Wild Rift Real Talk: July 2021

Hey folks, Mirross here.

It’s been a while since our last Real Talk, and we wanted to give some updates on some of the development areas that you’ve been asking us about recently. Thank you to all of you who have made your voice heard, and for sending in your feedback and personal experiences playing Wild Rift. As before, this isn’t everything that we’re working on, but we wanted to talk about our plans for a few of the most pressing. Let’s get straight into it!

LAG AND PING SPIKES

One of our biggest focuses at the moment is to address the lag and “999 ping” issue many of you see frequently in your games. This is our number one priority as a team, as we know how frustrating it is to be hit by these in the middle of a teamfight.

• We recently introduced the 4G/Wi-Fi Dual Connection feature which you can access in the Settings menu. This feature uses both your mobile data and Wi-Fi to supercharge your connection and ensure you stay stable throughout the game. We know this option isn’t available to everyone, though, so please only use this if you have the data for around 3.5mb per game.
• We are still digging into more ways to adjust and optimize the game and our infrastructure under the hood to try and limit both the frequency and impact of lag spikes. This includes backend tweaks, more accurate routing, and spinning up new infrastructure across the world.

MATCHMAKING FAIRNESS

As the ranked population of Wild Rift has begun to spread out (with many players reaching the highest echelons of play), we’re seeing some issues in the game’s matchmaking, namely long queue times at high skill, and the fairness of matches across the board. Here’s what we’re focusing on next.

• In Patch 2.4, we’ll be making adjustments to high-MMR matches to significantly reduce queue times.
• We’re also looking at a larger overhaul of our matchmaking system in patch 2.5. We want to end up in a situation where we’re able to make much fairer matches in a shorter time, but it’s going to take some time to get that ready.
• We’re working to show more clarity on the times when you enter a seemingly “imbalanced” match, by adding more context to when one of your teammates is actually just climbing the ladder super quickly!
• We’re working on improving the accuracy and speed of our skill detection, which should lead to more fair and engaging matches.
• Patch-by-patch, we’re continuing to adjust our matchmaking algorithm to balance getting your preferred position, ensuring matches are even, playing with local players, and keeping queue times short. This is always going to be a back-and-forth depending on region, time of day, and so on, but we’re actively working to make the experience more predictable and fair.

WIN TRADING AND MATCH FIXING

Win trading and match fixing are affecting small pockets of the leaderboards, and we just announced more frequent ban waves with further penalties for people who try to determine the outcome of games.

• Next up, we’re focused on making penalties for these behaviors faster.
• Additionally, we’re going to invest more in penalizing intentional feeding (and other forms of intentional losing) which impact more players than the more coordinated win trading efforts.

MORE THINGS TO DO

One area that you’re likely to see us work a lot on through the end of the year is improving the ways you can explore Wild Rift outside of the core 5v5 game. It’s important to not overload the game with a bunch of unnecessary systems, but we know Wild Rift is still lacking in a couple of core social features, as well as more ways to progress, earn new content, and show your mastery. We’re still figuring out all the details and timings, but you can expect to see the following through the end of the year:

• In Patch 2.4, we’re making adjustments to ranked, including changes to several aspects of progression. More info throughout July.
• Also in Patch 2.4, the Wild Pass returns with a ton of upgrades; including no more downtime between each new pass. More info in the upcoming July /dev diary.
• In Patch 2.5, we’re rolling out a huge new set of social features to make it way more fun to play together.
• In the future, we’re working on more rewards for playing Ranked, and giving you more goals on your journey besides just your end of season tier and division.
• We’re still figuring out everything beyond this, but we have multiple teams working on new features like these across Riot.

That’s all from me for now. Thanks for playing, and good luck fighting back the Ruination!

Mirross