End of year rewards proposed changes
Without turning this into too much of a rant, I find the end of year rewards to be incredibly annoying. I absolutely loved that a couple years ago, everyone got the yearly skin for participation. I hate to complain about RIOT not handing out freebies, but this is downright depressing. The problem is that the skin is too difficult to obtain, which is coupled with the other things being lackluster. It's outright insulting to be shown the splash of the reward skin, not to mention all of the excessive hype RIOT adds to it, when I have no chance of getting it. I'm sure other players feel similar frustration.
I think that the reward tiers should be reorganized so that most players will get the cool reward, while the players in higher leagues will get more subtle things to show off their prestige. 73% of players are edged out of the reward. I'm sure that even extending it to Silver(43% of players) would be a sufficient change, while still allowing the skin some prestige. The higher ranked players could get rewards such as a ward skin, chat coloration, tiered icons, etc. I would recommend switching the loading screen border and banner trim with the skin.
I am aware that skins cost money to make, and by handing out skins RIOT is losing a bit of money. If they made no skin at all, it would be better because it is frustrating to see them catering to the 27%. If they are making it and giving it out anyway, it really isn't too hard to make a ward skin aside of animations for the higher tier rewards. I realize that by including more people, the skin loses prestige. The problem is that the skin often doesn't get used by the people who earned it, which wastes the time and effort of making it. The other possibility is that they do use it, and the reaction to the skin is usually much more contempt than admiration. Looking at the stats, I realize the reason that "ELO Hell" exists is because the leagues are so immense. This change would at least remove the insult to injury of being stuck and losing out because of it.
I would love to get feedback from anyone, however excessive flaming without an actual argument will be ignored.
Edit: another possibility is to fix the underlying problem of league distribution. namely that there are 7 leagues and yet a vast majority of players are placed in the lowest 2. Even excluding master and challenger as special leagues leaves 5 normal ones with 73% of players in the lowest 2.