Riot RottenKandy, Product Lead for the competitive content team, revealed some major upcoming improvements to Legends of Runeterra this week. Future Seasonal Tournaments will have more Open Rounds but also be less punishing, future gauntlets will be shorter, and World Championships may be coming sooner than we expected! 

Seasonal Tournaments Open Rounds Will Be More Forgiving

Effective for April's Empires of the Ascended tournament:

  • The Open Round will increase from 5 matches to 9 matches
  • All match times will be reduced from 75 minutes to 60 minutes
  • Both the Open Rounds and Playoffs will be moved from Sunday to Saturday

Note that there are no changes to this month's Cosmic Creation tournament -- i.e., Open Rounds will be the same 5 matches / 75 minute duration as Monuments of Power, and Open Rounds and Playoffs will both take place on Sundays.

These changes are to address some of the community's concerns that it was too punishing if you got unlucky in any single matchup -- under the current system, participants need to go undefeated 5-0 to proceed as one of the 32 finalists to the playoffs (1024 initial participants / 2^5 = 32 undefeated). By including more games, they can now allow players to go 9-0, 8-1, or even 7-2 with a high seed to proceed. Even with the shortened match times, however, the additional rounds will result in a net increase to duration of the Open Rounds. Currently, Open Rounds take just over 7 hours (5 matches * 1.25 hours + 55 minute signup time); under this new system, they will last almost 10 hours.

Gauntlet Are Getting Shorter and Dropping Singleton

Effective for Patch 2.4.0 (March 17th), there will be some changes to the normal weekend Gauntlets:

  • The Standard format (Pick and Ban, Best of 3) will become the only format for the foreseeable future
    • The controversial Singleton format will cease 
  • Gauntlet runs will be reduced from 7 wins to 4 wins 

Additionally, there will be some changes to future Last Chance Gauntlets:

  • The Last Chance Gauntlet run will be reduced from 7 wins to 5 wins
    • The maximum number of Prime Glories that can be collected will also be reduced from 5 to 4
  • The Last Chance Gauntlet will be held a week earlier, starting on Saturday and running for the whole weekend

The loss of the Singleton format will be a welcome change to the many who criticized how random if felt and how different it was from the tournament format. We personally are more excited for the reduction to the normal gauntlet runs, as getting a focused play session for ~20-35 individual games could be quite daunting. And of course, moving the Last Chance Gauntlet from midday-Friday to Saturday will be a huge boon to those who work a traditional Monday - Friday job.

World Championships Are on the Horizon

Finally, RottenKandy also teased the arrival of Runeterra's World Championships.

Quote From RottenKandy

Our goals for LoR’s competitive scene are built around providing a path to becoming a competitive player. We’re still working on developing this structure, but the idea we’re building towards is that a player’s competitive journey enters through Ranked, experiments within Gauntlets, engages in Seasonal Tournaments, establishes themselves in community events, and excels at the World Championship.

That’s right - World Championship, the pinnacle of competitive play. We’re still hammering out the details for LoR’s first World Championship and while I can’t share much on this yet, I can say that we’ll be bringing together the very best Ranked and Seasonal Tournament players from around the world for a high-stakes competition. For those on your own path, please don’t forget to sign in to the Cosmic Creation Seasonal Tournament!

While RottenKandy was tight-lipped on the details, the implication is that there will be a World Championship this year and that participation will be based on performance in the seasonal tournaments starting with this month's Cosmic Creation tournament.

What do you think of the changes Riot's making? Share with us below!