Welcome to Riftbound’s first ever State of the Game, to start this off, we’re bringing it to you in text format. Future updates might include video as well. We’ll keep experimenting with the right format but we didn’t want to delay this too late into the year, to keep pushing for an open conversation with players. The goal of these will be to stop and discuss how Riftbound’s doing, answer community questions, and share larger updates about the game.
So, to start this off, we asked Chengran Chai (Riftbound’s Executive Producer) and Dave Guskin (Riftbound’s Game Director) to talk about a few things which will be recurring topics for these State of the Game moments, and after that they will be diving into answering questions from the community.
First off, we asked Dave and Chengran to discuss their overall philosophy towards how they approach Riftbound, as a good reminder of how two of the leaders of the game see it and what we’re doing Riftbound for:
Chengran: On the Riftbound team, we are all card game players who value both the strategic and social elements of playing a TCG. We aim to deliver through Riftbound both an interactive social and deeply strategic experience for our players.
Dave: We’ve tried to make a TCG that appeals to everyone – competitive folks who love pursuing mastery in a 1v1 environment, and social players who love to bring everyone together for battles at the kitchen table, and everyone in between. It’s a new game, and certainly not perfect, but the most important thing to us is to continue to improve by listening to you (the players) and shaping the future of Riftbound informed by your needs.
Next we asked Dave for his thoughts about what he sees going well for Riftbound:
Dave: Across Origins and Spiritforged, the first two Riftbound sets, there are a lot of cool decks to try in competition and in casual play. The resource system and the ebb and flow of excitement at battlefields is resonating with both the TCG and the League audience. And, despite availability challenges, communities have formed around local game store play at weekly events like Nexus Nights and around high-level play at the first Regional Qualifiers.
As we have made clear, we take the development of this game very seriously and we have both Dave and Chengran discussing what we we are working on improving:
Chengran: While we’re excited by the response to Riftbound, there’s work to be done. The team is working on getting more supply in the wild, improving our ordering process for the Riot Merch store, and improving the process for registering for Riftbound events.
Dave: Agreed there’s work to be done – there’s opportunity to provide more tools to allow more Legends to be top-tier in the competitive metagame, and also some big opportunities to explore on the horizon – multiplayer focused formats, more limited experiences like Draft, and laying the groundwork for a lot of new original art and collectibles.
With that, we will transition to answering questions. We received so many questions on social media, many of which had overlapping themes. As such, we’ve tried to select questions which cover the range of areas players were most curious about.
Q: “Which set are you most excited for?”
Chengran: All of Riftbound’s sets have really exciting new content! Without revealing too much, I think we’ve got something really special for set 3, Unleashed, and the team really cooked for set 5, Radiance, as well! In fact, here are a few teases Dave and I wanted to share with you…
For Unleashed:
For Vendetta, perhaps fitting of the set’s name, we can tease that there are legends for each of these three color pairs for the first time in Riftbound:
And here’s a look at the key art for Radiance:
Q: “Are you concerned about the metagame for Riftbound being solved quickly?”
Dave: TCG players are incredible – there are so many of you, and you’re very talented and motivated to find the craziest combinations of cards. That means that often the picture we have of the game internally during development doesn’t match what players in the wild find to be strong. I’m not concerned when players find some of the best decks quickly – that’s expected – but I also hope that players continue to experiment and find interesting new ways to attack the top decks. In general, as long as players can tinker and evolve the decks week to week, I think that is a healthy metagame.
I want to talk for a minute about the current apparent dominance of Draven. In Origins we saw Kai’Sa and Yi on the top of the meta but players ended up evolving their decks such that the meta continued to develop. My current perspective is that there are underexplored ways for players to attack Draven (particular strategies that are more resilient to the purple “win combat” spells), and we believe those strategies can evolve to beat Draven to be well positioned in the meta. Of course, time will tell, and we’ll pay attention to results that come out as Spiritforged sees play.
Q: “How will Riftbound handle banning cards when needed?”
Dave: Of course, sometimes something in the meta is too overwhelmingly powerful or too oppressive. In general, our philosophy is that we want to intervene at a minimal level needed to correct an emergency state. (Often “minimal” here means “no intervention” because we believe things will continue to evolve, or we deem the issue isn’t severe enough.)
Given that, how do we determine whether things are in an emergency state? We have 4 major metrics we observe:
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Event attendance – Are we seeing event attendance decline?
