The real reason veteran players are unhappy with the rune…

Critkeeper · 2017-09-05T09:40:25.303Z

Honestly the reason veterans aren't happy with the proposed update to the runes system isn't because the replacement isn't exciting or good. It is very exciting and a much needed step up from the current archaic system. The reason we are unhappy is because we feel as though we effectively HAD to buy runes to even play the game up until now, so the notion that "we are replacing the current rune system with a new one, but we aren't refunding the ip that you basically had to spend as a matter of course" is offensive to us. We are especially offended by explanations that don't seem to account for our personal perspective on this matter because it feels like an insult to our intelligence. There wouldn't be an issue if IP were just something we got "for free" for just playing the game-- but from our perspective it wasn't. Runes were priced in such a way that many of us felt that we couldn't afford to buy champions early on with IP, because runes could ONLY be bought with IP and were very costly. So with IP being a limited resource and not enough of it to buy both champions and runes, we chose to purchase both by spending money on champions. The choice given to us was basically "spend ip on runes or you can't really play" and "if you don't have ip, spend money on champions or the lack of opportunity in champion select will occasionally cause you to lose." This was especially exacerbated by RIOT's early history of balancing league in a whack a mole fashion in season 2 and earlier that generally made it so that newly released champions were almost always overpowered because they weren't "wacked" by Nerf Master Suck Town yet. Eventually we expanded our roster to a minimally viable size and grinded a few basic generalist rune pages-- then we were able to effectively play the game and grind up enough IP to buy most or all of the runes and champions. But that initial grind still sticks in our minds, and we totally agree that this pointless grind isn't something that makes league a better game. If we had the choice, we would have spent IP on champions rather than runes-- we didn't have a choice though, not really. We understand your position and we even agree with the direction in which you are taking the game, we just feel like you don't see it from our perspective. We feel that you gave us a false choice and then told us our choice was wrong. Its kind of like having a bad Dungeon Master tell you there is a room with two chests and one of them is booby trapped, but it turns out that while one of them technically was booby trapped, in fact both of them were. We couldn't NOT spend IP on runes to play, and yet it appears that spending IP on runes was a mistake. Some of us only bought a small subset of the runes, only the ones we really needed. Most of the long time veterans bought every single rune because we couldn't imagine that it would be a mistake to do so, and we had nothing else to spend our IP on after collecting every champion. Now all of a sudden our vast reserves of IP can be spent on things besides the occasional new champion-- its now called BE and it can be used to forge skins and other content, so we are happy. And yet, the runes we actually bought-- specifically the IP that backs them, have burnt up and are now worthless, so we feel unhappy. The most aged veterans don't really care because they are sitting on hundreds of thousands of IP and the 150 thousand they spent on runes is marginal. There are other veterans who have collected every champion and every rune, but haven't yet amassed a horde of IP, and they legitimately do feel cheated because you all of a sudden made an enormous chunk of their possessions worthless. Replacing the rune system with a better one is good for everyone, but replacing the work that people put into amassing their current collection of runes with value equal to 12% of that work is not good for those people. From your perspective you are just giving everyone all the runes and are additionally giving away some free BE to people so you feel magnanimous and can't imagine why people would be frustrated. From our perspective you are telling us that the time and effort we spent to gain a competitive edge by increasing our opportunity in champ select by amassing a collection of runes and rune pages was worthless because you've come to your senses and decided that the playing field should be even-- but you made this decision only after we made the choice to spend that IP From the veteran's perspective you punished us until we bought the runes by giving everyone who did buy them an opportunity advantage and then you punished us for buying them by deleting the IP we were forced to spend on them instead of champions-- almost certainly because you don't want that IP to be spent on champions or skins when real money could be spent instead. We know you are trying to stay in business and we weren't asking for a mountain of free stuff, but you didn't even offer us the ability to recoup our oppo…

RavenhaleSep 5, 201727 votes

Is there any practical reason why a 2050 quint has the same return value as a 515 quint? Feels a bit odd that there would be a variable return rate depending on which runes you own.

