Does Riot owe anything to us, veterans ?

Before you reading this thread i'd like to state that my english isn't perfect and that this thread was made a long time ago but I just realized it never actually posted, so I'm reposting it, not sure if it's outdated as of today. I haven't read any thread about this in a long time either. Also this is a long thread so I'll try to make it as simple as I can. ALSO IF A THREAD ABOUT THIS ALREADY EXIST, PLEASE REFER ME TO IT.

EDIT : IF YOU WANT TO JUMP TO THE CONCLUSION THAT'S PERFECTLY FINE : GO READ THE HEXTECH CRAFTIN AND CHAMPION MASTERY PARAGRAPHS

So, the basic question: Does Riot owe anything to us, veterans?

Today, I’ll be almost exclusivly talking to those who have put much more than 100$ in this game, those who have been playing for more than 2 or 3 years, those who owns almost all champions or those who are stacking up insane amounts of IP, to those who gets to diamond every season, or just come every last week to get to gold so they get the rewards,, to those who may have quitted the game once or twice in the last 6 years only to come back just because… league is a drug.

This topic came to my head when I entered a discussion about the mastery system and the hextech system. The question is quite simple: Do Riot, in their game League of Legends, as a free to play financial model, owe anything to us, veterans? I’ll be separating this topic in 3 sections:

1. Why would Riot owe us something? 2. Why would Riot not owe us something?
2. **What **would Riot owe us? 3.1 Talking about Hextech Crafting. 3.2 Talking about Champion Mastery.

Why would Riot owe us something? ‘’Why would Riot owe us anything?? It’s a free to play game after all!’’ This is why I’m personally trying to mention Veterans, which is a topic I feel haven’t been around a whole lot in this game, comparing it to other games I play (such as Planetside 2). But here’s why I feel Riot is not doing enough for us, veterans: • We usually are the ones who have put the most money in this game: Yes I can agree that this is a bold statement, as not every veteran have even put money in this game and some rich kids who’ve played the game for one week could’ve thrown more money than someone who’ve played the game for 3 years, but this is a statement that is easy to use to make the next statement stronger. • We were the ones to populate this game and created its community: We probably were the ones to try the game out first, invite friends to it which invited more friends to try the game. We are the ones who made the game popular. And as I mentioned in the last point, we are the ones who have putted money into the game, but we also invited friends who ended up putting money for something as useless as the** swag factor**, skins. • The game feels old or like it’s dying and we need encouragement to keep going: A lot of people will be against me on this, but talking to many friends of mine, they’re starting to feel like the game is not rewarding anymore, like it’s not worth the effort as the community is becoming more toxic every day, which makes the experience mediocre and at a certain point, not fun. Yes, the season rewards can feel rewarding at the end of the season, but sincerly, the last 3 seasons all I did was come at the last 2 weeks of the season and get to gold. Do you guys even remember leveling to 30 and getting rewards every level we’d get, that felt rewarding. Hextech mastery could replace this but, let's be sincere, it doesn't, especially because of the random factor, but I'll get into that later. • Comparing it to other recent MOBAs : Compare LoL to HotS (Heroes Of The Storm) : HotS has a Try mode in which you can see if you like the skin in game. HotS rewards you with gold, a skin (which you buy with the game currency) and something similar to chroma packs as you level up your character. All that is a big motivation when you play the game and feels totally rewarding.

Why would Riot not owe us? I actually prefer leaving this section blank for ya'll to fill up with decent arguments and counter-arguments.

What would Riot owe us? ''FREE SKINS !!'' To be fair, this is a very good question which I’m not entirely sure to have the right solution, and almost certain that someone has come with better ideas then me. But I’ll still lay it out here. I also feel what made this discussion come up is the arriving of Hextech Crafting and Champion Mastery, which, from my perspective, are flawed.

Hextech Crafting ‘’That moment when you just lose the game so damn hard, but hey, you got an Hextech key!’’ I don’t actually think hextech crafting is flawed to be quite honest, they’re making money out of it, were enjoying it for its free reward perspective as well, everyone’s happy ! Actually, it’s not flawed since Champion Mastery came out. But when it first came out, I thought it was flawed because I thought it was an actual system made for veterans to make it feel rewarding, but then there was champion shard, which are quite useless and frustrating to get when you have all champions, and the non-rewarding way the keys drop (random and less chance to get the more you have dropped in the month). EDIT : What I meant to say is that champion shard is super for a newer player, but very very frustrating for a veteran. Now that they introduced the 1700 IP champion shard I feel like it's even more frustrating to drop one. Perhaps if we'd make it so you cannot drop one if you have more than X amount of champion would be nice, and with that change the way you master your champion :

Mastery ''Luckily, I dropped a shaco champion shard so I don't have to spend all my precious blue shards to level him up, hehe !'' Here’s where I feel it’s truly flawed… why? Because it’s not trully a mastery system. I finally thought Riot was getting a reward system for your **experience **, skill and time spent. But then you need actual champion shards for it… Yes, I heard they were going to be adding some special thing you can buy with IP and stuff, I don’t know if it’s true, but taking it for what it is now and for what we should know about it, this is lame. Now that they've added the 1700 IP champion shard, it's a bit better but it still feels off, even tho it's good IP spent for all this random stacking. But in the end.. C’mon Rito…

Conclusion ''Final..-teemo shroom .'' I feel like I mainly talk about Hextech and Mastery in the end, but that’s not only what I’m trying to get out. If you have more arguments, ideas and such please mention them!