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Negative player sentiment – We know that the community conversation can draw down players’ interest in playing.
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Gamebreaking combos – Do we see oppressive gameplay as a significant portion of play in the format?
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Archetype dominance – Are we seeing a deck or decks dominate across multiple set releases?
When one or more of these metrics becomes concerning, we have internal discussions about potential ways to make changes. What are we considering?
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Banning one or more cards
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Restricting cards in simple or complex ways – we prefer not to do this, as it is confusing to communicate and often leaves the underlying issues unresolved
And two things we won’t do as a way to fix things:
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Issue Errata – we won’t issue power-level errata for cards, which is to say we aren’t going to change how a card actually works as a way to fix things.
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Changing rules – we won’t change rules to adjust power level
Sometimes we will need to change rules or errata cards to improve Riftbound overall in terms of clarity or completeness but we won’t pull those levers to balance the metagame. When cards are particularly strong or dominant in the meta, that can lead to more conversations internally around the rules interactions underlying those decks. However, the power level of the cards involved is not a determining factor for whether we make rules changes.
If and when we do end up intervening and banning cards, timing and communication is super important to help maintain integrity of the competitive game:
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We’ll provide communication about considering intervention and about the chosen intervention (if any) as rapidly as we can.
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When possible, we’ll hold off on banning cards when we are less than two weeks away from the next high-level competitive event to try and ensure players have a chance to playtest and adapt.
Q: “Riftbound feels complex, what are you doing to simplify and streamline the game?”
Dave: TCGs naturally add complexity over time as more and more content is added to the game. We are striving to make sure Riftbound cards themselves are as processable and understandable as we can, to minimize additional complexity. We won’t always hit the mark, but this is our ethos we strive for.
The primary tools we are using to control this and make the game approachable for new players are:
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Reusing mechanics where it makes sense to – doing this reduces the overall burden of learning new game vocabulary and gives experienced players new context for old cards using those mechanics.
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New-player friendly champions – We are aiming to always have 1-3 Legends in new sets that are more streamlined or straightforward decks – These give new and casual players Legends which are easier to understand to ease into the new content with.
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Creating introductory level products – Proving Grounds and products similar to it help provide a good point of entry that’s comfortable (one of the reasons we’re unhappy with that product not being on shelves and printing a lot more), and to some extent, the premade champion decks and even sealed deck are good ways to ease new players in.
There have been a number of errata for the first two sets of Riftbound. That’s the nature of designing a new game – we’re learning and improving how we approach the rules as we develop. We expect the quantity of cards to receive errata to decrease going forward, but as always our first goal is to make Riftbound the best game possible, and we’ll always be looking at improving and updating the rules to make that happen.
Q: “What are you doing to make Riftbound more available and bring prices of boosters down?”
Chengran: We continue working with our partners at UVS and Shining Soul to get more cards in the hands of players. In January, we announced news regarding Origins and Proving Grounds reprints, but as we said, we know more will be needed. As we see how the community grows and evolves, we’ll continue adjusting our print plans for the game. The team cares about players first and foremost. We are keenly aware of both meanings of investment when it comes to our players, we want Riftbound to be a worthy investment of both our players’ time and their money. Our vision of a healthy Riftbound landscape is when everyone who wants to play is able to play.
Q: “Riftbound has added French, when are you adding my language?”
Chengran: We are always excited to welcome more players into the Riftbound community! In addition to adding French, we are excited to share that Riftbound players will soon be able to get cards in Chinese Traditional later this year, to better serve our Traditional Chinese community. As we think about more language additions, the team is being very deliberate about the process. Adding a language to Riftbound is more than just translating the cards. Adding languages also means ensuring that we have distribution set up, access to stores, regional support, etc. I am excited to see the work the teams have been doing to expand our distribution into more parts of the globe.
Q: “When are we going to see more original art for Riftbound instead of just reusing art that is from other Riot games?”
Chengran: With every release you will be seeing more new art on Riftbound cards. We’re already ramping up to add more new art to the game and players will be seeing a larger proportion of original Riftbound art with every new set. The amazing art which has already existed thanks to Legends of Runeterra and elsewhere from Riot was fantastic for us to get this game started quickly, and we’re excited to showcase many more brand new Riftbound-first art in the near future.
Q: “I want to play more multiplayer Riftbound but since release everything is 1v1, what are your plans for it?”
