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Leveling feels bad, losing feels worse then ever, and you never expect anything from the capsules

Crusina Luachra·11/10/2017, 6:37:41 AM·393 votes·21,803 views

There has been plenty of discussion about the actual calculations (It took me 15 games of varying types to level up just from 30 to 31. Most were over 20 minutes, about half were over 28 minutes).

So rather then focus all on the numbers I thought I'd focus more or less specially on how this update feels.

Knowing exactly what champs I wanted beforehand felt like a goal. Knowing the same thing right now makes me feel overwhelmed this is due to a number of factors.

  1. This lootbox idea stems from games like Overwatch, you level up, you get something. However even overwatch has an advantage, all heroes are unlocked from the start. LoL locks all champs away at the start and also only gives you stuff when you level up. It's the same system...but actually worse especially since we have like what, 110 more champs? And I can tell you right now, while I don't really play OW that much it does not take anywhere near the same amount of time to get 1000 coins for a skin then it does to get 6300 BE. I hate OW's system and I still think it's better.

  2. The loot drops are terrible, as is disenchanting. The one i opened had malphite, nunu, ryze, sivir, veige giving me a grand total of...729 BE. Making me short 20 blue essence of getting the champ I did want, Rammus.(Mind you, this is RIGHT AFTER I had to level up to get Illaoi because I was short 8 BE) So now i have to play 15+ games just to get 200 blue essence. EVEN IF THIS NEW SYSTEM GAVE MORE (which is debatable) NOBODY, is going to feel like that was a fair result. Nobody is going to go "Well, great I have to play 15 more games and play 6+ hours minimum just to get 20 essence! FUN!" you are punished a bit more for actually purchasing champs with BE then with IP. If for instance I wanted a 6300 champ and a 3150 champ, if I had just a bit less then the amount of BE needed, say 9449 instead of 9450. You can't get both if you don't have enough for both. In the old system, you'd just play bots or something, get the IP and buy both. But you can't play a match and get BE, you have to level up. This means people have to wait far longer then ever before to get new champs. Again, even if this new system gives out more, you're still working more and it's been proven you have to play more games to get equal results.

  3. Nobody is ever going to rely on RNG to get discounts on champ shards. This doesn't even make sense as an argument (and it's one riot employees brought up) because what champs you get is up to RNG, why would you EVER rely on RNG to get you what you want? It can't even give you good amounts of BE, you expect it to give you the one champ you want out of 138 champs, with only a few chances every 6+ hours, that increases past every milestone? I expected at least ONE higher value champ yet I didn't get a single one worth more then 1350? And these milestone ones that supposedly give you more...um hello? RNG? The chances of me getting anything I want from them is entirely against me. I don't ever, at any point with this new system, feel that I am in control of anything. The thing about a grind, is that as long as people are given a clear path, even if they complain along the way, they do not feel lost, overwhelmed, or a sense of despair. I feel all three with this system.

  4. You are punished for holding on to shards. Let's say you get a champ shard you want to keep, but you want the new champ Zoe right? Well, if you don't disenchant it you are actively increasing the amount of time you have to play possibly by multiple factors. Let's say I get 1200 BE from a capsule. If I want to keep ekko from it, it's now worth only 900. Now imagine this happens every time you open a capsule. Let's say you spend the dozens of hours you need and finally get to 5200 BE...now you have to pray that the next capsule doesn't have champs you want and you have to pray that it gives you more then 1100 BE. None of which are guaranteed. In what sense is it a good idea to punish people like that for not disenchanting champ shards they want to actually keep??? Because if they get even 100 less BE they have to spend 15+ games leveling up AGAIN assuming they are in the lower levels.

  5. Which is another thing, I honestly feel punished for not winning more then ever. I'm not a great player. I'm still trying to remember what all those guides and youtube vidoes are saying. I'm still practicing those last hit challenges. I'm pretty sure I lose far more then I win. Because of that I miss out on a lot of EXP. And let me tell you, do the calculations, -50 exp from your average match, and say you lose 9 out of 15 matches. Now add that up for 3 levels. That's 1350 exp you are missing out on...or somewhere between 4-7 extra games (assuming they are all summoners rift). So for people like me who don't win a lot...that's going to add up especially since i dont have anywhere near a 50% win ratio. (GG says I have a 33% win ratio which is fairly typical I'm told of new players). It's honestly a little crushing knowing that every loss means getting that FREAKING 20 BLUE ESSENCE I NEED will take even longer.

