thank you for doing these! I love hearing you talk about not just TFT but life/work stuff in general, a lot of helpful wisdom and it's generally just really entertaining as well. I also really appreciate how you approach every question thoughtfully even if the person is rude, not letting people be disingenous while still actually taking silly questions to the logical extremes as a thought experiment. thanks for everything you do and I can't wait for #6!
I relisten to them as a 'podcast' type thing while I work or play casual games where I don't need full attention. Its great, was so glad to see another one pop up when I was looking for them the other day!
50:51 This one hit hard. I stopped hanging out with my college friends when I graduated, I stopped hanging out with my Yugioh friends when I lost interest in the game, and now I'm losing interest in Smash but these are some of the best and most fulfilling relationships I've ever had. At this point a lot of why I keep playing is to stay in touch with these people that I love and I worry about what is going to happen once they leave or when I start attending tournaments even less. Relationships are hard.
Make some friends that aren’t based solely on one interest. Your friends should want to hang out with you doing any number of things, not just playing one game.
@@Faron837that's false. Every human relationship is based on the desire for cooperation that arises from a common interest. "true friends" that will stick by you as brothers in spite of your lack of shared interests are extremely rare. Most people only ever have one or two of those if any at all, and data shows that more and more people are having less friends now.
This was an awesome AMA. Hands down, the best dev, leader and face of TFT. Thank you and your team for the hard work you guys do. Also, MORT as a playable character in set 11! :-))
3:43:19 Not gonna lie, the second part of that question to me sounded more like someone who genuinely struggles with visual noise, sensory overload and potentially epilepsy issues, because tft combats certainly can have a lot of flashing lights and stuff like that (specifically not talking finishers, but gameplay itself). I get that the first part of the question gave a negative taste for that question (and rightfully so) but that 2nd part seemed more genuine, because visual noise, flashy lights, stuff like this can very much be an issue for some people who might otherwise enjoy the game. So maybe some accessibility features that tunes down stuff like spell animations (again specifically not finishers) might be worth looking into?
I think a decently good solution to the loss streaking problem is that instead of giving econ in the form of gold, or only using the tuning knob of player damage, instead, give a +X free rerolls of your shop, maybe 1 per round on a 3-4 loss streak, and 2 per round at 5. In this way, it is still econ, but its short term econ that goes away unless you use it, and you increase agency by letting that player see more units and make more choices and decisions on their board.
Even though I never fully agreed with every stance mort took, it's been a pleasure hearing the thought process and seeing the growth of the dev team over the years.
I really hope Mort can get TFT to a state where he can just be an overseer and focus more on family. Obviously I don't know jack shit about what's going on in his family or his dynamic but I know how juggling a strong work ethic with being a good father can be extremely diffficult. It was one of my biggest difficulties after becoming a father where previously I was all-in on work. Best of luck Mort. TFT is one of my favorite games of all time.
2:25:05 The T2 League eSports falling apart is specifically an NA issue, most european national/regional leagues (our T2 ecosystem) are somewhere between doing just fine and going great. On the other hand, buying a ticket for the Vegas Open and on top of that buying a two-way plane ticket to Vegas is a huge financial barrier for anyone not within the country who isn't very well off financially. To me, this answer shows quite a lot of NA bias on Mort's part, which is somewhat understandable since that's his home turf. On the other hand, the European national/regional championships are also doing alright and don't have a particularly high barrier of entry either. For example the DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) championship runs Open Qualifiers that have no buy-in and no ranked requirements, so literally everyone can sign up and give it a shot. So in conclusion, what he said about TFT having a low barrier of entry is still kinda true, although not really for the reasons he gave, at least for those of us living outside NA.
I've had way too many senior-level guys who don't know shit about what they're doing. Handing out promotions like candy is not the way to go. Giving out regular raises is a better approach in my opinion.
That super depends on what kind of job it is and what the environment is like, small companies may not have to turnover or growth for several years to offer a meaningful promotion for example
Really depends where you work, if it's a restaurant or something sure it shouldn't take that long to get a promotion or two. I work in a stamping factory, you can train a brain-dead monkey to do the entry level work, but if you want a promotion of any kind it means being responsible for other peoples lives and multi-million dollar machinery that will tear itself apart because you forgot to change one number somewhere. It takes a long time to learn and longer to actually be comfortable and confidant in what you are doing, and every operator has to start out at entry level because you can't go to school for it anywhere.
