Road to Pre-Season: Practice Tool in the Works

Wait, what?

A year ago, we shot ourselves in the foot with our first attempt at Riot Pls, where we talked about the things we were and weren’t working on. Back then we said that a practice tool—an environment where you could train solo, without restraints—wasn’t something we wanted to do. You disagreed, and we heard you.

Six months ago, we walked back on our decision to nix a practice tool, but also realized we needed to make more progress on the client update before we could invest in developing new features. So, we said we’d give an update when we began tangible, focused work.

Here’s an update.

A tool to master and improve your skills.

If you haven’t noticed yet, Season 2017 is about us getting good at delivering on long-awaited promises so you have the right tools to step up your game. Work’s just now kicking off on a practice tool, but we’re ready to talk broad notes.

Our initial approach with a practice tool is going to be low-scope, simple, and straightforward—close to a punching bag and weights for practicing execution. We are doing our best to make this tool inclusive to people at every level. Everyone from Bronze to Challenger should see value in a single-player training mode to practice mechanics and map movement, but we’re currently not looking to develop a multiplayer training tool for organized team drills or pro-play specifically. Once we get the first version out, we’ll pay close attention to see if we missed anything in terms of how to become better by yourself.

With our vision for League to be a global sport that lasts for generations, we want you to be able to train more efficiently without having to wait 5 minutes at a time to practice a core skill. Practice tool is League’s version of sparring with a punching bag: the extra training you can do with a mechanically unfamiliar champion so you can enter the Rift with more confidence.

Here are some of the things Practice Tool will let you do:

• Infinite Gold

• Reset your Cooldowns

• Lock your level

• Freeze minion spawns

We’re still figuring out the full list of features, but future additions will be similarly focused on helping you practice more effectively by yourself and polish your mechanical abilities. Prototype work on practice tool has just begun, but stay tuned for updates as we keep working throughout pre-season!