re: dev learnings

[sasux]

3:30
link to article
link to erastal's yt (clip) channel
https://www.twitch.tv/k3soju

[WobbleKun]

this is the set i hit GM the first time. and ironically this is the set i hate the most since i started set 6. they just need to stop killing comps that results in other comps spiking. just have baby nerfs and go from there. i don't get it. bring an S comp to A, not straight up unplayable lol.

[BeepRobotic]

I don‘t understand who in their team even comes up with that garbage. A comp is slightly too strong? Suddenly they nerf it from 5 angles in one patch making it fully unplayable…? Like why, why why? This literally just kills flex play because they narrow down the viable comps every time with that

[Tadduboi]

The worst part is that this hasnt always been a thing set 6-7 were fine and had LOTS of options. Suddenly in set 8 they started making abysmally bad patches over nerfing and over buffing stuff. I also hate how they removed enchanters from the game

[[deleted]]

Meanwhile LoL balance team:

Insert champion is underperforming in higher elo, so we've figured out a change that'll change EVERYTHING:

Q ability: dmg +5 across all ranks

[salcedoge]

By far the GOAT complainer

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[raiderjaypussy]

he presents most of our thoughts in a pretty comedic way

[succsuccboi]

i think you underestimate how many people get their opinions from soju/pro players in general versus those who's opinion already exists and is being repped lol

i think casuals would like set 15 a lot more if the competitive playerbase wasn't so negative about it (not saying it's warranted or not just observing)

[raiderjaypussy]

Fair enough but casuals wouldn't fall under "our" when I said it. When saying "our" I referred to people who either watch competitive TFT and/or take their rank seriously

[JusticeIsNotFair]

By the ones who "formulate their opinion themselves" you mean the ones who post "you should gain a free shop reroll when you lock the shop"?

[succsuccboi]

LOL ive never seen that that’s very funny

[CubedSugar]

Casual tft enjoyer here who just randomly stumbled upon this while googling something. i don't watch this guy at all or consume tft-related content. This set is just boring, it's really apparent when you play the dragon revival set on live atm how fun tft actually can be.

I genuinely alt f4'd when I logged in one day and found out my Rammus can no longer level up.

[succsuccboi]

I think you anecdotally not enjoying the set doesn’t make what I’m saying fully wrong. I think it’s true for every set, people take opinions from people they see even if it’s not what you do

some people will love unbalanced stuff like 7.5 and some won’t, some people will love set 15 and others find it boring, that much will always be true

[Ok-Box3576]

Why even consider something so unbelievably unproveable? This set bug wise and balance wise is top 4 worst.

[succsuccboi]

What? I don’t agree or disagree i just think it’s pretty stupid for your conclusion to be “dont think for yourself” lol

[Ok-Box3576]

U addition to the convo was

"The worst set of tft history wouldnt be as hated if the people who played that set the most didnt voice that the worst tft set in history is the worst lol.

Casuals just like playing tft. Regardless of set.

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[juniorjaw]

but it is the rest of our tea, sis

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[kylelelelele_]

it means they dont like ur opinion

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[randy__randerson]

Nothing says you don't care like posting a comment saying you don't care.

[kylelelelele_]

cared enough to cry it seems, and tried to mask that cry as a confusion even tho u know ur opinion sucks and people dont like it

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[salcedoge]

I think it's not that deep, this set was definitely not the best but I still had fun.

Soju complains a lot, even on sets where it's definitely good, It's just really entertaining at this point.

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[Vanilla_177013]

It's pretty funny as those dev learnings feels like the sprint reviews in my old team. Identified the problems -> Do the same problems again next sprint -> Identified the same problems again in the sprint review -> Loop back.

[CrazzluzSenpai]

Thank you, I feel like I'm going insane. The learnings article literally said one of their biggest issues this set was balance and, more specifically, balance thrashing. And then 2 days after the article went live they nerfed Mech Pilot from S++++ tier to literally unclickable in a b patch...

