After 11 months of battling on Summoner’s Rift, League of Legends Season 10 came to a close earlier this week for players across the world. While the community quickly adapted and even started playing more matches due to the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, Riot Games also continued providing plenty of updates for its decade-old MOBA.
Despite the unique challenges presented by quarantine and working from home, Riot kept improving the quality of content for releases this year. Looking back at League of Legends‘ Season 10, there are plenty of successes but also lessons to be learned as the game moves forward into Season 11.
Although the game has never been exactly known for its friendly player base, recent seasons have seen a drastic increase of League of Legends‘ toxic behavior in-game that avoids chat detection. With even some famous streamers acting this way, many matches would end with someone AFKing or sabotaging their team and receiving no punishment. Because these actions became widespread to the frustration of many community members and figureheads, Riot vowed to heavily revamp its behavioral systems.
Since the start of summer, shipped updates have included improved AFK detection and the ability to report or mute disruptive players during champ select. These changes have resulted in more penalties and less repeat offenders with League of Legends players feeling their actions are making a noticeable difference. After these successes, Riot is planning further updates for affected teammates such as early surrendering and reducing LP loss in ranked games. While there are still rare issues like players being flagged for actually doing poorly or returning to ranked after several years and being placed in smurf queue, continued work should fix things in the next few months along with further improvements.
During Season 10, Riot added 5 new champions to the extensive roster starting with Sett, a walking JoJo reference, in January. Though the next few months were devoted to reworks, players were also introduced to Lillia, League’s unique take on a dryad, in late July. Early in August, everyone witnessed the return of Yone, Yasuo’s long dead half-brother, while the Noxian AD carry Samira was leaked ahead of her September release. Finally, Seraphine made her debut at the end of October following months of social media posts exploring her real life/KDA version.
The number of new champions this year may be lower than usual, but they can be considered successful for different reasons. Each one maintains a good play rate in certain roles, with Sett distinctly being flexed as a top, jungle, and even support in some regions. However, their backstories also expand the world of Runeterra whether it’s giving more details of various city-states or continuing to make lore-heavy characters into champions such as Kai’Sa or Senna previously. Seraphine’s full reveal may have disappointed some players after the massive build-up, but her unique marketing approach release shows that Riot still has many new ideas to promote future champion releases.
Moving forward, new champion releases shouldn’t clash so closely with one another. Yone’s debut heavily eclipsed Lillia’s earlier arrival despite players knowing both would come out during the summer event. Furthermore, Seraphine’s social media may have been planned months in advance, but this greatly took away from Samira who seemed like an afterthought. However, this year’s schedule can largely be attributed to the shift cause by COVID-19, and it shouldn’t be a sign that 2021 will continue an erratically slow or fast pace.
On the other hand, 2 champions were finally reworked after winning the community vote back in 2019: Fiddlesticks and Volibear. Both characters were chosen by players for a visual update because their concepts didn’t fit in the game’s ever-evolving lore. To that end, Fiddlesticks was transformed into a primordial demon disguised as a scarecrow while Volibear was redesigned as the Freljord demigod he was always meant to be. Even though details were changed, the thematic is still there and instantly recognizable by veteran players.
Similarly, the gameplay updates modernized both champions without alienating the fans who grew to love them over the years. Fiddlesticks still has an AOE Crowstorm and targeted fear, yet causes even greater chaos by chain CCing then draining the life from multiple enemies during a teamfight. Volibear no longer flips his foes, but truly lives up to the fantasy of a savage bear god mauling foes with thunderous strength. Either one plays just like before, only with new tricks and skill expression that let them stand up the current roster.
Most players can agree that the 2020 reworks are more successful than previous attempts like Aatrox and Swain who play much differently or barely resemble their original incarnation. Since the next updates will focus on Dr. Mundo and perhaps Shyvana, players can only hope they continue the current trend which retains a champion’s most iconic spells and concepts adapted to modern Runeterra.
While Riot continued to improve events during Season 10, their quality and design went beyond what players had come to expect in the past few years. Specifically, the Spirit Blossom summer event implemented a visual novel experience instead of normal missions allowing players to bond and share some hilarious fourth-wall breaking moments with champions like Teemo. Additionally, after last year’s feedback that event passes weren’t worth their RP cost, the rewards for playing were significantly boosted. This culminated in the Worlds 2020 pass where over 1000 event tokens and 30 milestone prizes were guaranteed after enough matches.
At the same time, there is plenty of growth left for future events and scheduling. PsyOps 2020 had the unfortunate circumstance of coming right after Spirit Blossom and during the Worlds 2020 hype period. Since Samira’s release skin was tied to PsyOps, there wasn’t any other time the event could release, but it still contributed to being overshadowed alongside the shorter 3-week duration. Finally, K/DA’s comeback was heavily anticipated by players since August, but the group was only Worlds 2020’s closing act. With the promotion across Teamfight Tactics and Legends of Runeterra in addition to Seraphine’s storyline, K/DA could easily have earned their own event alongside the ALL OUT album released last week. At this point, fans can only believe this will happen with an eventual third return.
While Season 10 wasn’t perfect, it brought plenty of positive changes and laid the foundation for future improvements Riot Games will continue to make. For now, players should have received their end of Season 10 rewards and can take a well-deserved break from solo queue. Otherwise, the preseason has drastically shaken up the item system and experimenting now could lead to early ranked success when Season 11 officially begins in January.
League of Legends is available on PC.
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