[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards podcast.
Hey, what's up?
[00:00:08] Speaker B: It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: And you're listening to the Four Wards podcast here to help you move forward in league.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to episode 461 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me just two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. This week we've got Mike of many names.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: I'm still here.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: And we've got Pillow Pet.
[00:00:56] Speaker C: Hello. Merry Christmas.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. We are recording this on December 23rd. So Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Whatever you celebrate or don't celebrate, we hope you're having a good time.
Guys, we are the Forwards podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out, come play games, come chat about whatever. It's a great time. Link is in the episode description.
We also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksoman where it's been a lot of not League of Legends but that's okay.
Mike has been streaming at Twitch TV Katsura444 and Pillow Pet. You can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet.
[00:01:40] Speaker C: I promise I will eventually start streaming again. Eventually?
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Yeah, somehow. Now you're the least streaming of the three of us.
[00:01:47] Speaker C: Get on my level. I will pick it up again eventually. I got some games in mind that I think me and my wife are going to be playing and I might stream that.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Oh, wife streams are great.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: Oh yeah. Like we found some that we're enjoying. I think it's fast food simulator so she wants to try that out. Should be fun.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Last thing me and my wife streamed together was Stardew Valley and it's a great times.
[00:02:13] Speaker C: That's so fun.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Alright guys, we do have to give a shout out to Codex Ninja, our very own Pillow Pet and Robegon for supporting us at the shoutout tier. Thank you. Guys, we can't do this without you. You pay for our ability to keep this podcast on the Internet.
We do have a patreon. Patreon.com the4wardspodcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. Sometimes like today it's just like 10 minutes of us BSing. Sometimes it's like 30 minutes.
So yeah, there's a lot of stuff there. It's a good time and of course $10 a month gets you the exclusive feed and will shout you out in the intro like we do for Codex, Ninja Pillow Pet and Robegon.
Last but not least, listeners. You get disappointed. Dad Jacks this week, not a one of you rode in. We have no new questions.
[00:03:11] Speaker C: Bah.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com and give me a belated Christmas present by giving me questions that we can answer on the show.
Alright, so our topic tonight, because it's, it's a couple days before Christmas, we don't want to do anything too heavy. We want this to be a light, fun episode.
So naturally we're gonna talk about League of Legends monetization strategies.
Oh boy. Guys, this is, this is a doozy of a topic. We wanted to talk about it with the patch last week, but we wound up talking for so long about the patch we pushed it to this week.
They've changed the way that they are handling their like, FOMO systems to like convince you to spend more money.
And we have opinions.
Do you guys want to start with the Mythic shop or do you want to start with the new Sanctum feature?
[00:04:11] Speaker C: I want to start with like personally with the Sanctum.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Okay, let's start with the Sanctum.
[00:04:16] Speaker C: It's a bunch of.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: What the hell is the Sanctum?
[00:04:19] Speaker C: Like, so it's, it's a slot machine. Like you're putting in money and you're hoping to. They'll win something out of it. Like, it seemed pretty ridiculous. It's. I don't like it. Like, just let me buy what I want, you know. But it's a shop. Let me go pick up what I want. Let me go check out. Let me have my item. I don't want to be spending ridiculous amounts of money to hopefully maybe get something. But no, you know what I do? I had. What is it, 400. I think a spin. Something like that. Four.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Yep. 400 spin.
[00:04:52] Speaker C: 400 a spin. And I had like 800 or 900 RP, you know, which is in a small amount that's like five or ten bucks or something like that. I don't know. I'd have to go look. But it was just sitting there. I was like, oh, why not? I'll give it a spin. So I spend it once. 5 Mythic essence.
I get that out of like a box with keys.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Oh, it's a very pretty animation.
[00:05:14] Speaker C: And then I spend the other one and I get five Mythic essence.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:05:20] Speaker C: All right, so I'm not happy with it.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: So to be clear, they do publish all of the drop rates in the client. You don't have to go to like a separate website or anything. It's all in client, right. Where you go to buy them. So I do want to give them the tiniest bit of credit for that.
Mostly they're doing that because it's required by law in some countries, because some countries have better consumer protection laws.
But basically, you have a 90% chance of getting a shit reward.
Is. Is the easy way to summarize it.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: I beat the 90% odds, apparently. On stream.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Literally half of all of your pulls on this, which again, are 400 RP a piece, which for those keeping track, 400 RP is about $4, three and a half dollars somewhere around there.
Why are you making a weird face at me, Mike?
[00:06:17] Speaker A: I'm checking things. No, no, no.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Keep my eyes. Five dollars gets you 575 RP. So it's like three and a half bucks per pull.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay.
[00:06:27] Speaker C: That'S. That's more expensive than going to the casino.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: And got better odds. At a casino, you have a 48.78% chance of getting 5 mythic essence.
You have another 10% chance of getting 10 mythic essence. So almost two thirds of all drops are pitiful amounts of mythic essence.
So most of the rest of B tier, which B tier is 90% of all drops, most of the rest of B tier are just a shitload of different icons you can get.
[00:07:06] Speaker C: So let me ask you, what do you think a prestige skin that you buy with Mythic essence is? 150 Mythic essence. What do you think they normally would sell a prestige skin for an RP? I don't know if they.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: 32 50.
[00:07:19] Speaker C: All right, so how much. How much is 3250?
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Actually? No, prestige skins are more because you have to buy like $100 worth of boxes to get enough tokens to automatically get the prestige skins.
[00:07:32] Speaker C: Okay, so, like, I've just saved up, like, I get my mythic essence or whatever when I buy the. The battle pass or whatever.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Right. I'm in that boat too.
