Riot releases new Dev Update – Skarner, Quick Play & New Skins

Riot Games leaked a new Dev Update on their channel about Skarner and many other things earlier this morning, which was later taken down. Aside from the timing, though, there was some really interesting info about what Riot has been working on recently.  

Riot Dev Update – Mid-scope and Skarner updates

In the video, Rioters Jeremy “Brightmoon” Lee and Andrei “Meddler” van Roon mentioned Riot’s intention to push more champion updates in the near future. They added that they are specifically looking at mid-scope updates currently, focusing on the champions’ gameplay. 

“Now that we got Yuumi out of the way, though, you know, she jumped the front of the pack as a bit of a problem in all skill levels across League, we can focus on a few other champions.”

Meddler mentioned Rell, Neeko, and Ivern as the three champions they are working on. For Rell, they are looking to work on her mounting and demount mechanics. With Neeko, on the other hand, they are looking to tweak her passive, allowing her to transform into things other than champions. For Ivern, instead, they are working on some usability changes for Daisy. Even though they haven’t revealed exactly what they are going to do, we should expect more details in the near future.

Image Credits | Riot Games

Riot also updates us on the current state of Skarner VGU: “Skarner has been taking us a while because let’s face it, he has a lot of challenges. We’ve been asking ourselves a lot about what we want to keep or change from his kit. It’s not the spires.” 

Considering the challenges Riot has faced so far, Brightmoon mentioned that it will take longer than they hoped before he gets released. That said, they will have a specific blog update where they will go deeper into their game design changes, goals, lore updates, and art direction.

Exploring new skin themes

Aside from the Faerie Court skin line, Riot is considering introducing new themes for larger events in the near future. One of those will be MSI in May, and the largest Summer Event a few months later. 

In the dev update, the two Riot employees also mentioned that Udyr, Mundo, and Shyvana will be getting some love and receiving new skins down the line. 

Speaking of new skins, Riot is looking to bring some Wild-Rift-specific skins to the PC version, sometime around July. Star Guardian Orianna, Seraphine, and Senna are the first three, followed by Redeemed Xayah and Rakan later.

Read also: LoL Skins 2023 | All skins released this year so far

Riot dev team looking to bring back the BE Emporium

The dev team is aiming to bring back the Blue Essence Emporium this summer after it was taken down last year. “It’s not a guaranteed thing, but it’s looking very likely,” said Brightmoon. He also added that it will be similar to last year, but will have lots of back-end changes.

Quick Play will be replacing Blind Pick

Riot’s Game director Pu “Pupulasers” Liu announced that they are looking to introduce a new game mode for League called Quick Play, which will be replacing Blind Pick, as it has been the least popular queue.

“We want to evolve that into Quick Play in order to give you guys what you want about blind pick, in a better way. We’re going to allow you to choose your favorite champion, your favorite role and you’re guaranteed to get at least one of those in your next game. Once you see which one you got, you will jump straight into the game.”

Image Credits | Riot Games

Pupulasers continued by saying that they will be looking to test Quick Play in a few regions in the upcoming months and see if it works. 

Lastly, he concluded by saying that 32-bit operating systems will no longer be supported on League, starting from Apr. 4th, and players will have to move to 64-bit in order to play. While it looks like a big deal, according to Pupulasers, the affected player base is only a tenth of a percent (0.1%).

This decision was made to allow the Riot dev team to work on new changes, such as improving security features, anti-cheat and bot detection, thus providing a better game experience. 

Read also: LoL free champion rotation of the week