League of Legends
CREATING A RIFT
Updating LEAGUE OF LEGENDS is a mammoth task, but this year Riot Games has taken more risks than usual
By Mike Stubbs
After almost 15 years, League of Legends remains one of the most popular PC games in the world, boasting over 100 million players every month. But keeping a game fresh and exciting for that long is no easy task, especially with so many people to please, so Riot Games has taken some risks with the new 2024 season.
Updating League of Legends is not simple at the best of times. With millions of players to keep happy ,each patch has to improve things in some way but not break everything that players love. Throughout most of the year the risks are minimal for a new patch, with one arriving every two weeks Riot tends to keep them relatively small, making balance changes and introducing one or two new things at once, be it a new champion, game mode or a change to a system. It is, usually, only once a year when a lot of big changes are made all at once, and that is with the launch of a new season.
Andrei ‘Meddler’ van Roon joined Riot Games in 2011 as a champion designer, before the idea of seasons was even in place and the focus was just on adding more and more content to the game. But after a while, he and the dev team started to realize that just adding more and more content all the time wasn’t a sustainable option, and that they would need to change strategy a little.
“Over time we gradually refined [the update system] and realized, this works well for players if we turn off [ranked matchmaking] right at the end of the year, we make a bunch of changes, then we turn it back on once the game is a bit more stabilized,” explains van Roon, who has risen through the ranks and is now head of League Studio, overseeing all of the games built internally at Riot in the League of Legends universe.
A lot of changes have been made to make top laners more impactful and make the lane a true 1v1.
MEET THE NEW BARONS
With three new Barons to take down you need to know who you are up against
HUNTING BARON The Hunting Baron keeps the pit you know, but will punish enemies that group together too closely.
TERRITORIAL BARON Opens his pit up to have two entrances but will deal a lot of damage, so you need to be quick to get out of the way.
ALL-SEEING BARON The All-Seeing Baron makes his pit a long corridor with big walls, making it harder to escape if you need to run.
This was the format for a new League of Legends season for years. Around November time the previous season would end and ranked matchmaking would be turned off, which for some players would mean it was time to take a break. Van Roon says this was “a pretty healthy cycle” for players, but for many, it meant that, when all the fun new features dropped, there was little competitive reward to try them out.