In case you missed it, the 10th TFT Learnings article is up, talking about how we did on things from Runeterra Reforged, and what we learned from Remix Rumble: https://t.co/lMTw1Za8rg

Honestly enough time has passed that I barely remember exactly how these got started. I remember wanting to be extremely open with players (because these pre-date my streaming even), and talk about how we were going to take the game in a positive direction. Thankfully everyone I’ve had the pleasure of working with on the Comms side of Riot has been supportive.

The first one talked about stuff now that seems so obvious. “Phantom and Hextech bad”, “Every champ should have a fantasy”, “Have less bugs and balance better”…but that was kind of the point. It was us going “Don’t worry, we see these as issues also and are working on them.” To help everyone see that we’re on the same page, and where TFT is going. Some of it wasn’t just snap-your-fingers-its-solved (insert comment about bugs today), but it still keeps us honest.

This continues each set, as we would continue to make some changes that didn’t always land. Full item carousels in Set 3, Shadow Items in Set 5, etc…as well as continual improvements to things like the UX or the ranked climb, that were always worth discussing and showing where our head was. A big part of this also was that the team was so small and we were still playing catch up, so it was easy to sort of go “Here’s the next thing coming”.

But as we head into the future of TFT past the 5 year mark, it’s become harder. A lot of the stuff we’re learning now isn’t quite as black and white like “Shadow Items Bad” and much more grey like “What do our different audience segments want and how many of them are there?” It’s also stuff that doesn’t have as easy of a solution to just act on quickly and insert into the next set. Many of our issues now are much more complex, and have trade offs. (Look at the recent double up change and how immediately divisive it was.)

All of this to say, that the past two or three, I wasn’t even sure we should continue the tradition. I’m also not quite as central a figure around the product vision as I used to be now that the team has grown. We have an Executive Producer, Game Director, and various Initiative leads that are driving a lot now, and TFT has long term plans for the future which is amazing!

Thankfully for all of you, my partner in these articles, Riot Prism convinced me they are still worth doing. He’s been helping me do these for so long as editor, and making sure they get done in time to be localized properly. When I asked him, he looked into it and determined they didn’t have the widest appeal, but the people who read them really enjoy them and read them in depth. So for all of you that do, we’ll keep doing them for as long as we can. Thank you Rodger for all your help on these!

So there ya go. For those who have read this, or these in the past, what do you think? Happy with them? Anything you want to see change or talked about more in the future? 5 years is a good time to shift if we need to, so I’m open to it. Until then, it’s almost spoiler season so this the beginning of lots of fun stuff. Can’t wait! Until then, take it easy 🙂