When my friend told me about this cool game in beta called League of Legends, the business model sounded great. No pay-to-win 'cause you have to buy the out-of-game progression with fake money, not real money. Nowadays it's dated and there've been soooo much better.
Tons of newer free-to-play games have done it a bunch better, and they didn't have the advantage of an established, huge playerbase to kind of guarantee they'd remain profitable no matter what. Path of Exile, for example, is by a tiny little indie studio and isn't one of the biggest games in the world. And yet they manage to have a fully not-annoying, not remotely pay-to-win system with just cosmetics and extra bank tabs for sale. And yet League's model is, frankly, by today's standards, awful.
The fact is, if you want a satisfactory champion pool, you really have to spend money on champions to have enough IP to buy runes. And then there's the fact that, yes, there are substandard runes. And then there's the fact that there are primary and secondary runes at all, which is just bad, and they aren't shown differently in the store. It really feels like it's intentionally trying to trick you. And it's never properly tutorialized. It feels predatory. Like they're trying to trick you into wasting IP so you then spend RP because you didn't have enough IP for that champion now. Which you wouldn't anyway, because the rate is so painfully slow.
When I started I bought a bunch of health runes 'cause I figured hey, everyone needs health! Then turns out two-thirds of those were awful. Because the game never told me about that little thing. So then I had to go on the wiki to figure stuff the heck out. Never a great sign.
So even if runes aren't revamped, at least properly marking them in the store as primary and secondary would be kinda necessary, frankly.
And tier 2 runes should just be done away with. Another consumer-unfriendly trap. And the rune combiner is just plain almost useless. Yay, a random (probably useless) rune of one tier up. So if I'm upgrading from tier 1 to 3, my odds of getting anything useful are next to nothing.
Many a time have I lamented the fact that my friends play League and not Dota, as even though I like League better as a game, the business model is just that much worse.
Now on to how runes are just innately awful. I've mostly played, since before level 10, with a level 30 friend or two. This probably meant I got better a fair amount faster. I know for a fact I've been matched with and against higher level players regularly. They have an advantage I don't. Full runes and masteries.
That's just dumb. What is gained from not keeping things a truly even playing field? It just makes things, well, unfair. It makes it that much more appealing to just stop and go back to Dota where you're not at a disadvantage, even if you're still horrible.
My opinion on what should be done to "revamp" runes then? Do away with them, refund the IP. And do away with masteries while you're at it.
Does anyone actually like either thing? I'd believe it if someone said they like masteries, but runes? Heck no.
So maybe combine the two in some way. Because people do like progression. Or at least it's addictive and manipulates you into feeling tied to your account. But there should not be this maaaaassive IP sink. That's just crappy. And skins and unlocked champions make you feel invested in your account already. I've spent like $5 on the game and I certainly feel tied to my account now, less interested in playing alts.
And it's nothing to do with the "progress" of that account's runes.
Now what're the odds Riot actually does this? When it manipulates people into spending more money? Which is fine to an extent, Riot's a business, and they can TAKE my money for a plush Poro and some pretty skins. But when they get into consumer-unfriendly, predatory, evil, bad, doubleplusungoodness... well, time to raise a stink hopefully?
