Nick Fridge
@RiotEndstep
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Game designer on the Summoner's Rift Team @leagueoflegends @riotgames . Formerly on Systems & Balance @wildrift .
Joined January 2010
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Pinned Tweet
When I was interviewing at Riot in 2017, at the end of the process they asked me what change I would make if I could make one change to League. I said I'd make Amp Tome 400g. They thought I was joking. Six years later, I've made it clear I never joke about Amp Tome
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Big announcement: Soon I'll be moving off from Wild Rift Systems & Balance to return to PC League as a designer on the Summoner's Rift Team. Can't talk about what I'll be working on yet but I'm very hyped about it.
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Bonus 14.6 change that didn't make it into the patchnotes: I've rescripted the way that item tooltips load tracker values, such that now when you buy or upgrade an item it will update the tracker instantly. This fixes the false 0 tracker when you upgrade grievous components
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Fun thread about the Conservation mechanic, which is being added to Wild Rift in 2.5 and coming back to PC as well in the next preseason. This mechanic was originally used in PC's jungle in Season 4, as a way to pay junglers off for both farming and ganking rather than having a
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(Hopefully) interesting thread on visibility of mechanics & player frustration, using Yone's Spirit Unbound (E) as an example. Yone's E works very similarly to Zed's ultimate, in that it stores a percentage of damage dealt, and then deals the damage at the end of the effect.
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Big announcement for me: Later this month I'll be moving over to Wild Rift as a game designer. This is a big changeup from my current role as a QA on GAT, and something I've been working towards for years. Very exciting, very new, very happy to head over to work on WR.
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As many have guessed, this is what I've been working on since I came back to League from Wild Rift - particularly the item system.
@RiotPhlox
and I will be doing a stream later today talking about this season live
Looking for a quick rundown of the bigger changes coming to the Rift next year? Check out our 2024 Gameplay Preview here:
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I've been promoted to Game Designer II, so I'm now legally authorized to work on sequels to my own work. Get ready for Meteor 2: The Meteoring and Demolish 2: Demolish Harder
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HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT: Due to the release of WR patch 3.2, I will be stepping down from my position as a designer on Systems & Balance. Instead I will be retiring to live as a hermit in the woods, because now that Demolish is in the game it is perfect and needs no further changes
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Thread on WR enchant design, specifically about the enchants in 3.3 - both why we picked these three (plus reworks), and how we got to these types of effects. Thought people might like to know how we got here and what we're looking for.
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Seeing some confusion about this from the 3.2 patch preview video - WR Kraken Slayer deals the true damage, only the true damage, and nothing but the true damage.
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People seemed to like my reddit post about the design of Cryptbloom, so here's a video going through the design of Triple Tonic:
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When the 14.1 patchnotes drop I'm just going to record an outrageously long video in one take going over the entire patch and put it up on youtube and no one can stop me
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On the PBE right now there is a rescript for all tethers in the game. Some dataminers have noted that Zac's Q tether range has changed from 1000 to 900, which is part of this - however, it should be very similar in gameplay, as with the other tethers, but more responsive.
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Tether video up! It's longer than it needs to be but should fully explain the tether changes on the PBE right now
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forgot I made this template months ago for when we had finally locked in removing Gunblade, but then I couldn't decide what to put on the final door
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Now that I'm officially moved over to SRT, I can announce that the real reason I moved over was to replace all runes with Demolish. After I'm done that, I'll replace all items with Demolish, and after that, all champion spells will be replaced with Demolish. All will be Demolish
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I'm going to do a long-form Q&A stream this weekend focusing on WR gameplay stuff. I already have some questions prepared, but if there's something else you'd like answered please leave it here on this tweet or send me a DM and I'll try to fit in as many as I can.
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Fun fact: When I added spell crit to Shadowflame, it was originally only for magic damage. In an early version of the system where Horizon Focus was not as targeted at artillery mages, I had Vel'koz players in playtest complaining about not having items. So I added true damage,
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So you're going by "Luden's Companion" now nerd? Haha whats up douche bag, it's Stormsurge from High School. Remember me? Me and Liandries used to give you a hard time in school. Sorry you were just an easy target lol. I can see not much has changed. Remember Shadowflame the girl
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Both PC and WR have a lot of really exciting stuff coming up so this was a tough decision to make for me but ultimately I think moving to PC is the right move for me, even as sad as it makes me to leave WR, especially with the awesome community for my streams.
