League of Legends has gained worldwide popularity, and alongside factors such as good promotion and the game’s long-standing presence, one important aspect is that LOL is an Esports title that requires extremely low system specifications. Thus, from its early days, the game has been widely accessible, especially in budget internet cafes where players can smoothly play League of Legends.
However, allowing gamers to experience the game at the lowest possible settings has also posed challenges for Riot in developing new skins, visual effects, and champion abilities. Consequently, many skins labeled as Ultimate have poor visuals and effects, leading to backlash against Riot, such as with K/DA All Out Seraphine or previously with Miss Fortune’s Ultimate Weapon. Many players have even boldly declared that only a few older skins deserve to be called Ultimate, like Lux Elementalist or Udyr Spirit Guard.
A few days ago, a Riot employee announced on Reddit that the system requirements for playing League of Legends would be raised compared to before. Specifically, this new requirement will officially take effect from patch 11.17 along with the launch of Vex – a champion that, according to Riot, features many new ability effects that older configurations would struggle to support.
“Riot Cogswobble: Not just for Vex, but these are general changes we will implement so our graphics and design department has enough space to do the things they are doing with Vex.
We are very, very cautious about changing the minimum system requirements because we want to ensure that as many players as possible worldwide can play League of Legends. In some regions, players still have to use older hardware compared to North America or EU (where most redditors reside).
Before we change the specifications, we carefully study how many players worldwide will be affected, and for the most part, we will not implement changes until the affected number is extremely small. Even then, we will balance that with the benefits we can bring to players by giving our graphics team more capabilities.
Any exceptions will largely be on third-party platforms (like OSX, Windows) that do not support or change requirements that we cannot control. However, even so, these third parties often continue to support until the number of affected users is very small.”
In addition to the aspects of skins and ability effects, the champion set to debut in patch 11.17, Vex, is also a significant reason why Riot requires players to upgrade their system configurations to install and experience the game optimally.
“Reav3 also mentioned in the April Design Diary: […] we decided that our new gloomy Yordle champion will need some extra time for us to create some new mechanics and to make her power source more visually striking. This could be a new mechanic for the shadow, given the fact that there is a shadow companion with Vex.
Similarly, in the lore, Vex casts a large shadow over the members of the Sentinels and slows their movement, which could be a new mechanism or a reworking of an existing one.”
Thus, it can be seen that after facing continuous backlash for creating expensive skins in a “low-budget” style, and especially with the launch of champion Vex featuring a dual-entity ability set, Riot has decided to make changes to enhance the quality of player experience while allowing more freedom in champion and skin design. Players will have to adapt to ensure they have the best gaming experience and avoid potential risks if they continue to install the game with the old specifications.