Learn more: Star Guardian 2017

Well while I disagree with your take on the border if you read carefully you will notice that you DO NOT have to spend 8k in order to get the border. I think Riot understands that would be super stupid pointless and plain old greedy. Instead you simply...

[+]"...purchase a New Horizon Set or any First Star Edition bundle and receive an exclusive loading screen border."

Next, if you already have the champion in question the bundle is 1775 (except Ahri's, it's 2245 RP due to the base price on the skin [1820 RP]). So boo hoo you have to spend an extra 425 RP (approximately $5 extra) for an icon you may or may not want to get the skin you do want NAD the snazzy border to go with it. Sounds like a WAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY BETTER deal than 8K for a bunch stuff you probably really don't care about if you ask me.

However I do agree the rewards for the Star Guardian missions are ABSOLUTE TRASH! Riot, you're telling me I have to put up with that much Cho'gath, Velkoz and Kog'maw shenanigans on THAT LEVEL, and all I get is a lousy ward skin OR a RANDOM REGULAR CHAMPION SHARD (while i personally have EVERY CHAMPION IN THE GAME SO IT IS LITERALLY THE MOST USELESS THING YOU COULD POSSIBLY GIVE ME)? REALLY RIOT? REALLY? WHO'S "BRIGHT" IDEA WAS THAT? That ward should be 1 MAYBE 2 tokens ABSOLUTE MAX! In the two weeks it would take me to get the tokens for that, I could go to my neighbors house offer them 25$ to clean the weeds outta their yard, finish that whole project in less than a few hours TOPS, and not only get that same ward skin, but buy it for four of my friends. Like there is honestly NO REWARD there for the exchange in time and sheer effort alone that's actually worth it. I played about 10+ games on that mode and I was only able to complete the initial quest and the utility part of the easiest quest in the 2nd part (GO SORAKA LOVE OF MY LIFE!). All that work for a ward skin, and that's LITERALLY IT? UNACCEPTABLE RIOT! YOU CAN DO WAY BETTER THAN THAT! So PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE consider the following:

[+] A) Make the border BY ITSELF a choice for 4 Tokens and [+] B) Decrease the costs of the Shard/Ward skin to 1 token IMMEDIATELY, OR [+] C) Set the missions so they DO NOT REQUIRE THE WIN!

If you do A&B or C, it should pretty much balance out the entire system. Now I understand you guys want the last level to be hard and I get that, but for some "kids" that's not in the realm of hard it's in the realm of "impossible to OMFG I'M NOT A PRO THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE" hard. Based on this reward system it looks like you guys could use a little help, so I'll be hitting the careers section of the website and applying like crazy, wouldn't want you guys to totally derail this train (unlike some of my solo Q ranked teams :-/...). If you think you have something available I might be good at in the meantime, hit me up in the League client (this is my main account) and we'll see what we can do :-).

But all in all Riot good job overall, I like the First Star Edition Bundles that was a GREAT IDEA (although I would have liked to see similar bundles for the first set of Star Guardians), the new skins look FABULOUSLY FANTASTICALLY AWESOME (and I think Taric would agree :-), and the new game mode, although insanely almost impossibly hard at times, is still HELLA FUN! So I look forward to seeing how you all will balance out those rewards in future. As well as the upcoming Victorious Skin for Season 2017 (Victorious Soraka cough cough, hint hint, wink wink)

KUDOS ON A JOB WELL DONE RIOTERS! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

I'm saying this as clear as possible, PLEASE CHANGE THE MISSIONS RIOT ! it's getting frustrating, it's extremely rare where people win, extremely hard to find 5 people who intentionally want to pre-made and get frustrated to finish missions, Please 1- make it for either completing a game like on the PBE not winning OR winning the Normal mode 2- NO pre-made requirements ! I know many platinum and Diamond players who keep losing most of their games, like win 1 every 20 games or so, this is NOT RIGHT.

Don't get me wrong, Riot's done a fuck ton of good for the game and its players this season, but at the same time that doesn't really excuse them changing all their business practices and increasing the price on everything. Boarders are becoming more and more difficult to obtain compared to first PROJECT event where you simply got a boarder for buying the skin within the same week of release.

Here's the thing about the Conqueror Karma Boarder. It had to be bought through a bundle, much like how these ones are too. The Bundle cost 1616 without any discount factored, the base skin itself was 975, and the Ward cost 640, meaning the border you pay for it is a whopping 1 extra RP. For the base cost of the non-discounted individual SG skins, not factoring the champion themselves, leaves you paying an additional 175 RP when factoring flat skin costs and the normal cost of an Icon. That's WAY more than what you had to pay for Conqueror Karma's Boarder. You can justify the 175 as paying extra for the exclusive Icons that can only be bought through the bundles, but at the same time, most player's don't care for the icons unless they do something in game like the special emotes, changing the poros in Snowdown or linking the icons to a boarder (like the PROJECT: Disruption skins). Otherwise most players like me care only for Skins and Ward Skins since we can actively play them in game.

Boarders, which only appear during game loadings, should stay consistent as a 1 RP bonus like all past executions of the special Boarder or be like PROJECT where you can earn it by doing missions if you are going to do increased RP costs as you at least got loot drops out of it along with the Icon and Boarder bonus.

I was really hyped for these skins on release, but now I'm probably bowing out on them until they go on sale later. Boarders are awesome, but not for 875 additional RP that I could use on other skins I could want later down the road.