Boards›Gameplay

Rune Refunds

KuroCaliber··15 votes·8,553 views

I'm in that middle camp between being a veteran and being new, since I only joined in s5. And I don't see why people are so upset about not getting a 1:1 refund on runes. I'm just going to breakdown a couple of my reasons for thinking this way, and I'd like to discuss with all of you fall in the other camp.

  1. Whenever we buy anything on League, it's not a purchase, it's a rental. We are paying to access their content for as long as it exists. If the game ended tomorrow, would we try and get refunds for all the RP we paid?

  2. Buying Runes all the way back in time gave us years of usage. Whether it was S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, or S6, we've used our runes for several years. When we looked at the store and saw runes, we saw advantages that we could use now, that put us on even ground with the others that used them.

  3. It's in game currency: Outside of runes, the only other thing we buy using IP is champions, the occasional summoner Icon, and Name Changes. If we got a full refund, what would we spend it on? For a greater majority of players, they already own all the champions. I guess they'd spend their time changing their name every so often?

  4. Buying Runes over champions gave us a better success rate with the champions we already owned. When we buy runes, we consciously make the decision that the current runes are more valuable than champions as of right now. If we had bought champions instead, we would certainly perform poorer against those with the same champion, but a specialized rune page. I myself am a bit odd, in that I only have 2 rune pages, AD and AP. I never spent IP on runes, because I never saw the worth in buying more. To those who considered it valuable, got full use of that value while they existed.

  5. We aren't losing our runes, we're getting them upgraded, for free: Riot could have had full right to give a price to each new rune, and then we would have full right to be outraged. However, we're having the void filled by current runes being replaced with new runes-absolutely free. Because riot made the upgrade free, they were not obligated to refund anything. Especially given it was in-game currency. What we got wasn't a refund, it was a consolation prize.

  6. The IP that rune buyers spent got them early access to runes it took the rest of us seven years to get. I may be wrong, but I'm fairly sure that anyone can buy their remaining champions in less than seven years.

That's all I have to say. Please give me your opinions on what I've said so far, even if you disagree.

20 Comments

Kokua4 votes

I'm expecting to have ~450k Blue Essence at the current given rates, but that's 150-200k less than what I would have if I were to get a full refund of my runes. Runes are not currency, it is a place where you can spend your currency. You do so for the purpose of gaining a different experience when paired with different champions. Having no runes puts you at a major disadvantage compared to say someone who can start a game with 20% crit chance without any items, someone with an additional 40% attack speed at the start of a game, someone who can get an extra free 85 ap by the time they hit level 18 (which further scales with their deathcap), someone who has full lethality, a support with extra gold income and mana regen from runes, a tank with full regen or an extra 10% hp. You may not realize it because you only own 2 simple pages for AD and AP, but people like me with full rune pages and 35x9 T3 runes and 15x9 T3 quints will feel the pain 10x more than you. Then there are people who own even more runes than I do who will feel the pain even worse than me. Had I never had a purpose to spend anything on runes, I would have been buying champions with IP rather than RP, thus would have spent quite a bit less money on the game. We ARE losing the runes, and those who have owned many of them for a long time are the ones most negatively affected by it. All runes being offered for free is a benefit to new players to bring more balance into games, so that a level 30 with runes couldn't pub stomp sub 30's in every game. If they were offering the new runes at a cost, they most likely would have also paired that with a FULL refund of runes purchased in the past. What upsets me isn't the amount that I'm being refunded, but the fact that people who purchased runes more recently than I and many others have are receiving a FULL refund, whereas us long term players are being given a small fraction of the amount for the SAME runes.

KuroCaliber2 votes

I understand your concerns, but the full refund is only going to those who bought runes after the announcement that they are changing runes. They also probably couldn't buy as many times as veterans did. Furthermore, after today, all runes are 10 ip, so the amount fully refunded is only between the first announcement and today.

Kokua5 votes

That's the part that's upsetting. People were warned that runes were going to be changed, and will receive a full refund after they were warned. HOWEVER, everyone else who purchased runes before then had absolutely no warning that they were going to be changed, and will be penalized by receiving a lesser refund for what they have spent, whereas anyone who spent on runes afterwards wouldn't be penalized at all, but rather be fully compensated.

