Riot, do your new players a favor

This was posted earlier today about a topic that has been discussed to death over the years, but I think it still deserves to be revisited from time to time. I'm going to assume that people who reply are either going to watch the video (or already have), so I'll just offer a few ideas that would cost Riot very little while offering new players a whole lot. Keep in mind that this isn't for myself, as I have been playing since just prior to Season 1 ending, but for people I want to get into the game to play with me.

1. Make the 450 ip champions free. Having a base set of champions to work with outside of the free week rotation would give players a foundation to work from, and the champions that are 450 right now are actually diverse and useful enough to be worth learning on.

2. Remove Tier 1 & 2 runes, make Tier 3 available from the start, but keep the level requirements for each rune slot. This will still give a sense of progression, but won't "trap" players into wasting countless ip on worthless runes that they will never touch once they are 30 and have an idea what they are doing. It also makes their level a lot more relevant.

3. Remove the level requirement for Summoner Spells. Honestly, this limitation is just pointless and only serves to frustrate new players who constantly get out-played because everyone has Flash except for them. This extends to other SS's that they are locked out of as well.

4. Allow players to "trial" champions. I think the idea of "renting" champions for 10% of their IP cost per week, and deduct this cost from the champion cost if the player chooses to buy it, would be a great way to improve player satisfaction without actually costing much for Riot would be a great way to go. It would be as simple as just flagging that champion as "free week" for that player and counting it toward the balance of that champion, so it's hard to foresee many complications with implementation either. If having individual champion ip balances actually IS an issue, just make the IP fee lower so it's less wasteful. This is just one idea to enable players to "try before you buy," and it doesn't really matter too much how it works in the end as long as it is convenient and low impact on a player's IP progression.

5. Give players an extra rune page at levels 10, 20, and 30--or just start them with 5 in the first place (one for each role). a. While you can get by, to a point, with only 2 pages, this still leaves these players at a disadvantage in certain roles, especially as Support or Jungle. b. This won't hurt the sale of Rune Page Bundles (which add 7 each) since you have a cap of 20 anyway (5 + 7 + 7 = 19). You can argue that you don't need that many pages, but as players get more serious, they need more pages. I personally wish I could have 40 Rune and Mastery pages because I customize per champion/role quite heavily. c. Combined with #1, this would highlight the importance of runes while enabling players to put a little more of their IP towards them.

6. Normalize the cost of runes. Double the cheapest ones and half the most expensive--make them all cost the same. Marks, Seals, & Glyphs = 410 while Quints = 1025. It doesn't really make sense that some are 205 while others can 2050 IP, and it's another pointless "IP Gate" against new players. Runes and Masteries should be about customizing your champion to make the most of them while playing your best, but some valuable runes are extremely expensive (flat HP yellows and crit damage runes, I'm looking at you). You can argue the relative potency of each rune all day, but that's really a different discussion; what this change would do is encourage players to experiment more and make those experimental builds more accessible since they share opportunity costs evenly across the board.

Current example using most expensive in each category: Hybrid Pen Reds (820 each x 9) Flat HP Yellows (820 each x 9) Flat CDR Blues (820 each x 9) Hybrid Pen Quints (2050 each x 3)

Total cost: 28,290 IP Current page cost using cheapest runes: 7080, enough for 4 pages, but pidgeon-holed into runes that may not be so useful (scaling AD, for example). Normalized costs: 14,145 IP, enough for 2 pages and no limitations about what goes in those pages.

Players should be buying their runes based on what is actually useful to them rather than just what they can afford, and this would help to mitigate the "IP Gating" issue a bit, though it is going to exist either way as long as we have to pay IP for runes.

Ideally, these changes should all be used together, but if even a couple of these can be used in a positive, productive way, it would have to be better than the current system which looks like an enormous pay/grind wall to new players--and that "barrier to entry" really does keep people away.

Anyway, just my 2 ip...