Riot game director Meddler on Eternals: “We want to be careful with Eternals design so that they don’t warp gameplay”

League of Legends game director Andrei “Meddler” van Roon shared some initial thoughts on Eternals in today’s Dev blog post.

The new stat-tracking feature has certainly divided the community, with many wondering if they’re worth purchasing at all. While the Eternals stat-tracking may not be incredibly interesting, Meddler explained that it’s important not to compromise gameplay for achievements.

“We want to be careful with Eternals design so that they don’t warp gameplay,” Meddler said. “Progressing Eternals should be very correlated with actions that help win a game as a result rather than incentivizing less optimal play… That does lead to somewhat less interesting Eternal design.”

While stats like “killing enemy champs” or “taking epic objectives” aren’t super exciting, other potential Eternals, such as saving CC abilities for killing blows or choosing less effective summoner spells, would “warp gameplay.” Meddler explains that Riot would prefer less unique Eternals instead of adversely affecting matchmaking.

And since not everyone is a fan of Eternals and their in-game notifications, Meddler says that Riot is working on “making it easy” to opt out of the feature.

Now that Eternals has had “a bit of time to settle,” Riot will reassess them based on the community’s feedback.