League of Legends is undergoing yet another significant ranked rework in Season 13, with the full year cut into two splits and a reset in the middle. However the system is still a work in progress, and more changes could come as Riot finds the right cadence.
League of Legends’ ranked system will be changing again for Season 13. Among the myriad of changes — which include reducing promotion series to Best of 3 and removing “visible rank influence” — is the splitting of the grind into two distinct halves.
While ranked splits have existed for a couple of years to divide out rewards, the new two-split system will give players a new goal to grind for in the second half of the year after a mid-year ranked reset.
During their initial reveal in December 2022, Riot cited issues such as players swapping onto smurf accounts after hitting a ceiling, which “goes against some of our core goals for playing ranked.”
Ahead of Season 13’s full launch in LoL patch 13.1, product lead Chris ‘Auberaun’ Roberts told Dexerto the changes will hopefully keep players motivated for the ranked climb throughout the year, and not just fall off once they hit their peak in the middle.
“Overall the hope is players play more games, and the reason they do that is they have more goals to go after,” he said. “It’s another opportunity to experience ranked progression. For a lot of players who just start playing at the start of the year, they’ll hit their approximate rank mid-way through or even a little earlier than that. From there, you’re just playing to play.
“We always want you to have a meaningful goal for you to pursue, and a satisfying progression experience, so this is a step towards that.
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“You do look at other games and they have much shorter season cadences.”
Even with a two-split system with approximately five months in each, that is still significantly longer than most other games. Valorant has new ranked Acts every two months, Teamfight Tactics resets ranked with every quarterly Set release, and most non-Riot titles also follow a similar pacing.
Whether League of Legends will stick to two splits a year remains to be seen, with Riot leaving everything on the table when it comes to perhaps increasing the number after Season 13’s trial run.
“I wouldn’t say anything’s off the table,” Roberts continued. “This is an experiment we are excited about and optimistic about, but we’ll have to see how this performs and figure out what we will do next.”
The new League of Legends ranked system will go into effect when Season 13 kicks off on January 10, 2023.
