Open letter about the pre-season from a casual

Dear Riot Games.

I write here to voice my opinion of the pre-season after just a few games played, what I believe works and what doesn't. I hope this board-post will reach someone who listens, even if I do not get a response. I might not have as much experience with the current patch as others who have written about the pre season, but I still think my voice has some hold to it as I've played casually since the release of Sona and have experienced the games ups and downs.

My first point of discussion lies with the biggest selling-point of the pre-season, the Rune System. The runes themselves are super interesting, almost every rune having a destinct reason to be picked over the other. There doesn't seem to be one that's better than any other just on an idea basis. Perhaps there's a bit of balancing to be done, but the runes themselves are crafted well. Good on you. I do however have one major complaint, that lying in the extra rune pages. As I have been playing through the years, I focused more on unlocking all champions than buying rune pages. This meant that when everything was converted, I sit here with only 2 customizable rune pages, meaning I am forced to craft my rune page in the moment I make my pick or choose one of the premade ones. I've played less than 10 games this pre-season, but have had to pick the premade ones more than once because I simply didn't have time to craft an entirely new page between picking the champion and the game starting. Buying a new page will cost the same as a new champion and knowing that I have to go through one level per seemingly 800 BE, I will have to get to level 54 before I have enough freedom to have one page from every tree that I can edit. This doesn't seem alright to me as someone who just plays the game casually. Worst case, I have to go through 360 more games before I can play the game as intended, which is more than I played the entire last season.

My second point of discussion is the Blue Essence system. When it was announcced, I loved the idea as I would finally be able to get my Mastery 6 unlocked for my main champions. I could even reroll the excess champion shards into random champion permanents so I could finally fill my champion pool after so long. Well, what I got wasn't what I'd hoped for. Firstly, my old runes were made into 13.000 BE, which I feel isn't close to what I've paid for them in IP. I'd hoped for a 1-to-1 conversion, but seemingly that wasn't the case. Then I go through the store and spent all my newly gotten BE on Hextech Mystery Champions because it seemed like a good offer. Little did I know the only way of getting BE was levelling up. I've reached 646 BE and that number isn't moving and it's taunting me. Whenever I get to the front-page after a successful game, that number stands in the corner, unchanged, telling me I've gotten nowhere closer to my goal of unlocking every champion or getting enough flexibility with my runes. Then, today I go into the crafting system after getting my first levelup cache and lo and behold, you've removed the random champion permanents, meaning I also lost that possibility of unlocking all the champions. Well, I accept it's a system you apparently do not want, but then we look to the actual values you get from the shards. Upon levelling the first time, I recieved one shard for Jayce, a champion I already own, but don't play. I will have no use for his shard, so disenchanting it makes sense. I'll recieve 960 from this. I'll just have to do this 7 times and I'll be able to buy a champion. 7 levels... And that's if I get a 4800 BE champion each time. If I get a shard for Soraka or Annie every time, well, I suppose I'll just have to get 70 levels. For one champion. This is the way the system has been presented. It might not be how it actually works, but this is how it's percieved by me, someone who plays between 0 and 3 games per day. Presenting it like this to new players will just tell them to spend countless hours for an investment they might not know if they'll enjoy.

My third and last point of discussion will be a lot shorter, as I will talk about the old loot chest system. I would feel robbed if I opened a chest and found it gave me a champion shard and nothing else. Sure, it hasn't changed from before, but because there is another way to get these shards now, their value is so much less. People work hard for those chests and for it to just give the same as playing 10 games would be horrendous, especially with the champion shard rerolling being gone.

I hope this reaches someone willing to read it who has an influence within the company, even if it is just for an opinion's poll. Below is a poll just to see if people agree with me or not. Feel free to tick whichever you feel best fits your opinions.