Those who tuned in to the opening day of First Stand — the new League of Legends international tournament — may have noticed a big difference in the viewing experience. A brand new in-game HUD overlay has made its debut at the tournament and aims to modernize the game’s presentation. But these changes have been divisive.
Image credit: Riot Games
According to Riot’s First Stand primer, the new HUD would allow them to ‘push the boundaries of game augmentation, collaboration, and sustainability while improving the overall experience for both dedicated fans and new audiences’.
Riot’s stated aims for the changes were to:
- Improve overall clarity across platforms
- Simplify key information
- Better represent the ‘ebb and flow’ of a match by having the HUD ‘transform’ along with the game itself
Key changes include the shifting of key metrics like kills, gold and turrets into the top-left corner, akin to a football scoreboard, while champion information towards the bottom of the screen has been updated ‘to make it easy to understand who is stronger in lane’.
New LoL HUD does not impress the masses
These changes have not gone down particularly well following the opening day of First Stand. Industry figures like IWDominate, Odoamne, and LS voiced their concerns on X, with the latter highlighting a number of issues with the new HUD.
“PROBLEMS W/ THE FIRST STAND HUD: – It looks like a bad version of using Mobile mode on Desktop. – It’s way too large and the gameplay itself is too small. – Doesn’t show exp/gold. And CS number is to small/not a good font – Stacks should be more pronounced Did I miss anything?”
IWDominate was not sure what was wrong, but something definitely was:
“I’m just a boomer who hates change so I can’t tell if this overlay is fucking horrible or it’s just me as a person hating it.“
The removal of champion gold is perhaps the most significant change, greatly reducing the ease in which viewers can interpret champion strength and lane advantages. Instead of having the figures displayed at all times, they are instead rotated so that some of the removed information will show on screen periodically. This includes the number of dragons, barons, and void grubs claimed as well as the progression of Feats of Strength.
Another criticism was the lack of visualisation of keystone runes, something that’s especially interesting to see early on in a game as it can indicate how a pro is planning to play the laning phase.
While the new changes don’t seem to impress, my First Stand predictions will definitely impress you.