At the start of the 2022 League of Legends season, Riot revealed that we would be getting returning content like Nexus Blitz, but throughout the year this did not happen and no one knew why. Now, we've got some more information on what happened behind the scenes.
Fans have been worried about the direction League of Legends is taking. In 2022 fans didn't get Nexus Blitz, or any indication that any other new game mode was being worked on. This had them scratching their head, wondering what even happened to the modes team.
Well, it seems that on Reddit we got some answers as to what happened to game modes over the last year and why it's taking so long to get anything new.
Modes Team Shuffle Caused Lack of New Game Modes
Fans believe that due to the lack of new content, League of Legends is becoming too repetitive. It also feels like Riot is completely disregarding the casual players of the game, since they don't bring in as much money as elo grinders and skin collectors. Therefore, fans doubt that things like the 'winter wonder map' or new rotating game modes will be given as much attention, since these are things that don't help the bottom line of the company overall. This was a sentiment which Reav3 refuted on Reddit.
He explained that internal issues and re-staffing caused the delay in new games modes for the upcoming year.
The issues with game modes has not been an issue of them being a money sink or low priority. Towards the end of last year that team lost a lot of people, through either leaving Riot or moving to other teams. They lost basically their entire leadership team shortly before moving over to gameplay.
While they did re-staff the team, something like this will take time and the new people in charge of modes will need time to get to know the product, as well as how to work with what they've got. That's why LoL players only got the ARAM update at the end of 2022.
In the last year, the modes team was also part of the personalization team, which is in charge of skins and emotes. According to Reav3, the team has recently moved back to gameplay initiative. Because of this move, the modes team was still re-thinking their strategy when the videos for the LoL Season 13 livestream were filmed.
So, now that the team has had time to settle and is slowly ramping up their work, we can expect some definitive news on the upcoming game modes and what Riot has planned. Will we finally get Nexus Blitz back? Or maybe even the Twisted Treeline as a rotating mode?