The Current (Im)Balance of the Rune System

On this board I hope to examine and bring forward the inherent balance problems with the current rune system (06-18-2015, Patch 5.11).

Note: I am ignoring the profile-leveling mechanic and the feature of runes where you have to level up to unlock the slots to put your runes.

There have been people claiming that the rune system is "pay to win" and they get heavy backlash when they come out and say this. Mostly this is met with typical internet language but its always the same line of thought: you buy runes with IP not with RP, so it's not pay to win because you don't buy IP .The truth is that it is not really a pay to win system, it can be if you shovel out enough money for IP boosts and flat IP purchases, but generally speaking it is actually a play to win system.

No, "play to win" does not mean you can't beat someone else who has played for longer than you have. Player skill has a lot to do with the game; probably more than anything else. This is just a term used to signify the type of system being addressed.

Runes, as they are currently incorporated in the game, can offer power to a champion which can compliment their kit or item builds by either enhancing these strengths or for compensating weaknesses. But the content below should demonstrate just how this system of runes in League of Legends does more harm than good.

First and foremost comes the most obvious critique of the rune system: the advantages of runes vs no runes. New players are given only two blank rune pages and zero runes to fill them with. With no runes in these pages, these players are immediately subjected to power differentials between them and more seasoned veterans of the game. This isn't even taking player skill into account, it is just a straight forward stat-boosted advantage. It's kind of like giving one athlete water and another one Gatorade and asking them to compete. Sure, the athlete who had water can outperform the one who was given the Gatorade, but, statistically speaking, the guy who got those extra key-nutrients will perform better than the one who did not. A player must overcome this power gap by investing in runes, you get runes from IP, and you acquire IP from playing games. This is why this is a play to win system.

Newer players feel the effects of this system more than anyone else, because the system isn't designed to accommodate or help them. Newer players are burdened by the lack of champions they own and this is compounded by the rune system. Most new players, including myself, found it more desirable to purchase new champions that we found enjoyable (or thought we would find to be enjoyable) rather than to spend our IP on runes which we had very little experience with and understanding of to begin with. Also we were worried about choosing the right runes for the job and it was just a better option to pick the champion we knew we enjoyed rather than to pick a few of those runes which may be useful for this one character but not for every one of them.There's also the ranked feature, currently one has to unlock a minimum of 16 champions to participate in ranked games. This further encourages new players to buy the champion over runes. Why would you choose to buy those runes which may be somewhat useful for this champ but not the other ones you also play? Why buy them if you end up not really liking this champion that much further down the line? What if I just waste my hard earned points on useless runes? These are the kinds of questions that go through a new players mind when making their purchases. It just naturally seems to be a better, safer investment to buy the champion.

Runes can actually hold back player experimentation. When players are forced to grind and pay for runes, they are not buying champions to play and try out, which typically means less experimentation than if a player was buying and playing more champions*. The result of less champions in a newer player's pool means a general lessening of role accessibility, item knowledge, and understanding of other champion mechanics for newer players**. They essentially learn the game slower than they likely would otherwise.

*Yes, free champion rotations are a thing but I know not everyone plays all the new champs that are free that week. I know there are still champions I have yet to try out (for many reasons) even though I have been playing since mid season 3. You also have to account for time constraints and general accessibility to play the free champions. Also it could take weeks before a champion is available for free play, and we know how impatient people can be. Free champion rotation actually increases player prioritization of buying champions over runes because of the want to play the champions you like will likely outweigh the option to buy some runes.

**To elaborate a bit on the point of understanding champion mechanics, I acknowledge the lol client contains some champion tips, counters, ability descriptions, and ability previews and that other sites give other counters and information on champions, items, and strategies. But these guides don't often make up for never playing as a certain champion. That kind of experience matters a whole lot more than reading about it or watching a streamer play as or against that champ. For example, It took me a long time to understand Katarina and some of her weaknesses. I understood that she was an assassin, magic resistance would help protect me from her burst, exhaust was good against her, hard cc stopped her ultimate and that sort of stuff, but I did not understand that she couldn't just jump on me again for free (due to her lack of mana costs and mana bar that would allow a player to gauge if she could perform the combo again or not) soon after she had just done so. So after Kat jumped on me and I saw my health bar get chunked... I backed off and ran in fear of another burst of damage coming to kill me any moment, rather than going in and harassing her with my abilities and auto attacks while she was vulnerable due to her cooldowns. Maybe if I had played as Katarina back then I would have understood this weakness and played better against her.