[00:07:41] Speaker C: I. I just. And sometimes I just get really lucky out of boxes and just get mythic essence.
And so I saved up and, like, I just bought a prestige skin. So, like, I'm trying to figure out 150 mythic essence comes out to be like, what 4800 RPM whatever prestige skin would be.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: We'll say something in that ball. So like, on average, you're not just buying it directly.
[00:08:07] Speaker C: What is that, like 30 bucks? Something like that. 20, 30 bucks.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: So you have to factor in the original cost of the regular skin and then do some factor above that because you'd be buying the regular skin normally. And then assuming you're having additional stuff to get another skin, a fanciful version of it.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I would say assume that a prestige skin or a mythic skin or other like high end regular skins are 35ish dollars.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: Oh, wait a minute. We have a way of, we have a way of tracking this. So according to Riot's own system with the skin lines that they have just in their base thing, they have a rarity center thing of based on what kind of skins are which. So officially mythic skins are above legendaries, but below ultimates. So let's check out an ultimate skin and figure out how much that costs. There's. There's one left going on.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Ultimate skins are about $35. That's what I was basing that on.
Because bear in mind, prestige skins are considered separate from regular mythic in terms of tier.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: We're going to equate them roughly together, about 3250 for RP. So about 30 bucks.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: Yep. All right, now I want to put into context. So they've added this arcane fractured jinx and it's a cool skin. It is the jackpot reward in this sanctum system. You have a 1 in 200 chance of getting it. Yeah, it's 0.5%. And that's why I'm saying 1 in 200, because 1 in 200, I think drives home how low those odds are. Better than 0.5% to people who don't do statistics.
Now you are guaranteed if you do 80 of these pulls, you will get arcane fracture jinx. So there is some RNG protection.
Do you want to know how much 80 pulls in this sanctum system cost?
[00:10:02] Speaker A: It looks like 250 bucks.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Yep.
The cheapest you could buy from the store is $244.99 US dollars.
And that would get you enough RP to be able to guarantee arcane fractured jinx. It is a $250 skin, effectively.
[00:10:22] Speaker C: So they took the complaints of the faker skin for Ari and turned it into a gambling system and said, ah, okay, we won't let you buy it.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: So 100%. Yes. But you're missing the point of what they decided on that one, which was they said, this is now going to be a set of skin lines that are there for the whales. Or if someone wants to try and go, eh, I'll give it A potluck shot and maybe get it. This is designed for the people who want to pay $200. That is exactly what they said to our faces specifically, this is a whale skin.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: And if they had just priced it at $250, I'd be a lot less annoyed because this gambling shit exploits FOMO and will convince people to try to play for it who can't afford $250 to guarantee it. Because like, to be clear, if you are a whale and you're like, I'm gonna drop 250 bucks, I'm gonna get 80 pulls on this to guarantee it, you're going to get a lot of other stuff too. I don't think it's worth it personally, but like, that's a judgment call that I'm not gonna like disparage people for making if they are a whale player already. If you are the kind of person who drops hundreds of dollars on a free to play game and it's not a problem for you, I don't get it. But more power to you. Have fun, enjoy yourself. The people this exploits are the kids who spend 30 bucks and that's all they've got. And they go, well, I could buy a skin or I could try to get that arcane fractured jinx skin. It's so cool. And they will pull 15 times or whatever. Their 30 bucks gets them 10 times and get jack shit. They'll get some icons and a tiny bit of mythic essence.
[00:12:12] Speaker C: And I kind of did some quick math and your five mythic essence comes out to equivalent about a dollar from 5 cents roughly.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:12:21] Speaker C: So you get a third of your money back.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: So that's if you're someone who's constantly doing the the deals. If you don't ever buy the passes, you get no mythic essence whatsoever. Like almost ever. I'm on my third round of mythic essence for getting a skin, period.
I'm at like 105.
In the time since I've done it. I've bought two skins with that line.
[00:12:50] Speaker C: I'm a hoarder, so, like I keep all my loot.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: I'm sorry, three. About three skins in that line.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it's.
The loot system is great for people like us who own every champion and we're just getting some cool free occasionally and we're not fussed about what we don't have.
But that last part is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
This sanctum system is exploiting those who do not have the money to be whales, but want the cool, shiny Thing Baker skin just straight up said you can have the less cool version because you can't afford the good version.
This skin is all or nothing. There is no lesser version.
You can't get. Okay, your arcane jinx, but not the fractured version. It's not the same skin.
[00:13:57] Speaker C: Like that's. That's essentially like. They're gonna end up making more money off of this because the people who bought the skin are gonna buy the skin and the people who weren't gonna buy the skin are gonna take their chances at by getting the skin with the gift cards they get for Christmas or, you know, whatever have you.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. No, make no mistake. It is not a coincidence that this thing was released a week before Christmas and ends a week after New Year's grant is like, entirely designed to exploit people's Christmas and New Year money. So they spend it on this shit.
[00:14:33] Speaker C: Like, granted, like, once the gift cards bought, like, Riot's already got that money anyway.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: But people are going, don't get gift cards, they just get money.
[00:14:42] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And people are just gonna like spin their gift card on gambling, which, I mean, if that's what you want to do, that's fine. Like, I. I like to gamble. I don't. I don't.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: If you are an adult of sound mind who is not prone to gambling addiction, which is a real thing.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: You are making that conscious decision, fully understanding everything. You're getting into more power to. You have fun.
There are a significant percentage of people who are very susceptible to these kinds of gambling systems who will spend more money than they planned to or intended to because these systems exploit them.