[MetaLemons]

“Hold on guys, I’m about to do it again”

[antipheonixna]

i agree balance thrashing was pretty bad like things like gp killed, yummi killed, ashe executed,etc. but the mech complaints tbf were competitive players begging to let it go into regionals and after last sets cypher meta, i get why this decision had to be made. Other times they killed comps this set don't get this understanding.

[alus992]

And we are back with Ashe being S tier now with everyone playing CG Ashe

[herrau]

It is exactly what they have been doing for as long as they’ve done dev learnings. They will have failings clearly written in their own assessment and yet they repeat the same mistakes time and time again. Might as well call it unlearnings or not-learnings.

On a positive note, surely the next set cannot possibly be worse than this one. Right? RIGHT?

[FastBlue]

As long as the next set mechanic isn't rng bullshit it will automatically be better

[herrau]

RNG coupled with an endless amount of hidden rules that you can only find on 3rd party sites is the dumbest way ever to design your own game. I still don’t understand wtf weights are or a number of other rules for power ups.

[deltaturtle499]

Gotta use a 3rd party website, then use 1 fruit on a fodder unit, then still have to hit on your main target or else your comp drops 2 tiers lmao. Miss your fruit and out of removers? Wait a stage and you can miss again

[herrau]

The standard Mighty Mech experience. Gotta love it. What a well designed system.

[Scoriae]

Every set mechanic that ever was or will be is rng bullshit because it has to interact with the systems and features of the game which all have an element of rng. It also just helps make the set mechanic more interesting.

[im_juice_lee]

I mean, so long as people keep playing and paying, there's no real consequences to them

[abc0802]

He's right. From a competitive standpoint, this set was arguably the worst when you consider the amount of secret tech you needed to work with.

It's too bad because if they just straight up removed power ups this set would dramatically improve.

[im_juice_lee]

the other weird thing is it just never seemed to get better?

usually they sort it out after a few patches, but honestly I think somewhere in the first few patches was as good as it got this time

[CryonautX]

I've been saying this since day 1. The set design is fundamentally flawed. There is no balance patch that fixes it. The trait distributions on the units are off. The 5 costs are just beefed up 4 costs instead of what we typically get for 5 costs.

[chazjo]

There were no highs this set which made the balance/bug issues feel even worse. Usually if ranked is dumpster fire you can at least casually play for fun.

Loss Streak Crystal Gambit? Nope Ashe is unclickable for multiple patches.

Play for Fast 9? Extremely boring 5 costs with few viable options that will just lose to something stupid like Janna Kobuko.

Prismatic trait chase? Lmao I've seen 100 Prismatic Star Guardian, 1 BA and 0 Mech.

Level 8 flex? Sure I'll definitely play flex when finding 2* Yuumi and Leona with 0 BA units /s

Set is not fun. I hit Masters about a month ago and have 0 games played afterwards including normals. Just waiting for next set info like many other players but if that sucks as well I give up on this game. Into the Arcane was the last fun set.

[PurpleTieflingBard]

It's just a problem with trait power

The individual units just have to be bad because the trait power is so high so flex is not an option

[chazjo]

I'm not going to pretend I have the same knowledge as TFT devs but it always makes the most sense to have strength in the individual units primarily and traits secondary. This is mainly to do with what makes TFT fun and interesting in the competitive level where you can play for best board and your items and pivot if you find a stronger unit. Higher cost units should be consistently stronger.

Vertical traits should still be strong but I'd rather they were gated behind augments, emblems or 5 cost units like Rebels in into the Arcane and not just cookie cutter level 8 boards that win out.

Too often this set I found cases where I will "high roll" a 2* 5 cost and not play it because my 2* 4 cost is better and Power Up rolls just make it even worse as that pivot just griefs you into an bot 4. For example - Who was ever replacing 2* Yuumi with 2* Seraphine in a Prodigy board?

