The League of Legends client is getting an overhaul.
As revealed in a blog post, Riot Games has acknowledged that its player base has been asking for the League client to be fixed for some time. The primary complaints include memory leaks, crashes and freezes.
The company has attempted to make improvements before. However, problems have remained.
"Late last year, we added some tools to the client that allow us to track basic performance indicators like, for example, the amount of time it takes for the client to boot up and become fully functional - aka bootstrap," said Riot
"We would like bootstrap to take under 15 seconds, even for players with relatively slow machines. However, we found that, currently, bootstrap can take up to three or even four times that long for some players.
"Another major thing we've been tracking is "champ select lock-in" time. This is the amount of time that it takes the client to register that you've locked in your champ after you click the button."
Currently, Riot has got two specific long-term targets for the client. Firstly, it wants to lower the bootstrap time to 15 seconds - three-to-four times faster than it is now. Secondly, it wants the champ lock-in speed to be around 100ms for the 90th percentile players - nearly eight times faster than it currently is.
The company has explained its decision to focus on these two things first, rather addressing the bugs issue.
"Why prioritize these two things first? The reason is that, in the process of addressing bootstrap time and champ select lock-in time, we're going to be cleaning up and reworking certain fundamental aspects of the client's architecture," said Riot.
"We believe that we'll be able to opportunistically address bugs, memory leaks, and crashes while pursuing these targets.
"Issues like the 'black screen' bug in champ select and rune pages not saving properly are just examples of things we intend to address as part of this process."
Riot continued: "But we want to be very transparent about the fact that this will take time. We currently have a rough six-month plan that we believe will earn us meaningful progress toward these goals. But reaching our long-term targets will likely take longer.
"These are targets, and it's possible we may fall short. We're sharing our targets with you because we know that in order to build back up trust in the client, we have to be more transparent than ever."
Last month, it was revealed that 79 per cent of League of Legends players had faced harassment.
Earlier this month, Riot announced its new tactical shooter Valorant. It was announced alongside five other projects as part of the 10th-anniversary stream for League of Legends.
