About the price of Mecha Kha'Zix and Morello on the Future of LoL

I'm glad to see you've taken time away from playing our newest champion to return to good ole' Surrender at 20. As a reward, here are a handful of the latest and most interesting red posts!

Continue reading for an explanation of why Mecha Kha'Zix carries such a steep price point and several posts by Morello concerning some initiatives coming into play for S3 and the future of League of Legends.

In case you didn't notice it in the announcement earlier, Mecha Kha'Zix is now available at an uncommonly high 1350 RP price point. This unusual price has upset many summoners and caused quite the confusion about why exactly this skin merits an extra 375 RP.Hippalus defended the increased price point by saying:

"This was a special case where the launch skin is arguably legendary due to the evolving model and other features. We decided that rather than price it as legendary, we would launch it at 1350 RP, and that we would keep the regular launch bundle price of 1462 so that players who want the skin could get the champion for almost free.

This will not be a trend for launch skins or skins in general, but as we produce more legendary quality skins, we may bring the 1350 RP price back on occasion.

We are also trying something new with Sultan Tryndamere today by launching him on sale for 487. Again, this will not be the norm, but I am interested in your continued feedback so we can decide which new ideas make sense and which should be sent to the recycle bin."

One summoner spoke to his fear that thus new price point will be a permanent addition and would be the standard price for new skins,  to which Hippalus replied:

"Good theory but wrong. That's no more accurate than expecting that if you buy Sultan Trynd that all future skins will come out at 487.

Most skins for the forseeable future, including Pentakill Olaf next week, will come out at 975. Most legendaries will continue to come out at 1820.

However you are somewhat correct in that your feedback (and purchases) will help us decide if 1350 and 487 launches should be considered in the future for skins that meet a certain threshold for quality and effort. If you don't think these either of these skins are worth the price to you, don't buy them and feel free to let us know why. If you think they are, we'd love to know that too."

Morello spoke a little bit about his thoughts on Nasus & Renekton and how the currently measure up. He says:

"I've spoken about Nasus before, and sadly, I don't think we're likely to do much on him. To me, the design's "fun" is what also holds him back. To make Nasus good, Siphoning Strike simply can't infinitely scale. When I asked about, many passionate Nasus players preferred not-in-tournaments Nasus but with his most signature mechanic in tact.

Renekton is honestly fine, and I don't understand the feelings of marginalization on him. He's used sometimes in serious play (but not always) and only really suffers from lack of AD Caster itemization - something that will probably be much better in the Season 3 item overhaul."

Even though it's nothing new, notice at the end Morello mentions the S3 item overhaul. When probed for further information, he replied with:

"Nothing until it's closer - we're in mad science mode on it right now. Lots will change"

Again, no new information but boy does stuff like this get me antsy for the upcoming season.

Following the same theme as the previous post, Morello put up a MASSIVE response to a thread about the future of League of Legends and where Riot is headed. He mentions his feelings on several key points such as eSports, new maps, better balance, champion reworks, and more. Here it is in its entirety:

"Hey there, good post that poses some really valid questions.

I can't tell you everything you want to know in detail in this post and I'm sorry for that. However, we talk about this a lot internally. While there's always room to improve on Champions, I think we're putting the right amount of care and resources into it to release cool stuff regularly - the question is non-Champion releases.

First of all, let's talk about a few of the features we think are important and are talking about already:

* Player Behavior (Honor, Tribunal improvements, etc). This is one of our biggest non-gameplay things to tackle, and Lyte's team works specifically and only on these aspects. This also includes looking at things like Matchmaking, how to group players, etc - no additional details yet, but Lyte will let you know as soon as we can While not always as instantly "sexy" as gameplay features on the immediate glance, I think most people agree this is an important area to focus on.

* eSports I think it goes without mention how seriously we're treating this aspect of League. Frankly, we think eSports needs to be supported in a way I've never seen of beforehand - it's what it needs and deserves, and more importantly, what a lot of players want to have. Our plans here will be unveiled more and more as we progress, but I think we're in good shape here.

"But, Morello!", you may ask, "These are cool, but they don't enhance the gameplay. I want to talk about gameplay features!"

This is, unfortunately, where I need to be tight-lipped on details. I will talk in more high-level stuff. Directionally, here's a couple of bullets;

New Maps: Xypherous and I talk philosophically where we want to spend our efforts on this front in the following thread: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/....php?t=2449093. The major takeaway is we discuss the damage of multiple 5v5 SR-style maps, but like new game modes like Dominion, TT or ARAM. Support for these existing maps is our next priority here. For design rationale on why we're doing this, that thread has a lot of information.

The desire for all-new mechanics: We agree that some of this is needed, but I like the clip we do new and familiar. I explain why familiar mechanics don't tell the whole story of uniqueness in this thread (get past my mid-playtest short posts!) http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...44270#29444270

This has relation to champions, but also can apply to other mechanics in the game too.

More reworks and support for the live game: Agreed. We formed a whole team dedicated to reworks, but we're figuring out some details on how to increase this pace (it's harder than new champs in a lot of ways).

The other aspect of this is systems changes - things like Guinsoo's new jungle of Season 2. We've got a LOT to talk about before Season 3 on this front (and between seasons is the right time to do big changes) including the new items overhaul Xypherous is heading up. We think there's a lot of nuts and bolts style improvements to return a bit of the experimentation and "new game smell" without making the game totally alien to people.

Better balance:Balance is not something I consider a major problem today, but could always use improvement. I have a whole team of Live Design that hyper-focuses on this and knows the game better than I do, and 99.9% of people reading this Balance, objectively by any reasonable metric, is pretty good. My philosophy on balance is well-summed up in the Kha'Zix/Rengar passive thread as an example: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...10108#29610108

Directionally, we want League to be around a long time. We want long-time players, meaning we need to keep strategies and the game fresh. Champions and Balance are good tools here, but you're right that there are many more - some of those up our sleeves at the moment. It's easy to see Champions and Balance because they happen so frequently, they warp time perception around other things. Did you know we released Dominion about a year ago? ARAM is pretty new to League too. When we release content so often, it makes everything else seem like an eternity (even if it's not actually "too long").

Riot is about one thing from a game standpoint; Long-engagement, serious PC games for PC game players. No churning out things to maximize short-term and burn long-term, no product abandonment, etc. We're all PC gamers, and want to make those kinds of games - the ones we'd always wanted a company to make."

 In addition to the above, he continued to comment on the thread, briefly mentioning plans to update Twisted Treeline and that a Lore project is in the works that will "make the JoJ seem like a joke comparatively".

What do you guys think about or hope for in this looming overhaul to items or any of the other initiatives that we'll hopefully see roll out sometime soon? Season 3 seems like it's literally going to be a game changer!