So there IS a cap on key fragment drops

Quepha·Feb 9, 2017·27 votes·6,189 views

I thought a Rioter once told us that there was no hard cap on key fragment drops but according to the latest Ask Riot it looks like it's capped at 4 keys (12 fragments) per month, the same as the number of chests you can acquire. Since I didn't play enough every month to get those 4 keys each time while getting all my chest drops was trivial, it means my stock of chests that has been building up will be impossible to ever open without spending money on keys (I will not spend money on keys, I don't consider chests to provide enough value to be worth the cost)

edit: link: http://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/2017/02/ask-riot-i-need-more-keys/

45 Comments

Mysticman89Feb 9, 20176 votes

I'm in a similar situation where I will always have 3-4 extra chests due to the way the system works out, unless I somehow fail to unlock a weekly S rank chest.

I'm a reasonably decent player, on top of the fact that theres always going to be randomly stompy games, so I have a hard time imagining a world where I couldn't spam any champion for a week until I got an S rank, and in the majority of cases it'd only take a day or two. (I literally got my S rank chest for urgot last night after twoish days of playing him for the lulz as support, despite almost never playing him prior.)

I can only hope that whatever adjustments to the system they alluded to involve ways for people to eventually catch up if they fall behind in one thing or another. The dream probably involves using IP for them, but that may not be realistic. Maybe they could do something like a limited 1 key or one chest per month for 10k ip or something, so people could slowly fix their key:chest ratio without impacting the amount of chests/keys in the system that much, but that's easy for me to say as a player who doesn't buy RP and doesn't have access to their internal data around these things.

Fondling GemsFeb 10, 20171 votes

I don't think a hefty IP price is the way to do it. The people who are suffering from a discrepancy tend to be those who don't play enough to get both keys and chests. Those same people are going to be the players who are lacking more IP on average than the players who are getting all the chests/frags.

Mysticman89Feb 10, 20171 votes

Well it is delicate, since the idea isn't to let people who play less get more pay content for free, but more to remove the frustration of people who didn't quite manage to get all their key fragments in month and not be forever stuck behind their chest stockpile as a result. (Or the people who play a ton so do manage the max keys, but don't often get S ranks on new champs so they're always in need of new chests.)

A large IP barrier wouldn't necessarily fix everyone's discrepancy, but it would mean that they aren't theoretically screwed forever unless they pay, which for me at least would make the key/chest mismatch in my loot much more bearable. It's not that I care so much about actually opening those extra 3 chest for their content so much as the feeling that I never can because I was relatively busy one month, even if I was willing to put in extra time in a subsequent month.

But of course, theres plenty of other things I'd rather spend my ip on, and having a stockpile of IP is nice too, so I'd certainly welcome an alternative solution. Theres people whose jobs directly involve designing these systems, so I wouldn't expect something I came up with while typing that post to be ideal, but in the long term everyone has IP so I feel it's at least an option.

Fondling GemsFeb 10, 20171 votes

Honestly I would like on one end to see key drop rate be based on a combination of key frags you can get per month while also getting a boost based on how many chests you have. (Perhaps with a way to differentiate between bought chests and earned chests so people don't game the system to save RP) Not sure about what to do on the other end of the spectrum since chests have a hard requirement.

Valderis VandalaFeb 9, 20175 votes

From what I can recall, there is no hard cap, but the more key fragments you gain in a month the less they drop, until it resets in the next month. But I don't know how out of date this info is.

EDIT: I'm sitting on like 30 key fragments. Sooo, yeah...

QuephaFeb 9, 20179 votes

[{quoted}](name=Valderis Vandala,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=v1Fj12sF,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2017-02-09T22:56:51.612+0000)

From what I can recall, there is no hard cap, but the more key fragments you gain in a month the less they drop, until it resets in the next month. But I don't know how out of date this info is.

EDIT: I'm sitting on like 30 key fragments. Sooo, yeah...

http://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/2017/02/ask-riot-i-need-more-keys/ "It’s possible to earn 4 keys (12 fragments) in a 4 week period. This matches the number of chests players can get." That kindof implies it is not possible to earn more.

Valderis VandalaFeb 9, 20171 votes

Thanks for the link, looks like that is new information, they where more vague about it in the past. And your right, that does mean you can't get more keys then chests.

EDIT: Your also right not to spent any money on keys or chests, its just a shitty way to gamble with your money, which is what Riot wants you to do.

Angry MonsterFeb 10, 20173 votes

its not, they were up front about this when it came out.

