Collection: It's in the name. Collecting cosmetics and engaging in loot fills the bars here
Icon of the Rift: Obtain Summoner Icons
Spice of Life: Obtain Champions
What happens if you already have all the Champions unlocked before the Challenges get live ?
You will complete these challenges retroactively.
This just feels like people who devoted time to eternals were robbed. Since they were apparently discontinued and we didn't even get Series 2... At least refund us and integrate Champion-specific challenges there please? It feels really bad to separate two very similar and complimentary services. Thanks for hearing me.
Eternals will be integrated into Challenges before Live launch. Also, there will be continued support and iteration for Eternals in the future.
Hey all, we've activated some of our Challenges features on PBE for testing in all matchmade queues which means we'll also be enabling Challenges on PBE. Challenges is in its beta state. As we polish it up we're looking for issues and feedback to address before we release early in 2022.
Specifically, rolling out the following:
We're looking for feedback around:
If you want a refresher on these and other changes we're working on, head to our most recent blog: https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/game-updates/challenges-coming-to-pbe/
To test certain challenges more effectively, we're enabling the Ranked Flex 5v5 queue in place of Normal Draft.
Read moreSpeaking of competitive /u/codeofbear
How will Challenges change player behaviour? I see a world where a player will be like “playing for challenges, gl” and process to play suboptimal on purpose. League is a competitive game across all its SR modes. Not playing to win is very toxic.
It’s a good question for sure. We’ve done some pretty rigorous testing of challenges and we think the design framework adequately irons out most of the conflict here. I think the main thing we’ve found is that challenges on their own rarely will have such an impact on an individual game that this consistently happens. We have flagged a few at risk, but we’ll be taking a look first on PBE to see how they pan out.
Like others have said, really appreciate you coming in here and talking about this! My one gripe that I see somewhat often is even when the Flex matchmaking is "fair", I run into players who have their solo rank at Plat/Diamond/higher but their Flex rank is bronze/silver. I understand that you want players to climb each queue, and that rank /= MMR, but it makes no sense to me that the exact same player can have two vastly different ranks in 2 queues where the only difference is potential teammates. Would love to see this cracked down on somehow.
Thanks again for answering questions!
No problem. Happy to talk! I think there are some seeding solutions we can target here to make it better. As with all of our work, it’s a matter of being able to prioritize them and dedicate the right amount of time to these projects to be effective.
I really appreciate your willingness to talk with people about this, actually. Flex's atmosphere is enjoyable and it's becoming my favorite mode more and more as me and parties of friends queue up and play!
- The idea of seeding MMR like with Solo/Duo is a good one, as it not only solves the problem but it prevents people from abusing a semi-fixed MMR. It would almost certainly result in a better experience for the people playing Flex and could possibly make Flex the preferable mode if all goes well. If the only excuse people have for not playing Flex is "It's a joke" then when it stops being one they'll probably try it out.
- Ah, so it does preference matching parties against one-another! I would argue that, at least presently, the people who queue for Flex don't care about the long timers. I can say that my regular queue time ranges from 2-15 minutes and I do not mind one bit so long as the matches are fair. Flex could end up being the mode with stricter matchmaking requirements (and longer, more accurate queues) for those who want it.
- Flex serving as a generalist-specialist mode isn't a bad thing imo. It allows you to go solo, duo, trio, full party, whatever suits your fancy and with the noted issues aside it does so well. It can be practice for Clash or competitive if you want it to be, and it can be an alternative to Solo/Duo if you want it to be, and I like the sound of both.
I only made this account to post about Flex anyway, which should tell you how much I actually care about it. Because I do. Me and my duo may be able to take Solo/Duo over, but Flex is more fun and that's what's most important tbh.
I really love the passion for sure -- it's definitely a space that's on the cusp of what could be amazing competitive team play if we get it right. I play a ton of flex too and would love to carve out some space to make it better, or at least find the right solution that fits that mold.
Can you comment on why ranked 5’s was removed? My initial thoughts are user engagement and the addition of flex and clash. It’s a decision that’s always sort of confused me.
I wasn't part of that decision a while back, but as with any mode we want to make sure it's healthy not only in population but in integrity (where we can). Team 5s was a great start into competitive 5s, but iirc it didn't hit our healthy bar for play and had a lot of problems with the implementation.
Flex and Clash have been positive steps in the right direction -- but there's still more to do there as well.
What about removing duos from solo queue and incentivizing them to play flex? 2/3/5 stack premades in flex and pure solo in solo queue. It would make matchmaking better and also give people a reason to play flex/take it serious. The game has enough people who want to play ranked but refuse to play solo that they would start playing flex. Throw in some better rewards too just to top it off.
It is something we talk about frequently. I really like the direction of it, but there are some queue health concerns that have held us back in the past.
It's worth reopening the discussion again though.
You're right. It does need some work. We don't have a full commit on what's next for Flex, but I do like talking about where some of the problems are.
It’s never too late to start. You got this.