RiotRiot CactopusSep 5, 201724 votes

We decided to set the return rate for the overall system rather than individual runes because that way it's easier for you to count out how much you'll be getting back. Just count all your regular T3 runes X 100BE and all your T3 quints X 300. We could've gone through and set lower rates for 200IP runes and higher rates for the most expensive ones but it all would have been just a sort of complicated way of getting at the same result.

flibitydooSep 5, 201759 votes

so the whole reason why you're shafting players who spent IP on more pricey runes like gp/10 or lifesteal or flat health runes is just to save some players 10 seconds to calculate how much BE they're getting back?

...that sounds like a horrible reason.

and I'm doubtful players are getting "the same result" as if they were getting compensated based on actual IP spent on runes. No sane player is going to be buying all the secondary runes (especially ones like AD per level glyphs which cost 205 IP) unless they are either a collector or a person buying them for jokey-memey reasons, which I'd assume is part of your calculations for "getting the same result".

RiotRiot CactopusSep 5, 201717 votes

My explanation above (which is getting hella downvotes) is just answering Ravenhale's question about why we just picked a flat rate rather than a different rate for every rune. I wasn't talking about why we didn't choose a higher rate (although I'm happy to have that conversation).

Your response seems more concerned about the amount that we're actually giving back, if I'm reading it right?

NefasSep 5, 201725 votes

You are assuming that players bought the expensive and cheap runes completely randomly, which seems like a pretty dumb assumption that feels designed to deflate compensation, as opposed to giving compensation specifically for each rune purchase, which actually feels like Riot is at least trying to compensate on an accurate, individual basis (whether or not that level is fair is a separate question).

SukishooSep 5, 20174 votes

Well, why didn't you have a higher rate? Having 100 back for Marks, Seals, Glpyhs and 300 back for Quints is still pretty low.

Warlord DienekesSep 6, 201711 votes

You're probably getting downvotes because, well, it's condescending. "We made everything standardized because we think you're too dumb to do basic math."

HutchSep 6, 20175 votes

You are getting downvoted because of the choice of a flat 100/300, not because we hate the refund amount (which we do hate!) But we ALSO hate that we are being penalized for buying the best runes (most expensive) and skipping the worst runes (least expensive).

The player community for LoL has a much higher average intelligence than most games, and your current flat return is both unfair and condescending.

PaladinNOSep 5, 201741 votes

We decided to set the return rate for the overall system rather than individual runes because that way it's easier for you to count out how much

"Easier for us to count"... Right, I trust you're not being serious here.

We can do math, you know. A set percentage would've been just fine. 153799 IP spent on runes and runepages over 3 years turned into 43700 BE overnight rather stings.

The previous 40% (61520 BE) hurt too, but not so much. 60% (92280 BE) would've been fine.

...but the current ~28% is unacceptable.

XonraSep 5, 20171 votes

Calculators are super hard to use in 2017 though.

RiotRiot CactopusSep 5, 201717 votes

Wait you guys have calculators? I've been doing everything on my fingers.

RiotRiot CactopusSep 5, 201724 votes

So you basically want to know why it wasn't a higher percentage, right? I do think that's a fair question and we owe you an explanation, so let me take a shot at it (I'm stealing parts of this from other stuff I've been writing today on the boards):

To understand this you have to understand our business model. We use the money we get from sellings things to make the game better. Giving away IP means we make less money, because it cuts into future sales of champs for RP (and that's a big part of the business model for our game). It's how we get money to reinvest in the game with new features that make the game better for everyone.

So what we're doing with the rune rewards is giving up a portion of our revenue. Why, then, are we giving back some blue essence for each tier three rune you ever bought? Why not give nothing in exchange for runes, if it hurts revenue? The answer is that we understand that it feels bad to have something you paid for suddenly become free for other people. Given the broader context of how positive the upcoming runes changes are for the game, we think that giving a little something back is the right thing to do for players and for the long-term health of the game.

