[Brainstorm] Figuring out League of Legends H.U.G.E. success over the past decade

Its no mystery to anybody that League of Legends has been a worldwide phenomenom and the most popular and maybe even the most profitable videogame of the past decade. In this post we will break down and analyze the game's business model and why it was succesful (and I do truly believe hextech crafting was a big factor in this success)

The perceived impact of hextech crafting:

Before hextech crafting even existed, league whales were very uncommon because there was never an incentive to be a whale.

With hextech crafting though, videos, data, posts and communities started surfacing/discussing the "benefits" of hextech crafting and how people could acquire certain benefits with its help.

As a business model, hextech crafting was indeed amazing in hooking up people into making their very first in game purchase, specially if you take into account the release of the very first league battle pass on the golden age of league (around the K/DA or Odyssey gen 1 era).

Hextech crafting opened a "possibility" for very mild spenders or casual players. It made collecting every skin for a champion you main a very feasible feat (take with a grain of salt and consideration, 10 years ago we had around 700 total skins in the hextech pool compared to the current 1500+). Players in the past, way before hextech crafting barely bought skins or had skins, I still remember S5 and before every single game lobby had 1 or 2 skins tops, even in ranked games

As time passed, players were acquiring skins through hextech crafting and game lobbies started getting stacked with skins. My personal conception though (I can be very wrong, take this with a grain of salt, but I've played hundreds if not thousands of games every year for the last decade) is that in the very early days of league, nobody bought nor cared much for cosmetics so almost nobody had skins, then since the introduction of hextech crafting until the removal of weekly chests every single game lobby had 7-10 skins being used and the last year or two the number seems kind of down, lobbys seem to have 5-6 skins tops nowdays (I never thought reducing the amount of hextech chests would had such a huge impact in the short term here). I guess people getting banned or creating smurf accounts increases the numbers of skinless accounts

The pros of hextech crafting:

As mentioned before, with hextech crafting being a thing and with its benefits for spenders surfacing a new class of consumer was created or made "viable" to say the least (while whales with full skin collections before hextech crafting may have existed, whales became a more common kind of player to encounter ever since the release of hextech crafting), which are the whales.

Ever since the release of the very first mythic essence skin (or gemstones for oldschoolers), Hextech Annie, we saw for the first time the most comparable "customer" in early League of Legends to the current "Gacha skin buyers" or modern whales. And let me tell you, eventhough they bought a LOT of chest from the shop (300$ on average) to purchase the very desirable back then Hextech Annie, customers got in return a very good amount of value in skin shards (probably 150-ish shards, or around 50 total random-ish skins on average if rerolled/crafted with orange essence)

Around 2018-2019 videos, posts and information started blowing up that incentivized "whaling":

1)It became common knowledge that after acquiring every skin in the game (around 1,100 ish back then) you would start getting every single prestige and mythic skin from rerolls from the reroll pool (not as if these were particularly desirable, but a very few of them like the OG prestige KD/As seemed like a fan favourite)

2)Discussion started surfacing on social media about people who had every skin in the game trying to open "your shop". When they did, the game pretty much offered them 1 of 8 exclusive unobtainable OG ultra rare skins (PAX TF, Jax, Sivir, Policeshield Singed, Championship Riven, Rusty Blitz, Urfwich and such). This was a HUGE boom that made a lot of people incentivized to complete their collections, which was a very feasible feat after hextech crafting

3)There is/was (not aware if it still exists) an official discord server where every player that owned all skins would get invited into, which is/was access to a very exclusive community

4) Long term "discounts" for every skin in the game (although the marketing team hated these type of players and wanted to milk them for the full cost of the skins, selling every single skin for 600 rp or 3 orbs is always infinitely better than not selling them). On this very point, the company was not happy for not being able to sell all new skins for its full price to whales while not considering the fact that they were selling ALL skins released despite the quality drop as of in recent years and the fact that those players had already spent 2-4k$ or even more to be able to reach those discounts