And that's just talking about the adults. That's not even talking about kids who are just straight up getting scammed by this stuff.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: So there. If we go in and I did some digging and I'm going to do a draw, one draw. I've got 500 essence just to see what goes on.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Don't waste your RP on this shit.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: No, I'm gonna do it. Gonna do it mostly cuz I've got nothing better to do.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: All right, listeners, I want it to be on the record. I advised him against wasting his money on this shit. I know, it's funny money. It's RP he already has in his account.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: He could use it for something more useful.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: It's wasted money. But I've been looking through things and going through. They're also guaranteeing you an a tier after 10 pulls. So that's 40 bucks.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Plus whatever pulls you may have Gotten.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: The A tier is basically a bunch of different arcane skins.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Yes. So there's a bunch of the arcane skins which are also prestige, rank, roughly or legendary in their lines.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Or 35. Mythic essence is the other thing you can get. Yeah.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: Which is. We did the math that. About 10 bucks.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: And, and that's a 10% chance. Whereas all the others are 1%. So most of the A tier drops are going to be the mythic essence.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: So let's see what we get. Do a pull. Do a check.
[00:16:51] Speaker C: I hope you get it. I hope you get it.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: I got. I got something better than you.
Oh, okay. That's, that's the, that's the Victor skin.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: You got an A tier.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: I got an A tier which was.
[00:17:07] Speaker C: Let's see the point. 7 5.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: What is his weird name? Something arcane. Victor Savior. Victor Arcane savior.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So listeners, Mike just got very fucking lucky.
He had a less than 1 in 100 chance of getting that.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: And I will prove it to them just to make sure. Just make sure I'm not doing anything.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: He had a 1 in 10 chance of getting a skin at all.
[00:17:36] Speaker C: Oh yeah, he got it.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: So I do not like this kind of gambling shit. It is very exploitative.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: I'm. I did. I know that I should not have done. I should not have done that while we were doing things, but I needed to try it. I thought it was gonna be funnier than that. But it turns out I have better luck.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: I don't have any thoughts on the new sanctum shit.
[00:18:04] Speaker C: Nothing. Nothing positive.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: The main takeaway is. Yeah, the main takeaway is what it's designed for and what it is doing are both two separate things at the same time.
It is made to be. This is the whale skin. And you have a chance of getting some stuff if you want to do that. But it is also, hey, here's your little gamble roll to try and see if you can get something. And to be honest, it was kind of nice to see that pop up and get a. Get a thing. That. Okay, cool. I got a thing. But also I got really, really lucky in a complete. Where I didn't spend any money on this.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Well, you had previously spent money. It was a sunk cost.
[00:18:49] Speaker A: Yeah, sunk cost. Whatever.
[00:18:51] Speaker C: For a $5 roll you got a $15 skin.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Yeah. So there's, there's problems with the concept of it.
The real problem is the fact that there are a lot of people who have very little self control when gambling.
And that is literally. That is the actual problem.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: It is Built and designed to exploit people who are susceptible to this.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: They have some. Some safeguards in place to make sure that you're actually getting something every role unlike an actual casino roll, but true.
But here it's. It still seems a little bit off, a little bit. A little bit exploitative. Even if they, They've flat out told you we're doing this for this reason and they still let it go out and it's, It's. It can be a problem.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, we got one more part of their whole monetization thing to briefly discuss. They minorly reworked the Mythic Shop and I think this is more positive than the Sanctum stuff. So that's why I want to highlight it separately instead of bundling it indirectly.
The first thing they did is they removed blue essence, orange essence, and shards from the Mythic Shop offerings. It is supposed to be stuff that is exclusive to Mythic Essence now, only.
It is now a rotating batch of Prestige and other similar skins, like the old Hextech skins, that kind of stuff.
And they added a new type of content called Nexus Finishers.
And they specifically said they'll be monitoring what content is highly sought after and listening to feedback for what you'd like to see rotating through the shop.
So this is what you spend all your Mythic Essence on. If you're someone who buys the passes regularly, you'll have a lot of Mythic Essence to spend. If you're not, you won't.
Please do not actually, like, buy Mythic Essence directly. It's not a good exchange rate.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: It is not.
In my time playing the game, there is precisely one Mythic skin, one Mythic Essence Shop skin that I have desired and I was going to get and I went out and I bought a different pass line that, hey, every four drums you get X amount of Mythic Essence.
And that was how I ended up getting that skin because I really wanted the prestige. Ocean song Seraphine.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Yeah, for context, if you buy a pass, the passes are like what, $15, something like that? Worth of RP? A little less. A little less than $15. But you have to buy at least $15 worth of RP to be able to get enough RP to do it. And for your RP, you get enough tokens to get 125 mythic essence or one of these skins outright. If you want this specific event skin like the current event that will have ended by the time you hear this podcast, because it ends apparently in five hours, has Prestige Arcane Commander Caitlyn. That's not in the mythic shop yet, and it won't be for a little while.
You can get that or you can get 125 mythic essence. If you are playing the game a decent amount during an event, you will get enough tokens to get one of those.
[00:22:34] Speaker C: So just.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: I've been playing less than usual, and if I bought the pass, I'd instantly get 1880 tokens. And the pass itself gives some tokens.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: 600.
[00:22:46] Speaker C: I think I've always felt like the past was good money spent for, like, if you're gonna spend money, like, you get a lot out of it, like, immediately just right off the rip, you always get, like, skins. And it used to be before they changed it before, like, it was. It used to be, like, missions, you know. You know, based off missions. You would get like. Well, as soon as you bought it, you got like, five or ten skins or something ridiculous. As soon as it started, it was pretty cool. But going back, it's 36.50 for the skin and more if you don't already own, like, the champions and stuff on it. So you're looking at 2,800 revolutions $22. So you're looking at 3,650.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Is the premium pass. I'm talking about just the pass itself.
