Riot refuses to scrap League objective bounties but will nerf them after complaints

Riot Games devs have shot down calls for them to remove new League of Legends objective bounties, added in Season 12’s preseason update, but promised “some changes” are coming for the controversial comeback mechanic.

League of Legends Season 12 preseason has begun with the 11.23 update, bringing new dragons, a host of Mythic item changes, and all-new objective bounties.

Just days into the preseason cycle, LoL players are already begging Riot to change one of the new features ⁠— objective bounties have been less than popular on debut, and many want to see the comeback mechanic scrapped entirely due to how “broken” they’ve been in Summoner’s Rift games already.

Riot’s devs have refused to delete them, however.

Objective changes are coming though, the League of Legends devs have promised, in a bid to better balance the new mechanic before Season 12 officially arrives.

Senior League of Legends designer Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison confirmed the LoL balance team is “currently monitoring objective bounties,” particularly in regards to how early they’re being activated in-game.

“We’re planning some imminent changes quite soon to objective bounties,” the League developer revealed. “These changes will address bounties turning on with only a minor lead, and having bounties more appropriately fall off if a losing team clawed back some (but not all) of the deficit.”

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Riot is also looking into why bounties aren’t falling off for some teams, but warn it’s “complicated” to solve, and won’t ship until patch 11.24 at the earliest.

They will not, however, be bowing to early player demands to scrap the objective-based comeback mechanic entirely in League of Legends.

“We don’t expect to hit correct tuning first try,” he said.

“Objective Bounties have a pretty strong teaching element to them (show both the winning team and losing team points of interest with the highlights), especially for newer or lower skill players

“I’m pretty confident that the community will learn these things and improve their coordination over time; the initial shock of a particular piece of content dropping that changes gameplay is always painful, but we’re quite confident that this feature improves the game in the long term.

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“We’re not saying if you make a mistake the game should be equalized, but an enormous mistake should equalize [the game] when the lead is only small.”

Objective bounties are based on four factors: each team’s Dragons, gold and experience advantages, and how many turrets have been broken.

Early in Season 12’s preseason, the new bounties have been triggering on turrets, Baron Nashor, elemental Dragons and Elder Dragon, and both Heralds. Teams have been reporting comeback hauls as high as 2,000 gold or more, on top of what the secured objectives would also pay players.

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Riot is also working on Caitlyn changes, mainly relating to the Sheriff of Piltover’s mechanics, in another update early on in Season 12’s preseason cycle.