League of Legends was the most impactful for me and my friends of all the games I’ve played. It was late 2009, and I was back from college for Christmas break. I was at home, playing on my 360 when a couple of friends asked me to get on this new game. “Dude, you have to try League of Legends,” they repeatedly said. So, finally, after they begged me for a week, I loaded it up on my laptop.
I was surprised once I finished the tutorial; I had never seen anything like it before. Running through the champions, I decided I’d unlock Nocturne. He looked freaking sweet, and my friends told me they needed a jungler. How could I pass up the chance to gank enemies?
It’s hard to believe that was 15 years ago! I can still recall it vividly, as if it happened just last month. My journey with League has been quite the venture, and overall, it’s been a positive experience (toxic gamers excluded). I was thrilled when Microsoft announced support for Riot games like League and Valorant. As a Game Pass subscriber, I had instant access to all the Champions I still didn’t have.
League of Legends update: What’s happened so far
Complaints started popping up a few days ago on Reddit, where players noticed the new Event Pass had been nerfed in terms of the player base’s ability to acquire Blue Essence or BE for short. For those unaware, Blue Essence is the currency players can earn to unlock champions, ranging from 450 to 7800 BE per Champion.
The highest price is reserved for new Champions, who drop to 6300 BE within a week and stay there for quite a while. Often, these Champions become meta and are sought after by players to gain a significant advantage—one that newer players were going to struggle to achieve, especially if they wanted to play ranked. More on that last part later.
First, let’s start with the old system. Players earned Champion Shards for every five levels they achieved in the Event Pass. These Shards could, in turn, be used to grant a significant discount on the Champion the Shard belonged to. They could also be turned in for BE. Now, they no longer exist, and neither did most of the Blue Essence bonuses. You can see previous Event Passes here.
For example, the daily reward for your first win used to grant 50 BE, meaning players could earn starter Champions for 450 BE over 9 days by just showing up, regardless of the Event Pass. Over the course of a year, that was an extra 18,250 BE that players could get. With an average price point of 3150, that’s almost six new heroes!
As of now, completing the Event Pass will grant 4 Champion Capsules and 4750 BE. Afterward, users can earn BE through what are called repeatable missions, which also receive a staggering nerf. A Reddit user calculated that achieving a new Champion would take a staggering 882 hours of playtime. That’s over 36 days of gameplay for a single Champion.
According to the poster, “With only repeatable missions remaining, you earn 1.5 experience per minute. Every 5 levels of the pass grants 200 Blue Essence. It was stated that 2500 experience takes 1666 minutes, meaning you get 200 BE every 28 hours, and it takes 882 hours to get 6300 BE.”
Where did that leave new players?
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Get ready for some necessary number crunching.
In order to play in ranked play, gamers need to reach both level 30 and have 20 Champions unlocked. Currently, a new player can obtain:
- 7 Champions and 6300 BE from early missions and rewards.
- They can then earn 4 Champion Capsules,
- which grant either one, two, or three Champion Shards at a rate of 40%, 50%, and 10%, respectively.
- These Champion Capsules can also grant 90 or 260 BE at a rate of 30% and 10%, respectively.
With the 4750 BE I mentioned earlier and the fact that 23 Champions are available for 450 BE, players can buy enough Champions for ranked play by the end of the Event Pass, depending on their Champion Capsule rolls.
However, with the average price of Champions, buying mid to upper-tier Champions means you won’t have enough Blue Essence to buy cheaper Champions. If you buy cheap Champions, you wouldn’t be playing with the Champions that many consider to be better.
Some more affordable Champions, like Malphite, Miss Fortune, Annie, and Garen, can still be played competitively. However, the most crucial factor is the meta, and these Champions aren’t always considered to be so. Having a relatively decent selection of Champions to choose from in the current meta helps players significantly.
With each team banning 5 Champions each, newer players may have seen their Champs banned and unusable.
Fans were (and still are) outraged
The player base was beyond frustrated. Over the last few days, they’ve been making multiple posts claiming that this could be the potential nail in the coffin for League. Sure, they might be exaggerating a bit, but players are making good points.
