Spectrolyte 💎

🇵🇭 Speedrunner, Host, Entertainer | @Twitch Partner | Survival Horror & JRPGs | Inquiries: [email protected]

[Riot Mort @Mortdog]

Longer post today about a kind of serious non TFT topic, so skip today if you're looking for fun stuff.

I'm generally pretty lucky. I would consider my "approval rating" as a game dev on a popular game to be pretty high, and TFT is a great game that does lots of good things for players. Also the meta and the set are in good spots, so things should be pretty light hearted and easy in my corner.

In the image below is stuff that was sent to me on various social media platforms just from Jan 1 to Jan 7, 2025. Just the first week of the new year. And again, I'm generally on easy mode as a game dev being pretty well liked overall. So this really isn't too bad.

In my case, I've been doing this for a long time now and am pretty unaffected by stuff like this at this point. They're small blips in my day, and I've learned how to compartmentalize where these folks are coming from. So no concerns on my end.

But what I want to talk about is how much this damages other games having figures like me that can talk about games with transparency and honesty. I know a LOT of devs who have reached out over the years and said they want to do what I do, but it's just not worth it due to all the time you have to put in, and then to get stuff like this...the value proposition in pretty low, considering its easier for companies to just...not do it.

Especially if you're on a game where things aren't going great. Imagine trying to have a tough conversation around a game right now, and you have to be the face of it. What I get is easy mode, I can only imagine some of the stuff other folks would have to deal with.

And that's really unfortunate. I feel like stuff like Vegas/Macao opens where I see devs talking to passionate players is so great, as it can inspire the next generation of folks who want to be game devs. Or even just being passionate about your hobby and getting to talk to folks who love your game or want to give feedback to make it even better. I still wish for a world where more of that happens across the industry, but it's tough.

And then there's the despairing rabbit hole when you start to consider where the folks who send these messages are at. Some might just be an edgy kid sure, but others might be folks who are just having a rough time in life. Earlier in my naïve career I would sometimes reply to these folks to see if they were ok...but it had around a 10% success rate so wasn't really worth it.

I know most of you know this, but this is just a reminder that if people want devs who can come out and talk to you about the games you love and want to deliver the experiences you want, this kind of thing doesn't really help.

If you're a game dev and this scares you a bit to be player facing, my recommendation is to start small. I find that right now smaller discords are GREAT for finding groups of folks on a small scale who are generally pretty passionate, and would love the chance to talk. Start there, and don't be discouraged.

Ok that's it for now. New patch is out, and super early read is we didn't mess it all up so that's good. We'll see how things develop of course. Also Lunar new year event stuff activates in a couple hours, so that should be lots of fun for ya!

Alright, have a great day and take it easy :)

[Riot Mort @Mortdog]

Today officially marks 20 years as a professional game designer. Jan 16, 2005 was my first day as an intern at Nintendo working on Mario vs Donkey Kong 2: Minis March Again. Pretty wild to think about how much has changed since then. Not just in myself since I used to be just a kid who thought he knew it all but had so much to learn, but also in the industry going from cartridge games to live service and free to play. So much to learn over the years.

There’s a lot to reflect on, and it’s impossible to capture 20 years of knowledge in a single social media post. The stuff I learned at Nintendo vs what I’ve learned at Riot are so starkly different as well since they’re such different companies. However, I recently did a talk and the final part was me sharing my most important notes, so I figured today I’d share what I’d say are the 4 most important things I’ve learned over the years. If you take away anything from me or my posts, these should be it.

1.) Creating games is about offering something new to the world. The truly successful games out there offer something new and novel to the world. It can be a systems innovation, a new archetype or genre, anything. But if you really want to win in this industry you have to innovate. Look at what you’re making and make sure to identify what part of your game is this innovation and lean into it. If that innovation is something great, you’ll find your audience and your success, and it’s up to game design to make sure it’s something players will find enjoyable.

