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spootime

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
3,429

Coming to test servers later this month (!!!)

How It Works
You'll spend gold in the store before each round to recruit League champions to your team. Throughout the game, your team will become more powerful as you draft champions that share origins and classes to unlock trait bonuses. Additionally, you can combine three duplicates of the same champ to upgrade them into a super version of themselves, and combine three supers to create the ultimate version.

Your team will then travel to an opponent's board (or they will come to you) and a battle will unfold. During combat, your champions will move, attack, and cast spells automatically. Just like in League, you'll need to choose a team comp and position your champs wisely to unlock their full potential.

At the end of each round you'll earn gold to spend in future rounds. Occasionally, everyone will gather for a special event and draft from a single line-up of champions of varying strengths. Players will pick in the reverse order of their current standing, giving the players falling behind the chance to make a comeback. Win teamfights consistently to avoid losing health and deal damage to your opponents. Outlast everyone else to win, and don't forget to spam your emotes along the way.

How and Why We're Making Teamfight Tactics
Recently, we've been trying different kinds of modes that are deep and unique additions to the League experience. TFT is our next big exploration in that space and the first time we're jumping into a different genre. We've always loved strategy games and recently we've gotten into the new auto-battler genre—folks around the office have been playing an insane amount of Dota Auto Chess in particular. We love it, and it actually got us inspired to create something new as a mode in League.

We're building this one with you. TFT's initial launch is a beta, so expect it to be a work in progress as we work all of the kinks out. Every step of the way we'll be listening closely to your experiences and feedback, so please let us know what you think. For our part, we'll be in frequent contact via dev articles, updates and patch notes.

Part of treating this like a Real Grown Up Game Mode means we'll support it with cool metagame features. That includes ranked. You can expect to see the ranked for TFT start up around patch 9.14. At that point, we should be in a good spot with bugs and initial game balance.

What do you guys think? I'm excited to see everyone getting in to the arena with auto chess. Especially since Valve's entry appears to just be a 1:1 clone of auto chess without any features or improvements.
 

Kalor

Resettlement Advisor
Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,620
I was wondering how long it would be until League tried to do their own version.
 

jon bones

Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,978
NYC
I haven't found a version of Auto Chess that feels good, but the LoL guys might do it!

Any comments on gametime yet? 40 minutes or whatever is way too long.
 

Deleted member 11214

user requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
731
I don't enjoy League (I prefer Dota's depth, aesthetic and monetization structure) but that mode makes the Valve standalone ver that just leaked look like an early student project.

Assuming it's an in-dev build and not a prototype someone hashed together in January, what a joke Valve is.
 
OP
OP
spootime

spootime

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
3,429
I don't enjoy League (I prefer Dota's depth, aesthetic and monetization structure) but that mode makes the Valve standalone ver that just leaked look like an early student project.

Assuming it's an in-dev build and not a prototype someone hashed together in January, what a joke Valve is.

Maybe I had the wrong expectations but I was shocked to see that they had copied all of the synergies verbatim.
 

Deleted member 13645

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
6,052
I will play a lot of this if it's as good as Dota Auto Chess. It'd also save me harddrive space by not having to keep Dota installed for a single addon.
 

Terbinator

Member
Oct 29, 2017
10,195
Shame they're not bringing it to consoles / mobile. Would be good to get some of my non-PC pals in to LoL.
 

Yushi

Member
Nov 27, 2017
703
I mean Valve did try to negociate with Auto-Chess dev for a few months before they got the hard no and had to start with their own version.
 

jrpl

Member
Nov 20, 2017
297
Just like how Dota 2 was late to the Moba game, Valves own Dota Chess will be out later than Leagues too lol
 

Smash-It Stan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,259
I mean Valve did try to negociate with Auto-Chess dev for a few months before they got the hard no and had to start with their own version.
Auto Chess developers were also negotiating with Tencent, who were also trademarking like 5 different auto Chess products during that. I assume this is one of them.
 

Holundrian

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,114
Upsides to having 3000 employees versus 300 I suppose
I wasn't aware that Riot had 3000 developers on payroll. *eyeroll*

Also I hope this statement isn't indicative of an ignorance that assumes the more devs you have the faster you can develop.
Cause that would be ridiculously naive. Game development is full of challenges that aren't just simply solved by throwing more manpower at it.

If you wanted to make this point in a serious manner why not just say that given Valve's company structure they're not going to have the same number of devs dedicated on getting this off the ground as fast as Riot who can just put a sizable team together that is dedicated to this project alone.

