Red Post Collection: Explaining PBE Changes, Patch note Feedback, and brief mention of Twitch VU

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Explanation on Some PBE Changes
Following up Riot's latest set of PBE patch notes,  Statikk commented on the jungle changes - which push back the spawn times of the small jungle champs and tinker with the experience values a little bit -the Bulwark/Aegis changes, and the Spirit of Ancient Golem nerf.

"This is the reason why we moved EXP away from the Young Lizards in the first place, to avoid EXP leeching ruining jungle runs. 

We've done 2 things to help alleviate the possibility of junglers not hitting the correct levels due to EXP leeching. 

1) At the current tuning if both Young Lizards are leeched by a teammate at the first buff camp, Junglers will still hit level 3 after both buff camps. I think I'll have to do some slight tuning to the other camps to ensure Junglers still hit 4 after a full clear. 

2) We've given the Young Lizards a bit more starting Health so they're less likely to die to ambient AoE. 

We'll definitely continue to monitor and iterate on this. 

As far as the Runic / Aegis changes go, these changes are simply necessary for the game to be less stagnant. Aegis / Bulwark on Live are so ridiculously overpowered to the point where they push out the other possibilities in the game. 

You're right on the Spirit of the Ancient Golem nerf though. It's probably unnecessary at the moment even if the item is objectively overpowered. Will probably pull it from the patch."

Xypherous also touched on the new Spectre's Cowl, saying

"The item was created as an MR option against generalized magic damage. 

However, any generalized MR option is going to hurt burst magic damage far more than it will hurt sustained poke damage due to the repeatable nature of these effects.

Given the tenuous relationship between ranged harass type mages versus burst magic damage- any generalized MR item has to be slightly better against ranged harass than burst mages - otherwise you simply provide the tools for invalidating a class of characters while keeping another type dominant."

As for Riot's list of PBE patch notes in general, Riot Pwyff also commented that he hoped he can get them to us faster.

"Hopefully in the future I can get you guys these PBE change lists earlier."

Feedback on Patch Notes:
Riot Pwyff is lookin' for feedback on recent changes to how patch notes are presented and how they can better deliver information to players, including the TL;DR type statements interjected throughout the notes.

"Looking to improve Patch Note Communication and hoping to involve y'all. You can see our first big changes here: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/....php?t=3691287
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Hey all, 

Over the past few months we've been experimenting with the patch notes in order to better deliver information to players. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, check out a few of our previous patch notes to spot the difference: 

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/patch-303-noteshttp://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/patch-35-noteshttp://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/patch-39-notes 

Basically the most important thing here is that we think contextualized change is super important for a game like League of Legends because sometimes it can be a shock when your favorite champion gets nerfed (y'alls is dramatic, by the way). Additionally, understanding our thought process behind a change also allows you all to be better informed when presenting counter-points. 

The next step we've wanted to do for some time is to now separate the WHAT from the WHY. Mainly due to two reasons: 

Consistency:
Some contextual paragraphs focus too heavily on what's being changed (and how it'll affect the champion) while others focus more heavily on the broad approach to the change and what the champion deserves thematically. We're trying to make each contextual paragraph more directed and consistent across the board. 

Laundry Lists are painful: Sometimes when you see a huge wall of changes, your eyes can glaze over and the tears start flowing. Additionally, some changes can be rather nuanced if you don't fully understand the champion or what makes them strong. This can lead to excessive QQ that - while we appreciate - provides no real actionable feedback to work with. I'm joking (a little), but the end point is that sometimes change can be scary, but if we want to create an ever-evolving game that remains interesting throughout, then change is necessary. 

With that being said, a TLDR summary of the change and how it affects the champion might be useful both for players who don't quite get the impact of the changes and for players who don't fundamentally understand what makes a champion strong (or weak). 

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THIS SECTION IS IMPORTANT
We want to create layers of information for players depending on how invested they are. Basically if you just want the lightest of information, you can get that. If you want more and more, you can go deeper down the rabbit hole as we go. Helping us iterate on that would be awesome!
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http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/....php?t=3691287 

Those are some of the changes we're testing on the PBE. You might notice some of the format changes we're already piloting (summaries, large contextual paragraphs, etc) and that's where you come in. 

I'm looking for specific feedback surrounding our patch notes to see if there are things you really value (or don't value) when looking at them and if there are quick opportunities we can take to fixing them. 

[n]PLEASE NOTE[/n] this will be a directed discussion too, so I'll tell you if your ideas are going a little haywire or if there's something we just can't do as of now.

Also, WE'RE TRYING TO KEEP CHANGES RELATIVELY LIGHT FOR NOW - so big UI updates or things of that sort will sound great but will require a lot of exploration to really get it right.

For example, I'm leaning heavily toward adding a table of contents to our patch notes but I don't know (technically speaking) if that will mess things up. 

So... let's start with a basic question here: how do you like the patch notes as they exist here?
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/....php?t=3691287"

In the following discussion, he answered several patch note related questions:

[ Why can't we get patch notes for small patches that pop up frequently ]: "Usually these are hotfixes for changes that shouldn't have existed in the first place, if that makes sense. So messaging them wouldn't really message any change of any sort (more like a THINGS NOW WORK AS USUAL)."

[ Why don't we have numbers in the patch notes you linked? ] : "That's actually PBE specific. In the real patch notes you'll get real numbers."

[ Why not make collapsible tags with the context stuff in it? ]: "We're considering this!"

Exterminator Twitch
IronStylus briefly mentioned on the long lost Exterminator Twitch skin, an unreleased skin first seen on the PBE in early 2012.

"As others have mentioned, yeah, Twitch is in desperate need of a VU. Currently his existing model/rig/animations, etc are impossible to build skins on top of. He basically has like.. a unicycle action happening with his legs. I actually don't think he even HAS legs actually...

So yeah. Unfortunately no timeline on this, but Twitch is on "The List" and there most likely won't be any skins for him until that happens. However, Exterminator Twitch is an awesome concept and hopefully we'll get it remade when the VU kicks into gear."