Riot Games Addresses League of Legends Preseason 2023 Changes Being too 'No Brain'

Riot Games revealed its upcoming League of Legends Preseason 2023 changes today. The update focuses on improving communication among players and making the game easier for new players, especially for junglers. Professional shoutcaster, Isaac "Azael" Cummings Bentley talked about how the changes were making him, “pretty nervous about the direction of added information”.

Are League of Legends Preseason 2023 changes making the game too easy?

The main aim of the changes made in Preseason 2023 was to make the game easier for rookie players. Jungling has long been considered one of the harder roles in the game, so Riot Games has decided to make it less intimidating for new players by adding a number of things to help players. Not only is Riot adding recommendations for runes, and abilities (when leveling up) but it is also adding help for jungle pathing and adding leash ranges. Enemy ward timers are also being added to the game to make it easier to keep track of vision. While this is great for onboarding new players, Azael raises the concern that this is, “open[ing] the door for more and more info to be handed to the players removing some of the advantage of knowledge about the game from you”. He follows it up by saying, “These changes don't break the game, but I do think players SHOULD have advantages for learning and studying the game etc and the more knowledge that's just given with no effort to the player the less that side is rewarded”. Azael worried about how far the game was from “being given ability CDs (cooldowns) for enemies”.

Azael compared these changes to trends in World of Warcraft saying, “WoW went this direction through the evolution of add-ons & weak auras becoming so crazy and it actually made the game at the highest level less skilled IMO because everyone is armed with perfect information”. He concluded the thread by appealing to Riot saying, “Please don't turn league into all hands no brain”.

Lead Designer for League Balance Team, Matthew “Riot Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison responded to Azael saying that he “generally agree[d] with the concern”, and Riot wasn’t “planning (as of yet) to add exact jungle timers”. He explained that the “general philosophy is to Reduce the barrier to entry, while still encouraging further optimizations”.

Other changes like recommended items and jungle paths were aimed at “giving players a good baseline, but not recommending pure optimal”. League streamer Cowsep agreed with Riot Phroxzon tweeting out:

Cowsep later tweeted out:

Another Twitter user mentioned that the barriers to entry were “not why players don't want to play jungle. It's because the role gets blamed and flamed by all 4 other players for their own mistakes and lack of understanding of the game.” Multiple users suggested creating a Jungle Tutorial to get new players into the role. Preseason 2023 changes are going live on the PBE (Public Beta Environment) soon and will come to the game later this year.