League of Legends Competitive Play Begins July 13
The first season of ladder play will also launch alongside Ranked Games and Draft Picking, improving the game's offering for serious players. The game, while free-to-play, monetizes itself through microtransactions, though everything can be purchased via points earned by playing the game.
The full list of features coming on July 13 is listed below.
- Ranked Games - Once Season One begins, summoners of Level 20 or above will be able to indulge in our ranked game system. At launch, ranked players will be able to join one of three queues: 3v3 Premade, 5v5 Premade, or 5v5 Solo. Players will receive an individual rating for each of these queues.
- Ladders - Once Ranked Play begins, players who choose to participate will have their Elo ratings displayed publicly on the League of Legends Ladder. On the ladder, players will be able to see just how they stack up against the rest of their fellow summoners. The ladder will be available on the League of Legends Community Site.
- Draft Mode - Champion selection during ranked play will take on the form of a live draft. In 5v5 premade and 3v3 premade, the first phase of this draft process will provide the inviter of each team with the opportunity to ban the use of two champions. Banned champions cannot be selected for use on either team, so choose wisely!
After bans have been dispensed by both sides, the teams will begin the draft process. During ranked play, draft picks will be exclusive, meaning that a drafted champion will not be available for play by the opposing team. The team who received the second ban will begin the drafting process by drafting a single champion. Following that, the game will follow a 1:2:2:2:2:1 draft format for the 5v5 brackets and a 1:2:2:1 format for the 3v3 bracket.
Through this system, we hope to encourage players to embrace a wider range of champions, allow for teams to effectively counter popular strategies, and develop a familiarity with their opponents and counter accordingly. Initially Draft Mode will be available both in Ranked Play and in practice games. Casual games still utilize blind pick during champion selection.
- Improved Visual Styles - Since our launch back in October of 2009, our UI Team has been hard at work improving the visual components of the PvP.net interface. With the substantial renovations required to support Ranked Games, now seemed like the opportune time to give the game a facelift. We wanted the new look for League of Legends to be brighter, more visually appealing, and easier to use. I could elaborate further, but I think that once you get a look at the accompanying screenshots their work will stand on its own.
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*Improved Visual Styles
This means that they copy what the WoW Armory.
Ya, I think I'll stick to HoN.-
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The dealbreaker for me, is that they expect to use a P2P networking system for a tournament play, and expect to get away with it. Just about every game I play, there's at least 2 people with a consistent ping in the 300-500 area.
The dealbreaker for me, is that sure they do balance updates every 2 weeks, but that doesn't mean the game is balanced. They've done numerous balance changes that make sense. (Nerfing Shen's Vorpal Blade, not addressing the ability to have a large amount of Champs on one team that can teleport around the map, thus encouraging backdooring, etc)
And as stated above, the fact that I either have to spend more money than what HoN is worth or play for quite a long while, to have everything I need to be on level ground with everyone else, competitively.
There's also some general item/champ ability/summoner spell combination's that are extremely unbalanced. I do give them props for planning on removing Flash entirely, though. -
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