QuephaFeb 10, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=Angry Monster,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=v1Fj12sF,comment-id=0000000000000000,timestamp=2017-02-10T04:17:51.993+0000)

its not, they were up front about this when it came out.

http://boards.euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/help-support-en/6FXz5T9r-is-there-a-limit-to-the-number-of-key-fragments-you-can-get they gave conflicting information all over the place.

Angry MonsterFeb 10, 20171 votes

sigh why do i bother, you can believe and interpret things how you want.

QuephaFeb 10, 20171 votes

"is there a limit" "there's no hard limit that I'm aware of" Where is the ambiguity there? Some red posts acted like there was a hard limit, some did not, people asked and received conflicting information so no one really knew what was correct.

Glory ln DeathFeb 10, 20171 votes

The Ask Riot article you are referring to in the OP does not explicitly confirm a hard limit, and only very vaguely suggests it based on interpretation.

Glory ln DeathFeb 10, 20171 votes

It can imply that if you look at it that way, but nowhere have they explicitly stated "No, you can't get more than 4 keys a month".

Don't forget, they stated in the same article that there is a hard cap on how many wins you can get before receiving another fragment (basically, if you have gone X won games without getting a fragment, you will get a fragment on your next win). So, if you play enough, you can get more than 4 keys per month.

Mysticman89Feb 9, 20172 votes

The recent ask riot implies that 12 fragments (4 keys) is the max.

I believe it's been implied previously by relevant rioters (e.g those involved in developing it) statements as well, but I feel like well meaning but perhaps incorrect player support rioters have also said that they didn't know of any cap and it was just the diminishing drop rate holding people back, which lead to increased amounts of confusion.

SchàdenfreudeFeb 9, 20172 votes

Or maybe you just can't get S in games lmao

McFatalFeb 10, 20172 votes

i get 5 keys a day if i play 5 games a day lo..

this is false.

Edit: 4 downvotes because I said the fact about how I got 5 keys a day. Someones salty they can't get S ranks after their game :(

ElikainFeb 10, 20172 votes

Well, those 12 key fragment drops for an entire month look solid. You have 4 chests to bank so every key can be used to open one chest. If you manage to bank all 4 chests, you have to wait a week for one chest to recharge so you can pick it up again but that also gives you a week's time to get 3 fragments for that chest.

I believe that getting chests is harder, in terms of having to show your champion mastery by getting that S- at least, whereas getting key fragments, you only have to worry about winning the game. However, chest recharge rate + key fragment refresh rate isn't synced so chests are a lot easier to pick up, if you have a sizable champion pool. Theoretically, 1 chest you get = 1 week for 3 fragment drops.

Why is it harder to get to those 12 fragments, the longer you play? Because Riot didn't want to promote key farming as the ideal situation to get free loot. They didn't want for people who don't have a lot of time to invest in League, be punished by this system because they'd have a lot less keys to open their loot.

Meaning that yes, people who have more time to invest in League will have more keys to open their chests but not so much more that they're practically swimming in them. At best, you can equal 1 chest to 1 key. Riot aimed to make their system exponential in nature, meaning that people who play more games can get more keys but up to a point. After that, you'd need A LOT wins to even get one fragment, which is why the cap exists and it resets monthly.

QuephaFeb 10, 20171 votes

I don't think 1 chest per week would be "swimming" in loot with how low the average value of a single chest is, that would be a 5 year grind on average for enough gemstones for a Hextech Annie, but even that seems pretty unfeasible in terms of key droprates unless you live off streaming. How long do you think it should take someone to grind 10 gemstones? a decade? When Riot was talking about releasing multiple gemstone-only skins per year?

ElikainFeb 10, 20172 votes

I did not say "swimming in loot". I said "swimming in them", referring to keys respectively. If chests are a constant and regardless of how much you play, you can get 4 + 1 per week, both parties (players who don't have much time and players who do) can somewhat get the the same number of chests. The only difference being is that if you always have a key to open one.

If farming keys was allowed, people who farm them would always have keys to open their chests (and more) without spending any money while people who don't would probably have a lack of keys. The point of that exponential system is to not allow for the free content to be farmed because that rigs the system in favor of min/maxers.

It is possible to get 12 fragments a month but i don't think i've gotten to that point. Meaning that people who want to farm keys can get to this number while people who cant farm keys, will be able to get anywhere from 2-3 keys respectively. That's only a 1-2 key difference.

On your point about Gemstones:

Gemstones are something much more valuable than keys and chests. Collecting a certain number of them can get you a Hextech exclusive skin for a champion or a ward, or you can turn 1 gemstone into a Chest and a Key respectively. I believe the drop rate for Gemstones is 3%, which is 3 Gemstones per 100 chests, respectively. They are meant to be rare drops. Even if you increase the key fragment drop rate, having only being able to get 50 chests a Season respectively, that's 6 years for 300 chests, for a possibility of 10 gemstones.

