Alex

Director of Product and Head of Gameplay for TFT

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@elchapo93274 Yep we have a crew on it! Just don’t have any specifics quite yet

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

yo-

Wanted to take a minute to catch everyone up on where we’re at a week into PBE and give some extra vis on our big focus areas this week:

There are still some gnarly bugs happening so please keep reporting them and we’ll keep fixing everything as quickly as we can. There is a lot to get through and we realistically won���t close out everything before live, but a huge chunk of the team is focused solely on bug squashing so we are making good progress day over day.

Various crash fixes have been going in and the issue resulting in blue screens was shipped yesterday. Our engineers are tracking these all closely and thank you again for folks who have sent logs and helped us investigate these.

Our tech and UI artists are making a ton of improvements in the visual fidelity space. We’ve heard (and agree!) that PBE looks “blurry” or like a “mobile port.” Some of that stuff is solved with things as simple as texture settings updates, fixing shadows, or being less restrictive on higher-end PCs. But some of this will be a bit more iterative day over day. Also make sure you check your graphics settings and if your PC can run it on high ensure it’s at that level as we were previously defaulting to medium.

Our VisD artists are hard at work getting our old font back into the game and that should be on PBE in the next few days. Seeing the side by side yesterday it’s pretty insane how big of a difference a font can make in a game. Excited to get this back to our tried and true.

Game feels remain a top priority for a huge chunk of our team. Responsiveness issues (rerolling, buying XP, tactician movement, etc.) should be mostly resolved. And stuff like unit repositioning, gold pick-up, augment icon size etc. is all being burned down. Once again I can’t promise we fix everything before we go live, but we are making good progress on this front.

And as always our live team is getting daily balance updates out there. For more in the weeds balance info, make sure you follow @TheTruexy for daily patch notes while we’re on PBE.

On a side note… something that was new in Unreal was the ability to buy units from the shop with hotkeys. This idea originated from wanting better accessibility within TFT, but a few issues started to show up that we didn’t feel comfortable with. The biggest of these being that APM is never a skill we want to highlight as part of our game. It also pushes a disparity between mobile and PC players that isn’t okay and while we may take another look at this someday for now consider them dead.

Thanks again for all your feedback and I'll be back next week with another update. Until then gl out there!

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@ClementKChu Repairing the client here has worked for almost everyone

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@MagicManChance @ineekoh @kentwuhoo @TFT Just don’t let live balance see it. If they don’t know they can’t nerf it 🧠

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@ki7774468136168 Nothing already planned but I know we haven’t done that in a while so lemme poke at it tomorrow when I get in!

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

sup gamers-

We’re a day into PBE and have Android live today! We really appreciate all your constant feedback and bug reporting. All the info around responsiveness (shop/xp/reroll etc), graphics, CPU load issues, and visual fidelity have been incredibly helpful for our devs.

I know UI responsiveness has been a big pain point, but unfortunately it popped up too late for us to address in the right way before we went to PBE. This has been high priority for us to get feeling right for you and should be ironed out in the next day or two. But if it still doesn’t feel right or you notice other things please keep sending stuff on game feel, the more specific you can get the better.

You can always drop a reply here and even if I don’t respond I promise myself/others are capturing it and for folks also on Reddit there's a bug megathread that's keeping things organized: https://t.co/9GEg7iRdQQ

To pull back the curtain a little we were a bit more cautious than usual with today’s deploy to focus on stability and crashes, but expect a larger update tomorrow focused heavily on bug fixing. Some things will take time to do right and ensure we remain stable, but we'll be constantly prioritizing and reprioritizing what we will get out immediately vs what might need to wait a few days or even until live to fully resolve.

There's a bunch of work in front of us until we get to live launch, but that’s why we have the extra time. We'll keep you folks updated regularly to ensure you know where we’re heading and what we’re focused on. Thanks again for being on this journey with us and hope you get some top 4’s today

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@maiitoVA Yeah we should def change that if that’s the case when your shop is locked! Tyty

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

we are LIVE!! have fun gamers

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

yo-

As most of you probably know TFT is going to PBE for Set 18, Enchanted Wilds in our new Unreal Engine build today.

