League of Legends Devs Give Insight On Missions

After recent news that League of Legends would soon offer in-game missions within the new client, questions began popping up about how the idea would be implemented in the new client as well as the intentions behind the idea. In an announcement on Thursday, the Riot Games employees behind the new idea provided some clarity about the upcoming incentive-based addition to League of Legends.

As far as missions and sub-objectives are concerned in League of Legends, most of them have typically been locked to special holiday events or other limited-time changes to the game. Completing these missions can offer player icons to commemorate the event, and smaller in-game competitions such as ARAM's Battle for Freljord mini-quest will net you a shiny crown and some bragging rights.

The overall goal of the game is clear enough: To get better and improve your rank and skills along the way. However, the designers over at Riot Games have acknowledged that such long-term goals are a bit difficult to conceptualize for players, and the shorter-term goals don't always occur frequently enough or with meaningful incentives to complete them. In

"These long-term goals are fun to work towards, but progress usually takes months (or years), and important milestones are fairly scarce," said Game Designer Evan "Revenancer" Humphreys in the recent dev talk. "On a week-to-week or day-to-day level, there aren't many different goals to pursue to bring variety and character to your individual play sessions."

Humphreys went on to say that the old client also made it much more difficult to manage events, as rewards had to be distributed manually by employees after verifying that the player had indeed satisfied the requirements. With the new client, however, missions can be incorporated seamlessly and faster than ever before, which led the developers to the decision to include smaller, more frequent missions to accomplish.

These smaller missions won't be created haphazardly, though. Humphreys assured that each mission would fit in well with the way the game was supposed to be played, not in a way that would change traditional strategies or jeopardize the rest of the team. Below are the two principles the team behind the missions considered when deciding what would be suitable goals for League players to shoot for:

PRINCIPLE #1: MISSIONS DON'T TROLL YOUR GAMES.

• This is a delicate area. It's important to us that missions don't negatively impact your games. This means missions can't encourage players to play to lose or to play in sub-optimal ways. However, we're making an exception for situations where all five players are signed up for the same challenge.
• Good mission: Win three games with at least 10 kills/assists.
• Bad mission: Win a game with 300 AD as Lux.Ultimately, we want players to come away from a completed mission having had fun—or feeling satisfied with the challenge they've overcome.

PRINCIPLE #2: MISSIONS CHALLENGE YOUR SKILL, NOT YOUR PATIENCE.

• Not every mission will be easy to complete in one afternoon, but no mission's condition of success will simply be how much you're willing to play.
• Good mission: Win three games as Leona with an A grade or higher.
• Bad mission: Play 100 games as Leona.

There won't be a constant flooding of missions either, as the devs promise that each one will be crafted carefully and might even take some time to accomplish. The team also reassured players that the goal of League will remain PvP oriented, and the missions are guaranteed not to alter the game to a more RPG-like experience.

Some of the potential rewards that these missions will offer include crafting loot, icons, and, the most attractive incentive, unique skins. It's unknown now what the nature of these rewards will look like, as the discussion closed with Humphreys admitting that the designers are in uncharted waters as well and would have to see how it plays out.

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