The LoL Season 14 is just around the corner, and it brings a lot of changes. These changes are extremely important, and in a way will decide what the future of LoL looks like, since the game desperately needs to be revitalized.
It's been a long time since LoL introduced such massive changes, changes that affect not only the visual of the map but also how the game is played. But are these changes enough, or do we still need some features added or removed to give LoL a second life?
Let's go over everything we want to see in LoL in 2024 right now.
Keep Mythic items out of the game forever!
The Mythic items system was introduced in 2021, and it didn't take long for players to understand that it wasn't a positive change. However, it took Riot Games three years to listen to the community, admit they got it wrong, and remove this system.
After just a few months since its inception, it was clear the Mythic items system hurt more champions than the ones it benefited. Some champions were forced to build weak Mythic items, others would need to avoid going for them as the first item because they simply weren't optimal.
Many champions saw their pick rate decrease because of that, as their Mythic items were weak and in some cases just a waste of gold. This forced players to prioritise other champions, and entire classes of champions fell into a black hole.
The Mythic items system will cease to exist in Season 14 and we hope it stays that way.
Have clear guidelines for toxicity
Ah, toxicity, a tale as old as time. Since the beginning of LoL, that toxicity has existed, and unfortunately, it never is going to completely disappear. However, Riot Games can do a better job of defining what is toxic and what isn't.
I've seen cases of players being banned for typing "GG easy" or " better JG wins" after winning a game, and that is just too much. One thing is if you are insulting other players, calling them all types of names and whatnot, then you deserve a hard ban, especially if you do it consistently.
However, a simple "mid gap", "GG easy", or even just saying "Hey, you played bad and you are the reason we lost this game" shouldn't get you banned for 14 days.
There needs to be clear guidelines on what is toxic and what isn't for Riot Games. A "we lost this game because of you" or even "stfu" can't be in the same category as "get cancer" and other awful comments.
Yes, no one likes to hear they played badly, or that their mistakes cost the team the game, but that isn't a reason to ban someone for a long period.
Revert ping system changes
The ping changes introduced a little over one month ago have received massive negative feedback from the community. From casual players to pros no one liked the changes, mainly because they had a negative impact on the gameplay.
Riot Games' main goal when implementing these changes was to decrease toxicity, but that didn't happen. Of all the ways to be toxic in LoL spam pinging was the least impactful one.
There is no verbal harassment in spam pinging, and you can simply mute your ally pings. I think we all also agree that it's better or at least less impactful to get pinged six times than to receive a death threat in chat.
Not being able to spam ping one of your teammate's icons is understandable, as it can be seen as toxic. Despite that, you do have a button that allows you to mute pings.
However, not being able to ping your teammates' abilities or spam pings makes no sense. It's much more convenient to ping an ally ult instead of having to type in chat "player x pls Ult".
Spamming pings is also something needed to ask for help, make your allies aware that you are going for a play, or use the danger ping to say "pls don't do that you are going to throw the game!".
Oh, and have I mentioned we already have a mute pings button, so limiting the amounts of pings you can do and increasing the ping cooldown makes no sense? I think I did.
Continue with Patch reviews
Like all the other companies in the world, Riot Games isn't perfect, after all, no one is. However, the level of communication Riot Games and their developers provide to the player base is great, and not a lot of gaming companies do the same.
Phreak Patch reviews are a great example of that. Having one of the LoL lead designers constantly go through all the changes made in a patch, explaining the thought process behind those changes, and explaining what they aim to achieve with them is fantastic.
Matt Leung-Harrison and August also do great work communicating with the player base, answering users' questions, addressing the community feedback and more.
This makes the community feel important and gives players a way to directly share their thoughts about the changes with the developers. Hopefully, this will continue in 2024. But pls revert the ping changes Phreak.
Is LoL too hard for new players?
This is a discussion that has been going on for years. LoL is a complex game, especially if you want to be good at it. There are many concepts users need to understand, with all of them falling order two categories, macro and micro game.
In those two categories, we have wave management, building, match-ups, last hitting, mechanics, rotations, tempo, jungle pathing, map awareness, and many others. Furthermore, new players still need to choose what position to master and all of them are quite different.
Oh, I almost forgot, there are also 166 champions in the game, with different skill sets, roles, and different builds, that change depending on the opponent's team composition.
So yeah, LoL is hard for newcomers, but in a certain way, that's how it is supposed to be. Riot Games has been making the game more noob friendly in the past few years, but LoL will always have a huge learning curve.
Yes, Riot Games can certainly make that learning curve smaller, and make it a little easier for new players. But at the same time, it needs to make sure it maintains the core aspects of the game and doesn't make the game too easy, or catered just for the casual players.
We would like to see features that make the game easier for new players being added, as long as they don't come at the expense of removing or altering features that took skill to master.
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