Since it’s gonna feel different and a bit crazier than a normal PBE cycle I wanted to jump in before it all opens up to set some expectations.

The core gameplay loop of Set 18 is all there and we’re excited for yall to get your hands on it to start cooking up comps, playing with wisps, and telling us what works and what doesn’t. But I wanna be clear that there will also be a ton of weird and pretty janky bugs/interactions that we will need to iron out over the next month such as:
•Button responsiveness: spam-clicking XP and reroll won't feel smooth and seamless yet.
•UI delays: trait icons or augment panels/tooltips might take a split second to load information the first time.
•Rubberbanding: units might visually jump back for a moment before moving into position.
•Audio/Art: some audio hiccups that play too often or lingering VFX particles that don’t clear up after fights.

and with TFT's endless combinations, there’s a ton more that we know about but also a ton that you all will help us discover in the coming days and weeks.

All of that is why we’re on PBE for a full month instead of the usual two weeks. This isn't a typical cycle for balance and normal bug bashing. We’re gonna need time to knock out the stuff I mentioned above (and more) and also test a lot of under the hood stuff. A good example of that will be quite obvious when we turn on our Ranked queue on PBE (which I'm pretty sure we have never done) to make sure all of our ranked/matchmaking systems are ready for live launch.

We expect things to break and your bug reports are what will get us to the most successful launch day possible in a month.

Quick details for today:
•Launch timing: Expect PBE to open later in the day (likely late afternoon PT) as it’s a massive deployment with all the new engine assets. There will probably be delays. Just expect it.
•Downtime: Expect more instability and intermittent downtime throughout the month as we push necessary fixes, fix crashes etc. 
•Bug reporting: As you run into issues plz drop them into the r/competitiveTFT Reddit PBE megathread or the bug channels in the TFT discord. Please include the full screenshot if you have them (don’t crop and instead show all the players/full screen of game etc) or even better if you have video to include. The more information the easier it is to track down.

Thanks a ton for bearing with us through the initial days. They are gonna be messy, but helping us break things now is super valuable so we can get it crisp for live. This is a big and tbh kinda scary first step but we’re excited to have you gamers be part of this with us

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@ggdavid Glad to hear dude. Sorry you had to reinstall tho. Gl in your games

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@dudecat_ She’s yours forever now. Take good care of her

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@ggdavid My go to is usually restart PC. If that doesn’t work lemme know and I’ll ask folks what might work

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@aatroxesq @Spideraxe30 Nope should be able to use the same one

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

Update: PBE deploy is currently ongoing and we are making solid progress, but ran into some issues with the Android build. Our plan is to continue deploying across other platforms while we work on fixing Android with a plan to get that out tomorrow

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

yo-

As most of you probably know TFT is going to PBE for Set 18, Enchanted Wilds in our new Unreal Engine build today.

Since it’s gonna feel different and a bit crazier than a normal PBE cycle I wanted to jump in before it all opens up to set some expectations.

The core gameplay loop of Set 18 is all there and we’re excited for yall to get your hands on it to start cooking up comps, playing with wisps, and telling us what works and what doesn’t. But I wanna be clear that there will also be a ton of weird and pretty janky bugs/interactions that we will need to iron out over the next month such as:
•Button responsiveness: spam-clicking XP and reroll won't feel smooth and seamless yet.
•UI delays: trait icons or augment panels/tooltips might take a split second to load information the first time.
•Rubberbanding: units might visually jump back for a moment before moving into position.
•Audio/Art: some audio hiccups that play too often or lingering VFX particles that don’t clear up after fights.

and with TFT's endless combinations, there’s a ton more that we know about but also a ton that you all will help us discover in the coming days and weeks.

All of that is why we’re on PBE for a full month instead of the usual two weeks. This isn't a typical cycle for balance and normal bug bashing. We’re gonna need time to knock out the stuff I mentioned above (and more) and also test a lot of under the hood stuff. A good example of that will be quite obvious when we turn on our Ranked queue on PBE (which I'm pretty sure we have never done) to make sure all of our ranked/matchmaking systems are ready for live launch.

