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Riot Games has introduced a plethora of changes in the Patch 12.7 cycle in the Public Beta Environment (PBE) of League of Legends. One of the major updates, design-wise, coming our way is the new level borders for player profiles. Earlier this year, Riot introduced Ranked Crests in the place of Ranked Borders and also updated the client’s user interface (UI) in LoL Patch 12.1.
On Youtube, Skin Spotlights posted a video pointing out the changes made to the profile banners. The video features the old border and the new reworked designs for levels like 1, 25, 50, 75, and so on till level 500. Riot Games seems to have retained the theme and essence of the existing border designs. However, some borders like the level 125 (which is now a bright fuchsia instead of emerald green) have undergone significant changes.
Currently, the community seems to be split on whether or not it loves these upgrades. However, a majority of players seemed to agree the level 500 border looks underwhelming, seemingly a downgrade from its older version. On social media, many players pointed out that the lower borders look so much better with the upgrades in LoL Patch 12.7. One Redditor wrote, “But many of the higher-level ones are downgrades or sidegrades, low-level ones are huge upgrades tho.”
Players have been sharing their tier lists for these border upgrades by classifying them on the basis of whether a certain level’s border has improved or worsened.
Uncapped leveling in League of Legends
In 2017, Riot introduced uncapped leveling and replaced it with a revamped rewards system that levels up with the players. Every time a player levels up, they receive a capsule containing champion shards and blue essence, and hitting special milestone levels earns the player special rewards like gemstones or rare emotes.
The reasons for this system change, according to the company were the following:
Give players something to work toward beyond just champions
Focus the rewards experience around content drops that feel far more substantial and cool
Tailor rewards to different types of players
In a blogpost, Riot wrote, “Since our intention was to build an uncapped leveling system that could grow with you, we had to think early about how the visual language could scale with those conventions.” It added that visual representation of progression always ran the risk of looking the same (or unintelligible) after a certain point.
Riot wanted to tap into design elements that could be leveraged into something novel whilst still maintaining a sense of familiarity for the players. As a result, it looked into the then newly launched honor system that came with color schemes per level of honor. It said, “With leveling being uncapped, it would make it nearly impossible to ever reach that highest tier color (as well as create a situation where you feel like you’re forever trapped in a single color).”
With the idea of making every level border look good than the previous one, Riot set out to do the following:
Utilize volume, color values, and different materials to escalate higher tiers from lower ones
Follow similar shape language for core areas of the borders
Use themes to decorate, not obfuscate, the progression of a player
Fans were not entirely fond of the Ranked Crests that were introduced at the start of Season 12. Riot was criticized for the designs and they said the crests were “a dull and a disappointing change” and pointed out that the old ones “had some substance to them.”
These updated profile borders will likely hit the live servers on 13th April, with the upcoming LoL Patch 12.7.
