A recent Dev post from Riot Games shows what they’re planning to do in the future in League of Legends, in terms of Clash, the balance framework update, and more.
Before we head over to the highlights of Riot’s future work, we’d like to mention that (like most projects) they’re subject to change, can be delayed or scrapped. Nonetheless, Riot prefers to share their plans and get feedback from players, even if these projects might change.
Let’s take a look at how MMR ratings will change and learn more about Riot Scruffy’s ‘Quick Gameplay Thoughts.’ We’ll only include a few essential information, but you can read the entire Dev post here.
Clash “Trophy Case”
Lead gameplay designer Mark Yetter (Riot Scruffy) talked in his Dev post about the Clash “Trophy Case.”
As we all know, after League players win a tourney in Clash, they win trophies. You can see those accomplishments on your profile and in the Summoner’s Rift, but as the next tournament starts, the previous accomplishments are erased. Now Riot is planning to give players a permanent Clash “Trophy Case,” along with a new tab in the client:
This new tab in the client will store all of the trophies, banners, and icons you’ve earned in Clash so you can go back and browse your past accomplishments.
He also added in a few comments on Twitter and Reddit that:
- Clash Case will be retroactive, so any “beta or demacia stuff will go there instantly.“
- “We’re doing a bunch of upgrades for clash over time – scouting phase will get a bunch of tweaks now that we’ve seen it played a few times.”
Balance Framework Update
Riot Scruffy notes that the last balance framework doesn’t quite work for the Elite range of players:
In our last update to the balance framework (breaks balance into four bands: Regular, Skilled, Elite, and Pro), I mentioned that we were feeling that our Elite band method wasn’t fully satisfying our goals. The old method using ban rate captured high popularity, high frustration champions that were overpowered (like Akali) but would fail to discover overpowered champs in classes that are less banned (like supports or tanks).
Changing the MMR range will help the balance team focus on champions that have higher win rates, meaning we might not see too many nerfs in the future.
The range of MMR from Master+ (top 0.1%) will be expanded to Diamond 2+ (top 0.3%) so that Riot could analyze a larger data set. Their analysis shows the balance outliers are nearly similar, so the criteria have changed, revealing what counts as overpowered champions:
- Overpowered Old: – greater than 45% ban rate
- Overpowered New:
- Greater than 50% ban rate or
- Greater than 54% win rate if below avg banrate, down to 52.5% win rate if >5x avg banrate
- Underpowered Old – Less than 5% combined pick/ban rate
- Underpowered New – Less than 7.5% combined pick/ban rate
These winrate thresholds are 0.5% higher than the skilled thresholds to factor in the reality that players of this extremely high MMR have slightly higher winrates overall because they can only be matched against players that are lower skill. In other words we don’t want to nerf champs in this tier unfairly because they are being played by the best players.
Priorities During Coronavirus Pandemic
Riot Scruffy also drew attention that the team at Riot supports and prioritizes the important issues during the Coronavirus pandemic. Riot has also announced that they will increase server capacity for NA servers:
We’re all going through this global pandemic together, and with all of the disruption to our normal lives, we’re taking stock of all of our work and trying to prioritize what is critical. Our top priorities are our game’s stability, servers, and client to make sure that League is available to all of us looking to play.
Personally, I hope you all are staying safe and sane. Let League be a place to compete but also a place where you can unwind or stay connected to your friends and family. I’ll see you on the Rift.
You can read more news, updates, and the latest patch notes on our League of Legends page. We also have a special page for the Teamfight Tactics: Galaxies players.