Red Post Collection: Riot BrokenSword Q&A, Lemondogs out of the LCS, and more!

Posted on at 12:32 AM by Moobeat
Tonight's late night red post collection features a Q&A with Riot BrokenSword where he discusses things ranging from the far off Ao Shin to upcoming improvements to the invite system, notice that Lemondogs failed to submit their roster and are no longer in the 2014 EU LCS, and more!

Continue reading for more information!

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Riot BrokenSword Q&A

Earlier today, Riot BrokenSword, a production coordinator, hosted an impromptu Q&A over on the EUW forums.
"Hello, my dear friends of EUW, 
I wish you a late happy holidays, and new year. I hope you all partied responsibly hard.

In an effort to plead your forgiveness of my recent absence, I wanted to hold a 1 Hour long Q&A session. I did a 20 questions thing before that was fun, but it forced me to leave a lot of people out.

It's 10:16am for me in Los Angeles right now, and I'll answer as much as I can until 11:30, as I have a quick 15 minutes meeting at 11.

I now open the floodgates to your thoughts.
RBS"
He followed up by explaining his job position and hinting at some upcoming features he and his team are currently working on - improvements to the game invitation system!
"I'm in Production, AKA Product Management. What I'm doing at Riot is leading that's building toward a better PvP.Net client experience. Our work is most invisible, as my team's domain is in the Platform, which controls most of the global information sent between your client and another. 
Our contributions are in a rebuilt Champ Trades system (for Ranked, Normal Draft, and ARAMs), and a various Champ Select improvements.

We're currently rebuilding the Game Invitations system. That should come out in two patches from now. I'll announce it to get your feedback on it. You'll now be able to transfer ownership of a game to someone, similar to giving them an invite privilege. That will be make them "Captain" of that game, putting them in the position to make the picks and bans.

That's one of many new additions. I'll explain the rest in the announcement."
He then dove into answering a multitude of questions!


When asked about the start date for Season 4, he replied:
"I think a little over a month from now. I don't have an exact date. It depends half on our strategic timing, and ability to have the Season 2014* (that's what we're calling it now) code ready and stable."

When asked about the new data center being built in Amsterdam is coming along, he commented:
"It's coming along nicely. I was told by the VP of Operations that it should be ready in Q1 (Quarter 1) of this year, which means sometime in the first 4 months. I'm going to be crucified by you guys if we miss that, but I was given the OK to mention Q1.

Keep your fingers crossed for us, lest something go wrong out there. We want you to have it ASAP."

As for the Ao Shin champion concept we saw a while back, he noted:
"Ao Shin is very, very far down the road. Probably not even this year. There was a lot we learned about him after we introduced his concept art. His concept at a character has changed dramatically, but much for the better. It will take a while to develop an excellent kit that matches his lore."

When asked about the current situation of the Magma chamber map, Riot BrokenSword replied:
"We're still figuring that one out... There's a lot of internal debate. I think we'll analyze the success, or lack thereof, of Showdown to help lead us to determine whether or not it's something we want to support. Many of us do, but the arguments against it are very strong."

He also entertained a question on the next champion to be released, saying:
"I haven't checked the launch date of the next champ yet. If I knew it, I couldn't tell you. It will be a fun champ, though. Nothing you'll see coming."

Similarly, he replied to a question on the increasing number of champions reworks by saying:
"lol I was in talks to be another producer on the Champion team, and I saw the roadmap for 2014. It definitely will be the year of reworks. Far more so than new champs. Gotta give love to the champs we've already come to love and adore."

When questioned if Riot had any plans to revive Dominion with "better balance and ranked", RiotBrokenSword replied:
"Nothing official being done yet. There are talks of Dominion work, but there really aren't many people playing it. Giving it love in the future isn't out of the question, though. It's a matter of knowing what we'd couldn't do, if we were to dedicate time to Dominion. There are probably much higher value projects than most things related to Dominion. Unfortunate as that sounds, it's just a truth we keep seeing validated."

When asked why it takes such a long time to release a new champion, he commented:
"We HAVE to know that it's a fun champion. We don't want to introduce something into the game that won't add any new, or better experience to LoL. It takes a long time to find that perfect mix, then build the champion, and burn down all the bugs accrued in its creation. It also has to gel well with other champions and their kits.

Yasuo's wind-wall took weeks to get perfected in blocking or not blocking all the appropriate spells of other champs."

Riot BrokenSword also replied to a question regarding if we'll ever see a "League of Legends 2", saying:
"If you look at the art that we launched with and compared it to now, we'd be at something like LoL5. 
There won't ever be a League 2, because we improve the game every month.

We're working to improve our infrastructure (engine, and patcher) that will allow us to have even higher quality art that still exists within our style. We want fantasy, not realism, so I don't know if we'll ever see a day where someone's still has realistic skin textures and lighting. That stuff is saved for the cinematics."

Lemondogs out of 2014 LCS Spring Split

Following up on yesterday's articleon the Lemondogs situation and the new LCS rule changes, it seems Lemondogs were not able to submit their roster and have been removed from the 2014 LCS Spring split.

Here's the what the update to the Lolesports article has to say:
"Edit: Lemondogs has not met the deadline and will not be participating in the 2014 LCS Spring Split. We will be releasing more information shortly about the qualifier for the 8th LCS team."
RiotNickAllen also commented on twitter:
"Lemondogs has failed to submit satisfactory paperwork and will be removed from the EU LCS. Stay tuned for details around the tiebreaker."

AT&T Mobile Payments No Longer Supported on NA

Starting January 15th, Riot will no longer be accepting mobile payments from AT&T due to issues outside of Riot's control.

Here is Riot Zephyreal, a player support specialist, with more info:
"Hey everyone 
Unfortunately Riot has been informed by Boku (merchant for mobile payments) that starting 1/15/2014, AT&T will no longer process mobile payments. Due to this decision, players who use their mobile phones to purchase RP and have AT&T as a provider will no longer be able to use their mobile phone to make purchases in our store. This decision was outside of Riot's control. 
As far as we've been told, this will only affect players with phones tied to the United States playing on the North American servers. 
To avoid any confusion, our payments team will also set up messaging within our store itself on the 15th for those who attempt to use mobile payments.

Sorry for any inconvenience this will cause the large amount of players who use AT&T and mobile payments, but we hope that some preemptive messaging will allow you to prepare alternate payment methods should you decide to buy RP in the future."

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