Hextech crafting has some flaws that keep it from feeling as rewarding as it could
I recently did an unboxing video for the hextech crafting system and a few things became apparent that could be changed to improve the system and make it feel like a much more rewarding experience for the players.
The way to unlock chests at the moment is pretty solid, 1 chest per champion per season, and you can only unlock so many chests before you need to wait for another one to become available, this feels pretty rewarding and keeps people from using up all their chests early and having nothing to unlock for the rest of the season, no issues with this part of the system.
Then there are the key fragments, this is one area that the system falls flat, it kind of kills the excitement that comes with getting a chest when you realize you don't have any keys so you can't unlock it, then once you get the keys you have a chance to get something you already own, which is even higher if you buy a lot of skins, meaning that hextech crafting is kind of worse for you the better customer you are. I own a lot of skins, well over 300, as well as every champion, and after opening 28 chests I only ended up with 7 skins I didn't already own, though I did get a couple more through rerolls and bonuses.
So I have a few suggestions for improving the system.
- Get rid of the random key fragment drops and replace it with the ability to buy keys using IP, this way if we get a chest we can actually open it, and it gives players with a lot of IP something to spend it on after getting all the runes and champions.
- Weight the system to be more likely to give players something they don't own, or even make it so you either can't get something you own or things you own take up 2 reroll slots.
- Allow the option to gift the loot you get to people on your friends list, this would be especially good if I get a champ or skin I already have.
- Have each chest contain 2 things, the first thing would be a champion or skin shard and the second thing has a chance to either be a second champion/skin shard, an icon, a ward skin, purple gem, orange/blue essence, or a rune unlock token(for unlocking a complete set of 1 type of rune, aka all 9 AD reds)
- Allow players to turn blue essence into orange at an exchange rate, once you have all champions there's nothing you can even get with the blue essence.
So those are my suggestions, if you have any more then leave a comment.