  6. Don't even get me started on us only having two rune pages and new ones costing....6300. The already punishing grind for newer players is made even worse by that. I'll just settle for always having the game start with incomplete rune pages because I have to change them every single time (ARAM, is hell for this) then setting back getting a new champ by dozens of hours.

  7. Yes I could buy it and when I feel the system is fairer. I'm positive I will drop some money, but not a dime until then.

  8. I understand you are human. I understand you as a team worked hard. I don't know all the decisions behind this. I don't know if you plotted evil things to make people spend more money on RP by making this new system. I don't know if you just didn't think of everything. No I don't think the developers are all evil. yes I understand you have to balance profit/progress. Yes I am okay with a grind.

But at the end of the day. Even if the numbers you put out disprove what others have calculated. Even if the exact system we have right now actually is better. It doesn't feel that way. And in the end, that's what matters. Getting multiple shards of champs you already own (I already had Malphite, sivir, and veiger. It feels bad getting low value shards, it feels bad getting copies of champs I already own, it feels bad knowing that bad RNG made my grind that much harder). When opening loot was optional, it sucked getting duplicates but it wasn't that bad. Now that it's mandatory...well even Overwatch did away with duplicates for a reason.

It feels like getting the champs I want is a slog, not a fun challenge that will take a while because RNG, slow leveling, constant losses, and other issues drag down the journey.

I can't even be happy when I get shards of champs I want because if I so much as dare keep them, I am escalating the challenge of getting to 6300 or 4800 BE. That's a terrible feeling to have. I want nautilus, if I get him, I'm going to have to decide if I want the new champ Zoe or him more. If I decide the former, I lose his shard, if I chose the later I increase my grind and have to pray that RNG gives more high value champs I don't want to make up for it.

At every step I just feel lost and discouraged. Yes I'm being blunt but I hope you understand this is how I feel, it's not meant to be an attack on you all but it's the only way I can get my disappointment at this system across.

A few suggestions:

  1. As others have said, give BE alongside EXP for daily missions. Fixes the issue of not having extremely low amounts of BE like 20 BE.

  2. Possibly do multiple BE missions and EXP daily missions. This structure rewards the people who play a lot, doing away with one of the complaints that the system rewards people who barely play vs the people who play a lot. This also fixes the issue above of having to play 15 games or more to get 20 BE. The amounts do not have to be crazy. They could simply add up to the same daily IP we used to get, or even less. But something is better then nothing in alleviating certain issues.

  3. Make champion capsules always have a value of 1000 or increase the value of shards. Getting only low value shards is crushing. Getting however many capsules till you hit the "milestone" with nothing of value won't make the milestone feel any better when you again, end up with nothing that you want. Because their is literally zero guarantee your amazing milestone capsule that has much more value, will have ANY value to a specific individual even if you do get more BE from them. Getting a nocturne skin shard as a part of your milestone when you will NEVER play him is NOT REWARDING. Especially since you can only hit a milestone once and it gets harder and harder over time. Nobody is going to celebrate spending dozens of hours to get a capsule filled with champs/skins they will never use. And again, I KNOW you have to balance this with earning money. But there has got to be some kind of middle ground, heck, it doesn't even have to be middle ground, it can still be slanted in your favor, but this is NOT going to work out in my opinion. I am not in the least bit excited for this milestone award (ditto for champ capsules, zero excitement) because I know I'm not going to get anything I want. That's how every single level is going to be, people not expecting anything they want but being forced to play harder for what they do want. RNG, sucks. It was more or less optional before this update, now it's mandatory and a part of everything. There has to be a middle ground somewhere.

155 Comments

RiotRiot Calad11/11/2017, 3:59:46 AM110 votes

Hi Crusina,

This is super thoughtful, well-articulated feedback that I'm going to share with the team. Thank you for both your directness and clarity.

