League of Legends Dev Diary recap

League of Legends is an old game. And as such, it requires a lot of maintenance and fixing. It’s hard to create a fine balance between adding new content and improving the existing one. But the team of developers working behind the scenes is doing their best. And now through their Dev Diary, they are addressing the community.

Champion updates

With a roster of 162 champions in League of Legends, keeping track of them all is not the easiest task. Heck even learning the abilities is the steepest learning curve in this game. This number only keeps growing, and with every new champion, an old one becomes outdated. To fix this, a lot of work needs to be done. And Riot’s developer team for League of Legends does this in multiple ways.

ASU- Art and Sustainability update

According to the team, some champions don’t need that much work. Older champions with great design can still function in League of Legends. But what is noticeable with the higher quality of skins being produced, is that some champions don’t benefit from them. That’s what these  Art and Sustainability updates are focused on. Ahri and Caitlyn were the most recent examples of this. Caitlyn underwent no changes to her kit, meanwhile, Ahri just got a QoL (quality of life) change on her ultimate ability. These give the selected champions and their skins a freshly reworked model that applies to everything. This makes dedicated players pick up and enjoy their favorite champions, now that they fit the aesthetics of 2023 League of Legends. 

The team has also announced that because of the success of the most recent ones, they will be picking up the pace when working on these. At the moment, they are working on two ASU’s at the same time. This will mean that we should expect fewer new champions in 2023. Teemo and Lee Sin, two iconic champions in this game, are next in line for a visual update. It’s unclear if these will carry some gameplay changes with them. Many Teemo mains have struggled to properly utilize his passive since the AFK changes were implemented. Whatever they bring, it will be a breath of fresh air. 

New Champions

K’Sante is barely 4 months old, and some League players are anxiously anticipating a new champion. The community has been teased about a new Darking champion which might be slotted into the support role. The tiny bits of information we have, signal that it could be something revolutionary like Pyke, but we will have to wait and see. The team mentioned in their Dev Diary that we shouldn’t expect 5 new champions like in previous years. And while this might sound disappointing, lets just hope it benefits champions like Rumble and Corki that have been in a dire need of attention. 

Champion pricing update

As the roster of champions in League of Legends keeps expanding, new issues continue to emerge. The developer team has been battling the power creep issue for a while. But another topic bothering the player base is the accessibility to these champions. In 2023, it’s a lot easier to earn the in-game currency called Blue Essence, which is used to purchase champions. But that doesn’t mean that anyone can do it. Some returning players have run into the issue of not having enough BE. The best way to collect the currency is to play daily, but not everyone can do that. That’s why Riot is implementing a new approach to champion pricing.

Rather than pricing champions according to how many champions have followed since, the team is now calculating the price according to the champion’s age. And while this means that new champions will still be expensive, it should help out with acquiring the rest of the roster. With 6 tiers of champions on the pricing table in play, this should open up a lot more opportunities for new players to find a main. 

The community noticed this flaw about a month ago, and it’s great to see the team working on the game responding to the feedback. In the immediate future, this means that these champions will receive a major price discount. This will be the last pricing update with the old format, and we should expect to see more updates as we go. If you have stockpiled a bevy of champion shards in your inventory, this is a good time to do a fire sale. Make the most of their current pricing to stack up on Blue Essence which will help you move forward.

Mastery tokens on ARAM

ARAM enjoyers rejoice! Our season 13 complete ARAM guide might help you win more of your duels on the Howling Abyss. But another equally as important topic is the fact that after patch 13,5 we can earn champion mastery tokens on ARAM. This is a major change that should benefit a lot of players that are devoted to the game mode. Not everyone likes or has the time to play on Summoners Rift but we do like the recognition that mastery tokens give for proficiency on champions.

Wild Rift skins coming to League of Legends

While PC gamers are faced with problems dating back to 2010, mobile gamers have been having the time of their lives playing a newer version of League of Legends. There are a lot of benefits to playing a game made with the newest cutting-edge technology, but League players will never experience that. Wild Rift has managed to implement various features that League is still missing, and it has greatly changed perception of mobile gaming in the minds of PC gamers. And while League can’t implement everything because the games are made on different engines, it appears that we will be getting skin ports. 

According to Riot’s developer team on League of Legends, the exclusive skins in Wild Rift will be ported into the main game, 3 years after the mobile version was released. Some of the first ones to arrive in the undisclosed future are: Star Guardian Seraphine, Redeemed Star Guardian Xayah and Redeemed Star Guardian Rakan.

