The important League of Legends Ranked changes in 2024
On 10 January 2024, developer Riot Games pushed out one of the biggest League of Legends updates in recent history, changing Summoner’s Rift, completely ripping apart the itemization system, adding new Jungle enemies and much, much more. One thing that some fans might overlook are the Ranked changes for the 2024 season, which competitive players really need to know about.
LoL Ranked Season 2024 changes
One important thing to note for competitive Ranked players is that for 2024, the season is divided into three Splits, with Split 1 running from January to May 2024. The season kicked off on 10 January 2024, and Riot also made some behind-the-scenes changes that are difficult to spot.
Check out the Ranked changes for League of Legends in 2024 below, including details about the modified LP gains and new player matches.
- Narrowing Emerald Tier: While overall we believe the new Emerald tier is accomplishing our goal of spreading out the ladder, the range of skill levels within Emerald is currently a bit too wide, so we’re going to be making Emerald a bit smaller. This, among other changes, should also help to correct instances of players Emerald rank and above receiving more LP per loss than LP per win.
- Visible Rank Differences: While promoting ranks was made easier in 2023, there weren’t any adjustments to demotions, which led to some players having much higher visible ranks than their actual MMR. To correct this, demoting has been made a little easier to help avoid situations where a player could have a visible rank of Platinum, but actually have a Silver MMR. Additionally, we’ve also made adjustments to matchmaking so that the range of visible ranks within a lobby are tighter.
- Modified LP Gains: The LP gain increase to +/-25 per game we introduced last year has done a good job of helping players move up or down a division within a session, which we’re currently pretty happy with. That said, We’ve learned that this amount of LP isn’t sustainable in tiers Emerald and above where breadth of skill is higher. Due to this, LP gains at Emerald Tier and above have been decreased to roughly +/- 20 per game.
- New Player Placements: We’ve updated how new players are placed in Ranked which should place them closer to their appropriate skill level.
While the changes do not seem to impactful at first, the LP gains definitely are. Will Riot push out more changes in the near future? Probably not right now, but we know an MMR overhaul is coming later this year…
Header image via Riot Games.
