Custom maps are coming back to League of Legends
It’s been a while since League of Legends saw modified Summoner’s Rift map appearances, such as the snowy Summoner’s Rift that was brought up whenever winter arrived. However, it appears that players aren’t the only ones who have missed the seasonal changes, as Riot is currently exploring solutions to bring map themes back for everyone.
Ken Adams, Riot’s product lead for events, loot, skins, and more, conducted a brief Q&A in a recent Reddit post on League of Legends’ maps, game mode, and contents.
The developer understood that players would like having themes throughout the game as something special and unique to the map. However, there are certain obstacles to making them a feature again in Summoner’s Rift. Elemental Drakes is one perfect example as they can affect the execution of the modifying phase of Summoner’s Rift.
“Elemental Drakes made this a lot more complicated to do since SR is a very hand-crafted map and is not modular or easy to edit at all.”
Riot built Summoner’s Rift with the purpose to be compatible with low-end PCs and let everyone enjoy the game. There’s also the issue of bandwidth, which can be stressful on performance.
Riot, on the other hand, feels the same way about Summoner’s Rift motifs. “That being said, we miss the cozy feels of the snow map (as one example) as much as all of you,” Adams remarked. With that being said, the devs are looking for methods to make certain adjustments there.
The developer stated that they cannot make any promises about future map accents and themes, but that the team is working for methods to make map accents more sustainable to execute.