While I'm sure many of you know my stance on Riot's pricing strategy, this thread is not about whether or not I agree with it. Instead, this thread is about taking a look at what it actually takes to own all of the champions.
I began by calculating the total amount of IP it would take to purchase every single champion. You can see the exact breakdown in the Excel document included below. The total came out to 342,000 IP. However, that number doesn't remain static. It actually increases by about 12600 a month, as two new champions are released each month at 6300 IP.
The next step in realizing that such a feat cannot be accomplished over night. No. It will definitely take time. The question is, how much time? Well, the average player earns 79 IP per game, based on a 50% win/loss ratio and an average game time of 33 minutes. Furthermore, each day a player can gain a bonus 150 IP from the First Win of the Day. I figured any avid collector would willingly play Coop vs AI for their last game of the day if they had yet to collect that bonus, and so it's assumed that every day the player gains that bonus.
Given that rate of IP gain, including the bonus, I found that it would take a collector 4 games per day for 248 months to unlock all champions, and anything less than 4 games per day would result in that player falling further and further behind rather than catching up. Holy ****, right? However, and I do say, this is not for the casual gamer, if a player plays 10 games a day for 22 months, they will can unlock all of the champions. But man, 10 games per day for 22 months is a ton of games, 6600 games to be exact. Not the easiest thing to do, I know.
There must be another way, of course. And that way, is through RP. Now the challenge with dealing with a dual currency system is that, unfortunately, there is no solid conversion rate. For example, when you're buying a 6300 IP champion with RP and it's on sale, the conversation rate is 487 RP / 6300 IP, or about 13 IP per RP. However, when you're buying a 1350 champion that's on sale, the conversion rate is 292 RP / 1350 IP, or 4.62 IP per RP. That's a huge difference. Thus, the optimal strategy when including RP is to maximize the conversion. The way to do that is to prioritize RP purchases 6300 IP champions that are currently on sale. As such, I pinned the RP/IP conversion rate at 13 IP per RP.
I found that including RP even in small amounts made a really big difference. For example, our player earlier who had to play 10 games per day for 22 months can cut the number of games he has to play per day to 6 just by purchasing $5 worth of RP per month, or 2 by purchasing $10 of RP per month. That means $10 of RP per month improves the rate at which he collects champions by 500%. Huge!
I then sought to find a realistic timeline within which a truly devoted collector can reasonably collect all of the champions. I feel I've found the sweet spot at 2 games per day and $20 of RP per month. At those rates, an avid collector can expect to own all of the champions in under a year, including those champions released during that year.
It's definitely not easy to collect of the champions. I certainly have no aspirations for doing so. However, for those who are truly interested in performing such a feat, it isn't impossible. And remember, all of these calculations are coming off of the assumption that the collector is starting from zero. Most of you already a head start. Good luck!
- Dominatius Maxim
Notes:
- Feel free to use the excel sheet included to calculate your own rates.
- I did not include Runes in this exercise, but if you would like to, simply calculate the total cost of all of the runes you wish to purchase and add them to the value in "Total Effective IP Needed Today".
- I did not include skins in this exercise, but if you would like to, simply calculate the total cost of all the skins you'd like to include, multiple that by 13, and add it to "Total Effective IP Needed Today".
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