In June 2019, Teamfight Tactics, an auto battler to League of Legends, was released. Despite initial great enthusiasm, the game is experiencing a strong low in 2020 and there were doubts whether further development was worthwhile. The developers have revealed to MeinMMO editor Alexander Leitsch how they got out of this low and how it will continue this year.

What is the story of TFT?

• At the beginning of 2019, a small hype arose around the genre of Auto Battler. The reason for this was a mod to DOTA 2, which was called “Auto Chess”. It quickly gained popularity among streamers and fans of DOTA.
• In the course of 2019, several new Auto Battlers were created, including Dota Underlords as an official game by Valve and Teamfight Tactics by Riot Games.
• Especially in the first weeks, over 350,000 viewers watched simultaneously in Peak TFT on Twitch (via Sullygnome). Many LoL streamers tried it out and were convinced by the concept.
• In 2020, however, interest dropped sharply, partly due to the second set around Elementals. That didn’t go over well with gamers for a variety of reasons. On Twitch, the game only cracked the 100,000 concurrent viewer mark three times in the entire year – and only during big announcements.
• Geoffrey Virtue, executive producer of TFT, described to us how threatening the situation at TFT was. However, everything now looks bright for the future.

“At the end of the second set, everything was on the verge of collapse”.

What did Virtue say about the development? At an event, Riot Games presented us with the upcoming 7th set of TFT. In this context, Geoffrey Virtue also revealed how difficult the LoL spin-off had it in the meantime:

At the end of the second set, Rise of the Elements, everything was about to collapse. Things were not looking good for us. If our third set – Galaxys – had not been successful, I don’t think TFT would be the good experience it is today.

Virtue also talked about how there have always been setbacks with LoL, such as with the Twisted Treelines and Dominion maps. TFT also seemed like such a setback in the beginning, where players could not be retained long-term.

Rise of the Elements was rather a flop.

However, the game has since turned a corner. According to Virtue, this happened mainly thanks to the help of the community. The community gave important feedback and helped the developers. At the same time, Riot Games has also taken action and improved the communication around the game:

You see our adjustments set by set, mid-set by mid-set, and even patch by patch. And you also see it directly in our communication, through blogposts like /Devs, where we put our bugs under a microscope.

Better accessibility and the guides that the developers themselves now share on the official site are also said to have played an important role.

In total, players are said to have played over 1.5 billion hours of TFT since its release. The competitive scene is also said to keep growing. However, the long requested Spectator Mode, which was already an issue at release, is still not in the game.

New Set 7 is in the starting blocks – Brings huge dragons, but also old mechanics

What does the future of TFT look like? Significantly better. Earlier this year, lead designer Stephen “Mortdog” Mortimer already talked about the future, promising “content for decades.” For now, however, we were only presented with the upcoming Set 7 – Dragonlands – which brings some interesting innovations.

What’s in Set 7? As usual, the new set mainly mixes up the champions. The highlight are the new dragon champions:

• These cost double the gold (8 gold in the epic version and 10 gold in the legendary version) and are especially strong.
• Dragons count three times for a given attribute each.
• However, you can only use one dragon effectively because they take up two champion slots and have a trait that makes them weaker when there are more than one on the field.
• The dragons are: Daeja, Idas, Shi Oh Yu, and Sy’fen (epic), and Aurelion Sol, Ao Shin, and Shyvana (legendary).

There will also be some other new champion attributes, including Shapeshifter, Astral, Tempest, Ragewing, Jade, Bard, or Guild. So not much of the old set will remain. All champions and attributes can be found in our Cheat Sheet: Cheat Sheet for Set 7 “Dragon Lands” and all new champions.

What happens to the hextech augments? A special feature of the currently running Set 6 are the augments. You will be offered three of them three times during the course of a set, and they determine the direction in which your team will develop. So there are augments that strengthen an attribute or count as an additional unit of an attribute. Bonuses for melee fighters, mages or complete items are also possible.

Augments are maintained in Dragonlands, with adjustments:

• They now appear in rounds 2-1, 3-2 and 4-2
• There will be new augments and old ones will be removed
• You will be able to re-roll augments once per match if you don’t like the three offered

For example, a new augment allows you to have more than one dragon on the field. This is considered especially strong. 6 tips for Teamfight Tactics that I wish I had known beforehand.

What else does the set bring? Another big change affects enemy NPC creatures in the lategame. They will no longer drop emblems with attributes that you don’t use. There will also be the Treasure Dragon, which will give you 5 rewards at once in the endgame, including items, item components, and gold. In addition, there should be slight adjustments to the items, including renaming Neeko’s help because Neeko herself will become a playable character. This is to avoid confusion.

Dragons become important, but not overpowered

Are dragons mandatory in the new set? With the new set, there is a big focus on dragons. Mortdog confirms that dragons are really strong and useful for almost every team. But it should also be possible to win a match without a dragon. Fittingly, there should even be an attribute that is specifically strong against dragons. This is to prevent the dragons in the set from being overpowered.

Shyvana easily carries me to victory

What do you guys think of Dragonlands? Does the new set appeal to you? And what do you say about TFT and the development of the game in general? Feel free to write it in the comments.

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