As part of its ongoing, and frankly Sisyphean, efforts to combat toxic behavior in League of Legends, Riot Games offered a "mystery gift" to players who managed to get through 2014 without being a jerk to other people. It will do the same thing this year, but as Riot's Jeffrey Lin explained on Ask.fm, there are going to be some changes to its policies.

"We always want to encourage reform, and celebrate players that successfully reform by the end of the season. So, players that got a Chat or Ranked Restriction during the season, but manage to reform and DO NOT HAVE active Chat or Ranked Restrictions by the season end cutoff will still get their Ranked Rewards," Lin wrote. "Players that still have active Chat or Ranked Restrictions by the season end cutoff will not be eligible."

Players who have received a few Low Priority Queues will also be eligible for Ranked Rewards, because Riot doesn't want to punish anyone who may have simply had problems with their ISP or hardware. "Extremely chronic leavers" will not be eligible for the rewards, however, nor will anyone who's received an escalated (seven or 14-day) ban at any point during the 2015 season.

"Players that have received these types of bans have shown some of the most egregious behaviors in the game, and we have a zero tolerance policy against things like racism, sexism, homophobia and other kinds of hate speech," Lin wrote. "These players WILL be eligible for Ranked Rewards in future seasons if they reform and are not flagged for excessive behaviors in future seasons."

It's safe to assume that Riot will be true to its word: In March, it lifted a two-year-old permaban against Nicolaj 'Incarnati0n' Jensen, declaring that he "has continued to demonstrate behavior in game that is well above the normal standards of good behavior across all of his accounts since at least January 2014."

Thanks, GamePolitics.

Another patch, another slew of changes—and with Worlds coming up soon (just two patches and a September away), this one's a big'un. The introduction of so many new items and balance tweaks in the last few months have been alarming to pro players and team analysts, as they force a frantic pace of adaptations in preparation for the big prize... and, conceivably, have affected some tournament results along the way.

It's not just a change in top-tier champions that affects tournament outcomes, but general role dynamics too. Across-board nerfs for aggressive jungle champions, for instance, was a major factor in the top-lane teleport metagame that rewarded teams oriented towards particularly capable carry laners in that role, favoring them over more supportively oriented player styles. The effects of it wouldn't be immediately apparent to the casual viewer: in both meta instances, Maokai's a high priority pick due to his inherent strength in teamfights. But the difference is between a Maokai that teleports early to rush people down with Righteous Glory and a Maokai content to sit back and farm for 30 minutes before stomping into the fray with a more expensive overall kit to include Frozen Heart, Aegis of the Legion, and whatever else is specifically handy for the overall game situation.

Unfortunately, I've got some terrible news for carries: 5.16 does you no favors.

Peashooters

Initially, the reduced effectiveness of armor items seemed like it would be a boon to AD carries. Even if they're cheaper, they offer less points of armor per item—surely a substantial improvement for the role. And given how much AD carries have struggled this year, it certainly seems overdue.

But look closer. It's like an unbelievably good cell phone deal: the stipulations to their "buff" come at greater cost than any of its benefits. The armor decrease comes hand-in-hand with an across-board armor-per-level gain buff, especially to bot-lane supports like Alistar and Leona. What was already an increasingly difficult laning phase, far more dependent on the support's influence than anything the AD carry does, is made even harder as a result. Early on, nobody buys cloth armor or anything similar, so the item reductions don't affect that crucial early phase at all.

But it gets worse! With Randuin's Omen now neutralizing a percent of critical hit damage, physical damage carries now have an even rougher transition out of the laning phase too. Their long-term game plan, as of the last season, was to build up serious AD and back it up with serious critical hit modifiers from Infinity Edge—a combination of damage amplification effects more than capable of burning down even the most stubborn of tanks. With the crit nerf, however, even their late-game presence is now in jeopardy. A combination of Frozen Heart and Randuin's Omen hurts especially badly now.

