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Intro: Hello, everyone! I've been playing this game for a looooooong time and I can happily say that I still enjoy it a lot and more than any other game. However, there's something that I don't like and I think it's getting worse every year: Events. I want to prove my point by analyzing the evolution of events throughout the years. Just a heads up, League of Legends was released 12 years ago (!!!) so this is gonna be LONG (tl;dr at the end) and before anyone says anything, my shifts at work are way too long and I have a lot of free time. Please excuse any mistakes as English is my second language.
To make things simpler, I decided to divide my analysis in 5 parts (or eras) according to the characteristics of the game (and the events) at the time. Let’s jump right into it.
The game was in its beginnings and things were (rightfully so) simpler. The events from this era were characterized by event themed Summoner's Rifts. In the span of 2 years, we had:
- Winter Rift
- Winter Games Rift
- Christmas Rift
- Autumn/Halloween Rift
Every event also came with special runes, minion skins and new editions for consumables and items (and skins of course but that's the whole point of events: to sell skins so I'm gonna focus more on the additional features). While this might sound simple, I simply loved it? I live near the Equator so there aren't seasons around here but logging in to League and feeling the vibes of any of these events felt nice. I think immersion plays an important role in what events should be.
Trivia:
- The last time we got the Autumn/Halloween Rift was 2011 (11 years ago)
- The last time we got the Winter/Christmas Rift was 2017 (5 years ago)
- We haven't gotten new versions for Items/Consumables since 2012 (10 years ago)
All the things previously mentioned were removed for this period. So what was new? Well, Riot introduced "Missions". Missions as we know them today weren't introduced until 2017 but there were events where if you did X thing, Riot would send a reward to your account after a few days (similar to how they distribute ranked rewards nowadays).
Yup, FOMO has been here since the beginning.
The most common missions were:
- Purchase RP
- Send a gift to a friend (the Gift Center was created)
- Playing with friends or in certain maps (Howling Abyss and Twisted Treeline)
- Purchase event content
The reward was an icon 100% of the time. Additionally, ward skins were created and you could equip them and were free to use throughout the duration of the event (this was later changed and you had to rent them for RP or IP/BE to use it).
I would say the highlights of this era were that lore and champion release events were introduced: Freljord Event (choosing your tribe) alongside with the release of Lissandra and the rework of Trundle / Sejuani. Similarly, events weren't Rift-centric all the time and featured other maps/playstyles. Twisted Treeline became the Harrowing map and Howling Abyss became the Snowdown map. On top of that, the first ever game mode was created: Snowdown Showdown (1v1 or 2v2).
I'm sure not all of you agree but I will die on these hills: I hate the fact that most events revolve around Summoner's Rift in some way and that profit (skins/champ releases) comes first when designing events instead of focusing on expanding the lore and building an immersive experience with a strong/cohesive narrative (e.g. Akshan had more to do during the Ruination event than Maokai, Yorick, etc. just because they wanted to promote the new champion and they shoehorned him + a lot of other champions just to sell the skins). Let’s move on because everything related to the Ruination event has already been said.
Trivia:
- The last time ward skins were available to use for free during an event was in 2014 during the Lunar Revel event. After that, you were able to purchase them from the store and use them permanently (8 years ago)
- Snowdown Showdown hasn't returned to the live servers since 2013 (9 years ago)
While the formula stayed mostly the same, everything was improved and Riot decided to give players everything they wanted. During this period, the following game modes were released:
- Legend of the Poro King
- Ascension
- U.R.F.
- Hexakill (moved to the Twisted Treeline)
- Black Market Brawlers. Included new items and even some of them were added to the main game: Dead Man's Plate
- New Map: Butcher's Bridge (ARAM)
All things considered, I think this is the closest we got to perfection.
Event Missions were diversified and rewards were improved. New missions included:
- Earn gold
- Get kills
- Win under X mins
- Play in X map and do X thing specific to this map (Poro King, Ascension)
Rewards stopped being only icons and now included IP (BE) weekends, XP boosts, mystery champions and in some cases skins. Additionally, reactive icons (Poros in Poro King/Finishers for URF) and announcer packs (Gangplank) were introduced. Finally, minion skins such as Pool Party/PROJECT returned with exclusive spawn animations. Loading Screen Borders were introduced for purchasing a skin during its release week. Icons were 250RP and didn't include the border.