Dave: We love that Riftbound works so well for multiplayer – both free-for-all and 2v2. One of the guiding principles of the original Riftbound system design is that it’s very welcoming and fun to play with your friends and bring in those who might have never tried a TCG before.
This year, we expect to begin supporting multiplayer more at the local game store and higher level event level (through side events, not any main events of larger events). Additionally, we are also looking into development of new multiplayer format support, and even potential multiplayer-friendly products.
Q: “Why won’t you allow more people to register for Riftbound Regional Qualifiers?”
Dave: As much as we would prefer to have these uncapped, it doesn’t make a great event when it has to be 20 rounds or when there isn’t sufficient judging staff to make sure everything goes smoothly. We’re working with our partners at UVS about raising caps on event size in a sustainable way for high-level premier events, as we scale our ability to manage events of that size… but it’s also true that the cap isn’t infinite. We’re looking into how to manage this long-term, including investigating 3rd-party tournaments and their relationship to premier level play, how many would make sense, and how often to run large events.
Q: “Riftbound has competition with other TCGs, how do you plan to stand out as a competitive TCG?”
Chengran: There’s been a ton of new products and excitement in the TCG space in recent years, and the team here feels excited as long time players of the genre! Riot’s games have almost always been competitive in its nature, so we hold the competitive elements very near and close to our hearts.
We have set out from the beginning to be communicative and reactive about Riftbound and its launch in a way we hope players feel valued and that they are part of the growth of the game as we work to get the basics right as the game launches.
Riot’s brand and game ecosystem are also something we feel helps us stand out compared to other TCGs. Both from Champions players know and love, but also from game mechanics and concepts that translate from digital to tabletop. As we have seen in our other games, whether it’s LOLesports, VAL or TFT, there’s been many learnings and interactions along the way, and we will definitely adopt the best practices from our other games, iterate and keep the boundaries on a great experience for our competitive players.
Q: “You all confirmed Best-Of cards would not be one-ofs, but how many are you planning to have out there?”
Chengran: We believed Best-Of prizing was an exciting element of Riftbound and we’ve been thrilled to see players agree. We had several conversations about these prizes and what the right balance was for players and for the game.
Our current plan is for Best-Of to rotate out of Riftbound tournaments after three sets. So Origins and Proving Grounds Legends will stop being Best-ofs at events following the release of Vendetta despite them still being legal for play in the format. We felt it important to ensure there were multiple opportunities for players in every region to have a chance to take one of these prizes home, but also wanted to ensure they remain a limited and exciting prize. As always, we will be eagerly watching the community and the events to see if this decision bears reconsideration or changes in the future.
Q: “What are the designers working on?”
Dave: Well, a lot! The team has finished work on the sets for this year and is currently working on sets that will be delivered in 2027 and later. We’re also busy on some cool collectible products that aren’t the main sets, and working on improving our core and tournament rules (something that we look into with every set release) as well as potential new multiplayer and organized play formats.
Q: “Do you have updates on the global release syncing between China and the US?”
Chengran: Yes! We are planning on syncing the release when Set 4, Vendetta, launches – a lot of players have already guessed (accurately, might I add) that we were spacing the Chinese sets out at a 4 month cadence while keeping the English sets at 3 months. This has allowed us to be in sync with the launch of Set 4. Future languages will be launched at an accelerated pace such that they will also be caught up as soon as possible.
Q: “Are there more products like Proving Grounds coming?”
Chengran: Yes! As we announced earlier, we have already kicked off the reprint process for Proving Grounds and will share more news on that shortly. Additionally, the team also has a few important takeaways for future products like Proving Grounds, which is intended to serve as a learn to play/introductory product.
One important example that fans will be excited to hear: we’ve learned our lesson and do not plan to include mechanically unique cards in future iterations of this product.
Q: “What are the plans for officially supporting Riftbound digitally?”
Chengran: Definitely did not see this question coming! Jk. We’ve been asked about this a lot, and have discussed it a lot internally as well. After all, Riot’s games have been all digital prior to Riftbound.
It is a delicate topic as there are many benefits to having a digital experience, including easier onboarding/tutorials, more clarifications around some of the card interactions. However, we all know that a key part of the TCG experience is the in-person social interaction, and we do not want that to be lost. We’re always looking for ways to improve our players’ experiences, and won’t rule out any options that can do that, including an official digital client for Riftbound.
