Jacob

@Mortdog Enjoy your time off big man. Thank you for everything you do for the game and its fans. Happy Birthday.

Hey everyone. As of April 14th, I will be on my Sabbatical until July 7th. During that time, I will not be involved in any TFT work, and will not be communicating anything TFT related. I will be using the time to disconnect and spend some time on some personal projects. You'll hear from me again at the end of the Sabbatical. Until then, take it easy.

@RonWeskley @Mortdog Its for TFT, not LOL

@Mortdog Why do i nit understand this patch notes? Is this buffs and nerfs fir league of legends?

Hey everyone. As promised, here are the 16.6 Patch notes as is that will be on PBE after todays deploy. Reminder, this is not something we normally do, but we're trying to keep competitive folks in the loop. This is like 95% final. There's one last day for adjustments and feedbacks, and I know the team already snuck in a couple more this morning that will show up in tomorrow's final build. Otherwise don't expect a ton of changes from here on out. So far response from the folks playing has been positive, which has been good. Tim and I are also going to try to get the rundown video out a bit earlier if we can. Ok, that's it for today. Have fun!

@Mortdog Talk about a hat trick!

Got any hats?

@Mortdog When will Mort stop winning?? Never!

I’m packing for Paris and my wife made me a little snack care package in case I got hungry. She’s a keeper for sure ❤️

@TFT What decides a champions cost during a set? Do certain champions "deserve" the limelight of a 5cost more than others? Or does it come down to mechanics/available abilities?

We want to hear from YOU for our upcoming Lore & Legends dev panel 🫵 Have a question you've always wanted to ask about the development of a TFT set? Reply below for a chance to have it answered live during the #TFTParisOpen!

@Mortdog And what an excellent one you are, having worked for 2 of the biggest names in Gaming!

Mom bought me an NES when I was 5 and was hooked for life. Kindergarten teacher said I was going to be a game designer when I grew up, so it stuck I guess...has always been the target since!

@TolarianCollege 🙋‍♂️ its what I've played the most since I started with Return to Ravnica. Its my favorite way to learn new sets

How many of you love limited (draft / sealed) more than commander?

@Mortdog Man, if only I knew when set 15 was slated to come out...

:|

@Mortdog Youre a good man Mort. If you spent all your time answering every single question, you wouldn't have time to work on the Set 20 mechanic that physically pinches players whenever they lose combat rounds!

Since we posted the positions for game designers, I've had a LOT of folks reach out about it. Some asking simple clarifying questions, some looking for more details, others looking to schedule a longer conversation about it or send me reasons why they should get the job. I feel bad, but I've pretty much had to ignore all of these requests. It's not because I'm too good for them or want to ignore them or anything like that, but there's two main issues to trying to respond to these. First is just the time cost. Trying to respond to everyone fairly would be too large of a time commitment for me while still allowing me to do my core work, so it's just not possible. But the second reason is more important. When it comes to hiring in general, it's important for me to remain completely unbiased, so that everyone has a fair shot at the role. The last thing we'd want is to miss out on the best candidate because they didn't happen to try to schedule a meeting with me or didn't talk to the right folks or something weird like that. So we trust our awesome recruiting team to go through all the resumes and utilize the devs as needed for interviews. There will certainly be a point in the process where my calendar will be filled with interviews as we narrow things, where I'll be talking to the candidates to assess team fit and design craft ability. But until then, I need to stay out of it so I can be unbiased. So if you are someone who reached out and maybe felt ghosted because I didn't reply, hopefully this clarifies why. I feel bad, but it has to be this way. Good luck to everyone who applied!

@Mortdog Thanks for all your hard work Mortdog. Your dedication is inspiring. Plus you're cool.

Good morning and happy Monday everyone! Cyber City launches in 2 days! For those of you who have been testing on PBE, we'll have 1 final round of adjustments that I will post tomorrow morning after we finalize them today. Won't be a ton of stuff, but certainly will be aimed at getting the balance closer to what we want day 1. For those who haven't been on PBE and have been patiently waiting for the full release, excited for you to get your hands on the set. It's some of the best pure TFT we've had, so if that's your thing, you should enjoy this set. Ok, off to work. Have a great week and take it easy :)

@Mortdog Thanks for all your hard work MortDog. Your continued passion and resilience is commendable. Keep Doggin On.