- “Lmfao, this game’s largest issue is that it isn’t accessible to new players at ALL, and these clowns are just making the problem worse every single patch they release” CTM3399
- “A new player who completes the battle pass each season would get about 4-6 champs per season, depending on how expensive they were. This means they would take over 10 YEARS to get all the champs free to play.” SkeletronDOTA
- “Genuinely one of the dumbest ideas I have ever seen from a company. We are getting at the point where we need to pay real money to simply unlock champs in a reasonable amount of time.” HugeDegen69
My favorite comment mentions the fact that Dota 2, the number one competitor to League, has all the characters available from the start. Even Marvel Rivals doesn’t block a single hero from use. Their new characters are free as they launch. In 2025, it’s rare to see games take this strategy, much less double down on their efforts.
Riot’s response
Riot has come out, claiming everything was a mistake to begin with. Outlining their response in four points, Riot broke down their errors and how they would fix them. “TL;DR: We meaningfully screwed up on this one. The numbers we shipped were pretty far off from what they should be for many of you. We’ll be putting out fixes for that during Patches 25.S1.2 and 25.S1.3.”
If you check out the response, they laid out a rather well-formatted Blue Essence sheet that broke down all how users could gain Blue Essence. After the update, newer players would see an increase of 6.94% in Blue Essence earned, whereas other players would see a massive drop-off. For example, players who put in 200 hours or more saw their BE production reduced by 71%, according to Riot.
Those 200-hour players will see an increase from what they were prior, increasing by 22.28% over the original acquisition rate. Even newer players will see an increase of up to 18%. In essence, pun intended, they’re buffing progression across the board and admitting fault.
It seems odd to me that they carefully laid out these numbers in their response but somehow didn’t know these were the changes they put into effect. How do you miss the mark by this much? Was this actually intentional, and this is your response to having your hand caught in the cookie jar?
Riot mentioned the cause of these problems, “When the Passes went live, we saw a large amount of feedback and analysis from many of you, which caused us to take another look at the math. When we did, we realized that we didn’t factor in the First Win of the Day experience into our calculations for BE income—both directly from that XP boost and the indirect faster access to Champion Capsules from account leveling. As for account XP, the problem is very similar—we hadn’t accounted for the loss of FWotD, which meant drastically slowing the progression of accounts and, therefore, access to Ranked.”
This response almost makes it worse. How do you not account for one of the most basic ways players earn Blue Essence via the first win of the day? That’s been a staple for years. You just missed it? I want to call shenanigans or something.
The rage against the machine continues
Looking at the League of Legends subreddit, it looks like I’m not the only skeptical one. Players are rightfully pointing out that the update is somewhat bogus. In a post titled, “Blue Essence buffs are a trap,” the poster points out that all gains are now loaded into the back end of the pass, and any promising early returns on Blue Essence are still missing.
Commenters also point out some obvious flaws and that the math ain’t mathin’.
Neblinio points out, “They didn’t do their math right (or are straight laughing at us). The old system’s BE value shown in their table was the minimum possible (disenchant). They “forgot” yet another important aspect from the old system: most of the BE value we used to get came as champion shards, allowing a 40% BE discount on most/all champions.”
Asiyt mentions that players still don’t have other items that were lost in the new system, “And just to be clear, blue essence costs Riot NOTHING, we still lost account progression rewards and chests. This “fix” is literally the absolute minimum Riot should have done, and they deserve no praise for it.”
Another user, BlueBunny333, theorizes Riot knew all along, “The Blue Essence nerf was known and intentional. It first divided attention from monetization and Chest nerf to a more urgent problem, and by “fixing” it fast after the expected feedback, they are banking on the majority being happy. Most people have a short-term gratification problem, so these quick information changes can quickly overwrite your hate for the nerfs.”
Where does this all end? Does Riot respond again, or do they let the current outrage die out until no one is left yelling? It really depends; I’ve seen companies take both routes. Often enough, places like Riot believe they’re too big to fail to such issues and will keep heading forward regardless of what the player base says. Let’s hope for the best for the health of the game and the players affected.
Where do you land? Are you outraged by the current situation, or have you taken a back seat in this mess? Let us know below or on social media. I’d love to read what some users outside of Reddit think, for better or worse!
P.S. Game Pass gives you access to all the characters, LoL.
