Hi all,

You may have noticed the lack of updates over the past year. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to change. Sorry about the bad news, but I'm guessing most of you already anticipated that based on the lack of updates.

So as soon as I am allowed to by Steam (hopefully next week), I will be making MOBA GM free.

If anyone would like to take up the mantle of MOBA GM development, I open sourced all of the code behind the game: https://github.com/dumbmatter/zengm-legacy/tree/master/moba

And you can play the web version of the game on the ZenGM website, also for free: https://moba.zengm.com/

I am going to have to push the next update back to next Sunday, April 12th. Sorry about that.

Here is the list of new champions:

1. Kai'Sa
   
2. Pyke
   
3. Neeko
   
4. Sylas
   
5. Yuumi
   
6. Qiyana
   
7. Senna
   
8. Aphelios
   
9. Sett

I had thought users might do this with custom files, but the early/mid/late, synergy, and counter data isn't easy to work with. So until I simplify adding new champions I plan on keeping them updated myself.

• Fixed some links.
  
• Fixed Player page salary display.
  
• For now removing highlighting on the league history page because it doesn't mesh well with
  the current table design.
  
• MSI history page 2nd knockout team display correctly now.
  
• For now removing Champion Synergy and Champion Counter pages until I make them more stable.
  
• Fixed 2019 LPL 1 & 2 seeds.
  
• Fixed 2019 LPL Groups using #1 seed twice (may be due to change above, so never was live).
  
• Fixed KDA and Tower Differential tiebreakers in standings and playoffs.
  
• The Standings page for Worlds w/ Ladder can get messed up after simulating a season (probably has something to do with the new filtering feature on that page). If you leave the league and reenter it seems to fix itself. I was able to simulate until 2030 without a problem it seemed. However, I wasn't able to pinpoint exactly when/where it would go bad. It seems to be due to the conference data getting corrupted somehow. It takes a while to test that league. So I am still working on it. If you happen to notice when/where it goes bad please do let me know.

The next update will be on Sunday, April 5th.

I'm still working through some of the suggestions I got for this past update. Sorry if I didn't get to yours. However, feel free to send more bug fixes and quality of life improvements. I may focus more on this for the next update.

v1.155

Our last update would break on import for leagues that had played more than 1 season. This is fixed now. Sorry about that.

In the past league wide champion stats would just accumulate over the years. In order to better capture the meta changes I've enabled a dropdown that will allow you to view champion stats by year.

I also added a score stat to better sort the top champions. It is a combination of games played and KDA.

There is probably more that can be done here. So feel free to suggest new ways of looking at champion data that would help you particularly with drafting in Coach Mode.

I took the most recent custom roster file:

https://old.reddit.com/r/zengmlol/comments/eaqubn/2020_moba_gm_roster_update/fb1i7aw/?st=k5l40ep6&sh=7740b178

and I did some more testing on it. It is a Worlds file. Those should work for any game type (NA, EU, LCK, LPL, Worlds w/ Ladder). However, it was missing some information I was using to do that. So I cleaned it up. Those game types should now work with that file. Also, it should now work even better for other files that had been working.

So if you are new and just want to play a quick game to learn, you can take that file and use it on an LCK league, for instance, to just play with those team. That league should play relatively fast.

Alternatively, if you really want a challenge, you can also import it into the Worlds w/ Ladder game type so the top teams will have the real players.

Here is the list of new features/performance improvements/bug fixes:

1. League champion stats can now be viewed by year.
   
2. Champion Stats page now has a score stat to better sort the top champions.
   
3. Power Rankings page now has a team/conferences dropdown.
   
4. New God Mode option to let users change max roster size.
   
5. Custom roster files better convert Worlds files to LCS-NA only, LCS-EU only, LCK only, LMS only, and Worlds w/ Ladder.
   
6. Standings page now has a conference dropdown (by region and ladder)
   
7. Adjusted MVP calculation.
   
8. Champion Synergy and Champion Counter pages further refined to make more robust against crashes.
   
9. League Player Stats page, League Player Ratings page, and Leaders page weren't showing the full list of players when looking at prior years. This is now fixed.

Recently I've been more focused on making sure custom rosters work and making sure the game can be played many years without issue. That way users can get the most out of existing features and roster files. I still want to do more here in line with the recent updates.

However, I'm hoping to soon start working on some more major features. The two next key ones are probably updating the champion lists with any new champions and updating the playoffs/leagues for 2020.

Here is my current order of importance going forward:

1. Looking to further refine long term gameplay (particularly focused on custom rosters).
   
2. Expanding the number of champions.
   
3. Updating the playoffs/leagues for 2020.

The next update will be Sunday, February 23rd.

If you do happen to run into any bugs/issues please do let me know. Also, if you can think of any quality of life improvement feel free to let me know as well.

I went through all the custom rosters that had been posted by users since MOBA GM's release in 2018. They all were working (loading and simulating). You can find a list of them here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/zengmlol/comments/3xww1n/best_of_lol_gm/

One bug I found was with regards to contracts. This was fixed.

So if you have used a file, and contracts were all really low, then you may want to try that file again. It also impacted future contracts since the minContract and maxContract global variables were off. So for those particular files this should be a big fix.

There was a new file posted today by reddit user Piph_:

https://www.reddit.com/r/zengmlol/comments/eaqubn/2020_moba_gm_roster_update/

I tested it and it seemed to work fine.

The next update will be on Sunday, January 19th, 2020.

Best of /r/ZenGMLOL Updated

I updated all the roster files that have been posted to our subreddit going back over a year in our "Best of" post.

You can see it here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/zengmlol/comments/3xww1n/best_of_lol_gm/

I also did a bug fix for 2018 files that don't have the game state included that broke for 2019. Those files will now start in 2018 instead of breaking.