2.) Never stop evolving your understanding of your players and your game. Even if you’re working on your 6th game in the same series, or have been working on a live service game for more than 5 years and think you know everything, you don’t. Things change, players' needs and tastes can change, and your assumptions can be wrong. Especially because decisions aren’t binary and what you thought was the best call may no longer be. You need to constantly question all your assumptions and not assume a decision you made years ago is right.

3.) Be honest with your team and your players. If you do things for the right reasons, it's easy to have tough conversations with people. It doesn’t always need to be the popular choice but if you find yourself saying “I can’t tell people this” it’s probably not a good thing for them. This can be about design, monetization, systems or whatever for players, but also team building, promotions, decisions and more for your team. I’ve found honesty to be one of my most powerful weapons and I can’t recommend it enough. It makes tough conversations so much easier.

4.) You’re not above anything and own up to everything. No matter how much my roles and responsibilities changed over the years, I made sure that I am not above anything. Do we need a tedious excel sheet filled out? Happy to help so that other people can do their work even if I’m the Game Director. No matter what, I'm still an equal member of the team and will do anything I’d ask of anyone else. In addition, and this one ties to the honesty thing, but when something goes wrong, own it. “Yup, that’s my bad. Here’s why it happened and here’s what I’m doing to fix it.” That owning up is powerful and shows you have control over the situation even when it goes wrong. Admitting fault has never hurt me in the long run.

If you made it this far, sorry if this feels a bit LinkedIn. But as I’ve gotten older I find myself wanting to share what I’ve learned more and more, and today seemed like as good of a day as any to share these little bits. I’m happy to dive deeper into these topics more on stream or something. For now as I reflect on 20 years, I do find myself at a crossroads. How much time do I have left as a Game Designer and what do I want to do with that time? I’m not one to take the easy way out, so I need to figure out where to go from here. The only thing I know for sure… that Metroidvania is coming some day.

Ok, have a great day. Hope everything is going well for you. Here’s to the next 20 years. Take it easy :)

[Riot Mort @Mortdog]

Riot doesn't really talk about player numbers on TFT, for better or worse. On the one hand, I always wish we would because I've wanted the team to have that external validation that we're crushing it and our numbers are insane. On the other hand, seeing the way the gaming community has been using player numbers lately, I'm glad we don't.

It's wild to me (yes I'm old) how people now obsess over the steam charts of games they barely played, or never will play, as some weird validation of their own taste. And it's a shame too, because there are so MANY games and choices to play. A lot of the early design lessons I got as a kid were from playing games that weren't necessarily great, or didn't have amazing sales.

Swords & Serpents on NES always jumps out in my memory as this random game that wasn't a hit, but somehow my family ended up owning. I remember playing it and trying to learn their systems for enemy generation, stat allocation, and more. Such an interesting game with great lessons to learn from. I have no idea how many copies it sold.

On the dev side, one of the game I'm the most proud of because of the quality of level design, as well as how quickly a tiny team pumped out the game, was Aura-Aura Climber. It only sold like 75,000 copies and I'm sure even at it's peak probably (using steam terms) would have only had like 1,000 concurrent players on release. Does this mean I should be less proud of it? Of course not. There are lots of factors into game sales, and game design wasn't one of them here.

If you really TRULY love games, stop obsessing over player numbers. Play the games that interest you, and take lessons and experiences from them. Form great memories from the games you love, or sometimes the ones you don't (looking at you Bible Adventures on NES). And if you aren't interested in a game...don't play it. It's really that simple. Spend your time experiencing things both good and bad that drive your passion, and I promise you'll end up in a much better place with games.

Ok time to go to work. Another extremely busy week in future land, as well as 14.18 prep with all the big swings coming up. Also my kids start their new school on Wednesday, and we're nervously trying to make sure my son has the support he needs. Also excited to see people try (and miserably fail) at Chaos Mode in Tocker's Trials. So yeah, have a great week all, and take it easy :)

[Riot Mort @Mortdog]

Good morning folks. I wanted to start this week off with a bit of an update and roadmap on the live side of things, and what you can expect the next few patches.

