In a recent Riot dev Update, the team went through how a mid-scope works, how Rell is doing, and a roadmap of mid-scopes to come.
Image Credits | Riot Games
Riot explains how mid-scope updates work and share info on Rell
Producer and deliver lead for mid-scope updates Terra “Riot Yasuna” Ray started off the dev post explaining the main goal of a mid-scope update. Riot wants to give some updates to champions who have lost a bit of their shine over the years or have become problematic for the game. This has become their main criteria to decide who gets these updates and what things must be changed.
She mentions how midscopes have a different process from other updates like ASUs or VGUs, and it’s divided into four phases:
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Finding the Right Opportunity – Riot uses a combination of both data and passion to help find midscope targets. Does a champ have an overall declining play rate? Are their mains dropping them? Is a champion currently unhealthy for the game?
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Exploration and Kit Lock – This is the experimenting phase, which sees Rioters putting down ideas on paper. The best are put into the game and playtested (playtests happen at least twice per day) and then adjusted based on feedback.
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Planning and Coordination – Once things are starting to feel right, they look at everything that changed. At this point, they envolve the art and Gameplay Analysis Team who can point out the relative power levels of changes or just give us insightful, high-level gameplay analysis from the changes.
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Iteration, Refinement, and Polish – To get things ready to ship to players.
She concluded by saying that the team is looking to continuously update champions who need love based on a yearly schedule. This means that we’re probably going to see more and more mid-scope updates to other champions in the near future. But first, it’s time to look at Rell.
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Rell is the first mid-scope target
Champions team designer Stephen “Riot Raptor” Auker shed some light on the approach and thought process behind Rell’s mid-scope update.
“We think Rell has an exciting fantasy and playstyle around swapping between mounted and unmounted forms. And while she is a strong champion, she feels overly punished when she misses W. She also doesn’t quite match expectations for what a mounted lancer might do. This means that she didn’t fully capture the audience that might’ve been interested in her. So when evaluating what mid-scope opportunities were out there, Rell was near the top of the list.”
Below are the goals set with this mid-scope update:
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Lean into the Mounted/Dismounted fantasy – Let Rell feel fast like she can charge enemies down while mounted, and let her feel like a formidable fighter while dismounted.
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Increase Play Pattern Variance – Give Rell more options in lane and teamfights besides landing W, and make sure that while she’s dismounted, there are useful things she can do.
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Sand off some QoL issues – We’ve heard your feedback on some of the more frustrating parts of Rell’s kit, so we wanted to help alleviate some of them. We want to smooth out things like poor ward clearing, not being able to use E while alone, and Q having reduced power on subsequent enemies.
In particular, Rell will be receiving a completely new E, inspired by one of the earlier explorations from Rell’s original designer Stash “Riot Stashu” Chelluck.
Image Credits | Riot Games
The devs said that the main challenge came from balancing her speed while mounted without making her too strong as a roamer. “We also tried a bunch of ways to make her dismounted form feel more empowering. In one version, she had a three-hit passive (we are legally required to try this on all champs) that reset her W cooldown, turning her into an infinite pain train constantly dismounting and remounting. This was a lot of fun (for the Rell at least) but ultimately didn’t solve the core issue of making each form feel distinct.” Auker continued.
With that in mind, Riot decided to empower her Q more, giving her Rell’s original E stun, boosting her dismounted attack speed and range, and softening the self-slow. In other words, Rell will have new exciting effects on her spells, almost turning her into a different champion.
Riot is currently working on her VFX, SFX, animations, and fixing bugs. This is probably the last update before she goes live, so it looks like she will hit the live servers real soon.
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Mid-scope Roadmap – Neeko and Ivern
In the leaked dev update video, Riot Meddler and Brightmoon said that Neeko and Ivern will receive mid-scope updates. This was confirmed by Riot Yasuna, as she said that Rell and Neeko have been delayed as a result of Yuumi’s latest rework.
Even though Rell is in the works, Neeko has had a problem for a long time of unfortunately having many more bugs than her fellow champs.
Image Credits | Riot Games
“One of our secondary goals with her is to update her tech and sustainability, that way we can squash a lot of her existing bugs and address new bugs more easily as they appear in the future,” she said.
For Ivern, instead, they are focusing on Daisy, but the devs haven’t gone deeper into how they want to do it. While Riot Yasuna doesn’t know when these mid-scope updates will drop, Riot is trying to push them out as soon as possible.
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