LoL Season 14 Dev Thoughts on Objective Changes & Baron Revamp

Another dev blog was released by Rioters further detailing their thought process for the changes that are hitting the rift in Season 2024. We will take a moment to look at their design philosophy so we can better understand how to navigate the map in Season 14 of League of Legends.

It is always interesting to take a look at the way Riot Games addresses changes to the game that result in meta shifts and new ways to enjoy and play the game. Let's get started!

LoL Season 14 Core Game Concepts

It seems the main goals of the developers were to not only offer more variety to end-game scenarios in terms of strategy and meta changes but also add more replayability to the game by adjusting the importance and value of all three lanes in the game.

One of the primary things they decided to address was neutral objectives, specifically the Baron and Dragon iterations. All in all, they wished to include more ways for players to interact with the map, instead of junglers predominantly taking charge of objectives.

They later share that the game is fundamentally separated into three different phases, early, mid, and late game. It seems that this formula is working, but the current state of the game needed tweaks in order to add variability and more chances for teams to make a comeback.

LoL Season 14 Early Game Concepts

A very peculiar idea was shared across the dev team with cats spawning in Baron pit. No, seriously, cats in League of Legends as a neutral objective.

These cats would substitute the second Herald, as the developers shared the sentiment that having the Herald respawn did not greatly fit in with how the game was designed to be played. A very unexpected turn from the traditional Void creatures.

Ultimately, the idea of a 'horde boss' was scrapped but that allowed space for more avenues for the devs to explore by either adding new jungle objectives, but after their testing, these additional objectives became too demanding and did not merit any positive feedback.

What's interesting is that Riot Games also explored the idea of laners occasionally walking away from their lane to stop these kittens, but forcing players to leave their lane was met with harsh setbacks to the enjoyment of the game. Finally, the devs settled on Voidgrubs and Voidmites. 

LoL Season 14 Mid Game Concepts

Another exciting idea was a Mecha Herald, essentially allowing you to pilot Shelly with her own abilities added to the mix. After a couple of games, the players started to become frustrated not only playing against this mechanic but also not being able to use their champions which is the sole reason you play League of Legends is to master a champion's kit, not to pilot a Void creature. 

This idea looks very similar to Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm mechanic on the map Dragon Shire where you can pilot a Dragon Knight after completing certain objectives. Although the current charge mechanic Rioters have ended up on for the upcoming season may seem a bit overpowered, it is still early to determine its value and impact on the game.

LoL Season 14 Late Game Concepts

One of the major updates coming to League of Legends, namely the three Baron variations that also change the map. Rioters experimented both with cosmetic and gameplay transformations. One notable idea was turning all of the walls into Ornn pillars. The devs tested out Baron Nashor firing missiles into random positions in each quadrant of the map, destroying small portions of the Ornn pillars.

After these tests, the developers moved into isolating the terrain changes to be limited around Baron pit, hence the current design of the three different types of Baron as an objective. They ran into certain hurdles that prevented ADCs from being useful in team fights around the objective so they scrapped the idea of walling off the only entrance into Baron.

The team also decided on adding more objectives for teams to contest, namely improving the Red and Blue buffs once Baron or Dragon were dead so the players had more things to fight over instead of waiting for the major objectives to respawn.

Summary

All in all, as Riot Phlox said it best in the blog post:

League of Legends is a game that’s constantly changing, while at its core remaining exactly League of Legends, so that’s what we tried to do here.

These new implementations to the game not only add more flavor to the world Riot Games has created over the span of 14 years but also keeping to its roots by adding tasteful changes that compliment variety and keeping the game fresh. We are looking forward to what Season 2024 will bring to the table as we draw closer to the end of Season 13.