Prestige skins are a predatory failure.

As most of you probably know, Blood Moon Aatrox just released and Riot has listened to your feedback! Instead of grinding for upwards of 100 frustrating hours where loss streaks set you back on your sluggish grind to unlock Prestige skins and losing all sense of real fun in the game as you try to get tokens, you can just spend $120 every patch to get a shitty chroma! Wowee!

What am I referring to? https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/features/prestige-points-and-new-prestige-edition-skins

Basically there's one way to get prestige skins and that's to buy overpriced loot boxes. You can't gain enough free Prestige Points in a year to get a Prestige skin, so if you're not willing to shell out money for a single subpar chroma with garbage random rewards, you can't get the limited skin. I'm immeasurably disappointed in Riot, part of the reason you gained a massive following was because you didn't try to cheat customers and now you're just another EA or Activision.

For reference, let me compare apples to apples by looking at SMITE. SMITE is a free to play MOBA like League and is one of the most predatory games on the market. Their big end of year event called The Odyssey happens every year and is basically a multi patch skin event. For buying skins (or emotes, ward skins, loading screen borders, etc.) you gain collection bonuses. The final collection bonus is a tier 5 skin, the equivalent of an Ultimate skin in League which evolves as the game progresses and has some other cool extras like music and an animated loading screen splash art.

To get this skin you would have to spend about $100.

Additionally you get all the cool new skins that add up to it (equivalent of 1350 skins), collection rewards like other exclusive skins, emotes, music, etc., plus EVERY Odyssey item you purchase comes with a loot box that requires no key and gives you yet another permanent cosmetic item.

Riot is absolutely delusional if they think prestige skins are anything other than a predatory low effort money grab. Want a limited skin? Pay up or grind for an entire month of your gaming free time. Unlike SMITE this new line of Prestige point skins have no guaranteed new 1350s, no collection rewards, no alternative way to grind tiers, nothing. You're paying $120 for a skin you'll regret getting and random dogshit from loot boxes, with a high chance you'll get nothing cool from the latter and just reroll 520s.

Riot, stop trying to drive away your community. The game itself has been shit since season 7 and season 9 seems like only a small step back in the right direction. I used to put up with it because the replayability is amazing and even a shit LoL is more fun than most other games, but the patience is running out. Now with overpriced loading screen borders, overpriced gem skins, overpriced ruby chromas, streamer exclusive content, etc., it's not only the game which is broken but the whole ecosystem around it as well.

If you want to make more money, you will from this. Short term. The grinding, the obvious predatory limited shit, and all your other gimmicks will just drive people away long term. This isn't even to mention that your next games will be looked at skeptically like an EA or Activision type game and possibly crash based on reviewer drama as a result.

Quit being scummy Riot. I love your game, I love your company, I want you to survive. Just make the game GOOD again if you want money. I just feel bad for artists and writers who are having their work bastardized for a short term profit which might eventually cause their jobs to be lost.