Real Champion Names

You could always import real names. But I've decided to try just giving you the real names. This could change at any time should Riot or Steam request it. It is trivial for me to change it back.

For now, both LOL and DOTA2 champion/hero names will come standard in any new league. I also changed the menu to better show that the standard option is LOL and that you can change it to DOTA2.

Other Fixes

1) The Hall of Fame page should be more robust and should work for any league that had it broken.

2) The new 2019 Worlds with the expanded Wild Card teams had duplicate abbreviations. This made it impossible to view the roster pages, etc. of one of the teams. I've gone through and fixed a number of these.

Next Update Next Sunday

A few things came up that pushed back my schedule. So I didn't get everything I wanted done. To make it up I'm going to do another release next Sunday (December 15th). I'll be primarily focused on making sure all the "Best of" roster files work.

The updated champion drafting I recently put into place to better handle champions that can be used in multiple roles could break when using the champion Executioner. The reason was there were actually two of these champions in the game (Darius and Draven). So the ADC version was changed to Executioner2 since people may be used to it already.

The name changes only for new leagues. If you have an existing league you can go to Tools/Edit Champions. However, it only impacts Coach Mode leagues when the user selects those champions.


The subreddit ZenGM LOL had a few custom rosters recently that were not working for people. So I tested and sure enough there were some issues.

The first one I fixed was:

https://www.reddit.com/r/zengmlol/comments/dlaacy/lol_gm_worlds_roster_2019/

I believe it was based on LOL GM. For some reason the conversion to a MOBA GM file was broken. I fixed that.

One of the team's region was also set to 000 instead of CIS. I fixed the game not being able to simulate with this issue. However, it also broke the Standings page among others. So on file import the game will fix this particular file's bug.

For existing leagues (if you could actually import the file), if you go to Tools/Edit Teams and change the region the game should work better.

I also reviewed two other files:

https://www.reddit.com/r/zengmlol/comments/dle2vy/lol_worlds_updated_roster/

and

https://www.reddit.com/r/zengmlol/comments/didato/lolgm_2019_rosters/

The prior fixes appeared to get these files working as well. A big thanks to the creators of these files. It is a lot of work.

I will try to ensure files like these are working going forward and plan on reviewing even older files for next time in case there are other bugs I've missed. If you know of any non working files feel free to let me know.

1. The 2019 2nd Groups stage better ensures teams from the same conference aren't in the same group.
   
2. Fixed trade bug where player stats weren't tracked correctly.
   
3. Background Change moved from God Mode to the Options page.
   
4. League Dashboard only shows Spring Split standings for leagues with a both Spring and Summer Split.
   
5. A few user team highlight changes.
   
6. Multi-team dropdown color change.
   
7. Contract proposal color change for the different options.
   
8. Reduced game size by deleting unused country logos.
   
9. Removed the display of both team names in certain areas since they are usually the same/redundant.
   
10. Cleaned up the Achievement page (even though it hasn't been activated yet).

The next update will be on December 8th (Sunday).

Thanks to everyone who sent in bug reports and created the custom roster files!

I tested all the major league types over 20 seasons and didn't run into any issues. So it makes me think the issues people are running into as early as 5-8 years may be disc size and generally computer related.

So what I did was have the game automatically:

1. Delete box scores from previous seasons, and
   
2. Delete any retired players who didn't win awards or weren't on the user's team.

This may not fix all issues people run into. However, it will make it a lot easier to go to Tools/Export and send me the file so I can debug the league.

If you run into any issues with a league it may be a simple fix. So please do let me know and ideally send me the league file at commissioner@zengm.com, post it on the /r/zengmlol subreddit, or pm me (/u/mycoder) on reddit.

For those who don't want to have players deleted or have box scores deleted I have created the Options Page where you can turn these features off.

When you create a Coach Mode league (versus GM Mode) you get to draft the champions for each game. Currently the game will then assign each of those champions to your players at the start of the game.

Previously the method that assigned champions would sometimes handle champions that could play more than one role poorly. So the TOP might be the best at a champion but that champion was the only one that could JGL. So the real TOP champion might end up going to the JGL.

Now the game will evaluate every possible champion/player combination and pick the best ones as a group. So the game should much better handle champions that can play multiple roles and allow flex picking much more successfully.

The next update will be on November 3rd.

Again, if you run into any issues/bugs please do let me know. The file sizes should be potentially much smaller than before. You can send those files to me at commissioner@zengm.com, post them on the /r/zengmlol subreddit, or pm me (/u/mycoder) on reddit.

Thanks!

You can now play the updated 2019 playoff format!

Background

Some of the key features for this update are:

1. The wild card conference is dropped for 8 new conferences each with a conference tournament.
   
2. The playoffs now have a group stage (NEW), a play-in (NEW), another group stage, and then the final playoff.
   
3. The initial group stage takes the top team from each of the 8 new conferences (with a few other teams from the 5 major conferences).
   
4. The top two teams from each group are seeded #1 & #2 and then enter a play-in where each #1 seed plays against a #2 seed. The winner makes it to the second group stage with the rest of the team from the top 5 major conferences who automatically make it that far.
   
5. The rest of the playoffs proceed as before.

How To Use

To create a league with the new format you want to select:

1. Game Type: Worlds
   
2. Year Format: 2019

Next Update

If I did inadvertently create a major bug with this latest update then I could do a quick bug fix right away. Otherwise, I'll look to clean up any minor bugs that people come across and do some quality of life improvements on October 6th.

If you do come across any issues please do let me know at the subreddit /r/zengmlol or e-mail me at commissioner@zengm.com. Thanks!