5) And last but not least, the fact that players could amass small collections that could incentivize them to chase objectives that can range from "owning all the skins of X champ" to "owning all the skins in the game" at a discount since hextech crafting already gave them a jumpstart and considering that purchsasing orbs/chests is considersably cheaper than buying skins at the expense of freedom of choice and at full mercy of RNG

The "diminishing returns" and factors that worsen this:

1) A lot of the current whales already bought every or almost every skin and has no incentive to keep doing so (they maybe did it to get all mythic skins, or maybe they did it to claim one of the 8 ultra rare discontinued skins)
2) The game has very little influx of new players and the new player experience is terrible. This needs work done ASAP for the long term health of the game (the main issues to tackle are early champion acquisition, a proper new player tutorial built into the game explaining every role and all basic play patterns to win games and last but not least SMURFS, smurfs need to go)
3) The removal of hextech crafting not hooking new players as potential customers effectively
4) Nerfs aimed at whales (gacha skins although cheaper no longer come with 100+ skin shards or themed skins anymore, orb bundles no longer grant 800 tokens of the old system, Mythic Essence is useless for customeres that can hit the mythic table through rerolls and useless for normal customers that would rather convert them to skin shards, the sanctum not offering any form of value in return like skin shards, etc)
5) The massive quality drop on recent skins (For every new cool Rain Shepherd Milio or Attorney Azir we get 10-20 skins where champions get forcefully introduced into skinlines that make no sense of them with old reused assets, no new animations or features on legendary+ and end up being pretty dull/undesirable at best. Quality should be prioritized over quantity, specially in a game with well over 1500 skins. The odds of making a cooler new skin for a champion with 20+ skins are very low considering every person has different taste and would most likely rather buy an older skin the find more appealing)
6) Profits can't grow if the game can't grow while also not hooking players into spending

The battle pass system:

The battlepass syetem was and probably still is succesful, because combined along hextech crafting it would allow players to quickly amass skin collections via grinding shards or would allow them to get a prestige skin or mythic essence for a future prestige/mythic skin

The battle pass system was good and successful because its synergy with hextech crafting, removing hextech crafting removes a LOT of value from the battle passes (combine the removal of hextech crafting with the new terrible battle pass model and you get lesser sales)

The battlepass system is probably the biggest value system for all mild spenders and I do believe it has room to improve (not talking about the pass model) into attracting newer customers into spending... For example, why not offer a 50% one time discount on the first battle pass for accounts that reach level 30?

Suggestions:

1) Add chests back into the game, it could be weekly, bi-weekly or through the old mastery system. The intention to do so is to get players hooked into spending and maybe create/set a short term goal for them to send.
2) Improve the new player experience, new players = new customers. If the game keeps growing healthily over the years the game's long term success will be bigger. Arcane could have brought so much more new players if the early game experience was good.
3) Add deals with the aim to hook new players as customers (like a first battlepass discount suggested earlier)
4) Add value to deals for whales (no skin shards on sanctum deals = less incentive for whales to buy them... would you rather sell every single skin you release at a discount or not sell them at all?)
5) Appeal to ALL customer types (an example here are exalted skins... why not release 1820-3250 RP versions of exalted skins that is appealing for regular spenders while also offering at the same time a more exclusive version of that same skin in the sanctum that could be desirable for whales)
6) Add a whale "battle track" so whales keep spending (a good example of this is the exclusive ultrarare skin they receive if they buy all the skins in the game... Now imagine if whales could get rewarded per year of owning 99%+ skins of the game every year.... for example: every year or 2 years owning all skins could grant them neo pax sivir, neo pax jax or a 2022 prestige edition skin, maybe every 5 years of updating their collections while owning all the skins could offer them a second skin of the 8 ultrarare offered skins)

TL:DR
-Hextech crafting is and was part of League of Legends great financial success on the last decade because it hooked players into spending (players who never were customers before and had no intentons to spend)
-The early game experience has a lot of room to improve on to increase sales