LiL Bunnie FuFuu11/10/2017, 7:30:08 AM58 votes

You should get blue essence after every game. And to make things more interesting... the better grade you get the more essence you receive. I saw this idea on another thread and wanted to bring it up here because, imo, it's a really good idea. Especially if essence is supposed to be (more or less) the same as IP. The current system, where you have to play like a dozen games to get a capsule which might give you ~750 essence or something is a joke.

In fact, I'd rather see IP brought back. If it ain't broke don't fix it. But that's probably not going to happen

ScorcherElf11/10/2017, 8:29:43 AM18 votes

I could of sworn that riot said we'd be earning BE like IP. But the whole thing was a lie it seems. Or maybe thats just the natural conclusion one makes when one form of in-game currency gets "updated or changed" into something else and still expecting to get it like normal. I can't even imagine the new players getting all these champion shards and are sitting there like, "i wont be able to get any new champions". Riot really will have a riot if they dont fix this

XLC11/10/2017, 6:55:05 AM16 votes

I mean, league's always had a problem of individual games not feeling rewarding. You've barely ever gotten enough IP/game, let's be real. Now it's the same thing only an even worse feeling of a lack of progress.

NewMetaKurbeh11/10/2017, 10:10:27 PM10 votes

I just got my first milestone capsule. The skin shard that was included was Sivir. That is 90 BE.

90 total Blue Essence for a milestone. Granted, there were free skin shards and Orange Essence in there, but I don't need those. I need BE, which I got a total of 630 for my past 3 levels for from the champion shards that dropped, and one of those levels was a milestone. And if I actually want to unlock Sivir, I need to pay 270 BE. So in fact, for climbing a level I end up LOSING BE instead of getting any. You get 270 BE for a 1350 champion shard, which I got for my last 2 levels. So in other words, I need to climb 2 entire levels just to unlock a single 450 champion that I happen to own to shard for. If I want one where I don't have the shard, I need to grind 3 levels for a single 450 champion.

I am not seeing the math working out at all.

This system is the absolute worst thing for new players I have ever seen. Please revert it and try again next preseason after you tweaked the numbers.

SexRaptor11/10/2017, 7:28:59 PM9 votes

"So now i have to play 15+ games just to get 200 blue essence. EVEN IF THIS NEW SYSTEM GAVE MORE (which is debatable) NOBODY, is going to feel like that was a fair result. Nobody is going to go "Well, great I have to play 15 more games and play 6+ hours minimum just to get 20 essence! FUN!""

So, as someone with all the champions, I've kind of been skipping over a lot of this 'lack of blue essence' stuff cause it has little personal weight for me, but this really put it into a perspective nothing i'd read had quite done. This is literally the dumbest damn thing I've seen this week (And I practically live on the internet) and is mind boggling to me that Riot thought this was an okay way for this system to go.

MutatedBread11/11/2017, 10:13:32 AM6 votes

This entire update was just a big cash grab...

Daeneries11/10/2017, 10:59:30 PM6 votes

They should just revert this fuckin' BE system

I Main Swain11/10/2017, 11:59:11 PM5 votes

first of all i wanted to say that i really appreciated the way you did this post not just because its very well thought out and clear and concise but also because its not a rant at riot calling them trash and failures like so many people seem to be doing. anyways, i entirely agree with your points, it feels like more of a grind than ever before right now with less reward than ever. i get what their reasoning and purpose was but i think it had the opposite effect of what they intended. i also noticed that so far as ive seen NOBODY has gotten a shard of greater value than 1350, or at least nobody ive talked to on either the boards or irl and i find that rather worrying.

a few ideas i had to help with this if they want to keep things primarily as they are: add some BE to the first win of the day bonus, decrease the cost of a LOT more champions (honestly there are WAY too many 6300 champs it was already a grind before now it feels impossible), and maybe add milestones where at every 10 levels you get a random champion permanent or a gigantic BE drop or something of that sort.

SpiritOfOdysseus11/11/2017, 3:38:02 AM5 votes

You can expect one thing out of this though!!! . . . . . . . . That Riot will completely ignore any topic even remotely giving them criticism because they apparently think their employees are immaculate geniuses that know the perfect way for everything!

BooBoo Custodian11/11/2017, 5:46:07 PM4 votes

No matter what Riot says it's ONLY about RP. No they aren't listening, no they don't care, no they won't change their course. Money is all they care about. They are comically transparent in this.

