For those of us who haven't been playing in the past few days, can you describe Ascension?
0
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
edited September 2014
The goal is to get 200 points before your opponents. You get 1 point per kill, 3 points per relic capture, 2 points per kill as an ascended, and 5 points for killing an ascended. It shares some ARAM rules in that you can't go back to base to heal and buy unless you die. I guess a term for it would be VIP Deathmatch. It takes place in the center ring of the dominion map and you can't move into and past the lane, except for the former control points that you teleport onto. When at base you'll have a trinket that teleports you to one of the 3 former control points near your base.
The speed shrines (the electric shields) now have Shuriman relics on them and are captured in a similar manner to Dominion's control points. At the center of the map is Ancient Ascended Xerath. He's basically Baron for this mode, and whoever strikes the killing blow on him gets a massive buff in the form of Ascension. Yopu'll be frozen and untargettable for a few seconds and your health and resources will be returned to full. Whn you emerge ascended, an explosion will happen that pushes all enemies away from the center section of the map. Xerath also does this explosion when he respawns. You gain HUGE stats, huge size, and have no resource costs, but all healing is reduced by 50% and the enemy team always has vision on you. There is a banning phase to the champion select and good bans for this mode are mobile assassins and melee carries. Yi, Yasou, Zed, Katarina, Kassasdin, Fizz, and Akali are common ones. Namely those that are incredibly destructive as ascended or those that have an edge at killing the ascended. Good tips for the mode are stick together, keep capping the relics, protect your ascended, and be careful about when you try to kill Xerath. Don't want someone jumping in when he's low and stealing the buff.
You can see and learn more at the Shurima website. You'll also need to go there to claim your rewards for participating in Ascension if you want them asap. Riot will do a sweep when the event ends and grant the rewards that people have earned but not claimed.
One of the icon rewards is awarded if you have a perfect ascension match, that being, that your team ascends at least once and the opposing team does not and you win.
Only 10 days left.
1
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
Also, in Honor of the Season 1 World Champions, a Fnatic skin set has appeared on the PBE
Corki, Janna, Karthus, Gragas, and Jarvan
0
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
edited September 2014
Today's PBE update marks the beginning of the mass texture update.
The Short: The new Summoner's Rift coming out Soon™ has a very stylized color pallette and Riot wants to bring older champion's textures inline to "match." More "solid" colors. No tiny details. No "sparkles" from texture aliasing due to said tiny details and other factors. New lighting passes (darker mostly) and simplifying details I should say. For example, Ahri just has a slightly darker lighting pass on her (hair, tails, skin.) "Champions and skins released prior to 2013 plus some outliers." are the targets. These will be strictly texture updates, so models will likely remain the same.
Today's update has the following champs: Ahri, Akali, Ashe, Corki, Fiora, Galio. Graves, LeBlanc, Leona, Nautilus, Orianna, and Xerath.
Samples: Credit to Riot and Surrender@20
Old to the left. New to the right.
Galio, Nautilus, and Akali are good examples for the criteria Riot is wanting to change.
Please note that these are not considered "Done" until you see them in the live client. So if you don't like a change, remember that you aren't seeing the final product, and if you can give constructive feedback about why you dislike a change, I'll let Riot know on the PBE forums and whatnot.
Waittaminute - just to be 100% sure - which are the new pictures, and which are the old?
The pictures on the left look more detailed and prettier, so I would assume they're newer... but based on your statement about eliminating sparkles due to aliasing tiny details and keeping everything solid-colored, am I to believe that the photos on the right are newer?
0
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
edited September 2014
Sorry, forgot to mention that (Derp). You are correct, the left are the old and the right are the new. S@20 is still checking out the dataz. Check their article out in an hour or so to see all the current changes.
So... I see what they're going for, and a lot of the changes are really inline with the idea and serve their purpose well, but I think they've way overstepped their plan on one count: removing so much detail. There's a lot of reason to remove detail, but I don't agree that it was the best choice here. Usually artists remove detail if it gets in the way of the story they're representing. Writers remove detail so the reader fills it in in their minds. UI designers remove detail because it gets in the way of function, and because minimalism is pleasing.