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I want to take a moment to talk about the Pool Party 2015 event (Team Up Week!). I have never seen something similar since then and I don't understand why those kind of events aren't more common (the VS events come close but not really). It was an event in which the whole community participated together to earn points and unlock rewards. The only downside is that points were difficult to get (gifting friends, strangers or playing as a group of 5) and that's' why we weren’t able to get Pool Party Mundo.
This was awesome, except for the five-player premade party part
Trivia:
- The Butcher's Bridge hasn't returned since 2019 (3 years ago)
- We haven't gotten a new announcer pack since 2018 (4 years ago)
- We haven't gotten finishers/reactive icons since 2019 (3 years ago)
- Out of all the game modes released during this era, URF is the only one that returns frequently nowadays
The missions system that we have today was introduced but the challenges stayed mostly the same. Rewards were improved a little bit with the introduction of Hextech Crafting (icons, IP (BE), hextech chests, emotes, champion shards, wards and in some cases, skins). New announcer packs were released: Pyke, Star Guardian Ahri, Dark Star Thresh, Phreak & Kobe, Odyssey Kayn. Map accents and minion skins returned for Snowdown, Arcade and Lunar Revel.
Rotating Game Mode queue is introduced. Every weekend a game mode would be made available to play for everyone. This wasn’t necessarily connected to any event. However, here's the list of game modes that were released as a part of an event:
- Star Guardian: Invasion
- Hunt of the Blood Moon
- Dark Star: Singularity
- Doom Bots of Doom (the game mode was released in 2014 but wasn’t part of any event)
- PROJECT: OVERCHARGE
- Odyssey: Extraction
Hextech Crafting, Event Shops, Tokens and Passes are introduced.
This is where things get complicated. As I mentioned before, missions and their rewards stayed mostly the same. However, a new event currency was introduced: Tokens. Every event had their own currency and some of them even had special chests which could give you a different (and more ‘special’) currency for the same event. You could use the tokens or the ‘special’ currency to unlock additional exclusive content (icons, emotes, chromas). This sounds familiar, right? Well, we didn't have passes as we know them today and the only way you could get additional tokens was by buying orbs/chests bundles or by buying the pass (not all events had it and it only unlocked an exclusive mission track to earn a limited amount of tokens (+ bonus content); it wasn’t possible to earn tokens indefinitely). The loading screen borders were also included as exclusive content or in bundles and they weren't awarded for purchasing the skin during its release week. It's worth mentioning that events had free missions with tokens as rewards but you could only use them to unlock one icon/chroma most of the time, if you wanted anything else you had to buy the bundles or the pass. Here are some examples:
Riot really loves to give their players ways to show their pride and accomplishment, don’t they?
IMO, this is where things started to go downhill. They gave us some of the best game modes ever but at the same time they introduced the predatory and FOMO fueled event system that we have nowadays. I'll go into more details at the end.
Trivia:
- Not a single one of these game modes have returned since 2018 (4 years ago)
Do I really need to explain anything? This is what the first and latest pass got/get you when buying it:
4 orbs, 200 tokens and 1 icon vs. 4 orbs and 200 tokens. The icon was moved to the mission track.
This is what you could/can get in the event shops:
However, not everything is as bad as it seems and you gotta give credit when it is due. I believe the first event only gave tokens as rewards of the missions and it was hard to get tokens. The mission track of today's events is more diverse and you always get:
- 1500 tokens (purchasing pass, free and paid missions)
- 25 mythic essence
- 3 emotes
- 1 random emote
- 2 icons
- XP Boost for 10 wins
- 3000 BE
- 1250 OE
- 2 orbs
- 3 Masterwork chests (with keys)
- Eternals capsule
Half of these things I don't care for but it's something? For better or worse, the missions requirements and token gains have been tweaked a lotl. I'm glad you're not required to kill Baron as Yuumi to complete a mission anymore /s but the points/time required to complete them still feel like a punishment. Token gains were nerfed and I don't care how many times it is stated that the system is better or hasn’t changed at all, it's more difficult to get tokens nowadays and that's why I decided to not buy passes anymore.
