Riot Games Plans to Clean-up League of Legends Item Shop

MOBAs and games like League of Legends have been pretty popular for the better part of a decade now, and with that comes an ocean of gamers that are deep wells of knowledge. This can be a problem if you’re new to a game with a decade worth of conversations to catch-up on. 

Over the weekend, Riot Games announced in their message board that they will be cleaning up their in-game item store. 

One of the hardest things to learn the nuances of is the item shop that exists one you get into the actual game. This is where many League of Legends games are won or lost. The item builds you acquire throughout the fight on the rift is very important. 

Since League of Legends became immensely popular, Riot Games has added some items to that shop, but most of their quality-of-life improvements have come outside of the game. One of their best tools comes in the form of a store builder in your client collections menu. 

This tool lets players build out their own quick menu in the store. Those that use the tool, however, are players with a vast understanding of the labyrinth that is their in-game shop, or those that have the means to research ideal builds online. 

To ease the pain of jumping into the ocean of items, and to open the door for Riot adding new items, they have decided to clean up the shop. In RiotScuffy’s red board post, they go over the kinds of items that could be removed, and why. 

“Unhealthy items, meaning items that:

• Massively reduce or remove counterplay against a champion

• Incentivize not interacting with the enemy team

• Give access to an effect (usually reactive or defensive) that we don’t actually want all champions to have access to

Items too similar to another item:

• This leads to always picking whichever one is stronger rather than making decisions around the items' unique properties. Either we find better ways to differentiate them or we can just combine these items and retain both user bases

Very low usage rate items:

• This can sometimes be because we nerfed an unhealthy item. Removing the item would be better at this point since it's too weak to be a good item, but we aren't going to buff it since it causes gameplay issues when strong.

• It can also be because a too-similar alternative is currently better so everyone's using that alternative instead

• Some item niches aren't really something that any champion would want

Items reducing or not adding impactful decisions to the system:

• Overly similar versions of Zeal items or tank items with near identical stats have had this problem in the past

• Overpowered or "always good" items can squash a lot of other choices in the system - core items like IE can be great for power fantasy but if we have too many of these there is no room to make choices

• This can also be true of overly similar component items, like if we had a 500g health item that was used sometimes instead of Ruby Crystal; we’re not really gaining any new decision space”

In addition to speaking about removing items, RiotScuffy also mentions the types of things they are looking to add to the store in the near future. They describe items that help further the variety in champion builds and paths that do not see a whole lot of difference. This may include brand new items built from scratch to solve these problems, but more than likely will come in the form of reworked current item. 

The red post particularly mentions that this isn’t about to happen right away. “We don’t want to just rip out items and tell you ‘hey, we promise this will be better soon,’” writes RiotScruffy at the end. “So our approach is to combo future item removals with item reworks or new items that often replace them in spirit and overall make for a more deep and satisfying item system in League of Legends.”

It’s not the biggest fix to the large uphill climb that is learning all of the tricks and strats to League of Legends, but a cleaned-up item shop could go a long way to ease the pain of confusion for newer players hitting the rift. As of right now, we highly suggest you find some build guide sources you trust and use the client custom item list builder.

You can catch a lot of League of Legends next weekend as the LEC, LCS, and LCK Spring Split Playoffs all come to an end.