Oh that’s weird. Let me look into that. Grats on the win btw
This is the kind of speculation thread I can get behind :)
Edit: excuse the formatting from phone :-(
Decay at apex tiers is super unforgiving. It’s something we have on the roadmap to address.
Transparently it’s more to give you a bigger window of decay prevention after decaying out of Master to Diamond, but we can look at the banked days.
Just a reminder for those that aren’t sure what OP is discussing:
DECAY
When you enter a division with Decay active, you’ll be given a number of Banked Days. At the end of each day, your number of Banked Days will decrease by 1, and if you don’t have any, you’ll lose LP instead. However, you can earn more Banked Days by playing games. The amount of Days you get per win, and how much LP you lose when you decay, differs by rank:
FOR APEX TIER:
Banked Days per Game: 1 Maximum Banked Days: 10 Initial Days Before Decay: 10 LP Lost on Decay: 250 FOR DIAMOND:
Banked Days per Game: 7 Maximum Banked Days: 28 Initial Days Before Decay: 28 LP Lost on Decay: 50 If you fall at or below zero LP as a result of...
Read moreTop: Trundle Jgl: Nocturne Mid: Zilean Bot: Jhin Support: Nami
I guess movement speed is my crutch?
So after Eternals it's probably a dumb question, but... Will the Challenges be a free feature?
Yes.
Do you have a little more information about this social comparison thing? I always hated mobile features on LoL PC tbh even gameplay cadence wise. I feel now with Wild Rift out surely those features should stay there unless they make sense when benchmarked with the design pillars of LoL PC.
The current iteration is just a leaderboard that you can choose to look at when forming your ranked lobby (flex or solo queue) so you can compete more clearly against your friends list, instead of a bunch of strangers that you have no affinity for.
/u/CodeofBear while people are tagging you with feedback - have you guys ever considered re-thinking the intended rank distribution (% of players in gold, plat, dia etc)?
I ask because in most other competitive games (off the top of my head - Overwatch, Starcraft, CSGO, DotA2...), gold, and especially plat and diamond (or equivalents) are much larger portions of the playerbase.
In other games, 'gold' is usually the most populated, bell curve 'average' rank (roughly 50th percentile), and things above gold tend to be around 33% of the best (67th percentile onward). Some examples:
- In League, at 50th percentile you're roughly Silver 3. In other games you'd be roughly mid Gold.
In League, at 70th percentile, you're Gold 2-3. In other games you'd be roughly mid Platinum.
In League, at 85th percentile, you're Gold 1-2. In other games, you'd be high plat or low diamond.
My hunch is that that discrepancy can actually lead to some interesting implications when it comes to player psychology, and could contribute in some part to the toxicity in the community given the more likely percieved lack of progression even if people put their nose to the grindstone etc. Not even talking about casual comparisons with friends in other games breaking down, that's kind of a minor point.
Anyways, you guys are the professionals, but I wanted to raise this in case Riot wasn't really aware of the discrepancy, since it seems you guys are looking roughly in this problem space right now.
Thanks for the discussion -- rank tiering and percentile bands is something we're always looking at (it's something we review bi-weekly).
This season we've opened up tiering a tiny bit and we're evaluating how it's performing. Nothing too crazy in either direction, so there isn't anything glaring about the distribution we want to jump on just yet.
We're seeing a pretty healthy percentage of the bell-curve straddle either side of low gold, which is functioning pretty healthily. Again, we look at this every two weeks and compare it over time, so it's constantly being re-evaluated.
Read moreThis is an awesome post and something that is LONG overdue for the game. I remember when Riot first broke the level barrier from 30 to progress further I felt pretty bummed as there was a mere emote as recognition for veteran players. As we all know, leveling to 30 back in the day was way harder and took a lot of time.
That being said, what I hope these updates do are the following:
1) Enhance visual prestige from Ranked. The ladder over the years has lost a bit of it's exclusivity and prestige. Visual flexing may aid that a bit (outside of the obvious behavioral/matchmaking problems). Side note can the Ranked borders get a visual change? They're too thin and lack that sudden visual impact.
2) Recognize veterans.
3) Introduce new exclusive ways to express yourself. Unobtainable/exclusive rewards feel very nice to show off in lobby/profile.
4) Improve Clash recognition.
That's pretty much all I can think of off the top of my head.
Cheers <3
First, thank you for the feedback.
We've already made some changes since I wrote the article that seem to be in-line with general sentiment being expressed through social channels right now and align with our lab groups pretty heavily too, which I'm excited about.
One of the key pieces of feedback was essentially "don't tone down rank", while still giving good solid priority weight to non-ranked identity expressions. Additionally, this paired nicely with your #3 point of "introduce new exclusive ways to express yourself" and we have some options on the table that we think we're going to move forward with, but nothing to follow up with just yet.
For #4 -- I really want this to be true, we're trying to carve out space to really make some improvements for Clash, and part of the identity update effort may include some of it, however big changes for Clash won't be on the table until the 2022 Clash season as of right now.
Read moreYou can play if you completed ranked placements last season as well as this season.
Hell yea! What an accomplishment!