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[DemonOfWrath]

Please.

Clearly you want jungle Yorick.

[Cthulhu]

I think that'd be overkill, and we want Nautilus for peeling and initiation.  Nunu could also be a good choice, peeling with his snowball and blood boiling Vayne.

[Skyrunner]

Sejuani > Nautilus in my opinion.

Edit: I just played a game as Corki with thresh vs Jinx and Blitzcrank. It was a duo with someone I knew.

I was like 'wow' the entire game. For starters, he landed a perfect Death Sentence at 1:00 to let me kill a Jinx that wandered into the bot river bush (though he died in the process), came to support me trying to kill a counterjungling Yi, landed multiple Death Sentences on Blitzcrank and Jinx, and zealously warded to prevent deaths or secure kills, and zone the enemy laners. The result was a 10/1/1 laning phase score for me, and I used that momentum to pick up another 15 or so kills before game ended >_>

Wow... really, the support makes the adc. O_O

[sebcool]

((I am aware that my response is pretty late, sorry about that))

How many EUW LoL players are there, by the wayż Haven't seen many in this thread...

You will never get nearly enough IP to play properly without: buying RP's, using a single hero role (eventually you can play a few more, but that takes quite a while), or not using proper runes for your role.

That's just wrong. Without ever paying anything I currently own 9 rune pages (from free RP + special offers) and have 230000 IP left (which would also easily buy me those pages if needed). Those 9 have so far sufficed for several roles, and would especially suffice for all but the most extreme cases if I would focus on just a single role. I haven't even played that many games (~2500 in total, I think), every serious player probably played way more. With that IP I could buy essentially all missing heroes fitting into one of the five roles and some more runes.

I am not saying that you can't get everything in the game eventually.
It isn't even a massive problem, as far as P2P goes its actually rather mild. But it is a constant and ongoing annoyance (at least until you play thousands of games).

Now, it isn't a huge problem. But if there is a choice between a LoL and another equal quality game (DOTA) without having to spend hundreds of hours unlocking all the content, then LoL loses every time.

If the runes and such *actually* made the game more fun, then I would be fine with them. But as it is, all it adds is pointless grinding.

Now, that isn't my only problem with LoL, but it is one of the largest problems.

DOTA has the advantage of having all the champs available for free at the start, but I personally don't find the grinding for new champs much of a problem. It gives you a sense of progression, and the IP gain per match is such that it doesn't take a hundred matches to earn a champ (if you take advantage of the 'first win' bonus, that is.)

Really, you don't need to grind at all. Just play normally and you'll still earn tons of IP. It also has the advantage that there are fewer people taking your champ, since they have to unlock it.

[Flying Dice]

Well, if they made the runes work like masteries, where you can get them all for free, it would eliminate the grinding.

This is a intriguing idea. I could see it working like this: as you unlock the slots, you can fill them with level 1 runes for free. Once you hit level 30, you can fill them with level 2 runes for free, and you can buy level 3 runes like you currently do. Pair that with, say a free rune page at level 20 and another at 30, and you've eliminated a lot of the complaints about grind while still leaving enough of it for it to be worthwhile for the people who enjoy it.

I'unno about anyone else, but I think I'd like LoL quite a bit less without having to unlock champs and runes. It's not really an onerous grind (at least compared to a lot of games I've played), but there's still the satisfaction that comes from that sense of progression. Numbers increasing is a powerful drug. It's stimulating some sort of basic part of our collective psyche associated with materialism. I mean, I've played games where everything is basically handed to you on a platter, and I almost always end up faffing around, getting bored, and leaving. The only real exception is Just Cause 2. Why? Just 'cause.

[Cthulhu]

I think I'd probably enjoy crack less if it weren't chemically addictive.

Anyway, the runes are an integral part of their monetization scheme.  As I mentioned, a lot of people won't be willing to spend the time it takes to grind IP for champs /and/ runes, so they pay for champs with RP.  Once you've bought a champ with money it's easy to persuade yourself to buy a skin, and if you're dedicated enough to be buying runes you're probably not going to quit over runepages.

[Flying Dice]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ya think that maybe there's a tiny little hair of difference between substances that create chemical dependency and entertainment that has a hook designed to trigger instinctive behavior? A hell of a lot more people overcome the desire to keep playing grindy games when they're not fun through nothing but sheer will than there are that break drug addiction with the same.


TBH, I don't see why people get as up in arms as they do over this sort of grind. You don't need to have every single champion that catches your fancy, yanno? It's certainly not like, say, WoT, where you have to unlock a bunch of champions (tanks) and grind each of them just to be able to grind  the one you want for days more to make it playable. Not sure what you meant about buying runes, either. AFAIK there's no way to buy them with RP, and "dedication?" o.0. Unless you're seeing things in the light of "I have twenty main champions and I need a full page of level three runes for each of them!" That said, the way Riot monetizes rune pages does press buttons for me.