[00:23:29] Speaker C: Oh, I didn't even.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: Pass itself is 1650.
Yeah, that's the other thing. By the way, their store will try to trick you when you go buy the pass. They will try to sell you the pass. An emote, a chroma, a skin, an icon, and the champion for 3650. If you don't. If you own the champion or 4550 if you don't, you can just buy the pass for 1650. And the pass is the good stuff. The rest of it is shit. Unless you really like that specific skin.
[00:24:00] Speaker C: Because they changed.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: Literally, the pass lets you get the prestige version.
[00:24:03] Speaker C: Like, they changed the pass the way you buy it up. Like, I haven't bought one in a while.
But yeah, it used to be like, just click. This gives you your pass.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: So. So, yeah, there's a little. There's a little button right on the bottom that just says click to bypass. And you'll see three different options.
Yeah, I'm looking now, and they're not. They're not bad.
The second option is actually probably the one. Like, if you want the base skin to go with the prestige skin, because it's usually two things going on. You get both of those, plus you get the pass, plus you get some other icons and stuff. So it's not, it's not bad of a price.
But the, the main one, the 1650 will get you guaranteed if you play enough, you will get your prestige skin plus you will get a bunch of mythic essence. You'll get a bunch of orange essence. You'll get a bunch.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: I was gonna say, I looked through the actual like what you would get for that $15.
You get like five orbs.
You get a 10 win experience boost, 25 mythic essence outright separately from whatever you choose to spend your tokens on.
You get a masterwork chest and key. You get a grab bag when you hit level 50, which those ones give at least one skin depending on the specific grab bag. Sometimes they give a bunch of lower value skins, sometimes they give a couple higher value skins.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: You get two masterwork chests and keys.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: Yes you do. I missed the second one. And then playing enough, you'll get enough mythic essence to either pick the prestige skin or another 125 for a total of 150. The passes are a good value if you are looking to spend money.
Yeah, you get the bang for your played for free.
[00:25:56] Speaker C: Like you get the bang for your buck out of just the pass. Like, yes, $15. Like you said, the five orbs which you're almost guaranteed to get skins out.
[00:26:05] Speaker A: Of the orbs, they're not full skins. Partial skins.
[00:26:09] Speaker C: The shards.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:12] Speaker C: Which I mean by now if you've been playing and you have a shop, you probably have a buildup of orange essence like I do and build up of skins and you just trade in your doubles and hold on to them and decide. If you decide we keep the ones you're not like I do because one day I might be maining a new champion. Be like, ooh, I want this skin. I go on, unlock it.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: That's what I do a lot of the time. I have a lot of skin shards that I just haven't bothered disenchanting because I have more orange essence than than I currently need to unlock the ones I care about.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: So apparently as we found out, I have a gambling problem because I always like rerolling them into random skins.
[00:26:51] Speaker C: Like if the only ones that like I reroll as soon as I get them are the Alistair skins because like most of those are garbage. Unless I get the cow one. I will get the cow one.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: The pajamas, yes.
[00:27:03] Speaker C: Like the ring the bell and annoy everybody, I will get that one eventually. So I'm like just overhead. Like I like the passes. I'm just throwing that out there. I know that's not what we're really.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: No, I agree.
[00:27:18] Speaker C: I like the passes.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: So the passes, it leads into how the Mythic shop works. So because most of the time your mythic essence comes from these passes or very, very slowly going down the line.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Your options are you get very little or you get enough to get something.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: So let's again address then we talked about how much you get from those passes. One Pass gets you 150 mythic essence. If you. If you don't like the specific prestige skin offered on the pass minimum, what can you get with that?
Most of the skins sold in the mythic shop are 150 or less based.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: On how many times they've been through there, how old they are, etc.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Yes. So I say most because there are going to be some that go up to as much as 200. That's for the desirable old ones basically.
Or they've added something new. This is the part that's actually new is these Nexus finishers.
Right now there exists exactly one of them. It's 250 mythic essence with there being exactly one. I think it's pretty lame, honestly. 250 mythic essence and just sometimes Jinx will rocket the Nexus when you win the game.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: To to be fair, I think these things are legitimately a to be fair. I don't know what I mean by that. I think these are a worse version of the TFT finishers because they're basically the exact same thing, only there's a lot less of them. There's just the one kaboom. And they don't have the really fun ones that you get from the customized characters.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: See my problem with this is a there's only one right now. These are low cost pieces of art to make compared to a full skin. It's just an animation that plays over the top of the Nexus.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: I think it's horribly overpriced. You're right.
[00:29:18] Speaker B: They're horribly overpriced for what they are. And there's only one of them. I think if they offer lower cost ones, like if it was a oh, 50 mythic essence and five ziggs ultimates rain down on top of the Nexus where they're using pre existing artwork and stuff, I probably wouldn't be offended at this one being 250 because they'd have lower cost ones that are clearly less work for them to make. But with this being the only one and it's just an animation, I'm like 250 is a lot. And here's the worst part, you have a 20% chance of seeing your own Nexus finisher when you win a game. First of all you have to win so half your games you're not going to see your Nexus finisher automatically.
And then 20% chance because one in five each player has a 20% chance.
[00:30:12] Speaker C: I see it now. Now there's going to be a Nexus finisher where a giant teemo pops up and spams. Laugh.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: There should be.
[00:30:21] Speaker C: It's coming, it's coming.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: They should offer that just like built into a pass.
Like just everyone who gets the pass gets that because that would be funny.
