Old Runes to run Alongside the New Runes - To Our Riot/Tencent Overlords

I think its about time that RIOT and their tencent benefactors took a long hard look at their decisions with runes and masteries. I sympathise greatly with riot employees who are here not to trashtalk people but to really try to make a difference in support of players and their needs. But it sucks when the corporate structure prevents any positive action from being done due to the bureaucratic nature of RIOT games.

Let us begin with the greatest question of them all.

Why were runes removed?

This is a rhetorical question.

There is no logical reason as to why these should be removed at all. Let's get real here.

Patch 7.21 was groundbreaking. For the first time, the rune pages and runes became dirt cheap. New players easily could buy them and old players could start experimenting with 100's more rune pages in the space of 2 weeks. I felt like I could actually experiment without putting my norms team at risk of loss because now I could enter with high-level runes instead of lessers.

It was revolutionary in terms of creativity. One could adjust the base stats, say, of Janna, and make her a superspeed heavy tank support. Or even take Lux to the top lane with scaling armor and AP, and +10 magic pen as base. I enjoyed playing her off-tank on hit with a lich bane/DMP rush. Because we had base penetration runes in that meta, it was easy to counter tanks and heal bruisers. Now its nearly impossible in the early/mid game to do that. This is how you really 'DIVERSIFY THE LANE META', not by nerfing adc's to oblivion, or buffing tanks and bruisers to uncounterability.

But perhaps the main question here is what led to the deletion of runes. Not so much masteries, as they are the new 'runes' that have been marketed towards us.** I will be making a video on this soon.** Please leave a DM if you want to leave a testimonial on what it was like back then compared to now.

From what I understand, old players tons of rune pages would only get refunded 1/6 of the rune page component costs, no matter how much RP was spent on it. This to me is a blatant moneygrab strategy and does not sit well in the long run, or in the hearts of old players. Masteries, remember, also used to be free.

Now to achieve the same amount of BE or IP equivalent, one must spend nearly 3x the time to get 3x less the reward (this is approximate on my experience). I play nearly everyday and it takes me nearly a month to get 6250BE, enough for a new 'Rune' page. "Receiving an unlocked chest everytime you level up" is the same as putting RNG crates in games like robocraft or PUBG, games with record low player sentiments because of dev team actions and attitudes towards that. Your skill in a match is no longer rewarded. Levelling up faster per carry match does not help. Because at the end of the day, if you were to have a huge carry streak you could still potentially get as low as 90BE because of crappy crate RNG. Levels are worth nothing. BE earning NEEDS to be more reliable. Rune pages are thus comparatively MUCH more expensive. Please for the love of God remove the crates system for earning BE.

PLAYER PERFORMANCE IS NO LONGER REWARDED. >Loot boxes for playing the game. Can't go wrong, right?

I believe that one can make money without having to destroy their own game. You don't have to completely destroy the free to play base in order to generate customers. I believe that if you promoted creativity like riot has done years before, it would bring the old playerbase back. Add more items. Add more old style RUNES for base stats. Maybe something to augment the new mastery pages, like comet stat changes.

My recommendation: Bring back old rune pages and keep the new masteries ('runes') - but make the runes free for the first 3 pages. Then after that charge progressively more per rune and rune page. From 1BE -> 500BE per rune from 1 -> 50 as you progress, and 0 - 10000BE per rune page from 1 -> 10. It is better for us to adjust to the meta accordingly by allowing us to heavily mod the base stats of our favourite champions so that they are still viable through every patch and rework. And please, make League a bit more predictable, I don't want to feel like watching 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' level plot twists 20 times per year. It hurts us the player because everything we knew and loved to climb those few ranks suddenly gets removed. It hurts when the old, balanced metas get completely destroyed for the sake of an 'item rework'. Or for supports to be wiped off the surface of the earth by their item removals, shield debuffs to creep assassin power, etcetc. It's just no longer fun to play them.

From the Patch 7.22 video, the rep states: "Our goal is not to dramatically shake up the meta. Our goal is to enable more creative team comps, different strategies and greater diversity. All without compromising the normal experience on live." I agree with this statement the most. But this has never been done. In fact the exact opposite appears to have been done - the game is more unbalanced and less creative than before, with champs like Vlad dominating bot lane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq2i6RDmbNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqem7TI0XR4

Sort of like playing Tetris, don't you think? "What's the point of it all, if you're building a wall, and in front of your eyes it disappears?"

TLDR:

1. Runes used to be more creative and promoted lane diversity
2. Component Runes can easily be cheaper for new players if RIOT weren't as stiff, and scale up in price as the player wanted more and more pages
3. Players were refunded a mere iota of the thousands of IP spent on page components
4. Runes made the game more fun
5. Runes allowed you to play your favourite champs through nearly every meta in ranked
6. Bring back old runes to run alongside the new masteries('runes') because there're only reasons for bringing it back - not against

I believe it's what most of the player base sentiment lies towards. Let's have some open discussion and some reds on the case. I hope the "We'll be on deck to listen to feedback" statement still applies here.