League of Legends design director Andrei “Meddler” van Roon explained the future of Clash in today’s Dev Corner post. With its full launch “coming fairly soon,” the Riot dev detailed a few improvements made based on player feedback.
Clash will now give every team the opportunity to play three matches, even if they lose the first two. Squads that were taken out early in the beta experienced “shorter than expected” tournaments and “unclear” placing for rewards purposes. Riot made some changes in the last beta, incorporating a consolation bracket for teams that lost their first match. But now teams are guaranteed at least three matches.
Riot is also working on presenting Clash information more clearly for its official launch. This includes a timer that shows how long a team will need to wait before their next match occurs based on how far along their opponent’s game is. A clearer distinction between different types of entry tickets is also on the horizon.
Riot hopes to encourage more players to “give Clash a try.” Many League players are hesitant to jump into the tournament mode or have trouble finding a team. Meddler explains that Riot is looking into things to improve this, such as a free Clash ticket for your first event.
Riot devs will continue to collect feedback throughout the year and plan to run Clash regularly. But the company wants to avoid falling into certain traps.
“We want to ensure gaps between Clash weekends don’t feel too long,” Meddler said. “We also want to avoid running tournaments so frequently that the potential player base is split over too many different days (leads to weaker competition and lower significance per tournament).”
Once League’s Clash system is stable, Riot plans on potentially expanding it into other event game modes and even autobattler Teamfight Tactics. There’s no set date on Clash’s launch, but it’ll likely come in early 2020.
