Originally Posted by Akesgeroth

You're opening a box which you should have left closed.

First of all, you DO have to buy champions. You can't seriously pretend someone can just use free week champions all the time. More champions means more versatility. Now, of course, you can buy them with IP, but since you guys decided to make every new champion cost 6300 ip and reduce IP rewards... On top of that, runes can only be bought with IP, which means buying champs with IP essentially gimps you unless you already have full rune pages.

Unlocking a single 6300 ip champion will easily take around 50 hours of gameplay. Pretending you don't mean for people to purchase them with RP is laughable, and pretending that it doesn't affect gameplay is absurd. And inevitably, if you keep this stance, you'll get compared to DotA 2, which is also free, but has all champions unlocked at the start and does not have a masteries/runes metagame that requires grinding. Their income comes entirely from cosmetic items, and know what? It works.

If the IP system was reasonable, there would not be an issue. But it isn't. IP gain rates are ridiculously slow unless you buy boosts (which cost RP, btw), which barely gets them into the "acceptable" range. Unless you spend RP on boosts and champions, you will remain crazy gimped for a long, LONG, LONG time.

It's like claiming someone working minimum wage can become a millionaire with that job. Sure, if he lives to be 600 years old, never has any accidents that force him to spend money and works the whole time and lives extremely poorly. Realistically though, it's a dubious claim. You'll buy the old champs at 450 ip and even then it'll prevent you from getting runes for a while. And let's not even count the cost of additional rune pages.

Originally Posted by Zekarie

You guys are completely missing the point. Sure, when you look at it like a ****** it is indirectly buying power, grats, you win, you are indirectly buying power. Riot does not directly let you buy power (runes, exp, IP) because those require you to play the game to improve the ACTUAL STATISTICS OF YOUR IN GAME CHAMPION.

There is NO WAY that you can increase the effectiveness of your character in game no matter how much money you throw at it, at some point you have to play the game. If you were allowed to buy IP or convert RP to IP then you would be giving a way to DIRECTLY increase the power of a champion without actually playing.

There is a very good separation right now. So congrats on believing that buying a champion is buying IP, its not... its not even close. If you don't understand that then this whole conversation is lost on you anyway and you will just be disgruntled because you have to play the game to get runes instead of just buying them with cash (since that is what this is all about).

Originally Posted by Aggrbargl

How do you reconcile this position with your the selling of champions, which improve a player's ability to counterpick both personally and by trading with teammates; and rune pages, which are required to play many champions at full effectiveness and to adapt to the opposing team's picks?

Originally Posted by Aggrbargl

Indirect power is still power.

For that matter, I think grinding power is questionable, too. If I had my way, everyone would enter champion select on a completely even footing.

Originally Posted by RiotKiddington

Riot will not support this idea. This idea is essentially "selling power", which Riot is strongly against.

Originally Posted by Dyshonest

Snipped

Originally Posted by Aggrbargl

How do you reconcile this position with your the selling of champions, which improve a player's ability to counterpick both personally and by trading with teammates; and rune pages, which are required to play many champions at full effectiveness and to adapt to the opposing team's picks?

Originally Posted by TimeScar

Let's see how much money to make on that high chair you sit on. You cannot have successful FREE game out there that doesn't involve grind in one tiny form or another, and 99% of non-free games have grind in them too. At least in LoL the only grind is playing a new game every day, and not collecting skins.

Originally Posted by Daitrombe

Of course technically they don't force you to buy champs or hell play the game at all, but that is missing the point, buying champions with RP gives you a LOT of IP to buy runes and the like, compare it to the effectiveness of IP boosts for example.

They ARE selling power, just indirectly, you're paying 975 RP for 6.3K IP if you were definitely going to buy the champion.

Originally Posted by TimeScar

Let's see how much money to make on that high chair you sit on. You cannot have successful FREE game out there that doesn't involve grind in one tiny form or another, and 99% of non-free games have grind in them too. At least in LoL the only grind is playing a new game every day, and not collecting skins.

Originally Posted by TimeScar

Let's see how much money to make on that high chair you sit on. You cannot have successful FREE game out there that doesn't involve grind in one tiny form or another, and 99% of non-free games have grind in them too. At least in LoL the only grind is playing a new game every day, and not collecting skins.

Originally Posted by Raisu

Scenario 1:
You have 0 IP and 975 RP, you want <New Champion> but you also want <New Runes>, you use 975 RP.
You still have 0 IP and cannot purchase <New Runes>, your purchase of 975 RP did not give you 6.3k IP

Scenario 2:
You have 6300 IP and 975 RP, you want <New Champion> but you also want <New Runes>, you use 975 RP.
You still have 6300 IP that you can use on <New Runes> instead of using it on <New Champion>. This was the luxury provided by using RP

Scenario 3:
You have 6300 IP and 0 RP, you want <New Champion> but you also want <New Runes>, you use 975 RP.
Where'd that RP come from... Oh right you purchased it specifically so you didn't have to use your IP. See above luxury note.

TL;DR - Pay attention to Scenario 1. You're not purchasing IP with RP.