Champion Shards, Loot, Honor Rework, 1st win of the day and BE, ars oh my!

The most important Parts are the ones with the !!!. Since the IP -> BE rework I've been making much less and the rate at which I can buy champs I want has dropped by lightyears. I am level 69 at the moment, and the last time I have bought a champ was ages ago. And the problem is, that the conversion rate from champion shards to BE is insanely low. Considering how I own all champs below 4800 BE except 5, it simply takes too long to get enough BE to buy a new champ. I generally level in 2 to 3 1st win of the day bonuses, so that gives me around 100 to 150 BE. I climbed from level 66 to 67 in two boni, and I received Garen, Xin Zhao and another champ for 90 BE. Basically, in two days I made 100+90+90+280=560 BE. For simplicity's sake, in the old IP system a win gives 100 IP and a loss gives 65. Lets say I play 10 games in a day with a 50% win loss ratio. The IP system awards me with 825 IP, plus 1st win of the day is 975 IP. Immediately, no waiting no ifs no buts. At lvl 69 I need 3456 XP to rise a level. Once more for simplicity's sake, 10 games, per win I receive 204 XP and per loss 167, 50% winrate. 1020+835+400 is 2255 xp. In those same 10 games, I have recieved nothing and not even leveled. So I basically need to play I think 6 or 7 more games (or 4 or 5 if I can catch the 1st win of the day bonus) (at a 50% winrate) to hit the next level, at which yeah, I can receive a champ worth 6300 BE. However, the chance that I receive a champ that I don't already have is about 2/6ths, so that means most of the time I will be receiving champs I will have to disenchant to a fraction of their value. Now lets add those 6 or 7 games in IP, without the 1st win of the day bonus. With that, I'll be at around 1470 IP, with 1st win of the day bout 1570. Remember, from level 67 to 68 I made 580 BE. Now, your argument will be yes, but you can buy champs for half the price with the shards. Yeah, but 1st I have to get the shard for a champ I actually want atm, then I have to sit on it and wait till I can buy it with the stuff I get from other levels, lets say I get two 6300 champs in a row (yippee), basically I received 3200 BE those two levels, but I have to wait super long until I can get the actual item from both of those shards because I basically need to earn 6400 in BE to unlock both of them. Now two champs for the price of one sounds awesome, but actually not so much when you have times where 1617 games give you 580 blue essence as compared to to 1570 IP. And since BE is for champion Mastery as well, and the price of champion mastery was raised by 10fold, I'm getting a lot less for my BE than I would be getting for straight up IP. Put simply, I could by the most expensive champ in around 6 days in the IP system, whereas in the BE system it takes about 1.6 times as long. About 3 levels a week simply amounts to quite a bit less than ~6000 IP/BE, especially the higher the levels get simply because the drop value is too random for a scaling XP system. When I hit level 100, I still will not own all champs simply because I don't spend actual money on games because I'm not in a position to do so. And I believed riot noticed this, or else they would not have changed the 1st win of the day bonus to 400xp + 50 BE but actually that's a mini buff and a mini nerf that's a bit bigger than the buff on their part. Remove 100 xp and add 50 BE, no that's just a 1st win of the day nerf packaged nicely. in 3 level ups I'm missing out on 600xp but gaining 300 BE, which would make sense and actually would have been a smart move to balance early leveling and late if BE had the value of IP. But it doesn't seeing as I generally need more of it (champ masteries) and receive less. Now we get to the Honor system. Riot knew that they were basically nerfing IP gain rate for people who play a lot and reach high levels. So the honor system was an Idea to improve player behavior by having other players reward them for the way they play, giving you a shot at medieval twitch or grey warwick and some guaranteed extra blue essence, but the drop rate for honor capsules was so damn low that it barely made a difference. The new Honor rework is a shot at finally fixing the problem that higher level players have (they simply aren't getting enough for their games) while adressing the "problem" that honor was simply a monthly lottery ticket to receive 2 skins, and some blue essence as a condolence if you didn't that was pretty much negligible. If you play a lot, chances are high you'll get honored a lot, unless you're toxic and in that scenario it's good that you don't get honored as a form of punishment. So now, people who reach mastery level 5 quickly will be receiving BE a lot more quickly, maybe, allowing BE to maybe catch up to the value of IP. But there's also a hidden nerf, again. Now, you're losing a chance to gain 2 cosmetics in lieu of receiving 1 guaranteed cosmetic and a more steady BE income. Well, the whole point of introducing BE was to make general in game income more steady, and that was a complete mess up for players who play more often and don't spend money on gameplay. Buying every champ costs 546350 BE, btw. Now we get to hexcrafting. Actually I was expecting the honor system to get reworked, but to be honest I was expecting something more than it just being to balance out ingame income. In fact, since key drop rate was tied to honor, I was hoping you would play the cool card and incorporate the whole honor system into the orange essence system because, to be honest, ever since BE became the new loot I haven't been seeing orange essence for quite some time. I'm gonna put it simple. I have to spend more time to achieve the same thing I could have achieved faster before, and you're making the system ever more complicated over literally nothing and I don't understand why. If you just wanted to change the fact that you could get two skins for free instead of just one don't hide it as a "buff" that's nothing but balancing out something you changed to balance out the exact same problem you had before the change.