To be fair, I'm just banging out a response here and not looking for evidence to the contrary, but I'd contend that I've never seen anyone remove detail in character art. It seems really backwards - a character's story can be told visually by the details, and the lack thereof just edges more toward a visual version of Bella (a la Twilight) - damn near a blank, featureless canvas. Even if someone never sees the details, it helps build the shape, posture, and gait of the character. Makes the designer more honest with the character, the same way unseen details make an actor more honest with their character.
I hunted down some other pictures on the web of the characters standing in the background (not sure if it's the new or old one), and sure enough - it looks like they belong in the world a little more than before (before, it was almost like they were great big shiny cardboard cutouts on the world... kind of like what you see when you watch an old cartoon: you can tell what parts of the frame are mobile and what is part of the background cel). But I feel like they could have attained this without sacrificing all the detail.
I think they could have attained their goal by changing color palettes, reducing brightness, and especially reducing the highlights... and maybe thinning up that damnable black line around all their characters, but I really don't think removing details was the way to go. The runes on Corki's propeller blades, Akali's finger, muscle, sandal, and hair definition (plus her bracers now look like they're straight out of 2006)... these didn't need sacrificed.
Orianna is a really good example. I don't notice a lot of detail reduction there - just a color palette change. She looks awesome. LeBlanc, too. They kept the pattern on her cloak, her mantle, her boots, that weird sash around her leg, and her belt buckle. They dropped the brightness and the highlights, and she looks like she belongs with the world behind her so much more. So why did they rip Akali apart? Who else are they doing this to?
They don't need to remove detail to make the characters fit in.
@RahnalH102 said:
Please note that these are not considered "Done" until you see them in the live client. So if you don't like a change, remember that you aren't seeing the final product
Dammit, that wasn't in there when I started my reply. Now I just look stupid. :P
Gotta agree with Myrmidon. The new models somehow come across as what I would call fuzzy. They're not terrible just less interesting based on the images above. Except for Akali which does look actually terrible compared to the original model, the new one is just painfully bland in comparison.
0
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
edited September 2014
@Myrmidon said:
Dammit, that wasn't in there when I started my reply. Now I just look stupid. :P
I was updating that post like, every 5 minutes at the time. The "Please note that these are not considered "Done" until you see them in the live client. ..." part was an early one though. I apologize for my sloppy breaking news reporting regardless.
Something other things to note:
1. The majority of these are basically band-aids. A placeholder till the champs VU or proper TU is finished. I'm not saying Riot shouldn't do their best on these, but that these still probably won't be as good as the VU will be. There will be more detail that is both inline with the character and the new style.
For example let's look at Sona's recent VU: Again, old to the left, new to the right.
As you can see, Sona has slight model adjustments on the new version: she is slightly bigger, her instrument is slightly different, and of course her hair is super flowing and full (she did get her yellow tips back later in the PBE cycle, this is the only comparison shot for the base though.) If she had not received this VU recently, and was in yesterday's update, she would still have the old model, but the texture would be redone to look more inline with the new map's style. What you see on her new model, but without the new model. This should end up being the same thing for the others eventually.
2.
@Myrmidon said:
I think they could have attained their goal by changing color palettes, reducing brightness, and especially reducing the highlights...
This is what they are doing with a lot of them. Look at Ahri for example, all they did was a lighting pass over her. Her hair isn't reflecting the sun (it's actually raining on new SR so there is less bright light, not so dark shadows) and the rest of her is slightly "darker".
I'll grab another from S@20's post:
The details are still there, the shadows and highlights are not as intense is the main change.
I do see what you mean about Akali, and I agree she just doesn't feel right compared to the others. And guess what, we're not the only ones that feel that way. We'll see the new look next week (Monday or Tuesday most likely.)
Here are some quotes from RiotBaconHawk and RiotIronStylus, two of the senior artist at Riot:
RiotBaconHawk: As always, I want to strongly emphasize that a screen cap does not do justice to an actual in-game experience. Speaking to the removal of the runes [Corki's propellers, which by the way have white stripes on them now, Riot's screen cap of him wasn't up-to-date apparently], for game clarity purposes, detail like that is lost at game height and muddies the champion look, making it overly busy to the eye.