QuephaFeb 10, 20171 votes

Min/maxers would be people who farm wins every single month to get all 4 of their keys, casual players would maybe play less or more in a given month depending on how much time they have. The system as it stands now creates a weird min/max pattern where someone would want to play way more in a month than they would normally like to just to grind out those key fragments while a casual player doesn't realize that they are about to lose their key drops to an invisible timer. If the hard cap were removed then players could just relax and say "oh I guess I won't get 4 keys this month, I might make it up in the future when I have more time on my hands," while the turbo-grinders just end up spending more money on chests to open with their few extra keys.

I know what a gemstone is, you don't have to explain it to me, what I'm asking is what you think the appropriate length of time a player should have to play this game before being able to acquire a gemstone-exclusive skin. Your model there gives a 6 year timer for a single skin when Riot has said they want to release multiple skins through this system per year. To me that already sounds ridiculous, but it turns out the average player will take even longer because they probably don't get all their key drops in each given month as the grind for the last key or two takes an absurd amount of play time.

ElikainFeb 10, 20171 votes

But isn't it logical that the player who doesn't collect all 12 fragments, loses the rest to the cycle reset? If i understood you correctly, what i think you're proposing is that the maximum number of keys you can get a year is always guaranteed for you, if you happen to miss certain days. Essentially, you're not losing any key fragments and by the end of the year, you could make up the losses in some way. But that's going in the opposite direction of what i discussed previously.

What i said previously is if the system was linear, it would reward those min/maxers - people who can sink a lot of time into League and grind fragments on a daily basis, consistently. But this new proposition goes in favor of those people who can play a few games only. Eventually, they get the same reward, but it takes longer. Why would then anyone play League more than they should, if in the end everyone gets treated the same by the system? League should reward you for playing the game. That shouldn't change. But there should be balance between playing too much for the dank free loot and playing too little and not getting any. I believe this current Hextech system does that really well. And as Riot said, there's always room for improvement.

As for Gemstones, i don't particularly care about them. The skins are nice but i don't play those champions nor do i wish to own anything rare in the game that no one has. If there were Soulstealer skins for my favorite champions (Morgana and Eve), i'd probably have a different story to tell. But not up to a point where i would want to practically have them fall in my lap (for free) as then there's no point in being rare content if everyone can have it. If Riot does make multiple Hextech exclusive skins a year, the Gems themselves may become more common than now. But given that this content is not yet expanded, i believe that currently, the Gemstone drop rate is fair.

As to my projected 6 year, no money spent Gemstone farm, that's way too long. But i also think that if Riot ever expands on this system, they should also have Gem tiered skins, going up to Legendary and Ultimate Hextech Exclusive skins, costing to 10-20 Gemstones. If that becomes the case in the future, many of the skins would cost less than 10 Gemstones, effectively reducing the time one would have access to a Soulstealer skin - with the increased drop chances for Gemstones still, but slightly.

QuephaFeb 10, 20171 votes

{quoted}

But isn't it logical that the player who doesn't collect all 12 fragments, loses the rest to the cycle reset?

No, it's not logical that there is a limit to key drops at all. It isn't even logical to have diminishing returns on droprates but I can at least consider the merits of such a system to be reasonable and valuable. There's no indicator of a hard cap in the client or the official hextech crafting page and conflicting information from Reds on the subject, there's no timer available in the client so people don't know when their deadline for key drops occurs, and it's silly for players to very easily fall into the situation where they will be getting chest drops which they will NEVER be capable of opening without spending money on keys.

If i understood you correctly, what i think you're proposing is that the maximum number of keys you can get a year is always guaranteed for you, if you happen to miss certain days. Essentially, you're not losing any key fragments and by the end of the year, you could make up the losses in some way. But that's going in the opposite direction of what i discussed previously.

The 'guaranteed' part makes absolutely zero sense in this conversation but the rest seems accurate: a player should be able to make up for getting less than 4 keys earned in a month through effort in future months.

What i said previously is if the system was linear, it would reward those min/maxers - people who can sink a lot of time into League and grind fragments on a daily basis, consistently.

reward them with something that is useless until they spend money on it? wouldn't those players be the most devoted to the game, the most likely to spend money, and thus the group Riot would most want to target for money-spending opportunities?

But this new proposition goes in favor of those people who can play a few games only. Eventually, they get the same reward, but it takes longer. Why would then anyone play League more than they should, if in the end everyone gets treated the same by the system?

The current system is the one where players eventually get to the point where they have dramatically reduced incentive to continue playing League during the current month as key drops eventually completely run out. It also may cause people who would have difficulty finding more time to play end up stretching past what would be fun/healthy/smart for them in terms of play hours because if they don't get that 4th key drop then they will never, ever get another chance to open that box and it will effectively be lost forever.

League should reward you for playing the game. That shouldn't change. But there should be balance between playing too much for the dank free loot and playing too little and not getting any. I believe this current Hextech system does that really well.

1 opened box per week is too much? chests still cap the amount of loot attainable without spending money no matter how many keys are earned and that rate still feels ridiculously low.

ElikainFeb 11, 20171 votes

There's no indicator of a hard cap in the client or the official hextech crafting page and conflicting information from Reds on the subject, there's no timer available in the client so people don't know when their deadline for key drops occurs.

I have to agree on this part. It would help a lot if the key cycle reset is timed, just like chests. It should add clarity to the system and Riot can be upfront on how much a player can expect from the system, if all those numbers are present. Granted, there will always be people who would come here and say "it's not enough, i want more free things" but that's something that can't be addressed easily. Both Riot and us players have to find that sweet spot.

This transparency might take away some people from the game until their key timer refreshes (because they don't want to grind a few fragments forever) but if those people only play for loot and not because they enjoy the game, i think this can be a fair price to pay for having less frustrated or uninterested players in the game at some points in time. At least, that's how it would appear to me.

a player should be able to make up for getting less than 4 keys earned in a month through effort in future months.

I'm still not convinced in this statement. I just don't see why Riot should allow players to make up for the lost time. You can't really request to queue up your "would be" drops so that it all waits for you when you are ready to grind them out in a timely fashion.

One way i could see this system being somewhat more casual player friendly, is if Riot implemented something like "first win of the day" for keys. Like, if people didn't log in for a month, they get a 1 fragment per win (for 6 wins - all numbers are arbitrary). But the catch is that the next 6 fragment drop chances are slightly lower, to prevent people from farming easy 12 fragments. It should be a a small boon for players who were away for a longer time, without allowing min/maxers to take advantage of the system for the easier fragment farms.

The current system is the one where players eventually get to the point where they have dramatically reduced incentive to continue playing League during the current month as key drops eventually completely run out.

Let's be honest here, if people play this game because they force themselves to "enjoy" it only for the loot, i don't really see the point in giving those players more free loot, in order to force them to play more. I don't want a player who never tries to play his best in my games as that makes for a very poor experience. How are skins even making them happier if their interest in the game has waned already?

It's the same thing if you're working a job you absolutely hate but the only incentive for you to get to work is because the pay is good. So you put up with the shit and unhappiness, until it all goes to hell and you break apart, often taking it out on the people who never deserved it. In League, this behavior is punished and those punishments take away all your rewards and loot until the yellow card from your account has faded away. And you never get that loot back, it has been permanently confiscated as a punishment.

1 opened box per week is too much? chests still cap the amount of loot attainable without spending money no matter how many keys are earned and that rate still feels ridiculously low.

No, one box per week looks good to me. Especially when the loot is completely random, you can get that Soulstealer skin or an Ultimate skin, completely making it worth for you in just one lucky chest. That's the idea behind the system.

Both the chests and keys are required for the system to work. Which means that having an abundance of one resource and a complete lack of other is equally bad as having none. However, if you're getting those S ranks for chests, you should be winning games. And if you're winning games, you should be getting key fragments. Both parts of the equation work off each other so you're really not able to say "one part of the system is incredibly easy to acquire and the other part, practically impossible".

QuephaFeb 11, 20171 votes

{quoted} Both parts of the equation work off each other so you're really not able to say "one part of the system is incredibly easy to acquire and the other part, practically impossible".

I currently have 20 chests and no keys. Acquiring chests is trivial but acquiring key fragments takes a lot of time.

Jesus is SaviorFeb 10, 20172 votes

uhhhhhhh they told us this when the system first came out.

Because I asked publicly on the forums and they responded.

QuephaFeb 10, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=That Evelynn,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=v1Fj12sF,comment-id=000a,timestamp=2017-02-10T14:03:55.156+0000)

uhhhhhhh they told us this when the system first came out.

