Riot Phroxzon breaks down LoL 2026 Season 2: Demons' lore, WASD controls vs pros, and all gameplay changes

Season 2 of 2026, Pandemonium, is shaping up to be a more controlled update for League of Legends than its predecessors by focusing on gameplay tweaks, build diversity, and new systems like early game termination rather than major overhauls.

In an interview with Sheep Esports, Matthew “Riot Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison, Lead Gameplay Designer at Riot Games, talked about the philosophy behind these updates. From why Riot is making fewer big gameplay changes to what the team wants to improve when it comes to items, roles, and the overall player experience in League, here are more insights on how Riot Games decided everything around Season 2 of 2026.

Matthew “Riot Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison: So, one of the things that we've been evaluating through the release of seasons, from our origins in Noxus and moving now to Demacia and going through Spirit Blossom, we've really started to think a lot more about where we deploy seasonal thematics and how we deploy them tastefully in a way that resonates with the audience.

One of the things that we tried in 2025 for the initial set of changes for Noxus was really integrating that seasonal thematic into the gameplay. One of the issues we found with that was that sometimes it wasn't super resonant with the core Summoners Rift playerbase. And in many ways, like Atakhan and Feats of Strength, it had a bit of a turbulent reception with the community. It didn't necessarily land super well in the places where we wanted it to. And while we found a lot of players saying, "Hey, this was really exciting," as the season went on, it also, I would say, overstated its welcome a little bit and resulted in us removing them.

So we've been thinking a lot about how and where we deploy the season and the narrative elements. Or if we're doing motion comics, whether we do motion comics or whether we're using modes and supplemental offerings like that to make the feeling of the season come alive, and things like the Battle Pass, Skins, and whatnot.

So over time, we have decided to essentially stray away from integrating a lot of the seasonal thematic elements into core Summoner’s Rift. When we were polling players about what they wanted out of seasons, that was not something that ended up being super resonant with them. However, getting the seasonal thematic into other places, like game modes or potentially champions, was ending up being more resonant with players. And so those are the types of things that we've been thinking about recently with how we deploy the season automatically.

Riot Phroxzon: It's really a collaboration. So we were going back and forth with a lot of the teams that work on the seasonal package, and we worked together closely with them as a gameplay team. And ultimately, we wanted to do what's best for Summoner’s Rift gameplay, and that doesn't necessarily mean leading with the narrative — we really wanted to just do what is best for the gameplay. And if that landed well with the narrative, then that's great. If it doesn't, then it's not as narratively led as we were in 2025.

And so a lot of the changes in Summoner's Rift were targeted at being a little more conservative, I would say. Again, players didn't necessarily resonate super well in 2025 with large sets of changes to Summoner’s Rift, and especially in the middle of the season. And so we took a look at, “Okay, well, what opportunities and problems do we have on the Rift?” And thinking about areas where we could improve the game, and we didn't really feel like we needed a lot of large table flips. And so really a lot of it came down to understanding what players wanted.

Players have been very happy with the season overall. The sentiment has been really good, the engagement's been really good, and so we didn't feel like we needed to shake up a lot of things. However, we did feel like we needed to touch up a few things, like Role Quest or adding a little bit of excitement here and there, bringing back some of the two old keystones that players loved and remember fondly. So that was really a lot of how we were approaching this particular season in Summoner’s Rift.

Riot Phroxzon: What I would say is basically we always want to keep experimenting, trying different things. I think we want to keep surprising players and making sure that we meet their expectations in different ways. And sometimes that means maybe, for example, a story might take a shorter time to play out, and that might be a reason why we have a shorter season. Sometimes it might be, "Hey, there's a really long story, and it needs to play out," or maybe there are some things that players might find unusual and surprising and delightful about how we construct the seasons.

I think at the point where we are always doing the same thing or doing something predictable to players, there are certainly pros and cons to each approach, but as a game that's been alive for like 16 years now, we always want to keep it unpredictable and help players get excited about certain things.

And so I don't really want to say particularly what types of things we have planned for the season or for future seasons, but that is our general philosophy. We're always trying to surprise and delight players in terms of how we approach them, and I think also the theme of this season was one of the ways we were trying to take a bit of a different take on how we could express the season thematically.

Riot Phroxzon: So this was a really exciting development, actually. So when we were talking a lot about Demacia last season and thinking about ways that we could surprise and delight players, like always through that lens of, "Oh, what are players going to find exciting and interesting?" At this point, we had gone to multiple different regions: we'd gone to Noxus, we'd gone to Ionia, and we'd gone to Demacia.

