On June 15 2012 05:28 gtrsrs wrote: well, frankly, it never made sense that you lost elo AND had a time penalty it should have been one or the other. the combination of both made it so everyone would rather risk playing with promote/revive eve than instantly losing 10 elo and not getting to play at all.
i expect they'll either just up the wait time after dodging to absurd amounts (halfhour first dodge, hour second) or implement a "leaver" queue where your queues are longer the more you dodge games and also filled with leavers, so you never get games.
also, it sickens me that riot will probably make $30million+ on that ezreal skin the first day it comes out. i mean i don't dislike them making money, but i will get sick with jealousy, and anyone with an artistic side should also be extremely jelly. when did one of your pieces of art sell for $30million?
also i've been tanking my elo and i'm playing in the 1500s now and it is hilarious every game i drop, the players get more and more cocky and also more insecure. at the slightest mistake by ANYONE, the entire game implodes and it's the ragefest of a lifetime. i didn't give blue buff to a mid ONE TIME and he left the game (that we were winning HANDILY) for 10 minutes then came back and just took buffs every time they were up. lol. classy AND hilarious. i also havne't seen a support hero in like 12 games. galio bot, orianna bot, jarvan bot, akali bot, kennen bot... people will do ANYTHING to not play a support hero
I'm fairly certain that several artists for Magic: The Gathering have had the copies of their art sell for a large sum of money.
Yep, I own a full Print Jace, the Mind Sculptor signed. It ran me about 35$.
A copy of that card alone is worth $50 in English, and much more in foreign languages that aren't Portuguese, Spanish, or Italian.
On June 15 2012 05:28 gtrsrs wrote: well, frankly, it never made sense that you lost elo AND had a time penalty it should have been one or the other. the combination of both made it so everyone would rather risk playing with promote/revive eve than instantly losing 10 elo and not getting to play at all.
i expect they'll either just up the wait time after dodging to absurd amounts (halfhour first dodge, hour second) or implement a "leaver" queue where your queues are longer the more you dodge games and also filled with leavers, so you never get games.
also, it sickens me that riot will probably make $30million+ on that ezreal skin the first day it comes out. i mean i don't dislike them making money, but i will get sick with jealousy, and anyone with an artistic side should also be extremely jelly. when did one of your pieces of art sell for $30million?
also i've been tanking my elo and i'm playing in the 1500s now and it is hilarious every game i drop, the players get more and more cocky and also more insecure. at the slightest mistake by ANYONE, the entire game implodes and it's the ragefest of a lifetime. i didn't give blue buff to a mid ONE TIME and he left the game (that we were winning HANDILY) for 10 minutes then came back and just took buffs every time they were up. lol. classy AND hilarious. i also havne't seen a support hero in like 12 games. galio bot, orianna bot, jarvan bot, akali bot, kennen bot... people will do ANYTHING to not play a support hero
I'm fairly certain that several artists for Magic: The Gathering have had the copies of their art sell for a large sum of money.
Yep, I own a full Print Jace, the Mind Sculptor signed. It ran me about 35$.
A copy of that card alone is worth $50 in English, and much more in foreign languages that aren't Portuguese, Spanish, or Italian.
I stopped playing MtG a little bit after Ravnica came out, so this is based on assumption, but isn't the card worth that much because it's relatively rare and really good? I doubt the artists get paid more if their artworks get used on rare cards.
Also, how is it that those particular languages aren't sought after in the scene?
I stopped playing after the calamity that was Arcbound Ravager-Skullclamp-Affinity mess of Mirrodin. Still followed until Worlds when Lorwyn was legal, and only recently started following again. Wondering if I should start playing again but so expensive.
EDH, Legacy and Vintage players like having foreign cards to pimp out their decks. Less common with people who play Standard though. Dunno about Modern. Like, a Russian Dark Confident goes for like over 1k or something because Vintage players like how rough the Russian alphabet looks and they have money to blow on their decks anyway.
Moving back on topic. I'm not at liberty to discuss Riot's Marketing and Art stuff much. But what I can say is that there has been a recent shift in the way Riot approaches things such as Champion Skins and that is going to affect things such as pricing and there will be a general increase in quality. Legendary Skins used to just be nice stuff but now there a certain minimum requirements a skin will hold in order for it to qualify as legendary. That's why we see a difference with say Frostfire Annie and Annie in Wonderland. Both skins come from different times when the Art Teams worked with different technologies and assets.