But my issue is mostly like 250 mythic essence is way too much for what that one is. And with that being the only one, if you spent your 250 mythic essence, you're gonna feel really bad if it doesn't go off every time you win.
I believe you're not gonna know if it's yours or someone else's that went off when you do win.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I think these should be 50, I think economically half the cost of whenever the prestige skins when they come out because whenever a new one comes out, it's about 100, 125.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: You get to see it for you know, five seconds instead of 40 minutes of gameplay.
[00:31:11] Speaker C: Now I do have a concern and like it scares me. Like I would. Okay, scare is a strong word but it worries me like this is moving into a, a micro transaction like dominated market where everybody was scared when the jungle pets were re released that you're going to be able to buy skins for your jungle pets now like this is feels like I'm. We're leading into a direction where they're going to be more likely to be like oh, we can get money off of this. Let's turn your, your scorch pup into anything like they can any release any skin for it, a little kog maw or something.
It just worries me like I don't want to. I like I know why they got to do it. Like they got to make money. But I, I've always enjoyed League for the the lack of the cosmetic microtransactions. As far as like the only cosmetic you had with skins, like give me what the cosmetic that everybody wants change to change the rift. That's what everybody wants.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: So we'll see about that one. Now that they are in fact changing the base version of the rift, we'll see if they start maintaining alternate versions of the rift that you can buy. I don't understand why we got Nexus finishers, as boring as they are as such high end premium content and we still don't have fucking announcer packs. Let me spend $20 and have Captain Flowers automatically casting all of my games.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: I think that's probably the healthiest thing they could have done. And that should be something that is like a 500 mythic essence and I.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: Would be okay with that. I would fucking bypass or like a $20 reward to get Captain Flowers because that will actually change the game experience to where I enjoy it more.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: Yeah, the finisher is, is grossly over costed, grossly overcasted. I remember.
What game is it? Starcraft does.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: Announcer packs.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: Announcer packs. I'm going to try and do a quick check to see how much those cost because I think those are something that we, I think we, we want those. I think all of us agree that's something that's really potentially huge and awesome.
[00:33:33] Speaker C: I mean they could do a lot of different like announcer packs. Like I mean different champions could be your announcers, you know, or anything like that.
[00:33:40] Speaker B: For context, you can buy a total biscuit announcer pack for Starcraft 2.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: So there are.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: Some of the money still goes to.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: His wife there, there are named announcers. There are people who do things. So like they did a specialty one for In Control after he passed a couple other people. They're seven and a half dollars and you can get character voices. The, the main ones instead of like specialty announcers that are five bucks.
Wow, is that great?
That's, that's incredible. You can get things from other games. They do.
There's a diva announcer in this.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:34:30] Speaker C: Like I said earlier, like I'm, I'm not super thrilled with like cosmetic everything but you know there's stuff that's people like you said been at like been asking for forever.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: Like we've been asking for that for 15 years.
[00:34:44] Speaker C: ANNOUNCER Packs. Like nobody in their right mind's like man, I've never heard anybody say go. I really want to see a jinx rocket on the Nexus when it blows.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: And here's the thing. If the Nexus finishers were just finishers like Trigger, whenever you get a multikill kind of things or whatever, I feel a lot less bad about them because that's something that you can feel good about throughout your game.
Kind of like literally a five second animation that plays when you win a game sometimes and you're paying 250. Mythic essence, which we established was how many dollars on average?
Like 50.
[00:35:22] Speaker C: And you know they got the multi kill like animations because they have the pentakill animation off of.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: They have takedown effects on certain skins.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: There's certain times of the year. So when URF comes around, there's unique takedown animations.
[00:35:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:40] Speaker A: If you bought or you have the specific summoner icon.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:35:48] Speaker C: I think takedown animations would be fun.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: That's a lot of us venting about how we're all disappointed in the Nexus finisher. There's a little bit more that they changed in the mythic shop. They've added several icons and chromas and a couple of word skins to fill out the lower mythic essence cost stuff. How do you guys feel about those?
[00:36:12] Speaker A: If you care about them?
Sure. I don't know anybody who wants to spend any mythic essence below a champion, at least chroma, if not skin. I don't know anybody who wants to do that.
[00:36:28] Speaker C: I'm just looking right now at the zillion one for the wreath guard. It looks like it has better visuals than base zillion. Like skin. Like it looks like it's more detailed. Just basing it off of like what I'm looking at here.
[00:36:48] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:36:49] Speaker C: So I mean like, I'm not against it. Like a chroma coming out. If it's going to visually update and make a skin look better, I don't know if 40s a great price point for it.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: Well, considering where the the cost on chromos goes roughly with. They almost never exist and then sometimes there are ridiculously expensive chromos.
40 is not horrible.
They need to have something that's middling.
And so maybe somewhere between 20 and 45 would be the appropriate. We can debate on what the actual cost would be.
[00:37:27] Speaker B: I think the issue with the chromas is that they are for specific non prestige skins. So it's not like you can go, oh, I got 165 mythic essence. Let me buy the prestige skin and the.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: The chromos for it. Which I think, I think if they're going this is specifically right now, it's Christmas time. So they're giving a bunch of the Christmas themed ones. Yeah, I think they should. If they're gonna do this, they're gonna have these chromas on here. They need to be the chromas for the prestige skins that they are in the shop right now or for the previous shop.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Make it both.
[00:38:07] Speaker A: You can do both. Yeah. But something so that you know, hey, you didn't. You got the one from the previous one. Here's something new for you. The low end stuff.
[00:38:15] Speaker B: So it sounds like we're Mixed but not too negative on the addition of all the chromas because they only had like one chroma before. And to be clear, that one chroma is for a non prestige skin that is offered for mythic essence currently Ash and conqueror pantheon.
