League dev explains why new Eternals are shaped to “encourage teamplay”

While the League of Legends Eternals system is all about individual skill expression on your favorite champion, Riot has revealed they specifically designed the new stat tracker to “encourage teamplay” in the five-vs-five game.

Eternals have been a divisive topic in League of Legends since their original pitch. While the idea of stat tracking, and rewarding players for mastering a champion, has been long-requested, the original set of missions fell flat for almost everyone.

Riot took the feature back to the drawing board for over a year, and they are now ready to release the revamped system, with the intention to “encourage teamplay” around the individualised stats.

There were three goals for the Eternals rework: “create more skill expressive and exciting stats to track, offer ways to earn Eternals without spending RP, and provide discounts for players with broad champion pools,” said League Product Manager Adriaan ‘KenAdamsNSA’ Noordzij.

A major issue with the initial set of Eternals was how meaningless the stats were, and if players wanted to reach new milestones, they might have to play in a way that could have negatively impacted their team.

“Many of you told us our first series of Eternals wasn’t exciting enough and didn’t let you show off your skill in the ways you wanted,” KenAdamsNSA added.

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“We took some time during development to post our designs for all 435 of the new unique Eternals to get players’ feedback on where we were headed.”

Mains for champions all across Runeterra were able to craft the perfect set of stats to track with meaningful value behind them, rather than just boring mechanics.

The best example of this change is with Poppy’s Iron Ambassador passive focusing on damage blocked instead of number of shields received.

They also changed the Starter Series set to be more revolved around teamplay for all champions, and a better indicator of skill across the board. Instead of focusing around slightly varied stats for each champion, every champion will have access to the same starter trackers.

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These trackers have a focus on global objectives, including takedowns, structures destroyed, and epic monsters killed like Barons, Dragons, and Rift Heralds.

“We specifically chose these stats because they encourage teamplay and are applicable to all champions in the game,” he said. “You won’t need to last hit a turret or dragon to get credit for these, so long as you participate in taking the objective or kill, your stats will go up.”

The Eternals rework also features ways for players to unlock the stat trackers for cheap, or even free. Eternal Capsules will be granted to players as a free reward during Ranked Splits, containing a new set of missions for a specific champion.

Players can choose to unlock a Series Pass too for 5850 RP to get access to all Eternals in a series, a 90% discount compared to buying them individually.

League of Legends’ Eternals system is set to launch in the first half of 2020.