And we were thinking a lot about how, when people see three things in a row, generally, that feels like a pattern. And so we were thinking, “Oh, well, it wouldn’t be pretty, I would say, not particularly creative to just go to another region,” for example. And so one of the things we were thinking about, especially the narrative team and thinking about how we can tell a story, we were thinking about, “Okay, well, one, we had a very, I would say, bright-feeling season in Demacia where it's all about these vibrant whites — in terms of color palette and things like that, whites and golds and blues and things”. And so one of the things that the creative team and the gameplay teams and things like that were collaborating on early during Demacia’s development is how can we surprise and delight players in the transition from season one to season two? And in this, we had a lot of brainstorming and kind of arrived at the idea of demons being a potential way that a Demacian story could play out in an exciting way.

And I'm not going to talk about any particular specifics, but you can think of things like the borders of Demacia and what types of things could exist there, or where Demacians would go if they were to venture out of Demacia, or if they were coming into Demacia from Ionia. And so there was a lot of brainstorming and thinking about what types of stories we could tell, and the team was getting very excited about the prospect of these being a little more mature, a little more dark, a little more exciting. But at the same time, we drew a very fine line between something that would be depressing and a horror type of dark versus exciting or edgy or danger or monster slaying, that type of contrast. And so that was something that really got a lot of backing from the team, and that's kind of how that started to play out.

So I would say that it was the need to subvert expectations and exceed the expectations of the audience that caused this pivot overall.

Riot Phroxzon: I will say that we have explored many different narrative directions. I saw a significant number of them. I think it would be kind of disappointing to play as if I spoiled what was in the season. So I will say that there were many, many, many different narrative lines and stories and things that were exciting to tell.

We did end up with a lot more of a character focus, in terms of the narrative that we landed on for this season. And that was, again, falling into the same category of, “Okay, well, in the previous seasons, we told stories about the region overall or a bunch of various plot lines that were [region-focused]”. And honestly, the Atakhan storyline as well, with Atakhan as a central character through all of that, he's not a champion as well. And so we wanted to come back to a champion-focused feeling of the season and play for more of that depth on following a certain champion that we know players love and resonate with. And so that was, again, one of the ways that we felt like we could do something a little different and have that be resonant with people.

Riot Phroxzon: We have gone back and forth on how we designed the item system over the years. In previous years, I want to say circa 2021-ish when we released the mythic item season, we were thinking a lot about how we could make more generic items that are appealing to many different champions and that the item system would be more of a toolbox system where it's like, “Oh, because I'm running into this type of champion or I have these types of champions on my team, I should pick Divine Sunder, or I should pick Divine Sunder in this game and Trinity Force in this other one.”

As time has gone on, we've kind of realized that the item system itself is most resonant when there are core items that resonate very deeply with certain champions. And so this would be something like saying Trinity Force is just an item that is going to be deeply resonant with, I don't know, insert champion that uses Trinity Force, and that's just going to be the item that they build every game, and they're going to be really satisfied by it.

And part of that is a pretty intentional shift in understanding that there are some items that we should consider as core items for champions that feel part of their identity, and that if they don't have them, they kind of feel incomplete — and then there are items that are more situational. So things like a grievous wounds item or things that are situational based on the game state, and we've kind of moved more towards having items fulfill certain specific fantasies on players and building those into the champion's power budget in a way so that those champions feel more resonant at a baseline with the item system, and it feels hard to disentangle those two. And so we've moved our philosophy more towards items being core parts of champions essentially, as opposed to being a toolbox that you pick for a various game state.

So that's been a pretty major shift. And when we think of build diversity, we now think of things like, “Oh, this champion is just going to build Dusk and Dawn, or this champion is just going to build Lich Bane,” and we embrace that. And that's how we build the champion and balance the champion and things like that, and then there are the items that are more on the build diversity game state side and just being intentional about when an item is in one camp or the other.

Riot Phroxzon: So this is another type of area where we're leaning more towards serving the base champions’ fantasy, and Role Quest is kind of a way to deliver that.

When we think of Role Quests, I want to say guiding champions into certain archetypes or certain strengths and weaknesses — like toplane is just being higher level on average, or midlane is having better roaming, or botlane is having more items, or supports having more control wards — there are pros and cons with that approach. The pro is that many players resonate with having a special thing about their role: I'm proud to say that I'm a midlaner, for example, and that there's a difference between playing Corki in midlane and playing Corki in botlane, for example.