The goal with the rewards we've announced is to recognize the time you’ve spent getting Runes and reward you fairly for it, without going overboard and hurting ourselves financially. That's the most straight and honest answer I can give you.

MrNeverDye Sep 5, 20174 votes

i appreciate this and i do respect you trying to sort this out with us. just know this is helping even if little changes after now. i just want to take time and point out i really really like that riot comes out and talks to us directly

RiotRiot CactopusSep 5, 201711 votes

No problem bud. I'm here to answer all y'all's questions, even when people are pissed off about stuff lol. I'll do my best to explain our perspective and listen so I can learn what else we might be able to do to make people feel better about things (hopefully without just throwing out random stuff like mountains of BE or skins or whatever)

EnkiduUrukSep 5, 20175 votes

[{quoted}](name=Riot Cactopus,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=o1hsbxt5,comment-id=001b0000000000010001,timestamp=2017-09-05T21:54:33.565+0000)

So you basically want to know why it wasn't a higher percentage, right? I do think that's a fair question and we owe you an explanation, so let me take a shot at it (I'm stealing parts of this from other stuff I've been writing today on the boards):

To understand this you have to understand our business model. We use the money we get from sellings things to make the game better. Giving away IP means we make less money, because it cuts into future sales of champs for RP (and that's a big part of the business model for our game). It's how we get money to reinvest in the game with new features that make the game better for everyone.

So what we're doing with the rune rewards is giving up a portion of our revenue. Why, then, are we giving back some blue essence for each tier three rune you ever bought? Why not give nothing in exchange for runes, if it hurts revenue? The answer is that we understand that it feels bad to have something you paid for suddenly become free for other people. Given the broader context of how positive the upcoming runes changes are for the game, we think that giving a little something back is the right thing to do for players and for the long-term health of the game.

The goal with the rewards we've announced is to recognize the time you’ve spent getting Runes and reward you fairly for it, without going overboard and hurting ourselves financially. That's the most straight and honest answer I can give you.

Again I see this reasoning and again I feel the need to point out something here. You claim you will have to give up revenue if a larger refund would go forward, so instead the idea is that we should give up something that we invested in so you can continue making the same revenue. How messed up is that? You profited from the existence of the old Rune system so effectively your future "profits" were earned in the past.

All you are doing is hurting your consumers. Asking us to understand your business model is a slap in the face. Hey, some of us do understand it, and some of us are really unhappy about how you decided to prioritize your short term profits over your long time playerbase.

You claim you will have less champion sales if we are refunded a fair amount of IP, but how much did you make in the past from the existance of the rune system where we had to spend IP on that instead?

You get no pity from me on this, any business that puts profits over it's customers will find itself with less of both.

haywire androidSep 5, 20175 votes

[{quoted}](name=Riot Cactopus,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=o1hsbxt5,comment-id=001b0000000000010001,timestamp=2017-09-05T21:54:33.565+0000)

To understand this you have to understand our business model. We use the money we get from sellings things to make the game better. Giving away IP means we make less money, because it cuts into future sales of champs for RP (and that's a big part of the business model for our game). It's how we get money to reinvest in the game with new features that make the game better for everyone.

I believe the feeling that many harbours is that their rune investments has already resulted in RP sales and that it feels really bad to have to buy further champions with RP if they want to catch up to where they would have been if they've invested their time comitment into champions instead of runes.

Theoretically it could have been champions that where anounced to be free and runes stayed, as a consumer there was no way to know.

Purely as an investment cost for the players that bought runes the anouncement might as well have been that they have to re-buy every champion starting off with a ~20% refund.

[{quoted}](name=Riot Cactopus,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=o1hsbxt5,comment-id=001b0000000000010001,timestamp=2017-09-05T21:54:33.565+0000)

So what we're doing with the rune rewards is giving up a portion of our revenue. Why, then, are we giving back some blue essence for each tier three rune you ever bought? Why not give nothing in exchange for runes, if it hurts revenue? The answer is that we understand that it feels bad to have something you paid for suddenly become free for other people. Given the broader context of how positive the upcoming runes changes are for the game, we think that giving a little something back is the right thing to do for players and for the long-term health of the game.