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there are still a couple of outlier cases that I haven't fixed yet that I'm looking to fix in 14.7, but it should be very rare to have a "false" tracker value now (which was previously common with any sell/rebuy, sell/undo, or upgrade)
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I'm going to make a video sometime this week explaining the details, but tl;dr is that tethers will now break instantly upon the range being exceeded, rather than checking the range on some server frames (but not others). I've also fixed a few misc tether bugs while I was at it,
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Thinking about maybe going over the 3.1 preview on stream this weekend - would anyone be interested in that?
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lot of incentives to focus heavily on exclusively farm or heavily prioritize ganking over farming. This mechanic, and the resulting mix of farming and ganking, was quite popular, especially among skilled jungle players that liked having reasons to opt into good variety in their
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Final stream of the year done, thanks everyone for all the stream participation this year! Bonus content: red buff breaking Lillia sleep is a known bug, and I'll be looking into blue Kayn P timer after the Riot break
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This does mean the end of the WR Q&A streams, but my plan is to do one more kind of wrap-up/conclusion stream next Saturday (probably starting around 9-10PDT). Not sure yet if I'll be streaming at all on PCLoL, but we'll see.
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Final WR stream is over, thanks so much to everyone that helped build my stream up and participated (ever, not just today). I absolutely loved doing the WR streams and I'll miss it quite a bit on PC.
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From the dev side of things, I'd really like to thank
@RiotRogueFool
,
@maddizzlee
,
@PapaSmoothie
, and many others that don't use Twitter for welcoming me to Wild Rift and trusting me to do good systems work.
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Got a DM accusing me of stealing a design from Wild Rift (that I made). I feel like one of those academics accused of plagiarizing their own work
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gameplay. I'm not exactly sure why Conservation was removed from PC's jungle (this was before I was working on PC, and no one from that time I've asked actually remembers), but the original designer of Conservation, SolCrushed, not only still works at Riot but now works on
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way to understand it/process the information. Anyway, I don't have any stunning conclusions here, this was just a line of thinking I thought people might be interested in reading. Thanks for reading, everyone that made it here to the bottom! (Wow, this got really long).
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I've reverted Zac Q self-only VFX to the "superclap" ring rather than the tether range. I think ideally we'd want a way to display both but for the purposes of this change if people are getting value from the current one I'm not going to change it.
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Going to be doing a 3.1 patchnotes review stream Thursday morning my time - WITH SPECIAL GUEST
@RiotRogueFool
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Alright, as promised, here's the 14.1 video. Unfortunately due to a delivery and some neighbors, had to make a couple cuts, so it's not quite one take, but it is a very long very low-quality experience anyway
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I'll be doing an early stream tomorrow morning to go over the 3.2 patch preview! Probably looking at starting around 8 or so PDT
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but if anyone is playing on the PBE this week and notices something odd about a range-limited tether (Aatrox, Fiddlesticks, Illaoi, Karma, Kled, LeBlanc, Nocturne, Morgana, Renata, Zac), please let me know and send me a clip so I can review it.
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Final WR stream will be happening ~24h from this tweet, at around 10PDT. Current plan is to run through all the systems changes from my time on WR starting with patch 3.1, but I'm open to other requests if there's stuff people want to see.
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thanks to patch 3.3 I can now display my true power in my wild rift display case
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Wild Rift. During my time on PC, Conservation was often brought up as a way to improve certain aspects of the jungle, and it was even in testing at different points for some preseasons that I was working on (years ago). However, for a variety of reasons it never quite made it
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Get through all of 3.2 patch notes in one stream challenge [IMPOSSIBLE]
so
@RiotEndstep
…i think you might need a 24 hour stream to cover everything in your 3.2 patch notes review
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Ultimately, this just works like raw damage amplification, but it allows the damage to be grouped in a much more noticeable way (very good for power appreciability, which is something damage amp is typically not very good at). It's a good way to arrange mechanics -
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I'll be doing a 3.0b patch review stream, but tomorrow morning - probably start around 8-8:30AM PST or so.
It’s the last balance patch of the 3.0 cycle! We’re throwing a fish to our latest addition, Yuumi, who's been struggling, and nerfing / buffing runes across the board. The poros are also going on a new flufftastic adventure to Ionia!
🐱PATCH NOTES 3.0b:
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please enjoy my dev art icon for this item
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If Meteor has a million fans, I am one of them. If Meteor has ten fans, I am one of them. If Meteor has one fan, that is me. If Meteor has no fans, I’m no longer on earth. If the world is against Meteor, I’m against the world.
