Champion Mastery, Reward Systems, and Lore.

Greetings, Rioters and fellow summoners!

First, I just want to say that I love Champion Mastery! For me, a "favorite champion" is a lot more than a flavor of the week champion who's strong in the certain meta or patch. Coming from a lifelong lover and fantasy and story-crafting, a champion's personality, style, and story are what makes them special to me and melts my Heart of Gold.

Take Yasuo, for example. Maybe I miss my Q's. Maybe I dive in with E without a path to escape and die. Maybe I get greedy for building damage when what I really need is that Randuin's. Maybe I can't play a top-tier Yasuo. But that won't stop me from loving this champion! He resonates with me and my own meandering path through life. Maybe I haven't done things by the book or the way that people have said I should, but I have faith that I'll get there eventually! _Not all wanderers are lost. _

That's the kind of connection that makes me certain that even though (as teammates love to inform me) I'm not exactly an LCS player and probably never will be, I still don't plan on giving up on League of Legends anytime soon!

I like to think this is a connection that everyone treasures, to some degree. Whether they're hunting evil with Vayne, protecting their friends with Soraka, or spamming /laugh at their puny enemies with Sion, everyone gets into the style of their favorite champions!

This is something that champion mastery rewards. Love a champion? Great! Now there's a way to see your dedication in physical form on your league profile! You even get to brag with that fancy ribbon on the load screen. You and Ahri are a soul-stealing pair, and everyone knows it!

Since I love Champion Mastery and the connection to specific champions that it brings, I've been thinking about ways to enhance this connection! I know a lot of fellow Summoners who have complained to me about Champion Mastery, saying "It's cool, but I don't feel like it really does anything." They see it as a system without reward. I see it as a fantastic opportunity to strengthen a summoner's connection with their favorite champions!

I think a great way to introduce a reward system into Champion Mastery would be to simultaneously address the desire for more lore that many of my fellow summoners share with me. For example, upon reaching levels 3 and 5, you receive a small notification that your champion lore is updated. Upon going to the champions tab of League, under lore you find an unlocked tidbit to help you get to know your favorite champion a bit more! Always wondered about the specifics of some of Ezreal's explorations? Curious about the tragic run-in with scurvy that led Gangplank to carry around an orange AT ALL TIMES? Want to see some conversations from Blitzcrank's Fleshling Compatability Services? This would be the place to find it! Champion lore can feel overwhelming and impersonal when you're faced with a paragraph or two about 100+ champions that covers the basics of their personalities and how they learned to fight the way they do. But I feel that personal, fun, and revealing lore related to the champions you love the most would be a brilliant addition to the game!

I enjoy expanding on existing story and would love writing lore like this! I think it would really help to fill some of the role-playing, story aspect of league as well as improve one of my favorite existing facets of the game, Champion Mastery.

Thanks for reading, and tell me what you think! Much love to all of you!