To start with, we think Magic in Mayhem launched as a pretty solid set. The origins and champs are very fun, the Charms mechanic landed well, people are enjoying the core of the set, and most of our players are having a great time playing TFT. Which is awesome! That being said, for our most engaged players, the balance has got to a spot where the first two patches had a big gap between the best comps and the rest. Syndra and Ahri have been doing their best to show up in every game, reroll comps in general are very strong, and there's a good chunk of champs and traits that are too difficult to pull off victories with. So what are we doing about it?

First, you can expect a 14.16B, likely going live tomorrow (Aug 20) that will be focused on nerfing the top end of things. We're still seeing some combats resolve too quickly, so we're opting to go with nerfs here. Expect things like a couple hero augments, a couple trait breakpoints, and a few champ nerfs. Want to try to improve things quickly, so we're going to get that in your hands ASAP.

After that, we'll be locking in Patch 14.17 which locks on Wednesday, but goes live to you Aug 29th. While that does include Tocker's Trials which I'm personally excited for, on the balance side we're going to have three major focuses here. First, Augment balance is going to be a major focal point and you'll see a pretty large amount of number adjustments here to close the gap between the 4.0 augments and the baseline. Second, Buffs! Champs and traits that haven't had any time to shine are going to get buffs! Stuff like Twitch, Cassiopiea, Hecarim, and more! Buffs are always fun! Third, item balance. Right now we still believe items are holding a bit too much scaling power, so we will likely be bringing down some of the top end items to baseline levels of other items.  Should be a decently large patch, but fun with more lines enabled.

And then, just to get you prepared, Patch 14.18 (which I've been code naming Set 12.25) will be a larger patch with some reworks and surprises. We've seen some stuff that could use a minor update, so expect some augment, trait, and champ light reworks to improve the set further. As an example, we will likely be adjusting how Honeymancy works. It will still have mini bees that fire, but the mechanics of how many and how much damage they do will be changed quite a bit. And this is just one example. In addition, we have a few surprises here that you aren't expecting that are likely to be permanent parts of TFT in the future. Excited to show you what we've been cooking up. I'll likely be sharing details of this patch during the weeks leading up to it, so you'll get lots of details.

So there ya go. We want to keep the ball rolling on Magic & Mayhem, and that means continuing to deliver new charms, balance updates, bug fixes, and general improvements. To everyone who has been playing so far, thank you! Twelve sets in and it's still a joy for us to share TFT with all of you. Have a great week, and take it easy :)

[Lilly @RealKittyRawr]

Crash Bandicoot Dance Pad day 2... 14 levels down 🙌🏼

[Spectrolyte 💎 @_Spectrolyte]

@RealKittyRawr The silent not-so-silent sounds have me dying LOL 😭 love these clips

[Lilly @RealKittyRawr]

so far on crash bandicoot on a dance pad..legs are JELLO. 💀 round 2 tomorrow..

[Spectrolyte 💎 @_Spectrolyte]

@itshafu Gwen

[juju @jueliaoh]

hello i'm giving away 10 decks of the new TFT tarot cards!! #TFTPartner

Rules:
1️⃣ follow me + @TFT
2️⃣ RT + like this tweet

* Must be in Canada/US

winners will be chosen on aug 15, check out your DMs to receive your prize 💌

[Riot Mort @Mortdog]

Tocker's Trials!! PVE mode coming to TFT in 14.17!!

PVE is something we've talked about for a long time in TFT, and this is one of the REDACTEDs I got to help with and am excited for everyone to try out. There's so much potential in the PVE space for TFT, so this feels like us moving forward as a game even more!

