Images: Riot Games
Despite the changes promised, players are still unhappy with Riot’s overall response.
Season 1 of League of Legends (LoL) for 2025 has had a rough first week, with players frustrated over the new LoL reward system that greatly reduced the amount of Blue Essence (BE) players can earn, with a Redditor even claiming that players would need to grind for 882 hours to get a new champion.
Although LoL developer Riot Games initially responded to the thread with some employees sharing computations and receiving feedback, they eventually addressed the issue on social media, admitting that they “screwed up” on this matter.
The post came with a statement from Riot's Senior Vice President and Head of League Studio, Andrei “Meddler” Van Roon, who admitted that the numbers “missed the mark” for many players, especially those who were highly engaged with the game.
“Our intent was for Blue Essence earn rates to be the same, or slightly better, for all players, with new and casual players in particular seeing a more meaningful increase,” he said.
Issues with Blue Essence and XP rates
Meddler admitted that BE rates in the process, became “significantly lower” than intended and that progression to Level 30 had slowed by up to 30%. He also highlighted a lack of communication about moving Champion Capsules from account-level rewards to the seasonal battle pass.
After taking a second look at the math, the team discovered a few things that were overlooked. “When the Passes went live, we saw a large amount of feedback and analysis from many of you,” Meddler explained. Riot realised that their calculations did not factor in the First Win of the Day (FWotD) experience boost, which had been crucial for faster Champion Capsule access and BE income.
Digging further into the issue, Meddler shared a chart that showed the disparity showing that BE earnings were positive for casual players with low engagement but negative for medium-to-highly engaged players. “We missed the mark a lot for other players, especially those who play a lot,” he added.
Changes coming in Patch 25.S1.2
To address the issues, Riot plans to implement the following changes in Patch 25.S1.2:
- Increasing BE from milestones from 4,750 to 9,000.
- Increasing repeatable Epilogue milestone rewards from 50 BE to 750 BE.
- Account XP earned will be increased by 40%, ensuring that reaching Level 30 or Ranked access will take about the same amount of games as before.
- Additional changes include converting the last Champion Capsule in the pass to a Glorious Champion Capsule beginning in Act 2.
- As some players have already progressed through Act 1 milestones, Riot will introduce a one-time mission in Patch 25.S1.3 that grants 4,250 BE. This mission will be available to all players, regardless of whether they complete the pass,
Meddler concluded by stating that Riot would “dig deeper into why this issue slipped through in the first place and how to prevent similar problems in the future.” He added, “We’ll keep you updated as we review these systems for potential adjustments, and we apologise for our mistakes in both the numbers tuning and communication about what was and wasn’t changing.”
LoL players still dissatisfied with the changes
LoL players thanked the devs on social media for responding to the backlash, but not without commenting on other parts of the new reward system that Riot failed to address.
An X user, @HeyShuggie, criticised the removal of Hextech Chests and how free-to-play players have been impacted. Some of the things HeyShuggie, and many others, pointed out were:
- Free-to-Play (F2P) players losing access to weekly Mastery Chests (earned through S-, S, or S+ ranks).
- The current system gives more keys than chests, leaving F2P players with fewer opportunities to earn free skins.
- Previously, players could earn 8 shards in 2 months, enough for 2 new skins. Now, F2P players get 1 random skin every 2 months without VFX or recalls.
- Removal of Masterwork Chests reduced access to ME, which is now mostly tied to the Arcane Sanctuary.
- Acquiring a prestige skin now costs significantly more RP (around 10k RP for 125 ME).
- The 25 ME previously included with a 1650 RP pass now requires spending 2k RP more than before.
- Exalted Skins combine three legendary skin designs but lack unique animations and recalls.
Among all the changes mentioned players who responded to LoL’s tweet wanted to bring back the Hextech Chests the most, which were missing when Season 15 changes rolled out last week.
Players can hope all the other issues may be addressed in the future, but for now, these are all that Riot is changing.
