On October 8th (Vietnam time), Riot released new information about the upcoming Season 6 of Teamfight Tactics. However, after reading the information released by Riot about Season 6, players went from feelings of joy to disappointment and a sense of being ‘deflated’.
Specifically, Riot admitted that the Dragon Tribe in Season 5 and 5.5 was indeed too weak, as aside from providing Golden Eggs, there were no other benefits to activate this tribe. This led to the Dragon Tribe being rated as the weakest tribe, only used to store resources and will be sold off when reaching the mid to late game stages. The community was very excited when Riot announced that they would introduce a new, more useful and interesting ‘money-hacking’ tribe compared to the current Season 5 and 5.5.
Next, Riot also committed that there would no longer be champions costing 1 gold who, when fully equipped and reaching 3 stars, could annihilate a whole team of 4 or 5 gold champions as seen now. The dominance of champions like Kalista, Vayne, or in Season 5, Warwick, Vladimir, LeBlanc… has made Riot unable to continue to ‘stand by’. Cheap champions being the center and climbing to the top more effectively than 4 or 5 gold champions is not the balance Riot aims for.
However, one of the points that has drawn the most attention from the online community is that Riot will not demote players in Teamfight Tactics Season 6. According to Riot’s explanation, many players will only play ranked to a certain level and then stop or create another account and play again. Or when players lose too much and drop in rank, the discouragement will affect and make gamers not want to try hard anymore. Therefore, Riot hopes that players will play Teamfight Tactics more due to the fact that they will not be demoted. This no demotion feature applies from Iron to Diamond. For example, once you have climbed to Silver, even if you are stuck in Silver IV and keep losing, you will not be demoted to Iron I.
However, this is precisely the point that creates mixed opinions. The explanation from the Teamfight Tactics community is that the competitive nature of ranked play, along with the fear of demotion and losing points, is what makes people try hard. Not to mention, if players keep losing and are not demoted, there is still no information indicating that they won’t fall into elo hell, so players will still create new accounts to play again from the start if they experience a case of winning +18 points but losing over 50 points. But some players must admit that being demoted, as Riot argues, will indeed easily demoralize them and reduce their motivation to climb ranks.
In addition to promising new, significantly different tribes compared to before, Riot also brings a mechanism that has sparked quite a bit of controversy. Of course, both sides have their own reasoning. However, everyone will have to wait until the new season is officially launched or for further information from Riot to be sure about the pros and cons of the new mechanisms.