We expect things to break and your bug reports are what will get us to the most successful launch day possible in a month.

Quick details for today:
•Launch timing: Expect PBE to open later in the day (likely late afternoon PT) as it’s a massive deployment with all the new engine assets. There will probably be delays. Just expect it.
•Downtime: Expect more instability and intermittent downtime throughout the month as we push necessary fixes, fix crashes etc. 
•Bug reporting: As you run into issues plz drop them into the r/competitiveTFT Reddit PBE megathread or the bug channels in the TFT discord. Please include the full screenshot if you have them (don’t crop and instead show all the players/full screen of game etc) or even better if you have video to include. The more information the easier it is to track down.

Thanks a ton for bearing with us through the initial days. They are gonna be messy, but helping us break things now is super valuable so we can get it crisp for live. This is a big and tbh kinda scary first step but we’re excited to have you gamers be part of this with us

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@watanabe_kai_ @ImpetuousPanda It depends how it goes honestly. My guess is no and normals will be what we prioritize once we have all the information we need for ranked. But we do want to be thorough because ranked on live is critical to work immediately and without issue

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

yo-

As most of you probably know TFT is going to PBE for Set 18, Enchanted Wilds in our new Unreal Engine build today.

Since it’s gonna feel different and a bit crazier than a normal PBE cycle I wanted to jump in before it all opens up to set some expectations.

The core gameplay loop of Set 18 is all there and we’re excited for yall to get your hands on it to start cooking up comps, playing with wisps, and telling us what works and what doesn’t. But I wanna be clear that there will also be a ton of weird and pretty janky bugs/interactions that we will need to iron out over the next month such as:
•Button responsiveness: spam-clicking XP and reroll won't feel smooth and seamless yet.
•UI delays: trait icons or augment panels/tooltips might take a split second to load information the first time.
•Rubberbanding: units might visually jump back for a moment before moving into position.
•Audio/Art: some audio hiccups that play too often or lingering VFX particles that don’t clear up after fights.

and with TFT's endless combinations, there’s a ton more that we know about but also a ton that you all will help us discover in the coming days and weeks.

All of that is why we’re on PBE for a full month instead of the usual two weeks. This isn't a typical cycle for balance and normal bug bashing. We’re gonna need time to knock out the stuff I mentioned above (and more) and also test a lot of under the hood stuff. A good example of that will be quite obvious when we turn on our Ranked queue on PBE (which I'm pretty sure we have never done) to make sure all of our ranked/matchmaking systems are ready for live launch.

We expect things to break and your bug reports are what will get us to the most successful launch day possible in a month.

Quick details for today:
•Launch timing: Expect PBE to open later in the day (likely late afternoon PT) as it’s a massive deployment with all the new engine assets. There will probably be delays. Just expect it.
•Downtime: Expect more instability and intermittent downtime throughout the month as we push necessary fixes, fix crashes etc. 
•Bug reporting: As you run into issues plz drop them into the r/competitiveTFT Reddit PBE megathread or the bug channels in the TFT discord. Please include the full screenshot if you have them (don’t crop and instead show all the players/full screen of game etc) or even better if you have video to include. The more information the easier it is to track down.

Thanks a ton for bearing with us through the initial days. They are gonna be messy, but helping us break things now is super valuable so we can get it crisp for live. This is a big and tbh kinda scary first step but we’re excited to have you gamers be part of this with us

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@aatroxesq As long as all goes well yes!

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@ImpetuousPanda There will be only ranked for a few days (aug 3-5) but otherwise we will have normal queue as well like always! We’ll try to keep both on but will need to keep an eye on queue health especially as folks climb may not be possible but at that point we’d have all the data we need

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@watanabe_kai_ We will have only ranked queue for just a few days currently targeting Aug 3-5 but otherwise you’ll have access to normal queue as well

[Alex @RiotBlueVelvet]

@Corsair_Quinn Quinn shall return 🫡 you have my word