"We screwed up on this one," Riot admits, promising League of Legends updates for Blue Essence and Account XP amid player backlash
League of Legends developer Riot has owned up to missteps in a recent update which made unlocking new characters a gargantuan, potentially 800-hour grind, admitting "we screwed up on this one" and promising reward improvements.
"We meaningfully screwed up on this one," a blog post from Meddler begins. "The numbers we shipped were pretty far off from what they should be for many of you. We’ll be putting out fixes for that during Patches 25.S1.2 and 25.S1.3."
The pain points highlighted here are Blue Essence and account XP, two resources that are essential to unlocking new stuff, especially playable characters. Riot says it intended for all players, especially new and casual players, to see a "meaningful increase" in Blue Essence payouts. Meddler says the dev also "didn't intend to change the number of games it takes to get access to Ranked" or the speed of leveling in general.
As you may have guessed, both of these things were, apparently inadvertently, chucked in the dumpster.
"For a lot of you, BE rates are significantly lower right now," Riot continues. "It also is meaningfully slower (up to 30%) to go from level 1 to 30 and to access Ranked. And, finally, we failed to communicate that the champion capsules from account level rewards after level 30 were being moved to the Pass when we talked about other changes in November."
How did this happen? It's a live service classic. A big part of the Essence problem is the result of changes evidently meant to help low-engagement players severely punishing more engaged players, especially those who are "incredibly efficient at finishing Pass Missions and completing Milestones." At worst, "super high" engagement players could see up to 71% lower Essence in a season.
"We missed the mark a lot for other players, especially those who play a lot," Riot summarizes.
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To fix this, Riot says it will "significantly increase the free Pass earn rates," demonstrated by the
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