Top 5 Riot decisions of 2017

With a great game comes great responsibility. This is especially true with League of Legends and Riot Games.

When you’re treading a delicate line between pro gamers and casual players, you’re bound to be subject to community criticism. But while there are still controversial topics like rising skin prices and overloaded champion kits, Riot did a lot of things right this year.

Here’s our list of the top 5 Riot Games’ decisions of 2017!

5. Chronobreak

In gaming, bugs are pretty much unavoidable, and League of Legends is certainly no exception. Unfortunately, in the world of esports, bugs can change the course of the entire match and lead to controversial decisions like the GMB vs SK remake. It seemed that the same exact narrative was about to unfold on February 12, 2017, when a critical bug appeared during a C9 vs FLY match. 

And then Chronobreak came in. 

With its help, Riot rewound the game to the time before the bug happened, and both teams continued the match as usual. An error that would previously result in a remake was resolved with a single pause. And sure, it took some time to make Chronobreak work in other regions, but now it’s hard to imagine that pro games were ever played without it.

4. Clash

Technically, Clash isn’t released yet, but the beta was in 2017, so… close enough! Besides, the important thing here is the concept.

After the departure of the Ranked 5s mode from the game, there was a distinct need for another team-oriented mode. Flex Queue scratched that itch a bit, but it quickly devolved into a ‘joke’ mode where players tried out new champions and messed around with friends.

Enter Clash, an in-game tournament with tangible prizes on the line. The event is open to the 5-man premades and takes place over the span of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Granted, you aren’t obligated to play every day, but it’s a good idea to do so if you want to get the best rewards possible.

Of course, issues can appear in the future. If the rewards are too underwhelming or there are too many smurfs, Clash can easily turn into a glorified Go4LoL. But it’s still a great way to expose the community to how it feels to be a pro gamer.

3. Rune Rework

The preseason is a time of chaos. In the past, this usually took the form of jungle and role reworks. But this time, Riot went full throttle and released a massive Rune Rework that affected every champion in the game.

Of course, not everything is fine and dandy.

Many champions feel unbalanced while others fall out of favor because they can’t make use of the new keystones. But everyone has received opportunities to explore and experiment, and ultimately, it’s exactly this sense of discovery that makes League of Legends so fun. 

2. NA LCS franchising

The NA LCS franchising is a… complicated topic. The entire concept was met with mixed feelings, and even more questions surfaced when a few notable teams didn’t make the cut. But after witnessing massive roster moves and new organizations entering the scene, we’re more excited than ever for the upcoming NA LCS season. Combine that with the Bo1 switch, and we’re expecting the viewership to be reach its peak in 2018, especially during that opening TL vs TSM match.

1. Transparency

There was a time when Riot Games was a very closed-off company. Their media presence usually came down to making light-hearted comments on inconsequential topics on Reddit, and every piece of criticism was met with silence or blank PR statements. 

But that time is long in the past.

These days, we have Cactopus’s posts, Ghostcrawler’s interviews, Nexus updates, and many other ways of interacting with Rioters. If you want to know something, there’s a good chance you can find someone from the company to comment on it. And that’s a very positive direction for League of Legends as a whole.

That’s it for our Top 5 Riot Games decisions of 2017! Think we missed anything? Share your opinion in the comments below!