And I believe that it may be worth listening to those who feel that these parameters aren't tuned right. It is either a full refund for the new players or as it seems a refund tuned for players who already have more IP than they know what to do with and get a little extra for a special shop.

But there are a large part of the playerbase who don't already own all champions, who can't indulge in an IP shop and for whom choosing to buy runes instead of champions was a considerable investment. These players now are left with the options of buying champions for RP, regrinding thier loss from previous years of playing or quiting. Again for no other reason than that apparently they choose the wrong ingame system to invest in.

Reusing a part of my previous post;

I belive the unpopularity of the old runesystem is clouding the judgement of what is fair and makes for a "getting rid of it at all cost" perspective seem more reasonable than it is.

I'm generally not a fan of analogies but sometimes they help getting a point across:

A while ago Riot experimented with having 10 extra support heroes for free in the weekly free champion rotation to see if more players would play support. Say it was successful and Riot now anounced that all support heroes will be permanently free come pre-season. Current owners of support heroes will be compensated 750 ip/be per champion and full refund for this seasons bought champions (a bit generous compared to runes but in general the same jist).

Now new players wont be affected and players who owns all heroes likely wont be very affected. The problem lies for those who spent a substantial amount of thier ip on buying support champions making them have to miss out on other champions due to ip budget constrains.

Now others can say, well that's thier own fault they choose to be a support main. They could have mained another class, besides everyone knew support was unpopular. These player chose to opt into a role they knew was unpopular and have only themselves to blame.

Looking at it from this perspective makes the whole ordeal in my opinion seem a little more nuanced, is it really fiar to single out a particular group of ip spenders regardless of what they invested it in?

The important part to remember is that the players never upheld the runesystem, Riot did. But in the discussion that has followed it seems rune users (or atleast those that invested a substansial amount of thier ip in it instead of champions) are being portrayed as evil pay-to-win system abusers who should suit themselves for thier bad investment.

Kowe The EwokSep 5, 201718 votes

I doubt anybody would sacrifice potentially thousands of IP just because it's easier math. Would you sell all skins for flat prices rounded down because it's easier for your customers to calculate? You wouldn't. Because you actually use confusion and purchase step breakpoints to get customers to spent more.

I can live with that. But for those of us who invested RP in runes instead of champions you just burned the value of 90% of our investment. Buying runes instead of champions had an opportunity cost. In real money, not IP. If you really go through with this offensively low refund rate paying players will remember.

RiotRiot CactopusSep 5, 20175 votes

But for those of us who invested RP in runes instead of champions you just burned the value of 90% of our investment. Buying runes instead of champions had an opportunity cost. In real money, not IP.

This aspect of the system is actually a really fair criticism. Although you HAD to grind to get runes, it was possible that some players spent RP on IP boosts specifically to get runes faster. Obviously, if you got more runes, you're still getting a certain amount of BE for each of those runes, so it's not like the benefit from what you spent is totally going away. But it still feels a little more wrong than for people who just got those runes through playing the game normally, right? I see what you're saying here.

The comparison I'm trying to figure out though—and call me out on this if this doesn't make sense because I'm just trying to grapple with your criticism—is how this is different from champion reworks (because runes and masteries are being reworked into a new thing, not just deleted, right?). Even if you spent RP to unlock a champion, we don't give you any of that back when we rework the champion. I we don't give you RP back when we eventually lower the price, either. I think every precedent in our game is "if we rework a thing, you don't get refunded for it."

aZ3R0nSep 5, 201716 votes

Here's the thing about your current logic. Riot is not reworking the current runes. The current rune system is being retired and completely replaced, and the analogy you made doesn't quite fit. A proper analogy would be Riot retires Nunu so that he is unplayable by anyone, even if they bought him with RP, and then replaces Nunu with a brand new champion with completely different mechanics that every single player can play for free whether they owned Nunu or not. People who invested more into Nunu like buying skins and getting higher masteries would lose more, but every player gains even if they didn't put in equal time, effort, and money.

