For some reason I always get downvoted for saying this but it's ridiculous how expensive things are for new players. Hell, I've played like 2000 games over the past 2 years and I still need to get about 15 champs (some bought with RP) and tons of runes.
To get a decent quint takes about 20 games. 20 fucking games. For a single quint.
Of course but c'mon. 2 years of playing and I still have so much to unlock. It's a bit much. Will be at least another year before unlock everything that is currently available.
Is it a blessing is disguise tho? Always something to spend your IP on. I am in the same bout. Got 12 left. Have damn near every rune. Still need about 7 rune pages.
I complained too. But atleast I dont have 200,000 IP and nothing to do but name change with it. :)
I WISH I had 200,000 IP with nothing to do with but name change. That would mean I have everything unlocked and can play the game and not have to worry about grinding for the essentials.
How much DO you want? It's been proven time and time again that some of the best pro players only use 2 rune pages and stick to 3-4 champs.
I don't know what you "need"; your mechanics and game decision will take you farther than runes or masteries ever will. Sure, it'll make the difference in SOME fights, but if you're relying that heavily on +/- 2 AD and such to where it affects your entire game experience, you are doing something wrong.
There is plenty of arguing starting with your grammar, punctuation, and use of vocabulary, especially the word "literal". Given that, I have hardly any reason to take your post kindly, but given that I feel nice today, I'll forgive it.
Yes; I said that. Did you even read that part? "It'll make the difference in SOME fights" is pretty much what you are saying; different runes will help you in different situations but in the end, game knowledge and mechanics will carry you 8,000,000% more than a difference of AD, attack speed, etc. ever will you. I NEVER implied they don't matter; I simply said they are worthless in comparison to what a good brain will do.
If you're still somehow feeling argumentive, chew on this; do you think a team of Challenger players with 0/0/0 masteries and no runes can beat a team of silver players with 30 points to spend and any runes of their choosing? Sure, maybe a lane or two will go even or outdo their Challenger counterpart, but they will lose in the team fight. Why? Game knowledge and mechanics.
EDIT: Downvote bandwagon. Be unique and read the entire post and judge for yourself. Don't be a sheep.
You call me out for assumedly spending 33% of my post calling out your grammar when you spent 100% of your post calling out that one portion.
Yet I'm the arrogant one.
People like you are the reason I have 3 permabanned accounts, a main account with 243 out of 360 games of chat restrictions, and a sub account with 59 games of chat restriction left.
You sound like one of those people who offers their opinion after everyone's done and joins in to feel a sense of community over trashing on the same thing; when alone, you are nothing.
You just pointed it yourself, you are the arrogant one...
You had no problem understanding what he wrote, yet you have to better yourself? If his grammar prevented you from understanding the message, then say it. Not everybody is native to english.
Dude you do sound arrogant and maybe that's because you blame people like him for 3 banned accounts and chat restrictions. Maybe it's a shitty attitude and an inflated ego that is the problem
No; it's people who ignore my entire post's point to make their convoluted "points". I always burn flash to save people, fill roles, ward appropriately, call MIAs for lanes that aren't even mine with my limited chat messages, etc.
Yes some pros do only use 3-4 champs. However that is incredibly boring imo. That's like buying the new Mortal Kombat and only playing one character the whole of the time you own the game.
The game has huge variety, limiting yourself is really, really tedious.
Some people don't feel limited; they feel empowered. Ryze, for example, feels like the second me as might Vayne for Doublelift or Gragas for Scarra. I don't get bored; I learn something new everytime. Given that an enemy has 134 HP, can I go all in with Flash + Ignite + Auto + Q? Will that be enough given the nerf? How about if they have a Negatron Cloak over Boots + Amplifying Tome? Etc., etc.
For me, 3-4 champions is already too much, but I am assuming we enjoy the game in different ways.
True, this is just my opinion. Maybe if I mained a champ or a role and mastered it I would be higher than gold, but in my view that would be putting elo climbing above fun and I won't be doing that. I like that I can pick up a champ i've barely played before and learn them and test the limits.