Can I copy your homework? Yeah just change it up a bit so it doesn't look obvious you copied.
So how would I describe events nowadays? Boring. Here's a pass that will always get you the same, a prestige skin that you might want to grind for, icons (+borders), chromas and sometimes emotes/wards. Just a heads up, you won't be able to get everything because you're not supposed to. However, if you really want it you can always buy more RP. What about map/minion changes? You only get those when Riot's not busy looking for more ways to monetize the game (spoiler: never). And game modes? Here's (A)URF and One for All for the fiftieth time in the past year. Did you know they used to have a team focused on creating game modes? I put that in the past tense because based on what they've put out recently it looks like there isn't one anymore (I hope so, otherwise that would be sad). You know what's even sadder? Riot agrees. Here are the trailers for the last couple of events (90% of the content they use to promote the event is something you have to pay for. It’s funny how they try to sell the icons/chromas/borders as something game-changing):
Wow. Look at all those things you can buy. What an \"event\".
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TL;DR / Conclusion
Events in League according to Riot Games: buy the skins, buy the capsules, buy the event pass, buy the chromas! In other words, if you do not pay for those things, you are not participating in the event at all and that is lackluster. You know what’s even worse? If you buy the pass, you will probably still miss like 70% of the content because of how grindy it is. League of Legends has one of the worst pass systems I’ve ever seen. If you buy the pass in Fortnite, you can basically buy the next one for free and unlock like 5 skins with all of their additional content. But sure, let’s make it fairer and compare League’s pass system with Riot’s other games: TFT and Wild Rift. Are they grindy? Yeah, but you’re able to unlock all the content and you get: arenas, little legends, skins, finishers, etc. There's no token/event shop BS.
I’m just gonna use this gif to explain how I feel about (A)URF/One for All being the only event game modes (I know they’ve explained why they don’t bring any other game modes back but bear with me.)
https://i.redd.it/5byys9ztp8391.gif
What I think events should be:
95% of the time events are made to sell AU skins, the other 5% is to also sell skins but related to the lore. An event should be the exploration of the universe you’re trying to sell. As a player, things like Invasion or Extraction took me to that world and made me love it. I was immersed in those universes. Let’s be real, the first batch of Odyssey skins wasn’t that great (except for Kayn and maybe Ziggs) but everything was just so GOOD that I don’t care, I love every single one of them.
Game modes should be related to the event as well. I want to experience a demon-infested wild west, battle Mordekaiser in the PROJECT universe. I know other game modes have low play rates (especially on second runs) and that’s why they haven’t returned. But hey, not every game mode has to return or stay up permanently. It looks like if it’s not something Riot can bring back 20 times, then it’s not worth it for them to greenlight. They have the money, they have the resources and other companies also do it with no problem so I don’t see why it isn’t possible. Shootout to the Spirit Blossom, the 10th year Anniversary and Arcane events. They tried something different for the most part and even revamped some aspects of old events (e.g. Nexus Blitz). Ultimate Spellbook was the only redeeming quality of the Ruination event which tried to replicate the success of the Spirit Blossom one and failed miserably.
Finally, exclusive content is okay but it sucks when most of the content is locked either behind a paywall or a 30 day grind (and you still aren’t able to unlock everything). I play LoL to have fun, it loses its purpose when it starts to feel like a full-time job. It shouldn't be called an event if most of the player base is not able to engage with it in a meaningful way (community-wide events were awesome!!) and the paid content shouldn't be the primary focus of the events. If the experience is amazing, the skins are going to sell like hotcakes with no problem.
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Unfortunately it looks like things aren't going to change anytime soon and the only update that will come out soon is the third part of the mythic content overhaul (pictured below). So what's gonna change? Nothing. They're just gonna move everything to an event hub and things will be easier to find/visualize but the mission track/ event shop will stay the same:
