Riot devs sacrificed original LoL Arena ideas for a faster release

In Riot Games’ latest dev diary, the company shined a light on the recently launched Arena mode, which has been welcomed with open arms by the League of Legends community. The team shared the reasoning behind the much-anticipated addition of a new game mode to the client, along with some details of its creation. 

At the beginning of the year, Riot recognized League players had been feeling “underserved” for quite some time, according to Daniel Emmons, the modes design lead at Riot. This prompted a dev update in February in which Riot shared the arrival of the two-vs-two-vs-two-vs-two game mode this summer at the expense of other already existing rotating game modes, like Urf, Spellbook, and One For All. 

The hype and expectations around what would then become Arena mode grew immensely in the months preceding its release—and it seems players have been quite content with the product that was delivered. Now, Riot wants to shed some light on how Arena came to be. According to Andrei Van Roon, head of League studio, Riot had already been exploring “a bunch of game modes” but the discontent among players at the beginning of the 2023 season put a “sense of urgency” in delivering one this year. 

Initially, the dev team started working on a prototype for Arena at the end of 2022 with the intention of delivering a finished product in 2024. But ultimately, they were asked to do so for this summer. The idea was to create a “lower stress League experience,” as described by Eduardo Cortejoso, the modes product lead at Riot.

Arena quickly became a high priority for Riot as it became clear the hype felt within the studio would rapidly spread to players—but making a great first impression was still not enough. “We don’t want to just make a thing that makes people go like ‘oh that was cool’ and then stop playing,” Emmons said. “We really wanted to try and make a mode that had lengths.”

Knowing in depth the nature of Arena, the team had to address certain issues from the beginning. This led to the decision to add Augments from TFT and the creation of a completely new terrain type called Deep Water, which would be of help to ranged champions in the constricted map that is the Arena. The addition of champion cameos, like Sett and Lux, also brings another layer of strategic plays that League players have to keep in mind while fighting in the Arena. 

According to Emmons, the best scenario coming out of the release of Arena is finding an audience of people who want to love League but aren’t in sync with the Summoner’s Rift map. 

After all the stress and hardships—but also enjoyable times in creating Arena mode—Rioters hope “players don’t want us to turn Arena off,” a sentiment echoed by many since the release of the game mode.