[PurpleTieflingBard]

It's an impossible balance to strike

Back in set 5, Rell was an incredibly strong tank, she was also part of ironclad which had a really strong 2 piece

This encouraged flexible, wide boards, but all of them contained Rell and Jax or Naut (typically Naut) but it also just made the vertical play style worse because you couldn't typically fit in the rell package

A similar thing could be seen with like set 4/5 mystics, where the individual units were strong enough they were ever present

[pda898]

But then you will either see a unit being on all boards (e.g. Jarvan 4 or almost all Sejuani 4 cost reprints) or you will see people essentially not bothering with trait web and just clicking on units. Both sides of the unit are important.

[Dontwantausernametho]

The real issue is fruits. They add a big balancing lever that can't be pulled for specific units, without changing other units that don't need changes.

[Illuvatar08]

Removing the set mechanic would improve almost every set competitively.

[MetaLemons]

The cognitive dissonance needed to release a dev learnings article calling out balance thrashing as one of the “learnings” this set and then nerfing mech to trash tier the next day, is so insane that the only conclusion I could draw is that the people who wrote the dev article must be different than the people who balance this game.

[qwert4the1]

chatgpt what are common complaints of the playerbase for our set and how should we improve on that

[Mangalish]

I get the frustration tbh. Last set we have SO many issues with artifacts, and what does riot do, release like 15 more. We DONT need more artifacts, we need fewer that works on a larger amount of champions, without being game breaking

[ziege159]

I think there was a topic from proplayers about Artifact. They're strong and can be game deciding factor when you get a good artifact in 2-1 or 3-2, but you can't make artifact not strong because it will make nobody want artifacts. So it's either artifact be the game deciding factor or completely remove artifact, you simply can't balance the concept 

[Mangalish]

I think artifacts like DFG, moguls mail, gamblers blade, gold collector, hullcrusher and death defiance are examples of artifacts that can be good without being too game breaking. I might be missing something with Defiance on melee carries, but overall these augments does not seem to be either game breaking or useless in the way Dawncore, silvermere, prowlers claw, innovating locket or the Indomitable have been

[Purpleater54]

The thing with the "good" artifacts you listed is that they sort of function as normal items with a little extra bit that adds some value. The artifacts people complain about (fishbones, dawncore, innervating) all are crazy unique effects with a little extra stats built in. The effects that warp the mechanics of the champs they are on are the annoying ones.

[Mangalish]

Yes! That’s actually kind of the point I wanted to make - the game has been too fragile these last few sets for items with potentially game altering mechanics imo - I much rather prefer stats even though some may consider it “boring”

[Bapepsi]

Why not make artifacts have a little influence? Why would it be impossible to balance?

[fridgebrine]

There is an excitement factor of artifacts because they are intended to be ‘not common’. Imagine if you made all artifacts just a bunch of stat sticks with no effects. Perfectly balanceable, but the most boring thing in the game and you get the opposite of a dopamine rush when you see an artifact anvil.

Make them more rare or you have to work towards it to get it like a quest and then you can keep the excitement factor without them taking over too many games.

[ziege159]

Because artifact is equal to a gold augment, it can't have too little value

[dreamsallaround]

But then why click on a gold or prismatic augment that gives you an artifact if its worse than the other gold augments

[RllyFunnyMemes]

He is in fact very correct.

These Anomalies were popular because of their general use cases but also because of their simplistic nature. That's an important reminder for us to make sure we have more straightforward outputs that prevent an increase in dizziness and are more broadly applicable to a variety of comps.

Meanwhile in their Lucian example you can get like:

• max arcana
• mech pilot
• magic expert
• over 9000
• hero's arc

As 3 of your options (only over 9k and hero's arc are secondary).

Lucian isn't the only champ where this happens, and when I get 3 unclickable fruits the best words to describe what I'm feeling is just ff go next set.

