Game News League of Legends: Riot could offer more gameplay updates, subject to conditions
Riot made headlines this week, announcing the arrival of League of Legends, Lol: Wild Rift, Legends of Runeterra and Valorant on Game Pass! The studio remains in the news with this time around possible changes in the way the pace and importance of updates are approached.
More partial redesigns and scope changes? Riot responds
For ten years, League of Legends has lived to the rhythm of the addition of champions, competitions, balancing updates or even various events. A well-oiled production process, but which will possibly evolve in order to allow the title to remain at the top. Riot Games has therefore opened the door to many updates from past championswhich would require a reduction in the number of new characters added each year.
But conditions have been set. There are now 160 champions in League of Legends, and not all of them are played. Some no longer part of the high-level meta, others just aren’t effective enough anymore for the competitive. Riot regularly intervenes to balance the cast, but as we saw last time, it’s the practice that makes the metaand not necessarily the gameplay planned and thought out by Riot Games.
To encourage players to give former champions a chance, Riot has picked up the pace since the start of season 12, with partial redesigns and scope changes. Our colleagues from MGG took advantage of Bel’Veth exit to interview Ryan “Reav3” Mirelesin charge of gameplay on the MOBA, about these changes:
I don’t think we’ll see any more full reworks, as these go through the same development process as a new champion, so their pace will also slow down a bit to achieve the same quality goals. Also, VFX (visual) updates will not increase, as they are on a different team, so they are not affected by the change in pace. However, it is possible that this new strategy will lead us to do more MGC (complete gameplay update). Before committing, we want to test the result of launching the very first one that will impact Aurelion Sol.
Aurelion Sol’s complete overhaul is a life-size test
In other words, Aurelion Sol acts as a test to know if the strategy adopted is relevant or not, and if such a process does not harm the future of the game. If all goes well, we should be entitled to more regular gameplay updates, as they are not about character design or skins. Some champions, considered old-fashioned in their aspects, could therefore remain as they are, but the way of playing them could greatly evolve. One thing is sure, there will be more scope updates:
(…) This is something we can now do more often thanks to the slower pace of champion releases. So far, we have seen very positive feedback from them. This can always change, but I think given the current trajectory, everyone can expect to see more of these updates in the future.
In doing so, Riot will respond to a request from the community, which often states on the forums that updating old champions is a good thing, and that the slowdown in the release of new characters is not that serious. If all goes according to plan, a number of champions should become interesting again and get picked more often. As an example, MGG cites the case of Ahriwhose power has been decreased three times, is chosen three times more often than before the updates.