Pulsefire Ezrael opens the first step towards perhaps what will be a new tier of skins. At the same time however, there will be ripple effects down towards standard skins and the quality in general should increase.
Riot prices according to what nets them the most profit. A long time ago they said that going below the current price points does not actually increase their sales, therefore they do not price them lower.
I agree that a lot of older skins have gotten the shaft in pricing lately. Regardless of what sold 2 years ago it's simply ridiculous that baron corki costs the same as party fiddlesticks or overlord vladimir, let alone more than soul reaver Draven (which has nearly as many features as Astronaut teemo). Riot is extremely slow at adjusting champion/skin pricing and I can only assume that it's because they're making too much money to consider doing it faster.
I believe I remember reading somewhere that they considered the older legendaries to be much like older cars, they don't have as many features and shiny bits as the new ones. This I can understand as we've seen already how much skins have improved in the past year. It's understandable that many of the original ones(Tf legendary, Red baron corki, annie in wonderland) can't compare to the newer ones but rather they will be updated is anyones guess. I suspect at some point they will start to work on these older skins simply because it's a good way to renew interest in them and generate more sales. Of course with the schedule they seem to be on and more important things such as redesigning how champions look(Ashe,GP, soon to be Soraka,Kat) that it takes back priority because the champions have to be more important then the skins.
Of course they could just have an art team that doesn't quite know what it wants to do with those older legendaries yet. Price points aside in the end I don't care what other people spend the money they earned on and if they do spend money on something good for them it doesn't really hurt me(Robot amumu aside) or anyone else. I could however understand worry that prices may go too high for something that good but then again if every skin is -that- good it's not an out of this world price for it.
Moving back on topic. I'm not at liberty to discuss Riot's Marketing and Art stuff much. But what I can say is that there has been a recent shift in the way Riot approaches things such as Champion Skins and that is going to affect things such as pricing and there will be a general increase in quality. Legendary Skins used to just be nice stuff but now there a certain minimum requirements a skin will hold in order for it to qualify as legendary. That's why we see a difference with say Frostfire Annie and Annie in Wonderland. Both skins come from different times when the Art Teams worked with different technologies and assets.
Pulsefire Ezrael opens the first step towards perhaps what will be a new tier of skins. At the same time however, there will be ripple effects down towards standard skins and the quality in general should increase.
Thanks for the info. I really hadn't considered the difference in resources or standards from start to present time.
As an aggresive support having your AD carry follow up your aggresiveness is really a big difference. I hate supporting random people sometimes. I lay out perfect kills for them and they don't follow.
On June 15 2012 09:34 Zhiroo wrote: As an aggresive support having your AD carry follow up your aggresiveness is really a big difference. I hate supporting random people sometimes. I lay out perfect kills for them and they don't follow.
Right before you initiate, ping that person's head twice and then go. It shakes most AD's out of the must focus on last hitting mindset so that they're aware of what's happening/about to happen. Most of the time if they do not follow up the first time, they won't follow up subsequent times either. There's not much you can do about that unfortunately.
How about do that to the people in my games, who feed all game then blame me for throwing the game (15/3/9 Irelia at this point) when I've been carrying their sorry asses whole time? "GG REPORT IRELIA THROWOLOLOL" - 0/6/6 Graves
you can do it easily just point out their score, their CS, and compare to your score, your CS tell them firmly that you are the only thing standing between their victory or defeat, the game is yours to win, not theirs to lose. tell them that they will apologize, they will stop raging, and you will win. just keep repeating it til they do it. then when they do it tell them they learned a valuable lesson, that it's easier to type "sorry" than "fuck you irelia you flaming scumbag feeder noobshit blah blah blah"
it feels really good
I'm at 1500-600 elo. Those guys super annoying. Too bad I'm probably exactly at the elo I belong and don't always win my lane and fuck up once in a while. I'm actually suprised how often "Dude I fucked up, I know it. You think flaming me makes me play better now?!" works. I mean there is still the "OMG fucking noob uninstal l2p" even when I'm 4-1, but yea definitey worth a try. Or of course just ignore when nothing helps.
Edit: When they lose their lane and blame the jungler that obv. doesn't work. Can't say sorry when you didn't fucked up.