If you think this means that Corki gets yet another indirect pre-Worlds buff, don't kid yourself. They dropped the cost of magic resistance items too—not necessarily a hard nerf to mages, who got a lot of goodies with the AP itemization update patch, but champions reliant on mixed damage kits to circumvent armor stacking now has an even smaller window of relevance to play with.

Broadswords

On the other end of things, bruisers got their Christmas presents early! The new items are meant to help the "juggernaut" archetype—the sort of champion that's meant to wade into a fight into punching range and break noses.

...they might've done too good a job at it. The new items are a little crazy. Expect a lot more Hecarims on patch 5.16, because the horsey got a better saddle. Dead Man's Plate, fresh out of Black Market Brawlers, turns an already quick pony into a devastating charger: Dreadnought passive boosts to his movement already plays into a kit built around running around, but then further rewards Hecarim for just plain existing by adding extra damage and a slow for hitting people at full speed. The item might be named after Gangplank's recent lore escapades, but it is effectively a multiplier on Devastating Charge, not to mention giving the champion an even larger radius of engagement to work with.

Meanwhile, there's Sterak's Gage—or, as I'd like to think of it, Mega-Gnar's Favorite Toy. Not only does it give Gnar a great early-game itemization path (Long Sword and Giant's Belt? Perfect!), but it's exactly the sort of item he'd want for jumping into teamfights: a giant chunk of free attack damage, a health-scaling shield, and an even BIGGER physical size! All the better to absorb skillshots with and intimidate smaller champions!

Unfortunately, and ironically, signature bruiser item Warmog's Armor loses relevance in the face of all of this competition. There's only six slots, after all, and so many things build off Giant's Belt now. Even as Warmog's Armor basically gets Garen's passive, regenerating a crazy 3% total HP per second if you haven't been attacked in a while, its steeper cost and mitigated combat relevance makes it a difficult choice in light of these better options. The situational regeneration's only really useful for sustained laning presence—it doesn't exist at all in context of a team fight, or if you're under 3000 maximum health. Even a Frozen Mallet's more useful.

Of course, that raises the question for how the meta's going to adjust to this bruiser-biased metagame.

Bleeders

The meatier metagame and crit mitigation demands a greater focus on percent-health damage sources. The reduced value to Infinity Edge is an indirect buff to Blade of the Ruined King, as well as champions that can exploit it to max potential. Generally, that takes two forms: either auto-attackers already equipped with percent-health damage, or champions that are inherently hard to catch and can kite forever. In other words, welcome back to the meta, Vayne and Caitlyn.

Vayne's the high-risk/high-reward type: relatively short auto-attack ranges and a very short-range dash. She's slipperier than eels, but can't quite make it over walls, making her comparatively easy to catch (if you can dodge or bait out the Condemn knockback, at least). But the inherent synergy of Silver Bolts and Ruined King makes quick work of even the meatiest tanks, and is one of the few AD carry kits that truly benefits from the armor changes. Kog'maw too, for similar reasons, except exchanging short-range mobility for ungodly range. He might not have escapes, but who needs escapes if the rest of your team's made of bruisers too, making it nigh-impossible to catch him?

Caitlyn, however, has none of their benefits—the reason you'd play her's simply for an easy laning phase and to be impossible to catch. The Sheriff of Piltover's 90 Caliber Net flings her backwards, over walls and out to safety, and the Yordle Snap Traps make it difficult to path straight at her. Anything, in other words, to squeeze out yet another autoattack. Ruined King won't let her kill anywhere near as consistently or quickly as the Infinity Edge meta, but that isn't her role—in fact, that isn't the role for any AD carry anymore.

To the chagrin of bot lane specialists, it's a misnomer to consider them carries now. The more accurate mindset, I think, is to count them as sustained-damage supports. There is the faint and desperate hope, of course, that patches 5.17 and 5.18 provides them some love. But for the next month, at least, things are going to be a little (more) rough for the League's gunslingers.

Team Solomid once again proved themselves to be the playoff princes of the NA LCS this early morning in Taiwan, and it's starting to become something of a tradition. Struggle early, win the region's title anyhow—a legacy of clutch plays across multiple rosters that seems almost inevitable so long as they're performing within the confines of the continental USA.

Outside, not so much. In fact, TSM's only the latest team to join the confirmed list of Worlds-qualified regional representatives. And thus far, the field is already full of surprises.

Two for Taiwan

Flash Wolves and ahq E-Sports Club being the second and first seeds, respectively, for the diminutive Taiwanese region isn't exactly surprising. But there was about a half-month period where it seemed as if the world was getting to have Kurtis "Toyz" Lau come out of the cold at last to reclaim his mid lane crown. The Season 2 world champion's new team in Hong Kong Esports ripped straight through the summer playoffs—not bad for a team bereaved by their star AD carry's sudden banishment amid Elo-boosting allegations, and almost reminiscent of ahq's miracle run back in spring.

Except, of course, that it was ahq in the grand finals, and Hong Kong Esports fell short in a white-knuckled 0-3 defeat—though for a 3-loss streak, it was impressive how close they managed to make it. Sadly, they couldn't keep it up: they exhausted themselves in a full-fledged best-of-five set against Taipei Assassins in the regional playoffs, themselves suffering the loss of Singaporean mid laner Xing Lei "Chawy" Wong to the same ban allegations. Then HKE found themselves firing on empty against the Flash Wolves. Though Toyz and company managed to pull out a decisive round-one win, the Wolves' better overall form snapped shut any hopes of a return to the world stage.

In the face of Toyz's announced retirement, that might be the last we'll see of the former 2012 world champions. Bebe certainly isn't cutting it with the Assassin Snipers, hogging the last place slot in the LoL Master Series. Then again, this isn't the first time that Toyz's retired either—and maybe, if fortune smiles upon Taiwan's successes on the world stage, his hunger'll get revitalized too.

After all, unlike last year (or the year before), Taiwan's been making splashes. It's been the recipient of a stroke of good fortune—the almost literally impoverished esports region might not have the funding, sponsors, or attention of their richer northerly neighbors, scraping together what they can from local players and Korea's B- and C-tier talents, but they're just barely good enough to justify scrim time with their Chinese and Korean counterparts. Sure, China gets Kakao, Flame, Pawn and everybody else—including Samsung White's coaches and staff. But there's a reason why Taiwan went from last-place trash to beating up western teams at MSI: we get to borrow China's notes. We might not get to have world-class infrastructure, but we'll take that infrastructure's intellectual products. And with it, the chance for yet another legendary upset—one to eclipse 2012.

Eastern Beasts

What the heck do you mean EDG isn't qualified for LPL's first seed?! What do you mean they didn't even make it to the finals?!

I haven't written extensively about Chinese League of Legends, because Kelsey Moser over at TheScore does it better than I do, so to catch up quickly: EDG is—or was—the demon prince of the Chinese circuit. Depending on whether Faker feels like hard-carrying on a week to week basis, they were even considered the number one team in the entire world over the course of the season. For them to fall so short was way outside of anybody's expectations—and a terrible nightmare for everybody else's first seeds, whomever that may be after the conclusion of their respective playoffs and regionals.

It's a ticking time bomb, just waiting to explode. Can Fnatic handle EDG? Heck, can SKT T1 and Faker? They failed to do so back at MSI—and even as everybody else's gotten more refined in the intervening months, the shadow of China's first international victory since IPL 5 still lurks at the back of their thoughts.

