14 DAY TRIAL // Riot Games has talked a bit more about the upcoming overhauled version of Summoner's Rift, the most popular map in League of Legends, and emphasized the ways it improves gameplay and fixes bugs experienced by players in the current version of the map.
League of Legends is one of the most popular multiplayer online battle arena titles out here, as tens of millions of fans enjoy playing it and watching competitions for it every month.
However, Riot Games has taken pride in constantly improving the game and it's just confirmed that a big overhaul is coming to the Summoner's Rift map, one of the most popular levels in the MOBA title.
After emphasizing that it wants to make the map clearer and less visually confusing, Riot has revealed in a blog post that the overhaul also enhances actual gameplay, while keeping as many things intact as possible, like the positioning of the neutral NPCs in the jungle.
"For this update we focused on keeping gameplay intact as much as possible. We put a ton of effort into ensuring that even though the entire map looks quite different, the layout is nearly identical," the studio said about the new map.
"Similarly, though many of the creatures look different (or are replaced by completely different creatures), we tried to keep every jungle camp’s gameplay as close to the original one’s as possible. You might notice a few minor differences initially but, in our playtests, players got used to the new camps very quickly."
Some major neutral monsters, like Dragon and Baron Nashor, have been tweaked to make them feel more epic. Dragon has two unique area of effect attacks, while Baron has a host of fresh abilities that make him feel like a boss encounter.
Besides making improvements to the neutral NPCs, the new map also fixes plenty of bugs, while mirroring the two sides of the level for a balanced experience.
"Second, we are fixing a ton of navigation bugs and inconsistencies between sides. For example, the south and north bases, which do not have closely-mirrored gameplay spaces on current Summoner’s Rift, are now almost completely mirrored so that the play space between sides matches much more closely."
What's more, the game's camera angle will be adjusted slightly to make skill shots more accurate, while increasing the amount of camera space at the bottom of the screen.
The new and improved Summoner's Rift will make its way onto the Public Beta Environment for all players to try out soon enough.