I understand there being a threshold for how many games back you can look at like 20 game limit or something. However I think it's kind of stupid that as soon as a patch hits I can't look at a game even if it only happened 2 days ago and I've played like 5 games total in that span of time (this is an example. I don't remember exactly the number but they were rather small.)
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I'll take a stab at this even tho I'm in no way qualified to answer.
So with how we do replays now: No, this is not possible
This is a problem with how replays are done as a whole. To keep small file sizes and such, replays aren't recording the game, but the inputs from each player. When you play a replay back, you're really just watching your PC emulate/play a game of League of Legends. When a new patch hits, your replay fucks up because of how the game changes patch to patch. Your PC gets confused when it is playing the same inputs and getting different results from the previous patch. (This kills the replay. )
For example, last patch, your Ez Q does 40 damage and the enemy barely lives. Replay plays this and this makes sense.
But this patch, when you play the replay back, your Ez Q does 50 damage and kills the enemy. Suddenly nothing makes sense anymore.
There are some janky ways to get around this. If interest is here, I can post a guide of how to play replays on an older patch ^^"
it would be nice but considering it took them 7 seasons to get replays working I have doubts they can in reasonable time implement dynamically repatching the client to fit the patch a replay is from
although blizzard does it pretty well with starcraft 2
Replays don't work after patches because they aren't traditional video files. Instead, they log the code of every action that happens in the game, and play it back. This way, it takes up a TON less space. Other games like Sm4sh and Brawhalla work the same. The problem with playing an old replay in a new patch is, if the code says "Veigar hits his W on Ashe and Lux", but in this new patch Veigar W now does 700% AP, and Rabadons, which Veigar rushed, now has 225 AP, the replay isn't going to be the same.
I also assume that if something changes too much, like Lux being coded to Ult and kill 3 people, but now being dead, the client would crash, or start doing weird shit.
In all likelihood, the replay system records everyone's inputs, and reruns the game with those inputs. Given this, any changes to the game mechanics mean that the replays stop working. This would also explain why you need the highlight tool to get actual videos of the game. In all honesty, this type of thing is actually pretty common in a lot of games (Super Smash Brothers does this for replays too), because it takes way less space to store the stream of inputs than it does to store a video of the whole thing.
yet we cant spectate high elo like we used to...
They delayed replays over and over because they were trying to make it work for prior patches.
The simplest possible explanation:
"Patch 7.19 - Ardent's Censer is removed because along with EVERY piece of code of that item" (cuz its a broken item) "Patch 7.20 - Hey, i feel like watching my replay from 7.19, let's see".
Then you open a replay
BAM BUGSPLAT Why ? Because you tried to watch a 7.19 replay where ardent's and all of it's files were in the game on a patch 7.20 where it's absent and the .exe simply won't be able to display you Ardent's Icon or stuff.
It may sound stupid, but i tried with the simplest way to explain you guys why we can't watch replays from the old patches. This may or may not be a single reason, but it's one of the reasons im 100% sure.
I think its because the game is running in engine based on the data from the game and not just a video replay
how to fix :'( you are trying to open the league of legends game client in an invalid way to ... ?
2 years later and i still wish this was a thing.