On June 15 2012 02:35 Live2Win wrote: I'd say GP ulti is more like Gyrocopter's ult with agh.
lol this got me into looking at the playdota website again, a place I haven't visited in over a year and there's like 4/5 heroes I've never seen before
That's kinda funny. If it was LoL you haven't been playing for a year it would be more in the line of 15-20 champions you haven't seen before ^^
Well they just HAVE to change something about it sooner or later. At one point people will realize that League is one of the most expensive games on the market right now. =P
Not exactly. If you want to buy everything the game has to offer, sure. But for the price of SC2, you can get a good number of champs. Add an "expansion" and you can easily afford runepages and more champs. LoL has more to offer than what you can get for that money, but you can still buy enough to call it a full game. You don't go into a shop and say "this is the most expensive shop in the world" just because it has more stuff than you can afford, either.
The thing is, LoL is now competing with a game where all of the meaningful content is free and unlocked at the start, and only the cosmetic extras cost money.
Granted, I doubt DotA 2 will really have that big of an impact on LoL, seeing as how different the playerbases are, but the fact that DotA 2's business model is essentially only selling cosmetics has got to turn at least a few heads at Riot HQ.
I'm late to the discussion, but on the topic of DotA 2's business model vs LoL's:
Riot is in a great place right now in respect to its competition in the MOBA market. That's why the need to act is placed on other companies like Valve to force some market share out of the current monopoly. Having fully free heroes certainly attracts attention and will draw some interest from players of competing titles. However, it is important to note that Valve has not yet made any money from DotA 2, and that it is currently planning to base its business model on only offering cosmetic upgrades. This is the only truly win-win way for Valve to make money since other ways such as taking cuts from monetised events and services will hurt its PR. This seems to me a very risky move by Valve and is based on its predicted ability to take a lot of market share to be profitable. If DotA 2 turns out to be not-so-profitable, which it seems to be heading towards, then Valve will probably relocated resources away from DotA 2 to its other franchises.
Riot, on the other hand, has made it very difficult for other companies to compete with it in the MOBA market. It has, by far, the largest market share, and it has also set the barriers of entry quite high. It is a F2P title with fully free features, albeit requiring a time investment and referrals. Importantly, it is not a pay-to-win game. So that is probably why DotA 2 has been announced, rather surprisingly, to be F2P and with fully free features bar cosmetics.
I don't think Riot will be all that pressured by DotA 2's business announcement. After all, both are basically fully free games, and Riot still has time to respond to it. After all, Riot has shown us that it is a flexible company that responds quickly to its competitors (think graphics updates on SR and older champions and the increasing quality of skins). I predict that once DotA 2's announcement loses its thunder, and DotA 2 approaches release, that Riot will significantly reduce the IP to buy champions. That way, players who are mainly F2P will be able to farm up champions more easily, while players who are mainly P2P will still buy champions, resulting in a mitigated lose of income (which it doesn't need as much as Valve).
It should also be noted that the suggested migration from LoL to DotA 2 will not be anywhere as close as some may think. Most LoL players have spent a significant time and money investment in LoL already and so have emotional connections to their accounts. Furthermore, with the way Riot is going, there is going to be zero reason for people to switch to DotA 2 by the time it releases because LoL will have caught up to DotA 2 in all features. That leaves gameplay and a change of environment as the two biggest reasons why people may switch over. Gameplay is not going to be a key reason because DotA and HoN already exist on the market with the same gameplay, and LoL players have shown that they enjoy LoL's gameplay more. A change of environment is a rather superficial and short-lived motivation.
Lastly, there are people who suggest that the MOBA market is not a zero sum game. I disagree in the context of DotA 2 v LoL. DotA 2 will attract veterans of the MOBA market, whereas players who are new to the game will not enjoy the IMHO outdated gameplay of DotA 2 and will get flamed out by the comparatively more competitive scene. DotA 2 will basically not retain any new consumers of the MOBA market. LoL will still remain the gatekeepers of the MOBA market (as long as it can keep up in marketing and graphics, which it is showing it can) and will have the larger playerbase and earn more money.
I'm happy if Dota2 decides to put ads during gameplay so that every 5 or 10 minutes, the game is paused and an ad is played out for 30 seconds before resuming the game.
Is there any way to train to play mid or top without being a huge dick and gimping your team in half the games because the other guy who wants mid/top is a huge dick too? Jungle is easy to get, support too. Ad carry you can get in half the games without problem, but mid or top are basically impossible without dealing with guys who absolutely dont ever want to do anything else.
On June 15 2012 10:20 Simberto wrote: Is there any way to train to play mid or top without being a huge dick and gimping your team in half the games because the other guy who wants mid/top is a huge dick too? Jungle is easy to get, support too. Ad carry you can get in half the games without problem, but mid or top are basically impossible without dealing with guys who absolutely dont ever want to do anything else.