However, would love for Ququ to come weigh in on this as it's his team working on these. I'm on Skins team, and we focus on ensuring we don't add these kinds of unnecessary details—which are cool when zoomed in, and on cosplay, but sadly, not conducive to a clear in-game experience!—but that doesn't mean we don't add details anywhere else We are just selective and make sure that details we do add are meaningful and add to the character!
RiotIronStylus: Gotta remember that detail frequency often works against us. Excessive detail, especially detail that is highly contrasted against it's adjacent material leads to "flickering" and "buzzing."
That a) hurts they eye, b) generally feels low quality, c) doesn't fit in with our changing style.
While it can be sometimes confused with feature removal, it results in a cleaner asset, it's for the overall health and quality of the game.
I'm not sure why these last two are 1 and 2 again. Formatting ugh!
@Myrmidon said:
I think they could have attained their goal by changing color palettes, reducing brightness, and especially reducing the highlights...
This is what they are doing with a lot of them. Look at Ahri for example, all they did was a lighting pass over her. Her hair isn't reflecting the sun >(it's actually raining on new SR so there is less bright light, not so dark shadows) and the rest of her is slightly "darker".
It seems I have been unclear - I know that reducing highlights/brightness is what they've done, what I mean is I think that's ALL they needed to do.
IronStylus talks about detail working against them - I agree that high contrast detail works against them, I don't agree that it all does. But I'm not the dev.
Also wait, I thought they WEREN'T doing model adjustments?
0
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
@Myrmidon said:
Also wait, I thought they WEREN'T doing model adjustments?
They are not. Sona's VU happened 2 months ago. I was using it as an example of "what could be" if they were updating the models as well.
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
RiotQuquroon had this to say today:
Thanks for all your feedback, both positive and negative. There's been an overwhelming response to this, so I'm sorry that I haven't been able to reply to everything. I assure you that I've been reading through this thread (as well as many many others).
So to let you know what's coming up during this cycle. We had a large response to two characters in particular, and we're looking to bring your feedback in. Namely, Akali and Nautilus.
Akali will be receiving a few more details back, in response to her being too simplified. She's being modified with our goals still in mind, but we agree that we went too far. We will also be returning the Silver kamas on Silverfang Akali.
Nautilus is being grundged up, and will be getting more rust. We're also looking at an opportunity of placing a shader on his base as well, to really help it feel like metal, and not the commonly quipped plastic. [For example, that Leona screenshot above, you can't see the sheen from her shader making her shield and armor all realistically shiny and reflective while she's moving.]
Finally, we're looking to finish Corki with the Red Baron and Ice Toboggan skins."
For the record, I would have had less deaths that round if our "ADC" wasn't a shit. I think I've finally really gotten a good handle on Sona. (Not that she's hard to play, but I think I have a better idea of how to be a good Sona now versus just a decent Sona).
I would love to help you. This week is sort of ... weird. But if we end up playing LoL, or are on at the same time, will definitely love to boot up a game and do solo middle lane.
@CannonFodder said:
I would love to help you. This week is sort of ... weird. But if we end up playing LoL, or are on at the same time, will definitely love to boot up a game and do solo middle lane.
lol why, it's not like you're in California or anything
0
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
@Ilriyas said:
Are they redoing Sion or something?
Yes.
0
RahnalH102the Green Devout, Veteran Monster Hunter, Creature EnthusiastNew MexicoIcrontian
edited September 2014
They've been working on him for almost a year now. Said in order to redo him right, they would basically need to make a completely new champion. Undead juggernaut is still his theme.
Comments
Man I've had soo many near perfect Ascension matches over the past few hours. Makes me wonder how a coordinated team would do.
For those of us who haven't been playing in the past few days, can you describe Ascension?
The goal is to get 200 points before your opponents. You get 1 point per kill, 3 points per relic capture, 2 points per kill as an ascended, and 5 points for killing an ascended. It shares some ARAM rules in that you can't go back to base to heal and buy unless you die. I guess a term for it would be VIP Deathmatch. It takes place in the center ring of the dominion map and you can't move into and past the lane, except for the former control points that you teleport onto. When at base you'll have a trinket that teleports you to one of the 3 former control points near your base.
