How will Challenges work in Swiftplay? Will it be possible to get challenge progress in this new mode?
How will Challenges work in Swiftplay? Will it be possible to get challenge progress in this new mode?
Yeah, you'll be able to progress Challenges / Eternals / Champ Mastery. Most of them should be compatible, some will probably progress a bit faster, they probably won't be fully polished for launch.
League has needed a mode like this for a loooong time. Only thing I'm wondering is if it's gonna have its own champion balance like ARAM, otherwise it reads like early game champs are at a disadvantage
Yeah we'll be balancing the mode like we do for ARAM & Arena. We're already planning to use some more unique levers like attribute scaling over time, because if Draven is weak since it's harder to snowball and close out from the early game, just giving him +20% damage or something would probably make the experience of laning against him unreasonable.
How will this impact regions that don't have draft? Does this mean ranked is the only alternative if we want to play normal SR?
For the initial test of this we're only going to be launching Swiftplay where Normal Draft already exists, so there'll always be an unranked standard-ruleset SR option available. We'll need to learn more about how y'all enjoy and interact with this queue before making permanent decisions.
We already have a mode that's "SR but faster", why try this instead of tweaking URF into something you can leave up long-term?
We think the two modes serve pretty different needs. URF loses a lot of the strategy, personal power build-up, and narrative arc that a Summoner's Rift match has because of how accelerated everything is, to the point that a lot of characters have pretty distorted gameplay. Pulling that back to the point that Swiftplay is at really makes it an entirely different mode, which is why we want to keep them distinct.