Pick-order swapping, loadout recommendations, and more coming to League

A plethora of quality-of-life features will be coming soon to League of Legends, each aimed at preparing players before they step foot on the Rift.

In a recent developer update, Riot Auberaun, product lead on the Game Loop team, provided more information on what the team has been working on to better the experience of features like matchmaking, types of queues, and more. They also provided a bit of information on the status of their goals from the last update, which included looking at MMR and solo-only lobbies.

Auberaun explained that, as of now, the team is not exploring the idea to create separate queues for solos and duos. The team is not confident that duo parties will have a competitive environment to play in as they feel Ranked Flex does not currently offer the same competition as normal ranked queues.

A recent change implemented in Patch 12.16 has also resulted in players being autofilled less against players who main a specific position. Players returning to the game after a brief hiatus have also been experiencing higher win rates in ranked queues.

For the near future, Riot is looking at increasing the anonymity of players in the drafting phase to prevent players from using third-party applications to determine whether to dodge a queue or not. “We recognize that there are legitimate reasons that someone might need to dodge a lobby, but there are also a lot that aren’t done in good faith,” Auberaun wrote. “We want to impact the motivations behind why dodging occurs to reduce the frequency in a natural way.”

The highly-requested option to swap pick order currently present in the mobile version of League, Wild Rift, is also something the team is looking to implement in the near future. This would allow players to simply click a button during the draft phase that requests a pick-order swap with them that can be either accepted or declined.

Additionally, Riot is looking to implement a “loadout recommender” in the draft phase akin to item recommendations in the in-game shop. This would provide players with the option to choose from popular sets of runes and summoner spells for specific champions without having to manually select them, while also giving players who don’t have much experience on certain champions an idea of how they should play their role.

While no concrete dates have been revealed for any of these quality-of-life changes, players should expect more information about them heading into the 2023 League preseason and the start of next year.