League of Legends season 13 is a much-needed simplification of the MOBA complex

League of Legends is loved—and hated—for its complexity. Veterans love depth, while at the same time making the game almost impossible for new players. Season 13 is a big step towards making the game as simple as possible so that the player base grows steadily.

Complexity League of Legends is something that hardcore fans celebrate and are taunted by outsiders. While this gives the MOBA a depth that keeps players coming back, it makes it harder to attract new people to Summoner's Rift.

This is the perpetual conundrum Riot faces: keep the game simple to attract new players, or keep adding depth to appease those dedicated to the world of Runeterra. Champion niches are getting harder to fill, but there is a lot of new content available to explore.

The barrier to entry in League of Legends is arguably one of the highest in gaming. Between all the characters, the game's macro and micro elements, and even the little things like choosing minute runes to gain an advantage, there is so much knowledge to be acquired just to get a basic understanding. It's not as easy as picking up and playing - unless you want to get trampled on.

For so long, this has been something new players have experienced: losing a lot and learning the hard way. However, Riot is trying to ease that burden and make League of Legends a more enticing game after 13 years by lowering the entry barrier.

“This is a very important thing for us to ensure that new players have a good experience entering the ecosystem,” said product lead Patrick Noonan.

"There are some things we've done to make the game more accessible, whether that's optimizing the rune system, creating load recommendations, other ways to enter, and removing the game's complexities."

While there has been a dripping stream of changes, League of Legends Season 13 is the biggest implementation yet. It's a smaller update than players might be used to, but this preseason will include a host of quality-of-life changes made to ease the burden of starting in a challenging MOBA without mind-numbing the game.

Forests are at the center of these changes. A role that plays so differently from the other four is often the hardest to understand at the start. The addition of new jungle pets with a distinct visual power, jungler path recommendations to help those unfamiliar with the role, and the removal of some micro-mechanics such as the multi-camps leash should increase the skill floor without fiddling too much with the ceiling.

There's an asterisk here: Riot doesn't want to "solve the game" for players, but they do want to make it easier to solve the puzzle. And if you already have a clear understanding of the role, recommendations will not replace this.

“We suspect that most experienced junglers, especially at higher levels of elos, will still create their own clearings,” Noonan said. “They will have advantages and better paths based on their understanding of matches and the game.”

The second major focus is to provide more download recommendations for everyone. Following the success of an in-game item offer, Riot is extending it to summoner spells and runes in the champion select. If you're in a quandary or a first-time champion and need a rune page, Riot will give you three that suit your playstyle based on what's popular in high elo.

These resources are not new. Third party software has long offered some of these solutions to players, and the community has been divided over whether they were an unfair competitive advantage or just a boon ready to be exploited. However, moving them within the company draws a clear line for the players. Not only are they available to everyone, but the policy is changing to make third-party programs less powerful in collecting information.

“Here at Riot we sometimes find ourselves using third party sites to find rune pages. We think if this is such an important feature for players to be able to easily jump in and try out different champions, then we wanted to make it more accessible in-game without going outside of the game to get that information,” Noonan said.

“At a very high level, our overall goal is to ensure that third-party tools do not give players an edge in the game. If there is some way to request an api service to provide information that is not available in the game, then that is something we will consider and either internally close the information or work with third parties to disable things that are unfair."

No matter how many quality of life fixes Riot makes, there will always be one big hurdle for League of Legends: the number of champions. It soared above 160 in 2022, and with more releases such as K'Sante, just around the corner, the developers do not intend to stop for the sake of simplicity.

New content still needs to be released to keep existing players interested, and this will only increase the barrier over time. This is also in addition to the players just getting better.

“There are a lot of champions in the game right now and it’s important to understand what they all do so you can be an effective player,” Noonan continued.

The constant stream of new champions in League of Legends makes it hard to keep super simple for new players.

“Another thing that I find interesting and think a lot about is the average skill level of the player base. The things you see nowadays - their average CS scores, even their basic understanding of the game, wave management, trading patterns, goals - the average skill level is much higher than before.

"As the player base continues to learn more about the game, it can be harder to get in and be good because everyone else has been playing for a long time and learned so many things."

Riot can at least mitigate some of the damage by making the onboarding process smoother and players can learn what each champion is doing at a more gradual pace rather than information overload from day one.

There are some things they look at for the future of League of Legends. Using tools such as machine learning, a developer slowly understands the data behind some of the more complex game mechanics, such as how much a goal costs in terms of numbers.

“It's one of the things we're trying to consistently evaluate and think about how we can make it more accessible to new players without removing the depth of gameplay that makes it so great and something you can never fully master. . This is important for us".

While Season 13 marks the pinnacle of making League of Legends more accessible, it's far from the latest set of changes in that direction.

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