And so in the same way as the item system, the role quests are also seeking to create this greater sense of identity in the same way that Corki should feel great about buying a Sheen item, and if he's not buying a Sheen item, he’s probably not being balanced correctly, or there's something going wrong there. And so the role quests and the item system are kind of working synergistically in that way to help champions feel like they have a sense of identity, and they feel like they have a sense of belonging to some type of role or some type of item system. So I think they work very well together in that respect.

The downside of that, of course, is we lose a little bit of player creativity in the sense that you can't send two people toplane anymore because it just doesn't work. You can't “break the meta” and the roles are a bit more defined. But we think that the positive aspects of players resonating with their roles, resonating with their core items and resonating with the champion's core fantasy is worth that trade-off.

Riot Phroxzon: I don't think the season's changes are particularly controversial overall. I'll say some of the item changes that we're doing are a bit interesting. There's an item change that we’re doing to Statikk Shiv where Statikk Shiv now applies all on-hits with the Lightning, which is a really cool type of gameplay... I don't want to call it “game breaking output,” but it's something that can help players get excited. When I mention that, you think of, "Oh, what are all the things that I could do with that?"

Riot Phroxzon: Or Statikk Shiv with Blade of the Ruined King or something like that, or instantly stacking up your Terminus and things like that. So those are the types of item changes that we want that help players think differently about the system or get excited about these types of things. So that's the type of thing that I think is where we want to move the item system in the future — we call them build arounds.

So those are the types of things that are interesting and I would say are probably going to be more of the contentious ones. The keystones that we're adding back into the game, have existed in the game before, but those will hopefully be exciting for veteran players.

Riot Phroxzon: We've been thinking a lot about how we balance what I would say are long-term fans of the game versus being resonant with that newer audience. Some of the reasons why we did things like bring Hextech Gunblade back or bring Stormrazor back are partly because bringing these old keystones back brings, in many ways, a sense of nostalgia and a sense of reminiscence about these old pieces of content, and it just helps you feel a more sense of connection to the game.

I remember days back in Season 3 or Season 4 when I was using Hextech Gunblade on people when I was playing… I don't know, I forgot what champion, Katarina or something, and that was a very resonant time for me. And it helped me feel that when that item came back in the game this year — made me feel more excited about playing the game again. And so we want to try and balance those feelings of nostalgia and also create something new. I would say that trying to keep both those player bases happy and excited is something that's high priority for us.

Riot Phroxzon: Maybe not quite that far [laughs].

Riot Phroxzon: In the same vein as talking about how we want to serve the needs of old players and serving the needs of new players, WASD is kind of an attempt to meet players where they are in terms of what control schemes people are used to these days.

Way back in the 2010s, RTSs and mouse control type games were very prevalent in the games that people were playing, and nowadays, a lot of the games tend to be on WASD controls. And in order for us to be resonant with all of the different types of players that are coming into the ecosystem and giving them a safe landing place and giving them a path to get good at the game and learn in a way that isn't particularly natural with mouse and keyboard necessarily, WASD is a way that we think is great to bridge the gap there.

And we also think that we just need to keep up to date with the expectations of what players are looking for and what they're familiar with, especially if we want League to be a game that lasts for generations. That’s a lot of the idea behind developing things like WASD.

And we also want to make sure that, at the same time, it doesn't subvert or render the mouse and keyboard as a control scheme that many players have used for like 16 years at this point. We don't want WASD to become the optimal way to play in a way that displaces mouse and keyboard players. The way we think a sweet spot for that can work is, “Oh, WASD is just another way to play the game with its own strengths and weaknesses,” but it shouldn't be strictly better, is kind of the way that we're thinking about it.

Riot Phroxzon: There's definitely some pros and cons about both control schemes. So, to start with WASD, you can only move in eight directions. At the same time, being able to pivot on the spot, like going left to right, you can just tap the A-key and tap the D-key. Whereas on a mouse and keyboard, you have to move the mouse rapidly back and forth. So there are pros and cons: in WASD, you have a lot faster reaction speed, but you also have less precise movement. It can also be a little difficult for males to walk around when there's a lot of how creep-block interacts with WASD, for example, or just getting blocked by a champion or moving against a wall. So I would say in general, strategic movement is a trade-off that you take by playing WASD, but on the upside, you get the reaction speed, and kiting might be a little bit easier, but at the same time, you lose quite a bit of precision.

