Riot gets creative in new 2v2v2v2 League of Legends game mode

After years of fans requesting a wider variety of ways to play the game, a new League of Legends game mode has been confirmed by developer Riot Games.

League of Legends, Riot Games’ hugely successful MOBA, has had a problem with gameplay diversity for several years. The main mode takes place on Summoner’s Rift, the regularly-evolving iteration of the standard three-lane MOBA map. The only other permanently available game mode is All Random All Mid, taking place on a single-laned map called Howling Abyss. After the arrival, testing, and subsequent disappearance of the Nexus Blitz mode, a mini-game-filled party mode, a new League of Legends game mode has finally been announced by Riot Games.

New League of Legends mode announced

A new League of Legends game mode arriving in 2023 has been announced by Riot Games. Following major community backlash from a lackluster year beginning, Riot Games took steps to regain community faith by outlining its plans for the year. One of these was the much-anticipated development of a new game mode for League of Legends, including a fully-staffed alternate game modes team, after the previous iteration of that development team was turned into the basis for the Teamfight Tactics mode.

This new mode would take place on the Nexus Blitz map, being a 2v2v2v2 deathmatch-style showdown.

The new mode has very few details released, but according to a video published by Riot Games that included senior employees Riot Brightmoon and Riot Meddler, it will be arriving later on in 2023. This would be the first League of Legends game mode ever added in which there were more than two teams of players competing. With the rumors that it would take place on the Nexus Blitz map, it’s hard to imagine how four separate teams would compete for supremacy on the map.

How will the new League of Legends mode do 2v2v2v2?

Two-champion teams is a strange way to play League of Legends, even the smallest modes had been three champions leading up to this point. So how will Riot Games try to pull off this strange new iteration of League of Legends gameplay? The likely solution seems to be that not every team will be facing members of the other teams at any given moment, instead opting to face off one member of each team against another.

This would require a reorganization of the lanes unless four members of the game would lane and the other four would jungle. This would still require a drastic change from the original map.

Otherwise, it could be an isolated minigame in which players fight to the death on repeat, but that wouldn’t allow for level and scaling-dependant characters to excel, instead limiting the viable choices to early game-focused skirmishers and brawlers best served by constant bloodshed. For now, it remains a mystery, but details are sure to come as 2023 winds on about the new League of Legends mode.