ChargeItDownMid3 votes

[deleted]

SanKakU1 votes

Fine, make the prices on the Blue Essence shop higher. Rich people will buy what they want to buy. I have 601 IP and am missing 49 champions that cost more than 3150 IP, and Akali. My IP number is not floating!

Muzét3 votes

It's not the fact that they aren't giving us a 1:1 refund. It's the unfairness towards veteran players. Those who bought runes this year get a complete refund. Meanwhile veteran gets close to nothing compared to the 100% refund. I mean before every single limited items STAYED limited. WHERE IS MY VICTORIOUS JANNA?! I can't have her simply because I didn't play LoL before. I'm okay with it. I get it. I'm not even close to be unhappy about it. Old players did play ok. But now Riot just went to "reward" new players better than old by giving them a full refund when veteran don't even get a 50% or above refund. Getting 100Ip for a 820 IP rune is not fair AT ALL. No matter how long "veteran" played. I wouldn't mind getting a 50% refund. But 820IP becomes 100.... Feels like what I've spent it on wasn't that much worth it.

KuroCaliber2 votes

Only those bought between Late December and August 31 will be fully refunded. Do you seriously believe that any new player who had to grind during that time will be able to close to how many runes veterans have? Those were the only ones given at full price. Anything bought past today will be 10IP and won't be refunded. I'm not sure about you, but I think it'll be very hard for any new player within the time period to buy runes equal to whatever old players are getting.

Muzét1 votes

Oh trust me if you don't have much to do on a short time frame you can do great things. I started a few weeks after Braum's release. With a one week IP boost and at the some weeks after Azir's released I had collected every single champ minus 2 (Gnar and Azir) And that's it... So no casual (i'm not saying it in a mean way) players wouldn't have the time to do the same. Yet, hardcore or even "softcore" players could have enough to buy those runes especially if: they weren't like me → "Gotta buy them all" and the fact that runes are cheaper now than back in S4.

DuskDaUmbreon1 votes

If you're a veteran player, you're almost certain to be swimming in IP.

Muzét1 votes

I'm not swimming in IP Just had close to 15k IP that I just used into shard trying my luck to get out as much as BE as I can.

SwiftKitten883 votes

my god we were told nea the end of SEASON 4 the rune rework was coming... i never expected aNY sort of refund.. riot has already gone above and beyond..

CudyDarkyz2 votes

But we are losing are runes. The new "runes" are just a Masteries update. There just called runes now.

personally i see it as them finding a way to remove runes from the game without getting people mad over it "we are removing Masteries and there free so no complaining" but there removing runes and calling the new masteries system runes so you can't complain about them removing something you "payed" for.

Like come on there 100% masteries. Can change them in lobby, you pick effects, they have keystones, you can pick a full path then half another one, masteries from the old system are in it, and they have paths to pick down.

KuroCaliber1 votes

There are also new runes like CDR at lvl 10, similar to CDR/per lvl runes, and several other effects that focus towards simple stat increases just as runes did. Essentially they're combining the two to make a more predictable power budget. This also makes for better balancing as with both masteries and runes varying between players it was difficult to hypothesize how the massive variance would effect a certain buff or nerf.

CudyDarkyz1 votes

I just see it as them removing runes and replacing them with a new mastery system. It does however have hints of the old rune system but i'd still ask "why are you calling them runes?"

The whole thing doesn't really matter much to me. The whole way the refund and stuff around it. Looks pretty bad to me, Unless you started playing in season 7.

Also still very hyped for the new "runes" it will let me make more fun things then just. "champ with 45% cdr at lvl 6"

hhaavviikk1 votes

I don't see the problem in refunding more than a measly like 15-20% of the IP cost, especially when you look at the WW skin costing 150k IP.

I've been playing since 2009, played normals/ranked from 2009 till 2010 and at around 2011 I started playing ARAM only which means I never got allot of IP but the IP I did get was all spent on runes, the result of that is that I still don't own 25 champions and they're all 4800 IP or 6300 IP, I could buy all of them if I get proper IP refund for the runes I bought.