Kloqdq11/10/2017, 4:18:00 PM4 votes

The issue is just them putting too much of the reward into single bursts. This makes the grinding and general feel of progression a huge issue. I really wish they fixed this but it's hard to say.

PhoenixwingzZ11/11/2017, 7:34:22 AM4 votes

I understand where you come from on a lot of this. League has turned into the United States from 1910 to 2017 with the new update - I'll explain how;

Back then, Milk was 5 cents a gallon. There were less than 10,000,000 people who populated the US at that time.

Now, it's $3.00 because demand has to be met for 300,000,000 Americans.

The same has happened to League. Because the old system only adhered to the savvy League veterans in the amounts of a dozen million per year, now they had to make a new system. A system that was going to be able to pay for all of the new servers they have to sustain, supporting a larger-than-ever, 100,000,000 player-per-month player base.

Notice how some games are really laggy? It's high player traffic. But, I'm not at my point yet.

The point is that the old system was like Milk at 5 cents a gallon in 1910. League takes a long time to 100% complete; to get all the champs and to master them all to M7; but much longer now. There are more people demanding the experience of League, but Rito still only has the same amount of League to give to all. It still takes the same amount of time for League players to reach the end of the experience.

So what do they do if the theoretical supply of League doesn't meet the demand of the players? What do they do if the experience of League for each player won't meet privately-invested expectations? Look-

Champs take longer to get: Champion Shards are now more rare: Skin Shards come out of Hextech chests more frequently now, Champion Shards more rare; Blue Essence as a whole more rare to acquire without levelling up;

it's simple.

They dilute League. It's classic micro-economics.

By making champions harder to acquire, they have more new players spending longer playing the game in order to get basic commission from telecomm companies. The players that are playing free-of-charge, are still giving Rito small amounts of monies via commission. With a massive player base, it will add up, even if profit from each individual player is as small as .001 cents per player. The number is probably bigger than that.

Meanwhile, there are veterans like us, who pay money for the new champs, money for skins, money for everything; (I'm no Season 1 vet, but I've been playing on-and-off and Ryze since Season 3), Why do we do it?

I'll tell you why;

Ever notice how some American celebrities spend their time playing Xbox just like middle-class Americans do?

Even if wealth separates social classes, there is only one League.

In the Cryptocurrency world, whoever bought 300$ worth of BitShares on March 3rd, 2017, and sold all of them on June 10th, 2017? Has $900,000 dollars right now. And some people invested thousands at that time.

In the stock world, FRZT skyrocketed from .0010 to .0130 and whoever invested $1000 (me) made something like $10,000 profit off of three days of waiting.

I know it seems like money is impossible to come by for those young'un's out there, but once you turn of-age to do intricate financial things and have the audacity to make erratic financial moves that could potential be a golden age for your bank account, you make the money to be able to pay for all those cool Rito toys like that (snaps fingers).

Most of the player base is people who are middle-class or lower who try to get as much as they can for free, and they still have the system there for that.

I'm right in the middle. I'm upper-middle class, I made 1000% on a stock-market only run in June (missed the bitshare boom ;.;) and I bought only champions that are meta. Of course I'm not paying money for Tryndamere or Teemo since they are cheap, both money-speaking and gameplay-speaking. Banned a lot. I don't pay for Xayah or Rakan because each game of Summoners Rift is very circumstantial. I understand that buying expensive champs does not mean free wins, and I understand that enough to know not to waste money on out-of-meta expensive champions, like Aatrox.

In the end, it's all about whoever has the money to try it all out. Some people love the game so much that they'll pay for all the champs, whether they can financially afford it all or not. Some find it a social obligation to buy minimum-expense champs just to keep an edge, like Akali or Katarina. Some find it fun to Main Teemo or Tryn because they are cheap, and lmao cheap.

Can you imagine if I'm one of those people playing league who invested like $10,000 in Bitshares in march for no reason, then sold it all for $10,000,000 in the summer?

I'd buy every Aatrox Skin and hold a charity event livestream celebrating every death I get with Aatrox and each death I get as Aatrox, 500$ goes to the Jimmy Fund lmfao the Jimmy Fund would be VERY GRATEFUL

PhDs Nuts11/11/2017, 4:20:19 AM3 votes

Riot gave an explanation that the level-up capsules should average out to ~910 BE per capsule. Here's the problem with averages with a population in the millions:

Statistically, a lot of people are going to get screwed.