DeadUnbornSep 5, 20176 votes

[{quoted}](name=Riot Cactopus,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=o1hsbxt5,comment-id=001b,timestamp=2017-09-05T16:00:16.260+0000)

I wanna jump in here to say that I think a lot of what OP is saying here is valid and true.

Runes were never a good experience for players. They were basically a barrier between you and your ability to be really competitive in ranked, and the only way to overcome that barrier was by grinding. Not really "pay-to-win" but more like "pay-to-get-on-at-least-even-ground." Now that we're removing that barrier for all players, people who had to go through the gauntlet feel like they got a raw deal.

So, for that reason, we do think it makes sense for us to give a little back to folks who went through the gauntlet to get runes. That's why we're rolling out the rune rewards, and emotes for players based on how many hours they've played. I think we're open to the idea of doing a little more for veterans, but it'll have to be something like giving you something cool that lets you show off how long you've been in the game—giving away tons more BE just isn't that feasible.

I want to be really transparent about our thinking behind the rune rewards, because there's definitely a lot of confusion around that. I think we've screwed up by repeatedly using language like "investment" around runes, because they were never meant as something you literally invest in in the hopes of getting a return on. And we're for sure not going to do a full refund on runes, because we don't think that replacing a system with a better system should trigger a refund on the old thing; That's not a precedent that we're going to set. Plus (and this is real talk mode cactopus), the fact is that us giving away IP has consequences. IP/BE is worth money for Riot—giving it away cuts into future champ sales. We can pretty closely estimate how many RP-based champ sales we'll lose over any given time period after giving away IP, and I want to make it clear here that selling champs is a huge part of the way Riot makes money so we can reinvest in the game.

Also, by merging the runes and masteries system into a new, free system, we're already investing in a major upgrade to the game. This costs money, but we think it's worth it for the future of League. So, the goal with the rewards we've announced is to recognize the time you’ve spent getting Runes and reward you fairly for it, without going overboard. That's why we're doing what we're doing.

I hope that makes sense. I'm happy to follow up and answer any questions y'all have.

I think a lot of the problem comes from the fact that many players do not have the business context for why you are making these decisions. I understand when you announce these things you usually want to focus on the "game" side of the story rather than on corporate maneuvers. However, I think that sometimes Riot could benefit from being more upfront about the "business" reasoning behind some of their decisions.

One example is the Blue Essence Store that will open when the new system arrives. This is obviously designed as an IP reset so that players that have hoarded a moderate amount of IP and spent a significant amount of IP and RP in rune pages feel like they are getting rewarded while resetting their IP counter so that they may spend RP in the future to get content that would usually have higher IP prices and thus be gated. If you had explained that only really veteran players that have played the game for a while longer would be able to access the higher tier rewards, then people would maybe have been happier about the announcement. Also I know you don't want to commit to specifics as the BE store is still in development, but making it clear that probably other rare skins would be available for absurd amounts of bE would make super veteran players happier I suspect.** For example. Selling Black Alistar** (which is worth a ton of money, but Riot doesn't perceive because you don't sell the skin) for a TON of BE so that basically only people that have been playing consistently for at least 5 years can get it might have hyped people more.

Another example is how lots of people feel self-entitled and think the new rune system is "free" while you are actually investing a lot of resources on it. I think it would had been better if you (Riot) had emphasized more the amount of resources and money they are spending on this new system. Then proceed to acknowledge the specific pain points that this new system has (veteran showmanship and feel like their value spent is being kept) and give clear rewards and explain the math behind it more clearly. Basically, make it easier for people to understand how all your solutions tie together instead of assuming they will work it out themselves. As a business you know when the transformation from IP and RUNES to BE occurs, the value of these items will be transferable to the BE store, champions and other items that the players currently might not be able to get; they may not see these connections necessarily because they haven't done "the math".

