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The Blue Essence Catastrophe - and How to Fix It

ALittleBlueGuy69·11/25/2017, 5:26:26 PM·5 votes·997 views

I think many players have encountered some issues with getting enough blue essence to do, well, anything really. Now I started on this account at level 30 at the time of the change, so I cannot comment on how the system works if you started at level 1, but I think I see what's wrong with the system from the perspective of a previously max level account. So I'll detail the problems and the solutions that I believe would improve the player experience using blue essence.

  1. Blue essence is not gained as a reward for playing the game like IP was. This should be amended immediately. Not gaining in-game currency for simply playing the game like IP was looks to me like a cash grab and doesn't offer anything to compensate. Speaking of a method to compensate:

  2. Blue essence should be award from the mission system. If the blue essence is not available as a reward for playing the game, then the mission system should pick up that slack and offer blue essence for completing various tasks like killing champions, earning X amount of gold, getting Y number of assists, etc. I think riot has done a great job using the mission system for the PROJECT event, so implementing it for blue essence should be straight forward.

  3. Champions purchased with a champion shard is only a 40% discount on the champion, and it's random. I see what Riot was thinking here, but a 40% discount doesn't do you much good when get no blue essence in the first place. 6300 * 0.6 = 3780 and getting about 80 blue essence every other capsule (based on my personal experience, not a large data set) means I can get one 6300 champion maybe once a week if I play a lot of league. A lot. And that's assuming I get the champion I want from the capsule, which is random. The disenchant value is insanely low as well, and since there aren't any other ways of getting blue essence, it's painfully slow. Again, that's not fun, it doesn't feel fair, and it looks like an RP cash grab.

I think we can fix this if we let Riot know that it's a problem impacting our enjoyment of the game. I love the new rune system, the content they are releasing is phenomenal, but the change from IP to blue essence feels cheap, greedy, and has made more than just I question playing the game more than once in a blue moon. Please let me know what you all think and if you feel there are other solutions and let's get it fixed!

6 Comments

Cynosis11/25/2017, 5:42:33 PM2 votes

They knew what they were doing. Two possibilities, they're losing playerbase and want to make up for it in the back-end financially OR they legitimately didn't really think it through and the good idea fairy poked its head out and didn't get completely freaking smashed when it should have. noted I own every champion in the game, Have pretty much always owned them all through playing the game itself, there was a time when i had 40k IP.

Change, Change is good, change is welcome, change to your core gameplay and meta is even refreshing, but lets get serious for a moment, I pretty much leave for months on end then pop on to see the state of the game and how its doing randomly. I love the idea of getting rid of the runes system, the whole thing was convoluted and overly complex.

Whatever this new system they are using is a ****ing atrocity that needs to be utterly destroyed, Thornmail on a illaoi earlier this morning, lucian hits me and regens 300 hp some how, was told its from one of the runes. No. No.No. At no point should an ADC be wrizwrecking a bruiser like illaio WITH a raw counter item on her. Things just aren't making sense to this old dog anymore between the runes, the changes to some of the items... Kelpto ezreal... I don't know why any solo laner WOULDNT take kleptomancy, you are almost gaurentee'd to be ahead in the lane even if you die once.

What the heck is going on?

Śhunpo11/25/2017, 6:11:44 PM2 votes

Do remember that to get a level 6-7 mastery for a champion you now need like 3250 BE to upgrade to that level......that's more than the price of a tier 3 champion, and the rate at which you earn Blue Essence is painfully slow.

Hyrum Graff11/25/2017, 7:53:16 PM2 votes

I just wrote this as a comment in another thread, so I'm gonna copy-pasta here:

[{quoted}](name=Hyrum Graff,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=bQhZILk6,comment-id=00080001,timestamp=2017-11-25T19:24:58.980+0000)

I think the solution is to make level-ups less frequent, with bigger rewards. Riot has already set the pace at which you level up, so they can't easily change that now. However, here's what they can do:

  • First win of the day no longer grants bonus BE
  • Leveling up no longer grants a capsule.
  • Gain BE after every game, like people have been asking for.
    • This amount will be around 70% of what you lost in the two points above.
  • Milestone levels give much larger rewards -- several champion shards that are actually good.
    • This is where the last 30% from the first two points goes, so you're getting BE at the same overall rate as before.

In this system:

  • If you're close to buying a champ, you can play just a game or two and get the BE needed for it.
  • Most of the time, leveling up will feel more like an achievement, not a chore, since the only reward is being able to show off a higher number.
  • Hitting those milestone levels will actually feel good.
    • And, there's flexibility here. Right now, milestone levels are every 10, but if that's too long to go without getting a rewards, they could make it every 5, or something like that.

I'll add: Yeah, the discount feels kind of bad, since I can get pretty much the same discount by buying a random champion with BE. So, instead of being a discount, it's just "You can get this champion which we randomly chose for you, or you can try your luck with a different random champion."

This wouldn't be terrible, except that most of the time I'm just getting nunu/sivir shards, which are useless anyway (I already own both; I never play nunu; and sivir is already level 7). It might be a different story if I could use champion shards for something else, like a small RP discount off one of that champion's skins.

Subdue11/25/2017, 8:37:19 PM2 votes

Didn't they already show the math which shows you earn BE as fast or faster than you previously earn IP? Who cares if it's in bigger chunks?

WangMaster90002/14/2018, 12:11:14 AM1 votes

Don't even try, the greed has swollen up their ears and the smell of money has melted their brain. Welcome to LoJ, League of Jews. Better start using RP to buy champions like they want you to with this system :)