It's most worrying for SKT T1, because as dominant as they've been all season, their surprising loss late into the SBENU Champions Summer split brings unwanted scrutiny to how strong they actually are—and by extension, the rest of the Korean competitive circuit. Even domestically, they have notable weaknesses: even as their individual play is solid (especially, of course, Faker's), their coordination isn't quite as on-par with some of their peers. And that isn't an issue for EDG. If SKT T1 secures the first seed berth for Worlds, only to find EDG lurking in their group, it is entirely possible for Korea's best team to find itself stumbling out of the gates.

The Restless West

Of course, if EDG lands on Fnatic's doorsteps instead, the west is just plain screwed. With their complete dismantling of the Unicorns of Love, Fnatic seems set on taking a completely undefeated split—just one more best-of-five at the EU LCS grand finals to go 24-0! ...but it wasn't entirely easy, even against the Unicorns. They have a bad habit of falling behind early, taking ganks and dropping turrets before catching their European rivals by surprise in a flurry of counter-attacks and skirmishes. All of which had depended on lapses in pressure and a stronger understanding of mid-game dynamics than their rivals, which hasn't been a problem for their eventual Asian opponents.

Solomid's not in comparatively good graces. Yes, their playoffs versus Team Liquid were successful, pitting them in a legendary confrontation against Counter Logic Gaming—a rivalry as old as League of Legends esports. But even as they once again proved themselves playoff kings, it also exposed a lot of continued weaknesses with TSM. The fact that Wildturtle can be as far as 50 CS behind his counterpart and still be relevant in fights says more—a distressingly LOT more—about Team Liquid's state of play than it does about TSM's bot laner's capabilities. Same with Dyrus versus Quas—ill omens for when he faces off against LGD's Flame or ahq's Ziv.

And if not them, who else? The rest of North American League of Legends have similar coordination issues. While the rest of the regions, especially in the eastern hemisphere, have stepped it up since MSI, it sometimes seems as if North America's struggling to figure out how to play at all. While the pan-Asian scrim system is incubating a slew of new threats—successful hybridizations of last year's stars and monsters—the western teams are stuck with the same folks that failed to make the scratch last time.

But, heck, maybe it isn't so dire. Maybe those IEM results earlier this year—the first American victory since forever and a day—weren't just a random fluke. A region can only hope.

Last week Riot released their "Riot Pls" blog, an experiment in long-form explanations and updates for what they're working on and the reasonings behind them. First on the slate was why replays and sandbox modes haven't yet been implemented in the game despite community demands for it stretching back literal years, all the way to the game's debut.

To put it mildly, the community didn't like what they had to say.

The situation with replays might be understandable. The Riot blogging team started with an explanation that League of Legends' tech debt, or the underlying and outdated codes and infrastructure to the game, was "deep, deep in the weeds." Their reason for the lack of replay functionality followed along those lines. The issues with backwards compatibility, network stability, and their somewhat peculiar insistence on server-side storage required a total revamp of the game client itself—something that they've now officially acknowledged they're currently conducting.

While frustrating, especially since replays were part of the game's original release pitch, anybody that's ever had their Smash Bros. replays break because of balance changes can probably understand their desire to have something that works the first time. Their desire for proper native support is understandable too. The original replay demo they put up in the Public Beta Environment, over two years ago now, was far more than a simple video playback, but included stat updates, camera focuses much like how broadcasts are currently conducted, and other useful gimmicks. To have them break, repeatedly, with every new patch would certainly make for an asinine user-side experience. Acceptable, and expected, for third-party systems, maybe, but not so much for Riot's version.

Far, far less explainable is their stance on sandboxes. Said Riot, "our stance is that sandbox mode is not the way to go. We want to make sure we re clear: playing games of League of Legends should be the unequivocal best way for a player to improve. While there are very real skills one can develop in a hyperbolic time chamber, we never want that to be an expectation added onto an already high barrier to entry."

One step at a time

The Riot stance on sandboxing fundamentally misunderstands two things: the burden of knowledge impact on the base game's experience, and the base game's effectiveness in training. Each misunderstanding affects two different subsets of their player base, with the first affecting the most by far.