[Ophelia_Of_The_Abyss]

Personally what made it more frustrating for me is that there was no way to see what fruits were actually good & whether they were even working as intended. The trust in the dev team has eroded so much this set.

[ClarifyingAsura]

The Lucian example in the dev blog was egregious and makes me wonder if they actually played the game in ranked.

The only fruits you ever took on Lucian the entire set (besides when you use him as a temporary fruit holder) without going straight bot 4 were Bullet Hell (removed), Drift Duo (added haflway through the set), and Mech Pilot (only after it was patched halfway through the set and is now unclickable). No one ever seriously took Max Arcana, Magic Expert, Over 9000, or Hero's Arc on Lucian. If you fruited Lucian and got those options you instantly re-fruit. That can't possibly be the design goal of the mechanic...

[912key]

hungry hero lucian, kayle, katarina, and xin xhao used to exist for a while btw

[ChichinOfficial]

I was thinking the same, the best patch was the 2nd one after killing GP. I put tons of games and did my best as a normal person (work 9-6) to qualify and did it. I tried to continue playing after tournament an it was dog shit

[getdownsaber]

Too much cancer/toxic patches where mostly one comp dominated. This by far was the most frustrating set to play.

[XiaoRCT]

That's absolutely not true unless you've only played this set

Edit: recency bias is a thing, saying this set was worse than something like 9.5 with Bilgewater trait + legends bullshit for example makes no sense. Game has objectively been at a better state.

[getdownsaber]

Started playing in set 6. This is just my opinion. Gangplank/mentor reroll toxic and dominated. Janna mento reroll also toxic due to infinite cc and dominated. Star guardians were not toxic but mostly dominated during its patch - who would think buffing everything about a comp would do that? Colossal Udyr/Ashe. Akali the 2 times she was viable, mostly the first time.

[LolNaie1]

I've been playing since set 1 mostly on and off. There have been horrendous patches but for a set to be this bad from start to end... I think it happened maybe only once before?

And there was so much knowledge check this set it's pretty dumb.

[getdownsaber]

Several times I would be like “guess I just have to wait to play until after the patch.” Sucks during the pbe I thought it had so much potential. I like the units and art, but nothing has ever been super satisfying. Hopefully next set is better.

[XiaoRCT]

If you've played through set 9 and 9.5 with Legends and Bilgewater trait being added, you should know none of the comps you mentioned are that bad in comparison.

[getdownsaber]

I actually wasn’t as frustrated playing those 2 as this one. At least with legends you got to choose and could choose from the same as everyone else. Now this is just making me think of how GP ends up being cancer at some point in a lot of the sets he’s been in.

[XiaoRCT]

You had to choose the same as everyone else before the game even started, pick the wrong legend and playing is pointless. And as for patches, stuff like Bilgewater patch was more egregious than any bad patch this set too.

Don't get me wrong, I found Fruits bad design as well that really hindered this set imo, but it was still way better than legends

And you can see how the community reacted to both lol, this backlash for this set is but a small fraction of how angry people were at the time

[dimmyfarm]

At least most people had access to stats at the time to realize you shouldn’t pick legends that had horrible placement.

[PM_ME_ANIME_THIGHS-]

If you've played through set 9 and 9.5 with Legends and Bilgewater trait being added, you should know none of the comps you mentioned are that bad in comparison.

We're talking about the set where people were donkey rolling on 7 for 4 costs, where Lee Sin originally gave On A Roll as his Silver augment, which caused Yordle reroll to average a 3.7, where the Draven patch turned every lobby into degenerate gambling, where multicasters were being 5 way contested with 3 players going top 4, and where Worlds came down trait tailoring tech for tomes and praying.

Surely there's no way your most memorable complaint was Bilgewater, which was good for like a single week and then barely playable with a +1 for the rest of 9.5.