There's some cool stuff to look for here. It's a great way to introduce people to the game who don't want the stress of PVP so be sure to share it with them. It's also got a score system for people who want to optimize the perfect run (I'll post my high score later for you to try to beat). And for the insane, we've got Chaos mode which will be the ultimate challenge. Hope you all enjoy it!

It will be on PBE later, but for now we're keeping Chaos mode hidden. Want to keep a little bit of the surprise for the full launch. If you try it on PBE, let us know what ya think or if you run into any issues. I'm hoping this is the start of some awesome stuff!

Have fun, and take it easy :)

[Spectrolyte 💎 @_Spectrolyte]

@marphoria @2spooky4life Congratulations!! 🥹

[Spectrolyte 💎 @_Spectrolyte]

@sneevil2 It looks like their Twitter account is now nowhere to be found — actions speak louder than words.

I hope you can move forward from this Snee. Speaking from my personal experiences, you bring such energy and light to the RE community, unlike this fool.

[Spectrolyte 💎 @_Spectrolyte]

@sneevil2 I’m sorry you have to deal with this lowball behavior, Snee. This should have stopped long ago if you spoke up and they had any respect for you. “I’m sorry you’re upset on the matter” isn’t a proper apology. Changed behavior is and when it’s not out of self-preservation.

[Riot Mort @Mortdog]

People are by their very nature, diverse. With that comes a wide range of opinions. As your game gets bigger and has more players, you're going to hear a wide array of opinions and hot takes from those players about how to improve your game. Once it gets big enough, you'll hear almost anything.

In Lobby 2 yesterday, Frodan said "you almost always can find a large group of ppl who will agree with your take in TFT because the player base is that massive" and he is absolutely correct. As someone who takes the time to read through the various player opinions, it's pretty wild some of the takes I read each day from players.

One of the wildest to me yesterday that I saw from two different people stated "If they'd just remove Scuttle Puddle and Crab Rave, that would solve everything and the game would be so much better". Now mind you these are our most popular portals that are chosen 80% of the time they appear...but multiple people felt it's ruining TFT.

And that's just one example. The most common one that comes up from a small sector is "The game was better before augments, and they should be removed." I see this take around once a week, and clearly some folks strongly have this opinion. Their feelings are valid and I can't tell them they are wrong to feel that way.

All we can do is make the best choices for most of our player base. Every decision you make, someone out there will not like, but as long as you're living up to the goal and vision of your game, and the majority of players are happy with the decision, then it's the right one. Focus on those players and continue to ensure they're having a good time. (And don't worry, someone will point out that you're "just appealing to the masses" as if this is a bad thing also lol.)

This is why it can be dangerous if you field feedback from the wrong place. Certain parts of the internet often lead to too much group think, generally skew negative by default, or are too narrow of a subset of players and don't actually represent your player base at large. Major shout out to our insights team who help us gather data to ensure our decisions are informed by that wider player base and not our own biases and what we read online in our region.

Personally, I still probably read too much online to get a wide perspective on how players feel, and man there are some strong feelings out there. But with patience and practice, finding the general trends can be useful to ensure you make the right calls. It's tricky though so be careful when you do it for your game!

That's it for today. Looking forward to stream this weekend and Patch 14.9. I've been too busy, but I'm finally going to push to Masters, so looking forward to just some deep TFT playing. Until next time, take it easy :)

[Geoff Keighley @geoffkeighley]

New images from THE WOLF AMONG US 2, now in production @telltalegames

[Riot Mort @Mortdog]

TFT has had it's share of rough patches. When a rough patch occurs, there are usually two immediate questions from players and devs. "How did this happen?" and "What are we doing about it?"

How did this happen is honestly a tough one to be transparent about externally. In the modern area, many are often not kind when it does and that pressure can make things worse. So today, assume it's Mort's fault and keep venting your frustrations my way. I don't mind, and I get it!

Instead, let's use today's post to run down what the first 24 hours look like when it happens, to help inform what we are doing about it.