In total there should be around 60 Wild Rift exclusive skins coming to League of Legends which are:

• Camille (Stargazer, Mythmaker)
• Jinx (Chromocrash, Glorious)
• Orianna (Star Guardian, Glorious, Gothic redesigned)
• Miss Fortune (Lunar Beast, Resistance) 
• Gwen (Mythmaker)
• Seraphine (Mythmaker, Star Guardian)
• Senna (Psychic Detective, Star Guardian)
• Crystal Rose Lux, Ez, Jarvan, Sona, Yone, Vi, Riven and Akali;
• Resistance Katarina
• Zephyr Dragon Master Yi
• Redeemed Xayah and Rakan
• Mythmaker Zoe and Caitlyn
• Supreme Cells Sett, Zed and Kennen
• Cottontail Blitzcrank and Ziggs
• Battle Academia Akshan
• Bewitching Vex
• Stargazer Twisted Fate, Soraka, and Karma
• Chromocrash Ekko and Samira
• Glorious ranked skins for Tryndamere, Lulu, Fiora, Evelyn, Draven, and Nami

Wild pass skins (battle pass system in Wild Rift)

• Hexplorer skin line for Jax, Shyvana, Galio, Tristana and Teemo
• Dreamraider Nasus
• Super Hero Jayce, Super Villain Graves and Jhin
• Upcoming: Project Zeri

State of game modes in Dev Diary

The wave of negative feedback following the disaster of the seasonal cinematic finally pushed Riot Games to take action. As most of the community has noticed and noted, there just hasn’t been much effort put into League of Legends recently. With Valroant nearing it;s third birthday and entering franchising, the success of Arcane, the rise of Runeterra and TeamFight Tactics, and the upcoming MMO and fighting game, it seems that Riot has different priorities. League of Legends feels like it’s in maintenance mode but the team is starting to make changes. The aspect most painfully lacking in new content is the game modes. 

New League of Legends game mode

With ARURF and Ultimate Spellbook being the last new rotating game modes to enter League of Legends, the game has started to feel stale. We haven’t had a winter map in 7 years, Twisted Treeline was removed and ARAM is the only permanent game mode. But that will change soon enough when Riot Games are done working on their new 2v2v2v2 mode.

If you have played the Double Up game mode in Teamfight Tactics, you should be familiar with this concept. Teaming up with a friend to face 3 other duos in the race to the top. According to their Dev Diary blog, the team is looking to ship out a mode that focuses on PvP (player versus player) combat from the start. Customization should be plentiful and innovative, something that League players aren’t accustomed to as of yet. It should also be high-paced, with less time spent watching a gray screen or farming minions. This mode should play out through several deathmatch rounds. Champions will progress in power over the game, gaining items, levels, and special powers called Augments in between the combat rounds. Teams are eliminated after losing enough rounds, allowing you to queue up immediately. 

Augments in League of Legends

Augments are significant power-ups that are intended to create unique builds and playstyles for champions. They can either build upon their core strengths or flex into some new ones, that would open up a new aspect of the game. The intent is to create variety in the champion’s capabilities to create cool, unique combat situations. Some of the augments that are currently in playtesting are:

• Sylas who casts Lissandra W every 5 seconds
• Ekko with 500 attack range
• A Kai’Sa who dives the enemy team, dies immediately, and then creates a huge explosion post-mortem that wipes out a huge chunk of her two enemies’ remaining health

If this sounds fun to you, welcome to the club. This is probably still in early development phases but once it gets shipped out, you can bet Tear of the Goddess will be here to cover it. 

Dev Diary ARAM changes

There is a new team at Riot in charge of the game modes department, and it’s led by Riot Maxw3ll. If you ever wanted to point the blame finger at someone for the broken tower on the Howling Abyss, that is your guy. But according to their Dev Diary blog, they will work on implementing the player feedback soon enough. For the longest time, ARAM has been favorable towards poke champs, ADCs, and enchanters in terms of both pick rate and power level.

Playing melee champions on this map has always felt miserable, even more so before the Snowball summoner spell was added. The addition of Hex gates, bushes and  tower debris is something designed to limit the aforementioned aspects of ARAM. Playing Kayn or Talon on the new map feels a bit better. These changes allow those champions to somewhat utilize parts of their kit rather than being a dead waste. Rengar also has more bushes to play around with now, and it punishes bad players who don’t do their diligence and face check everything.

