Could the new Wild Rift feature be used to help League ladder?

Wild Rift is about to implement a gate feature for matchmaking in Legendary Queue, which could be just what League of Legends needs to increase its rankings. Indeed, there’s a lot that League could learn from its mobile counterpart.

When it comes to League of Legends solo queue, most players wish for Riot Games to finally fix the broken matchmaking system. The gaming experience degrades as the Elo increases, especially when players are forced to play with teammates of lower ranks.

Matchmaking Cure

It looks like the Wild Rift developers are trying something new to solve this problem. Wild Rift Game Director Jaren “DarkHorse4Life” Berbach spoke about the topic in the recent preview fro the upcoming Patch 3.4. He said the developers have been keeping a “close eye on the Legendary Queue” and will be rolling out a new feature for players to try.

High-level, competitive players want to be confident that their teammates are playing their best champions, so we’re adding a new Legendary Queue gate based on your champion’s Mastery Points.

With this new feature, Wild Rift players will be limited in their choice of champions in Legendary Queue matchups. They can now only select the champions for which they have a sufficiently high mastery value. After choosing a new champion, players must first grind other queues to become familiar with the character and increase their mastery points.

Mastery Points system for League?

Introducing the same feature could improve gameplay in League of Legends, especially at higher ranks. According to Statista, nearly 98% of league players in North America are platinum or below. This group is mostly casual gamers who log into the game just for fun. Therefore, it is not possible for them to level 161 champions (or even a third of them) to have enough mastery points.

However, if the feature is only added to Legendary Queue like in Wild Rift, the decision won’t have much of an impact on the larger player base. Only players who have achieved Diamond rank can play in Legendary Queue, and that’s less than 2% of the total League players in North America.

This topic has been discussed a lot in the Reddit League community, with most members coming to the same conclusion — that the developers should introduce this feature to League of Legends as well. It will encourage players to become familiar with more champions and expand their champion pool. Moreover, it will keep them from rushing to pick champions they don’t have much practice with, and save them from a potentially frustrating gameplay experience. But until then, players just have to hope for good teammates in the ranked queue.

Photo credit: Riot Games