League of Legends Replays development on hold

League of Legends developer Riot Games has launched a new "experimental blog" in an effort to be more open about the "priorities and values that influence what we're doing."

As part of the new "Riot Pls", they are also up front about features they are not working on. Riot confirmed that at least for now Replays are on hold.

"Well, this one was our bad. Not only did we promise replays at the launch of League of Legends because we thought it was needed to get esports off the ground (maybe not), but by showing them on the PBE we set the expectation that they’d be on the way Soon™. We backed off replays because the technical demands (server loads, backward compatibility, network stability) were so high that we knew it would be hard to do them ‘right.’ These days we also know that with our above priorities, replays just can’t be a consideration until we clean up a lot of those systems. In the meantime, we're huge fans of the alternatives that the passionate community of developers outside of Riot have created, and we're looking into ways to highlight (and support) those good folks."

Another player requested feature that the developer isn't currently working on is Sandbox Mode, though it sounds like that'll never be coming.

"For this point, our stance is that sandbox mode is not the way to go. We want to make sure we’re clear: playing games of League of Legends should be the unequivocal best way for a player to improve. While there are very real skills one can develop in a hyperbolic time chamber, we never want that to be an expectation added onto an already high barrier to entry. On an individual level, we know this isn’t always true – some just want a space to practice flashing over walls without having to wait at least 3.6 minutes in between – but when that benefit is weighed against the risk of Sandbox mode ‘grinding’ becoming an expectation, we just can’t accept the tradeoff. We never want to see a day when a player wants to improve at League and their first obligation is to hop into a Sandbox. We do want to support your ability to grow in mastery, and there may be other avenues to do so, but not this."

For now, it seems Riots two main priorities are paying off old "tech debt," or updating the foundation of League of Legends to support the game moving forward, and continuing to provide great new content, like the recent Bilgewater: Burning Tides even which just wrapped up. Of course, they'll continue to improve the competitive aspect of League, which has set the bar for eSports in the community.

Riot plans to provide these status updates on a quarterly basis. You can read this quarter's Riot Pls here.