3:44:09 The thing for finishers is that I don't mind people paying to make their experience better, but paying to make other people's experience worse is another thing. It's the same distaste behind the Cosmic Lux death screen effects. Since they only happen when you lose, it feels like kicking someone one they're down. Like, if we're opening the floodgates for players with money to make other people watch vain cutscenes of their glory, what's next? A skin that makes you type the praises of your opponent?
3:24:53 I think the question was referring to something like Zeri from League, where the champion is either in a state of extreme strength or weakness. This has been confirmed by Phreak, who announced that they [the League balance team] are not capable to balance her in her current state, and will be keeping her permanently weak so that she isn't problematic. The chatter probably was wondering if you guys had ever come up with a wild and wacky champion, but they would either be too strong or too weak. My assumption is that these issues don't exist so much in TFT as player mechanics can't be applied as a variable, making balancing easier in that regard.
I think taking extra damage for having fewer units would be a good way to punish going open and taking damage as you'd be paying extra HP for open boarding.
We can never flame mortdog. Outside the world of game devs, what other person would take so much time to answer community questions in such detail and drop nuggets of valuable knowledge. Mad respect for an awesome human and game dev
I think some of these answers contradict each other. Would love to get Morts response. Early into the video you say that you believe a major skill expression is being able to see the branching paths of comps you can play and which get closed off as you get more information. Later you say that reroll comps are not less skill expressive than play styles that level up and shift their board to strong 4 and 5 costs. How can both of these things be true. There definitely is some skill expression no matter how you choose to play, but reroll comps are inherently more narrow in branching paths than boards that shift as you level. When you commit to a reroll comp, of course there are still paths available, as you may need to settle with a worse frontline until you start rolling, but the point of these comps is to literally spend money on shop refreshes so you can tunnel on very specific units. Yes Annie is the "carry" in your example, but while you are rolling for Annie, you are obviously refreshing shops so often at level 5/6 that you are buying the other perfect units around her. You are purposely spending money for the privilege of getting to narrow your path to building your board. Even in another question we established that Yordles were a great comp for new players, maybe I'm wrong but I'd imagine a large part of that is that your comp is established very early, so a new player can close off any branching paths quickly which is much easier when learning the game. By no means do I think reroll should not exist and there is definitely some decision making, I just think it's disingenuous to say it is similar to levelling and buying 4/5costs, if you truly believe that being good at recognizing the branching paths as the game goes on is fundamental in skill expression.
I think that Mort is emphasizing the skill expression in reroll primarily to say that "Me Ahri sentinel me no pivot"-esque players are not actually playing the game any differently than the 20/20 Vex + Samira/Twitch reroll players. Ultimately though I believe you're right bc if someone is level 8 vs level 6 they will objectively have more champions available in their shop and thus have more room for skill expression in which champs to purchase.
Hey mort, love the set, the theme is amazing. Quick question, what was the need for level 10? In my opinion it makes 3 star 5 costs too common instead of the epic of the level 9 harder to find the lucky roll? Thanks for an amazing game!
about double up i like the state of the mod, it cool to have a more waky mode with big comp to play with a friend while waiting for our other friend to log in, the match making is a bit off we often find lobby with 2 realy weak team compare to the 2 other.
Item homogenization has a lot to do with the champs in the current set. This set, the 4 high cost AD carries are all basically casters. Not a single one of them is like a Zeri or Aphelios from last set. We also have unusually many 40 or less manacost champs, which makes blue buff a lot more generalized. I think the only true AA-based champ this set is Jinx.. a 1 cost with a very narrow comp, as she is part of this sets reroll comp. On the AP side, its not great that AA and Dcap arent good items right now. The new Nashors Tooth is also more generally good and bis than expected. On the tank side, for multiple reasons, health is simply the best stat currently. All 3 tank traits have strong health scaling. Guardian gives a max health based shield, sentinel is resistances, bruisers is a %health increase instead of a flat one. All those things have more to do with this set than the item system. Items currently need to be rather homogenized due to that, no way around that in this set. I think that, going forward, they should pay more attention to those factors. Making sure that every kind of item has a set of intended users at baseline. Cause that kind of stuff wont work itself out. Once that is given, they can actually work on the item system.
