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The latest League of Legends season hasn't got off to a fantastic start, as fans have spotted an enormous change made to the amount of time it takes to unlock new champions for free, and the lead gameplay designer is already admitting "we messed up" with Feats of Strength's 'First Blood' Feat, too.
When it comes to unlocking new League of Legends champions, if you don't want to splash the cash on League's premium currency, RP (which can be used to quickly unlock the game's now almost 170-character roster), you can also spend Blue Essence – usually earned from leveling up, opening Champion Capsules, and completing missions. While it takes time, it ensures that even free-to-play players can get their hands on all the champions eventually. However, with the start of League of Legends' latest season, it's been suggested that it could now take around 882 hours after completing the Battle Pass to unlock a single one this way.
After completing the whole thing, four out of the five repeatable milestones will grant 50 Blue Essence each, which really isn't much. Thankfully, you still won't have to spend a penny to earn any of it, but for reference, champions cost you 7,800 Blue Essence on the week of their release. After dropping to 6,300 for their first two seasons, their price varies, but Riot previously claimed the "majority" are 4,800 each. With that in mind, you'll probably be able to get one new champion with this Battle Pass, unless you grind those repeatable milestones endlessly, which is probably where the supposed 882-hour figure comes from. Whether this is accurate is another matter, so I decided to do some of my own estimations.
If we take a 4,800 Blue Essence champion, you'd have to level up 120 times after completing the Battle Pass to earn enough (that's accounting for the 24 repetitions of those same five milestones you'd need to do). As for how long that'd take, I deferred to GamesRadar+'s in-house LoL enjoyer Ali Jones, who reckons it takes him roughly between five and 10 hours of gameplay to earn one or two level ups. If we call that five hours per level up, that's 600 hours you can expect to spend after completing the battle pass. Obviously, there are various factors at play here, so that estimate is far from concrete, but all you need to know is that it's a lot.
Thankfully, there is a glimmer of hope, as the head of League Studio, Andrei van Roon, states: "Unlocking new champions via Blue Essence wasn't meant to get harder. Digging in to understand whether something isn't functioning as intended now." With that in mind, it sounds like there could be more changes to come.
If so, it won't be the only alteration coming to League of Legends, as lead gameplay designer Matt Leung-Harrison has confirmed plans to "replace First Blood as a Feat." Feats of Strength is a first-to-two competition with three possible 'Feats' to accomplish – you can destroy the first turret, score first blood, or slay three epic monster camps – in order to receive the Blessing of Noxus bonus for a buff to your tier-2 boots (and make tier-3 boots available in the shop).
In a new tweet, Leung-Harrison acknowledges that while Riot doesn't think snowballing (essentially, building momentum after gaining an advantage, to the point where you become basically unstoppable) is "much higher than the previous season, if at all," the "perception" is that it's higher now, partially thanks to "the visibility of the Feats reward." The team "wanted the Feats system to create more reward satisfaction, focus and tension around prioritizing early objectives," but know that "First Blood is causing too much friction for the satisfaction and clarity of gaining it."
Leung-Harrison explains: "As a result, we're going to change it either in 15.2 or 15.3. Candidly, we messed up here and it should have been changed pre-release, but we're going to own that mistake, learn from it and do better for next time."
All in all, it's not been smooth sailing so far for Welcome to Noxus: Act 1, but at least Riot seems to be aware of the main complaints. Here's hoping we get swift fixes, especially before new players commit to the ridiculous grind that can now be expected to unlock all of League's champions.
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