Get ready to head out onto the rift as new Eternals updates are on their way for 2020. Anyone who’s been playing League of Legends for the past year has benefited from the champion-based achievement feature one way or another. League of Legends developer Jonathan Belliss dove into some new changes and updates Riot has waiting for us.
What are Eternals?
If you’re not familiar with the term but vaguely remember hearing about it — you’re in luck! In the newest Riot developers video, Belliss gave a basic understanding of Eternals.
“In 2019, we announced Eternals, a champion-based stat tracking system that allows you to flex your moments of glory both in and out of game.”
For a better understanding, Riot team member Shio Shoujo created a detailed blog post on how Eternals benefits the players: “In-game features include a new flair for that champion’s Mastery emote, a list of Eternals at the back of a champion’s loading screen card, and a showcase of your Eternals on enemies’ death screens when you take them down.”
Criticism and feedback
Unfortunately, Riot received some major criticism from players regarding this new feature. Currently, Eternals is an RP-only feature, and many players were unhappy about this. When the feature rolled out, Product Lead Adriaan Noordzij gave insight explaining the reasoning behind this.
“Eternals were a huge undertaking to build. The system has a significant amount of new tech powering it to ensure that it works consistently and reliably … with so many champions to build and maintain Eternals for, the only way we could justify supporting the feature was to attach an RP price to it.”
They also received feedback on Unique Eternals. Players believed that initial versions of Eternals focused on the wrong parts of a champion’s kit. Unfortunately, this gave players stats based on unimportant parts of their mains.
Earning the Eternals
As they took this criticism in, Riot developers decided that it’s fair to create ways to earn Eternals, not just buy them. Luckily, they’ve developed a new starter series, available for Blue Essence or RP. The new set can track Takedowns, Structures Destroyed, as well as Epic Monsters slain. You can earn Eternals through Ranked Splits during a post-launch update; the point is to make sure every player is able to experience Eternals without having to spend money. This change speaks volumes as their userbase is a wide range of people, from children to adults — and not everyone is in a financial position to buy Eternals.
To address the Unique Eternals feedback, they worked with players on PBE to find solutions. The new updates now track more complex stats that tend to every Champion’s unique kit.
“We hope Eternals really capture the highlights of playing your favorite champions. It’s your feedback that helped our designers and team find new and interesting stats to track,” Belliss added.
What about those who aren’t interested?
Maybe a player isn’t looking to show off their achievements, or earn rewards; it could be that they’re just playing League to pass the time. Either way, the development team has added a mute toggle to prevent other players from seeing the Eternal features on their screens.
Check out Riot’s official guide to find out more about Eternals and the rewards the feature brings. Let us know how you feel about these upcoming changes. Leave us a comment below, and be sure to follow Daily Esports for all of your League of Legends needs.