No need to make this very dumb statement.
 

Tagyhag

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,450
Not surprised, this mode is here to stay for at least a while. It's better to create your own than have some of your players play your competitor's, and I bet it'll be less janky than the current Auto Chess'es.

Upsides to having 3000 employees versus 300 I suppose

My goodness, I thought you were kidding but you're not. What the hell is Riot doing with that many employees? They should be putting out like 2 games a year.
 

Deleted member 13645

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
6,052
Shame they're not bringing it to consoles / mobile. Would be good to get some of my non-PC pals in to LoL.

If the rumor that they're working on a mobile version of League is true, then maybe this game mode would be ported to mobile as part of that. But that's likely a way off.

My goodness, I thought you were kidding but you're not. What the hell is Riot doing with that many employees? They should be putting out like 2 games a year.

A large amount of those people won't be devs, and I assume that number includes every employee from every branch. They have branches in a ton of countries to support and run the local versions of League of Legends.
 

FuriousChipmunk

Chicken Chaser
Member
Oct 27, 2017
132
Indianapolis
I wasn't aware that Riot had 3000 developers on payroll. *eyeroll*

Also I hope this statement isn't indicative of an ignorance that assumes the more devs you have the faster you can develop.
Cause that would be ridiculously naive. Game development is full of challenges that aren't just simply solved by throwing more manpower at it.

If you wanted to make this point in a serious manner why not just say that given Valve's company structure they're not going to have the same number of devs dedicated on getting this off the ground as fast as Riot who can just put a sizable team together that is dedicated to this project alone.

No need to make this very dumb statement.

No need to come off like an arse like this either on the dude.
 
OP
OP
spootime

spootime

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
3,429
I wasn't aware that Riot had 3000 developers on payroll. *eyeroll*

Also I hope this statement isn't indicative of an ignorance that assumes the more devs you have the faster you can develop.
Cause that would be ridiculously naive.

If you wanted to make this point in a serious manner why not just say that given Valve's company structure they're not going to have the same number of devs dedicated on getting this off the ground as fast as Riot who can just put a sizable team together that is dedicated to this project alone.

No need to make this very dumb statement.

I really don't even get what you're trying to say to be honest. Your first sentence says that its ridiculously naive to assume that having more devs lets you develop faster. Your second sentence says that because Riot has more devs they could make a team more quickly and develop the game faster.

Honestly I didn't think I needed to spell this out. 3000 employees = more developers = more people you can quickly throw at a project to get it off the ground = LoL autochess comes out before dota autochess (and its not just a 1:1 copy). Let me know if this is confusing.
 

Holundrian

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,114
Normally true, however large companies like Riot have separate teams for their projects, which mitigates the Mythical Man Month issues.
Yes this is what I was alluding to when I conceded that Riot's structure is more suited to getting this off the ground faster than Valve. Like I can easily see that they have a 100+ people dedicated to that project/I wouldn't be surprised.
I really don't even get what you're trying to say to be honest. Your first sentence says that its ridiculously naive to assume that having more devs lets you develop faster. Your second sentence says that because Riot has more devs they could make a team more quickly and develop the game faster.

Honestly I didn't think I needed to spell this out. 3000 employees = more developers = more people you can quickly throw at a project to get it off the ground = LoL autochess comes out before dota autochess (and its not just a 1:1 copy). Let me know if this is confusing.

My disagreement is that it's really dumb to say that because they have 3000 people vs 300 they are able to develop it faster.
1. As already stated these aren't all developers and for developing what matters are the people that are actually involved with development. League customer support staff doesn't factor in so the sensible thing is actually citing the actual developer counts of each respective company.
2. Even if we assumed it was 3000 developers vs 300 this wouldn't make the 3000 man team faster because this ignores management challenges that occur as team size increases as well as the nature of actual development problems that don't scale with manpower. If you have a game design problem putting 100 game designers on it instead of 10 isn't going to solve the problem faster. It might actually be slower cause you have more cooks in the kitchen.

Basically pls don't be a person that thinks that manpower alone is the determining factor in how fast anything can be developed it's a naive view of how software development works. And that does not mean that I think it isn't a factor at all so don't have that as the take away.
 
