Riot reviewed the year 2020 in a recent blog post, reflecting on what has been a very hectic time packed with new stuff for League of Legends.
The yearly review from Riot included some of the biggest focal points of the year such as the LoL client, behavioral system, new releases, and of course the big preseason changes. To make it easy for fans to get a bit of insight, Riot broke down each major topic of 2020 with its own thoughts on how it has improved the game.
Join @Safelocked in reflecting on the past year of League of Legends.https://t.co/7LZ8YEIaGW
— League of Legends (@LeagueOfLegends) December 28, 2020
Riot to continue improving client, behavioral system in 2021
Some of the most significant notes from Riot were regarding recent improvements made to the game’s client and the behavioral systems. Riot has struggled to fix both for years, but 2020 was finally the time where Riot put in a lot of effort to make improvements.
The client has seen change throughout the year, as Riot has tried to eliminate the countless bugs that players have been dealing with for a long time. While the client isn’t flawless yet by any means, Riot has improved the loading times, memory crashes, and fixed over 100 bugs to improve the navigation experience. According to Riot, they will continue to work on the client in 2021.
“We’re not taking this year’s gains as cause to stop working,” Riot said. “There’s still room to improve, and we have a full roadmap of more client improvements we’ll keep pushing out in the new year too.”
Along with the continued work on the client, Riot will also aim to further improve the behavioral systems in 2021. Over the past year, Riot has focused a lot on improving intentional feeding and AFK detection and the results are showing. According to Riot, the improvements have led to punishing 50% more players who are feeding intentionally.
For the upcoming year, Riot will continue to refine and has already begun to tackle detection and punishments for players who go AFK in games. More info about the behavioral systems and their improvements will come next year.
Riot looking for more feedback on 2021 preseason
By far the biggest changes to the game in 2020 have been through the big 2021 preseason. After years with a flawed item system and in-game shop, Riot decided to do a complete overhaul of the two with the goal of creating better build paths and improving the shop’s usability.
The big preseason changes have been met with mixed opinions among fans, where some are unhappy about how much damage there seems to be in the game now and how easily matches can snowball. Riot made a note to this worry that games will always be more bloody in the preseason as players are taking more risks than usual. Riot still acknowledges that the damage, in general, is going up.
“While we’re interpreting initial balance feedback cautiously, please keep it coming,” Riot said.
Riot encourages players to keep providing feedback on the 2021 preseason changes so they can keep improving the new elements in the game ahead of the season 11 start.
Riot did reviews on several other changes for 2020 and all can be read in the official dev post.
What is the LoL client?
The LoL client is the program that players need to play League of Legends. The client is essentially the hub that players log in to before queuing up for a game. It’s also in the LoL client where players can interact with friends, purchase champions and skins, create rune pages, and of course enter the different game modes.
Is LoL a dying game?
Whether League of Legends is dying is a never-ending discussion, and the short answer as of December 2020 is no. Even after 10 years, League of Legends is still going strong and is growing in several respects. Every month, around 120 million people play the game, 30 million of whom are playing daily. That alone is a number that no other game is currently able to pull. Besides the game itself, LoL has a growing esports scene that is currently the most-watched by far among all esports titles. Riot Games has also been releasing new games in 2020 with more to come, making sure that there will be other games to fall back on if LoL starts to decline in popularity.
League of Legends will kick off its 11th season starting in January 2021.
