/dev: Upgrading Ranked Rewards

Hey folks! Ed here. Let’s talk a little about our Ranked rewards update launching in Patch 2.6

UPDATING RANKED REWARDS

First, here are our goals for this set of updates:

• Make Ranked more rewarding throughout the season, instead of doling out all the rewards at the end
• Reintroduce a “pace-breaker” during the climb, where occasionally your next few games have higher stakes
• Fulfill a promise to players in regions who missed opportunities to earn skins due to our rolling Open Beta schedule
• Give players some longer-term rewards for their season-over-season legacy
• Overall, just grant... more for playing and succeeding in Wild Rift’s most popular game mode

WHAT’S NEW?

There are a few major features coming to Ranked in Patch 2.6:

SEASON REWARDS TRACK

With a new progression path, similar to the Wild Pass, you’ll gain Season Points for the Ranked games you play. The Season Rewards system will also track your individual performance in games, granting you more points—and progress—the better you play.

We want playing Wild Rift to feel like one of the most rewarding experiences in gaming, and when looking at the overall journey of playing Wild Rift, we saw an opportunity to provide a much better “match-to-match” cadence of rewards within a season. Basically, you earn progress by winning games, playing your assigned position, and exhibiting good behavior in each game. Players also progress by promoting, and participating in a Weekend Reward Series—more on this below.

It’s worth noting that players of higher ranks get a larger bonus to their progression; ideally we want players who are focused on getting the highest ranks possible to be rewarded further with this system (and to disincentivize skilled players from hanging around in lower ranks just to farm rewards).

EARNING REWARDS

So… what do you actually get? First, we have moved each season’s Glorious skin to this track. We made the decision to do this because we know that the Ranked skin is the most exciting reward and some players’ favorite part of the climb. However; many players currently pick up the Glorious skin within the first week of their climb if they start in Gold or above, and we just want to make sure that getting this reward still feels meaningful and something to work towards each season!

That said, this change shouldn’t feel like a grind, and we want to be respectful of your time while giving you a meaningful reward to aim for. If it’s tuned right, the Glorious skin should ultimately represent that you have invested time in Ranked during that season.

For those of you who hit Gold or above during a season, we still want to celebrate this milestone! Gold+ players will be celebrated with a skin overlay for the Glorious skin’s loading screen splash. We’ll also be adding this skin border to Gold achievers in previous seasons in a later update.

Aside from the Glorious skin, the track also includes a number of exciting goodies like emotes, profile borders, and more. As you play, you’ll also earn a new currency, Ranked Coins, which you spend in the Ranked Store!

RANKED STORE

You’ll see the Ranked Store in game starting in Patch 2.6, featuring new goodies which you can purchase for Ranked Coins.

Our goal with the Ranked Store is to complement the “match-by-match” progression of the Season Rewards track. The Ranked Store exists to provide longer-term reward goals which you can work towards season-over-season, as you build your legacy with the game.

We also wanted to make earlier Glorious skins available to players that may have missed them during the staggered Open Beta launches. We’re thrilled to announce Glorious skins from previous seasons will be available for Ranked Coins.

We discussed for a long time on how to deliver these, and we felt the most fair way would be to:

• Time delay any earlier Glorious skin releases so players who had earned them in previous seasons had time to let their achievement shine
• Require some effort in Ranked play—we want to keep this tied to playing Ranked (vs making it available to buy for Wild Cores, for example).

When you’ve got your hands on some Ranked Coins, the Ranked Store contains lots of new goodies we hope you’ll love, like new emotes to show off your rank, recall effects, skin poses for Glorious skins, and more.

In Season 4, players will be given the opportunity to pick up Glorious Tryndamere from Season 1, and in Season 5, we’ll add Glorious Jinx.

WEEKEND REWARD SERIES

To give you an extra boost on your seasonal journey, we’re adding the Weekend Reward Series. Every weekend, you’ll enter a limited-time window to earn bonus progression on the Season Rewards track—if you win your games. This series ends after you win three games, or after 48 hours, whichever comes first.

Our main goal with this feature was to replace that feeling of a change of pace you got when you entered into a promo series. We think that this “pace-breaker” is great for keeping the climb exciting, but we wanted to capture it without the potential bad feelings of missing out on a promotion.

GLHF!

Everything you see here is in addition to the current Ranked system, so we hope you enjoy getting more rewards just for playing! There are a ton more small details which we hope you enjoy discovering, and most importantly we hope that these changes make Ranked play more rewarding and engaging for you! Be sure to let us know what you think when Season Rewards are released in a few days’ time.