I haven’t been on the forums much over the weekend, mostly because of the sheer volume of rage threads since the Leona patch, so maybe someone already covered this. I played a ranked game earlier today and couldn’t help but notice that the pick/ban screen had undergone a small change. Bans are now listed under the respective team that chose the banned character. The portraits are also small enough to allow for more than four bans.
I can only think of one reason to make that kind of change – Spectator Mode. The old system was fine. It was easy enough to understand and it certainly wasn’t the sort of function I would expect Riot to bother changing unless it was tied to another feature. The only feature that could possibly tie to would be Spectator Mode.
I hate to make predictions about this, because Riot’s timing is known only to Riot, but it seems like Spectator Mode could be right around the corner. I can’t say I’m dying to get my hands on it – I think the cases are rare that I would want to spectate a game, but it will be great for the competitive scene. It also seems totally reasonable that replays could have been the technical problem that delayed Leona’s release.
