In League of Legends (LoL), the champion selection is changing. This is intended to help eliminate potential conflicts and toxicity from the game.
As we reported in the article on the update of the League of Legends client, developer RiotGames is fundamentally changing the champion selection in LoL in 2016.
Recently, the game celebrated its 6th birthday, which was one reason to make some fundamental changes to League of Legends.
The current champion selection is not only outdated but also often the source of negativity in the game, says Jeffrey Lin (Riot’s Lead Game Designer of social Systems). “Games where players had to play a role they originally didn’t want to play were on average 15% more negative than games where players could play their desired role.”
The difference to the Team Builder in League of Legends
With the “Team Builder,” where you sign up for a specific role with a specific champion before the start of a game, Riot already tried to counter this source of negativity. Initially, it worked very well, but unfortunately, there are also some problems with the current Team Builder. For example, there are long waiting times for certain popular roles. This high waiting time is already a reason for many players to return to the “Blind Pick” or “Draft Pick” methods to find teammates for the game.
Often, multiple players want to play the same role. You may recognize the following chat:
Player A: “Hi, mid”
Player B: “No I am mid, sorry”
Player A: “:/”
Player C: “I am firstpick, I go mid”
This conversation could be elaborated further. The fact is, someone is forced to play a different role in this case. If you combine this problem with the current Team Builder and leave the result for 42 days with Heimerdinger in a basement, the solution comes out as the new champion selection.
Here, you choose 2 roles right from the start. This has the advantage of shortening waiting times and also improving your understanding of the game, as you will practice on 2 roles instead of just focusing on one function.
More communication in the pre-match of LoL
There should no longer be a situation where, as the 5th pick in the champion selection, you say, “Okay, I’ll just go to the bathroom first and be back in 5 minutes – I don’t care what my teammates do…”.
For this reason, the ban and selection system has also been revised.
With the new champion selection, Riot is trying to give players more time for communication while assembling a team. The lost time that was spent discussing who plays on which lane can now be used to create a strong team combination with a lot of synergy. For example, you can build a “knock-up combo” when you have a Yasuo player on your team.
The goal of the new selection is to ensure that players do not have a bad experience with LoL because they were forced to fulfill a specific role.
Jeffrey Lin concludes: “League of Legends has been around for 6 years now… We asked ourselves what we would do differently if we had a second chance to design the champion selection. If our update to this selection means that the majority of players feel ‘This is how League of Legends should be’ or ‘This is how I have always wanted the champion selection to be’, then I would consider it a success.”
The update to the champion selection is one of the most significant changes in League of Legends that we can expect in 2016.