Sadly, some bosses or companies don’t care about ethics or stuff. I worked extra hard and didn’t even get the “minimum” we agreed before. They just wanted cheap workers to do everything so yeah, shitty place. Sometimes you have to bet that you’ll actually get what both parties agreed on
To the question at 1:02:08, i think the champions this set look amazing rarely seen such intressting espeically low cost champions such as aphelios, annie, ksante (probably the coolest 1-3 cost tank ever introduced and i was a huge cho gath fan) all of them are great. Allthough I personally HATE the theme, not the artwork itself but to whole music lets dance k-pop KDA YAY theme. It initially turned me off but the set is too great and too fun to be mad about such minor things.
thanks for leaving us for a month with second worst update after draven one and not hotfixing TD spat/ open board strat i just quit and uninstalled tft meanwhile watching this. have a great holiday but this is not acceptable to do for anyone that who makes millions by their service and prefer their holiday than fixing their service. good luck for next sets.
thank you for doing these! I love hearing you talk about not just TFT but life/work stuff in general, a lot of helpful wisdom and it's generally just really entertaining as well. I also really appreciate how you approach every question thoughtfully even if the person is rude, not letting people be disingenous while still actually taking silly questions to the logical extremes as a thought experiment. thanks for everything you do and I can't wait for #6!
I relisten to them as a 'podcast' type thing while I work or play casual games where I don't need full attention. Its great, was so glad to see another one pop up when I was looking for them the other day!
50:51 This one hit hard. I stopped hanging out with my college friends when I graduated, I stopped hanging out with my Yugioh friends when I lost interest in the game, and now I'm losing interest in Smash but these are some of the best and most fulfilling relationships I've ever had. At this point a lot of why I keep playing is to stay in touch with these people that I love and I worry about what is going to happen once they leave or when I start attending tournaments even less. Relationships are hard.
Make some friends that aren’t based solely on one interest. Your friends should want to hang out with you doing any number of things, not just playing one game.
@@Faron837naive take
@@Faron837that's false. Every human relationship is based on the desire for cooperation that arises from a common interest. "true friends" that will stick by you as brothers in spite of your lack of shared interests are extremely rare. Most people only ever have one or two of those if any at all, and data shows that more and more people are having less friends now.
This was an awesome AMA. Hands down, the best dev, leader and face of TFT. Thank you and your team for the hard work you guys do.
Also, MORT as a playable character in set 11! :-))
3:43:19 Not gonna lie, the second part of that question to me sounded more like someone who genuinely struggles with visual noise, sensory overload and potentially epilepsy issues, because tft combats certainly can have a lot of flashing lights and stuff like that (specifically not talking finishers, but gameplay itself). I get that the first part of the question gave a negative taste for that question (and rightfully so) but that 2nd part seemed more genuine, because visual noise, flashy lights, stuff like this can very much be an issue for some people who might otherwise enjoy the game.
So maybe some accessibility features that tunes down stuff like spell animations (again specifically not finishers) might be worth looking into?
I think a decently good solution to the loss streaking problem is that instead of giving econ in the form of gold, or only using the tuning knob of player damage, instead, give a +X free rerolls of your shop, maybe 1 per round on a 3-4 loss streak, and 2 per round at 5. In this way, it is still econ, but its short term econ that goes away unless you use it, and you increase agency by letting that player see more units and make more choices and decisions on their board.
Even though I never fully agreed with every stance mort took, it's been a pleasure hearing the thought process and seeing the growth of the dev team over the years.
Great AMA thanks for these
I really hope Mort can get TFT to a state where he can just be an overseer and focus more on family. Obviously I don't know jack shit about what's going on in his family or his dynamic but I know how juggling a strong work ethic with being a good father can be extremely diffficult. It was one of my biggest difficulties after becoming a father where previously I was all-in on work. Best of luck Mort. TFT is one of my favorite games of all time.
