Riot confirmed the introduction of the First Stand event at LoL Worlds 2024, with the brand new competitors set to benefit from the Fearless Draft.
For many who don’t know, the Fearless Draft is a decide/ban format in League of Legends the place a champion can’t be used twice in a given sequence. This is applicable universally, so as soon as one group has used a champion, neither is ready to use it once more.
This draft system is used in the course of the LCK Cup and it’s an everyday function in China’s secondary division, the LDL, but it surely’s the primary time that gamers and followers have seen it on the worldwide degree.
At Worlds 2024, Dexerto spoke to Lead Gameplay Designer Matthew Leung-Harrison concerning the distinctive challenges that the Fearless Draft presents.
“We’ve been planning it for fairly some time. I’d say it’s been a reasonably thrilling factor for the dev group, really, as a result of one factor that Fearless Draft opens up for us is that we don’t have to steadiness professional play as tightly,” he stated.
“For instance, let’s say Ryze simply performed in recreation one, he doesn’t get performed in recreation two. That reduces quite a lot of the stress on steadiness, but it surely additionally will increase stress elsewhere, which I’d argue is an effective factor, proper?”
“We should always make it possible for as many champions are viable as potential, and make it possible for we’re paying quite a lot of consideration to that. That’s type of forcing operate for us to, quote-unquote, ‘do our jobs nicely,’ you already know? Not that we don’t do our jobs nicely at present, but it surely’s an additional factor to maintain us in test.”
As a part of that, Leung-Harrison additionally makes the purpose that it’ll drive professional gamers outdoors of their consolation zones. This may then doubtless result in a way more different method to extra commonplace draft codecs from competing groups.
“I feel there has traditionally been points with professional gamers desirous to take that leap. Solely the highest groups are in a position to take an L within the draft and use it to innovate with a brand new champion or one thing like that. Their again needs to be up in opposition to the wall. When you’re preventing to maintain your spot within the LEC, then you definately’re probably not going to be like ‘let me convey out my Karthus Jungle.’
“You’re simply gonna get flamed and inted on stage, and then you definately’re in all probability out of a job for the following season. So it permits us to have that sort of impact with out the psychological and incentive dangers that professional gamers are topic to.”
The First Stand event is about to happen between March 10 – March 16, in Seoul, South Korea. Every area will take one group to the event, with the LCK, LPL, LTA, LEC and LCP all represented. Within the LTA’s case, solely the perfect group from with convention will get to characterize the area.
