League of Legends Is Testing Changes to Extend the Laning Phase

The laning phase in League of Legends might soon be lasting longer if some changes that Riot Games is testing make their way to the live servers.

Following a statement in December where Riot said they'd be looking into the pacing of the game and the snowballing effect that tends to end them quickly, Riot recently gave some insight into specific areas that are being looked into. Two areas in particular are the power of turrets as well as the laning phase duration, both of which are in line for changes that are currently being tested.

"We're still looking into game pacing/snowball this week," Riot Meddler said. "As of Monday (time of writing) we're getting some changes in for testing to make towers a bit tougher early game. Average game times after the pre-season patch times didn't change that much. Almost all of the time lost however was from laning phase and we feel that's pushed laning phase down to too short a duration. We're testing changes to restore a bit of time to it as a result, along with potentially some changes to a couple of snowbally elements (e.g. a potential nerf to Triumph on the gold and/or HP regen)."

But these changes to the snowballing effect in games aren't something that everyone seems to agree on. Players have mixed opinions about most features in League, and snowballing is no different. With how long games can last, some have voiced the opinion that the state of snowballing is fine and that if one team is dominating they should be able to close out a game quickly while others say that games need to last longer.

"We see some online communities of players for example currently argue that games need to be much longer and snowball is very excessive," Meddler continued. "Other groups however have different takes. We also do some randomized surveying of LoL players, with a recent (start of January) survey to players in North America, Brazil and Korea (1500 players after they'd finished an SR game). That suggested that on average those people at least wanted a slightly shorter game than they're getting at present. They also felt that snowball is in an ok state and similar in magnitude to when we surveyed at the start of 2017 and 2018."

More information on snowballing and game pacing will be discussed as Riot looks further into the two areas.