League of Legends Is Testing a New Ranked Feature
For League of Legends players who constantly want to compare their ranks against their friends, [...]
For League of Legends players who constantly want to compare their ranks against their friends, you've got a new social feature coming your way that's going to put everyone's ranks on display for others to see. The new feature was shown off on social media this week as it headed to the game's test servers for players to preview. No release date for the feature was given when it was first presented, so there's no telling at this time when it'll be added to the game's live servers.
League of Legends product lead for competitive gameplay and behavioral systems Cody Germain shared a glimpse at the new social feature this week on Twitter. The League developer said the new "Social Leaderboard" feature would be tested on the PBE for both the Ranked Solo/Duo modes and the Flex Ranked modes. You can see what the Social Leaderboard looks like in the image below.
Turning ranked on in PBE 11.16 to test a new Social Leaderboard feature for Ranked Solo/Duo and Flex
Example Below: pic.twitter.com/5bydesQRbq
— Cody Germain (@coderbryant) July 29, 2021
The new leaderboard finds itself next to the "Change Mode" button whenever you're in the pre-game lobby for a ranked game. By selecting the new button, you pull up a leaderboard which compares your rank to the ranks of others in your list of friends.
If you don't have an extensive list of friends in League, this feature probably won't mean much to you. It'll mean even less for those who don't play ranked games at all, but for those who do meet the criteria of playing ranked and having plenty of friends, you'll be able to quickly justify your bragging rights by seeing who's on top. If someone's above you on the leaderboard, you could always just remove them from your friends list and take care of that problem to put yourself back on top.
Quick answer -- filter on social panel was the first thing we explored. One of our awesome interns did this as their project and identified that it was cleaner and more performant to leverage service data already in the lobby than create new calls in the social panel.
— Cody Germain (@coderbryant) July 29, 2021
Responses differed on Twitter as some people called the feature unnecessary while others praised it as an easy and helpful tool to use. Germain responded to some comments and said that the leaderboard was created by interns and that other options were first explored before landing on this design.