Second thoughts on supporting "free runes"... It does affect us.
I own 18 runepages and had all runes I needed (with spare IP incase I didn't) and until now, I always supported the change to make the runes making them free. I don't think it was a good system to drag new players through the trouble that we've gone through. It's good to diminish these barriers for newer players for a more fair environment (so that progress is more based on improving their skill rather than their account). I don't even care that this is a direct nerf to my ingame performance (since I no longer have the advantage of extra flexibility due to runepage advantage). I think that was a rather unfair advantage to begin with (that I happily abused).
What I'm talking about is that this change wasn't an isolated one. It's confirmed by Riot Cactopus here ( https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/fRZopjhE-bring-back-the-old-value-of-orange-disenchant-riot?comment=0009 ) that Orange essence value were reduced (from 33% cost to 20%) because of the free runes creating a dip in Riot's financials and that the netto result is intentionally lower than it used to be.
I don't want to make the promise that the orange essence amounts you get will “even out” or be the same as before. There’s way too much variance in the rates that people get OE from mastery and all the other systems for us to say that with a straight face. And the truth is the nerf to OE disenchant rates was significant.
They intentionally reduced the amount of skins we can get for free because of new players no longer having to grind for IP. While I still think it's a good initiative, I dislike the compensations that they had to make for it. I was under the assumption that Riot could remove the runes prices because they had excess income and saw this as an investment for the future (more new players). Instead, they decided to instantly compensate it by diminishing rewards for veteran players (not in terms of BE but OE!). With all the discussion about whether or not we get less BE, it seems like the OE reduction has been largely neglected. Personally I'd prefer to get half the BE (since I cant do anything with it) than less OE. Riot knows this, they know that BE is essentially useless for veterans, so they increased it when they saw we were upset by getting less BE. However, this whole discussion only disguised the more important loss in OE that does affect veteran players (and thus Riot's income).
I know Hextech crafting is something they gave us for free and aren't owed to us, but it always feels bad when you get 'less for free' than before.
tl;dr I still think it's good that runes are free now, but I disagree with the measurements they took to compensate for it (less orange essence for everyone).
