An Open Letter to the TFT Dev Team

#teamfighttactics #tft #videoessay
Please Devs, set 11 could have been so much better
Link to Mort stream with quote: / 2113474377
1:32:30 for context, 1:41:00 for quote from video
Music used: • Heartsteel Loop Late
TFT and the music used belong to Riot Games, all assets used are under fair use

[@kadalix]

0:00 - Introduction 0:40 - Encounters 2:49 - Balance Changes (specifically Thrashing) 4:29 ^ Set 11 Balance Thrashing 7:35 ^ Previous Examples of Thrashing 10:40 ^ Modern Examples of Thrashing 12:17 - Expectations from an Experienced Team 13:16 - Conclusion

[@zman11335]

Not all heroes wear capes

[@michalnguyen8527]

I'm relieved that I am not the only one that feels this way. Encounters are redundant (looking at you Sett and Sivir) and I think we would do better without them. It's especially sad since last set was one of the best ones.

[@zman11335]

100% A ton of the encounters feel really similar in a negative way which makes it feel boring, but then you get that sub 1% appearance rate encounter that completely blows up the game and feels awful

[@danijelfilipovic9390]

Dogdoodoo take, last Set was balanced sure, but it was the most boring Set ever.

[@wojteknenko]

@@danijelfilipovic9390 Shurkou said it at some point, that high ranked players hate the set because of added RNG. As someone that doesnt play tft and only watches it, I have to say this is one of the most enjoying sets.

[@ShaiJW]

Welcome back, Zman! Hope to see more vids soon :)

[@Zantier]

Idk how you appeared on my feed man but you are so right about this sett, unbearable portals, hwei and all the metas forcing an specific cost every patch is making this sett unplayable

[@zman11335]

Yeah another great point I forgot to mention, 3 star units are way easier to hit because holding copies doesn't stop people from just using hwei to print the 3 star anyway

[@suho_calamity]

I want to mention that this set was clearly focused on visuals more than actual playmaking as seen in the set preview in Mort's channel. None of the origins have any synergy with other units let alone even with the units within eacb origin. Think of the difference between origins of set 10 and 11. As an example ill compare KDA and Mythic respectively. They both functuon practically the same, giving buffs to units BUT the key difference that made KDA work was that KDA effect can work on ANY UNIT which means it can synergise with other units. It's why KDA spellcasters was avle to work, because they both benefit from each other. But in set 11? Mythic onky works on mythic, no synergies with other units except on who you want as a carry. If you wanted bard carry you'd want trickshot mythics, if you wanted lillia carry you'd not only need mythic + invokers BUT with both these comps, you absolutely need Hwei or some other secondary carry with how bad the units are EVEN WHEN THEY'RE THE MAIN CARRY OF THE VERTICAL THEY'RE A PART OF. Edit: I could do a whole bunch more examples or reasonings as to why this set isn't necessarily "bad" but it makes you feel frustrated that you think it's a bad set (which honestly it is a pretty bad set). Edit 2: I just played a game and I literally won with 7 mythic + Ashe carry. Even with Lillia BIS and Hwei with okay items, my Ashe out damaged both. For context I was level 10 with 7 mythic, 2 porcelain (lux with invoker emblem), 4 invoker (i had invoker emblem and Annie), 2 sniper while the enemy had Ornn 3 Dryad Vertical and I still won against them NOT BECAUSE OF MYTHIC SYNERGY but because of sniper and porcelain realistically.

[@zman11335]

I mean you absolutely hit the nail on the head with mythic/lillia, the unit is all style and no substance. Mort has even said himself referring to lillia in a short on his channel that whoever designed her forgot that units actually have to have some layer of consistency or else they can't be good carries. Not to mention that right now ashe/porcelain are absolutely broken and make everything else look weak in comparison. But you are absolutely right, a lot of the verticals in this set fall really flat because they are all 100% selfish, meaning for example if you are not playing a mythic unit as a carry you just are never bothering with ever playing any mythic units on your board other than maybe hwei. Fated is similar, and they keep nerfing things like heavenly and ghostly that don't work that way.