!!! So what am I complaining about? That prestige and gameplay are getting tied closer together in a super complex way that makes no sense at all. Experience for example is a pretty straightforward word and it's definition is pretty straightforward too, why should you be getting more experience just because it's your 1st win of the day? Someone who plays two times and wins with a 50% winrate every day gets the basically the same experience as someone who plays 5 games every two to three days with a 60% winrate. By definition of the word "Experience" the one who plays more games should get more experience. But because of 1st win of the day, the one playing two games every day actually gets the exp of 6 wins and 2 losses in 2 days while the one playing 5 games every 2nd day gets the xp of 5 wins and 2 losses in 2 days. Something is wrong there. He plays more games, his winrate is higher, but his level says he actually has less experience than the guy who plays 2 games every day.

Solution1: 1st game of the day bonus -> 400 BE if win, 250 if loss. Still encourages play per day but affects true prestige less.

!!! Leveling rewards, is a big problem. Big, big problem. There are currently 139 released champions. 13 450BE, 22 1350BE, 24 3150BE, 48 4800BE, and 32 6400. If I open a new account, starting with 0 be, to buy every champ with leveling rewards only (aka - 1st win of the day) and own them all by level 150, I would need to earn 3642.33333333BE per level up. Remember what I earned from level 66 to 67? 580BE. Now let that sink in. So I play lol quite a bit and it's a scaling xp system, I can definitely hit level 10 in a day if I do nothing else, maybe lvl 15 but from there on it's not that fast, maybe 3 levels a day till lvl 20 and 2 levels a day from there. From level 30 onwards I can level at a rate of 1 per day, until about level 45. By the time I hit lvl 30, off of level up rewards if I only receive 4800 skin shards (which would be pretty generous) I could buy myself 11 450 champs (because garen and ashe are free) and 18 1350 champs, and have 150 BE left. Add in the momentary 1st win of the day and you end at 20 1350 champs. So if you simply take what you can get starting with the cheapest 1st, you end up with 33 champs including ashe and garen. That sounds good, right? Now you might be thinking oh, you can also get a shard and disenchant it to a lower price? Hahahaa, that's where Riot tricked you. You can get a garen shard too when you level up. Even if you already own him. So you HAVE TO disenchant it to gain value from it. Which is 90 BE. Basically, you still need to pull a 450 BE champ 3 (not sure) times, just to unlock that very champion with a shard. Let me explain it with Lee Sin, because he's in the 4800 pool. Disenchanting gives you 960, unlocking costs 2880. If I get 4800 champs only up till lvl 30, one per level, I need to disenchant 3 of them just to unlock one. So basically, I need to level up 4 times to unlock a champ with a champion shard. And even then, I don't have the choice of all 4800 champs, just the ones I have in my loot. To put it short, if you end up with 33 champs at level 30, you're extremely lucky and I'm not going to go hardcore number crunching to find out the maximum number of champs you'll have at lvl 30 but if you don't buy the absolute cheapest, you won;t even have 15 champs at level 30. You won't even have 15 champs out of 139, at what was once the level cap. Let me say it again, in caps. IF YOU WANT TO BUY EVERY CHAMP BY LVL 150 WITH BE, YOU NEED TO EARN APPROX. 3642.33333333BE PER LEVEL. Waitwaitwait, lets say I did earn that much per level. How many days is that for someone like me? Lvl 30 - 27 days, bout. Just as a normal schmuck. Lvl 45 - 42. Lvl 60 - 72. Lvl 75 ~ 117. At 117 days of playing around 6 hours of lol a day, and reaching level 75 I will have reached half of my goal of having all champs by level 150. And seeing as how it begins to take me exponentially longer to climb levels, I say that even after a year of playing lol 6 hours straight every day I will not have every champ. If I spend 2190 hours on lol in one year, I will not have all champs, even if I received 3642.333333 BE per level up. From level 66 to 67, in a "scaling level, scaling rewards system", I received 560 BE. 7 years. If I spend 3 months straight without a break playing lol every year for 7 years, I will not be able to buy all champs if I open an account now. Whoo. If i spend 1/4th of my next seven years only playing lol, like, not eating sleeping shitting or anything, just playing lol, I most likely still will not have all champions. But I'll be far over level 150. That's something, I guess.

