New feature in LoL rewards you early if you play well, but many players believe that this causes frustration

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League of Legends started the new year with a fresh season on January 9th, 2025. As usual, there are some changes and new mechanics that are intended to shake up the game. One of them primarily rewards players who play well early on. This bothers some players. They fear that there will be more frustration.

What feature is it about? The new LoL patch 25.S1.1 is the start of the new season Welcome to Noxus. In addition to classic nerfs, buffs and new skins, new mechanics also came into play. On the one hand there is the new jungle monster Atakhan and on the other hand there is a new buff mechanic called acts of strength.

The team that first achieves 2 of the 3 achievements (first kill, first tower or kill 3 epic monsters) will receive a free upgrade for their shoes, which gives more stats. If you have at least 2 legendary items later on, you can use gold to upgrade to another shoe upgrade, which this time not only gives you better stats, but also passive abilities.

Once a team has achieved the Feats of Strength, the other team can no longer get the shoe upgrades. Some players are criticizing the new feature, thinking it will lead to more frustration.

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Players believe the new system offers fewer comeback opportunities

What is the problem with the new feature? In a new Reddit thread from user rekscoper2 with over 1300 upvotes and almost 500 comments, players criticize the new feature. The problem the thread creator sees is that players who were already frustrated by the difficulty of making a late-game comeback are now becoming even more frustrated.

  • Users like Spirited_Season2332 believe the feature will cause more players to quit.
  • The user SageKT talks about his own experience. He says in his last few games, teammates gave up as early as the 15th minute and the toxicity of losing the first kill was great.
  • User Duosion says clearly: Of all the new features of the patch, the boot upgrade that is tied to a team is the one I hated the most.

    • Other players don’t see it quite as harshly, but criticize that first kill is a factor for acts of strength. They would like it if at least this success was replaced.

    We’ll have to wait and see how the feature performs

    Is the new feature really a big problem? At the moment it is not possible to say this as the feature was only recently released on the live servers. But you also have to admit that this is a new aspect that means that teams that dominate early on could be harder to stop.

    League of Legends is already a game that rewards teams well for early success. The actions you have to achieve are also not equivalent. Getting the first kill is significantly easier than taking out the first tower or the first 3 epic monsters.

    Of course, this can lead to frustration and a lot of demotivation if the opposing team is the first to get the first kill. This could also affect the meta. If you want an early kill or tower, then you just choose a champion who is strong early on.

    But you don’t need to demonize the mechanics yet. The 2-week patch rhythm allows Riot to test the feature and adjust it if necessary. We will be able to see in the next two weeks whether the feature will have a strong impact. As part of the new season, Riot also released a new epic cinematic: LoL shows epic battles between champions, hinting at great evil in the Arcane universe

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