Announced on their blog days ago, Ranked Solo/Duo will be undergoing a number of large changes in 2019. Rioter Sapmagic explained that the changes all follow four guidelines: Give feedback, Offer Diverse Challenges, Provide Regular Milestones, and Reward Investment. To that end, Riot will be instituting a number of changes to the games Ranked system, one of the most controversial being that addition of two new tiers.

It would be fair to say that most of the focus to Ranked is coming to the lower tiers. Riot noted a diversity of player skill in Bronze, Silver, and Diamond that was larger than they felt was allowable. As a result, they will be making two shifts. The first is that two tiers will be added to the current lineup – Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, Challenger. Where these tiers will place and what they will be is unknown thus far, but to offset the additional tiers, Riot will also be lowering the divisions within tiers.

Bronze V will be a thing of the past. Now, each tier will have only four divisions instead of five. This will make the climb to Masters slightly longer. Instead of having to pass through 25 divisions – which was the old system – players will have to pass through 28. This technically means there will be more grinding for players, but Riot hopes it will help in the long run. A more contentious change is coming to how Riot is handling roles in ranked matches.

There are five roles in League of Legends – Top, Jungle, Mid, ADC, and Support. For most players, at least one of those roles is better than their others, usually by a fairly large margin. Riot is hoping to do something about that.

In the future, a player’s rank will be dependent on the role they pick. Riot hasn’t put out too many details on how this will work – if one role will have a relational rank to your other roles or if they will be completely independent – but it represents a big change. It means while LP will still be gained from wins, that LP will go towards the rank of the role, not the rank of the overall account. This has made it a pretty contentious point in the community.

Some fans feel like Riot is punishing them and making the grind even more difficult. Arguably, a win in an off role won’t feel as satisfying – or maybe satisfying at all – if that LP is going only towards a role they don’t play. One of the things Riot hasn’t anticipated is that this might dramatically increase the amount of dodged games. If players know the LP only affects their off-role, not their primary role’s LP, little is to stop them from just dodging games to get the role they actually want.

Also, neither of the biggest changes will be doing much for the top level players in League of Legends. Arguably, Master tier and above are a very small percentage of the body of players in Ranked, which might account for the lack of focus. The positional ranking, for instance, won’t affect Master tier. The moment a player reaches Master, Riot has said wins on any role will raise their LP and rank accordingly, making it a defunct system. Additionally, two new tiers at the lower spectrum will probably just be tiers that these players skip entirely when they play in their provisional games every season.

While it is understandable for Riot to focus on where the vast majority of players are having problems, it doesn’t address the concerns of high level play. Already, veteran players have questioned if the game is for them anymore. This was marked by the recent departure of the streamer Gross Gore from the game. Before that, Nightblue3 had temporarily quit the game, but eventually returned.

Riot has said that they are developing a new plan for the pros, but little has been revealed. All we know is that the season will now be divided into three splits, with rewards in each split available. We’ll just have to wait and see if that is enough.