Riot Games once again proved that it listens to its fans.
League of Legends lead gameplay designer Mark “Scruffy” Yetter explained today that Riot is “backing away” from the scheduled dodge penalty increase. The unpopular decision was met with many player complaints, which seems to have persuaded the dev team to leave it be.
“Hearing your feedback about the reasons that make you want to dodge convinced us that we can get more value hitting those issues first,” Scruffy said. “The team is refocusing on reducing game ruining behavior and matchmaking improvements.”
Riot previously wanted to issue harsher punishments on dodgers because it “hurts the overall player experience” by placing the other players back in queues. But many fans cited their reasons for dodging are because of toxic lobbies, autofills, or being forced to play a champion that they’re uncomfortable with.
Instead of increasing dodge penalties, Riot will tackle the catalyst for players abandoning lobbies—game-ruining behavior. It’s unclear if these plans will also transcend to toxic behavior within games or just focus on champion select. But players will definitely appreciate the dodge penalties remaining the same.
League players may still notice a difference when dodging, however. The dev team discovered a “misconfiguration” in dodge timers that will be fixed. This aims to correctly escalate penalties for players who dodge repeatedly.
