Best Of

Now that the dust has settled and we have all had time to sleep, I wanted to share some thoughts about Summoners Fest. This is not an official dev diary, just my own personal reflections.

I’m a pretty big introvert so I find these kinds of events to be very draining, but at the same time I absolutely love them and do everything I can to experience them. It was incredible to see so many friends, and to turn so many unknown faces into new friends. If I didn’t get a chance to meet you, or if I did but you felt like our interaction was rushed, know that I look forward to the next opportunity. For those who took time out of your busy schedules to visit us, thank you.

It was very reassuring to see Summoners excited about the things we have been working on. Things like Coliseum have been an enormous amount of work, and seeing Summoners enjoying that work is very rewarding. I want to thank the entire game team for working so hard to get as much of it in the hands of participants as possible, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing the features we previewed in the game for everyone to try.

Over the course of the four days (I start on Thursday since that was the day people started arriving and the conversations began) Summoners wanted to talk to me about a wide array of things. Many of them like progression, currencies, future game modes and champions were covered on the Live Stream. Beyond that there were five common themes Summoners raised that we didn’t cover in detail. I want to acknowledge them here to demonstrate we aren’t ignoring them.

1. Communication - Summoners told me they want to see more from us on this front. It’s something I do my best to promote but it can be challenging to muster the energy when I know every post I make is going to be met by a litany of angry DMs. Still, it was great to hear that many Summoners are engaging with our team in good faith. The desire for better communication is what inspired me to write this post, and I have a few other ideas for things I may write about in the coming weeks.

2. AI - As I’m sure you would all expect, AI was a hot topic. We had considered doing a session on AI at Summoners Fest, and decided against it because the technical nature wouldn’t be appropriate for the kind of action-packed experience we wanted to deliver. We have made substantial progress on AI 2.0 and the team is working on an update to share with Summoners right now. Know that the game team has communicated to leadership that this is a top priority for Summoners, and thus a top priority for us.

3. Bugs - We had a very rough Q3 when it comes to product quality. Thankfully it seems like that shadow has started to lift, and we absolutely know we need to go further. We have made a commitment to building a better testing and QA process, something we should be able to talk about more in the coming months.

4. Defenders - Summoners believe the meta that has been created by recent defender releases has made the game less enjoyable. This is an active conversation on the game team, and we are working to identify opportunities to mitigate the negative impact these defenders have had. Know that this is absolutely top of mind as we build out the design for Fortress Assault – we do not want its meta to be repetitive fights against these oppressive defenders.

5. Titan Crystal dupes - Finally, many Summoners shared the frustration about max duping champions from the Titan crystal, resulting in a handful of Titan shards. Right now our technology does not know where a dupe comes from. However, we can differentiate the source in data, and so we are exploring a makeshift solution to address this issue before the end of the year.

Again I want to thank all who attended for taking the time out of your busy lives to visit us and provide feedback on the direction of the game. I hope to see even more of you the next time we host an event.