Christian V. November 17, 2020
Riot will be making changes to many of the new item icons with the goal of providing more clarity, differentiation, and rendering polish.
League of Legends fans have been presented with a lot of big changes this offseason but some have been easier to consume than others. Many fans have reported that the new item icons are too identical and hard to differentiate from each other.
Riot has quickly acted on the feedback and is currently making adjustments to several icons, according to gameplay design director Mark “Scuffy” Yetter.
In the most recent preview, a total of 58 item icons are presented with adjustments and there might be more to come. According to Scuffy, the primary goals are to make the item silhouettes clearer so players can quickly identify the different items while playing. They will also look to differentiate the colors and do some rendering polish, both to make the new icons more consumable and easier to remember.
The first preview already seems to achieve some of the goals. The icons look less complex and easier for players to identify when scaled down to small icons in the in-game shop.
Riot has been reacting quickly to community feedback in the preseason so far. Not only by adjusting the icons, but also to bugs and unbalanced things in the patch. Riot has made a few hotfixes where they got rid of the most game-breaking bugs and will soon be introducing patch 10.24.
Scuffy recently gave a preview on patch 10.24, where the clear focus is on item balancing and a few changes to some of the strongest/weakest champions in the game. The new item icons could very well be introduced in patch 10.24 as well.