Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players Away

Ugh god. The woes of a Free-to-play player in a game like LoL. I'll have to pay money if I want everyone in a reasonable time. That or only unlock the overpowered/flavor of the month guys.

 Spoiler

This is going a bit off topic, but I own 8 rune pages and 56/120 champs after playing for ~1.5 years. I earn more than enough IP to pick up a new champ every week or so and that's more than enough to keep me busy since I don't play several of the ones I already own satisfactorily. With free week rotations, it's pretty easy to pick out the champs I'm most interested in and just buy those.

It was certainly annoying when I first started playing ranked that I was limited to 2 rune pages, but looking back it really wouldn't have made a difference at my skill level. I honestly have no problem with LoL's minor paygates since they offer such a vast selection of content anyway. Plus, the "grind" for IP is just playing games which I would do anyway. If you enjoy the game, it's not much of an annoyance.

If you're one of those people that flits from champ to champ or between roles, it can be frustrating but that's really not an advisable way to play the game competitively. I might like to see all champs available in normals or team builder, but never in ranked since it would just encourage playing new champs without much practice. Free week rotations suffice for my casual curiosity, but I can understand it wouldn't for others. Asking for more than that would certainly hurt Riot's profits and I don't think it would really gain them much.

In the grand scheme of things, I think their model is very balanced and a pretty good example of what other companies should be aiming for.