Ever since its release, LoL fans have been asking if the new game mode Arena will be permanent. While that does not seem to be the case, at least yet, find out here how long you can still play Arena.
Since the release of the new League of Legends game mode that came with the Soul Fighter event, Riot devs have made it clear, that Arena Mode will not be permanent, at least not right away.
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Arena Mode Won't Be Here For Much Longer
As Riot's Andrei "Meddler" van Roon and Jeremy "Brightmoon" Lee stated in the most recent dev update, Arena Mode was brought out specifically for the Soul Fighter event. Because of this, there were certain elements that devs wanted to add to the game mode, that weren't possible due to time constraints.
Riot has also confirmed, that Arena Mode will be taken down with the conclusion of the current Soul Fighter summer event. The event and the game mode will end on August 28, 2023, at 11:59pm PST.
If you haven't tried Arena yet, I highly recommend you do so! Get some play time in, before it's taken down.
What We Know About Arena Mode's Return And Changes
Arena Mode's Return
Although it hasn't even ended yet, many fans are asking if Arena Mode will be made into a permanent mode.
Riot's devs have stated in their Arena FAQ regarding the return of the game mode:
We consider Arena’s launch a chance for us to learn what players think Arena can and should look like going forward. If things go well, we’ll be looking at bringing it back sooner rather than later, but with some more polish. If Arena doesn’t do well, expect us to come back with a renewed focus on addressing major player pain points and concerns which may take some more time. Either way, we’re already thinking about ways to improve Arena for its return.
It seems Arena's return has always been on the table for Riot, and depending on how well it was received by the players, Riot will be re-introducing Arena as a new and improved version of itself, somewhere along the line. As the mode still hasn't ended yet, Riot has not made any official statements about Arena returning and if so, how and when it will return.
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Possible Arena Changes
While we may not know yet if and when Arena will return, it does seem like the devs are thinking about a lot of improvements to Arena already.
On Reddit, Rioter u/CptCubone commented revealed that adding in multi-queue is pretty high up on the priority list for the modes team and that the team has already been discussing adding this into future iterations of the mode.
[...] we knew from our playtests that getting to play an inhouse with a group of buddies is one of the best ways to experience the mode. Our engineers did their homework early, investigating the cost of all the different feature requests we'd need to get Arena functioning.
Unfortunately, the team was not able to add this feature into the mode in time for the Soul Fighter event, since it would take a "pretty sizeable effort" and therefore would have kept the game mode from running as smooth as it has been since release.
He went on to state:
The dev blog for Arena mentioned how much the team wanted to get this out in time for the summer event to make this moment special for players, and that because of that, it may be missing a feature or two. This, unfortunately, is one of those features. In this case, prioritizing custom lobbies would have been the difference between shipping for Soul Fighter vs shipping a few months down the line.
Custom Arena Mode games would finally be an option, so you could play with more than just one friend at a time. Adding on to that, devs would also look into making larger queues for Arena possible. So, instead of only loading into a round with just one friend, you could host a bigger party!
As part of an AMA about Arena Mode on Reddit, u/RiotAxes revealed that the team could also be looking to spice things up with a 3v3v3v3 mode in the Arena for future events.
He explained that this would "spice up combat" revealing that many champions are :designed to be interesting with 3 (or more) champions ona side in fights" since well... teamfighting is just part of League of Legends.
That said, there are a whole other set of difficulties, ranging from very different balance needs to concerns about setting up 2 players to blame the third random when the game goes badly, to needing to rethink how Augments are designed because fights are inherently a lot noisier. I expect we'll explore it internally, but we'll see how it actually plays out when we do, it might not be something we ever try to bring live.
As if the current Arena Mode wasn't already chaotic enough, it seems we might be getting a 12-player mode. Can't wait to see how that might turn out.
And seeing as the current cameos in Arena Mode are related to the Soul Fighters event, we can probably expect to see different champs as cameos if Arena is brought back in the future.
But, we will have to wait until the event concludes to find out if this might be the first and last time Arena Mode joined the LoL family. Until then we can only hope and continue to wish for more to come!
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