The absence of a snow-covered Summoner’s Rift for 5 years has left many players longing for the return of this festive and atmospheric environment. Riot Games has been actively implementing various changes in League of Legends, particularly in Patch 13.20 and 13.21, which suggests a growing commitment to listening to player feedback and making necessary adjustments.

Furthermore, the return of Nexus Blitz has ignited hopes for the possible revival of the beloved winter map, especially since fans have expressed strong desires for its return.

Riot Games hinted at Winter Rift

The Twitter saga began on October 10, 2023, when a passionate player named Dumbs tweeted with a tone that resonated with many fans in his tweet requesting the return of the Winter Map.

To the delight of the community, Riot Support FR’s official Twitter account responded with a cryptic yet intriguing message: “La magie du Solstice opérera peut-être cette année,” which translates to “The magic of the Solstice may happen this year.”

In the context of Dumbs’ tweet, it appears that Riot Support FR is subtly alluding to the winter solstice. However, it remains unclear whether this is a legitimate hint at the map’s return or just another tantalizing tease without immediate practical implications.

Nonetheless, the response from Riot Support FR carries weight and excitement among players, as it marks official acknowledgment of the community’s desire for the Winter Map.

The last time Riot addressed this topic, they mentioned certain technical challenges, but that was three years ago. Given Riot Games’ growth and resources, it seems feasible to make the return of the Winter Map a reality. Only time will tell if this hint translates into a delightful in-game experience for League of Legends players, be it in the short term or the distant future.

League of Legends Arena game mode has proven to be a popular game mode in League of Legends. It was released in conjunction with the Soul Fighter Event and the Soul Fighter skins. There were several intriguing aspects of the game mode that players loved.

The game mode will end on August 28. As a result, players were concerned about the game mode’s future. However, Riot is apparently discussing it behind closed doors, as Riot Maxw3ll revealed.

As the Soul Fighter event draws to an end, Riot has already declared that Arena will be closing as well—but there is still some hope for those who want to keep the game mode alive. Lead designer Daniel “Maxw3ll” Emmons reassured disappointed fans on the League of Legends subreddit that ideas for Arena’s future are already being addressed.

“Thank you for the kind words! We definitely haven’t seen the last of Arena; the team is discussing the future plans for the mode and none of the options on the table involve abandoning it. Brightmoon and Meddler will have a dev update soon that includes what the next steps are for the mode.”

The most encouraging aspect of his reply is that the team might reconsider Arena, but neither alternative is to cancel it. It implies that Arena will be returned at some time.

Riot Brightmoon and Riot Meddler will also deliver an update on the game mode in the upcoming Dev Update video, according to Riot Maxw3ll.

Overall, these are encouraging signals that we are pleased with. Players would like to get their hands on the game mode as soon as possible, with a better system and maybe many new features. We’ll just have to wait for the Dev Update, which is expected to arrive soon.

A new Mythic Variants for Dark Cosmic Jhin has been planned by the League of Legends developers, but they’re calling it a “skin” and saying that loot boxes will be the only way to get it. Players who are worried have done the maths, and it turns out that you’ll pay a fair sum.

Riot is going crazy with their skin price

In a recent August 17 Reddit thread, it was said that the chances of obtaining the skin without spending at least $200 were barely 25%. The chances are really much smaller if you merely spend $100 on this unique skin, and you only have a 10% chance of getting it.

All of this is predicated on the skin having at least a 1% chance to drop, though we’d guess that the drop rate will be lower given how frequently Mythic skins appear in loot boxes.

Words have spread, and some are even harsher in their condemnation of the developers, branding them as sellouts and claiming that this skin is an actual scam.

And that’s not all, another Reddit post also addressed the company for a crazy amount of money players have to spend for the newest chromas bundles.

They were horrified to discover that the new chromas would reportedly cost about $200.

In all, 5 new chroma bundles for the Immortal Journey skin line cost 14,462 Riot Points when they were added in Patch 13.16. Players will need to spend about $170 on two bundles of 8,750 RP each to get them all.

The prices, in the opinion of many players, are outrageous. Due to the current estimation of the price based on PBE being excessively expensive, even former Garena players believe Rioters have lost their minds.

The League fanbase is also understandably beyond incensed at the new Mythic Variants and has taken to insulting Riot Games for ripping off the gacha systems from Genshin Impact and Honkai.

However, players asserted that Riot won’t lower the costs as long as people continue to purchase these skins. Despite the players’ objections, it appears for the time being that the skin is on its way. However, we still need to wait for the company to make a choice.

Most notably, Rowan Parker stated that he would like to build more immersive and character-driven games, particularly a League of Legends dating sim game with additional romantic themes for certain prominent League champions.