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I've been getting a lot of questions around "how does Wild Rift do balance," so while we don't have a fully up-to-date article about it, there is one that still has most of the information here for anyone interested:
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This is the start of a thread talking about some enchanter itemization, if anyone is interested in it.
@draggles
@RataRadioativa
The Luden's buff was done because it was dramatically behind both Rod of Ages and Archangel's as a first item for every mana+AP champ in the game. Combined with the more recent nerf to RoA we have standard mage first items in an okay spot where there's more real choice 1/x
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So an interesting question here is: why do players tend to be more frustrated by Yone's version of this mechanic than Zed's? One possible answer is that Yone's is more frequent due to being on a basic ability rather than an ultimate, or being able to apply to any target.
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into the game, until now of course with
@RiotPhlox
's upcoming jungle changes. The Wild Rift jungle changes of course also include Conservation, which humorously weren't even made by SolCrushed both because he wasn't the designer working on the 2.5 jungle changes. In some ways,
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- because the player (both playing as and against) will have a much easier time understanding how powerful the damage amp was when all the damage is grouped. Also, in both the case of Yone and Zed, it highlights the difference between good and bad casts.
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yeehaw
🏋️Patch 4.1 is right around the corner and bringing new items for our beefy friends!
Join
@RiotEndstep
from the balance team for all the details on why tanks needed some more options! 🏋️
➡️
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@RiotPhlox
it is really just a coincidence that both games decided to commit to doing Conservation around the same time, since seemingly everyone agreed (both internally and externally) that the mechanic was great (even years ago) and would help moderate some of the extremes of the jungle
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secret third enchant reserved only for readers of the /dev
In Patch 3.3, we’re releasing two new enchantments and making some adjustments to a few others. Join
@RiotEndstep
from the balance team for all the details on why enchants needed some tune-ups. ✨
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@RiotPhlox
treats for the new PC jungle pets, but it sounds similar to the original PC mechanic with slower pacing (if that's not the case I'm sorry Phlox). Ultimately, I think it's interesting that a popular mechanic from PC eight years ago has made its way back into both PC and WR at
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@RiotPhlox
while actually adding to the fun of pathing rather than detracting from it as some of the other potential solutions would. I say "in some ways" it's a coincidence because it's not entirely chance: in the early days of pitching jungle changes for Wild Rift we actually met up with
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- often not specified how it's better). Truthfully, while Yone E damage amp isn't "strictly" worse than Zed's Death Mark, it's mechanically about as inferior as it could be. It tracks postmitigation damage instead of premitigation damage, meaning that Zed ignores any kind of
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one of my non-Twitter-using friends asked me for the PNG of my water bottle emote and now I know why
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I've been calling this "giga ranked" internally since I first heard about it
We’re adding a new queue and making changes to Ranked overall during Season 6! Join
@joshua_menke
for all the details!
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and then that got me thinking about other champs I could make the item feel better for, so I added pets and DoTs having higher spell crit values so that DoT champs would have a more damage-centric option, since they typically have more durable lower-damage builds.
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Planning on running the Q&A stream starting 11AM PST tomorrow, 1/29. I've currently got 35 questions to answer, if you have something WR gameplay-related to ask, post here or DM me and I can add it to the list.
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Going to try something new with this one - video up for 3.3c patchnotes review later, and then I'll do a shorter Q&A stream tomorrow morning.
It’s our final balance before Patch 3.4, and we’re focused on making adjustments to some champions who have been dominating and struggling in the Baron Lane. Welcome to Patch 3.3c!
⚔️ READ MORE:
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temporary damage reduction, resistances, shields, etc. on the target while they are marked. Conversely, Yone tracks post-mitigation damage, which means that any kind of temporary mitigation will affect the damage stored for Soul Unbound. Of course, Zed's ultimate deals physical
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he actually does work like this with the laptop (also background sightings of my desk in this video)
Learn more about our goals for the support item changes with designer Sean “Zekramen” Mason:
💪 Early game power
⚔ More agency
🛡 Access to enchants in teamfights
▶️ WATCH NOW:
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Woke up this morning and there was blood everywhere. Somehow I cut my leg while I was asleep. Is this my punishment for making Stormsurge?
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blitzcrank buffs will continue until morale improves
Here's a "First Look" at the balance changes for patch 3.3b coming next Wednesday.
Please note that this may not be the full list of notes and is not final. Context and the more complex changes will come with the full patch notes.
