Tier 2 runes of every Tier 3 rune?
With the upcoming changes to the runes where all T2 runes will cost just 1 IP, would it be possible to make a T2 verions of every T3 rune as well?
Why such a change?
The entry barrier for new players is so incredibly huge now. As a new player you need to grind so much IP currently. You need to grind IP for champions that cost incredibly much compared to the IP gain per game, you need to buy expensive runes to be competitive, you need to buy additional rune pages to fit said runes in.
Yes, you did the thing where with each new champion, an older champion gets a price reduction. The problem is that you came up with this solution back when champions came out more frequently thus older champions got cheaper more frequently as well. Now we have 3 year old champions that still cost 6300 IP.
A new player will ALWAYS prefer to buy a champion when presented with the choice of either champion or new runes. Yet runes are absolutely necessary to have a fighting chance against players who play this game for much longer. That is where budget T2 runes come into the picture. Sure you can just buy the cookie cutter AD/Magic pen reds, Armor yellows, MR blues and AD/AS/AP quints but some champions are simply better with a more specific rune setup which needs thousands and thousands of IP investment because some of them are only available as T3. Not to mention if there was a T2 version of every T3 rune the players would get much more room for experimentation and fun and interesting rune page setups. No one is going to pay thousands of IP just to test a wacky new build unless that person has every champion and huge amount of IP he doesnt need.
And yes, you might say "just buy champions with RP and save all the IP for runes and rune pages! Riot is a business and they need money too to keep the game going!". You need to realize that some people simply cannot afford to buy stuff with RP. You also have to realize that the game got so popular ONLY because it allowed you to buy everything with IP without having to spend a dime on it. Except back then champions were still released at sub 6300 price ranges, one gained more IP per game and there was much less stuff to buy. Now the barrier for a new player is simply too huge and this would hel new players have a fair fighting chance and more fun expermineting with different rune setups.
The T3 runes would stay superior to the T2 runes and eventually the player would work towards upgrading them once hed get a nice champion pool or champion which he/she enjoys playing and wants to get the most out of them.
I fear that something like this will never get implemented even though they have the perfect opportunity to do it now and the barrier will only get steeper and steeper with time but I think it is worth considering at the very least.