Riot Forge: LoL Dating Sim Game

MOBAs such as League of Legends have a large player base not just because of the gameplay but also because of the characters and their lore.

Parker feels a League dating sim would be fantastic because it would provide an intimate view into characters and a fresh way of narrative that hasn’t before been seen for Riot Games’ MOBA.

However, given the age of some League champions, he noted that there would have to be constraints on which characters appeared in the Runeterra dating sim.

“I would love a dating sim in the world of League of Legends. That would be amazing. ”

Although Parker is open to new ideas and somewhat keen, he admits that there hasn’t been anything publicly announced—or even explicitly pitched—in terms of sim games. In addition, the team are already actively working on a number of additional titles.

Many Riot Forge titles, such as Mageseeker, Convergence, and Ruined King, are character-driven and provide in-depth views at characters and tales from different viewpoints, allowing players to form deeper ties with these characters.

While it is not currently in development, players are hopeful that a Riot Forge League dating sim would be available in terms of immersion and incentives.

League of Legends’ newest game mode has officially arrived on the PBE. Riot’s newest attempt into various game modes is the 2v2v2v2 format, or Arena as it has been dubbed.

The arena accommodates 8 players divided into 4 teams of two who compete in rounds. Each round lost causes the players’ shared health pool to receive damage. This is pretty similar to the way Riot’s TFT Double Trouble works. Arena, like TFT, will also include augments that drastically alter how champions may be played.

Riot teased larger queues and custom games for Arena mode

With a more arcadey vibe to the game mode, it appears to be less competitive than League’s main 5v5 one. Players have requested the ability to queue with more than one other player, as well as the availability of bespoke game lobbies. Fortunately, a Rioter disclosed in a Reddit post comment that these features may be coming when Arena is more reliable in the future.

“Being able to queue with more than 2 people is absolutely a priority for us for future releases. As a team, we’ve had a lot of discussions about this feature, and we knew from our playtests that getting to play an inhouse with a group of buddies you know is one of the best ways to experience the mode. Our engineers did their homework early, investigating the cost of all the different feature requests we’d need to get Arena functioning. This one was called out early on as a pretty sizeable effort that would have diverted significant amounts of resources from getting the game mode core systems up and running.

The dev blog for Arena mentioned how much the team wanted to get this out in time for the summer event to make this moment special for players, and that because of that, it may be missing a feature or two. This, unfortunately, is one of those features. In this case, prioritizing custom lobbies would have been the difference between shipping for Soul Fighter vs shipping a few months down the line.”

Riot is well aware of the mode’s potential and researched the cost of developing the features; nevertheless, they judged that it would divert too many resources away from the mode.

The developer then noted that some of the missing features listed earlier this week in the Arena dev blog.

There is no set timeline for when these additions will be added to the mode, but with fans embracing the new Arena, let’s hope it happens soon.

Riot has been working on new features for the last six months to counteract the pervasive toxicity that has characterised League of Legends.

According to a recent blog post by Hana “TimTamMonster” Dinh, Riot is planning to take dramatic measures to tackle toxicity in the game in the next months.

TimTamMonster disclosed that toxic players would be kicked out of the ranked queue and forced to play in other lines instead. This implies that if a player engages in any disruptive behaviour, they will be forced to play in other queues rather than the solo queue.

This punishment will be applied to players that were marked for going AFK, chat abuse, or purposeful run-it-down behavior. Players who have been penalised for this sort of behaviour will have to play through different queue forms in order to unlock ranked again.

Not only that, but Riot will impose the normal punishments on players who are frequently caught with disruptive behaviour in their games, such as account bans and extended queue wait times.

The League community has generally welcomed the concept behind these changes, and many are eager to see how they play out.

It was also said that when the ranked-lockout goes live, the team would carefully check other queue forms to monitor behaviour or players and whether disruptive behaviour will escalate in other queue forms.

Riot occasionally makes changes to League of Legends that are damaging to the game and wreck the user experience. One of these modifications is the most recent revisions to the scoreboard UI.

The scoreboard is an essential part of the League of Legends experience. It aids in keeping track of your team’s and the opposition’s items, stats, muting players, and other information. Because it is such an important tool in the game, it must be clean and efficient, which it was until Riot modified it.

Riot altered the feature UI in Patch 13.9. They made it more difficult to silence other players, to mute oneself, and even to see whether a person was gone. The revisions were met with much scepticism and criticism. So, Riot is modifying the scoreboard once more.

League of Legends Scoreboard changes

Riot BarackProbama recently revealed some details regarding the upcoming improvements to the UI.

To begin with, Riot is reintroducing the ability to check the scoreboard to see if a player is absent. Previously, a missing mark beside a player’s symbol indicated that they were absent. It was recently deleted, but it is being restored.