[@user-pq4dq6bj2u]

I think the idea of encounters were good but executed poorly. The encounters like Khazix, Yorick should have been limited to very early in the game. Encounters like Kayn who initially seemed worrisome end up being quite fun and exciting. But getting an Irelia carousel in stage 4 just feels incredibly bad. In defence of the 4 cost meta, there were actually challengers that hated how balanced set 10 was and wanted balance thrashing, which was hinted at by Mort when making this change.

[@zman11335]

I think that if you are a player who enjoys a set and play hundreds of games of it, I can see how a set being TOO balanced could get boring, but for the average player, or even for a player who plays a lot but just not as a living, I would much prefer a set to be well balanced than to have the whole thing dropped on its head every patch. As for encounters, obviously I'm not a fan, but huge game changing encounters like Kayn showing up at the beginning of the game is 100% the most balanced type of encounter because you can actually plan your game around it instead of just hoping for the best. A lot of the other encounters just feel like a middle finger depending on your spot, and it really sucks to play

[@ehyzen]

started playing tft last set and i loved it, got to diamond and i wanted to get masters this set but the balance and everything is terrible so i stopped after plat... winning is not fun. losing is not fun. it can be fun but rarely...

[@zman11335]

I usually at minimum go for diamond every set as well, but I just can't find it in myself to grind this set out, it just is such a slog to play so far with these patches and encounters.

[@theloshowfosho]

I have a possibly interesting perspective as someone who played set 1 and didn't immediately fall in love with the game and got deep into it this current set and has been trying to consume as much content and game time to catch up to my friends. The thrashing has made it near impossible to learn the game. Everytime i start being able to put what I've learned through videos into practice (ie playing reroll, fast 8, fast 9) it swings the complete other way and i feel like I'm actively punished for learning the previous strat. Until the most recent patch where i feel completely lost. It seems like people are saying everything that was good before is still generally good but also generally worse than before. I'm trying out the same strats that i had success with in previous patches and is getting stomped. And on the encounters and portals, as a new-ish player I have enough game knowledge to know if something helps or harms my gameplan but don't have the skills to be flexible enough to adapt to it. The frustration of trying to learn this game while the set's theme seems to be "haha omg so random," feels like a slap in the face for trying. It sucks because I'm currently heavily interested and invested in tft but it's seeming more and more like this set is actively punishing me for trying to learn at it's worst and just straight up laughing at me at it's best.

[@zman11335]

Yeah, I can only imagine how rough it must be to be trying to learn the set and its meta and then have the whole thing dropped on its head in the next patch, rendering everything you are trying to learn irrelevant. It makes you think that riot must not see the damage they are doing to newer/more casual players.

[@theloshowfosho]

@@zman11335 That is how it feels. And I'm not sure if it's better or worse, but since I keep up with the meta with research and watching top players I at least have an idea of how I'm supposed to adapt. Some of my other friends who are getting into this have no idea what's going on and it's just whatever was working for them is impossible now and they just end up going 6th-8th all patch until it rotates back to a patch that fits their playstyle. The new player experience of TFT is abysmal imo, and this current set does not make it any better.

[@zman11335]

@@theloshowfosho Its really fascinating as well because a lot of people seem to feel like the increased emphasis on RNG this set has led to it feeling worse for more experienced players, but clearly it isn't improving the game for newer players either, so who is the targeted audience?

[@enriquelopez4516]

wowzzaaaaa! another excellent zman11335 film

[@mystpro4]

i'm farming engagement :)

