Riot Games launches League of Legends Challenges

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Riot just officially launch League of Legends Challenges that aim to provide meaningful progression to all League players. At launch over 300 challenges will go live with more to come. 

Challenges are designed to provide meaningful progression to all League players—so not just Ranked ravagers, but ARAM aficionados, Clash contenders, and cosmetic collectors too. You can level up individual challenges from Iron all the way to Master. And if that’s not enough, once you’ve hit Master, many challenges also have their own Grandmaster and Challenger tiers. Just like Ranked, only a certain number of players per region can be in these tiers at any given time. If you’ve ever wanted to be known as the person with the most pentakills on the server this is your chance.
We’re launching with over 300 challenges, and there’ll be more to come as League continues to evolve. Here’s what you need to know about how Challenges work.

The Challenges Tab

Challenges have their own tab within your profile. The big crystal on the left tracks your overall progression through the system. Every challenge you rank up increases your overall score, and over time, your crystal evolves from—you guessed it—Iron to Challenger. 
The five bars beneath your crystal represent the five* categories of challenges. Categories are a middle ground between your overall progress and individual challenges, letting you track your growth along particular aspects of the game. And (surprise!) they rank up as well.

  • Imagination: Modes and innovative plays make this category the home for those who dare to dream
    • Bad Medicine: Kill enemies recently healed by a heal pack in ARAM
    • Wave Goodbye: Kill 20 minions within 3 Seconds
  • Expertise: Skillfully crushing your opponents is the way to earn big in this category  
    • Unkillable Demon King: Win games without dying
    • Flame Horizon: Win games with 100 or more CS than your opponent
  • Teamwork & Strategy: Working together with your team to dominate the Rift is the focus here
    • Soul Sweep: Claim Dragon Souls 4 – 0
    • Team Diff: Score aces between minion spawn and 15 minutes 
  • Veterancy: Putting up big lifetime numbers in kills, gold earned, and other stats will help boost this bucket 
    • PENTAKIIIIIIIIL!!: Get Pentakills
    • Multi-Weapon Master: Win with different Mythic Items
  • Collection: It’s in the name. Collecting cosmetics and engaging in loot fills the bars here
    • Icon of the Rift: Obtain Summoner Icons
    • Spice of Life: Obtain Champions
  • *Legacy: Time-limited challenges live in this category to commemorate season-based accomplishments and past achievements others can no longer obtain. They don’t contribute to your overall progress, nor can you level up Legacy as a category.

There’s a search bar in the Challenges tab that’ll let you find any challenge by its name or the criteria it tracks. You can also filter challenges within each category by group (ex. ARAM within Imagination), most recently ranked up, or current tier.

Challenge Cards

Front and center to every challenge is its Token, a unique icon that represents that challenge, as well as its current rank. Below the Token is the challenge’s name (”Gets The Wurm”), and below that is its criteria (Take Barons before 21 minutes).
The upper left-hand corner shows you how many points a challenge is contributing toward your overall Challenges score. The upper right-hand corner shows you which modes a challenge can be earned in.
Finally, the bottom of the card shows the next major reward you’ll receive for leveling the challenge up to a given tier. In this example, you’ll earn the title “Early Bird” once you hit Gold. 
Wait, titles?

Lobby

Let’s talk about titles, Tokens, and all the places where Challenges shows up outside of your profile. For starters, we’ve updated lobbies to make space for everything Challenges provides.
Your Summoner Icon is still the centerpiece of your identity. We’ve also added the Challenge Crystal right below your Summoner Icon. Hovering over a player’s Summoner Icon will display a tooltip showing current and past rank, Summoner Icon info, and detailed Challenges information including their rank for each of the five categories.
Summoner names are still in the same spot, but they have a new friend right underneath them: Titles. 
Titles (”Dragonmaster”) are earned by leveling certain challenges to specific tiers, and you can freely choose between any title you’ve unlocked.
Beneath titles are the Challenge Tokens, which you also saw earlier in the Challenges tab. You can equip up to three to show off. Wherever a Token appears, you’ll be able to hover over it to see its associated challenge and Tier.

Identity Menu

The Identity menu has been expanded to additionally support your Challenge Token and Title selections. Easy peasy.

Loading Screen

The loading screen has also gotten a facelift! Player cards now have three sides. (Don’t ask about the physics. They’re Hextech.)

  1. Game information: Champion/Skin, Ranked Border, First Strike Border, Summoner Name, Title & Icon, Summoner Spells, Runes, and Honor
  2. Champion information: Champion Mastery and Eternals
  3. (NEW) Player information: Rank, Challenge Crystal, Challenge Tokens

We also added a Quick Switcher™ that cycles all ten players’ cards to the same tab to cut down on clicks.

End of Game

End of Game has also gotten a pretty hefty overhaul. We’ve split it into two screens: One for your personal progression and one for the game’s scoreboard. 

The Progression Page still displays all the things you’re used to: Ranked progress, Champion Mastery, and Summoner Level on the left; Honor received in the lower right. The big change is the progression carousel, which shows you the challenges and Eternals you leveled up, brought close to leveling up, or had a standout performance on. 

The scoreboard has a new look and feel but remains very similar to the one you see today. We couldn’t resist making a few changes though:

  • Added lane position (in modes that have it)
  • Added K/DA
  • Added a column that toggles between damage dealt to champions, damage taken from champions, healing/shielding done, and CC score
  • The gold earned column toggles to minions killed
  • Added a column to show which challenge each player progressed the most
  • Honor also shows up here, since teammates may honor you after you’ve already moved over from the Progression tab

Social Comparison

As mentioned, you can hover over Challenge Tokens wherever they appear. Once you’ve ranked a challenge up to Master or above, hovering over it will also display a leaderboard showing you where you stack up against the rest of your server.
When you hover over another player’s Token (or the Challenge Card in their profile), you’ll also see how your progress stacks up against theirs, including their server rank if they’re on that challenge’s leaderboard. 

Looking Forward

Even though Challenges have launched, we’re not done working on them! As one notable callout, we’re working on a new lobby customization feature, tentatively named Banner Skins, that’ll come out after the initial Challenges launch. Among other things, Banner Skins will give you the option to more prominently feature your past rank.
We’ll be on the lookout for usability and polish improvement opportunities as you all jump into the system, and we’ll have more Challenges to come as League keeps evolving.

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