The changes to mitigate lane swapping that arrived in update 25.05 have pleased neither the community, as they give more opportunities for players to troll matches, nor Riot itself, which has already triggered emergency changes involving the mechanic.
"We're working on a long-term change," says Rioter
According to Matt "Phroxzon" Leung-Harrison, lead designer and spokesperson for LoL systems changes, the idea is that the measures should prevent lane swapping for professionals but not impact ranked queues. Therefore, after the first few days of the current patch, the company observed how to achieve this goal:
"We've seen that the lane swap changes affect about 5% of games, but we think we can reduce that number much more with the adjustments made in the micropatch, which should arrive on the official servers."
The changes will focus on the duration that these measures remain active in Top and Mid. Both will continue starting at minute 1:30:
- Top Lane: Detection reduced from 3:30 to 3:00.
- Mid Lane: Detection reduced from 3:30 to 2:15.
The Rioter also discussed changes that will be introduced to the game for update 15.06. Check it out:
"Due to localization constraints (translation), we couldn't differentiate between 'Warning: Lane Swap Detected' and 'Lane Swap Detected, you have been penalized' in version 15.5."
"You will only be penalized if you have the negative effect (debuff). The first time the warning appears, no actual penalty is applied. This initial warning is given more broadly to alert players that something will happen soon."
"We'll be able to better differentiate between 'Hey, please leave the area' and 'This is being applied' in version 15.6."
Finally, Phroxzon reiterates, once again, that these changes shouldn't be in the game long-term, and that Riot is working to find solutions in this regard. However, it may still take some time before this reaches LoL:
"We're working on a long-term solution for lane swapping, and we feel we have some promising directions (but no date for it to reach the game yet)."
"Absolutely ridiculous situation," says community about anti-swap changes
Fans of the game don't usually agree on many aspects, but there is a consensus that the changes were too abrupt and impact situations that aren't related to lane swapping, such as a jungle invasion or a support wanting to make a creative play. On Reddit, players shared their experiences so far:
"I had a match today where I played ADC and the enemy team did a late invade. We got 2 kills for 2, and they invaded again around 1:35. So I went back to the red buff to help in the fight and received the warning. If I help in a late invade fight like this, do both teams get the debuff? Even if we're fighting in the jungle?"
"This whole situation is pathetic. The definitive solution won't come quickly enough. These arbitrary rules that impose specific game patterns seem extremely unpleasant to me as a long-time player."
These users were more succinct in their comments, with the latter offering a suggestion:
"At least they're trying."
"Why not make this change only for professionals?"
Player feedback is usually heard by Riot, and the proof is that changes are already on the way. It remains to be seen whether the "long-term solutions" will arrive in the game with the necessary agility, given that these cases have impacted a relatively high number of matches.