The speed shrines (the electric shields) now have Shuriman relics on them and are captured in a similar manner to Dominion's control points. At the center of the map is Ancient Ascended Xerath. He's basically Baron for this mode, and whoever strikes the killing blow on him gets a massive buff in the form of Ascension. Yopu'll be frozen and untargettable for a few seconds and your health and resources will be returned to full. Whn you emerge ascended, an explosion will happen that pushes all enemies away from the center section of the map. Xerath also does this explosion when he respawns. You gain HUGE stats, huge size, and have no resource costs, but all healing is reduced by 50% and the enemy team always has vision on you. There is a banning phase to the champion select and good bans for this mode are mobile assassins and melee carries. Yi, Yasou, Zed, Katarina, Kassasdin, Fizz, and Akali are common ones. Namely those that are incredibly destructive as ascended or those that have an edge at killing the ascended. Good tips for the mode are stick together, keep capping the relics, protect your ascended, and be careful about when you try to kill Xerath. Don't want someone jumping in when he's low and stealing the buff.
You can see and learn more at the Shurima website. You'll also need to go there to claim your rewards for participating in Ascension if you want them asap. Riot will do a sweep when the event ends and grant the rewards that people have earned but not claimed.
One of the icon rewards is awarded if you have a perfect ascension match, that being, that your team ascends at least once and the opposing team does not and you win.
Only 10 days left.
Also, in Honor of the Season 1 World Champions, a Fnatic skin set has appeared on the PBE
Corki, Janna, Karthus, Gragas, and Jarvan
Today's PBE update marks the beginning of the mass texture update.
The Short: The new Summoner's Rift coming out Soon™ has a very stylized color pallette and Riot wants to bring older champion's textures inline to "match." More "solid" colors. No tiny details. No "sparkles" from texture aliasing due to said tiny details and other factors. New lighting passes (darker mostly) and simplifying details I should say. For example, Ahri just has a slightly darker lighting pass on her (hair, tails, skin.) "Champions and skins released prior to 2013 plus some outliers." are the targets. These will be strictly texture updates, so models will likely remain the same.
Today's update has the following champs: Ahri, Akali, Ashe, Corki, Fiora, Galio. Graves, LeBlanc, Leona, Nautilus, Orianna, and Xerath.
Samples: Credit to Riot and Surrender@20
Old to the left. New to the right.
Galio, Nautilus, and Akali are good examples for the criteria Riot is wanting to change.
Please note that these are not considered "Done" until you see them in the live client. So if you don't like a change, remember that you aren't seeing the final product, and if you can give constructive feedback about why you dislike a change, I'll let Riot know on the PBE forums and whatnot.
Waittaminute - just to be 100% sure - which are the new pictures, and which are the old?
The pictures on the left look more detailed and prettier, so I would assume they're newer... but based on your statement about eliminating sparkles due to aliasing tiny details and keeping everything solid-colored, am I to believe that the photos on the right are newer?
Sorry, forgot to mention that (Derp). You are correct, the left are the old and the right are the new. S@20 is still checking out the dataz. Check their article out in an hour or so to see all the current changes.
So... I see what they're going for, and a lot of the changes are really inline with the idea and serve their purpose well, but I think they've way overstepped their plan on one count: removing so much detail. There's a lot of reason to remove detail, but I don't agree that it was the best choice here. Usually artists remove detail if it gets in the way of the story they're representing. Writers remove detail so the reader fills it in in their minds. UI designers remove detail because it gets in the way of function, and because minimalism is pleasing.
To be fair, I'm just banging out a response here and not looking for evidence to the contrary, but I'd contend that I've never seen anyone remove detail in character art. It seems really backwards - a character's story can be told visually by the details, and the lack thereof just edges more toward a visual version of Bella (a la Twilight) - damn near a blank, featureless canvas. Even if someone never sees the details, it helps build the shape, posture, and gait of the character. Makes the designer more honest with the character, the same way unseen details make an actor more honest with their character.
I hunted down some other pictures on the web of the characters standing in the background (not sure if it's the new or old one), and sure enough - it looks like they belong in the world a little more than before (before, it was almost like they were great big shiny cardboard cutouts on the world... kind of like what you see when you watch an old cartoon: you can tell what parts of the frame are mobile and what is part of the background cel). But I feel like they could have attained this without sacrificing all the detail.
