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League of Legends is changing its Ranked system to include 2 resets, two Victorious Skins, changes to promos, and many more.
League of Legends Ranked Changes
Product Lead Chris “Riot Auberaun” Roberts was the first to put his thoughts on the official game update. He began by saying that pieces of these changes may start popping up on the PBE soon, and he wanted to give the whole picture.
In general, the following changes are the biggest adjustments.
In Season 2023, League of Legends will have two Ranked resets. Split 1 begins in January and Split 2 begins in the middle of the year, with the exact timing still not finalized.
Promotion series between tiers are now Best of 3 instead of Best of 5.
Visible rank influence is being removed. Therefore, you can no longer see how much LP you gain/lose per game.
The main goal for the changes is to “always have a goal to be able to chase,” while being rewarded along the way. Riot Auberaun said that most players in the high level reach their rank goals by mid-year, which causes them to drop out of Ranked entirely or turn to smurfing, the latter of which “goes against some of our core goals for playing Ranked League.”
To complement the goal, the rewards are also being enhanced and will now include things like Hextech Keys, Hextech Chests, and other goodies along the progression track.
The way to earn these rewards is through “split points” which you gain per Ranked game you play. You earn a little more per win, and a little less per loss.
Two Ranked splits also means two Victorious skins, but instead of being given to players ranked Gold and above, it can be earned by players of all ranks. Chromas will still be awarded depending on your finishing rank.
More Ranked Rewards
Game Designer Chris “cwal” Wallace went more in-depth about how the Ranked Rewards were approached for the upcoming year, especially as a lot of these systems have stayed the same over the years.
Split rewards “wasn't doing its job of making players feel rewarded” as it only had four rewards, spread far apart. The number of rewards is being increased while simultaneously reducing the number of games you need to play to reach each of the rewards.
Split points are also being simplified. Previously, an attempt was made to reward players for queueing as fill or compensate them for being autofilled but the reward track was not very motivating, and it did not seem to affect role selection at all. Players who mainly played roles that are less likely to be autofilled were unable to earn as many split points. With the new update, players will simply get more points for a win and slightly fewer for a loss. This change aligns with the theme of ranked play more closely.
The biggest change concerns the Victorious Skins. The model for the skinline hasn't been updated since 2011's Victorious Jarvan. Players who ended the season at Gold or higher have always been rewarded with the Victorious Skin of that season. cwal outlined the problems with this reward model.
One is that once players hit Gold, they tend to stop playing Ranked altogether, which isn't a good thing especially if they hit it early on in the season. Another one is that the higher-skilled players can easily earn the skin through relatively less games. This leaves a huge imbalance from the Silver and below players playing hundreds of games trying to improve. cwal and his team “asked themselves what balance we wanted to strike between rewarding skill and rewarding [the players'] time playing ranked.”
While reaching Gold is no longer the end-all-be-all to get the Victorious Skin, as long as you hit that rank, you'll be eligible for the skin already even if you drop back down to Silver, or god forbid, Iron. If you don't reach Gold, you'll have to earn the skin through a number of Ranked games.
This implies that the Victorious Skin will also be on the reward track, albeit a special one as it only requires a peak rank of at least Gold to acquire. It will be earnable through “split points” even if you don't hit Gold for that season.
The game update concluded with a message to the players. “These are all pretty big changes, so we’ll be closely monitoring how things go throughout each split. Until then, keep an eye out for an upcoming video from the League team covering all of these details and more. See you on the Rift!”