RiotRiot CactopusSep 5, 20178 votes

This is a really insightful post. You're right that we try not to put the "business" context up front and center when we make changes like this. I do think that's probably the right strategy for us because most players aren't hyper engaged boards users who want to know the exact reasons behind every change. The vast majority of players will never see this post and just want the tl;dr of what's changing in the game. That said, we should probably get better at teeing up the business context behind decisions for the people like you guys who do really care.

You're also correct that one function of the IP store is to give folks with piles of IP to spend on. We tried to communicate this in the Riot Pls video (when Joe says that the URFWick skin is for IP dragons who've stored up tons of IP) but maybe that wasn't enough.

MrChymeraSep 5, 20178 votes

[{quoted}](name=Riot Cactopus,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=o1hsbxt5,comment-id=001b00020000,timestamp=2017-09-05T21:48:15.749+0000)

You're also correct that one function of the IP store is to give folks with piles of IP to spend on. We tried to communicate this in the Riot Pls video (when Joe says that the URFWick skin is for IP dragons who've stored up tons of IP) but maybe that wasn't enough.

I know some people value URFWick quite highly but for me its a joke skin on a champion that I don't play. Its really hard to feel good about the essence store when the oft cited example of what you can get there is something that I don't want or care about. Similarly many of us won't have 150k even after the refund so calling out the top value in the store without mentioning anything lower, again, feels bad. Some specifics about the lower end values in the store would help me get excited about it a lot more than URFWick.

Akh MornSep 5, 201715 votes

My biggest issue is after 7 years I just finished buying every rune a few months ago. Now I can't even get Urfwick. Have you considered giving anything special to those who have like, 99%, 95% of all runes, 85%, "tiers" if you will? The thought of accomplishing that and then having it all deleted while getting a significant hit to my BE (compared to NOT doing that) just leaves a very awful taste in my mouth.

RiotRiot CactopusSep 5, 201716 votes

Runes were never really presented as a collection to complete, but we knew that there were a bunch of people like you who treated them that way. That's why we figured that some "BE per rune bought" reward was the best way to make sure that people who bought more got more back.

I feel like I'm not totally answering your question so let's keep talking and I'll do my best.

TormentulaSep 5, 201720 votes

You say runes were never meant as collections,

But yet you guys invented those limited edition runes with no competitive use over tier 3s what so ever back in season 1 for holidays.

Btw, how are you going to make up for players having those? They did in fact have "collectors value" and now those who actually held onto them will lose them entirely.

ModCaptainMårvelousSep 5, 201733 votes

One more thing that I've gotta call out is this idea that you're only getting back 12% of what you spent on runes if you bought them before 2017. That's just not true—the actual number (depending on which ones you bought) is a lot likelier closer to double that. I showed how to calculate your rune rewards in this reddit comment.

Cacto, that's not a strong argument. Getting back 24% of what we spent isn't an incredible amount over 12%. Hell, it's just short of a fourth of what we spent. Hell, you could return us 40% (Like that test survey) and still give us more back without going into absurd 100% refund territories.

RiotRiot CactopusSep 5, 201727 votes

I'm happy to talk about what else we could do to make veterans feel better (I personally think we should do something unique for vets besides these rewards and the emotes—just not more BE) but in order for us to have that conversation we have to at least be agreed on the basic facts, right?

LightIsMyPathSep 5, 201738 votes

vets have their points.. but what about people like me, who started playing in season 5 (4 and 6 are in the same boat more or less I assume)? I had to grind for 2 years to achieve the ideal set for my runes, I still have many champions to buy. I JUST finished my grind, finally approaching champion select with the satisfaction that my effort has removed the disadvantage I used to have.. and you take it away from me. Suddenly, after 2 full years of grinding stuff, I will be on equal ground with someone who started playing this year.. not even in equal ground really since they still have their IP while I do not, in fact they will probably end up owning more champion then I do because you just vaporized all of my IP out of nowhere. I appreciate you are being honest about the money part of the problem but forgive me, this infuriates me even more. I have not spent 300 euros worth of rp to be betrayed as a customer in favor of someone who just showed his face through the door. Because you know the damage alone without the joke would be too few ( no idea if this is an expression in English, it is in my language) not only do my choice of spending ip on runes get penalized, even the one of spending rps on skins.. since I would have obviously had a better use of those rps if I bought champions with them, to not have a disadvantage in playing again (again.. after 2 years and most likely against someone who is here from less time and may as well have never done even a 5 euros recharge on his account). I feel cheated on and treated like a class C player: news have it best, vets at least are going to have a use for the BE shop since they have MANY IPs usually.. what about me? what do I get? my effort laughed at and its result removed.