''you used them, you rented them'' doesn't change the fact that it's bs to give such a meager refund rate

''runes aren't being removed'' they are, your runes get removed and new runes get put in place, obviously they're going to be free, can you just imagine the backlash if they replaced the runes with new runes that cost IP?

DuskDaUmbreon1 votes

Because 15-20% of runes will likely get you less than you're getting now. 15% barely means you just over break even on the most expensive runes (which few people bought or used), and you lose IP on every other rune. I'm dead serious. You'd be trading in getting in 30-60% less on every common rune for the sole purpose of getting 5-20 more IP on the most expensive runes.

Leonerdo1 votes

Disclaimer first: I don't give a shit about what refund I receive personally; I am a long-time player, so I don't need the IP and I already got use out of the runes which I bought years and years ago.

I think the real issue is mainly for people who have, for example, been playing for just 1.5-2 years, and finally decided to buy a bunch of runes right before the Season started (right before the full-refund will kick in). Maybe some of those runes were also niche runes, or just straight up bad runes, so they didn't much/any use out of them. And now they are being told that those relatively-recently purchased runes are going to be mulched for 1/4 of their original value.

If somehow they could have known 1 year ago that this would happen, they probably would have been much more frugal with their IP, saving it for champions or chroma sales or whatever. They wouldn't have made the same purchases, because it wouldn't have been worth it, aside from the most standard/basic runes. But they did make those purchases, in the hopes that they would get use out of the runes for a long time, or that the less-valuable runes would get buffed, or whatever -- they thought it would be worth it at the time. But now those runes are being turned into 100 IP, without exception, no matter how much use people got out of them, or how much was paid for them. And for many runes that is straight-up loss; a negative return on investment.

Like yeah we're getting new, free runes in their place, but everyone gets those, regardless of how much IP they wasted in the past. And yeah, most people have gotten ample use out of their runes, especially the better/more popular one. But for anyone who spent 6000 IP on spellvamp quints, that were only used a dozen times, it's a pretty hefty loss to only get 900 IP back for them.

I mean, it's essentially just buyer's remorse, but it's exacerbated by the fact that the runes can't be hoarded or held onto until they somehow become worth it. They are just going away, and a pittance is being paid for each, regardless of which runes already paid for themselves, and which ones were trash purchases to begin with. Any bad deals that people made in the store before, are being made final now.

Of course, if you happened to buy all your runes right after the arbitrary cut-off date for full refunds, then you're fine; you can make all the bad purchases you want this season, and not have to pay for any of it.

I'm not saying they should have made the refund policy 10x more complicated, just to adequately compensate everybody for their varying investments. But if they had, then at least the outrage wouldn't be as straightforward as "If you bought shitty/niche runes 1-2 years ago, be outraged, because you are the minority that got ripped off (comparatively)"

The Taco Kat1 votes

The issue is that much older players paid 820x27 on runes, plus an additional 1025-2050x3 on quints. When the permanent rune discount came along, it was halved on most runes, down to 410x27 and 1025-2050x3 on quints (I believe). The 100 BE:410 IP isn't nearly as bad for the people who had bought runes by then, but 100 BE:820 IP is a massive loss. The appropriate system would've been the original idea of 40% of what was paid; everyone gets the same ratio, so there is the same loss of investment.

I spent 22,410 IP on 27 runes. In return, I'm getting 2,700 BE.

Another guy a year later bought the exact same runes for 11,205 IP. In return, he gets 2,700 BE.

Do you see the issue?

I'm basically an almost-veteran player; I have over 4,000 hours and have been playing since early season 3, yet I certainly don't have all of the content, and I definitely don't have a massive IP bank sitting around. However, I do have a fair amount of runes, 90% of which were bought prior to the rune discounts.

I have roughly 46 Marks, 27 Seals, 54 Glyphs, and 15 Quints. In total, assuming I spent an average of 620 on each basic rune and 1525 on each Quint, I would have spent 78,740 on the basics and 22,875 on the Quints. That's an estimated 101,615 IP I've spent. Now, what do I get in return for that? For my basics, I get a staggering total of 12,700 BE. For my Quints, I get 4,500 BE. 17,200 BE is my grand total on runes, resulting in a loss of 83.1% of my IP. Had I known the runes would be removed and I would lose so much of that IP, I would've never spent so much of my IP on runes.

