The New Player horror story continues...

I previously made a thread about how horrified I was by some of the new player experience in the new season. BE gain is not great, but not as horrible as it first seemed (mostly because they just give you a free champion worth a decent amount at level 3. Otherwise it's subpar, imo). And that you couldn't even choose your own rune page until level 8 (you're stuck with a preset assigned to your champion), and can't edit the runes until 11.

Well, today I was infuriated yet again by Riot's need to gate content for new players... I've been watching my friend play and coaching her for three days. Today she finally hit level 11, and was really excited to have a chance to play with her rune pages. Just from using the presets, she already has some favorite abilities and some she doesn't like.

What did we discover? At level 11, you gain the ability to change your keystone. That's it. You can't change any other runes until level 13. Awesome Riot. Way to make the new player experience worse and worse. AND, on top of that, the Inspiration rune path is locked until level 17. Are you kidding me? What's next? At level 17 she will gain the ability to choose an inspiration keystone, but be stuck with preselected inspiration runes until level 21?

Riot, please... New players may be new to the game, but they're not stupid. After two dozen games (my estimate of what it took to get to level 11) I'm sure they can manage to play around with the runes until they find something they like. I regret a little more every day that I ever recommended this game to anyone. She's been hit with one disappointment after another, and I'm starting to feel guilty for being the cause of it. I should have just said "save yourself the time and frustration and play something else."