We’ve been talking to players about how they feel about pricing for a while now – we’ve talked with you on the forums, ran surveys, met with some of you in person, and listened to your feedback.
As a result of those conversations, we’re making some changes to champion pricing aimed at generally lowering champion prices and making it easier for you to add to your champion collection. This plan will involve immediate and ongoing reductions of IP and RP prices of older champions, as well as increasing the time you have to earn IP between champion releases.
We will also be slightly increasing the first-week IP price of new champions to partially offset lower overall prices.
Here’s the plan, which is being implemented immediately:
New Champion Release Schedule
You may have already noticed the rate at which we’ve been releasing champions has slowed. Moving forward, we’re targeting 14-17 new champions in 2013 -- around one every 3-4 weeks. This gives you more time to accumulate IP between champion releases, and it enables our design team to spend more time developing and polishing each new champion.
RP and IP Price Tiers
We’ve also updated the RP cost of champions so that that they’re more strongly correlated with the IP price. RP costs now match IP cost accordingly:
450 IP = 260 RP
1350 IP = 585 RP
3150 IP = 790 RP
4800 IP = 880 RP
6300 IP = 975 RP
7800 IP (first week) = 975 RP
Immediate Price Reductions
The seven oldest 6300 IP champions (Ezreal, Vladimir, Renekton, Nocturne, Lee Sin, Brand and Vayne) have all been reduced to 4800 IP/880 RP. As with all permanent price reductions, we’ll automatically refund the difference for anyone who’s purchased one of these champions up to two weeks prior to today. These refunds will likely take at least a few days to fully process.
Price Reduction Schedule
Every time a new champion is released, the oldest 6300 IP/975 RP champion will be reduced to 4800 IP/880 RP.
Also, with every third champion release, an additional champion currently priced at 4800 IP or lower will be reduced to the next lowest tier, based on age and ease of play.
New Champion First-Week IP Price
All brand-new champions will cost 7800 IP/975 RP for the first week only, and will be reduced to 6300 IP thereafter.
Tl;dr:
New champion launch price is… 7800 IP / 975 RP
After one week, the price is reduced to… 6300 IP / 975 RP
Each release, the oldest 6300 is reduced to… 4800 IP / 880 RP
Each third release, an additional 4800 IP or lower champion is reduced to one of the remaining tiers…
Out of the damn park Hippalus! That ball landed in a nearby industrial complex!
Great work. Very happy Riot's got you around. Hilariously I only don't own Vladamir. Ah well this will make it easier to catch up and hit 100% champions...over time.
Thanks BadgerDrool. Making it easier to build champion collections and have predictability around price reductions are the main reasons for these changes.
I actually really like the 7800 thing on first week. It benefits Riot by encouraging people to buy the champion with RP if they really want to buy it early and it benefits the players as a whole because discourages "impulse" buys and an over-saturation of the new champs seeing play (at least for the first week).
Yeah we hope this makes first week champion ownership a little more exclusive and less frustrating.
If I bought ezreal on sale will I still get refunded some rp?
No, the forthcoming refunds are only for those who paid full price for the champions. And it may take us a couple weeks to get all the refunds processed, as we lowered the price on a lot of champions.
+1 Hippalus, but I must agree the temporary price increase is unwarranted. Now, this is coming from someone who typically just buys the new Champs bundle.
Now to give you some insight. It's not the fact that you're making the increase. This just seems like one of those "We'll just make a soft increase now, see how it goes, then later we'll make a harder increase and it won't hurt them as hard."
It's sort of like a foreshadowing of sorts, we're afraid this is just a test for a more serious increase later down the line. You guys tend to test the waters with these types of things.
Anywho, like I said you all have you hooks in me and I just buy new champs right out of the gate, but I'll gladly raise the issue for those that can't.
This is the result of a few months of research and testing. It is not a test. My plan is to not think about champion pricing for the next year at least, as there are a lot of other challenges to address.
To clarify, we also want to try and keep our two-week balance cadence where possible. We're figuring out some of the nuts and bolts on this still, but I think it's likely we can maintain that.
Independent of this, we have a "relaunches team" that we're dedicating to this, and you're seeing the results of the art side of that. Our next goal is to get this more sync'd on design and art.
We've already been essentially doing 3-week releases for a few months now, so this change is just us going "Hrm, it does take us longer to create champions at the higher quality level, so let's just do that then."
Champion Pricing & Timing Changes
Hey guys,
We’ve been talking to players about how they feel about pricing for a while now – we’ve talked with you on the forums, ran surveys, met with some of you in person, and listened to your feedback.
As a result of those conversations, we’re making some changes to champion pricing aimed at generally lowering champion prices and making it easier for you to add to your champion collection. This plan will involve immediate and ongoing reductions of IP and RP prices of older champions, as well as increasing the time you have to earn IP between champion releases.
We will also be slightly increasing the first-week IP price of new champions to partially offset lower overall prices.
Here’s the plan, which is being implemented immediately:
New Champion Release Schedule
You may have already noticed the rate at which we’ve been releasing champions has slowed. Moving forward, we’re targeting 14-17 new champions in 2013 -- around one every 3-4 weeks. This gives you more time to accumulate IP between champion releases, and it enables our design team to spend more time developing and polishing each new champion.
RP and IP Price Tiers
We’ve also updated the RP cost of champions so that that they’re more strongly correlated with the IP price. RP costs now match IP cost accordingly:
Immediate Price Reductions
The seven oldest 6300 IP champions (Ezreal, Vladimir, Renekton, Nocturne, Lee Sin, Brand and Vayne) have all been reduced to 4800 IP/880 RP. As with all permanent price reductions, we’ll automatically refund the difference for anyone who’s purchased one of these champions up to two weeks prior to today. These refunds will likely take at least a few days to fully process.
Price Reduction Schedule
Every time a new champion is released, the oldest 6300 IP/975 RP champion will be reduced to 4800 IP/880 RP.
Also, with every third champion release, an additional champion currently priced at 4800 IP or lower will be reduced to the next lowest tier, based on age and ease of play.
New Champion First-Week IP Price
All brand-new champions will cost 7800 IP/975 RP for the first week only, and will be reduced to 6300 IP thereafter.
Tl;dr:
Great work. Very happy Riot's got you around. Hilariously I only don't own Vladamir. Ah well this will make it easier to catch up and hit 100% champions...over time.
Now to give you some insight. It's not the fact that you're making the increase. This just seems like one of those "We'll just make a soft increase now, see how it goes, then later we'll make a harder increase and it won't hurt them as hard."
It's sort of like a foreshadowing of sorts, we're afraid this is just a test for a more serious increase later down the line. You guys tend to test the waters with these types of things.
Anywho, like I said you all have you hooks in me and I just buy new champs right out of the gate, but I'll gladly raise the issue for those that can't.
We've already been essentially doing 3-week releases for a few months now, so this change is just us going "Hrm, it does take us longer to create champions at the higher quality level, so let's just do that then."