Clash NA beta - What’s changing? Your feedback in action!

https://i.imgur.com/e81C2ZU.png Hey all! Thanks so much for participating in the Clash beta in NA! We got a ton of useful information, bug reports, feedback, memes and big plays from you all, and we wanted to share what we&rsquo;re doing next as we ramp up for launch. First up, we saw **over 100,000 players** take part over the three days of the beta. Holy shit, y&rsquo;all. We&rsquo;re so glad so many of you had a great time playing Clash - the new ways you&rsquo;re thinking about pick/ban, practicing specific comps, map rotations and objective control. It warmed our lil&rsquo; macro-loving hearts. We knew some things wouldn&rsquo;t quite hit the bar yet. We are still in beta! Don&rsquo;t forget you&rsquo;ll have a survey in your email to share more feedback soon. Here&rsquo;s 10 things we&rsquo;re looking at after your feedback from the NA Clash beta: #1. Clarity, tooltips and UI * **_You said_: It was sometimes unclear to navigate Clash with some confusing tooltips, incorrect information and missing animations** We&rsquo;ll be implementing better error messaging, tooltips, and cleaning up some of the errors you probably saw. We&rsquo;ll make sure you have a way to navigate Clash before entering a tournament to see where you go after each win. We&rsquo;ll also spell &ldquo;ineligible&rdquo; correctly. #2. Substitutes * **_You said_: The substitute process felt rushed, and &ldquo;Unknown Error&rdquo; issues got in the way of inviting** We knew the tooltip would be an issue going into the beta, so the &ldquo;Unknown Error&rdquo; is already fixed for launch. The error came from the invitee being too high tier than the player they were replacing (which was also a mistake in our FAQ). We&rsquo;ll make it clearer ahead of time what the restrictions are on substitute players, and we&rsquo;re exploring larger improvements to the sub system post-launch, including having a longer time window to make sub selections before lock-in. * **_You said_: Substitutes should last for more than one day, or you should have access to more substitute players** Clash&rsquo;s substitute system is designed for emergencies, not a &ldquo;6th/7th person&rdquo; on the roster. Introducing a 6th/7th creates really awkward situations for prizing - do we treat the extra players as a full teammate, and allow people who don&rsquo;t play to get free stuff, or only give rewards based on participation, in which case being the 6th player on a team is strictly worse than being one of the starting five somewhere else? While it&rsquo;s a little harder to understand, swapping in people for a specific day affords a lot more flexibility to both the team and the sub. #3. SMS verification * **_You said_: Inputting your phone number for SMS sometimes bugged out** We&rsquo;ll be adding a flag dropdown in place of country codes, and continuing to make sure that as many mobile carriers as possible can accept SMS. As a reminder, VOIP phone numbers (Skype, Google Voice etc) will not work, as that would be an abusable way to play on more than one account. * **_You said_: SMS verification for smurfing only partially solves the issue** You&rsquo;re right! We&rsquo;ll never have a 100% deterrent for smurfs in Clash, but we&rsquo;re committed to removing them where possible. SMS is just one piece of the puzzle, and we&rsquo;ll have more ways to remove smurfs from the ecosystem, as well as encouraging higher-tier players to enter tournaments on their mains. https://i.imgur.com/lkVbsoT.jpg #4. Matchmaking and smurfing * **_You said_: Facing obvious smurfs is a game-breaker** First up: not every match you lose, even if you lose badly, is due to smurfing or matchmaking issues. Sometimes games get out of hand, even between perfectly balanced teams. This is a single-elimination tournament, which means we have to pit you against a lot of different people - some will be worse than you, some will be better. That said, we&rsquo;ll be penalizing smurfs we find, and using some behind the scenes matchmaking to help make sure any smurfs we miss start moving up through the Clash tier system, getting them back to their true tier faster. When we go to a global release, we&rsquo;ll also have much clearer guidelines on smurf detection, reporting and penalties. * **_You said_: Some of the 16-team bracket winners were verifiable smurfs** We&rsquo;ve taken immediate action on those accounts, starting with removing all earned Clash rewards. For launch, we will have more robust processes in place to discourage smurfing. * **_You said_: Sometimes matchmaking felt off with teams of vastly different skill in the same tier** We uncovered at least one particularly nasty bug in this beta test that was creating some rather unpleasant matches for players who came back after playing Day 1. We were able to adjust our algorithm for Day 3, but apologies to those affected. Additionally, we&rsquo;re going to adjust our team MMR algorithm to account for some edge cases where one high rated player could group with four low rated players and end up in much lower tiers than they should. Beta tests are invaluable for these kinds of matchmaking issues, because real data beats our test data any day of the week. We&rsquo;re going to keep tightening up these calculations before (and even after) launch, and additionally evaluate whether we need more tiers if competition feels truly stacked. #5. Tickets * **_You said_: The ticket buying process was a bit awkward, and it&rsquo;s unclear why the three-for-BE restriction is in place** This was another feature that didn&rsquo;t make it into our beta build; we&rsquo;re enabling multiple BE purchases in one transaction. As for the BE ticket restriction: In order to give the best possible prizes for running the gauntlet (like high tier skins), we need to gate a premium entry behind an RP purchase. We want to make sure that (aside from prizing) the Clash experience is identical no matter how you choose to enter, but for those of you that want to go ham, you have that option available. This also gives you the opportunity to enter all three days for BE if you don&rsquo;t end up winning a single