[@kadalix]

dunno how this got on my recommended page tbh but i'll bite lol (as a heads up i've played set 1 and 2 and then came back in set 6 and played since) just something i've noticed quite a bit recently, and as someone who considers himself a flexible player (as in i try to play exalted every game 💀) riot is making a massive push towards flexibility and intentional / active gameplay e.g. bag size changes requiring to scout, incredibly more flexible traits than before, and hell, even the inclusion of exalted shows they want to reward people that innovate or stay on the lookout to BE flexible (previous set example is headliners, u can somewhat force certain headliners but not every time, especially after THE headliner change) and i believe the reason for this is because, tft gets too stale, not because the game itself is stale but because the players make it. tft becomes a solved game very quickly from what i've seen over the years although i am not a game designer or studying it, a key idea in game theory is to protect the players from themselves. in tft, this is seen in preventing players from mindlessly rerolling the same 2-3 comps over and over again and the devs are trying to egg them to explore more of the game encounters also embody this idea, where the rng and potentially game warping punish the extremely stubborn "i go this /deafen" and potentially reward the ones who are willing to say "fuck, well ig i'm going this then" (unfortunately, that massively rewards the players who were already going said strategy as you mentioned) due to this idea of novelty and keeping the game fresh, i will say that i FEEL as if the devs don't mind thrashing as much as the players i wholeheartedly agree with you that the amount of changes they make in a patch is way too much, but then again, i don't think the devs mind if they overshoot something in league i've noticed that the league devs have taken a notice of is that player perception DRASTICALLY affects the power of an item or champion because of this, they've intentionally overbuffed items to get the attention of players saying "HEY, this item is good", becomes op for a patch, semi or fully revert the changes, and guess what? people KEEP using the item because turns out, it's actually a decent item. the only problem was no one gave it a chance the point i'm making is that maybe the devs have taken up this mindset as well, but unfortunately, it either doesn't translate to tft as well OR they're terrible at doing it lmao essentially, i think they believe that small changes over time won't do much and that they feel as if they HAVE to thrash in order to get the players' attention but i will say, they do it WAY too often to the point where reading becomes more important than playing the actual game sometimes anywho, that's my viewpoint a lot of is just summed up in "players want lp -> copy comps online; devs want fun, engaging game -> change game/comps" like i said, i play whatever, and playing exalted has exercised my skill of just throwing shit in the team planner and hoping it works meaning a lot of these patch changes don't really affect me as much, so hopefully this serves as a different perspective kk thanks for reading my yap tl;dr - players lowkey kinda suck at balancing, so riot wants us to be more flexible, but they also kinda suck at balancing so everyone needs to learn something lol

[@bench2346]

agree with this, well put.

[@zman11335]

1. Exalted is absolutely the most fun thing about this set in my opinion; fantastic mechanic 2. TFT absolutely is a game that usually has the fun solved out of it pretty fast once people figure out the best comps, but riot dropping the game on its head every patch does not keep it fresh in my opinion, its just obnoxious and makes people have to completely relearn the meta from patch to patch 3. You mentioning that RNG like encounters is trying to punish players for forcing the same thing every game which is somewhat reasonable, but then why are there portals/encounters that both support high cost strategies AND rerolling? Different strategies are being punished in different games, and there is no way to know what you are supposed to be playing that game until its well past the point of no return 4. The idea of the devs needing to overbuff something just so that the players perception will allow them to realize a unit exists is fair for sure, but I feel like as long as there is at least 1 buff to a comp people are more willing to give it a try; they don't always need to buff 1000 moving parts in the same comp at the same time while also nerfing the competition to get a comp to be tried out. 5. I reiterate what I said in the conclusion of the video that I could 100% buy it if they felt pressured to balance thrash to keep the meta fresh in older sets, but in the era of modern TFT I just do not believe that it is necessary anymore with the bigger and more qualified teams alongside the larger set durations. They should be able to make exciting changes to the meta without giving everyone whiplash every patch. 6. The devs absolutely cannot stop people from just opening up mobalytics and copying the best comps, or opening tactics.tools and seeing what items they should build or what augments they should take. Its just not something that is in their control. Making the game's meta completely different every patch isn't going to affect those people because they can just wait a day until there is enough data to let them know what is strong and then they will keep copying the best builds. I very much don't want them to keep pretending they can stop this behavior from happening. Remember when they tried to stop augment stats from being trackable by the third party websites so people made private API's that STILL tracked the data from high level lobbies and still used stats to determine what they should be doing in game?