Duo or triple Q and get the top selection slots in draft mode. Besides that, there's not many other ways of getting top/mid reliably
If I crush my lane, and my team not relatively even I just lose every time. My score will be like ~10/2/10 but everyone else useless. If I get raped in lane, I win every time.
On June 15 2012 05:28 gtrsrs wrote: well, frankly, it never made sense that you lost elo AND had a time penalty it should have been one or the other. the combination of both made it so everyone would rather risk playing with promote/revive eve than instantly losing 10 elo and not getting to play at all.
i expect they'll either just up the wait time after dodging to absurd amounts (halfhour first dodge, hour second) or implement a "leaver" queue where your queues are longer the more you dodge games and also filled with leavers, so you never get games.
also, it sickens me that riot will probably make $30million+ on that ezreal skin the first day it comes out. i mean i don't dislike them making money, but i will get sick with jealousy, and anyone with an artistic side should also be extremely jelly. when did one of your pieces of art sell for $30million?
also i've been tanking my elo and i'm playing in the 1500s now and it is hilarious every game i drop, the players get more and more cocky and also more insecure. at the slightest mistake by ANYONE, the entire game implodes and it's the ragefest of a lifetime. i didn't give blue buff to a mid ONE TIME and he left the game (that we were winning HANDILY) for 10 minutes then came back and just took buffs every time they were up. lol. classy AND hilarious. i also havne't seen a support hero in like 12 games. galio bot, orianna bot, jarvan bot, akali bot, kennen bot... people will do ANYTHING to not play a support hero
I'm fairly certain that several artists for Magic: The Gathering have had the copies of their art sell for a large sum of money.
Yep, I own a full Print Jace, the Mind Sculptor signed. It ran me about 35$.
A copy of that card alone is worth $50 in English, and much more in foreign languages that aren't Portuguese, Spanish, or Italian.
On June 15 2012 05:28 gtrsrs wrote: well, frankly, it never made sense that you lost elo AND had a time penalty it should have been one or the other. the combination of both made it so everyone would rather risk playing with promote/revive eve than instantly losing 10 elo and not getting to play at all.
i expect they'll either just up the wait time after dodging to absurd amounts (halfhour first dodge, hour second) or implement a "leaver" queue where your queues are longer the more you dodge games and also filled with leavers, so you never get games.
also, it sickens me that riot will probably make $30million+ on that ezreal skin the first day it comes out. i mean i don't dislike them making money, but i will get sick with jealousy, and anyone with an artistic side should also be extremely jelly. when did one of your pieces of art sell for $30million?
also i've been tanking my elo and i'm playing in the 1500s now and it is hilarious every game i drop, the players get more and more cocky and also more insecure. at the slightest mistake by ANYONE, the entire game implodes and it's the ragefest of a lifetime. i didn't give blue buff to a mid ONE TIME and he left the game (that we were winning HANDILY) for 10 minutes then came back and just took buffs every time they were up. lol. classy AND hilarious. i also havne't seen a support hero in like 12 games. galio bot, orianna bot, jarvan bot, akali bot, kennen bot... people will do ANYTHING to not play a support hero
I'm fairly certain that several artists for Magic: The Gathering have had the copies of their art sell for a large sum of money.
Yep, I own a full Print Jace, the Mind Sculptor signed. It ran me about 35$.
A copy of that card alone is worth $50 in English, and much more in foreign languages that aren't Portuguese, Spanish, or Italian.
I stopped playing MtG a little bit after Ravnica came out, so this is based on assumption, but isn't the card worth that much because it's relatively rare and really good? I doubt the artists get paid more if their artworks get used on rare cards.
Also, how is it that those particular languages aren't sought after in the scene?
I stopped playing after the calamity that was Arcbound Ravager-Skullclamp-Affinity mess of Mirrodin. Still followed until Worlds when Lorwyn was legal, and only recently started following again. Wondering if I should start playing again but so expensive.
EDH, Legacy and Vintage players like having foreign cards to pimp out their decks. Less common with people who play Standard though. Dunno about Modern. Like, a Russian Dark Confident goes for like over 1k or something because Vintage players like how rough the Russian alphabet looks and they have money to blow on their decks anyway.
