Riot’s now committed to Teamfight Tactics as a permanent League of Legends game mode, and while that’s great news for its fans, it means the developer will have to put in the time and effort to ensure its autobattler stays up to snuff.
Last week, Riot announced a suite of changes to the game mode set to launch alongside League of Legends patch 9.16, including four new champions and the new Hextech trait. That’s not all they have planned, however, as over on Twitter, technical game designer Geoff Marsi outlined matchmaking changes also set to hit the mode in the upcoming patch.
Marsi said that “we’re rolling out a new TFT in-game matchmaking system with 9.16. With the new system, it’ll be extremely unlikely to be matched against the same player (or the ghost army) multiple times in a row!” That should help out in both the late and early-games, ensuring you won’t face off against enemies multiple times in succession, or spend the final few fights constantly duking it out against bots.
What this won’t change, however, is overall matchmaking. Ranked mode will stay more or less the same under the new system, and you’ll still come up against opponents of a similar skill level. All that’s set to change is the in-game matchmaking, that determines which army you’ll fight on a given turn.
The changes Marsi outlines aren’t likely to make it into the game just yet – the relevant patch isn’t set to launch until next week. After that, you should be seeing those Groundhog Day-style matches significantly less often.