It's just... like, this complaining over grind seems to be focused more on instant gratification being impossible, with outrage over monetization acting as an excuse. Considering how so many people apparently get sick of playing once they've been in ranked for a while, you'd think that something to make progress towards would be welcome. I'm not saying it's a particularly good model for a F2P game, but it's hardly the cackling evil that people make it out to be, at least relatively speaking.

And hell, I'll take the option to speed up my progress with cash over a subscription fee any day. If Riot charged $20/mo. or whatever the batshit crazy standard rate is these days and made it easy to get everything, I wouldn't play. Whatever problems there are with models for profitable F2P games, they're nowhere near as bad as subscription-based systems. I might drop $30 on a F2P game over the course of a year, but a standard subscription model would bleed me like a trapped pig. Even really cheap subscription games (for example, what Runescape used to be back before it went to shit) could run upwards of $60 per year, and modern sub-based games can cost into the hundreds of dollars for a year of play.

Meh. :|

[Sharp]

I think I'd probably enjoy crack less if it weren't chemically addictive.

Anyway, the runes are an integral part of their monetization scheme.  As I mentioned, a lot of people won't be willing to spend the time it takes to grind IP for champs /and/ runes, so they pay for champs with RP.  Once you've bought a champ with money it's easy to persuade yourself to buy a skin, and if you're dedicated enough to be buying runes you're probably not going to quit over runepages.

You can't buy runes, you can only buy runepages (IP as well), champions (IP as well), skins, boosts, new summoner names and region transfers. LoL isn't pay 2 win at all, you can advance more quickly if you pay but once you hit level 30 then it's only your skill that matters. I haven't paid a penny to Riot to play LoL and I'm happily in gold league with only my skill (and a little luck) holding me back from going higher, not my wallet.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   Haven't been to this thread in a while. Probably end up getting sucked back in soon enough anyway but whatever. Anyway I don't know if what I am about to say is what Cthulhu meant but I do believe the runes are an integral part of the money making. Basically you need runes. You want heros of course but honestly if you have the right runes you could play free characters till the cows come home. Runes are only bought with IP which is earned by playing the game and as many people have been complaining you are not flooded with the stuff. Of course if you buy a hero with real money then the IP you didn't use on that can instead be used on the needed runes. Also once you bought a hero then if you really like it or have a bunch of money for misc spending your likely to get a  skin or two. In the end having runes which you have to spend the limited amount of IP you get means people are more likely to buy heros with the limited only by their willingness to pour money into RP.

[Cthulhu]

Yes.  Obviously  not everyone will pay money.  In fact with most games like this the vast majority of users never pay a dime, but a small percentage of the users pay much, much more than their share.

And yes, that's the gist of it.  Runes must be paid for with IP, are essential for competitive play, and are expensive enough to sink hundreds of hours of gameplay into.  And then you also need champions, which conveniently are available for RP.  Obviously not everyone will feel the need to spend money (see above) but it's still pretty obvious that the goal with runes is to create a hard enough sink for users IP that they will feel compelled to spend RP on everything else they need.

And yes, I would compare it to drugs.  It's all dopamine.  It's a carefully constructed system designed to trick your brain into assigning real-world value to imaginary commodities.

[Jopax]

The thing with runes is that you don't need them all, most people aren't good with every champion class but instead have two to three preferred roles that they play, and chances are those roles will need a maximum of three rune pages, most of which will probably be shared runes.

So no, by the time you get to 30 (or 20, when you should start buying the stuff) you probably won't have enough runes or champs to be competitive, but most people don't actually want that, they want to play champs they like, and for that they only need champs they like (which they will probably have a handful of by the time rune buying gets important) and some runes for those specific champs.

Yes it is grindy if you want to have EVERYTHING, but most people aren't like that and as such will get pretty much all of the stuff they need or want trough simple play.

[IronyOwl]

And yes, I would compare it to drugs.  It's all dopamine.  It's a carefully constructed system designed to trick your brain into assigning real-world value to imaginary commodities.

Everything's drugs if you reduce it down far enough. That's the trouble with having a chemically-operated central nervous system.

[eerr]

And everything is rational too.

[Frumple]

Nah, it's ultimately irrational at the very bottom. Arbitrary, etc.

[Skyrunner]

it's quantum all the way down


anyhow, I guess I'm chalking a bay12 tournament down as 'not enough interest'. :c