It is also a skin that is currently offered. So it is the one chroma in here that actually is what we want out of these chromas.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: And they were already doing that.
[00:38:42] Speaker A: Like, I have a good looking chroma.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: Indominus Kha'zix chroma from the Crystalis Indominus Kha'zix mythic skin that I got six months ago or whatever.
So like that's what they were already doing. So I'm not gonna give them credit for that. That's just status quo. These other skins are the new ones.
Okay, so we're mixed on chromas. What about all these fucking five essence icons or this 25 essence get jinxed icon or get jinxed Emote. It's an emote.
[00:39:16] Speaker C: I mean, a lot of it feels like to me it's just like a. When blue essence imperium comes out emporium. It just seems like a place for people, they can dump their mythic essence if they don' like something that they want to buy and they're like, oh, cool. You know, I really like Darkane. Let me get this powder icon.
You know, if something. If somebody wants to express themselves with an icon and they want to spend their mythic essence on it. Like I, I'm not against the mythic shop because it's not. There's no real, like we said FOMO out of it. To me, like it's more achievable. Like it's just like, there you go. If you want to spend it on there, that's fine.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: These are definitely 5 essence. You get 5 essence as your base.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: Mine again, 400 RP guarantees you 5 essence or something better.
[00:40:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:09] Speaker A: So like you did.
[00:40:10] Speaker C: I'm not a good skin, but you can go get the, the arcane jinx icon. There you go.
[00:40:17] Speaker B: So I don't know. I'm.
[00:40:19] Speaker A: The wards are a little expensive.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: That's. That's where I was getting next is I think an emote for 25 is probably pushing it, but like that's an in game thing, so maybe it's okay. The icons, like icons are the shittiest thing to spend money on in League of Legends. I don't know anyone who has deliberately been like, oh, that new icon, I have to buy it. Let me fork over my money, because no one cares about icons.
These wards, though. 50 mythic essence for a ward that.
[00:40:53] Speaker C: Is.
[00:40:56] Speaker B: Okay at best.
I'm cringing at seeing the individual polygons on the arcane ward like it's a PS1 model.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Oh, I was looking at the winter plus one. That's. That's got some.
Some real corners in it.
[00:41:14] Speaker B: It's also not new. It's a 2023 Ward, so it's not even like it's new content for the mythic shop.
But I'm cringing at the arcane ward, literally. You can see the individual polygons. It looks like it came straight off a PS1 or PS2 game.
[00:41:28] Speaker A: Oh, and the symbol. Yeah, it's.
[00:41:31] Speaker B: It's bad.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: Well, this is also drastically blown up. No word is ever visualized this big, so you won't ever see it at this scale. They're drastically smaller.
[00:41:42] Speaker B: But that's kind of the point. Who wants to spend 50 fucking mythic essence on a ward that you'll barely notice when you get ward skins as the booby prize from your regular boxes?
[00:41:55] Speaker C: Let's be honest, nobody uses their wards anyway.
[00:42:01] Speaker B: Yes, that is depressingly true. Way too often. I agree.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: But so really I'm thinking if I look at it, they're considering Ward skins when they go through the line of things in the base shop to be half the cost of a skin.
They're half the cost of the base skins right here.
I think that's, that's, that's consistent with what their monetization is. However, I don't think that's true. I think they should be half the price they are now. I think 25 is the right cost.
[00:42:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
Of course, the problem I have with Ward skins is just that I got the best ward skin in the game in 2018 and have no desire to ever buy another one.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: Oh, which one?
[00:42:46] Speaker B: The. The kitty cat with a witch's hat in a pumpkin.
It's the best word skin in the game and you can't convince me otherwise.
[00:42:54] Speaker A: I have a pumpkin cat. Yeah, I have it.
[00:42:57] Speaker C: I didn't realize I had so many Ward skins.
[00:43:00] Speaker B: Me neither, actually.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: Yeah. As I scrolled through, I go, oh my.
[00:43:04] Speaker C: I've always just used the pizza Chicken, I think.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: So overall feelings on mythic shop rework.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: Outside of one or two things that we explicitly have all gone, man, this is over costed enterprise. Whatever. It's the mythic shop you knew with more options.
[00:43:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm mostly fine with it. Removing fucking blue essence and orange essence and stuff from it is the right choice because those were straight up traps before.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: I'm annoyed. The one thing that I'm actually annoyed by is that this is now a weird little side thing. When you hit the crafting button, I want to go to crafting first. I think that should be the main thing. And then they should have something that allows you in the home page to click Sanctum, the mythic shop.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: You go there when you go there before crafting. Crafting is third. So you click the crafting tab. It goes to the Sanctum every time. And then the Mythic shop is the next tab. And then Crafting, which is where your actual inventory lies. So every time you want to use any of your chests or keys or anything, you have to see their ad for the gambling mechanic.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: I think that should just be on the home screen with all your other bullshit that that needs to not be in my crafting shop or give it.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: Its own icon next to the event icon. I'd be fine with that too.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: Agreed. Or in it. That should be another one that you click and get to a different, different one.
[00:44:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd be fine with that too. Even if it was just you click that and it takes you to the Sanctum and then you go to the event pass as a tab.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: The Sanctum is part of the event premium things. If they had Mythic shop and crafting being next to each other, that used to be inside of it. You did. You don't have your little mythic thing. It's now its own shop. That's always listed on the side thing. Sure, fine. Get Sanctum out of here. Put that with the. The arcane thing.
[00:44:58] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:45:00] Speaker B: Man, this is turning into a longer episode than I thought. We have opinions on gambling mechanics, not just me.