Moving back on topic. I'm not at liberty to discuss Riot's Marketing and Art stuff much. But what I can say is that there has been a recent shift in the way Riot approaches things such as Champion Skins and that is going to affect things such as pricing and there will be a general increase in quality. Legendary Skins used to just be nice stuff but now there a certain minimum requirements a skin will hold in order for it to qualify as legendary. That's why we see a difference with say Frostfire Annie and Annie in Wonderland. Both skins come from different times when the Art Teams worked with different technologies and assets.
Pulsefire Ezrael opens the first step towards perhaps what will be a new tier of skins. At the same time however, there will be ripple effects down towards standard skins and the quality in general should increase.
Draft now randomly assign spots instead of putting premades on top.
Morello said that they won't update their old skins (they'd rather use their ressources on new ones) nor reduce their price. They'll only put a single alternative skin with new champs too, like with Varus, Darius and Draven, but will work toward a higher quality (see Soul Reaver Draven) instead.
On June 15 2012 10:32 Alaric wrote: Draft now randomly assign spots instead of putting premades on top.
Morello said that they won't update their old skins (they'd rather use their ressources on new ones) nor reduce their price. They'll only put a single alternative skin with new champs too, like with Varus, Darius and Draven, but will work toward a higher quality (see Soul Reaver Draven) instead.
Afaik, this should have been implemented, but it is not yet.
I have no idea why since I think it's a good change, but from my experience when playing as a 3 or 4 man premade (99% of the time) we got 1st pick every single time so far.
This means that if I duo queue with someone in normal draft and we are 4th and 5th pick, I can be 100% sure that the 3 above us are a premade as well.
On June 15 2012 10:15 0123456789 wrote: I'm happy if Dota2 decides to put ads during gameplay so that every 5 or 10 minutes, the game is paused and an ad is played out for 30 seconds before resuming the game.
The funny thing is that the competitive scene would be 100% accustomed to those kinds of interruptions, because in WC3 with no reconnect, you'd have to have a multiplayer save every 5-10 minutes to begin with.
On June 15 2012 10:06 1ntrigue wrote: Gameplay is not going to be a key reason because DotA and HoN already exist on the market with the same gameplay, and LoL players have shown that they enjoy LoL's gameplay more.
Gameplay is actually a pretty relevant reason. I stopped playing WC3 DotA because a lot of the core features I'd grown accustomed to on other MOBA games was not present (e.g. reconnect), and there's a lot of overhead getting set up on any of the currently popular custom ladders. HoN just butchered their business model.
From talking to other players in the DotA 2 forum, I'm also not the only one who chose to play LoL over HoN or WC3 DotA prior to getting into the DotA 2 beta. I'm sure there are many more players waiting to make that switch.
On June 15 2012 10:06 1ntrigue wrote: Lastly, there are people who suggest that the MOBA market is not a zero sum game. I disagree in the context of DotA 2 v LoL. DotA 2 will attract veterans of the MOBA market, whereas players who are new to the game will not enjoy the IMHO outdated gameplay of DotA 2 and will get flamed out by the comparatively more competitive scene. DotA 2 will basically not retain any new consumers of the MOBA market. LoL will still remain the gatekeepers of the MOBA market (as long as it can keep up in marketing and graphics, which it is showing it can) and will have the larger playerbase and earn more money.
How can MOBA gameplay even be labeled as "outdated"? How does gameplay in a genre that's only existed for less than a decade, and which pretty much all members of the genre undertake persistent patch cycles of content addition and revision become obsolete? The term doesn't even make sense in this context.
On June 15 2012 05:12 Dark_Chill wrote: I don't get the comparison to Dota's stronger abilities for heroes. If all the abilities are stronger, then don't they become not strong in the context of the game? Also, can someone explain Riot's reasoning to make a skin worth the same amount as a champion?
You're right about that, it's just a different game style. Riot's approach is to tone everything down so CC and super strong abilities are long CDs and shorter durations, while Valve took the approach of "as long as everything is OP, nothing is OP". They both work in their own settings, you just can't mix and match.
The reasoning is that it's the most ambitious skin, period. Not only does it have the completely new voiceovers like every other (well, every "good") legendary skin has, it has some of the best particle effects in the game, and Ezreal actually has 4 different character models as he levels. He also causes unique death animations on minions and champions. Like Vaporized said, if you don't think all that is worth the price, that's your opinion. I'll be day 1 buying.
On June 15 2012 05:16 TheKefka wrote: Er a buddy just told me they are going to remove elo loss when you dodge ranked games. Wtf,won't that like,break the whole ranked que lol?
I think it's to prevent losing ELO when you dodge a game because your team picks all AD carries and you don't want an instant loss.