They are also relocating the self-mute and mute all buttons. This ought to solve some of the problems associated with self-muting rather than muting everything. Finally, they are making it easy to mute other players without using the menu, probably through some hotkeys.

The release date for the scoreboard UI modifications has not yet been announced, however, it will most likely be in Patch 13.10, which is set to be released on May 17, 2023.

Emotes have grown prevalent in video games, notably League of Legends, in recent years. There haven’t been many changes in the 6 years since emotes first appeared in League, other from a few UI tweaks and the inclusion of new emotes.

In League of Legends, players have noticed something different about the Emote Wheel since Patch 13.8 went live and Patch 13.9’s updates have begun to surface on the League PBE.

Riot fulfilled one of their promises with the revamped Ping system in Patch 12.22. Riot, however, postponed the Emote Wheel owing to various problems. Then, they finally released the updated Emote Wheel after months of anticipation.

New Emote Wheel in Patch 13.9

The earlier version of the emote wheel included five emotes that could be used in-game. It also has four more options for the Game Start, First Blood, Ace, and Victory animations.

Riot is now merging the five emote slots with the four new spaces for the revamped emote wheel, totaling nine slots. This means that players will be able to use the emotes placed in the Game Start, First Blood, Ace, and Victory spaces.

Even if these aren’t perfect for some, others don’t mind not having these situational emotes and enjoy the flexibility to spam as many emotes as they like.

However, the present form of the wheel is not final, and Riot may introduce more customization choices in the future. If it occurs, we will update it to you as soon as possible.

The redesigned Emote Wheel will be available on live servers with Patch 13.9, which will be published on May 3, 2023.

With teams from all over the globe competing for a place at MSI, Riot has been working on changing the pro play standard previous to the tournament’s start. The next two patches will decide and mould a new meta, requiring players to completely rethink themselves in order to compete with the new optimal picks and tactics.

Riot developers are also attempting to buff some of the underperforming champions in solo queue in Patch 13.7 with Katarina’s presence.

Katarina might be too broken with these buffs in Patch 13.7

However, some Reddit users have questioned whether the forthcoming changes to Kata’s ultimate will truly be game changers.

One Redditor explained how Katarina’s new buffs could affect the game, stating that new on-hit and attack speed builds could totally destroy this champion and make it difficult to stop her. While her AD scaling has been reduced, the higher her attack speed, the better her scaling.

According to the Reddit post, at level 18, with items like Kraken Slayer, Blade of the Ruined King, Wit’s End, Rageknife, the ultimate could inflict up to 5100 physical damage over the course of 2.5 seconds.

This is due to the fact that, in addition to all attack-speed items, Kraken Slayer gives passive attack speed for every Legendary item finished. At complete build, she gains an additional 40% attack speed for free.

Katarina has everything you’d want in her kit, delivering not only magic damage but also true damage and attack damage. With the addition of on-hit Katarina, there is absolutely no bad build on this champion, and the only way to halt her is through hard CC only.

Finally, the Reddit user believes that in order to keep Katarina healthy, Riot should either eliminate the delay on her E reset, allowing her to dash immediately and perform dependable combos, or introduce a new item similar to Hextech Gunblade.

So, despite being one of the most fearsome assassins in League, Katarina presently has a 49.35% win rate, which Riot hopes to improve with these buffs. When LoL Patch 13.7 goes live on April 6, it will be interesting to see how they affect her performance.

Patch 13.6 has arrived, bringing with it several adjustments, including Milio, the Gentle Flame.  As we near the end of split 1 of the rank system, we’ve seen quite a few changes this season. The season now has two splits, with every player having the opportunity to achieve the Victorious Skins at the conclusion of each split.

Riot has been tweaking the LP gain and loss percentage as there are more splits with a gentle reset in the middle. This was done to enable players to climb quicker in a reduced split time, allowing everyone to climb faster.

With that said, more adjustments to LP have arrived on the live servers as Riot focuses more on it in Patch 13.6.

Rank LP changes in League of Legends patch 13.6

“We’re generally happy with how the LP gain changes have been going, but we have some small follow up tweaks to make the experience even more smooth.”

According to their patch 13.6 notes, Riot is pleased with the general LP advances, but some of them needed to be changed. Here are the changes to the competitive LP:

• LP win and loss amount when your visible rank approximately matches your MMR from 22 ⇒ 25.
• Slightly smoothed LP gain/loss values at the extremes of MMR and Rank disparity.
  • Clarified the lobby tooltip for ranked duo queue restriction when one player’s MMR is at Master tier or above.

This means that LP win and loss will be easier and slightly higher depending on your MMR. Extremes are improving, which means that higher ELOs will have a better experience and MMR differences will feel less severe. Hopefully, this improves user experience and allows everyone to climd their ranks and receive all of the available rewards.