bracket. We&rsquo;ll likely be changing the ticket system to have a clearly defined &ldquo;basic&rdquo; and &ldquo;premium&rdquo; entry with different individual ticket types, but that&rsquo;ll be after launch. https://i.imgur.com/VQSjDcu.png #6. Team creation * **_You said_: You want to be able to break apart your team, permanently kick players, or form new teams throughout the weekend** Teams in Clash should win, lose and improve together. Clash teams are locked for the full weekend, partly because the easier it is to leave a team, the more potential problems this can cause. Assuming we did allow you to blow up a team and start over, who makes that decision? If a single player can just depart from your roster consequence-free, they potentially leave the rest of the squad in the lurch. All those other players then no longer can really play Clash, and may not be able to reform a team in time. Bear in mind that we can&#039;t just hold a vote, because that&#039;s easy to abuse by just saying you&#039;ll refuse to come back unless the team disbands, potentially holding everyone hostage. Also, allowing you to leave a team only if that team has lost creates a weird set of incentives. If I know some of my teammates aren&#039;t around later in the weekend, do we throw the final match on Friday so that we can still make another team? Or am I stuck in a squad that can&#039;t play, and forced to get fewer rewards because I was foolish enough to win my games? And if we allow players on teams that won to disband, we get back to the same problem about whose decision that is, but the severity is increased 10x because other people&#039;s entries and potential prizes are on the line. For these reasons, we&rsquo;re not going to be changing at the moment, but we will continue to make it clear that your lock-in is for the whole weekend so you don&rsquo;t feel misled and trapped into a team. * **_You said_: Finding a team to play with is hard** We&rsquo;ll be partnering with op.gg to release a team building tool to find other players like you! There&rsquo;ll be ways to filter by skill level, position and even playstyle to try and find the most suitable matches for you and your squad. #7. Eligibility and participation * **_Some of you said_: It&rsquo;s not clear how to get out of Honor 0-1 to play Clash** We recently [lowered the requirement](https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-86-notes#patch-honor) to get from level 0 to level 2, and we&rsquo;re continuing to monitor those changes. It&rsquo;s something we know can seem like a grind, but just getting honored isn&rsquo;t sufficient for climbing - you still need to ensure you&rsquo;re _playing to win_ consistently to get back to level 2. * **_We also heard_: What if Clash was double elimination?** Double elimination brackets take a lot of time, and can end up punishing the teams in the winners&rsquo; bracket really heavily. There are some situations where winning teams would have to wait hours for their final matches. We could nerd out here about bracket formats and stuff but we&rsquo;ve only got so much space in this post. https://i.imgur.com/NjlxE9Y.jpg #8. Rewards * **_You said_: The new rewards for Clash feel pretty good, but it&rsquo;s not clear how and when you earn them** We&rsquo;ll be adding some more information around when exactly you can expect to receive your capsule (hint: it&rsquo;s when you lose out of a bracket) and some better graphics to differentiate between 1-ticket and 5-ticket entries. We&rsquo;ll publish full loot tables for Clash at launch, too, so you know what you&rsquo;re fighting for. #9. Other known issues * **_You said_: Not transitioning to champ select and losing feels bad** We&rsquo;ve been specifically [looking for this bug](https://boards.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/client-new-features-feedback/hapd2crT-need-more-clash-come-play-clash-and-kill-bugs-this-wednesday-april-18th) and similar ones for a while now. If you never made it to champ select during the Clash beta, you should have your tickets returned to you already. If you experienced other issues like bugsplats or game crashes, check out our [Troubleshooting Connection Issues](https://support.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/201752664) guide. * **_You said_: Voice chat breaking after games are over is jarring** This is being fixed. We&rsquo;re going to make the transition for your team out of Clash and back to normal League a lot smoother, rather than unceremoniously booting you out of voice chat and your party. * **_You said_: You got timed out while inviting teammates, entering tickets, or locking in** We fixed this! * **_You said_: The time in champ select after the last lock-in is too short to edit runes** We&rsquo;ll likely be adding 10-20 seconds to the finalization phase in champ select. * **_You said_: Only having one flight time to play on Days 2 and 3 can be tough for players on the west coast, and east coast players may end up playing very late on day 3** We&rsquo;re looking at moving start times to better accommodate early starts and late nights, but NA is a big territory with several time zones. Adding several flights of games would make matchmaking very poor as the population splits. * **_You said_: Scouting issues were real** This&rsquo;ll be fixed too! If a player subbed into a team, they would break scouting data for all players to the right of them - because spaghetti. We&rsquo;re exploring offering more robust scouting data post-launch, making it more comprehensive, but no firm plans here yet. What sorts of things do you want to see? #10. One more thing... * From all the teams working on Clash, thank you. Your participation helped us locate a lot of areas of improvement before we go to a global launch, but we&rsquo;re not stopping now. If you took part you&rsquo;ll receive a survey link in the coming days - please fill this out, it&rsquo;ll help us make Clash better for the future. Oh, and you get to keep all your banners, logos, tickets and loot for the main launch of Clash, which May be coming soon&trade;. Keep calm and Clash on, Clash dev team
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