This small change in Season 14 is really important, and it’s been over 6 years since an employee fought to get into League of Legends.
After the rest of this announcement
Season 14 of League of Legends in particular has brought a lot of changes to things. Myths have disappeared, new ones have arrived, others have been discarded, and some have undergone changes. One of them has also seen its price drop, A small change that may seem insignificant, but is more important than it seems.
A few less POs that change everything
Season 14 arrived with patch 14.1, and the cost of first-tier items dropped. We’re talking about the Tome of Amplification here, which has gone from 435 gold to 400 gold.. But why is this change so important? To fully understand this, you have to go back to the beginning of the game. When the LoL economic system was created, the cost of items was based on a multiplier of 5. Liquids cost, for example, 35 gold (they cost 50 gold). now). Calculating what you could buy at the beginning of the game was much more complicated than it is today.
If the cost of Tome of Amplification was set to 435 gold, that was a way to nerf it. Players who purchased it at the beginning of the game can only purchase one potion, instead of the sorcerer’s starting item, Doran’s Ring. In short, this forced players to make a choice, buy Doran’s Ring which must be resold, but which is more useful in the early game, or invest in an ingredient included in many other high level item recipes. The problem is that this justification has not been understood for eight years now.
Changes from season 6
Let’s go back in time again. In Season 6, the starting gold awarded to the player increased from 475 to 500 and the game’s economy began to be based on multiples of 50.. In addition, the prices of many starting items were reduced, notably allowing players to equip two life potions from the start of the game, which was still not possible if you got the Tome of Amplification as the first item – which therefore Became a viable option for a long time and fell into oblivion. Then its price had no meaning.
So we had to wait until Season 14 to get the logical “price” of Amplification Tom compared to other items. But what you might not know is that in the shadows, an employee of Riot Games has been fighting this topic for years, more than 6 years. Nick “Endstep” Freegia previously suggested the price change during his job interview when asked what he would change in the game if he was allowed to do what he wanted. If the recruits didn’t really understand his intent, and thought he was joking, he was actually very serious. “It’s a joke. If I could go back then I would have done the same thing. That thought has stuck with me since I joined Riot Games.” He said in a video Youtube.
Even his colleagues knew about his obsession, one of them even revealed it on Reddit.
But then, why did Riot Games wait so long before aligning item pricing to make it more consistent with others? It is the cheapest of all the items that only offer power and this makes it one of the economic pillars of the game.
in short, If you change the Tome of Amplification, you have to change the more expensive ones that only give the same stats (AP here). This would require a lot of work on all things, and the opportunity never really presented itself. The League of Legends developers left the situation as it was while they tackled more pressing issues until the right circumstances finally presented themselves.
We had to wait until Season 14, and see the Tome of Amplification drop in price from 435 to 400 gold and its share of item changes – an adjustment that didn’t require additional work – but also because Nick left the quality control department. And now works directly in the gameplay department. His long search is now over.