YerroFever11/11/2017, 6:23:10 AM3 votes

I feel like we veterans have virtually nothing to look forward to except for the milestone capsules.

What else do we spend our BE on? The BE shop is going away in a few weeks... Could we get maybe a rotating few items in the store that we can buy with BE? Like one or two items a month that go on sale with BE? Champ skin? ward skin? summoner icon? emote? anything?

Rozzeta11/11/2017, 2:09:01 PM3 votes

In the same way some casinos use free food or snacks to keep people playing, Riot is using the exp system to keep people playing more games than then would otherwise. In addition, it's extremely frustrating to not get what you want, but the possibility of getting what you want is what keep a lot of gamblers coming, and landing something great only to not have whatever you need to fully activate it is what is going to trigger the RP purchases. Frankly speaking, the only reason they can get away with this is because there's a lack of regulation. Nothing in this system has the player's best interest in sight, and it's not like Riot was not making any money before. I feel more like a prey than a player.

grimnior11/11/2017, 8:15:22 AM3 votes

i want the ip system back. i hate this new system.

rtbf22561824111/10/2017, 7:52:38 PM3 votes

Not to mention Overwatch doesn't have such things like "Hero" drops. And even if it did, it'd count towards your credits anyway and you can buy freaking skins for them. Imagine if getting champ shards dropped orange essence? Blizzard can afford that.

Dreadlocks11/10/2017, 1:29:23 PM3 votes

And Rengar is still a swimmer... =]

YerroFever11/14/2017, 7:48:25 AM2 votes

For me, I have two gripes with the analytics supplied by Riot's team.

"You're earning more blue essence than in the old system with IP" It's true, but it's like asking someone to describe what's in the Pacific Ocean and all Riot says is it has lots of water. They're not telling you about all the salt content in the ocean and they're not telling you about the vegetation and they're not telling you about the organisms, etc...

  1. EXP gain vs IP gain Sure gaining EXP is faster in this than gaining IP, however, the feel of the EXP gain is less meaningful because we get virtually no useful things between levels.

  2. Blue essence vs IP Sure we earn more blue essence in the end but the way the graphs depict the BE gain, it's like we gain it on a curve, however, that's not true because the graph only plots the levels. The way we actually earn it is a staircase because you plot the games you play until you gain levels.

As you play games over the course of days, you gain basically nothing. When you level up, you get a spike of BE. This is why the graphs aren't accurate.

https://i.imgur.com/MWK8TiS.png

How to solve this?

How about after every game we play we gain a bit of BE and then based on the average number of gains, reduce the BE a capsule gives by that much? This way, we don't gain or lose any BE in the long run and we don't feel bad while leveling up.

Fishing Boat11/12/2017, 3:30:08 AM2 votes

Going to go out on a limb and say that people angrily posting in this thread are too impatient to give the system ten levels to see how things shake out.

Instead level thirty two players who hit their first level are frustrated because they can't trust the stats on essence numbers, or see that the time between their new champs is arbitrary anyway. Everyone here who has any right to complain surely has massive amounts of essence they should be sitting on because of the huge, VERY generous refund Riot gave from the old runes system, and now they're complaining because they're 200 essence from a new champ? Odd.

TLDR just trust the statistics and hit a few more levels, IMO the old system felt like garbage, earning like 80 IP a game to drop into your arbitrary currency abyss until you notice you have enough to do something interesting with. [slayer-jinx-unamused]

Swaid11/12/2017, 6:21:28 AM2 votes

Yeah, usually there is nuance, at least a shred of it for updates like these, but this time I can say with a bit more certainty: Riot, you done fucked up.

SnowHawKza11/12/2017, 6:14:30 PM2 votes

Change is needed. VOTE,COMMENT,SHARE

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/m2qjmMG6-can-we-not-get-blue-essence-after-a-game-like-we-did-with-ip

[slayer-jinx-catface]

xelaker11/10/2017, 2:17:39 PM2 votes

Easy fix. Buy tons of Rp.