Seems like post B patch the meta is in a better spot. Granted it's been less than 24 hours so it's hard to say for sure, but hoping for a great Regionals competition this weekend. 13.7 (Worlds patch) has to be locked today, so that's neat. It will be a very small patch, as disrupting stuff between competitions is probably not the play. That being said, there's at least one surprise. Otherwise...sorry I've been quiet. One of the side effects of TFT growing is that we're doing a lot more and someone in my role is involved in almost everything gameplay related, which is a lot. Even I've been pushed pretty hard context swapping and juggling it all, which is making the side stuff harder to do. I'll get it figured out though. Anyway, hope you're having a good week. Take it easy :)

@Cristia53833264 @Mortdog The man literally spends his weekends play testing and checking patches, running as many comps as he can. Listening to bug complaints and people's opinions. You sound salty

@Mortdog This happens because you have no idea how to balance your game, because you only play 10 games per patch and magically you already know what to adjust

Good morning folks. I know a lot of players are prepping for their Regionals competition, so want to keep you in the loop. The full patch notes will be out tomorrow, but we ended up pulling two changes. The family trait buff and the 4 Quickstriker trait buff are both pulled. In a patch this late into the set, playing it safe vs risking over buffing stuff is the correct play, so we were able to get those changes out. We also fixed the bug with armories you may have seen on my stream (Chembaron champ items) as well has hopefully fixed some bugs with Jayce. Again, patch goes live on Thursday. Have fun, and take it easy :)

@Mortdog He can't be stopped, they're all perfect

Are you Renni? Because you're a cut above the rest! Happy Valentines Day!

@TFT Pure bread i assume?

Get bready for this crispy kitty! Doughcat springs out of the oven and onto PBE with Patch TFT13.7.

@Mortdog Thanks Mort! Set 13 is the first set I've actively tried to grind. I've only ever gotten to gold then played normals. This is a good set of info to have.

One of the most common questions I get is "I'm at X rank and trying to get better. What can I do?" It's always hard to give specific advise without seeing that players specific play patterns. But here's a good general piece of advice. We looked into Total Gold earned over the course of a game, and found a pretty obvious but telling pattern. The higher rank you are, the better you are at using your gold efficiently so you have more to work with in the late game. Obviously it's a bit deeper than just "econ better", and econ in TFT is usually related to your ability to gauge board strength and not over spend to ensure you can progress forward with the least amount of health lost. But still something worth thinking about. Anyway, figured this was worth a share. Hope your week is going well as we reach the mid point. Have fun, and take it easy :)

@Mortdog Hey Mort. Ive been playing League for about 14 years now, right about season 2. I've been playing TFT since it was available. The game has only gotten better and better as time goes on. Youre doing an amazing job, and thank you so much for all your hard work. Keep it up!

Longer post today about a kind of serious non TFT topic, so skip today if you're looking for fun stuff. I'm generally pretty lucky. I would consider my "approval rating" as a game dev on a popular game to be pretty high, and TFT is a great game that does lots of good things for players. Also the meta and the set are in good spots, so things should be pretty light hearted and easy in my corner. In the image below is stuff that was sent to me on various social media platforms just from Jan 1 to Jan 7, 2025. Just the first week of the new year. And again, I'm generally on easy mode as a game dev being pretty well liked overall. So this really isn't too bad. In my case, I've been doing this for a long time now and am pretty unaffected by stuff like this at this point. They're small blips in my day, and I've learned how to compartmentalize where these folks are coming from. So no concerns on my end. But what I want to talk about is how much this damages other games having figures like me that can talk about games with transparency and honesty. I know a LOT of devs who have reached out over the years and said they want to do what I do, but it's just not worth it due to all the time you have to put in, and then to get stuff like this...the value proposition in pretty low, considering its easier for companies to just...not do it. Especially if you're on a game where things aren't going great. Imagine trying to have a tough conversation around a game right now, and you have to be the face of it. What I get is easy mode, I can only imagine some of the stuff other folks would have to deal with. And that's really unfortunate. I feel like stuff like Vegas/Macao opens where I see devs talking to passionate players is so great, as it can inspire the next generation of folks who want to be game devs. Or even just being passionate about your hobby and getting to talk to folks who love your game or want to give feedback to make it even better. I still wish for a world where more of that happens across the industry, but it's tough. And then there's the despairing rabbit hole when you start to consider where the folks who send these messages are at. Some might just be an edgy kid sure, but others might be folks who are just having a rough time in life. Earlier in my naïve career I would sometimes reply to these folks to see if they were ok...but it had around a 10% success rate so wasn't really worth it. I know most of you know this, but this is just a reminder that if people want devs who can come out and talk to you about the games you love and want to deliver the experiences you want, this kind of thing doesn't really help. If you're a game dev and this scares you a bit to be player facing, my recommendation is to start small. I find that right now smaller discords are GREAT for finding groups of folks on a small scale who are generally pretty passionate, and would love the chance to talk. Start there, and don't be discouraged. Ok that's it for now. New patch is out, and super early read is we didn't mess it all up so that's good. We'll see how things develop of course. Also Lunar new year event stuff activates in a couple hours, so that should be lots of fun for ya! Alright, have a great day and take it easy :)

@Bearsteaks It's the fishnets that do it for me.

My sister has never had anyone to do a makeover on, so for her birthday she asked to do mine tbh she killed it and also the look kinda fucked have some pics including one that she said was "the gayest picture i've ever seen of you"

Someone near me just asked what "ancient grains" are and thanks to @pattonoswalt I was able to answer. Thanks Patton!