@Riot Key Drop Rates Encourage Poor Play Patterns

The current system for key drops is not fulfilling its desired premise. The idea is to get people who are only moderately invested to continue logging in and play games at a consistent level. More players playing is good for business, and keys are supposed to be an extra incentive to log in and play, similarly to the First Win of the Day bonus. That is true of the entire Hextech Crafting system as well. The problem is that as it currently works, it is doing the exact opposite.

If you are not already aware, key drops rates are not linear. Instead, every key fragment you earn lowers your chances to find another one. For example:

• Your first win has a 50% chance to drop a key fragment.
• After earning your first key, your next win has a 40% chance to drop a key fragment.
• After earning 2 key fragments, your next win has a 30% chance to drop a key fragment.
• So on and so forth.

These numbers are obviously just arbitrary, but it demonstrates that each successive win becomes worth less than the last. Your key fragment drop-rate resets every month back to it's original maximum, from which point it will decrease with each successful drop like before. Riot's stated reason for designing it like this is because they want people who can't play as often to also be able to earn keys instead of limiting Hextech Crafting to only those who can play for hours every day, which is admittedly an admirable goal. But the problem is that the drop rate declines so quickly that you can get maybe 6 or 7 key fragments before the drops become so rare that playing to try and earn a key simply becomes unfeasible unless you have a full premade, and even then it's still unreliable.

What is actually happening is that people are only playing once their drop-rate resets. So for a day or two a month people will log on, earn as many key fragments as they can, then just not play again until it resets again. Instead of creating an incentive for people to keep playing to earn rewards, you've created a system in which the best course is to stop playing for a month at a time. That cannot be healthy for the overall state of the player base -- long absences make players more likely to not come back as they get hooked on some other game instead. So please, Riot, address the frequency with which key fragments drop because the system is not doing what you want it to do. I shouldn't be able to have over 20 wins without having seen a key fragment, and those are just the wins of which I was aware I was missing key fragments -- I wasn't counting until after the lack of key drops became noticeable. My obviously best choice is to simply stop playing until next month, which seems like a ridiculous thing for Riot to be encouraging.

Please, any Reds with knowledge of the system please come explain it me because it right now I'm just not getting it.