Now that season 15 of League of Legends has finally launched, a plethora of new changes have hit the game. However, a drastic change to the game’s free cosmetic systems have caused players to openly question Riot Games.
Like the start of most seasons of League sweeping changes have been implemented, including a map update and new forms of gameplay. The season also comes with a brand new battle pass that replaces the monetization systems players are accustomed to, thus making both Masterwork and Hextech chests completely irrelevant.
Back in November, Riot shared a post on their development blog detailing all the changes coming with season 15. The new battle pass system will last for four patches, and offers both a paid and free track for all players to experience. However, in an effort to streamline the cosmetic experience, the developers have decided to remove all free Hextech and Masterwork chests from the game.
Instead, players can use money to purchase Hextech chests and keys from the store, but Masterwork chests are completely removed. This has already caused controversy since Hextech chests have a chance to provide only keys or champion shards instead of cosmetic items.
To replace free rewards, players can collect a singular skin from the free track of the battle pass and various cosmetic items like blue essence and emotes. However, the free skin, which is currently for Elise, has no unique backing animations and lacks compelling effects. The developers did mention in their blog post that free-to-play users only earn “about nine skins a year,” so the free reward track is meant to replicate these statistics.
These changes come after a previous update to champion mastery, which made it more difficult for ARAM players to earn free Hextech chests. To combat this, Riot decided to completely remove the mastery system missions, replacing them with missions in the battle pass. Instead of earning Hextech chests by increasing champion mastery, players will just earn some battle pass EXP.
Now that Hextech chests can only be earned by spending money, users on League’s Reddit are discussing how keys and key fragments are completely useless rewards. The original poster noted how, “You can only buy keys/chests now, so fragments will only sit in your inventory collecting virtual dust.”
Whenever you purchase a Hextech chest from League’s store, a key is typically included with the purchase so you can instantly open your rewards. This means that any free fragments or keys you earn will never be used, since there are no longer any free chests available to earn.
This change also makes champion capsules significantly worse, since all keys you earn from leveling up are now worthless. Many players on the thread were sharing the amount of keys that can no longer be used, with one user pointing out he has “175 keys.”
While there is little hope that free chests will return to League, a player within the thread reminded everyone to “vote with your wallet,” or not buy anything from the company as a form of protesting. If the profits from cosmetics significantly drop off after these changes, then chances are higher ups in the company will look at ways of compensating the player base.
While the future of League’s cosmetics appears bleak, perhaps a player-lead movement can inspire change and reinvigorate developers and players alike.
