Riot reveal major rework for League of Legends in-game shop and items

Riot Games’ lead gameplay designer Mark ‘Scruffy’ Yetter has announced that they will be making major changes to the League of Legends in-game shop and items during the 2021 preseason.

While new items have been introduced to League of Legends over the years, the in-game shop – a core aspect of the MOBA’s gameplay – has remained mostly untouched since the game’s earlier seasons.

Riot has previously claimed that the item shop, which is found at each team’s starting fountain, is full of “unnecessary clutter” and back in April 2019, shared that they had plans for a major update at some point in the future.

It now seems as if they have a clear idea of their plans for the shop and item system after Riot dev Mark Yetter released a new blog post on June 12, highlighting a huge list of the changes for an upcoming rework.

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The massive update which is planned for the 2021 preseason, during a break in the competitive schedule, is focused on “building and refining one of League’s foundational gameplay systems,” it reads.

League of Legends Item Shop rework

Items from League’s in-game shop can provide players with the ability to turn their gold into the extra stats needed to best their opponents, although it has seemingly had its fair share of issues.

After feeling as if the current store and items system was too complex for newer players, Riot has revealed a few of their goals for the upcoming changes.

The LoL devs are planning on integrating in-game data to better their ‘Recommended Items’ tab depending on the situation, as supposed to manually updating the list themselves with each change in the meta.

It will also be providing contextual analysis that will help players, new or old, to make a better decision with their gold, while, ultimately, still leaving much of the strategic decisions up to the player.

These changes will cut down on the time it takes players to find what they need, helping them to get back in the action that little bit quicker.

League of Legends Item changes

Along with the hopes of making item purchasing quick and intuitive, the design team is also introducing new “polished” items that will have a clear purpose, rewarding strategic and reactive decisions in-game.

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They claim that these new items will have more of an effect when it comes to augmenting your champion’s playstyle, forcing you to adapt with certain builds to get the most of your character’s ability kit.

While some of the current items will seemingly be removed from the game, Yetter shared that the most iconic ones will be retained so players won’t have to learn everything from scratch. They estimated that a third of the items will be retained as they are, a third will be improved on and the last third will feature new items, following the preseason update.

The overall impact these changes will have on League of Legends’ gameplay is still unclear as of now, however, more information will likely be shared closer to the update, which is expected in November.