Around a year ago, Riot said that they had no intention of working on a practice tool for League of Legends. The community weren’t too happy with that, and they expressed their distaste. This prompted the following response from the developers a few months later:
We were wrong to completely shut down the possibility of sandbox mode. Full stop. Our initial argument – that training mode makes for an even higher barrier to entry – makes some behavioural assumptions that many rightly called us out on. Your passionate feedback and sound reasoning, along with a lot of internal conversations around this vision of League as a global sport have made it clear that our concerns only have the potential to become reality if we’re not doing our job. Providing competitive experiences at all levels of play also means we should be providing the right training tools at all levels of play.
What’s happened since then? Well, Riot needed to do some backend updates to the client before they could invest in this feature. They’ve reached a good point it seems, because they’ve now detailed exactly what they have in mind for their practice tool (via PC Gamer):
Our initial approach with a practice tool is going to be low-scope, simple, and straightforward—close to a punching bag and weights for practicing execution. We are doing our best to make this tool inclusive to people at every level. Everyone from Bronze to Challenger should see value in a single-player training mode to practice mechanics and map movement, but we’re currently not looking to develop a multiplayer training tool for organized team drills or pro-play specifically. Once we get the first version out, we’ll pay close attention to see if we missed anything in terms of how to become better by yourself.
With our vision for League to be a global sport that lasts for generations, we want you to be able to train more efficiently without having to wait 5 minutes at a time to practice a core skill. Practice tool is League’s version of sparring with a punching bag: the extra training you can do with a mechanically unfamiliar champion so you can enter the Rift with more confidence.
Riot’s tool is going to be different to the standard sandbox playground though I reckon. I can totally see them implementing drills or ways to properly practice skill shots for example. I wonder if they will even build in the functionality to set up specific scenarios? That’d be neat!
It’s not on the cards just yet. Here’s what Riot have planned thus far:
- Infinite Gold
- Reset your Cooldowns
- Lock your level
- Freeze minion spawns
Expect more concrete information, and possibly even a playable something something soon. Riot have already started prototyping their practice tool. Here’s hoping it doesn’t take too long to be added to the main client.
Last Updated: October 17, 2016
RinceThis
October 17, 2016 at 15:07
I, what?
RinceThis
October 17, 2016 at 15:07
Matthew Figueira
October 17, 2016 at 16:46
xD