All right, we have one other topic we're gonna talk about, and then we're gonna save your questions for next week, guys, because we have no questions in our queue.
So we're gonna talk about our other remaining topic for tonight. Pillow Pet, you have been playing Maokai in the top lane.
[00:45:26] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. I've been playing the tree.
[00:45:30] Speaker A: He's back, baby.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: Christmas tree in time for Christmas.
[00:45:34] Speaker C: Exactly. I've been enjoying it, man. Like, he is just a very straightforward, easy champion with some good, like, skill expression once you get used to him. And, you know, a few weeks back, we talked about, like, how, you know, when I'm trying someone new, like, I usually end up inting, and I found it's very hard to it on Maokai, but it is doable. But it's very Hard because like his kit just gets good sustain. Like he's got his own self peel. He's got an ability that lets him dodge targeted abilities and he. It's. It's. He's just been a really fun champion to play and he's got the nasty build right now where it's just unending despair rush into fimble winter.
And then it just diverses a little bit off of that depending on you know, what gameplay going on. But. Oh, it's spirit visage. Third, because it just goes really good with his kit plus the items you've gotten and it's unkillable. He's unkillable. Like it takes a little bit for him to come online because it's some expensive items but it's a scaling build and it's. I've had a lot of fun. I mean I'm not like breaking records with him or anything. I think I currently in ranked. I'm sitting 2 and 3 with him. But I'm. I took him straight into ranked. I didn't even take him into normals first. I just took him right into ranked because I had some history with him. I know how he kind of plays and I've just been having fun with him and it's been a while since I've had a champion that I can just sit on and play game after game after game after game and not get bored.
So yeah, I've been. I've been enjoying him quite a bit.
[00:47:21] Speaker B: So when you brought this up, you and I had a little bit of a discussion.
Maokai is one of the few top laners that I will play when I get put. Top lane. If Mordekaiser and Volibear aren't available, Maokai is basically my next choice.
Or if I think they're bad matchups. Like Maokai is a good fallback. Maokai does really well into champions. He can disengage.
[00:47:48] Speaker C: Mm.
His worst matchups are Mordekaiser and Gwen. Like those are his worst matchups. Just because they do percent max health.
[00:48:00] Speaker B: They do percent max health and they have the ability to say fuck you. Your disengage doesn't work.
[00:48:05] Speaker C: Exactly. And it's. I always ban Mordekaiser when I'm playing Maokai because he's a lot harder to deal with. I feel like then Gwen is Gwen. I can dodge her stuff. Mordekaiser. I'm kind of just stuck with him once he gets rylized. Like you're just kind of stuck with him.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Yep. You literally can't even escape by queuing him away because he's slowing you.
[00:48:29] Speaker C: Exactly.
But I did have a fun game. Like you would think a trundle would like whoop whoop on a Maokai. And he probably should.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: He should.
[00:48:39] Speaker C: But again with the disengage on Maokai's Q, it's pretty easy. Like, he's like, hey, I'm coming in to bite you. And you're like, eh, nah, man. I'm gonna. I'm gonna knock you back and I'm gonna walk away.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: So fair enough.
[00:48:55] Speaker C: It's been good.
[00:48:56] Speaker B: So, yeah, if you're looking for a top lane champion to pick up, Maokai isn't the winningest, but he's very satisfying when you get to do strong Maokai things. I still remember this was years ago at this point. A game of Maokai I played with Fimbul Winter Unending despair did not exist back then, but I had spirit visage, Fimbulwinter and I just sat tanking the enemy team for like 15 seconds straight because they were all spellcasters. So my passive was just up like every auto.
[00:49:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So this is something you need to take in mind if you're playing Maokai on the top. You're not winning a lot of fights. You're surviving forever, but you're not. You're not sitting there killing people.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: He does a shocking amount of damage with his Q against people Building health.
[00:49:48] Speaker C: Mm. Does a lot.
[00:49:50] Speaker B: Fighters, bruisers, other tanks. He does fine straight up mages. Or like light fighters like Gwen for example, just destroy him because he does no damage in return.
I think Irelia is a nightmare matchup for him for the same reason anyone.
[00:50:07] Speaker A: Who has good amounts of healing as well, who can. Who can sustain in a long term fight, gets to just fight him.
They may not kill him because he's also healing a ridiculous amount, but they're not gonna die to you.
[00:50:25] Speaker C: That brings back a core memory of I remember when I was back in my Karma Top days. Tank Karma Top against a mount.
[00:50:32] Speaker A: Oh, disgusting. Disgusting.
[00:50:34] Speaker C: We would fight for like five minutes straight because I think you were the.
[00:50:38] Speaker A: Definition of what noodle fight.
[00:50:40] Speaker C: You just. It was. Yeah, you just couldn't die as a Karma. You can't die as a Maokai if you want that.
[00:50:47] Speaker B: The best time for that was when kleptomancy was still in the game and Akali hadn't been reworked yet. I played a game as Maokai Top into an Akali where she could not deal damage to me through my passive and I could not deal damage to her through her passive and we just proc'd Kleptomancy at each other for several minutes straight. We farmed faster than if we had actually killed the minions because of klepto. It was dumb that there's a reason that doesn't exist anymore. Listeners.
[00:51:14] Speaker A: It's very good reason. Kleptomancy was abusable.
[00:51:18] Speaker B: It was very broken. We were the two strongest people on the map because we wet noodle fought each other for several minutes straight. It was dumb.
[00:51:27] Speaker C: 15,000 gold sitting in your inventory at seven minutes in the game. Probably.
