Less than five months after the modern update went live, League of Legends players are turning on the game’s new Mastery system and its “grindy” cosmetics rewards in droves.
The huge Mastery overhaul, which Riot Games introduced in May, has gone down like a lead balloon across the League fandom. Many players admit they’ve “not even bothered playing” since the changes went live. The wider sentiment has been that League’s developers have been trying to make everything more gritty—and everyone hates it.
The biggest sticking points are all focused on chest rewards, which the majority of League players now believe have been “nerfed considerably.” Whereas before, all that was really needed to collect a free Mastery chest (and the skins, icons, wards, and upgrades randomly included inside) was an S-rank in one game on Summoner’s Rift, players are now expected to pick the same champion at least five times and play well to earn similar goodies.
“I gave up a long time ago,” one League player said amid the fan outcry in a Sept. 19 thread on Reddit. “It’s crazy how I used to get a random free skin at least once a month and now I can’t remember the last time I got a free one.”
Others agreed the only thing the Mastery update did was incentivize them to play less, especially considering that “the only way to obtain anything will eventually be gacha” anyway.
So far, the backlash doesn’t seem to have impacted League playing numbers in any major way, though that could change if more take up the rallying cry; Riot has been forced to bow to overwhelming player demands several times already this season.
That said, Dot Esports doesn’t see Riot backing down on the 2024 Mastery update in any truly meaningful way. While there was no public indication regarding the overhaul’s objective, it’s very likely the internal goals were to have players log in more and work towards short-term metrics to keep playing numbers high—a target the update, by all accounts, has hit. The League devs have yet to respond to today’s backlash.
On other fronts, the League team has actually been quite receptive to feedback, most recently regarding the controversial three-split system launched at the start of the calendar year. Players have been complaining about it since January, and Riot’s now making changes.
Elsewhere in League‘s world, Riot’s also quite busy working on more than 120 changes across nearly every item in the game as it looks to slow down match pace slightly.