[@KlPooN94]

I have so much problem with this set’s balancing. At the first of the set bard/aphelios was the meta and getting b patch nerf in 3 days. Then yone rises but not being touched for 2 patches, and what does mort do? Nerf the 3cost% killing all the 3 cost reroll just because yone is causing too much problem. And now we have the liss problem.

[@zman11335]

Not to mention that in the most recent patch rundown mort is talking about how they want to help some struggling reroll lines this patch, which is really fascinating considering they completely nuked the strategy a few patches ago. These patches have just been a massive mess.

[@KlPooN94]

@@zman11335 the same mort saying that they want more front to back and dont want assassin-like things that bypass frontline and one-shot backline; then introduce set 9.5 multcast tf and set 11 yone

[@zman11335]

@@KlPooN94 I mean, its actually hilarious that they like to talk about "limiting backline access" when we might have the most incidental backline damage in the history of TFT. Hwei, Rakan, Irelia, Sett, Morgana, Lillia, Trickshot, Dragonlord, Yone, Alune, Lux, etc. The sheer amount of things that just *accidentally* hit your backline during fights is actually insane this set. If your backline carry doesn't have healing or some kind of extra defense they just perish horrifically to everything.

[@KlPooN94]

​@@zman11335 i dont have a problem with 5 cost unit having some form of backline access as long as it doesn't one cast nuking backline unlike the post nerf yone. the main problem i have is why having post nerf yone in the first place

[@zman11335]

@@KlPooN94 Yeah, definitely weird considering their adversity to assassin type units generally to print a unit as strong as yone was

[@Grantyboy2]

I play TFT casually rather than competitively, but I've noticed these issues as well. Some of the encounters feel fine, but a lot of them are just game destroying, and how impactful they are to you is entirely based on your current spot, it's not equal for all players at all. I also think the bag changes from Set 10 made the game worse as well, if you're playing a reroll comp and some guy then plays the unit randomly and holds a couple of extra copies for unknown reasons you just go 8th, it's not like you can pivot from it, so as a result I just avoid rerolling anything because it's just not worth the risk. Getting punished for someone else playing worse really doesn't make sense. I have noticed the trend of 'overbalancing' for quite a while though, sometimes you'll look at the patch notes and they've nerfed a trait, 3 of the units you play in a comp and one of their core items and it's like surely it's obvious what's going to happen to this comp after the patch so why are they doing that all at once? I also think in Set 10 your game was less predetermined, but in Set 11 it feels like a lot of games you can look at your starting units, components and augments at 2-1 and by then already know what comp you have to play or whether you're going top or bot 4. I don't know if it's just me, but the period between level 8 and 9 feels awkward too, and high rolling certain 5 costs in this set is too impactful, like getting a Xayah on 8 as Kaisa comp is so powerful because you can then go straight to 9 while everyone else is zero gold on 8 but if you miss it's so bad, or getting a Liss on 8 and being up multiple items or hitting Hwei and starting to print units. Of course I understand that RNG is part of TFT, but the degree of the RNG in this set in particular is just so high that it doesn't feel fun, even when you win a lot of games just feel like you've been spoon fed. I'm quite disappointed because I liked the theme of the set but at this point I'm just wanting the next to come quickly and hoping it's better.

[@zman11335]

I definitely agree that you can very easily know what your comp is going to be on 2-1, even though this set definitely wants you to play flexibly with the inclusion of things like exalted. But that is one of the biggest advantages of the chosen/headliner mechanic is the ability for you to pivot if you hit a good chosen that you can make work if you slam flexible items early. I didn't mention it in the video, but yeah the 5 costs of this set feel especially highroll-y, since units like lissandra, hwei, and sett have huge upside for hitting them early due to liss farming you items, hwei printing units, and sett infinitely scaling his AD. In addition to the already inherently highroll nature of hitting the 5 cost you need for your comp at level 8... Skill definitely doesn't feel as rewarded in this set as in other sets IMHO

[@Grantyboy2]

@@zman11335 I’m not sure how common the opinion is but I think Exalted was probably one of the best things of this set because it encourages you to play flexibly but it’s never really worth much more than using it for econ or if you high roll the piggy bank augment 2-1 but if it was balanced better it would definitely be a huge winner of the set, similarly I think the emblem golem portal is good design for similar reason even though it has issues like rolling porcelain sniper warden but the thing that makes it so bad is it can roll fortune, these additions are like almost good but still miss the mark. It feels like Riot is quite disconnected from the game itself and kinda caters the game to the worst players which makes for a worse experience for people that have a better understanding of the game.