2:25:05 The T2 League eSports falling apart is specifically an NA issue, most european national/regional leagues (our T2 ecosystem) are somewhere between doing just fine and going great.
On the other hand, buying a ticket for the Vegas Open and on top of that buying a two-way plane ticket to Vegas is a huge financial barrier for anyone not within the country who isn't very well off financially.
To me, this answer shows quite a lot of NA bias on Mort's part, which is somewhat understandable since that's his home turf.
On the other hand, the European national/regional championships are also doing alright and don't have a particularly high barrier of entry either. For example the DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) championship runs Open Qualifiers that have no buy-in and no ranked requirements, so literally everyone can sign up and give it a shot.
So in conclusion, what he said about TFT having a low barrier of entry is still kinda true, although not really for the reasons he gave, at least for those of us living outside NA.
3 years for a promotion is not ok for entry level jobs everyone. Just a small detail there hahaha
I've had way too many senior-level guys who don't know shit about what they're doing. Handing out promotions like candy is not the way to go. Giving out regular raises is a better approach in my opinion.
That super depends on what kind of job it is and what the environment is like, small companies may not have to turnover or growth for several years to offer a meaningful promotion for example
Really depends where you work, if it's a restaurant or something sure it shouldn't take that long to get a promotion or two. I work in a stamping factory, you can train a brain-dead monkey to do the entry level work, but if you want a promotion of any kind it means being responsible for other peoples lives and multi-million dollar machinery that will tear itself apart because you forgot to change one number somewhere. It takes a long time to learn and longer to actually be comfortable and confidant in what you are doing, and every operator has to start out at entry level because you can't go to school for it anywhere.
I will say, watching TFT games are some of the most fun things to watch
3:44:09 The thing for finishers is that I don't mind people paying to make their experience better, but paying to make other people's experience worse is another thing. It's the same distaste behind the Cosmic Lux death screen effects. Since they only happen when you lose, it feels like kicking someone one they're down. Like, if we're opening the floodgates for players with money to make other people watch vain cutscenes of their glory, what's next? A skin that makes you type the praises of your opponent?
3:24:53 I think the question was referring to something like Zeri from League, where the champion is either in a state of extreme strength or weakness. This has been confirmed by Phreak, who announced that they [the League balance team] are not capable to balance her in her current state, and will be keeping her permanently weak so that she isn't problematic. The chatter probably was wondering if you guys had ever come up with a wild and wacky champion, but they would either be too strong or too weak.
My assumption is that these issues don't exist so much in TFT as player mechanics can't be applied as a variable, making balancing easier in that regard.
I’m ready for DevHour ranking the 2 costs!
I think taking extra damage for having fewer units would be a good way to punish going open and taking damage as you'd be paying extra HP for open boarding.
I'd love to see Chonc as a playable champion in TFT 😂 please please make it happen 🙏🏻❤
Having an origin/trait called like "Little Legends" or something would be so funny lol
I want Pingu Chonk Burno and Cragle!
We can never flame mortdog. Outside the world of game devs, what other person would take so much time to answer community questions in such detail and drop nuggets of valuable knowledge. Mad respect for an awesome human and game dev
video quiet for anyone else?
Not for me.
not me
I think some of these answers contradict each other. Would love to get Morts response. Early into the video you say that you believe a major skill expression is being able to see the branching paths of comps you can play and which get closed off as you get more information. Later you say that reroll comps are not less skill expressive than play styles that level up and shift their board to strong 4 and 5 costs. How can both of these things be true.
There definitely is some skill expression no matter how you choose to play, but reroll comps are inherently more narrow in branching paths than boards that shift as you level. When you commit to a reroll comp, of course there are still paths available, as you may need to settle with a worse frontline until you start rolling, but the point of these comps is to literally spend money on shop refreshes so you can tunnel on very specific units. Yes Annie is the "carry" in your example, but while you are rolling for Annie, you are obviously refreshing shops so often at level 5/6 that you are buying the other perfect units around her. You are purposely spending money for the privilege of getting to narrow your path to building your board.
