It’s easy to assume that Legends of Runeterra, the digital CCG from the League of Legends universe, would be just chock-full of “surprise mechanics” especially considering Tencent’s ownership of Riot Games. A recent dev blog may put a few of those assumptions to bed, however.
The post goes out of its way to explain the kinds of things players can get without spending a single Coin, such as Capsules, Chests, and Wildcards earned from daily quest Vaults and region rewards. The post also provides infographics that illustrate what waits within Capsules and Chests and further explains how much XP is needed to hit level 20 in a region and what sorts of rewards players get for doing so. In addition, any Chest, Capsule, or card has a chance to upgrade or even chain upgrade.
As for cards, any Common or Rare card rewards that duplicate more than three times will get broken down into Shards, while Epic or Champion dupes get rerolled into another card of the same rarity. If a player happens to have every Epic or Champion card, then those get broken down into Shards, too.
Speaking of Vaults, the post also confirmed the addition of three new Vault levels on top of the old maximum of 10. These new levels will require more XP grinding to get to, but also should provide a suitably meaty reward to players who spend a lot of time in-game.
All of these reward systems are included to allow players to be “set complete” before the release of a new set without spending a single Coin. Riot assumes that a player who gets in 7 to 10 games on average will be able to achieve this goal, while those who don’t play quite so much should get about 75% of a set before a new set arrives, assuming those players get to at least the level 10 Vault each week. Those who would rather spend money will be limited to the number of times cards can be unlocked in order to make sure those who spend time playing the game don’t get beaten by a pay-to-win player.
“Speaking of Coins, there’s another major goal for us: create a game where how much money you spend is NOT the deciding factor in your success as a player.”
This could effectively mean that not spending money to effectively play a Riot game — a company that has proven to be demonstrably trash to employees, is 100% owned by Tencent, and expressed empathy towards Blizzard (the company) for the Hong Kong fiasco — will be a righteous middle finger raised.
Until adjustments to reward earnings happen, anyway.