[00:51:32] Speaker B: It wasn't quite that pronounced, but it was literally both of us had a.
[00:51:36] Speaker A: Completed item like probably 1500 though. Yeah.
[00:51:41] Speaker C: Like, yeah. Kleptomancy was so much fun. I miss that rune.
[00:51:45] Speaker B: It was dumb and should not exist.
So any. Any. Any deviations from that build. Like, when should you not go just straight? Unending Despair fimb.
[00:51:55] Speaker C: It's just always called for. Like if I. I looked it up, like up as build. And it's just like every build was just starting with Unending Despair. Because in between your passive procs, you have no healing. Unending Despair heals you. And then it's just. It's just a constantly triggering heel and it does damage. So I. It's just been. It's just a great item on him. I. I haven't found a situation.
I haven't put. You know, I put a handful of games in because what I. What games I have played, and it's just on every matchup. Unending Despair has been great. Like, maybe, you know, I'm not a fan anymore of the burn items. I just don't go them. Like.
[00:52:46] Speaker B: So I was gonna say, I think against a magic champion, you could make a case for Hollow Radiance first, because.
[00:52:52] Speaker C: It'S one of the burn items for Laning Hollow Radiance. I could see being better. Like, it helps. It'll definitely, like, help you, like, clear the wave and give you, like, the survival stats that you need. But then again, if you're getting Unending Despair and they're just poking you, you still just get the leech health just because they decided to poke you. And then you're. It's so. It's kind of like you're getting the same thing done.
What you would do with Hollow Radiance, be able to, like, clear waves and get your CS and live with Unending Despair because you could just clear waves because you're surviving and not taking the damage because you're just healing it right back.
[00:53:33] Speaker A: So the more I look, the more I Realize if this is even an AP heavy game, this is your one armor item. Because no matter what, something in the game will always do physical damage to you. And it's towers. You always want some armor in a game of League of Legends as a tank so that you can at least tank a tower for more than four shots.
And I think. I think this might be a hardbound one going on a despair plus fembo winter.
[00:54:01] Speaker B: I think it's 100 mandatory for you to have both of those items by your three item mark, no matter what.
[00:54:08] Speaker C: Like, even if there's no AP in the game, you're still getting spirit visage, like, because of how it works and how good it is on Maokai and those two other Unending Despair and Thimble. Thimble winner.
[00:54:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Because it does scale the shield from Thimble Winter to be clear.
[00:54:26] Speaker C: And all the healing. So I. You, I. When I finally complete Unending Despair and I'm like fighting, I always check my item to see what I healed. And it's always like thirteen, fourteen, hundred. Like my very first time interacting with my opponent with Unending Despair.
[00:54:47] Speaker B: Fair enough.
[00:54:49] Speaker C: Very good value.
[00:54:50] Speaker B: All right, I have two questions left for you, pillow pet. Okay, question one. Of all of Maokai's skins, which. Which Maokai skin should people be using? What's the best one?
[00:55:00] Speaker C: Meowkai.
[00:55:02] Speaker B: I like Meow Meow Kai. It is unanimous, I think.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: Oh, I need to go. I need to go.
[00:55:08] Speaker C: I'd have to go look at what all his skins are. Because I don't even own a Maokai skin.
[00:55:13] Speaker B: So you're just playing base skinless.
[00:55:16] Speaker A: It is.
[00:55:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:55:17] Speaker A: It is acceptable to do the festive skins in the festive times. There is a festive Maokai. For Christmas time, there is a haunted Maokai. For Halloween, there is a goalkeeper Maokai every four years for when there's a soccer tournament going on.
[00:55:31] Speaker B: Yeah. DRX fan. More power to you. It's a good skin.
[00:55:35] Speaker A: And if you are someone who is around when you got victorious Mai and that's the skin that you want to go. I got gold in this season. Victorious Maokai. That's a great one to do. Otherwise, I think the only two skins are Astronaut Maokai and Maokai. Because Astronaut Maokai is little. Little saffrolings. Being the little alien buddies is so awesome.
[00:55:58] Speaker C: Yeah. Astronaut's a pretty good one too.
[00:56:00] Speaker B: And his. His holiday ones are not really worth using outside of the respective holiday. They're not actually very good skins.
[00:56:07] Speaker A: No. No, they're not.
[00:56:09] Speaker B: There are some holiday skins that are actually good pumpkinhead fiddlesticks. For example, Malka's aren't.
[00:56:16] Speaker C: Maokai's been out forever and he only has six skins and it's kind of depressing.
[00:56:20] Speaker A: The Chris, the Saint of Vigor is another great one.
His bushy beard.
[00:56:25] Speaker B: All right, my last question, Pillow Pet, how do you handle Lucian when you are playing Maokai in the top lane?
[00:56:33] Speaker C: I don't. I just lose. There's no build that's going to protect you from a Lucian top.
[00:56:39] Speaker B: There you go. Listeners, this has been episode 461. I'm going to reiterate, we need questions right into the 4 wards podcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the podcast.
Like I said at the top, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, happy whatever holiday you celebrate or don't celebrate. I hope you have a great end of the year.
We will try to record an episode around like just before New Year's, but no promises. So if we're gone for a week, listeners, you know why I've been Jack Soman for Mike of Many Names and for Pillow Pet.
Have a great night.
[00:57:21] Speaker C: Good night.
[00:57:22] Speaker A: Good night, everybody.
[00:57:24] Speaker C: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected] the Four Wards Podcast. And of course, send your questions to the Four Wards podcastmail.com so we can.
[00:57:42] Speaker A: Answer them live on the show.
[00:57:43] Speaker C: That's the four Wards Podcast at gmail com.