I think they could have attained their goal by changing color palettes, reducing brightness, and especially reducing the highlights... and maybe thinning up that damnable black line around all their characters, but I really don't think removing details was the way to go. The runes on Corki's propeller blades, Akali's finger, muscle, sandal, and hair definition (plus her bracers now look like they're straight out of 2006)... these didn't need sacrificed.
Orianna is a really good example. I don't notice a lot of detail reduction there - just a color palette change. She looks awesome. LeBlanc, too. They kept the pattern on her cloak, her mantle, her boots, that weird sash around her leg, and her belt buckle. They dropped the brightness and the highlights, and she looks like she belongs with the world behind her so much more. So why did they rip Akali apart? Who else are they doing this to?
They don't need to remove detail to make the characters fit in.
Dammit, that wasn't in there when I started my reply. Now I just look stupid. :P
Gotta agree with Myrmidon. The new models somehow come across as what I would call fuzzy. They're not terrible just less interesting based on the images above. Except for Akali which does look actually terrible compared to the original model, the new one is just painfully bland in comparison.
I was updating that post like, every 5 minutes at the time. The "Please note that these are not considered "Done" until you see them in the live client. ..." part was an early one though. I apologize for my sloppy breaking news reporting regardless.
Something other things to note:
1. The majority of these are basically band-aids. A placeholder till the champs VU or proper TU is finished. I'm not saying Riot shouldn't do their best on these, but that these still probably won't be as good as the VU will be. There will be more detail that is both inline with the character and the new style.
For example let's look at Sona's recent VU: Again, old to the left, new to the right.
As you can see, Sona has slight model adjustments on the new version: she is slightly bigger, her instrument is slightly different, and of course her hair is super flowing and full (she did get her yellow tips back later in the PBE cycle, this is the only comparison shot for the base though.) If she had not received this VU recently, and was in yesterday's update, she would still have the old model, but the texture would be redone to look more inline with the new map's style. What you see on her new model, but without the new model. This should end up being the same thing for the others eventually.
2.
This is what they are doing with a lot of them. Look at Ahri for example, all they did was a lighting pass over her. Her hair isn't reflecting the sun (it's actually raining on new SR so there is less bright light, not so dark shadows) and the rest of her is slightly "darker".
I'll grab another from S@20's post:
The details are still there, the shadows and highlights are not as intense is the main change.
I do see what you mean about Akali, and I agree she just doesn't feel right compared to the others. And guess what, we're not the only ones that feel that way. We'll see the new look next week (Monday or Tuesday most likely.)
Here are some quotes from RiotBaconHawk and RiotIronStylus, two of the senior artist at Riot:
That a) hurts they eye, b) generally feels low quality, c) doesn't fit in with our changing style.
While it can be sometimes confused with feature removal, it results in a cleaner asset, it's for the overall health and quality of the game.
I'm not sure why these last two are 1 and 2 again. Formatting ugh!
It seems I have been unclear - I know that reducing highlights/brightness is what they've done, what I mean is I think that's ALL they needed to do.
IronStylus talks about detail working against them - I agree that high contrast detail works against them, I don't agree that it all does. But I'm not the dev.
Also wait, I thought they WEREN'T doing model adjustments?
They are not. Sona's VU happened 2 months ago. I was using it as an example of "what could be" if they were updating the models as well.
0/0/34 NBD
0 DEATH ARAM FTW.
Azir spotlight
RiotQuquroon had this to say today:
Azir OP as fuck, hard to use properly but it is scary when you get him down pat.
For the record, I would have had less deaths that round if our "ADC" wasn't a shit. I think I've finally really gotten a good handle on Sona. (Not that she's hard to play, but I think I have a better idea of how to be a good Sona now versus just a decent Sona).
This one time (the only time) I played LoL for the first time and after several hours of playing the only kill that I had was GnomeQueen.
FUCK. ZILEAN.
can i plz take lessons at the @cannonfodder school of Ryze
I would love to help you. This week is sort of ... weird. But if we end up playing LoL, or are on at the same time, will definitely love to boot up a game and do solo middle lane.
lol why, it's not like you're in California or anything
He's almost here ...
Are they redoing Sion or something?
Yes.
They've been working on him for almost a year now. Said in order to redo him right, they would basically need to make a completely new champion. Undead juggernaut is still his theme.
So is his rework coming out next patch? I'm actually really excited for this.