With this season of Wild Rift coming to a close, Riot Games held a roundtable dubbed Power Spike in commemoration of Wild Rift’s second anniversary.

Although this is Wild Rift’s second anniversary, Power Spike is Wild Rift’s first-ever anniversary event. To celebrate this, Patch 3.4 will have four running events where players can earn in-game rewards. To top this, Patch 3.4 will see the release of four highly anticipated champions that many will be familiar with from the game’s PC counterpart along with a bunch of Wild Rift-exclusive skins.

During the roundtable, the main point of discussion was in regards to the changes to come in Wild Rift’s Patch 3.4 along with a Q&A segment to close out the session. I’ll be going over the Q&A segment and sharing with you, what the devs said.

WE ALREADY COVERED PATCH 3.4 SO CHECK IT OUT

Roundtable Participants

• Adnan Mirza – Producer at Riot Games
• David Xu – Game Experience Product Lead of Wild Rift 
• Jared Berbach – Game Director of Wild Rift
• Hanna Woo – Global Public Relations Lead of League of Legends & Wild Rift

How does the new patch differentiate Wild Rift from other MOBAs currently in the Market?

Berbach shared that most of his colleagues, including himself, play “those other games” and are fans of them. He goes on to say that Riot approaches Wild Rift with the primary motivation that they want to be the best competitive MOBA they can be. But alongside that, they always heavily take into consideration the principles of why people enjoy MOBAs like League of Legends in the first place. So when getting involved in the market, they try to utilise their knowledge of why their fans like their games and try to emphasise that towards newer players.

How much do you take the esport into consideration when balancing the game?

Riot told Kakuchopurei that their very careful and intentional when it comes to taking a specific group of the player base into consideration. Say at the highest level, if there were to be a champion who is completely unbalanced but does seem balanced at lower elos then that’s something that will obviously be something that needs changing.

Riot Games Produce, Adnan Mirza also added that Riot has a plethora of data that they have accumulated from all kinds of player bases. One example of this was from the Icons Global Championship, the dev team sent out a survey for the players to hear their input on the current state of the game and how they felt about the balancing of champions at that time.

What does the process of transferring champions from the PC version of the game to Wild Rift look like?

David Xu, the Game Experience Product Lead began by stating that they don’t directly port champions over one-for-one, they build them from scratch. Meaning not just aesthetically but also the skills and values that come with the champion. Although the intention is always to remain true to the original concept of the champion, sometimes some mechanics just don’t make sense on a mobile MOBA. A good example of this is Karma who plays differently from her PC counterpart and Riot believes that both sides of the spectrum of players from the PC version and players who started with Wild Rift enjoy the changes that were made.

Are there any plans to further optimise Wild Rift for lower-end phones?

Riot stated that performance optimisation is something that they take extremely seriously and is always at the top of their list when implementing new features. An example of this was when they introduced enemy health bars, many players had begun experiencing performance issues after its introduction. So as a solution, they added an option to disable enemy health bars to counteract that. They were extremely vocal about just how passionate they are about sharing the MOBA experience with people of all walks of life and are constantly working on ways to make the game more accessible to everyone.

Xu elaborates that the dev team has been looking into the initial in-game install. Ideally, they’d like to make it so that the in-game downloads are more segmented. An example that Riot provided is that players may have the option to download certain champions instead of the entire roster of champions all at once. In addition to this players who choose this option are limited to certain game modes, proving said player with the ability to still play the game without risking other players’ experience.

How does the dev team feel about the split between players that want Wild Rift to stay true to the original game and players that want Wild Rift to be its own entity?

Berbach told Kakuchopurei that they recognise that the majority of the audience are players who are familiar with League PC, so when developing Wild Rift’s identity, they proceed with caution. Riot mentions that it is likely that they will do more Wild Rift exclusive content that is friendlier to those who may be new to the franchise or have only played Wild Rift. So with that said Riot is looking to try its best to please both sides without favouring one or the other, but for now, they are focusing on the first group mentioned and with time, they’ll try to cater to the latter.

Both Mirza and Xu echoed a similar sentiment saying that although Wild Rift will eventually become an entity of its own, it’s still League of Legends at heart. They again brought up Karma who both groups have given Riot praise for modernising the champion and evolving her into something that isn’t too alienated but still new and fresh.

League has got the best track record when it comes to white-washing and ethnic awareness, does the dev team behind Wild Rift put more thought into these factors when introducing new champions and skins?

Riot recognises their mistakes in the past, the biggest example was Lucian, having been voiced by a white actor in the past, who was then recast to feature a voice actor of colour. Riot has voiced its passion for making sure a mistake like this doesn’t happen again. Furthermore, it was disclosed that when developing champions and skins, Riot consults with their many Riot Interest Groups (RIGs) which consist of people of a particular ethnicity that represent ethnic minorities.

To further remove any doubt, Mirza chimed in and spoke about his own experience as a person of South Asian origin and finds emphasises just how supportive Riot has been of other underrepresented ethnicities.

Does the dev team think that Wild Rift is still in need of large improvements or do they think that the player base is comfortable?

Xu started by prefacing that the dev team don’t want to make changes for the sake of making changes. Most changes applied are to help keep the game fresh for players so that they don’t burn out from playing the exact same game for years on end. With that said, Riot’s plan for 2023 is to strip away the consensus that every patch is of equal size and change.

Riot wants it to become more like how League PC is whereby during the active playing season, players should expect champion and item rebalancing along with bug fixes and new champions. During the middle of the season and at the end of the season, players can expect a bigger change whether it be introducing new objectives or points-of-interest just to name a couple of examples. Riot wants changes to feel more schedule and routine for the players so that they aren’t worrying whether or not the next patch will completely change how they play the game and instead give players amble time to mentally prepare for those said big changes.