On August 8, Phroxzon, the lead gameplay designer of League of Legends, tweeted two systematic changes to version 14.16, both of which are aimed at the matchmaking mechanism of League of Legends. The first, which he mentioned last month, will be an adjustment to the balance of red and blue in League of Legends. The second is to improve the Ranked Play experience for returning players. After all, the second stage of the League of Legends S14 season is coming to an end, but there is still a third stage this year, and qualifying, as the core gameplay of League of Legends, has always been valued by developers.
Phroxzon said that they noticed a lot of discussion about the balance of the red and blue sides, especially at the beginning of the S14 season, and they investigated it more and found some room for improvement. Needless to say, the balance issues caused by the in-game camera angles, as well as the structural differences in the Canyon Season map itself, are important factors in the balance between the two sides. In version 14.4, the developers made adjustments to the camera angles, and they observed that there were indeed improvements, but there was still a lot of work to be done.
The first change is an improved balance of player power between teams. The designers found a few things that could be improved, especially in cases where the number of players in the top tier is small and it's difficult to bring fair matchmaking. They hope that these changes will lead to fairer games and reduce the number of players who appear on the same team repeatedly.
The second change is to bring a better balance between red and blue. The designers will further optimize the balance of the team on the red and blue sides, which is especially noticeable in the higher divisions, especially at the master level and above. Players with high tiers will be able to take advantage of the difference between red and blue sides better than players in normal tiers, giving them an extra advantage.
The third change is the matchmaking optimization for secondary locations. The designers found some optimization matching solutions that could improve the balance between the secondary and secondary positions without significantly increasing the ranking time, and the balance between the red and blue sides.
The final change is a better Ranked Play experience for returning players. The designers believe that returning players usually need some time to get used to the game and get back to their competitive form, and they will be more aggressive in adjusting the rank and skill decay of returning players who have taken a long break to ensure that they don't get killed repeatedly by their opponents in returning ranked matches.
Since the adjustment of the canyon terrain at the beginning of the S14 season, the balance of red and blue has been increasing in recent months, and the 14.14 version has even reached a 16% win rate difference in high segments, which has caused many players to complain. This Twitter teaser does not explain the specific principle of the change, but only explains the direction of their change in the new version, after all, the adjustment of the matchmaking mechanism is difficult to directly present in numbers. Update 14.16 will be available next Thursday, August 15th, and we'll soon be able to see how this change will affect League of Legends' matchmaking system.