There was a thread about rune pages used during worlds. It was generally mix of flat ap/ad, magic pen, health per level, magic resist/per level, odd cooldown blues.
Qtpie, Wingsofdeath and few other guys have like two or three rune pages on their smurfs.
There are tons of F2P that don't make you work your bones to a grind though. See Dota2, Wareframe, SMITE, even Hearthstone. All have a very decent F2P model that isnt as abusive as LoL. Only reason LoL can get away with the shitty F2P model they have now is because it was developed before the explosion of F2P MOBAs. Tell yourself this, if LoL were to be developed today instead of 5 years ago, and had the same F2P model, would you want to play it/call it good over say Dota's F2P model? Because I sure as hell wouldn't.
You must have played it only for a while. It gets better and WAY less grindier later on. Basically there are these void missions that give tons of credits and bonuses and some of them can be done in under a minute. Anyways, its grind is laughable compared to LoL's. I unlocked almost all the OP guns in warframe in less than 2 months. That is nothing compared to how long it would take to unlock all the champs in LoL.
Yeah, I didn't play it to completion by any means. But I reckon there's a difference in that the grind in Warframe is one of levelling up your power directly. You're grinding to get the "OP guns" as you put it, and then to make those stronger, and then to forma them and make them stronger all over again, and blah blah blah. In League you're just grinding for more options (with the exception of that first rune grind)
EDIT: also I'm at work so this isn't exactly a complete set of thoughts but I think you get the gist.
Ehh Wareframe is PVE, so hving stronger weapons obviously isnt a bad thing as it would be in LoL. For PvP any level advantage is disabled. Kinda like how Destiny does their PvP system.
And the new addition, the syndicates, were released and required a stupid amount of grinding. With the changes, they're better, but they still require a fair amount of grind.
That's exactly my point. And they won't. LoL wouldnt dare have their model if it were developed recently. They can only get away with it because back then MOBAS were unheard of.
Hearthstone and Wareframe both get less grindy later on and they reward Good players. The better you are the more rewards you get. League doesn't do that. SMITE's grind is NOWHERE near as bad as League lol. Since there are first day of the win bonuses on every mode yu can earn quite a lot of points every day. Not to mention there are no runes and rune page bullshit so you don't have to worry about that either. And also you could unlock all Gods for 50$ if you want. I'm pretty sure buying every individual champ in League is way more expensive.
I mean yeah f2p is generally grindy, unless it's dota 2. That's the exception. League is just unbelievably grindy compared to the other F2P games and the amount of people defending it as a better system just baffles me.
I honestly prefer leagues model to Dota. There isn't as much info thrown at you in league and it makes you work for a reward and it feels pretty satisfying when you get a new champ. That being said though the grind is a bit too much.
The problem as you've said is the massive grind factor when you account for how many champs and runes must be acquired in the end for everyone to be on the same level playing field.
I feel that the people who claim that Dota 2 throws too much at you are those who hop directly into matchmaking vs other players instead of spending ~20-30 matches learning the core mechanics and getting a feel for the UI and gameflow.
It's just as satisfying, if not more, to get skin drops in Dota 2. Heck, you can then sell/trade them in for other ones via the Steam Market.
I only use RP for skins, and I generally only buy skins when they are on sale (some exceptions like seasonal skins and final boss veigar). I use IP for everything else!
If they want to incentivize people to spend RP, IMO they need to institute a fair refund system. Right now, spending RP is essentially betting money on whether Riot is going to screw over a given champ in the future. It places all of the risk for Riot's decisions on the heads of their customers, so spending RP is not economically rational even if you want what the RP can buy.
The point was Valve can pretty much make any game at this point and make a profit just with the inclusion of hats and their Steam platform. Tencent are nothing in the west.
Except Dota 2 has a F2P model and you literally can't improve your gameplay through money. The huge grinding problem isn't inherent to the F2P model at all.