3am-10am: This is when we, like many of you, are looking at various discords and streams, and checking initial stats to see how the patch landed, and start to get a sign of the quality of the patch. It can range from good, to just ok, to bad, to ITS ON FIRE. This time is meant to get a grasp on the severity of the situation if there is on. If it's real bad, we could know as soon as 3am (don't ask about sleeping habits) if it's off.

10am-12pm: After getting ahold of the situation, product and design discuss what action should be taken if any. The severity, weighed against possible solutions on how to fix, and taken into account to form a plan. Can it wait a week for a proper B patch? Is the issue so deep rooted it has to wait for a full patch? Or is the fire so bad we need to drop everything and fix the next day? This is usually around where this decision is already made, which is wild since it's less than 24 hours since the patch has been live. We also have to take into account other factors such as timing around competitive events across the many regions of the world.

From here, obviously based on what choice we make, paths diverge...but in any case, if we decide to take action before the next patch, we have to immediately start doing the following:

Come up with a finalized plan for the patch and it's size, taking into account the already planned changes of the next patch. Goal is usually as small as possible to address the issues.

Run sims with those changes to ensure they are doing the job they need to. Nothing worse than shipping an urgent fix and have it not address the issue (which has happened).

Prepare the patch package into the branch cut and have QA check it to ensure it didn't break anything and the changes were implemented correctly. People make mistakes in high stress situations.

Finally engineers take the changes and deploy them to players across the globe, ensuring that the changes is a smooth process that doesn't disrupt players.

Then once all that is done, the team often goes back and looks at that original question of how did this happen, and retro what can be done or needs to change to ensure it is less likely to happen again.

Hopefully this provides some visibility into the process of what goes on behind the scenes. If you've made it this far, and are an active TFT player, the current patch is in this category and we are actively going through this process right now to get things in a better state. Likely an update later today on when you can expect changes.

That's it for today. Thanks for your passion around TFT, and all the various opinions I get, as they do help inform the situation. Until later, take it easy :)

[Riot Mort @Mortdog]

TFT has been out close to 5 years now, but we still haven't solved every problem around designs of champs and their impact on fight pacing. One of the biggest challenges is still around the amount of fighting away from the front line.

One thing that we have stuck to as a core principle of fights is that we need a variety of types of fights to occur in TFT to keep them interesting. If every fight was simply a front to back race with tanks vs snipers, then the game devolves to a very simple dps check race and fights aren't very dynamic. Someone once said "We need parts of the fight to occur away from the center of the board sometimes".

This is where things like Assassins, Hackers, and other classes came into play. They would allow fights to occur away from the main tank, and open up alternative strategies to simply racing to the highest DPS champs. We also had spells for some units that would hit in an AOE, providing threat to more than just the tank, forcing you to consider defensive traits and itemization. All of these things did in fact, make fights more dynamic.

However at the very clear trade off of some high player frustration. In TFT you work hard to save your resources, build your items, and make an awesome carry champ that you expect to do awesome things...and then they disappear because you 50/50 wrong sided vs the Assassin Diana. Pretty tough to deal with.

I think we're finding pieces that are getting closer. Set 10 Akali (KDA) for example was a pretty healthy version of this that had positioning counterplay...but she existed in the same set and class as Karthus so that wasn't great. We will continue to try to innovate in this space, but it's not an easy challenge. Keep giving us feedback on your favorite and least favorite versions of these champs, as we continue our pursuit for healthy and dynamic fights in TFT.

FWIW, my personal player bias on this subject is different than my professional opinion. As a player, I DESPISE backline access and love playing 6 sniper...but we make games for our players, not for me. So for now, CURSE YOU YONE. Ok, that's it for now. Until next time, take it easy :)

[Spectrolyte 💎 @_Spectrolyte]

@JackiJing Happy Birthday! 🥳

[Spectrolyte 💎 @_Spectrolyte]

@RealKittyRawr Happy Birthday Lilly 🥹🥳💖