Currently, in order to properly learn League of Legends, you pretty much have two options: get yelled at by players in custom games for dying to bots 10 times in a row, or get really yelled at for dying 20 times to human players! The tutorial mode is a widely acknowledged joke, and the educational resources for the game are largely outside the game itself, nested in half a dozen community-operated sites offering a plethora of guides of extremely variable quality. There's the custom games option, which is a sort of extremely crude sandbox—one that doesn't give you the ability to fiddle with variables and test spell interactions directly, forcing you instead to play Farmville for X minutes until you have the stats and circumstances available.

But that still assumes that the novice player stepping into the game will know what they're doing regarding last-hitting, wall-Flashing, a-moving, etc, ad nauseum. Miss a Flash, and you're twiddling your thumbs for three minutes before it comes off cooldown. Want to practice early-level trades, and you're out of luck the moment you ding level six or later, requiring you to exit to client. The circumstances they'd want to test with sandboxes already exist—just locked up in a frustrating and wasteful manner.

How many potential players have Riot lost specifically because of this status quo? Riot's Design Communications Lead Pwyff claimed "This is how I got better at playing DotA - I just mashed thousands of games out with Puck and picked up a broad fundamental skillbase. It was a default expectation - either because there were no better alternatives (a la League) or there were sandbox modes available but playing games was the best." But while the full-immersion way of learning is certainly effective for some people, and is a recommended technique for picking up new languages, none of that actually addresses whether it's a pleasant or rewarding experience for new players.

Hint: it really isn't. The lack of a stepping-stone tool, or at least a decently-designed tutorial mode, is one of the biggest barriers to entry.

Joining the fight

The lack of a sandbox also affects competitive play, though not necessarily in obvious ways. The pro player community have largely lent their weight in dissatisfaction with Riot's reasoning, but it's mostly just an annoyance for the uppermost echelon teams. The status quo actually protects them—the lack of a sandbox mode helps exacerbate the veterancy advantage that extant LCS teams have over their Challenger peers.

The problem is experience in group dynamics. Solo queue success is the primary means in which a player is determined to be eligible for recruitment, but the circumstances and environments of it are extremely dissimilar with actual pro play. The comparative lack of communication, pick-ban strategies, and pre-determined openers and strategies makes the two ultimately very different, despite using the same code, map and champions. Nobody comes out of solo queue knowing how to play around power spikes or sixth-man lane pressures—mostly, they just know how to 1v1 and roam.

A sandbox mode would've offered the chance to practice the skills they haven't developed: gold timings, moving together as a cohesive unit, or even just testing approach formations. For an aspiring team, it would've potentially been more useful than a week's worth of scrims, just getting used to moving as a group. In the status quo, they learn this by getting their ass kicked by teams that have already figured it out—and then get relegated out of the LCS at the end of the season, which has thus far proven a really good way at making people retire instead of fostering future talents.

It would've possibly also prevented a number of other forced suspensions—specifically, those players that were banned for account-sharing, like former world champion Alex "Lilballz" Sung. The quasi-illegal secondary market for pre-leveled smurf accounts aren't just driven by entitled nerds who have the mistaken impression that their teammates are the only reason they're stuck in Bronze—they're also driven from the other end by high-end players that can't be bothered to sit through half-hour queues for their own practices.

Pwyff is right about one thing: in the status quo, the best way to train is to fight against human opponents. Custom games and Co-op are terrible modes to do so—but the status quo also discourages people from risking their hidden Elo or current rank in order to learn new champions. Smurf accounts, which have largely been a detriment to the solo queue experience, are the inevitable compromise in the face of those incentives. It is, specifically, because of the lack of feasible alternative training options that games get ruined in mid- to high-rank play.