And so those are kind of the ways that we think about how these control schemes are balanced. And we have a lot of different levers that we can use to make sure that they are factually balanced against each other. And the other thing is that we want WASD to be something that players actually think is powerful. It should not be just strictly worse in every way than mouse and keyboard because if it was, then players coming in that wanted to play WASD wouldn't feel like it was worth it to learn WASD. So it is a fine balance to strike, but those are the types of considerations we're thinking about.

On the champion point, we do think that it's critical, especially for players coming into the game who have very minimal context on the champions, that the champion key bindings are set up in the correct way. In some of the early testing when I was playing WASD and then I was trying to play Jax, for example, and I would use WASD and then I would try and press his E button and then I would press E and then have to move my whole hand around and then keep trying to press W and D and E at the same time that can make the experience not that great. And different champions have different play patterns and might require different key findings. And so that's something that we also think is an important element of landing this in a way that would resonate well with players and factually be effective.

Riot Phroxzon: We've thought a lot about that, and it's actually interesting. Quite a while ago, when we were first doing feasibility testing on WASD, we tested an early build of it with some of the esports pros, I think at MSI one year, and they basically said, "Oh yeah, this kiting is really strong, this attack moving is really strong, but it's not as good as me.”

And so I'm pretty skeptical that WASD, out of the box, even with champion-specific key bindings, is any better than mouse and keyboard at the highest level, and we wouldn't want it to be. I think at the point where it would displace a lot of pro players because it was strictly better and all the pro players had to swap their control scheme, that would not be great. And so we took a lot of care in making sure that we did have balancing levers in case that was the case.

But at the same time, there's nothing stopping somebody from just being really good at WASD and learning the game in 2026 and becoming a pro player in 2028 and just being really good with that control scheme. Also, don't think that there's anything particularly wrong with that as long as the control schemes themselves are balanced.

So we don't really have any particular things that we're worried about there. We are also making it so that you cannot just flip-flop your control scheme in the middle of the game because we don't want that to be a skill test that is powerful. We don't want that to be a skill test where it's just like, "Oh, well, I'm coming up on a team fight now, so I just should swap to WASD so I have better kiting," that's not really a type of skill test that we think is good for the game experience. And yeah, so there are a few controls that we have in there that are kind of mitigating those effects as well.

Riot Phroxzon: So this is a feature that we've been working on for a long time. There’s been a lot of technical pieces to solve and also just definitions on what types of things we would terminate a game for. I don't want to go into too much specifics here, but I will say that high level things that we think are going to cause a significant amount of basically torpedoes, a team's win chance to sub 10% or even sub 20% in some cases, that's when we would go ahead and terminate the game — in the same way that we would offer up an early surrender vote in the case that a player was AFK or whatever.

So one thing that we do monitor is things like players selling their entire inventory and then just walking out the fountain. That is for sure, just going to end the game on the spot. And so those are the types of things that we think are worth terminating a game over. And yeah, it's really when the team essentially has a very, very, very low chance to win after this event happens, and there are many different ways that we're trying to detect these things.

Riot Phroxzon: We do believe that there are going to be cases like that that we need to protect against. At least in this first version of it, we are rolling out pretty conservatively, as we have with many of the other detections that we've rolled out.

We're aiming for an over 99% success rate in the sense that we should basically be wrong in very, very, very few cases. So at least at the beginning, we're not looking to tackle those types of cases because there's just so much subjectivity in terms of, “Well, my toplaner was getting actually a lot of gold, but they killed themselves twelve times in a row,” that could be a potentially valid way to play — look at Baus (Simon Hofverberg) or something like that. He plays in a very strange way and that can be very subjective.

So at least to start with, we're looking at trying not to be subjective, something that everybody would look at and say, "Yeah, that person just ruined the game." Whereas in a situation where Trindamere is in the side lane and getting a lot of gold, but dying a lot, at a minimum, that's subjective about whether or not that's intentionally trying to lose the game or not.

Riot Phroxzon: So we are blunting the LP loss for the allies in this case in the same way that we would blunt the LP loss for the AFK, but at the same time, we do think that the winners deserve to be rewarded for winning. Usually [inting] tends to happen because the winning team has caused the griefer, in this case, to get into a point where they're just like, "Oh, okay, well, the game's already lost. I'm going to start trolling now." And so we do think that the winners deserve to get some reward in that case, and so that's kind of why we chose the path of remediation that we chose.”