jcb1337 said:
I wouldn't necessarily say that Riot's process of releasing new champions for RP/IP can truly be considered "rackeetering". Yes, the people with RP are likely to receive the newer champions first, however, this does not exactly allow them to buy an advantage over the non-paying players.
I disagree. Reasoning inbound.
The new champions are not all overpowered (look at Renekton, Caitlynn and Maokai). Some of them do start off at high power or skill levels, but none of them, not even Vayne or Leona are unbeatable.
I never once said they were unbeatable.
Overpowered does not automatically equate to "unbeatable" (though it does in reverse due to gradient-logic); it just means that the other players have to work harder to win.
You say the new champ is harder to play? It's also harder to counter by the same logic; familiarity swings both ways (to noone's surprise that's exactly what happened just after Vayne was released; even in high-ELO).
Think about it this way: If people hear that new Champ X is overpowered, people will feel far more inclined to purchasing that champ immediately before the nerf stick is applied. Unless you happen to have 6300 IP sitting around for every time this happens, you need to break out the pocketbook.
Riot can even sprinkle a few lesser champs into the mix and people would still buy them based on that assumption alone, if proven correct for long enough.
It's smart business strategy.
That said, I'll admit this is all supposition on my part, but fuck me if Riot doesn't keep doing this on purpose. "Overpower now, nerf later" seems to be the way things work.
The fact that they are new means that players have to adapt to their skills. Most people in the lower part of the community can't do that very quickly. The lower to mid parts of the community are also large and quite vocal, thus leading to complaints of overpoweredness and unfairness.
The only valid argument I've heard on the subject, yet this doesn't keep mistakes like Vayne (who has a skill that scales with the game and has a very weak drawback) from happening.
Though I do admit that too many people exaggerate their complaints about certain champs being broken (they sawed Gangplank's balls off a few months back, and now that they buffed him back up to close to where he was before, he's apparently OP now...what the fuck?).
I've never really seen it that way. Riot allows players to most or all of the content with a series of time, skill and dedication.
In other words: LoL does precisely what a free-to-play MMO will do, but to a lesser degree, which was exactly my point to begin with.
They dump a ton of grind directly onto the player's head, but offer a convenient way out of that grind...if they're willing to pony up some cash.
Their emphasis on only releasing champs at the 4800 IP and 6300 IP mark proves this.
As mentioned before, while LoL provides a similar model, they don't exploit it to the Nth degree like most MMORPGs do (as you have said). There could be FAR more abuse slung about than there is, and I will admit that freely.
That said, I have an axe to grind with MMORPGs...especially F2P MMOs with their "Pretend-benevolence" of offering a "free game". And that is more directly related to this topic than LoL...
Now, the argument I see commonly see in favor of F2P-MMORPGs is that you "only pay for what you need, you don't pay for all the content you never use", and this argument is flawed from the very beginning because most of what is missing is something that you would consider critical (a common example: having an adequate sized inventory/bank) for playing the game in the first place.
"I buy power" falls into its own league of bullshit, and is the absolute WORST way to provide content in any game where people compete, but I won't even get into a game with that sort of problem if they're already charging money for absolute necessities.
At that point, you might as well charge a subscription fee.
If you want to see an imbalanced variant of this, look at a few of the Nexon games, namely maplestory.
Oh fuck Nexon. Fuck them sideways with a garden rake.
It took me years to convince one of my friends why I couldn't do MMORPGs with him anymore, and Nexon is a big part of that equation.
Here's why MMORPGs sell the socialization gig as hard as they can (when they can): Why fuck around grinding your brains out when you can drag
other/new customers your friends into grinding with you?
It's sickening how they exploit such things for money...
