Ranked gameplay in League of Legends is getting a massive overhaul ahead of the 2024 season, Riot Games revealed today.
The current ranked season, for starters, will remain open all the way through the entire calendar year, with the traditional November-December “preseason” segment of the season being done away with. Any big changes that would’ve been made to the game during the preseason phase of the ranked calendar will now instead be implemented at the start of the next season in January.
Furthermore, players will have the opportunity to compete in three separate ranked splits over the course of the year, up from the current number of splits: two.
This season, a “split” system was introduced to ranked League, with the 2023 season having two separate segments of play. These splits have worked similarly to the way that full-blown season launches previously did in that players had to play through provisional games after experiencing a soft reset to their rank.
At the back end of the splits, there are also rewards and Victorious skins each time the split rolls over, just as there were for full seasons in years past. This year, Victorious Anivia was handed out to players who earned enough “split points” to be awarded the skin. Moving into next year, players can expect three separate ranked resets throughout the course of the season, complete with ranked rewards.
Biggest changes coming to ranked LoL in 2024
- Ranked play will continue to be available in November and December, as all preseason changes will instead come to the game at the start of the next ranked season in January.
- Ranked seasons will contain three individual splits spread out across the year.
- Sweeping alterations to items, objectives, and Summoner’s Rift as a whole.
On the Rift, players should expect changes to objectives, as well as the map itself. But no bigger change is coming than the one that’s affecting Mythic items. For the last two years, Mythic items have completely altered players’ build paths, adding extra (and exclusive) bonuses to Legendary items, while establishing a tiered system of items that forced players to pick and choose which items were best for certain situations even more so than they did in the past. In 2024, though, the Mythic item system as you know it is being done away with.
Related: The next big champion releases and updates in League of Legends
A full preview of the changes was made today in a developer update featuring League game director Pu “Pupulasers” Liu, League executive producer Jeremy “Brightmoon” Lee, and head of League Andrei “Meddler” van Roon.
Players should expect more details of these updates coming to ranked League later in the year when we get closer to the start date of the 2024 season, which is expected to begin next January.
