TL;DW: Honor, Skins & More

A quick rundown of Meddler and Pabro answering player questions about honor, skins, and more.
Dev
Meddler, Pabro

Hey everyone, Meddler and Pabro here with a quick TL;DW of today’s Dev Update. We’re trying something new this time and answering questions from players across the world. We’ll be back with a normal Dev Update in September, but let us know if you liked this format—or if you didn’t. 

Q. From North America: “I've been playing Swarm since its release, will it be permanent? What about Arena?”

  • A TON of you showed up to play Swarm, racking up over 49 million hours!

  • We’ll have a decision on whether or not Swarm and Arena will be permanent in the next Dev Update coming in September, which will talk about the future of Modes.

Q. From Korea: “Streamers are having their game sniped by people looking to manipulate the game’s outcome. What are you doing to fix this?”

  • We’re taking this problem seriously and shipped some changes in 14.15 to make the penalties for declining queues more severe. 

  • We’re keeping a close eye on the problem and are open to making further changes, but we want to make sure we aren’t creating more problems down the road.

Q. From Europe: “It feels like ADCs have taken over the game recently and now I have to play them mid. Is this going to get changed any time soon?”

  • ADC player satisfaction wasn’t great before Split 2, so we made some changes to help the class out.

  • We missed the mark initially, but changes in patch 14.15 and 14.16 should get them to the point we were originally aiming for.

Q. From China: “It feels like my games are decided by how many fill players there are, especially in Diamond+. Are there plans to make autofill players on each team equal?”

  • We’re shipping some changes in late August to improve the balance between autofilled and secondary role players on each team.

  • We got a lot of questions about this, so we’ll do a deep dive on matchmaking in our next Dev Update.

Q. From Brazil: “Can you bring back honor opponents?”

  • Yes, honor opponent is coming back in September.

  • More changes to the Honor System will be coming soon.

Q. From Latin America: “Are you doing anything to fix people inting my games?”

  • We’re currently working on upgrades to our detection systems to improve the rate at which they identify griefers.

  • We’re expecting to roll this out within the next few months, check out the dev blog that just dropped for more details.

Q. From Southeast Asia: “My friends who are new to League are placed too high. They lose a lot, they get flamed, and they don’t want to play. What are you doing to fix this?”

  • Thanks to Vanguard removing bots, we’re now able to better gauge new player skill levels.

  • We added a 10 normal Summoner’s Rift game requirement to all accounts before playing Ranked which helps us get a much better idea of a player’s skill level.

  • We’re working on improved smurf detection so they get placed higher, earlier.

Q. From a lot of players: “Did Vanguard actually stop botting in League like you said it would?”

  • Short answer: Yes.

  • We’re at a 4-year low for scripters in Ranked—only one in 200 games has a scripter now.

  • Cheaters are now trying to steal accounts, so make sure you enable email multifactor authentication to help protect your account.

  • We’re still working through some player pain points.

  • Vanguard is coming to Mac soon.

  • More details are available in the Vanguard dev blog out now.

Q. From North America: “Do you have an update on the Champion Mastery emotes that you promised you’d be updating?”

  • Yes, here’s where we’re at with them now:

  • Our new goal is to update the visuals while respecting the elements players loved.

  • We want to know what you think, so give us your feedback.

Q. From Oceania: “Why do you force champions into existing thematics?”

  • We’re rethinking how we choose which champions go into which skinlines, starting by putting more emphasis on the champion’s base theme and personality.

  • We want skins to still make sense for who the champion is and enhance a champion’s fantasy.

  • If you’re interested in learning more about this process, check out the dev blog that came out today.

  • (P.S. it also includes the upcoming Prestige skin list.)

Q. From everyone: “When are you going to delete Yuumi?”

  • We're not going to be doing that.

  • Introducing Yuumi’s sister, Twomi. She has two books, is permanently attached, has double crit, a three, four, and five hit passive, multiple dashes, multiple global ults, transforms into Lee Sin (and gets his whole kit), and is also Yasuo and Yone’s sister.

  • Don’t forget! We’re celebrating 15 years of League this October with League Player Days where we’ll be telling community stories and giving away free rewards via in-game missions