Welcome to the new year, League of Legends fans. Riot Games has revealed a whole gamut of changes headed to the game, including some major adjustments to the ranked climb.
Since the introduction of ranked play, there has always traditionally been one full season for ranked play with a reset at the end of the year. Additionally, players were forced to play through full best-of-five series to promote between tiers as a final test to earn a place in a higher rank. But in 2023, the developers are changing things to ensure that players always have goals to achieve throughout the year.
“Some folks continue their grind, but others drop out of ranked entirely or turn to smurfing, and that goes against some of our core goals for playing ranked League,” product lead Chris “Auberaun” Roberts said. “At the end of the day, we want you to always have a goal to be able to chase, and to reward you for your accomplishments along the way.”
Here are all the changes headed to League‘s ranked system in 2023.
Season changes to League’s ranked system
Next year, Riot will be debuting a new system for League’s ranked play with two ranked resets instead of one. The first split will start at the beginning of the year in January and the second split will kick off sometime in the middle of the year. Additionally, the devs are changing the length of promotion series between tiers from best-of-five to best-of-three and are also removing visible rank influence from matches.
With two splits featured, this also means that there will be two ranked skin rewards in 2023 instead of just one. For those who aren’t able to break into the Gold-ranked threshold to win the skin, don’t fret. Riot is now allowing any rank to earn the new ranked skin rewards, as long as they play plenty of games to show their dedication and hard work.
For the players who have reached Gold to earn the skin reward and stopped playing, another welcome change is headed their way. If a player ranks up to Gold, they will automatically earn the ranked skin, even if they demote back to Silver and below. Gold players and above will, however, still earn the skins and chromas at the end of the split.
Lastly, Riot is now simplifying how split points are earned. The developers are now shaving the system a bit down so that players will get more points for wins and slightly fewer for losses. They are also adding more incentives on the ranked reward track, to push players to compete a bit more during the season.
