Cover-Credits:
Riot Games is making big changes to League of Legends ranked for players in 2023 with the start of Season 13. If you’ve been playing League of Legends for quite some time now, you’ll be familiar with the ranked system, which is traditionally one full season that resets towards the end of the year. Players will also qualify for the next tier by playing a full-fledged best-of-five (BO5) series. However, these systems are set to undergo big changes heading in 2023. Riot Games believes that most players reach their ranked goals by the middle of the year and that some of them have no motivation to continue climbing through the ranked ladder. Product lead Chris “Auberaun” Roberts said, “At the end of the day, we want you to always have a goal to be able to chase and to reward you for your accomplishments along the way.”
Changes to the League of Legends ranked system in 2023
Firstly, League of Legends will have two ranked resets in Season 2023. Split 1 is set to start at the beginning of the year in January, and Split 2 will start in the middle of the year. Riot Games is still deciding on the exact timing of its start. Additionally, Riot Games is also changing the ranked promotion series between tiers from BO5 to BO3. It added, “We’re removing visible rank influence from your matches.”
Riot acknowledged that the previous ranked split track had only four rewards that were spread pretty far apart and that the rewards were not motivating or rewarding players enough. As a result, the publisher is increasing the number of rewards and placing them earlier on the track. At the same time, it reduced the number of games required to reach each of the existing rewards.
Players will be receiving more rewards from ranked play including things like hextech keys, chests, and other goodies that can be unlocked along the progression track each split. Simply put, players will earn “split points” for each game of ranked played – a certain amount per win, lower points per loss, and with split points, these rewards can be earned.
Ranked skins in 2023
Game Designer Chris “cwal” Wallace wrote, “The model for the Victorious Skin hasn’t changed since 2011 when Victorious Jarvan was given out. Since then, we’ve always rewarded players who end the season at Gold or above. However, this has led to a few problems.” He noted that players in the Silver/Gold threshold usually stopped playing ranked right after hitting Gold tier.
Wallace added, “What about all of the Silver and below players who are playing hundreds of games a year, actively trying to learn and improve? Fundamentally, we asked ourselves what balance we wanted to strike between rewarding skill and rewarding your time playing ranked.”
Since there are going to be two ranked splits in 2023, players will be able to earn two ranked skins. Interestingly, starting next season, ranked skins will be available to players of all ranks, not just Gold and above. However, players will still earn chromas based on their final rank at the end of each split.
There’s a catch, however. The players who’ve reached Gold to earn the Victorious skin from lower tiers will automatically earn the skin right after their promotion and will have it in the inventory even if they get demoted back to Silver or lower tiers. But the players placed above Gold tiers will continue to earn the rewards at the end of the ranked split.
