this system is just fucked all around. to its credit, I went though my skin collection and was actually surprised how many skins I accumulated through the hextech system, but getting things for "free" is not an excuse for how aggravating the process of obtaining said skins is. in an ideal scenario, the paying customer is satisfied because he believes what he bought is worth its price, the non-paying customers are satisfied because they get rewarded regularly, which encourages them to play more often or at least on a regular basis and riot is satisfied because they have an additional source of revenue and, to be honest giving out skins 95% of people wouldn´t have bought anyway in a digital environment is not hurting them as much as some people want to believe while selling hextech exclusive skins are certaintly a big plus for them.
but right now riot has shot themselves in the foot in all these cases:
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obtaining rewards is slow and unsatisfying
- chests are hard to get since they are gated by a** multitude** of factors
- despite that, there is still the possibility for them to contain nothing of value
- and even if u get something good u still don´t have it. instead, u have to jump through even more hoops.
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buying chests is pointless
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the reward pool is deluded with trash
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disenchant values are awful
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it is still possible to get champ--shards
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and despite that chest are still quite **expensive **
--> still working for riot as people buy ridiculous amounts of chests in hextech openings just to get those premium-skins. their system is awfully designed and only works by exploiting a minority of mad people while annoying the majority of the player base. Or is anyone excited to wait 4 weeks to be maybe lucky to get 3 skin shards just to realize they aren´t even worth enough orange essence (OE) to upgrade your fourth skin?
compare that to Hearthstone. Another grindy af game that has its own fair share of problems, but at least in Hearthstone (HS) u get a pack every 1,5 days or so with additional rewards sprinkled in and the possibility to get more value out of your gold, if u are good enough in arena-mode. It may be a bit unfair to compare hearthstones system with leagues since u actually need those cards to compete, while skins are "just cosmetic", but my point is that in contrast to league I am actually looking forward to those rewards, because of how simple the system is. i get gold and i am pretty much limited by how much daily quests i have. but that´s it! i have the gold and i can spend it either on packs directly or go the risky route and invest it in an arena run. and if i happen to get a legendary out of my packs I can put in right away without trouble.
now compare that to league:
- honor capsules (keys)
- lvl-capsule (blue essence)
- super-duuper-lvl-capsule (barely any difference to a regular one)
- hextech-chest (skinshards / all the crap most people don´t want)
all those "rewards"!.....couldn´t....give.....a....fuck.
Because most of them are just hollow excuses for rewards like honor capsules which only work in conjunction with other rewards and in turn feel cheap and redundant. And it doesn´t help that all these capsules have those flashy animations as if the opening of them was the second coming of Jesus just to hand you over your 90BE, which makes the exaggerated representation clash with the uselessness of the reward. and you can´t really win in a system like this because as soon as u get something out of it there is another system in place to make sure you have to jump through more hoops, crushing your expectation and your excitement. u were lucky and got an ultimate skin u wanted? see u in a year when u manage to collect all the resources required to upgrade it, thereby ignoring or disenchanting all the other loot you are getting in that time.
just like a lot of things riot puts out the hextech system is a half-baked mess that could be easily improved on so many lvls without riot losing any money. heck they would probably make even more money if they managed to make it intriguing rather than annoying and give their player base an incentive to engage with the system in the first place.
Edit: fuck this went way to long xD
Stop joking when the people are teeling u the truth about ur game..