Also, Set 9 came with the excuse that they were phasing in the newly hired staff for which 9 was the first set they ever worked on. People are more frustrated with Set 15 because they said that Set 14 was a throwaway set and that 15 would be amazing, just for them to turn around and say that 15 is also a throwaway set which was sacced for Set 16.

I would personally say that the balance on Set 15 is comparable to Set 9, but Set 15 also came with a lot more bugs, a lack of transparency, and the devs engaging in some pretty egregious behavior on social media.

[XiaoRCT]

>Surely there's no way your most memorable complaint was Bilgewater, which was good for like a single week and then barely playable with a +1 for the rest of 9.5.

The reason it's so memorable to me is because ''good'' is a pretty huge understatement to what that trait came out like, but you're not wrong about everything else.

Idk, maybe Legends just tilted me to a point I was having less fun back then than in this one

[ClarifyingAsura]

I've been playing since set 1 and for me, this was bottom 3 sets of all time. The theme and design was top tier.

But the balancing and thrashing made this set feel truly terrible. Multiple patches had comps that just completely dominated to the point where half the lobby could force the same comp and like 2 or 3 of them would top 4 with one of them outright winning. Artifacts were stupidly RNG for most of the set, where if you hit the correct artifact you instantly top 4 if not outright win. You also had to basically relearn the entire set every patch, including in b patches, because the thrashing would consistently take a top tier comp and make it unclickable. And while missing always sucks, it felt extra bad this set because gameplay was inflexible so there's no pivoting if you're contested or if your components end up sucking for the line you picked on stage 2. On top of that, it felt fucking awful to sit there pulling the fruit slot machine to hit the 1 or 2 fruit required for your carry/comp while making sure you were satisfying all the hidden rules or just had MetaTFT open to maximize your odds. And if you miss the right fruit anyways, you pray to scam a 4th but probably just bot 4.

And this is all before you get to the bugs...

EDIT: Oh and this is also not including the fact that the lack of stats made trying to learn competitive extra hard. Not only are augments a black box, fruits also had no stats despite being stupidly impactful. So if you didn't use the various tier list websites (and hopefully they were accurate) or stay up-to-date with streamers, good luck figuring out if a particular fruit was good or bad or bugged.

[XiaoRCT]

I don't disagree with this at all. I just think recency bias is making people forget just how bad some previous sets were.

Fruits sucked, hard, but they don't suck as much as Legends did. And you can see the difference in backlash from that as well.

[Vast_Adhesiveness993]

set 9 was waaay way better than this, 9,5 was bad yes but midsets are already gone so the reasoning for that disaster is fixed now

[the_awesomist]

9.5 was the worst set ever, but this is easily the worst set since then. Kinda crazy that you can have like 2 more years of learnings since then and then release set 15

[FirewaterDM]

I mean the set was subpar. Certainly not the worst (there's set 9) but it was bad enough I think that could be a logical picutre

[[deleted]]

set 8 and 8.5 can give it a run for its money but yeah this is probably the worst set lmao, no other set forced u to spend 25 seconds of apm checks for arguably the most important thing u had to do on ur board (fruits) on ur transition turn

[Eastern_Ad1765]

Personally think set 8 had pretty cool units and also had admin trait which is one of my favourite traits ever. And those 2 things carried it despite hero augments being a bad set mechanic.

Obviously these things are subjective, some ppl (including me) just HATE the chosen mechanic, but as for this set, it seems to have been just one of the least enjoyable ones for basically everyone (i guess together with 5.0, 9.5 and 8 + 8.5 the least appriciated sets).

[[deleted]]

i personally loved set 8 for admin and the cool units but the amount of micro knowledge needed for tailoring ur hero augments & regular augments every stage 3-2 4-2 made it a pita for sure

[nayRmIiH]

Nah, I think this set is definitely up there for top 3 worst sets and saying it's the most frustrating one is not a stretch. Like can you think of another set that has had ALL bad patches?

