant runes information we expect you to play around at a given time. This may take slightly different forms for different runes, since they’re unique enough to warrant individual treatment as opposed to a “one size fits all” approach.

Some of the ways we communicate runes may be things you’ve seen before—we’re explicitly showing the strategic choices of keystone and the secondary path for every player joining the game in the loading screen for example (you’ll be able to make an educated playstyle guess if you see a Meteor/Domination Sona coming for you in bot lane). We’re also leaning far more heavily on timely VFX and SFX to communicate relevant tactical information than we have for systems like the old masteries. If a rune gives a shield, we want you to know an opponent has that shield by seeing it on the buff bar and then seeing the shield breaking VFX/SFX. If a rune gives out stats, we’re showing those stats to players in the places you’re already used to looking for them (champion stats).

We’re committed to iterating to get all runes to the right level of visibility and we recognize we may not get it right for every single rune on the first try. So we will be listening to player feedback here and making iterations to make sure rune users, allies and enemies have the correct level of visibility for all runes.

We don’t want you to feel you need to look at an opponent’s runes at the beginning of the game and try to memorize them all and then spend the whole game trying to predict/remember everything that person picked. We do want to present the information you need to play around a rune when and where you need to play around it.

For the specific runes you mentioned, we’re actually using some new channels (hah): Channel-Blink has an icon that replaces Flash’s when it’s on cooldown. For Unsealed Spellbook, we’re testing out showing a global in-chat message for all swaps. Also for both runes, you’ll see the swapped summoner spell icons on the scoreboard.

TL;DR We will work to make all players aware of relevant rune information WHEN and WHERE they need it, but it may not necessarily be through UI alone.