My thoughts on the BE situation and free content.

Rather than the typical angry diatribe, I more wanted to discuss what's going through my head regarding the situation, as well as my understanding of how free content is being distributed currently and in previous situations.

As everyone knows, IP has been done away with and combined with Blue Essence in a merger that has shaken the player economy up somewhat. Currency is not being given out on a "per game" basis anymore, and is instead being collected in chunks when a player levels up.

As I understand it, this doesn't seem too bad based on a couple of factors. The largest, and a theme I'm likely to repeat during this post is the differences in accruing the two resources.

Previously, IP was earned almost exclusively by playing games. Thus, in order to keep regular resource flow going, it made sense for it to be earned after each completed matchmaking game.

Blue Essence, even before the rework, has a couple of avenues it can be acquired through (which are also free). Mastery Chests have a chance to drop champion shards, skin shards, gemstones, ward skins, and are achieved simply by doing well or your teammates doing well. Granted, once you have earned a chest on a champion, you can't earn it on the same champion for the remainder of the season, but it's still free stuff. You also attain keys for being honorable that can unlock said chests. If you want to spend money on the chance to get random prizes or gemstones, you can also buy them from the store. It's not required, but is an option if you don't mind spending the dosh.

On the topic of honor, you may also receive an Honor Capsule for just being a decent human being. It's not hard, for most people it comes naturally, and you can get free things from it. Bonus!

Having explained that, it should be pretty obvious what my next point is going to be. Straight up, there are more methods to receive BE than there was IP. If they keep BE at the exact same values, suddenly they're going to be giving away too much free stuff for it to really make sense as a company. Even with IP (and I know this will probably be an unpopular opinion) I personally feel I was getting a lot more of it than really made sense, taking into account the other free stuff I was getting. I dumped a large amount of IP into changing my name a couple months back because I've been playing since 2009 and didn't have much to spend my IP on. While I don't recall the exact value I had after the purchase, I know it was below 6300 by a good ways. Maybe in the neighborhood of ~4000. Now, I don't play everyday, and I haven't bought an IP boost since God knows when. By the time preseason came around, I was back up to a ludicrous amount of IP again, enough to where I could have gotten Urfwick if I so chose. That's kind nuts when you think about it.

I remember back when I started playing it took ages to unlock anything because IP gain was very low and we had limited methods for getting content aside from IP or RP (Aside from the whole "Do x to get Nightmare Cho'gath, do y to get Riot Girl Tristana, etc). Along the way they increased gains, and added new ways to get free stuff just by playing the game. I wish those things were around when I first started!

These days, we have three different avenues to get free things that I have mentioned thus far. If you take events and missions into account, that makes another method to get content spending only time as a currency. From a business standpoint, Riot gives us a LOT of things just for playing the game. Before preseason, I often used to think a bit too much, and wonder how much they were making from sales that justified so much unpaid content.

In closing, I guess what I want to know is this: How much free content do you think Riot should give to players for just playing the game, while still making a day-to-day profit? At the end of the day, they are a business and this is an important aspect to bear in mind. How much free stuff is too little to appease players who cannot/no not want to pay for the product, and how much is too much free stuff to make revenue?