Eating humble pie

The backpedaling in the face of community critique was almost immediate. Claimed Pwyff: "When discussions get heated, I pick up an equally opposed perspective to see if a held opinion can be challenged. If I seemed like I was taking a hard-line stance on things, I was focused on getting that alternative perspective out rather than acknowledging arguments."

And that would've made sense if the debuting Riot Pls blog piece was about that fractious internal debate. Instead, it was a pretty hardlined and unambiguous stance: "We never want to see a day when a player wants to improve at League and their first obligation is to hop into a Sandbox. We do want to support your ability to grow in mastery, and there may be other avenues to do so, but not this." Whatever the internal debate going on in Riot HQ, the fact of the blog's publishing signals that the direction of that debate's veered off-course from what the community needs and demands.

It's not the first time that Riot's attempted to re-invent the wheel in order to solve a fundamental problem, and it probably won't be the last. But this is one they ought to wave the white flag on. Sandboxing isn't an obligation. It's a necessity for the development of strong gameplay fundamentals. The incentives of solo queue play heavily distorts player behavior outside of the sandbox at all levels, inhibiting the development of requisite skills.

Said Design Director Greg Street, in relation to the new user interface design, "it is weasely game design to say 'We developers really don't know what a good experience is, so we're just going to give you a big tool set and hope you can find something fun.'" But the reverse is often even more true: it's arrogant to tell players "we know what you need better than you."

Training options are not something to be curated, and sandbox modes are not a lesser priority. Give us what we want already—we've been waiting far too long.

Less than a week after killing him off, Riot has confirmed that Gangplank will return at the conclusion of the Bilgewater event. But the experience will leave him changed, as he apparently lost an arm during his temporary journey into the world beyond. 

"The orchestrated spectacle of the Dead Pool s destruction led many to believe that the dread reaver Gangplank perished in the flames. But what is dread may never die, and Gangplank returns to reclaim what he believes to be rightfully his," Riot wrote. "Fitted with a new limb to replace the one he lost, the Saltwater Scourge will soon rain cannonballs down on Summoner s Rift again after a brief stay on the PBE."

It's hardly a surprising development. An awful lot of people paid money for the character, for one thing, and so arbitrarily yoinking him out of the lineup was never really in the cards. And as we noted in the original report, Riot gave a knowing wink to the LoL community when it said, "We encourage all Gangplank fans to remain calm for a few days until we can fully assess the situation." We also put "killed" in quotes, just in case there was any doubt that we weren't buying it for a minute.

Players who prefer Gangplank's pre-Bilgewater look can stick with it by way of the Captain Gangplank skin, which will be given free to anyone who owns the champion and plays (or has played) an entire matchmade game with him prior to the end of the event on August 10.

Last week, League of Legends "killed" off a Champion. The pirate Gangplank was sent to meet Davy Jones' Locker, or so it seemed. Actually, no. He's due back any day now—and mostly in tact.

"The orchestrated spectacle of the Dead Pool s destruction led many to believe that the dread reaver Gangplank perished in the flames," explains a post on LoL's official site. "But what is dread may never die, and Gangplank returns to reclaim what he believes to be rightfully his.

"Fitted with a new limb to replace the one he lost, the Saltwater Scourge will soon rain cannonballs down on Summoner s Rift again after a brief stay on the PBE."

It turns out Gangplank didn't so much drown, as didn't drown. He did, however, lose an arm. To catch up with the in-game story behind the event, you can read the Epilogue here.

The pirate will return for LoL's next patch, due out this week. And while his default character model will have a newly mechanised arm, fans of his previous look will be able to earn the old-style Captain Gangplank skin for their wardrobe.

"Since this is the first time we've done something so dramatic with story and theme, we're commemorating the event with the Captain Gangplank skin depicting the dread pirate from before the events of Bilgewater: Burning Tides. All players who own and play (or have already played) an entire matchmade game as Gangplank during the event will receive the Captain Gangplank skin for free."

Players have until the end of the event, August 10, to complete the challenge and earn the skin.