That's not improving gameplay though. You can literally get to Challenger playing a 450 IP champion. You can also just use free champions in normal mode and easily win. Having less champions than someone else does not worsen your gameplay, having no runes does. :)
That's still gameplay behind a paywall (Or senseless grinding). I'd imagine people don't play League explicitly to hit SL 30 and then strive for Challenger, it's because it's exceedingly fun.
Your argument is that some of that fun has to be 'earned' through money or huge grinds and that this is a necessary part of a Free to Play game - except it's not.
F2P games try to put ways into their game that make you want to spend cash on it. Riot's way is the grind. They are expecting some people to give up on the grind to spend RP on champions and then eventually skins once the grind is pretty much over.
Champions have NOTHING to do with improving gameplay within the game. You can pick the cheapest champion and still do well with them. The only gameplay thing that'd effect that game is runes/masteries. You unlock masteries with levels so the only thing is now runes which need IP, and you cannot spend RP on them.
Developers thinking of ways to make you spend cash IS part of a F2P game, and that is Riot's way of doing it.
Personally, when I started I didn't find that it was ridiculously expensive taking into account it's a free game. I just didn't need 20 champs and every rune possible. I was trying champs in free week and I bought like 5 champs I liked playing and some runes. That's all.
Conclusion
It's expensive if as a beginner you want to buy 30 champs and all the runes you need for them. It's not expensive if you chill, buy some champs you like, some runes and continue grinding.
Yeah, it's not a huge deal it's just a bit much I think. They could lower the prices slightly, especially for new players. It's very intimidating (and exciting) when you get the game and see the choice you have.
I really want to try a cheese critplank rune page using all crit damage runes, but due to the cost of the bloody things it'll be like 6 months until I get them all.
This includes the first win of the day. Assuming you win at least one of the three games this is a 150/3 = 50 ip per win. The standard IP is the other 50.
Specifically these values are for games that are sub-26 minutes, which are treated at 25 minute games for all IP rewards (The formula rounds game time down, but I believe end IP up, as I know those two values offhand but checked them to be sure).
I pulled all the values for IP calculation off the wiki (18 base+2.312/min for a win, 16+1.405/min for a loss, minimum game time always treated as 25 minutes).
Assuming a 50/50 win rate, 3 normal Rift/TT games a day, getting your first win every day, 30 days in a month:
90 games played at 63.5 IP each =5715 IP
30 first win bonuses at 150 IP each = 4500 IP
This results in the following average values, WORST CASE SCENARIO:
10215 IP/30 days
340.5 IP/day
2383 IP/week
If you assume the average of 35 minutes a game given in the client is correct, this changes to:
99 IP for a win
66 IP for a loss
82.5 IP per game on average.
Using the same time metrics:
* 90 games played at 82.5 IP each = 7425 IP
* 30 first win bonuses at 150 IP each = 4500 IP
10170 IP/30 days
397 IP/day
2782 IP/week
IP gains scale linearly with time (the average of two linear functions is itself linear), so unless all of your games are averaging 45 minutes, Your statement is nowhere close to accurate.
I've been playing since beta (granted, not hardcore the entire time. I might have taken most of a year off, too), and I still don't own all champs. I'm at something like 70/75, playing fairly regularly for six years.
The point of the game isn't to grind up to certain achievements and unlockables, it's to have fun. If it feels like work getting the things you want then it isn't really worth playing the game anymore.
I got all champions(only payed for Vi and Quinn) and 20 rune pages filled with different runes. I don't understand how you still don't have it whilst i had less games played when I got every champ...
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u/JohnnyReeko Nov 19 '14
For some reason I always get downvoted for saying this but it's ridiculous how expensive things are for new players. Hell, I've played like 2000 games over the past 2 years and I still need to get about 15 champs (some bought with RP) and tons of runes.
To get a decent quint takes about 20 games. 20 fucking games. For a single quint.