League of Legends: Should you pay for a free to play?

In League of Legends, everything is obtainable for free except esthetics changes to your champions. While there is no in game disadvantage of not having invested a single penny, Riot the game producer is able to prosper on its large player base. Why?

The urge to get the better champions

There are 115 Champions in the game, all with a specific gameplay. Players like to change, looking for a set of skills that better match their style, but most of all they look for the most powerful champions. Professional games often set trends and players want to be able to emulate them. The issue is that you don’t have all champions available. To “buy” the latest champion you need 6300 influence points (IP) or 975 Rior points (RP).

To get 6300 IP points you will need to play a lot of games. Let’s say you win 100 points per game, plus an extra 150 every day that you play the game. It means that you need to play for half a month, 3 games per day to obtain a new champion. 45 games with a subpar champion, 45 hours of despair waiting for the new ultimate warrior! That proves to be too much waiting for most players.

The alternative solution is to buy RP. You get the new champion for USD7.5 or EUR5.81 (less if you buy a big chunk of points via Paypal, more if you use only micro transactions with mobile phone). It can be even cheaper if the champion is on sale, and there are always 3 champions on sale. Who can’t afford 3 Euros to have some fun? But be aware, that it will cost you 300 USD to have them all.

Buy to optimize your build

In League of Legend you can choose “Runes” that will apply bonus to your champion before the game starts. A set of runes is not very expensive and all players reaching level 30 (when the ranked games start) can have 2 basic sets of efficient runes. The issue is that you can only have these 2 set of runes, which is not enough to fit all roles. To simplify, you will have one for mages and one for warriors, but what about your support character, your tank, your jungler? You are forced to play with slightly suboptimal builds and while not game breaking at the lower-mid levels, can be increasingly frustrating.

To fix that you need to buy a rune page at 6300 IP or 590 RP. Farming for a champion can be boring, but farming for an empty page of rune, and then farming to fill it with runes can become excruciating. One more reason to quickly buy a page rune, or even better a “7 rune page bundle” and get rid of this issue.

Enjoying customization Skins and Icons

I do not know how much it represents in term of revenues but “Skins” i.e. changing the appearance of a champion in game and in the loading screen have proved to be a big success. Players can show the world which champion they like, take sexy skins they like or troll their opponents with ridiculous animations. Players that spam hundreds of game with the same champion appreciate the variety and can show their dedication with the most expensive skins. 

The skins and icons are only available with Riot Points, so one more reason to open your wallet. The nicest skins (that also include spell animations) cost more than the champion themselves and can reach 20 USD! It literally cost a small fortune to have them all (1905USD just for the one available in the shop that do not include special events)!

What do almost mature gamers do?

A survey was organized on a major generalist French Forum (HFR). The population is 25 year old on average, most are university trained and employed, and finally most are good players (average league Gold, with many in Diamond).

• 26% did not invest seriously in the game
• 39% payed the price of a regular game 20 to 75 euros
• 36% invested more than 75 Euros,  more than 200 Euros for 17% of them

As mentioned before, these people have an income and dedicate a major part of their free time to this game, so they might be among the biggest spenders. But still, it is amazing that so much money was invested in what is basically a free game. A common explanation among the posters that explained their choices was that it was a very small amount in regards to their budget. Many also pointed out that having played LoL for countless hours they had a very good Money over Time ratio. Finally a few also explained that it was a good way to burn money that was locked in expiring mobile phone credit.

Another factor was the seniority in the game. Players that were here since the beta had time to buy almost everything with influence points, while people that got sucked in much later invested much more to build their champion pool. However I still enjoyed it a great bit!

How I do it: I do not buy, I do not farm, I just play

I did not spend a single penny on this game and wrote this article because I was intrigued by the rational of others. The game is balanced enough so you can have great fun using the low priced champions and just expend your champion pool by playing regularly. The only issue for me is never having the new “broken” / “imbalanced” champions available, but honestly I can live without it. The only found myself at a disadvantage when trying to play in an amateur tournament, where my lack of response to certain champions was showing. I could not counter some opponents and was forced to start the game in a considerably weaker position.

As for skin and varieties, there are so many other games to test that I do not feel the need to customize this one. I would definitively buy League of Legends for 50 Euros as this would have a very high usage value. However I have a hard time buying goodies that are in no way as rich as mods that have been created for free by fans for other games! So I just play and enjoy the game.

Some facts about League of Legends and Money:

• 70 Millions Registered players
• 1 billion hours played each month
• USD 200 millions of revenues (estimate Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter)
• USD 40 millions of income before taxes (Broad estimate based on average gaming transaction value and sale of Riot to Tecent). That would indicate a very high margin.
• Sponsored professional gaming: Salary for top players (a hundred person for Europe and North America) and large cash prizes for competitions (estimate USD 8 million for Season 3, 2013) 

Are you a big spender on Free-To-Play? Please help me understand! That said, the target for next week end is to try World of Tanks, another promising Free-To-Play.

EuroExark