The ranked system is getting yet another set of massive changes for the upcoming LoL 2024 season. Here is everything you need to know.
Image Credits | Riot Games
The LoL 2024 season will have three ranked splits
In its latest dev vlog update, Riot Brightmoon and Riot Meddler have confirmed that players will have to undergo three ranked resets per year, meaning there will be three ranked splits over the course of the season.
According to Riot Meddler, this is an opportunity for improvement: “One long gradual climb over 10 months can feel like a real grind with a long gap until the fresh climb. There’s that down period at the end of the year where, often, a lot of people will want to play Ranked and can’t. And sometimes, it’s just a long time until we’ve got the next window for larger changes to Summoners’ Rift gameplay.”
The 2023 season has been an experiment for that, having implemented a mid-year ranked reset. For the devs, it was a positive result, which is why they are maintaining that structure and even adding an extra split.
New schedule for preseason PBE
They also explained another key reason as to why they made this decision, which ties to the major gameplay changes that usually come in for preseason. Past preseasons have gone onto PBE in early October, giving players a lot of time to test the new features. While that is fine on its own, Riot thinks players who got to try out the new gameplay changes will lose the excitement of playing the game.
Image Credits | Riot Games
As a result, Riot will move the preseason changes for PBE in mid-November (20th), with the official release in January of 2024, on the same patch Rnaked and pro play begins.
“The current ranked split will stay live through November and December of this year, giving more time to players to reach their desired rank.” said dev Riot Pupulasers.
With the information taken from the official LoL website for the Chinese server, the schedule will be as follows:
2023 Ranked split will be extended until January 3.
The new PBE preseason will be available starting from November 20.
The new gameplay changes will be implemented in Patch 14.1, which goes live on January 9, 2024. It will also mark the start of the new split.
The second ranked split will start in May 2024, with the third one beginning in September.
In other words, players will have four months to grind to their desired rank within the same split.
What were the reasons behind the LoL ranked changes for 2024?
According to Riot, there are a couple of motives. First, the devs wanted to give players more opportunities to climb and take breaks without sacrificing the progress they made in the past months.
Moreover, having three different segments will help Riot make more adjustments to core gameplay at three different points in the year without disrupting the state of solo queue and professional play. The player base will also have a clearer idea of when bigger changes will be coming. They also added that since the third split is usually close to Worlds, the adjustments for the last part of the season will be minor compared to the other two.
On the flip side, Riot made it clear they won’t be bringing pre-season size updates during the season. They will, however, bring, mid-season updates similar to the one seen this year, keeping the game fresh and exciting.
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What are the potential risks?
It’s quite obvious that having the new preseason changes hit the live servers as the season starts, will lead to an incredibly unstable game state. Riot is hoping to reduce such things by fine-tuning in advance and allowing pros to play in tournament realms so they can adapt to the new changes before the season starts.
On a positive note, players will have three opportunities to win a victorious skin, and the overall start to the season should be more exciting and chaotic compared to other seasons. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of this approach, but it will mostly depend on how Riot deals with all the changes and whether they are able to create a decently-balanced meta, without anything too game-breaking.
Riot reveals directions for preseason changes
Another important topic covered in this dev vlog update is the preseason changes that the devs are working on for 2024.
“We’re looking at terrain adjustments to parts of Summoners0 Rift, changes to map objectives, and significant modifications to the item system”.
In particular, Riot Pupulasers went deeper into the Mythic item system, mentioning how the results weren’t what they expected. With that in mind, he confirmed they will be removing Mythic items from LoL.
“While it [the system] works pretty well for about half of the roster, the other half is left with items that don’t feel really right for them or have their creativity stifled,” he said. “We will be adjusting current Mythic items that players like to be exciting options rather than prescriptive centerpieces”. That said, more details will be coming soon in another update.
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