Riot, the Runes weren't the problem. It's the champions. I've been playing LoL since around Season 3. I own all the 450 champs, all the 1350 champs except for Taric, and almost all of the 3150 champs except for 5. A couple of 4800 and a couple of 6300. I started season 3, and I barely have half of the champs you can have in LoL. It's season 8, and a few months ago you implemented a system that makes expensive champs in-affordable to buy with your in game currency. And the most recent (thus the most expensive) champs you released all but broke the game. Never mind his passive even in diamond elo an ornn under tower with half his health could triple kill a tank, jungler and assassin. During laning phase. "Yeah he was under Tower and they misplayed that" nononono. Take a shen. Put him under a tower. Then towerdive him with 3 people. He will not walk away with a triple kill in diamond elo no matter how hard they fail that dive. Zoe, 1v1 at all stars. In the 1st game, Zoe shit on Uzi. Uzi sweat his ass off on one of his mains vs a support main playing a champ he doesn't usually play. Translated: Uzi had to go into fucking beastmode on a dude who just randomly picked the newest champion 3 times in a row. I won't say it's pay to win. It's pay to heighten the probability that you will win. And I'm okay with that. If you don't wanna spend your time grinding then buy the champs ffs. But now, you don't even have the shot at grinding. It's just straight up not possible. If you're poor, you're gonna play the poor champs. Maybe one or two expensive ones, because you gave up on buying 4 champs to buy 1 one time, but other than that it's just straight up not happening. 435200BE. That's how much it costs to buy the 4800 and 6400 champs. 546350BE is how much it costs to buy all champs. So basically, yeah. The good champs are more expensive. 80 champs cost 435200BE, the other 13+22+24 cost 111150. 59 champs cost 111150, and the other 80 cost almost 4 times as much. Unlocking a shard gives you a 40% discount, but disenchanting it if you already have it gives a third of the value of the discounted article. A disenchanted shard is worth 1/5th of the champ itself, if you disenchant shards of the same value you need three of them to unlock the fourth one so actually the discount is also 1/4th because you don't retain the champ shard after you unlock it. To get a champ you need 4 champ shards of the same value if one of them is that champ, if not you need 5. OF THE SAME VALUE.

Solution2: Well you wanted it in loot. So let it behave like loot. Per level up 1 shard of an UNOWNED CHAMPION, 5% chance at receiving a straight up champ (not shard). 3 Shards > reroll into random UNOWNED champion. Disenchant value from 1/5th to 1/2. Shard discount 25% from 40%.

Hextech crafting. We all know that you know that you're losing money on this, and you aren't happy about it. Free skins hurts. There are ~950 skins in this game for a total of 139 champs, but you're a company too. I get it. Just one thing: that reroll function. Fix it. If you can already pull skin shards of skins that you have, a) don't let me reroll skins I already have b) don't let me reroll skins of value into dirt. That might just help you in bulgaria too. If I reroll 3 epic skins, throw out an epic skin with a 5% chance for a skin a tier above it. If you want to build in a fail quota do it with the ultimate skins.

!!! Honor. The rework doesn't fix your problems. You have to rework the BE system to fix them. Instead turn honor into a multiplier together with report rate. If you're in the to 15% of honors, your level up rewards increase in probable value, as well as your hextech boxes. by quite a bit. Top 30% increase by a mediocre amount. Top 50% increase by a tiny amount. Below 75% decrease by a small amount and below 90% decrease by a mediocre amount. Flairs show honor level in loading screen Resets every 3 months. Opponents are allowed to be honored as well again but those only count as a third. Getting honored by everyone from your team and the opponents team animates your flair next loading screen. Size indicates standing on list, color indicates category. If you lead in multiple categories they are all shown in the center of the flair.