10 Ways We’d Fix the League of Legends Client

League of Legends Riot Games

We’ve been playing League of Legends for almost 5 years now. Champions have been completely reworked and expanded upon. Items have been overhauled and ressurected. New game modes swarm us every few months now.

But one thing that hasn’t really changed much is the client. That clunky ol’ chunk of UI that keeps us entertained before we launch into a match. Many third-party developers have tried building addons and supplements to get more out of the screen real estate, and it’s got us thinking about what we want to see added or changed in the League of Legends client.

1. Login Authentication

For years, Savvy MMOs haven’t required typing in your password during login because that’s the primary point that keyloggers are able to access to your account info. If a keylogger lands on your PC, it’s going to notice a password you type in every single day.

Automatic logins trade a little in-house security for more online security. You can go beat up your little brother if he logs onto your account and sells all your stuff, but good luck tracking down a keylog owner halfway around the world.

Oh, and let’s get some phone-app authenticators while we’re at it. Blizzard’s had theirs available for free for years, and claim that it’s saved tons of accounts.

2. Guilds

Don’t worry, we don’t want League of Legends to become an MMO, but there are a lot of great social structures that translate really well into any online game. And, let’s be honest, LoL players spend just as much time hanging out in-game as MMO players do.

Guilds could be a great tool to build your own community. We can only play with 5 people at a time, but we have more friends than that. A shared chat room, a calendar for planning events like ranked team nights, and even IP/RP/skin gifting or sharing tools would be a welcome addition. Right now, there’s almost no group socialization happening inside the client, and that’s a real shame for a game with millions of players.

3. Replays

This one’s been requested approximately 10 gazillion trillion times, but it’s worth reiterating. We want to want replays of our matches through the official client. We want to watch other people’s replays, shared and rated in a Reddit-style voting ladder that brings the most exciting recent games to the top of the list on a daily basis.

Riot has been working on a replay system for years, and it even existed on the PBE for awhile. Whatever they’re cooking up, we hope it’s worth the wait.

4. Full Match Histories in client

We have to give Riot credit where it’s due: they’re actively working on adding more detailed match histories than the sparse bundle of numbers available now. Brazil’sBeta presents a lot of interesting details, but it shows them in a browser, which is weird.

We want full match histories with all those cool charts, graphs, and bragging rights right in the client where we can view it, manipulate it, and link it to a friend in-game.

5. Achievements

Part of me never wants League of Legends to get an Achievements system, because of all the time that I’ve already spent in the game that will go unrewarded. And because I know I will be forced to play for 20 hours a day until I have all of them.

Achievements are a polarizing topic and I’m sure not everyone agrees with me, but I would love to see a robust Achievements system that lets veteran players feel like they’re still advancing and earning accolades for their account after the level 30 cutoff.

6. 3D Skin Previews

Skin art is a lie. Well, sometimes. The concept art is pretty spot on most of the time, but other times they can be very misleading or out-of-style that you have no idea what to expect. (I’m looking at you, Scuba Gragasand Masquerade Evelynn.)

Shelling out 20 bucks for a skin without even knowing what it will look like in-game is pretty insane. It’d be great to cut out the YouTube middle man and just show us directly, in the client, what it is we’re actually buying.

7. Combat Log

Nobody wants a DPS meter. We don’t want information that players can parse in real-time and use to verbally abuse their low-DPS teammates. We’ve seen that in WoW and other MMOs, wwwand LoL already has enough real-time stats to compare and fuel trash-talking.

But it would be really nice to be given more detail about individual fights, even if it’s only for your own character. We get a mild breakdown of what killed us, but it’s pretty unspecific. Would we have survived if we had used our health potion earlier? How much damage did your monster crit actually do to them before you died?

That’s the sort of detailed information we could get from a limited-time or limited-scope combat log.

8. Remove Pando Media Booster

This is another one that Riot has said they’re working on, but we haven’t seen it happen yet. Pando Media Booster is an independent appthat used to help distribute files using a peer-to-peer system. The company that built the program closed in 2013 and the program has since been hijacked by hackers to install viruses and other nasties.

It’s no longer used by League of Legends for anything, but is still being installed by the League of Legends installer every time it’s run. Riot’s already made the changes to not require the program anymore, and it’s past time they stripped out the installer entirely.

9. Integrate build guides into the UI

This is a shameless grab from Dota 2, which has an excellent client and some great UI features. Valve hosts their build guides in the client and lets you simply choose one to use when you play.

Viola! Your item shop is now custom-tailored to show you what the guide recommends buying. Your ability tray highlights the ability that your guide recommends upgrading every turn. It takes all of the guess-work (and the Alt-Tabbing) out of trying to test out another player’s guide. I’d love to see something similar in League of Legends, that lets you override the guide’s suggestions at any time.

10. Voice Chat

I’m going to be honest: I don’t really want this one. I like watching TV and talking with my wife across the room while I play. But enough of my LoL-playing friends do want this to make me realize that I’m in the minority here. (I put it at the bottom of my list, though. Ha! That showed ’em!)

Ranked teams and coordinated groups of friends need voice chat to be competitive at higher levels. Right now, the community is fragmented across all sorts of different voice chat clients, and trying to get everyone in the same place while also sorting out which roles to play and who to ban adds unneeded stress to the system. Having an-game voice chat option that is automatically accessible to everyone would be a big first step toward bringing everyone back together.

So that’s our list! What are some other things that you really want to see added or changed in League of Legends?