To Sum up the Season 8 changes Pros and Cons

Pros: -no longer have to spend free currency on runes -playing field is more equal with everyone having all masteries aka "runes" available with no actual runes to give players nonskillbased advantages. -champs should be slightly easier to balance now that there is only masteries aka "runes" -catchup exp being reduced (makes outplaying more rewarding and is good for competitiveness)

Overall good changes in my opinion i like the playing field being equal and decided by skill not how many teir 3 runes you have.

Cons: -IP has been converted to BE and the drop rate greatly reduced and only gained per level-up. -Level-up exp required goes up the more you level taking longer each time. This making Exp boosts now highly incentivised to post level 30 players for the first time -Masteries have been named "Runes" in order to lower the page count from the default default 20 to default 2 forcing anyone who has not invested in previous rune pages to now purchase them and encouraging players that have a few to buy more. -people who purchase more rune pages will have a strategical advantage being able to be more situational -Champ prices and Rune page prices remain unchanged even though there is a much lower droprate of free currency forcing players to buy exp boosts or purchase champs with RP after the grind becomes ridiculously long. -Skin shards Orange Essence disenchant value reduced by 50% even though there has been no other alterations to their prices

All the cons seem like Riot doubled down on the "force people to buy more RP" tactic this year (as if they need more billions to sit in the bank)

Also the runepages not being free seems to be the only change that could effect competitiveness for players without large amounts of money to spend or large amounts of time invested in purchasing them previously. Slightly a pay to win more mechanic.