[@zman11335]

@@Grantyboy2 Yeah, It feels like they are adding a lot of RNG into the game as well with the intention of making it better for casuals but I think it actually just ends up hurting everyone because of how difficult it is to play consistently with all the weird RNG. Exalted really strikes me as a missed opportunity, because even though its really fun and very interesting, there are some exalted sets that are obviously better than others, as well as a lot of the time it just simply not being worth running because the trait just isn't strong enough to support some of the very bad units you are forced to run.

[@buzzingbeebaby]

LFG COMMON ZMAN W

[@ilovako7503]

i agree with u man, tho i am no hardcore player, i lost interest in the set rather quickly and couldn't find the motivation to play. what u covered explains alot of the reasons as to why set 11 just doesn't feel like a good set. That said we all love this fuckng game and wish it the best. More players! More tournaments! bigger tourneys and prizes.

[@Keyblader001]

While last set actively made me quit tft because the set was just so unenjoyable, this set is definitely stale. I think it exploded out of the gate on a good note, but now the meta has been very samey for a while.

[@KlPooN94]

liss is absolutely the biggest fail of this set. This whole set feels like mort giving placebo nerf and then follow up with an overkill. It feels like non of the set can reach set6.5. Set6 6.5 are truly everything is possible, lots of reroll comps, one turn full board pivot.

[@zman11335]

Yeah, if you saw mort's most recent patch rundown, liss is getting the "throw the frontline into the backline and nuke them" part of her kit entirely removed, which is just silly when you consider how overloaded her kit really was on launch.

[@KlPooN94]

@@zman11335 i get that they want to make a cool eating TK back from set 6. but TK can only eat 1 person at a time and all damage are from TK only unlike liss that can easily potting 2 units, sometime 3 units, and your premier tank can be potted, focused and died before having the chance to ult. not the mention you really have to invest gold into set 6 TK

[@KlPooN94]

@@zman11335 it was the same mort having the most clueless take on the supers yuumi, saying mascot healing too much. in reality it was yuumi bypassing frontline and pop your carry on first cast. (he did nerf yuumi after his carry zoe got popped 2s into the fight). his take on liss is just like the yuumi one. liss gives too much answer to a lot of comps without any counterplay. the reason why frontline carries are falling off the meta is because no one has answer for liss. i can win over a 3 star lee sin so easily just by putting liss in front of him.

[@KlPooN94]

@@zman11335 the correct way to nerf liss, 1. is actually give her less mana and more starting mana (1 auto to cast), so you can actually counter liss by 2nd row tank, 2. give liss more damage but only liss can damage the potted unit, 3. remove the throw, 4. keeping 50% drop rate. you really have to invest and put items on liss in order to farm gold and items

[@zman11335]

@@KlPooN94 100% agree, I think removing her stun could also be interesting, making it so your tank can still act after being hit by her so maybe they still have a chance to do something

[@Mouzhappy]

fortune is literally useless

[@kryssix8842]

set 11 is wayyyyyy better than set 10 and Im so happy we are back to form with set 11

[@treehouse1998]

post rank

[@monsieurmustache1]

You are nitpicking and biased, I win, bye bye

[@dachosens1]

oml you are just yapping so much, tft players am i rite although early on meta was questionable at least it there were still a variety of playable comps regardless of playstyle like literally the meta is in a decent position right now and next patch is just minor changes, heavenly changes were necessary, although i wish they still had some of the star up more power in trait aspects,

[@ZiyadAzouny]

L takes