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Ability To Rent Champions?

Creator: HunterTTP May 18, 2012 9:28am
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HunterTTP
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I'm writing this in a hurry so I will keep it short and sweet. I think it would be a great idea for players to be able to "rent" champions in League of Legends.

The basic idea is to be able to shell out a certain amount of IP or RP to play that champion for a certain amount of time, or a certain number of games. Kind of like XP and IP booster packs.

This idea occurred to me not too long ago when I purchased a few champions with RP and I ended up extremely disliking 2/3 of them. So I wish I could have "rented" the champion for a few games so I could see if I like them or not.

Now I know there are a couple contradictions to this idea. One maybe that the free champion rotation is good enough. But I can see some people not wanting to play LOL until the next rotation, and that isn't helping Riot. Playing off of that idea, you might think this could cause Riot to lose money by doing this. I don't think so; if you used a little IP to rent a champion, and you discovered you really like them, then you will obviously want to get the champion ASAP.

Now there will have to be many technicalities to this, but I think with the right amount of planning, this could be executed extremely well.

Hunter

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Viable but I think the free champ rotation covers it for the most part.
JEFFY40HANDS
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We already have a set of champions each week who get to be free. This idea takes that, warps it, and overall would ruin it.

IP is best reserved for additional things like, buying a champion/rune page/runes

RP is best reserved for buying champions/skins/boosts.

Offering people to "pay" to rent a champion when they could, wait for them to be free, or get information about the champion from their friends to see if they are worth buying, makes renting them wholly worthless.

I can understand your thought, but overall I think it's just a bad idea. The way RIOT's business model works right now is fine. Players get incentive to play the game to save large sums of IP for what they want, if they want access to something new they can put down real money for RP and expedite the process. Big gains require more time playing, so people continue to play through good or bad games in the end for their goal.

Renting would offer a similar model but make SMALL gains more beneficial than larger ones. That in itself starts to undermine the business model.

Issues I see with this renting idea, people might not ALWAYS be able to play the champion they rented. So now you have an issue where someone tossed ~150 IP to rent a champion for the week, but instead of being able to play them in ~30 or so games they played them 5 times. Not to mention, if they find they don't like the champion they just wasted IP. But on the opposite of that, if they liked the champion and found they were good with them, they might want to take them into ranked, but can't because (assuming this next bit) Riot placed the same "free champ week" restrictions on "rent a champ" where champs that are free or rented in a players champion select screen are not allowed to be played.

To summarize:
-Offering players to rent a champ defeats the purpose of free weeks.
-REDUCES incentive for players to play multiple matches to farm IP for their next purchase.
-Players potentially spend their "money" to play a champ that they don't get to play EVERY game.
-Overall gives little to no incentive for players to rent a champion, with free weeks and friends who might have opinions about the champion already, the player can get a decent amount of information with no cost to them. That alone makes the system of renting a champion, not worth RIOT's time to implement/monitor/discuss.
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Jeffy pretty much summed it up. It's a good idea, but wouldn't work in the current system.

Fearless bush diving

Rozsud3k
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Buying a champion with IP installments.


I don't even
A Chubby Baby
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maybe also give players the possibility to sell their champs, but maybe for a lesser price as a "punishment/tax" thing.
Embracing
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I think the champ prices and stuff are actually quite reasonable right now...
It keeps the pre-30 players motivated to play to get enough IP to buy the champs they want.
A Chubby Baby
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maybe they could do something like once you are lvl 30, you can sell your champs. motivates certain ppl to stop making smurfs maybe? idk.
JEFFY40HANDS
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Selling champions?

I don't think that would be a remotely positive impact on LoL. Considering that Riot makes champs SO people can own them...Offering people to "buy back" DIGITAL property would be a moronic move for Riot.

Selling back champions is in fact 1000% worse than letting people rent them...Not only does it completely counteract their (Riot's) business model, it would most likely run them out of business.

They make money on people purchasing RP and Swag, with the ability to sell back champions, that goes out the window. EVERYONE can sell a champ or 2 that they never play get a new champ.

I'd say it would reduce incentive for people even MORE than renting. Why play 10-20 games a week to farm IP when I can sell a champ or 2 and get the new one "free". If I don't like him/her I'll just sell them back.

Sorry if that was harsh, but to me, that idea was just....Well, not good. (Ill be polite)
Darcurse
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IMO it could work if you overthrow the whole "free rotation" system.
They plan (did it already?) to remove it from ranked already anyway.

Since you have many cheap champs already we can just switch rotation for 5-6 fixed free ones,
make the rent pretty cheap like 100ip for 3 games and that's that.
Could help reducing the testing of champs in free weeks on lvl30 matches.

Could work, but either way the current system also does, sounds dumb wasting energy on something that doesn't need fixing.
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