Had it been returned at a 40% rate, I would've been given 40,646 BE back. It was a big loss, but it would be much more acceptable for me and many others standing at the same spot here.

Imagine until you amassed 13k IP, you got 16.9% of the typical IP from games. Assuming the average win nets you 120 IP and the average loss nets you 75, you would be reduced to 21 IP on wins and 13) IP on losses. This would take you a minimum of about 619 games, if you managed to win every one, or up to 1,000 games if you managed to lose every one.

I basically lost 83.1% of my IP intake for 800 games. That is about one season's worth of games for me when I first started.

Trust me, I'm not ungrateful that Riot is offering a "refund" to us. I'm just deeply upset about the amount of work we put into something that others get a better return rate for just because they have just started playing the game recently.

Give everyone the same return rate. A lot of us are getting ripped off.

PS: When we bought runes, we thought we would be keeping them until the game stopped being supported, which is why we put so much of our IP towards them.

Dr Wolf1 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Taco Kat,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=ZqjIE3nA,comment-id=0007,timestamp=2017-09-03T02:31:07.383+0000)

The issue is that much older players paid 820x27 on runes, plus an additional 1025-2050x3 on quints. When the permanent rune discount came along, it was halved on most runes, down to 410x27 and 1025-2050x3 on quints (I believe). The 100 BE:410 IP isn't nearly as bad for the people who had bought runes by then, but 100 BE:820 IP is a massive loss. The appropriate system would've been the original idea of 40% of what was paid; everyone gets the same ratio, so there is the same loss of investment.

I spent 22,410 IP on 27 runes. In return, I'm getting 2,700 BE.

Another guy a year later bought the exact same runes for 11,205 IP. In return, he gets 2,700 BE.

Do you see the issue?

I'm basically an almost-veteran player; I have over 4,000 hours and have been playing since early season 3, yet I certainly don't have all of the content, and I definitely don't have a massive IP bank sitting around. However, I do have a fair amount of runes, 90% of which were bought prior to the rune discounts.

I have roughly 46 Marks, 27 Seals, 54 Glyphs, and 15 Quints. In total, assuming I spent an average of 620 on each basic rune and 1525 on each Quint, I would have spent 78,740 on the basics and 22,875 on the Quints. That's an estimated 101,615 IP I've spent. Now, what do I get in return for that? For my basics, I get a staggering total of 12,700 BE. For my Quints, I get 4,500 BE. 17,200 BE is my grand total on runes, resulting in a loss of 83.1% of my IP. Had I known the runes would be removed and I would lose so much of that IP, I would've never spent so much of my IP on runes.

Had it been returned at a 40% rate, I would've been given 40,646 BE back. It was a big loss, but it would be much more acceptable for me and many others standing at the same spot here.

Imagine until you amassed 13k IP, you got 16.9% of the typical IP from games. Assuming the average win nets you 120 IP and the average loss nets you 75, you would be reduced to 21 IP on wins and 13) IP on losses. This would take you a minimum of about 619 games, if you managed to win every one, or up to 1,000 games if you managed to lose every one.

I basically lost 83.1% of my IP intake for 800 games. That is about one season's worth of games for me when I first started.

Trust me, I'm not ungrateful that Riot is offering a "refund" to us. I'm just deeply upset about the amount of work we put into something that others get a better return rate for just because they have just started playing the game recently.

Give everyone the same return rate. A lot of us are getting ripped off.

PS: When we bought runes, we thought we would be keeping them until the game stopped being supported, which is why we put so much of our IP towards them.

Vallanzaska1 votes

Early this year i had like 200k+ ip, i play since the start of the game here in europe. My little mad brain thought that buying all runes was a good idea cos i had nothing to do with my ip, i used like 120k+ ip on runes that were useless for me. Now all my ip are gone and i will lose them cos i had no idea they will change everything and i got no advantage with all those runes bought.

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