Why is Patch 14.18 so big?

Why is Patch 14.18 so big? (Long post, sorry)

I’ve seen a lot of pretty incorrect takes on why we’re making such a big patch, and what we’re hoping to accomplish. I want to take a minute to be very clear here, so there’s no confusion.

First, if you don’t want to read all this, I talked about it on stream this weekend. You can watch it here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sql6YVYKj74

The TFT team is developing a LOT of cool stuff. New features, QOL changes, improvements, etc. But we can’t just give it to you all at once. We need to drip it out slowly so people can get used to each piece by itself.

So when we started this patch, first thing was we knew we were shipping two key features:

The Frying Pan – This is something we’ve been wanting to do for a while to simplify the emblem system and remove Tome of Traits, which was a complex item with a ton of hidden rules.
More Access to Item Removers – Making TFT more approachable is a big goal, and removers help people be more comfortable using items and transitioning comps.

(Thanks to @WittyWittrock and Phil for working on these)

So because we knew those features were shipping, it was a good opportunity to go “What else can we add to the patch to make it even more exciting?” This is where my co-workers are great, because everyone decided to add a little something.

@Chaemirix was willing to put some time in to improve various champs like Gwen, Dragons, Ashe, and more.

@kentwuhoo was willing to add some more Charms, and worked with @ineekoh to make sure there was more late game variety.

@ChakkiTFT put time into some traits that needed some extra love like Honeymancer and Faerie. (We actually postponed Faerie a patch to bundle it here)

@TheTruexy did some augment work as well, making some new class augments and bug fixes.

And this is on top of the live team doing another general balance pass on items/champs/traits/augments/etc. It was a lot. TBH probably more than we should have done…but the TFT team always wants to push themselves to make the game better, so we did. Also shout outs to the unsung heros [sic] like the engineers and QA who had to help a ton to make this happen, or poor @riot_prism who had to write the monster of patch notes.

TLDR – We wanted to ship 2 new features, and because of passion, scaled it up and did so much more.

Is this because the set is bad/failing? – No, not even a little. Magic & Mayhem has landed quite well, and is doing good player wise and hours wise. Mechanic was received well. We didn’t have to do this at all. But we did.

Can we expect this every set? – No. As mentioned, when we have key features to ship, we’ll likely try to make it a cool patch to go with it. The designers may not always have the time to do big stuff like this. But we also don’t want to be afraid to make the current game even better, so we’ll do it when we can.

Isn’t this too much? Too much change! – Maybe. Though this time we specifically tried to not change how things work too much. Every reworked champ for example still likes the same items, just less bound to them. We actually think the impact on things isn’t as big as it could be, but hopefully just cleaner. That being said, if this ends up being too much, will be a good learning for the next feature we want to ship during a set.

Your Face. – Fair. You’re probably right.

Hope that clears things up. Patch 14.18 is just the result of a bunch of Rioters who probably care a bit too much, giving it all they can. We hope you enjoy it. That’s it.

Ok, one more day of reveals tomorrow, then rundown this weekend, then patch Wednesday. Can’t wait. Until then, take it easy.

Link to Mortdog’s original post