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Holundrian

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,114
I've been interested in auto chess modes but it seems like you need to know the base MOBA first to be competent.
This isn't true. Auto Chess is its own game with it's own different learning curve.
Basically my Dota 2 knowledge didn't really help as far as I could tell. If anything I would cite more my experience with Hearthstone as more helpful for grasping certain concepts in auto chess. The reason is that the piece draft is basically at the center of your decision making so considerations about probability are more important than knowing how to read the map in a dota game.

Even for piece placement I don't feel like my dota knowledge is helpful(given I never really understood that part in the 20 or so hours I played anyway). To understand piece placement I think you just have to play a lot to get a sense about how pieces move.
 

exodus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,938
I really wish someone would iterate on this game mode a bit to get the game time down to < 15 minutes. 40 minutes is far too long.
 

NekoNeko

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
18,447
i'm in. loved auto chess but it was wonky af. was waiting for a big boy to get in on this.
 

caylen

Publisher - Riot Games
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
139
santa monica
It's crazy how quick Riot were at developing their own version.

The team working on this project (they weren't kidding when they said they love the genre) was super duper motivated to take their own ideas & ethos and prototype it. No sustained crunch, too!

Normally true, however large companies like Riot have separate teams for their projects, which mitigates the Mythical Man Month issues.

Bingo. Riot's dev pods (and project management style) are custom built for this kind of development.

TFT is fukken sick - hope people that are curious about it give it a shot when it goes to live servers!
 
Nov 23, 2017
4,302
WHy are people praising such an overt knock off/copy cat/me too product

Like isnt this the same forum that complains about sequels and clones and games being samey?
 

Holundrian

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,114
WHy are people praising such an overt knock off/copy cat/me too product

Like isnt this the same forum that complains about sequels and clones and games being samey?
So people can't like the potential of someone making a better version of a game in a new genre?
Seems really stupid better go back to all the hollow knight threads and tear that game apart.

Also disingenuous when the sequel complaint is often aimed at franchises like call of duty that literally have 10-15+(I'm not sure) entries vs a genre that has exactly 2 games(dota auto chess itself and the mobile version of it) in it. There is plenty of space in this new genre that nobody has explored yet and people that have been playing auto chess in general would just appreciate better quality of life to the experience anyway.
 
Oct 25, 2017
3,064
I'm not really sure what this is yet, but it seems completely different, and is more of a board game. If that's the case, I don't think I'll be interested.
 

Sylvee

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,562
I'm kind of surprised that this thread isn't gaining much traction because I feel like this mode can easily become the next big thing. Auto Chess is a super popular mode in Dota 2, to the point where it caused Dota to reach its highest player count in 2 years. I think that Auto Chess is very well-positioned to become the next big genre in multiplayer. Epic, Riot, and Valve if the leaked info is true, are all trying to make their own version of Auto Chess to capitalize on the emerging genre. And of those 3 I think that Riot is by far the best-positioned to succeed. They're getting the the market far sooner then their competitors, they have more resources then the other teams, and they already have a collection of characters that people are already attached to with a client that people already use. The fact that Riot is already going to be implementing a ranked mode just a couple weeks after the game drops leads me to believe that Riot has a lot of faith that this will succeed, Riot pretty much never adds in ranked for their side modes.
 

Eden

Member
Nov 15, 2017
414
I'm kind of surprised that this thread isn't gaining much traction because I feel like this mode can easily become the next big thing. Auto Chess is a super popular mode in Dota 2, to the point where it caused Dota to reach its highest player count in 2 years. I think that Auto Chess is very well-positioned to become the next big genre in multiplayer. Epic, Riot, and Valve if the leaked info is true, are all trying to make their own version of Auto Chess to capitalize on the emerging genre. And of those 3 I think that Riot is by far the best-positioned to succeed. They're getting the the market far sooner then their competitors, they have more resources then the other teams, and they already have a collection of characters that people are already attached to with a client that people already use. The fact that Riot is already going to be implementing a ranked mode just a couple weeks after the game drops leads me to believe that Riot has a lot of faith that this will succeed, Riot pretty much never adds in ranked for their side modes.
Eh I'm interested but there's not much to talk about. Nothing to play or watch yet. I'm sure there will be a popular thread once it's actually playable.
 

JahIthBer

Member
Jan 27, 2018
10,372
I knew it, i knew auto chess would be the next thing that devs all rush to do their own version of.
Im not mad about it though, i will play this if it's better than dota auto chess.
 
Oct 27, 2017
556
OKC
footage has started to come out today. I know it's early but I'm pretty disappointed, looks very bad in comparison to DAC and even underlords IMO