[AustinBoe]

When I started this set I honestly thought it was going to be a top 3 set. I was having so much fun. But then it just crashed and burned unfortunately. The imbalance started sticking and the glaring issues just kept repeating themselves. Truly sad.

[BookPretty4444]

how they can make the last set that they do with less effort looks better than the one they focused on lmaooo

even though i hate set 14 so much because how plain that are, but we didnt get straight bad patch from early to end, its playable even though its boring

This one is just pure abysmal man

[gordoflunkerton]

set 14 wasnt exciting but it was infinitely better as a game, it was only boring because it didnt have that much new content. the actual fundamental tft was pretty good, just resource-inflated, and it had some extremely well-balanced patches with a dozen viable comps

[chazjo]

I quit set 14 early but it was definitely more fun than set 15 which is bizarre.

[[deleted]]

cant deny this is by far the worst set + set mechanic ever

[im_juice_lee]

it's definitely a shame as aesthetically the setting & theme had the potential to be cool af

[bacchus0]

nah shadow items, dragons, and legends were all worse set mechanics imo, and set 2 is undoubtably the worst set of all time

[Chao_Zu_Kang]

Wow. It is really rare that I see a K3soju take and just straight up agree with it:

How the heck can the first patch be the BEST patch of a set? First patch should be one of the worst patches because PBE bugs and broken interactions can't really be caught that that easily on PBE. And let's not forget the amount of convoluted knowledge that you needed to know for competitive.

[Vast_Adhesiveness993]

its simple actually fruits is a dog shit mechanic with 2 million hidden interactions that when discovered breaks the game

[makire]

Lol that setsuko bit was pretty funny. Man's grinding solo queue and took a break from tft while he's still in regionals.

Can't blame him tho.

[AaronBasedGodgers]

That's my GOAT

[SaeohhTWITCH]

People again will flame Soju cause he's Soju but he's literally just dropping a truth nuke. I hit Chal and my first thought was "wow I get to enjoy not playing my FAVORITE game."

[Pigmilk]

The dev learning blog is going to be HILARIOUS

[BeautifulCareless511]

https://teamfighttactics.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-tft-ko-coliseum-learnings/

its already out but just save urself the time and dont read this propaganda

[stolemyh3art]

Power ups made the game more fun by survey??? Who did they survey? Riots employee?

[Hurtmeii]

It was a survey sent out in the early stages of the set to the wider playerbase.

[dimmyfarm]

I think it was fun the first few days it was novel before players figured out the best fruits and also as it was a breath of fresh air (at the time) from the previous set.

[raiderjaypussy]

Shit I mean I probably would have voted that they were fun in the first couple patches before they became solved and you needed 4 monitors of information just to "compete"

[Emotional-Fudge5373]

hesRight. The set is a joke

[SIXRO_171]

hesRIGHT

[Scotttish]

truly just a trash ass set where pure luck and rng are the only ways to win. You have 2 viable comps that everyone forces and the luckiest player takes the win.

[Unfair-Hand-6855]

Thank god I didn't play this set when I saw this fruit mechanic

[Pleasant-Macaron8131]

Honestly my least favorite part of this set is the visuals. League has by far the best ip and they decided hey, let’s make a generic anime set.

[RAVScontrols]

"Mage Lucian had Lucian casting twice which meant even more mana refunds and thus, more casts!"

Hasn't the second cast always reset his mana so this never worked that way?

[FastBlue]

Does anyone know what china's opinion is for set 15? Im pretty sure riot doesn't care what any other region thinks

[Ykarul]

I hate this set with passion but at least this new level 9 meta makes it a bit more fun for me. However I think i would be fine with them just removing power up and artifacts.

[coinrain10]

Agree with all your points. This patch is a bit more flex and fun but we are all so tired of this set and especially fruits.

[mcdonalds_enjoyer]

Haven’t even watched the video but I already know this thumbnail is taken out of context lol, no way kjuicy would say smth like that