Seven years, millions of players worldwide, and countless reinventions later, Teamfight Tactics has firmly established itself as one of Riot Games’ most played and enduring titles. In a landscape where live-service games often settle into stability, TFT keeps on standing out for committing to constant structural change, even when that means rethinking core systems players already know.
In an interview with
Sheep Esports on TFT’s seventh anniversary, Christina Jiang, Senior Product Manager, and Alex Cole, Head of Gameplay, reflected on
TFT’s evolution over the past seven years, the challenges of balancing innovation and accessibility, the future of the game, and what players can expect as
Teamfight Tactics enters its next chapter.
This interview took place as a written Q&A exchange with the Riot Games team.
TFT is now seven years old and about to hit its 18th set. When you look at the game today, what do you think is the biggest difference between what TFT originally was/how it was conceived and what it has become nowadays?
Christina Jiang: “There are quite a few differences between when we launched and where we are today with TFT. The thing that stands out the most for me is that we built TFT fast as a game mode, and now, it’s a full-fledged strategy game. I don’t think anyone on the original dev team would’ve imagined that.
Back during a 5th anniversary interview, some Rioters talked about how TFT evolves alongside its players. Do you think the community today still wants the same things from TFT that it wanted five years ago?
Jiang: As TFT has evolved and grown, player expectations have risen and the bar for us to surprise and delight players has risen along with it. Set 1: The Beta Set was so sharp and chaotic but the traits were relatively straightforward, and players were happy learning the game for the first time.
Now seven years in, even though modern TFT is more complex, I'm always amazed by how good current players are at TFT. They're so quick to solve the meta and discover comps we never encountered in playtesting. As a dev team that re-invents our game three times a year, we love the challenge of finding new ways to innovate in TFT and can't wait to show players what we have cooking that will raise the bar for hopefully many more years to come.
TFT has grown much more mechanically dense over the years. How do you internally decide when TFT is becoming “deeper” versus just becoming “too much”?
Alex Cole: With all the evergreen systems that we’ve established in TFT, we’ve essentially reached the limit of complexity, but TFT will always re-invent itself in some way every set. Our players love novelty and that is one of the biggest reasons we have been so successful in the strategy space, because we are never afraid of big swings and constant innovation.
However, within that it’s also important for us to keep some core pieces so that we always feel like TFT. We want to make sure that players who might skip a set can still come back and play TFT and be able to hop right in without feeling too lost or overwhelmed.
This set, in particular, is a pretty big swing in terms of removing the carousel and having a new experience in its place. The carousel is a deeply fundamental piece of TFT and serves a lot of specific gameplay purposes, such as being a comeback mechanic and a social space. We didn’t want to lose either of those things in the Realm of The Gods, so even though it looks wildly different, some of the core goals remained the same.
TFT has survived while many other autobattlers faded away. But at the same time, you now have a game with seven years of accumulated systems and expectations behind it. Is innovation harder and are expectations too high now because players already know TFT so well?
Cole: Innovation, creativity, and experimentation are an opportunity and a challenge for the dev team with every new set. We’re really proud of how we push the boundaries of what TFT can be as a strategy game and we currently rebuild the game 3 times per year on top of providing additional ways to play such as events, game modes, and more. As a dev team, we learn something with every set as do our players so we continue to innovate and grow alongside them.
What’s the biggest feature about TFT that you still think the team hasn’t nailed yet?
Jiang: I would love to go more broad and talk about a player need we haven't fully nailed yet - accessibility.
The sheer amount of information players have to process when we release three sets a year is staggering. We understand that not everyone can invest the same amount of time to learn a new set, so we've invested in many quality of life improvements over the years to make TFT more accessible to all players. Veteran players may remember the days when we didn't have item recipes in tooltips or even item removers that drop on PvE rounds!
While we’ve invested a lot in accessibility since launch, we can and should do more. What does this mean in terms of features? Expect continued investment in resources like Team Planner, better tutorialization, and new modes and systems for core and casual players in the future!
Seven years in, what part of TFT’s future excites the team the most right now?
Jiang: We will continue to push on this constant evolution is one of TFT’s greatest strengths and as we keep the game fresh while preserving the core our players love.
Looking ahead, do you see TFT experimenting more with sets that feel closer to standalone universes or larger Riot-wide experiences, similar to what Remix Rumble achieved?
Cole: We’re looking to do a mix of both exploring standalone universes and having TFT take part in Riot-wide moments. There are still so many great themes out there that we haven’t explored yet that take us somewhere new within the uncharted universes of The Convergence that we want to balance with opportunities where we can collaborate across the Riot ecosystem or bring back a fresh take on some community favourite themes, such as Arcane, music, and Runeterra.
Riot has announced big updates coming to the League ecosystem next year. How is it affecting TFT? Especially in terms of long-term planning and its position within the Riot ecosystem, do you feel TFT will need to adapt in terms of priorities or structure, given it still shares the client?
Cole: TFT has always had a great partnership and collaboration with League of Legends, and that will not change in the future. Our players love both of those games deeply and we want to continue to deliver versions of the champs they love from League in a way that only TFT can offer them.
One of the upcoming TFT set this year is based on a music-inspired universe. How much is this new set influenced by or connected to other Riot IPs, and is there any cross-team collaboration happening to make the experience feel more unified across games?
Cole: While I can’t share any specifics, we are super excited about bringing back music for Set 19. We learned a lot the first time and we can’t wait to bring the world tour to life with a lot of love from teams across Riot.”
