Riot ‘cancels’ the survey on the next reworks of League of Legends, but for a good cause: “we are looking at previous results and working on it” – League of Legends

The starting gun to the Season 13 of League of Legends it has been bitter a bad cinematic has served to fill the camel’s back for a community that was already having tensions with Riot Games. The company has not been able to communicate well the changes that have taken place this year, apologizing for it to the community and promising many clarifications in the coming days. A partly self-caused fire that has different sources. Among them is the absence of what had become one of the most important traditions for the community. In 2023, unlike previous years, there has been no polls to hear what reworks or skins players want to see.

Riot Games explains why there have been no polls in Season 13

The company has not offered an explanation to the community about this absence. However, both Jeremy Lee (executive producer) as Lexi Gao (lead of production of champions) spoke about this absence at a press conference that took place at the beginning of the season. Roughly, they explained that the ‘timing’ was inappropriate and that there was already enough data if it were necessary to start working on a new complete rework. In this sense, the survey was not as necessary as in other years.

The most curious response was probably that of Jeremy Lee. Although without making commitments, what is one of the most important positions in League of Legends even seems to anticipate a possible rework of Shyvana. “In previous surveys we began to understand player feedback. We have heard feedback on these surveys and, for example, I think that Shyvana is a champion that the community wants to see updated. We are looking at previous results and working accordingly, ”explained the executive producer of League of Legends.

Lexi Gao added to this explanation a ‘timing’ problem. Udyr was a particularly difficult champion to upgrade due to his four base forms and the fact that he has an ultimate skin, which took a long time to upgrade. Now he claims that “with Skarner it will not be easier” because they are trying to “rebuild it from scratch.” This means that there is still time until they start the next rework so that “putting a vote so early wouldn’t help”. In any case, there would be a door for it to take place in the future. “Maybe we’ll reconsider when we have a plan for Skarner and know a bit about what his release date looks like.”

Riot Games barely showed a few concepts about Skarner in the opening video of the season

The truth is Riot Games’ pace of work with reworks is being a bit slow. However, the company has invested a lot of effort in updating the old champions with what is known as Mid-Range Updates. With slightly smaller changes they are able to renew the characters who need it the most. In fact, having more influence on this type of project is one of the company’s medium-term plans, which hopes to be able to introduce one of these updates to League of Legends every couple of months. All told, the company has not wanted to make a firm commitment to this task because they have done few of these ‘minireworks’ yet and it’s hard to set deadlines so soon.

Lastly, and trying to explain the additional difficulties that Riot Games is encountering, which also affect reworks, one of the company’s most important developers wanted to speak on the matter. Reav3, Lead Gameplay Designer, has commented the following on Reddit after many fans claimed that League of Legends is no longer a priority and is just in maintenance mode.

“I can understand why people have come to that conclusion, although I assure you that this is not the case. Saying it will not make you convinced, that is clear. Like many companies, we lost a lot of talent during the pandemic, when many people took advantage of telematics work to seek a different path in their lives. It was tough across the industry and at Riot things were no different. It is not that the budget or work on League of Legends was intentionally cut. To put it more eloquently: this shit happens. It is also true that we have invested much more heavily in bigger things that will not be released for a while. In any case, words won’t change what you think and neither will this random answer on Reddit. The only thing that could change everything is when we start releasing the content.”