PS: yes my tone is aggressive, of course not directed AT YOU AS A PERSON but at this market decision that screams "we don't care 2 fks about our customers, we can make new ones :D "

RiotRiot CactopusSep 5, 201711 votes

Hey bud, no worries about the aggressive tone. I understand how you feel so I'll try my best to give you answers:

I JUST finished my grind, finally approaching champion select with the satisfaction that my effort has removed the disadvantage I used to have.. and you take it away from me.

Yeah, this makes sense. The old runes system was this huge grind that you had to go through just to be able to play on even ground with new people. It was a barrier. Having that barrier disappear for everyone for free right after you worked to overcome it feels bad. No argument from me here. I think this is mostly a lesson for Riot going forward. We shouldn't make players have to grind just to have the same stats as other players on the same champion. That was a bad design, and that's why we need to fix it.

not only do my choice of spending ip on runes get penalized, even the one of spending rps on skins.. since I would have obviously had a better use of those rps if I bought champions with them

I don't think this is true. You're about to be unlocking a lot of new champs with the BE we're giving you as rune rewards and with the new leveling system. Spending RP on champs wouldn't give you any sort of advantage now, and the skins you bought aren't going away or losing any of their value.

I feel cheated on and treated like a class C player: news have it best, vets at least are going to have a use for the BE shop since they have MANY IPs usually.. what about me? what do I get? my effort laughed at and its result removed.

It really bums me out that you feel this way about it, because the truth is that the upcoming changes actually are going to give you a bunch of stuff. You'll get all the future runes for free, you'll get a decent amount back depending on how much you spent on runes (I'm curious to know how many runes you bought), and making the system free has other benefits that affect you as well—we can balance runes a lot more easily now, for instance. You're also going to have a lot easier grind ahead of you without the bullshit you went through before when saving up for runes. I know that doesn't feel perfect, but I think it's a good change that will feel pretty good.

Now that being said, I wonder what else besides more BE we could do to make you feel like we value you as a player? Because WE DO VALUE YOU. A lot. And I understand why these changes could feel like you're not getting the best deal. I don't think we're going to change the rune rewards specifically, but what other sorts of things would you be interested in us doing to show that we care?

Sexy Jack RabbitSep 5, 201728 votes

As long as you don't give us a shitty summoner icon I think people will be happy.

Please. No more fucking icons.

NGO MaleficentSep 5, 20176 votes

[{quoted}](name=Riot Cactopus,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=o1hsbxt5,comment-id=001b0004000000010000,timestamp=2017-09-05T22:13:50.125+0000) I don't think this is true. You're about to be unlocking a lot of new champs with the BE we're giving you as rune rewards and with the new leveling system. Spending RP on champs wouldn't give you any sort of advantage now, and the skins you bought aren't going away or losing any of their value.

I don't think you really understood what his point was there. He was saying that if he had spent his IP he had used for runes on champions, he'd be ahead of where he is going to be now because the refund on runes doesn't match up to the investment he put into it. As a result of spending his IP on runes previously, if he had used the RP he had spent on skins on champion instead, he would've closed the gap between where he could've been and where he is now instead of a few cosmetic upgrades in the form of skins.

I understand that Riot believes that players have gotten a lot of value out of using runes in the system that was presented to them previously but I'll address this in the next section as it pertains to what he says.

