League of Legends Challenges: Three Glaring Changes in the Game UI

Riot Games’ new feature for League of Legends called Challenges was officially launched on 11th May with LoL Patch 12.9. Challenges is a new system that tracks a player’s progress on the Summoner’s Rift through unique challenges, letting them rank up from Iron to Challenger, along with its own leaderboard. It also lets players showcase their achievements in the game lobby and on the loading screen. Riot made it loud and clear that the system would reward players for all the impressive activities they participate in and out of the game, beyond the ranked system. This meant certain changes to the game’s User Interface (UI), some of these were anticipated at the start of Season 12 when Riot updated the client’s UI.

Now that the Challenges system has been introduced, players have something to celebrate at the end of every game whether they win or lose. Players can track their progress by logging into the game client, navigating to the ‘Profile’ tab, and then clicking on ‘Challenges’.

The crystal on the left tracks the overall progression through the system and every challenge that one ranks up in increases the overall score. There are five categories of challenges and another time-limited category called Legacy.

The five categories are as follows:

• Imagination

• Expertise

• Teamwork & Strategy

• Veterancy

• Collection

Notably, leveling Challenges to different tiers will help players earn new titles and also new flairs that can be shown off on their profiles.

Glaring changes in the League of Legends’ client UI

1. The Loading screen is different

Even before players get through the draft phase and enter the loading screen for the game, these UI changes can be seen in the lobby where now, apart from the ranked border or level, players can sport new tokens and titles, earned via these Challenges.

After the update, the loading screen contains three sides to the clickable player cards. The first side shows game information with the champion’s name, the player’s in-game name (IGN) with icon, title, and the summoner spells they have along with the runes. The second card has mastery information for the champion including the mastery levels and the Eternals progression. The new Challenges tokens and progress crystal along with the rank can be spotted on the third side of the player card.

2. The post-game screen shows Challenges progress first instead of game stats

Players are used to seeing the post-game stats after the game concludes and most of them immediately navigate to the detailed data which shows the damage dealt and other crucial information. With the LoL Patch 12.9 update, the post-game lobby opens with a new carousel for the Challenges system and forces players to check their Challenges progression first.

However, many in the League of Legends community have pointed out that Challenges are just a cosmetic feature of the game and that they would rather see what the stats for that particular game looks like. Players also pointed out the fact that the post-game screen looks way too cluttered, with a lot of information, and is not very easy on the eyes.

The community is now seeking an option to choose which screen to see first when the game concludes.

3. Chatbox looks weird

The chatbox is in the same place as before. However, it only displays two to three lines to make room for the new post-game screen, which is seemingly bigger than before with all its new elements. Players can click on the chatbox to expand it but it looks cluttered since the text appears on top of the post-game stats.

All in all, the reaction towards Challenges and the new UI seems to be pretty mixed. Some players have brought up the fact that the progression on every title seems a bit unclear and some titles may be clubbed into one to avoid repetition. For instance, the titles of Unkillable Demon King, Immortal, and Invincible are very similar because of the Challenge itself. All three require players to remain deathless in games. Naturally, as with every new feature, Challenges have also come along with a lot of bugs which shall be fixed with new patches in the coming weeks. With all this said, players are still appreciating the fact that they have new flairs to show off.