Runes are imbalanced. Ignoring rune tiers, the runes are quite improperly balanced in power and can easily create "best-of" and "useless" categories of runes. Some of these runes can be so strong that they even verge on mandatory (remember how armor yellows out shined everything else?) and others are still completely worthless and not worth your IP. Not only are some runes plain better and more efficient than others, runes almost never receive adjustments in patches, so the imbalance persists.

Some champions are only able to play effectively with certain rune setups. This applies to all roles but I will be discussing the jungle role as I believe it's unique PvE qualities make the argument simpler as it removes the other player from the equation. With the season 5 jungle being much more punishing than before, proper rune page setups for your champions create a make-or-break early game clear for many champions. Obviously, strong jungling champions like fiddlesticks will be more-or-less okay due to their advantageous kits but many weaker jungling champions are not as well prepared to fend off the beefed up monsters with just a hunter's machete. If you don't have proper runes for such characters, you're going to fall behind more and more due to the impact of early clear speeds. If a jungler is unable to make an adequate first clear in the jungle and obtain enough gold for the upgraded jungle item and enough "potion tax", you have to recall back to base, heal up, walk back to that last camp you missed, clear it out, recall again, buy the item, and walk back to the jungle to try and get the next buff (which is likely be gone by now). Jungling in League of Legends currently requires strong jungling champions with optimized jungling clears and therefore optimized runes. Jungling with only a few options on your small amount of pre-made rune pages is a hindrance to players. If a newer player has only a few pages made for support and midlane, they have the option to jungle, but not the really the necessary stats to effectively take on the beasts between the lanes. Have fun jungling with an ad jungler with full ap and gold/10 runes.

Runes create more imbalance than just stat disparities. Players do not know what runes other players have, they can guess based off of norms and expectations, or try and figure out other player's runes by looking at the stats of that champion (you can see these stats and bonuses by hoovering your mouse over the stat you wish to examine in the box that appears after clicking on that champion). But even with these methods you can never be completely certain. Capitalizing on this lack of information, other developers have created apps that allow the players who possess the application to view everyone's rune pages at the click of a button. This information gives these players a leg-up on their opponents. These apps give an even larger advantage to players with fast computers than they already have because not all computers can be expected to run these kinds of applications (You also have players like me who won't use these apps out of principles because I do not view them as legitimate and are actually cheating). There is an argument to be made that Riot is actually enabling the funding of these apps with their current practices.

Runes don't create proper strategic diversity. Runes are only able to be customized before a match, not during champ select or in game. This means you are stuck with what you have. You can not adjust your runes to the situation at hand. If you don't have optimized runes for the team you are up against or the team you and your teammates have crafted (runes designed for split pushing, late or early game strategy, champion-specific jungling, if you're against a heavy ad or ap team) you're at a disadvantage. The only way strategic diversity plays a role here is if you have a ton of rune pages all pre-made to account for these strategies. But the typical player is not even equipped with such a diverse and expansive rune page system, let alone newer players who are trying to scavenge up a decent page for themselves.

So, why are runes a bad design in their current iteration of League of Legends? They create an unfriendly, unnecessary, and immediately noticeable barrier to entry to new players. They create a play to win game that offers inadequate strategy and on-the-fly decision making to the player in favor of a more "play then pay enough to be prepared for any situation in advance" or "these will have to do" tactic. Runes are not balanced and there has been little effort to balance them.

Riot's mission statement is "to be the most player-focused company in the world". This is a bit of an odd statement and likely purposefully unspecific but I believe I have made a reasonable case as to why runes, as they stand today, are not player-friendly or strategically rewarding. As to the question of what to do about the runes? A simple rebalancing of the runes doesn't solve any of the aforementioned overarching problems and as it stands a whole new strategy needs to be implemented to fix these problems.

Edit: attempted to fix a paragraph and the *'s but it seems it just isn't quite working. Just broke it up more.