[{quoted}](name=Riot Cactopus,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=o1hsbxt5,comment-id=001b0004000000010000,timestamp=2017-09-05T22:13:50.125+0000)

It really bums me out that you feel this way about it, because the truth is that the upcoming changes actually are going to give you a bunch of stuff. You'll get all the future runes for free, you'll get a decent amount back depending on how much you spent on runes (I'm curious to know how many runes you bought), and making the system free has other benefits that affect you as well—we can balance runes a lot more easily now, for instance. You're also going to have a lot easier grind ahead of you without the bullshit you went through before when saving up for runes. I know that doesn't feel perfect, but I think it's a good change that will feel pretty good.

Again, I think you may have misunderstood what his point was about buying runes for a player who was buying them in, say, season 6 compared to earlier seasons or buying them in season 7 and this is where the concept of value comes into the equation and him referring to being treated as a "Class C player".

He's saying that if you spent your IP on runes in the mid-to-end of season 6, you got so much less usage out of your runes than a player who had them for several seasons and you get less value out of the refund than players who only bought them in season 7. The bunch of stuff he's going to get is the same as everybody in some cases or players who got more usage out of their runes in other cases while there's nothing for players like him to get around.

[{quoted}](name=Riot Cactopus,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=o1hsbxt5,comment-id=001b0004000000010000,timestamp=2017-09-05T22:13:50.125+0000)

Now that being said, I wonder what else besides more BE we could do to make you feel like we value you as a player? Because WE DO VALUE YOU. A lot. And I understand why these changes could feel like you're not getting the best deal. I don't think we're going to change the rune rewards specifically, but what other sorts of things would you be interested in us doing to show that we care?

I think the issue is that players who fall into the middle ground feel like they're getting the shortest end of the stick. I get that if you extended the refund range to S6, people from S5 would complain and so forth. I honestly don't have an answer for what could be done to alleviate that feeling because it's not an easy one to explain. But it kind of feels like it would've been better to just play at a disadvantage for a few months at the end of S6 and buy up a lot of champs rather than spend IP on runes that I could've gotten this season and gotten a better refund rate on.

SpoofghoulSep 5, 20179 votes

give vets an xp boost

simple as that

because i had way more time to play back in the day then i do now, i would still like to level up but as someone who got older and got a job i simply don't have the time i did anymore

i think that would best help vets

AMYS GRAVESep 5, 201711 votes

I spent buttloads of IP on runes because i had nothing else to spend it on, and i'll have to do some math on this but i'm not sure i'm going to be able to afford urfwick because of the weak returns on runes.

CritkeeperSep 5, 201710 votes

[{quoted}](name=Riot Cactopus,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=o1hsbxt5,comment-id=001b00040000,timestamp=2017-09-05T16:54:22.736+0000)

I'm happy to talk about what else we could do to make veterans feel better (I personally think we should do something unique for vets besides these rewards and the emotes—just not more BE) but in order for us to have that conversation we have to at least be agreed on the basic facts, right?

replacing something that was a functional advantage with something that is just an aesthetic will never feel like a fair deal, so I doubt skins or emotes will satisfy the players who feel wronged by these changes, regardless of how exclusive they are.

the only other thing that would feel fair would be a refund, but as you've said a direct refund is out of the question.

I suppose an indirect refund might work. For instance, double the rewards of all quests completed until an amount of value obtained from those quests equal to the value of the runes has been acquired. This gives RIOT a lot of control over what the players receive, feels fair to the players since they can opt out of a quest they don't like, is graduated over an extremely long period of time (years) so it doesn't bankrupt RIOT, and keeps players playing and isn't disruptive.

You could also offer "quest doubling" boosts to other players for a limited time or for limited amount of value at a specific BE cost to encourage people to invest their BE plus their time to eke out more value from their BE than they otherwise could. Besides the feeling of commitment would probably cause more people to want to actually complete the quests, which means more players actually playing.

And if you add in a few quests that involve playing with friends or a quest to play at least one game a day each day for a week or something... well there you go.

The real reason veteran players are unhappy with the rune rework:

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