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Riot gameplay designer Mark "Scruffy" Yetter recently shared his thoughts on League of Legends' current state and its scopes for improvement.
According to him, preseason 2021 and the entire 2020 was about building a core for the game at a high level. The primary focus points were to strengthen and improve League of Legends' foundations for the next ten years.
League of Legends Season 11 indeed saw massive changes to items and general champion itemization. Riot Games promised to bring in further balance tweaks to the MOBA in their recent blog post, titled "Quick Gameplay Thoughts."
Yetter outlined the current "state of the game," covering a bunch of topics and plans for improvisation in League of Legends.
Riot's thought on the current state of League of Legends and its plans
The item system update
The item system has been updated to increase strategic choice, satisfaction, and accessibility. Riot will further focus on follow up work to realize the full potential of the system.
Most League of Legends champions are currently seeing a wider set of item choices that suit different games. But the developers think that there are some cases where options are either not there or not satisfying enough to "feel."
They observed that roughly 20% of champs crossed the "Mythic hardbinding" threshold. Thus, Riot will continue to address these gaps to get as close to 100% of champions with meaningful build diversity.
Scruffy stated:
"Build diversity is one value among a long list of gameplay goals, so we wouldn't sacrifice too much of other important things like satisfaction, counterplay, or champion uniqueness to achieve it. This means addressing hardbinding will take longer than standard balance concerns since the work required is more disruptive and risky, but getting as close to 0% Mythic hardbinding as possible is one of our ongoing focuses."
In the last few patches, Riot has assessed the state of item choices and power level across many classes to tune the greatest outliers.
Patch 11.1 saw buffs to underused items like Shurelya's and Ionian Boots. The current patch 11.2 saw adjustments for tank Mythics to help Frostfire Gauntlet and Turbo Chemtank compete with Sunfire Cape.
In the upcoming League of Legends patch 11.3, the developers are targeting fighter class outliers like Goredrinker and Sterak's Gage and shifting systemic healing toward more conventional durability.
Riot's main plan is to provide every League of Legends champion with a satisfying range of item choices by the end of 2021 spring. Thus, fans can expect many new updates and tweaks featuring system itemization in the coming few weeks.
The item shop
Riot made a complete overhaul in League of Legends' item shop to create a tailored experience for each type of player from new to master level experience.
Though it has benefitted many newer League of Legends rifters, the devs look towards further scopes for improvisation.
Scruffy said:
"I would still estimate that our new shop is only 90% of the way to finished though. As we continue to play with it, small but critical usability improvements become clear. Now that we're using modern tech, we hope to continue adding more and more functionality over time to make the shop usability feel like second nature."
Position balance
With such a thorough overhaul in the item shop, Riot anticipated some needed follow-up on position balance. Initially, the bottom and support roles seemed weaker than before, but after the preseason update, they regained their powerful spots.
One of the main future focus points of Riot is the Jungle position. It's one of the most crucial roles in League of Legends, but unfortunately, it has low popularity. Thus, to provide League of Legends beginners with a better jungling experience, Riot made slight tweaks for the role quite a few times in recent years.
Burst damage
At preseason launch, many players felt an increase in burst damage. Thus, the developers began looking into the issue of bringing in a balance.
The last few patches have pulled burst from multiple sources and brought the situation back to a reasonable state. But still, the devs are looking for further improvements featuring burst damage.
Yetter noted:
"We're continuing to evaluate whether more changes should be made. Generally, we try to stay in the range where burst reliant classes (mages, assassins) can kill an out-of-position carry, but not so bursty where they can do so without hitting a full combo, or when missing important skills. We also use mathematical analysis with historical comparisons (how much damage is a Talon combo in S11 vs S10 vs S6 etc).
Snowball
Another key preseason goal of Riot was to avoid power creeping the League of Legends item system. Increased snowball could be one of the worse symptoms of messing up because finishing items earlier than the opponent would provide an additional advantage.
Though the current snowball conditions look good, Riot will be planning for further possible improvisations.
New champs and VGUs
The champions of 2020 were successful both in terms of satisfaction and appeal fronts. The themes and gameplay of Sett, Fiddle, Voli, Lillia, Yone, Samira, Seraphine, and Rell aimed for broad appeal among players within their applicable roles and archetypes.
Launch balance was also significantly improved compared to 2019, with Samira the only champ who launched significantly off-target. And Riot now aims for further areas for improvements and iterations in 2021.
This year, the devs will be looking towards improving the "good for League overall" side of new champs and VGUs. This includes strong and clear counterplay, unique kits, and more unique thematics to expand League of Legends' IP even if less popular.
Ranked play
Riot launched a small bundle of Ranked upgrades in both preseason and start of ranked this year. Overall, this has led to a smoother climb where players face more balanced teams, fewer smurfs, and consistent wins.
But they discovered an issue at the start of the season where MMR was adjusting too slowly, causing LP gains to be a bit lower than expected overall. The problem was addressed with patch 11.2 last week.
Still, Riot will continue to monitor all aspects of the League of Legends ranked play so that the experience works as per plan.
On a special note, Scruffy mentioned that the player behavior systems were not covered in the released blog. They would discuss the topic later with another blog in the coming spring.