Ya, I can see that a lot of work went into Ez, and he seems like an appropriate legendary skin. Everything from his speach, spells, animations, it's great. But according to a study on free-to-play games (not sure where I saw it, will post when found), you're more inclined to spend money after you first spend, which is where this Ez came in. The special sale will definitely help that, and while I do find that the price is too high for me, I can see that Riot probably put a lot of work into this.
I'm more referring to problems like this: Frostfire Annie/Annie in Wonderland. I'm not going to bring up how I feel about how costly a skin should be. Just looking at it, why does one cost 1820 while the other costs 975? I'm guessing Riot's team either decides which one they think is cooler or Wonderland took longer to make, but it doesn't make sense the same way Ez's skin does. Ez's animations are all much more detailed than his other skins. It makes sense that it would cost a lot more.
The other problem is one I mentioned already, but I'll go into detail a bit more: a skin costing more than a champ. I'm not going to refer to Ez's skin, because there was a large effort put into it. What I'm going to do instead is say this: if Riot's pricing works so that the cost of something is equivalent to the work put into it, then that would mean that many skins took just as much time as the champs to be designed. I don't believe this is true, but if it is, then you can just disregard the rest of this argument, and pretty much the whole thing. If instead Riot prices according to what they think will sell... well, can't fault them for being a company and wanting to make a profit, but wouldn't they make more of a profit if things were priced lower than the champs themselves, all skins aside from legendaries were priced the same. They'd have a much bigger audience, and, if I'm right about this mentality, people will be more prone to buying them because "hey, it doesn't cost that much to give my favorite champ a cool skin to wear. Might as well buy it". Again, if this kind of thinking is proven wrong, you could disregard this argument as well.
I know I'm not a marketing department, and Riot most likely does have its reasons, so if anyone can clarify for me, that'd be great
As for me I'm done handing them cash for 1s and 0s in a video game. I did spend a good deal of money but stopped because honestly they do absolute zilch to reward big spenders.
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????
lol
why should they do anything to reward big spenders? id be pissed if they did. u arent giving them money for the hell of it. you know exactly what you are getting when you buy something, and they owe you nothing more then what you paid for.
games on steam are discounted because it increases sales, oftentimes (but not always) for games that are not huge sellers in the first place. this is a direct benefit for the developers and publishers of those games. these sales are needed for the smaller companies to keep the business solvent in some cases.
now riot on the other hand is making money hand over fist. they discount 3 champs a week (as far as i can tell) and some skins maybe. im going to guess they get a bump in sales on champs they discount just like for steam, but they only do that to make even more money. they certainly dont have to.
On June 15 2012 02:35 Live2Win wrote: I'd say GP ulti is more like Gyrocopter's ult with agh.
lol this got me into looking at the playdota website again, a place I haven't visited in over a year and there's like 4/5 heroes I've never seen before
That's kinda funny. If it was LoL you haven't been playing for a year it would be more in the line of 15-20 champions you haven't seen before ^^
Well they just HAVE to change something about it sooner or later. At one point people will realize that League is one of the most expensive games on the market right now. =P
Not exactly. If you want to buy everything the game has to offer, sure. But for the price of SC2, you can get a good number of champs. Add an "expansion" and you can easily afford runepages and more champs. LoL has more to offer than what you can get for that money, but you can still buy enough to call it a full game. You don't go into a shop and say "this is the most expensive shop in the world" just because it has more stuff than you can afford, either.
The thing is, LoL is now competing with a game where all of the meaningful content is free and unlocked at the start, and only the cosmetic extras cost money.
Granted, I doubt DotA 2 will really have that big of an impact on LoL, seeing as how different the playerbases are, but the fact that DotA 2's business model is essentially only selling cosmetics has got to turn at least a few heads at Riot HQ.
I predict that once DotA 2's announcement loses its thunder, and DotA 2 approaches release, that Riot will significantly reduce the IP to buy champions. That way, players who are mainly F2P will be able to farm up champions more easily, while players who are mainly P2P will still buy champions, resulting in a mitigated lose of income (which it doesn't need as much as Valve).
i more or less agree with what you said except for this part. valve doesnt need money. they essentially print their own with steam.
Don't worry, next season riot will throw something more ridiculous, like, 5 million dollars at the players for esports. l0l Actually, probably 5 million Euros. Since the dollar is gonna be worth shit in a year.
EPT
I really hadn't considered the difference in resources or standards from start to present time.
