League of Legends gameplay design director Mark “Scruffy” Yetter discussed the 2021 preseason in a dev blog post today, addressing certain things that Riot will follow up on to improve matchmaking and the user experience.
After over a week since Patch 10.23 hit the live servers, the devs have plenty of data to sift through. There are certain aspects that Riot will follow up on, like item icon clarity and limiting burst from weapons. And there are some new features that will improve the game’s quality of life.
Riot already implemented two hotfixes to curb immediate imbalances since Patch 10.23, nerfing Bami’s Cinder items and tweaking a couple of champs and weapons. And there are more nerfs on the way to limit the amount of burst from items and actives.
But Riot also found that snowball numbers are lower than they were in 10.22.
“Typically as players are learning new systems, snowball increases from wider skill differences in a game,” Scruffy said. “We’re not acting on this currently, because a small reduction in snowball is still within our ideal snowball state for the game.”
If snowballing increases and drastically impacts matchmaking, Riot will likely swoop in with another hotfix or patch.
And Scruffy previewed some changes to improve item clarity on Nov. 17. Many fans argued that the new icons blend in with each other and are hard to distinguish. This was especially problematic with certain colorblind players. So Riot will make them more clear, easier to identify, and rendered to look more like “powerful fantasy weapons,” according to Scruffy.
A much-requested feature to allow the shop to be scaled up or down is also in the works. Scruffy says it “should be available in the next few patches.” In the future, Riot wants to allow more advanced scaling options, like changing the size of item icons in the all item view.
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