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But typically when I see players frustrated about Yone's damage amp, they're actually not focused on those things. The most common complaint is around the true damage aspect, and in some cases, I've seen players complain about how it is "better" than Zed ultimate (though it's -
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1. yes, I was actually promoted
2. I'm not changing teams or focus, I'll be doing the same stuff as before
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@RiotPhlox
Phlox who was in the early stages of working on his PC jungle changes at the time, and Conservation was on his list of mechanics changes at the time. SolCrushed was thrilled to see that it was being tested again, and of course this naturally led into us over on WR elevating the
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@RiotPhlox
idea to "must try" rather than "might try" on our list of things we were looking at for the WR jungle changes at the time. We tried some different versions of it, some where it was weighted more towards specific actions at specific times or more rewarding in specific scenarios,
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@RiotPhlox
but quickly found in WR that something reasonably close to the original version worked well for WR and so what you'll see in 2.5 is going to be pretty similar to the mechanic from the S4 PC jungle. I don't have much insight on the PC version, which I'm told involves some sort of
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moving my playtest and testing phones to and from the riot office and my apartment to make sure I can always playtest and check builds reminds me of that riddle where you need to get the chicken, fox, and sack of grain across the river in a rowboat without any of them being eaten
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that this type of non-ultimate "damage storage" should be worse than Death Mark. Yet, it's a frequent complaint that Soul Unbound is stronger than Death Mark, even though mechanically speaking there's several advantages in favor of Zed R and none in favor of Soul Unbound.
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Starting with Repulsor, we knew from the beginning we wanted a defensive effect to compete with Stasis. We're also nerfing Stasis and changing Quicksilver in 3.3 in order to open up this space a bit more, but we were skeptical of our ability to open up the self-peel space with
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Made it to diamond on my main account this season, legendary queue waiting room now. Playing dragon lane carry this season has definitely been a very different experience than playing the other roles - I lost a ton early on due to my unfamiliarity with the role
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stream up in a bit - maybe 30 minutes or so?
Gather your friends and defend the universe from evil in Patch 3.3: Shining Bright, arriving on July 14 UTC! Join
@RiotMirross
from the Wild Rift dev team for details on the new gameplay updates, champions, and events we’re looking forward to.
▶️
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Stream done, thanks to everyone that stopped by! Had a huge turnout today and was definitely not prepared for the number of questions, I'll be better prepared for next patch's review!
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damage, so it gets mitigated at the end, but there's a notable difference here in that shields actually "block" Yone's Soul Unbound from storing damage. Additionally, there are a variety of effects that care about specific damage types, but (currently both in PC and WR) none that
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@MoleculeLOL
Seems reasonable, I'll check with the designers that made this item and if no one objects I'll change it to champ-only
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GGs everybody, rumble finals over and
@Tekshi
and I are victorious! Big thanks to Frosty, isthatthem, and
@HydroZenith
for coming together to form the GAT superteam.
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ask for true damage specifically, meaning that true damage deal by Soul Unbound is "worse" as it won't do things like stack Black Cleaver or apply physical vamp, etc. This was something that we did intentionally with Yone when making him in PC, because we wanted it to be clear
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Unbound, where Yone cannot manually return - interesting spell, but didn't work for Yone's kit. Maybe for someone else). I think the likely best way to solve this would be a way for the player to be able to "see" the damage being stored, possibly using VFX similar to grey health.
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I attribute this primarily to two things: I do think even though it's not commonly in the focus of players, the frequency of Soul Unbound and especially the difficulty of perceiving the cost of use to the Yone (he often uses this from long range or out of vision, and the ways in
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Finished up work for the day, so I'm going to go grab something to eat, head back to my place and stream until I get all the way through the 3.2 patchnotes or die trying (probably ~8ish PDT stream start)
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used to signify spells that are intended to have other, non-mitigation counterplay (Olaf's Reckless Swing [range], Vayne's Silver Bolts [three hit requriement], Cho'gath Feast [range], Camille's Precision Protocol [range + delay], etc.), but in Yone's case, the counterplay
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yeehaw stream tonight ~730ish PST (2.5ish hours from now)
Patch 3.1b has arrived and brings with it a whole host of champion changes, item balancing, the return of Elemental Rift, and an adjustment to Scuttle Crab.
🦀 DETAILS:
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which Yone is punished for using/misusing the spell, or simply having it on cooldown, can be very difficult to perceive since offensively it's mostly about amplifying damage). Secondarily, the damage pop on Soul Unbound is shown to the player as true damage, which typically is
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damage dealt to shields at all), and there's probably just too many disconnects between the player's read of the inputs vs the outputs. That doesn't necessarily mean that Soul Unbound is a bad spell, just means that it doesn't do a good job of communicating the counterplay in
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best playtest we've ever had
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