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Fundamental problem with the way League gates it's champions

slippykitten·9/21/2018, 4:00:10 PM·1 votes·1,163 views

It's not news to anyone that league has some of the worst grinds to acquire content in any game available. Each level grants you 810 BE, and it takes about 10-15 games to level up (past 30). Each game lasts about 25 min. Even accounting for the average champ maybe being 3150 BE, that's still about 20 hours of gameplay to unlock a single champ. 3,150/810 = 4 levels gained. 4 X 12.5 (medium between 10-15) X 25min per game = 1250 min, or over 20 hours. (this is excluding possibly unlocking the randomly dropped champs instead of the ones you actually want)

20 hours of gameplay to acquire a middle priced champ is simply ridiculous. I understand Riot wants to make money, and thus motivate you to purchase champs with real money, but come on. There's no excuse for placing champions behind such a huge wall of grind.

Now, to Riot's credit (but also the crux of the problem), they haven't made any champions necessary for success. Meaning, as long as you don't purchase garbage tier champs awaiting reworks, then you have a fairly decent chance to win. But this is exactly the issue.

If 141 champions are all nearly equally viable in every circumstance, you simply cannot have a nuanced game of variety. They've intentionally designed them so that they fall into classes that basically do the same thing. Once you have about 20 champs, the only thing left to see is that some of the particles are different on some champs, and to find your preference on which abilities flow together best for you.

Riot is simply unable to create strategy, nuance, and tactical decision making in their champion design and play, because that would create a necessity to own a much larger pool of champions to be effective in the game. **Thus, with each champions release, the game gets more shallow instead of deeper and richer. **

Here's the unpopular opinion that I doubt riot would ever consider, but that would enable them to create much more compelling balance, nuance, gameplay, and strategy:** remove the gate from champion purchase. Allow champions to be acquired much quicker, or make them all playable.** I understand this would necessitate them developing another profit stream to make this work, but I personally believe this is necessary.

TLDR; With all champs being gated so hard, it's simply impossible to balance them in compelling, nuanced, and strategic ways without crippling players unable to purchase a large pool.

Edit: Clearly I must've done a poor job at explaining. The problem isn't that it takes too long to get champs. The problem is that because champs are gated, they are designed in a binary way that's very unconducive to real strategic gameplay. Not sure how to say it any clearer than that...

4 Comments

DuskDaUmbreon9/21/2018, 4:20:30 PM1 votes

You do have to realize that you don't need most of the champions. There are 141 champions, but only 5 roles. If it's evenly distributed between all of them, that's 4 roles with 28 champions and one role with 29. Accounting for champions who are normally viable in multiple lanes, let's say that's an even 30 per lane. At your rate of 20 hours per champion (that seems really long, but let's say it's right), that comes out to 600 hours of playing to unlock an entire lane. If you play for 4 hours per day, that's 150 days of playing - not even half a year - to unlock your entire primary lane. And that's at a maximum, so not accounting for better BE drops, champion shards from chests, BE from missions, or for getting shards for the champion you want. If we account for all of that that, that pushes it closer to 100-120 days, or roughly 3-4 months.

3-4 months isn't too long to wait to get your entire lane roster, and honestly you only need half of that and a few champions for other roles to do well. Having more champions than that only has minor benefits.

Kazekiba9/21/2018, 4:22:09 PM1 votes

Simplest solution is to leave Champions at the highest price point (7300 BE?) for longer and revert the costs of VGUs to a modern price perspective (updating Infernal Akali to 1350 RP, Nunu to the highest price point) while drastically increasing the rate at which champions decrease in cost. Rather than perpetuating the size of the 6300 BE roster (champions only drop to a lower tier when a new champion comes out, X + 1 - 1 = X) allow champions to drop in price every few months.

Alzon9/21/2018, 4:29:08 PM1 votes

20 hours of gameplay for a middle priced champion makes perfect sense if that’s 20 hours you spent mastering the last champion you bought.

UWWWWWWWWWWWWWU9/22/2018, 3:25:28 AM1 votes

i agree with all points listed on here, however i do find the grind almost ridiculous for not just champions but even things like name changes (13900 BE) or even rune pages (6300 BE) seems WAY to much. to make matters worse from doing lazy research, it appears that you can own 25 rune pages now. that total up to 157500 BE just on rune pages alone. in what way should you buy that when most of us just create as we go. Another point is that the higher levels we rise the harder it takes to level up, this was stated when the level cap was removed. this new system makes league of legends seem much more tedious to unlock a new champion. meanwhile back in season 4 it took about one week of normal playing to earn a 6300 champ. now jumping over 3 levels and i am barely at 4000 BE. (also one last thing, it cant just be me who does not like the abbreviation of Blue Essence? Influence Points or IP had a better ring to it. maybe its just nostalgia talking)