Why is IP gain so atrociously low?

Ritesh·1/16/2017, 7:51:06 AM·106 votes·5,939 views

So I'm leveling a new account and I noticed this since I've been playing on this acc and another for years I had lots of IP to spare. Since I started the new account I'm just now realizing how hard and painful it is to get IP. It would take around 75 games to get 4800 champion. This may not seem a lot but consider the fact with the 120+ champs and still having to buy runes which cost 15k+ it truly starts to add up. Why is it so low? Especially since most casual players only play 1-4 games a day. That's weeks of playing games to get a champion they want to try out and months to completely fill out 2 rune pages.

108 Comments

Dynikus1/16/2017, 8:19:42 AM22 votes

You don't need 75 games to get a 4800 ip champion, unless you lose a lot of games (by a lot, I mean like close to a 100% loss rate). With a 50% winrate, you average around 75 IP per game, plus fwotd bonus gets you 150 extra for your first win. If you're a casual playing 4 games a day with a 50% winrate, it'll take around 40 games, or a week and a half. And most of the more expensive runes aren't ones anyone ever actually runs, like energy or health regen. You can easily get away with a general AD and a general AP rune page, especially if you're just a casual player, then spend the rest of your ip on champions.

IP is a bit slow to get, but there are plenty of people that have been playing for a while that have massive amounts of IP with no purpose. Just think of it as giving you something to work towards.

SchmidttyGames1/16/2017, 7:54:19 AM10 votes

Because they want you to play ten thousand games to buy all of the runes and spend real money on Champions.

Cynical Rain1/16/2017, 4:15:46 PM7 votes

I really think they need to cater a little more to new players, but I think the reason they don't is that there probably aren't a lot of new players flowing into the game. I imagine most new accounts are smurfs. They should let new accounts choose 10 champs which are unlocked for free, or give new accounts some nice amount of IP. The issue with this is that everyone can just make multiple accounts and end up owning every champion. That's offset by rune costs per account, so it balances out, but it's probably a concern.

Overall, since the game is this old, they need to do something for new players, but only new players. Even if I spend all of my IP on my main account, I wouldn't even have half of the champions. This is fine. I have excess IP because I'm at a point where I don't want any other champions or runes. Nobody honestly loves every single champion in the game. If they do, and are that fanatical, they should support Riot by just buying the champions.

Let me summarize my total IP usage in terms of what I need. I've spent a lot more than this on champions I sort of regret buying, and runes I never use, not to mention buying champions which have been price reduced but I'm excluding that stuff. In fact, even a few of these champions, I dislike, or rarely use, but I'm including them for the sake of it.

Syndra - 6300 Anivia - 3150 Ahri - 4800 Thresh - 6300 Nami - 6300 Lulu - 4800 Xerath - 4800 Orianna - 4800 Galio - 3150 Ezreal - 4800 Cassiopeia - 4800 Brand - 4800 Maokai - 4800 Blitzcrank - 3150 Sona - 3150 Karthus - 3150 Malzahar - 4800 Ryze - 450 Morgana - 1350 Fiddlesticks - 1350 Janna - 1350

= 82350

Next, my rune pages. I have 8 because I buy them during 2 for 1 sales, but I really don't have a use for them because of my limited champion pool. Armor, Mres, CDR, AP, AP per Level, Magic Pen, and just because I use them, or used to use them - Move speed, Gold per level, and mana regen. Because this requires a bit more effort than the champs, I'm just going to double my champion total for my rune total.

That's about 160k IP for a maxed out account for my purposes. 300 IP per day is a reasonable guess for a "casual" player. That's about 1.5 years to get everything I want in LoL. Sounds ridiculous, but I can lower that champion pool and rune pool by a significant margin, and still be completely happy with LoL. Lets count that.

Syndra, Anivia, Ahri, Thresh, Nami, Morgana, Brand. = 33000 IP

Doubled for runes = 66k. That's 7 months. Actually, that's pretty insane. Riot, wtf.

Profirix1/16/2017, 5:06:03 PM7 votes

Because Riot has to make money somehow.

EDIT: My post was removed the first time because I apparently met the standard for "low-effort posting" by posting '$'. Please.

MohawkBird1/17/2017, 12:34:14 AM5 votes

People always use the bullshit argument that it will eat into Riot's profit and screw them over, yet Riot still manages to be the top grossing MOBA to date. If anything a change in IP gains will help them make money by keeping players happy and engaged in the game and making them feel like they are actually progressing instead of grinding.

It becomes bullshit, especially once reality hits and you realize that you need runes to compete at all.