Even in another question we established that Yordles were a great comp for new players, maybe I'm wrong but I'd imagine a large part of that is that your comp is established very early, so a new player can close off any branching paths quickly which is much easier when learning the game. By no means do I think reroll should not exist and there is definitely some decision making, I just think it's disingenuous to say it is similar to levelling and buying 4/5costs, if you truly believe that being good at recognizing the branching paths as the game goes on is fundamental in skill expression.
I think that Mort is emphasizing the skill expression in reroll primarily to say that "Me Ahri sentinel me no pivot"-esque players are not actually playing the game any differently than the 20/20 Vex + Samira/Twitch reroll players.
Ultimately though I believe you're right bc if someone is level 8 vs level 6 they will objectively have more champions available in their shop and thus have more room for skill expression in which champs to purchase.
We can definitely have Little Legends as the gameplay units. Although it would have to be a temporary event like Fortune's Favor, Set Revival, etc.
Hey mort, love the set, the theme is amazing. Quick question, what was the need for level 10? In my opinion it makes 3 star 5 costs too common instead of the epic of the level 9 harder to find the lucky roll? Thanks for an amazing game!
I don’t think all humans want to continue to grow and get better. I think some humans are perfectly happy being substandard.
Treat children like adults, but you need to still expect them to act like children.
sound is so low for like last 5 videos letting you know
about double up i like the state of the mod, it cool to have a more waky mode with big comp to play with a friend while waiting for our other friend to log in, the match making is a bit off we often find lobby with 2 realy weak team compare to the 2 other.
Item homogenization has a lot to do with the champs in the current set.
This set, the 4 high cost AD carries are all basically casters. Not a single one of them is like a Zeri or Aphelios from last set. We also have unusually many 40 or less manacost champs, which makes blue buff a lot more generalized. I think the only true AA-based champ this set is Jinx.. a 1 cost with a very narrow comp, as she is part of this sets reroll comp.
On the AP side, its not great that AA and Dcap arent good items right now. The new Nashors Tooth is also more generally good and bis than expected.
On the tank side, for multiple reasons, health is simply the best stat currently. All 3 tank traits have strong health scaling. Guardian gives a max health based shield, sentinel is resistances, bruisers is a %health increase instead of a flat one.
All those things have more to do with this set than the item system. Items currently need to be rather homogenized due to that, no way around that in this set.
I think that, going forward, they should pay more attention to those factors. Making sure that every kind of item has a set of intended users at baseline. Cause that kind of stuff wont work itself out.
Once that is given, they can actually work on the item system.
Yea the volume is a little low
Sadly, some bosses or companies don’t care about ethics or stuff. I worked extra hard and didn’t even get the “minimum” we agreed before. They just wanted cheap workers to do everything so yeah, shitty place. Sometimes you have to bet that you’ll actually get what both parties agreed on
2:50:08 where can I watch those games 4, 5, and 6 of vegas?
plz I love you mort bug give us dev hour episode 2 I need it in my life
To the question at 1:02:08, i think the champions this set look amazing rarely seen such intressting espeically low cost champions such as aphelios, annie, ksante (probably the coolest 1-3 cost tank ever introduced and i was a huge cho gath fan) all of them are great. Allthough I personally HATE the theme, not the artwork itself but to whole music lets dance k-pop KDA YAY theme. It initially turned me off but the set is too great and too fun to be mad about such minor things.
bigger item bench PLEASE, THANKS
time stamps please!
hey mort, can u low a little bit the music volume on your vids? some times in your vids the music make dificult to understand your voice
2:18:12
In my opinion Hero Augment should come back for variety of comps and carrys :v
thanks for leaving us for a month with second worst update after draven one and not hotfixing TD spat/ open board strat i just quit and uninstalled tft meanwhile watching this. have a great holiday but this is not acceptable to do for anyone that who makes millions by their service and prefer their holiday than fixing their service. good luck for next sets.
sounds like a dude who’s life is a holiday.
Sounds like a dude that needs a break anyways.
@@featherlord2768 sounds like a sucka. btw none of your business.