ARAM Tower rubble will be removed 

According to Riot’s Dev Diary blog, the extra bushes are here to stay, for now. But that can’t be said about the tower rubble. From the polling they’ve done, the ARAM player base has largely rejected the change. They have tried to pinpoint a cause for the dissatisfaction, but in the end, they realized it was too big of a change. With a lot of the combat on the Howling Abyss being focused on choke points and vision, moving away from the normal team fighting push and pull playstyle landed poorly with the majority of the players. That’s why the team is planning on strongly scaling back the tower rubble mechanic or outright reverting it in a future patch. 

ARAM Frostgates

On the other hand, the frost gates are here to stay. The new mechanic gave champions that wanted a flank opportunity a chance and lowered the cost of dying early, which is when melee champions are at their most vulnerable. A few patches into the new season and the change of pace and game flow have been noticeable.  The death timers were increased to compensate for the frost gates, but that has backfired. Riot already decreased the ARAM death timers on patch 13,1 but we are getting a full revert right now. As of patch 13,4 the ARAM death timers have been reduced by 2 to 6 seconds, reverting them to their 12.22 values :

• Level 3: 12 seconds ⇒ 10 seconds
• Level 4: 16 seconds ⇒ 12 seconds
• Level 5: 19 seconds ⇒ 14 seconds
• Level 6: 21 seconds ⇒ 16 seconds
• Level 7: 23 seconds ⇒ 18 seconds
• Level 8: 25 seconds ⇒ 20 seconds
• Level 9: 26 seconds ⇒ 22 seconds
• Level 10: 27 seconds ⇒ 24 seconds
• Level 11: 28 seconds ⇒ 26 seconds
• Level 12: 30 seconds ⇒ 28 seconds
• Level 13:32 seconds ⇒ 30 seconds
• Level 14: 34 seconds ⇒ 32 seconds
• Level 15: 36 seconds ⇒ 34 seconds
• Level 16: 38 seconds ⇒ 36 seconds
• Level 17: 40 seconds ⇒ 38 seconds
• Level 18: 42 seconds ⇒ 40 seconds

League of Legends Dev Diary Lore coverage

The lore of League of Legends is something many players find sacred. Not only does it immortalize the characters that they are playing, but it also adds context. Have you ever wondered why Aatrox sounds so mad in his voice lines and why he is called the World Ender? Well, make sure you catch up on his story in the lore. But Riot has dropped the ball recently. Most notably during the Ruination event. Having graphic artists that designed the skins write the Ruination story in the Runeterra universe was not well received. And hopefully, Riot has learned its lesson.

With so many new games, new characters, and overlapping universes in alternative scenarios, it’s fairly easy to get lost. It’s also harder to keep track of what is being said and done, but thankfully their new Lore team should handle that. Making the stories non-contradictory should also help out the development of the second season of Arcane. And that is something that everyone should be excited about, even if you don’t play League of Legends. 

Clash

Season 12 ended with a new version of the Clash tournament, played on the Howling Abyss. And while they do like the success of the experimental ARAM Clash, there still is work that needs to be done. Most of that falls on the ARAM balancing issues and making sure the format runs smoothly on a larger scale. But we will have to wait a bit more for the second iteration since the cyber attack Riot Games suffered earlier in the year has slowed things down.

That’s the reason the regular Clash events won’t be back in February like they usually are. In  season 13, Clash will debut in March. It will also be the first time Clash will be available in the region of Southeast Asia. But that isn’t the only good thing to come out of Riot ditching Garena as their service provider in this region. The concept was beyond flawed and we explained it thoroughly in this article.

Regional and global tech updates in Riot’s Dev Diary

With Riot Games entering the scene in SouthEast Asia, it seems that good times are coming for this region. In their Dev Diary blog, the team mentioned that the new servers they are planning to use will significantly reduce the ping issue many players are facing. With so many players spread out across a wide area of archipelagos, it’s no wonder it has troubled them to this day.  

But that won’t be the only server-side changes, the team is planning to implement in the following months. The hardware for the Korean and EUNE (Europe Nordic & East) servers will also be replaced, resulting in a more optimized performance that all players in those regions should feel. But Riot Games will also increase their usage of cloud servers, in all regions across the world. This might be a direct result of the cyber attack they sustained, but regardless, it should result in fewer login queues when starting the game. Knowing the player base, they would like Riot to do something about the client as well, but all in due time I guess.