Because I asked publicly on the forums and they responded.

they also told us the opposite http://boards.euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/help-support-en/6FXz5T9r-is-there-a-limit-to-the-number-of-key-fragments-you-can-get

Jesus is SaviorFeb 10, 20172 votes

{quoted}

they also told us the opposite http://boards.euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/help-support-en/6FXz5T9r-is-there-a-limit-to-the-number-of-key-fragments-you-can-get

3 things:

He's a network technician, not a game dev.
He is an EUW rioter. EUW staff have absolutely nothing to do with the development/programming of the game. ie: it's the wrong place to ask. They don't know shit.
He said "that I'm aware of"

DaNinadFeb 9, 20171 votes

I have 7 chests and one key fragment :(

Nick Da ChipFeb 10, 20171 votes

I have like 43 key fragments and 16 keys. It doesn't seem like there is a cap.

QuephaFeb 10, 20173 votes

[{quoted}](name=Nick Da Chip,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=v1Fj12sF,comment-id=0004,timestamp=2017-02-10T00:51:16.573+0000)

I have like 43 key fragments and 16 keys. It doesn't seem like there is a cap.

all in one month?

Critmaster GarenFeb 10, 20171 votes

not to mention, i think they increased the ratio of champion shard to skin shard drops this season.

i might just be incredibly unlucky, but out of the last 10 chests i opened, 8 contained champion shards which are entirely worthless to me.

like there is literally 0 reason for someone who has every champion to spend money on chests, when half or more than half the content isnt even worth anything.

RocketRelmFeb 10, 20171 votes

One, that just means if you stop 'completely' and miss out on some key fragments it might even up. Two, still getting a stream of free stuff.

As for the drop themselves… I'm pretty sure it's more like 11 ish. 12 is probably the 'hard' limit, but we always knew you couldn't get more key fragments than chests, presuming you got them on cool down.

I just figured it was a "the chances of getting your 11th and 12th key drops were literally 1 in a million", so hearing it's actually 0 past 12 isn't surprising news to me.

QuephaFeb 10, 20171 votes

{quoted}

we always knew you couldn't get more key fragments than chests, presuming you got them on cool down.

no, we didn't. i'm pretty sure there were actually riot comments that implied that was not the case at all.

BlackFluxFeb 10, 20171 votes

Does not help you have to still rely on RNG AND champs you own which can be real hard when free rotation brings a ton of counters to your mains into the mix....looking at you top illaoi.

SpoofghoulFeb 10, 20171 votes

I have a gargantuan pile of keys but no chests

could this be because i only play Sion

SanKakUFeb 10, 20171 votes

It's not new information, they told us this before, although perhaps it wasn't through an official news item.

QuephaFeb 10, 20171 votes

{quoted}

It's not new information, they told us this before, although perhaps it wasn't through an official news item.

http://boards.euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/help-support-en/6FXz5T9r-is-there-a-limit-to-the-number-of-key-fragments-you-can-get they told us a lot of things.

Chembaron YamadaFeb 11, 20171 votes

To be fair: that doesn't really matter. He said that the chance for each key fragment is decreasing after every drop.

They could remove the hard limit to key fragments. But after your 4th key of the month the chance for another key fragment will be 0,0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%. Does it at that point really make a difference if it is a hard limit or such a low chance that it will actually never happen in practice?

GrokmirFeb 10, 20171 votes

I don't know if it's actually a soft or hard cap, but eventually every soft cap turns in a kind of pseudo hard cap anyways.

It could be that by the time you get 4 keys in a month the drop rate is so low that it's almost impossible to get any more keys.

Xela SyabFeb 10, 20171 votes

I'm not gonna gripe about free content. I just wish that if you get a champ shard, you get some essence since they are pretty much 1.7k ip value. I kinda wish rune pages were hextech drops.

YalathanilFeb 10, 20171 votes

Ask me this doesn't matter. I have a constant surplus of keys anyways, so... yeah

p.s. do you get chests if a teammate gets and S and you own that champ?

QuephaFeb 10, 20172 votes

{quoted}

p.s. do you get chests if a teammate gets and S and you own that champ?

You can get a chest for the champ YOU are playing if you own the champ you are playing when a teammate from your pre-made party earns an S.

NaramielFeb 10, 20171 votes

Also note that 4 keys per month does NOT equal the 1 chest you can get per week. Over a year, you can get 52 chests, but if the description is correct you can only get at most 48 keys. So even if you were getting max keys from the very beginning, you would eventually build up a pile of unopenable chests.

KuboxFeb 10, 20171 votes

I feel like key drop rate should be adjusted to your amount of boxes, taking into account your ratio of keys to boxes.

Players wouldn't be locked out opening chests because they already hit the key frag soft cap. Likewise, players couldn't pre-farm key frags and swim in keys forever. And most importantly, this gives players with not a lot of money an option of buying boxes and farming their keys (while those that don't care or don't play as much but still want goodies can still buy keys). Maybe adjust the price of keys and boxes so that the total price is the same but boxes cost a bit more than keys.