Legends of Runeterra has been out for less than a month and is already seeing its first patch. This patch will not just focus on card changes but also many quality of life changes for the player. In a press release from Riot Games they have released all of the major changes coming in Patch 0.9.0 for Legends of Runeterra.
To start the developers have stated what their goals are as they look to balance Legends of Runeterra.
They will do the normal nerfing and buffing but their goal is to never nerf something into the ground or over-buff anything. With this, they also announced that they will be doing seasonal releases, similar to Teamfight Tactics and Hearthstone. Essentially there will be new sets and balances with each. Here is what they project their timeline for each set to look like.
There may be changes to this but, it looks like predicting when a new set comes out won’t be all that hard. Also that they may not patch this game like TFT and League of Legends are patched, which is every two weeks.
This section lets players know that they are listening to their issues. They are starting to make UI and UX changes already but they are mostly small.
For the deckbuilder they are looking at how the card counts are displayed and how many cards can be seen on the screen. For the future, they are looking at more display-oriented changes for a player’s currencies, wildcards and overall crafting of cards.
Lastly, they want to make sure the game continues to look and feel good as they go on. With that they will have sped-up animations and the ability to make moves without being blocked by the already in-progress animations.
They will be watching fearsome because they want to make sure that like Elusive, it does not make the interactivity too low. They still want everyone to be able to actually play the game without being unable to make a move. The hope is that the patches to some of these cards might help to stem the tide of Fearsome decks.
“Collectively, the card updates in this patch represent a general reduction in the power of tools that aggressive and midrange decks have to combat control strategies (specifically, ways to reach inevitability). While control decks haven’t been problematic so far during beta, we’ll be keeping an eye out to see if they’ve been overly powered up by these changes or their consequences.”
Demacian Steel has been consistently overperforming due to a full roster of units with strong statlines, so we’re adding in a common card that’s on the weaker side but mixes up what this archetype brings to the table.
Battle Scars has proven great at pumping up the Power of its units, but could have a tough time actually closing out games, so the addition of Might will allow those units to go over the top of opposing blockers. Alpha Wildclaw is also being swapped in for Bull Elnuk to give the archetype a stronger late game.
Suit Up has also been overperforming due to the consistency of Challenger units backed up by Frostbite and Barriers, so we’re enabling the Battle Scars changes by making the opposite unit swap here.
Shroom and Boom has been struggling lately, leading us to remove some underperforming cards like Get Excited!, which isn’t as exciting when you’re hoping to use your Mushroom Clouds to actually put shrooms in the opposing deck. In their place we’re adding Assembly Bot and Plaza Guardian to reward you for casting Mushroom Clouds, as well as Statikk Shock as a flexible removal spell that helps you not run out of cards.
Finally, we’ve also made some minor improvements to the way the shopkeeper selects trades, so you’ll more often be offered compelling choices.
“Play the way you want to play” is an incredibly important goal for our progression systems—we want players to feel LoR respects their time regardless of whether they prefer to climb Ranked or jam AI games. With the help of your feedback, we identified some tuning issues that encouraged players to play in ways they might not want to simply because it was the optimal way to get XP.
First up, end-of-trial bonus XP was too high relative to other modes. The bonus XP is meant to account for the slower pace of Expeditions matches and time spent drafting, but it was so high that it was really just the optimal way to grind XP. We don’t players to feel forced to grind Expeditions to build up their collections, so we’re reducing the XP granted when completing a trial.
To complement this change, we’re tweaking daily adjustments to PVP win XP to help out folks looking to heavily grind XP or just play a ton. We want to make sure constructed PVP wins always offer a reward, and that players don’t feel forced to play AI matches just because they’re out of PVP XP for the day.
We’re also re-designed the XP structure for Friend Challenge. While we want matches against friends to be rewarding, the previous values overly encouraged snap concessions and win / loss trading to reap full PvP XP.
Moving on to Expeditions rewards, we’ve heard some frustration that a 6-win run rewarded only 33% of the Shards (1000) needed to play another Expedition. While we believe overall Expedition rewards are in a good spot, we’re shifting some of the rewarded Shards from 7 wins to 6 wins to make sure the latter achievement still feels appropriately rewarding.
This definitely seems like a larger patch for actual quality of life changes as much as anything. They are not making many drastic card changes and more watching to see how things play out. Also, this confirms that they will be releasing content at scheduled times which should be good for fans. They can plan for when changes might be on the way. While the dates are not set they will be able to know that after a certain patch, a new set will be the next thing to come.
Lastly, they are listening to players. Many of these changes have been asked for and they are listening. This should allow for the game to improve and make the changes as they see necessary. With this being patch 0.9.0 it will be interesting to see if they go straight out of beta and into 1.0.0 or if they stick around in 0.9 for a bit. Either way, the full release will likely be coming soon for not only PC but likely Mobile too, so get ready.
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