LoL Season 14 New Map Developer Thoughts

A lot of exciting things are coming to League of Legends as Riot Games has taken on one of their most ambitious projects and seasons for the game, with new terrain changes to the map, new items, a new champion, and new neutral objective changes. 

Certainly, Season 2024 will be one of the most exciting updates to the game in years, as it seems Rioters have not been as keen on shaking things up around the meta at this scale. What is most impressive is that most of these changes have been very well-received by the community as this might bring in another golden era of League of Legends both for casual and competitive play.

Let's dive deeper into the design philosophy behind these massive changes and figure out just how much the game will change based only on the huge update to Summoner's Rift.

League of Legends Season 2024 Map Changes

The developers share in their most recent blog post that Summoner's Rift has not seen any substantial changes since 2019. It seems that their most important goal was to make all lanes as fair as possible, given the way the terrain was placed originally in 2014, a lot of the meta had defined the Blue Side as the winning side for most of the matches. 

Another noticeable design decision is their approach to making solo lanes safer from junglers and ganks in general. It is a good step to making the game last longer as there has been a tendency for shorter games to dominate over longer ones so at least you will not feel as punished for making a small mistake costing you the entire match.

League of Legends Season 2024 Top Lane Changes

Most players have been complaining that top lane is an island, with the champions having little to no impact unless they can make a good TP play, otherwise, top laners felt like they did not have enough agency in the game. To add insult to injury, should you become a victim to the enemy jungler, you could consider your entire laning phase lost to a good wave freeze, making the game very unfun. 

With these new changes, not only will you be able to more safely CS, but you will be able to show your full 1v1 skills without the added pressure of constantly being under the threat of a gank. Another welcome addition is that river access is much wider so that means you will have more responsibilities helping out your team when contesting the neutral objectives before Baron spawns.

Making the Rift Herald spawn at a later time, will allow equal footing for both top laners to be able to play the game they can before they start participating in mid-game skirmishes. Overall, a good change to the terrain that will make top laners feel valuable without the pressure of becoming an XP sponge once they get killed once.

League of Legends Season 2024 Mid Lane Changes

 The mid lane is also following the same philosophy of becoming safer, especially for champions with little to no mobility so it looks like mages will be making a comeback next year. It is interesting to see if these changes will allow for assassins to come back in the meta as the new items will probably set the ground for more players picking squishier champions and opting in for damage instead of utility and survivability.

It seems that Rioters are also looking to encourage roaming as part of the mid laner's duties either to help their junglers in skirmishes or have safer access to contest neutral objectives, thus resulting in more teamplay than solo-carrying mindsets. Perhaps this will encourage teams to pay even more attention to their teammates so as to capitalize on their opponent's mistakes. 

League of Legends Season 2024 Bot Lane Changes

It seems Riot Games is looking into making the map more symmetrical as the bot lane layout almost mirrors the top lane, with some notable changes to the terrain, especially around Dragon Pit. What is interesting is that the red side will be susceptible to a new ganking path should they leave their blue side jungle without wards as the tri bush area around the turret allows for junglers to come from behind.

The devs shared that they will be monitoring the balance of this new terrain layout so changes might be evident should the red side seem too vulnerable to ganks. All in all, it seems that for all three lanes, getting priority will be very important as the new map will have easier ways of reaching neutral objectives. 

League of Legends Season 2024 Jungle Changes

The more notable changes are around the Dragon and Baron pits as Riot Games is looking to have a more balanced experience for both teams so they can have an almost equal opportunity to contest neutral objectives. Instead of having tight chokepoints, the entire map feels much wider and more accessible so that power spikes do not feel as oppressive, and teams that are falling behind can have more chances of a comeback.

It is a good sign that Riot is looking to make the game more macro-focused as players can sometimes feel that they are playing alone in a 5v5 game, instead of feeling like they can win the game through good coordination and objective prioritization over getting easy kills onto their opponents. League of Legends has always had very interesting strategic components for MOBA, so hopefully we will see more intense and macro-focused matches.

Riot Games' Approach to the New Map

The devs have shared countless times how difficult it is to make such drastic changes to League of Legends. Every small tweak can heavily affect the overall gameplay, every brush needs to be well thought out before being placed, and every boulder adjustment or wall angle change will have to take into consideration all of the 166 champions that can set foot on the Rift.

Fog of war is another major component of how the gameplay can determine a fun or unfun experience so it's very encouraging to see Rioters not only stating that they wish for League of Legends to be exciting, balanced, and fun but also that they take the community's feedback very seriously. 

What is also interesting is that they shared just how much they experimented with so many ideas and finally decided on the current layout, for now at least. It might create a precedent where Rioters will look to update the map more often thus increasing the replayability of the game overall. 

Summary

All in all, this blog post was a fascinating journey into the minds of the developers of League of Legends as we are yet to experience all of the new changes coming in Season 14. Not only is the design philosophy warranted given how the meta has evolved to its current state, but the updated terrain also lends its way to a more team-oriented approach to the gameplay. 

If Riot Games continues to encourage team play and coordination, there is a chance that players will start getting out of their solo queue bubbles and instead focus on helping their team win the game instead of dominating their lane while watching their teammate fall behind and start raging or spamming FF 15 in the chat. 

We can only share that we are looking forward to the next dev blogs regarding Season 2024.