What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
You guys know that we spend a ton of time on this channel looking back at the history
of items, champions and the game itself.
Today we wanted to head in the opposite direction, and instead look at the future of League of
Legends.
We’re at a really interesting point in time right now; with the release of the Runes system
and the other preseason updates, we have finally reached a state in League of Legends where
almost all, if not all of the majorly outdated issues and long-standing problems of the game
have been either completely fixed, or at least had some level of solution attempted and implemented.
That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement, but Riot have made a number of
promises over the last few years that they have definitely followed through on.
Major updates are always an exciting time for the player base, so they are going to
be the focus of today’s video, and we’ll be looking for every aspect of the game that
either needs updating or that Riot themselves have mentioned they’ll be working on over
the next five years!
Riot seems to always head into new content with a real focus on problem solving.
No matter how big or small an update is going to be, they always approach things by considering
the problems that will arise and how they can be solved.
Quite often this seems to end up with them seeing problems where the players do not,
because they look at things from such an opportunistic perspective.
It’s not enough for them to find an acceptable place for an update, there’s always room
for improvement and ways to make things better than they are.
That means they often look at things that are probably okay and treat them like problems;
it allows them to really look deeply into the game and ask themselves what can be do
to improve it.
Although we’re at a point now that most of the game has been updated to an acceptable
standard, it’s seriously unlikely that we’ll stop seeing major updates from Riot.
We may eventually reach a stage where Riot decides to slow down on major revamps or changes,
but that’s probably a lot further in the future than the next five years.
The first big update we’re expecting to see now (aside from any more pre-season tweaks)
is another update to the Runes system.
Rioters have commented numerous times that the released version of the new Rune system
was simply a foundation to be built on.
The next Runes Update has been confirmed to include new runes, so it seems like Riot will
be aiming to add more variety to the system.
One of the big goals of the update was to avoid generalization; they didn’t want one
or two specific rune pages to be used in every situation or on every champion.
Instead, they wanted a simple, customizable system where players felt like any choice
they made was both useful and also beneficial for their own personal playstyles.
Adding new runes will definitely help them keep things specialized, and we’re expecting
to see a few tweaks and other balance changes to the current runes alongside this update
too.
Riot have commented that a big part of this follow-up update will be to see if any particular
set of champions that share certain traits are not being well supported by the update.
If that proves to be true, they can simply add a specific keystone for use by that champion
group, and it should solve the issue for them all.
The next major update we’re really expecting to see after the Rune Follow-up Update is
a set of changes planned for starting items.
Riot talked a little bit about adding new starting items during the preseason update
in combination with the release of Runes Reforged, but later cancelled their plans, instead focusing
all development on the runes themselves.
The removal of the old Runes and Masteries system meant that Riot not only needed to
spend a lot of time perfecting the runes they wanted ready for release, but it also meant
changes had to be made to champion base stats to compliment the new system.
As a result, there simply wasn’t time to develop and balance new starting items with
all these other changes.
Still, there’s a lot of work to be done when it comes to improving starting items
and offering more variety, so Riot plan to work on these and release them sometime in
the new year.
One example that Riot originally posted was Doran’s Dagger, a theoretical new starting
item that would give 12% attack speed, 60 health, 2 life on hit and 5 bonus damage to
minions for only 450 gold.
It would essentially act as an early game item for attack speed focused characters,
without forcing them to take the conventional dagger and lose out on health, sustain and
minion damage.
We’ll expect to see this in the update, possibly with a few tweaks, alongside a bunch
of other starting items that will hopefully offer every champion in the game an interesting
item choice to start the game with.
Player choice and customization has been a huge driving force behind Riot’s updates
lately, so we expect to see a good number of new items aimed to present the players
with more meaningful decisions to make at the start of every game.
We’ve mentioned a couple of times now that Riot have reached a point where they have
updated almost all the major systems left in League of Legends.
One of the remaining ones is actually something that the vast majority of League players don’t
ever really think about, and it’s the Beginner Experience.
Whether you’ve been around for one season or all of them, there’s not really any reason
for you to touch the new player features since you’re already comfortable with the game
and client.
But that’s not the case for new players, and Riot are constantly trying to entice new
people to try the game.
That means it’s super important for them to craft a strong new player experience, and
it’s likely something they’ll be focusing on in the future.
That may be a bit uninteresting for a lot of people, but if you’ve ever made a new
account to play with someone that has just started League, you’d know the current system
leaves a lot to be desired.
The introduction of the new Runes system and the new levelling reward system is actually
very good for new players; it means they are on a level playing field from Day 1, and they
can quickly start building a small pool of champions to play.
However, the current tutorial isn’t particularly good.
It does teach players the very basics in a guided game, but there’s lots of improvements
that Riot could make.
In addition to changing the in-game tutorial, Riot could also do more to help guide newer
players around the client, and help them get comfortable with all the different interfaces.
Another part of the game that has been a little neglected until now is lore.
Some players only really care about the lore of their favorite characters, and some don’t
care at all, but there are those out there that really enjoy diving into the lore of
their favorite games.
That means understanding the backgrounds of the characters, how they interact with each
other, the different areas of the world and all that kinda stuff.
Prior to Riot’s new standard for champion releases, lore was something that was heavily
neglected, and it resulted in a lot of characters being added to the game that had almost no
lore attached.
If they did have lore, it was usually the typical ‘dark and mysterious past’ kinda
thing.
To give them credit, a lot of the VGUs have really fleshed out character origin stories,
and Riot seem to be making an effort to tie everything together into one believable Universe.
So all that’s left to do really is to implement the lore into the client.
If they really want to turn League into a franchise with multiple games, the lore is
going to be really crucial, so weaving it into the client and making it accessible for
everyone is a great first step.
We expect to see an update like this sometime in the next couple of years.
The last large scale update on the agenda for League are changes to the user interface
and user experience.
The client is definitely not as stable as it could be, and Riot are always chasing perfection
when it comes to the in-game UI.
A good example are the upcoming health bar changes.
Riot want to make it easier for players to use health bars as visual indicators, so that
they can keep track of a fight, gain more clarity when spectating the game, and make
gameplay more intuitive when it comes to playing around important mechanics.
They’ve promised to keep things similar to the old system so that it feels familiar,
so players won’t need to relearn how to time their last hits, but it’ll also feel
way more satisfying when you do certain things (like blowing someone up with heavy burst
damage, for example).
Players will be referencing the various UI systems both on the client and in-game whenever
they play League, so it’s a high priority for Riot to make sure all these systems work
well, feel good to use and give as much useful information as possible without directly throwing
it at the screen in text form.
From Ghostcrawler’s comments on League’s long-term strategy and Riot’s approach to
development in general, it seems like they really want to turn League of Legends into
a franchise with the same kind of longevity as games like Magic: The Gathering or Dungeons
& Dragons.
Although a lot of players enjoy older video games for nostalgic purposes, there’s not
really many online games that can hold on to a substantial player base for that length
of time.
There’s simply so much competition that it can be really hard to keep players coming
back.
Historically, Riot has focused on sustaining their current player base by keeping them
happy, but it seems they want to begin enticing new players as well.
It’s going to be really exciting to see what Riot comes up with in the future in order
to make that a reality.
Although development on League of Legends itself is important, pushing it as a franchise
and developing new games in the same Universe may be a really promising way for Riot to
accomplish it.
Riot Ghostcrawler himself put it best: maybe in five years Riot will have multiple games,
and we’ll be stuck deciding which one we want to play that night!