Unpopular opinion on runes

There's a thread every month or so that pops up to the front page about how runes make the game very unfriendly to new players and how runes should be free/completely removed from the game and what not. While I agree that there are significant downsides to the rune system, for me, runes presented a clear player progression model that motivated me to keep playing.

Coming from a RPG background, I held off on league for a long time because I didn't particularly like games where playing didn't present some clear incentive in terms of character progression; I only started playing league with the insistence of a few friends. One of the main factors that motivated me to keep playing was the rune system. Runes were familiar; they were account-tied bonuses that you earned every time you played a match. Runes weren't able to be bought with RP either, so I never had the thought, "Why am I grinding for IP when minimum wage would give me more than 20x the efficiency?". This is in stark contrast to my champion collection at the time, which could be bought with RP. In addition, the 450 IP champions were more than enough to keep the game fresh and interesting.

There are also a few side benefits to the rune system - one of the bigger ones is playstyle customizability. Players who wanted to reinforce a weak laning phase would take resistances, while aggressive players could take a page of full ad or ap (a friend of mine uses these pages, they're actually very good in lane). Players who want better lategame would take Movespeed Quints/Scaling Runes/Lethality, while players who want better early game would take flat runes and health seals. On some champions, like Riven, a cdr page offered an alternative playstyle, one that resembled an arcade fighting game where you spam abilities.

Another small benefit of the rune system is that it serves as a gateway to the ranked systems. By the time you reach level 30, you have enough for 3-4 mid priced champions, or an AD and an AP page as well as 1 mid priced champion or several 450 IP champions. Either way, for most players, reaching level 30 is nowhere near enough experience to begin playing ranked, especially now that riot halved the EXP needed to reach 30. It's probably extremely demoralizing to reach 30, immediately play ranked, and be stuck in mid bronze. A player without runes, however, will probably think "I should finish my runepages before playing ranked". Getting 16 champions and rune pages is good experience for a player before they start playing ranked, especially as it seems that the seeding MMR for first time ranked players seems to be around high silver.

I won't be discussing the downsides of runes, as most veterans of the boards are already well versed in them, but this thread hopefully provided some insight on why runes aren't such a black and white issue.