Riot responds to community complaints about blue essence and mastery

The preseason changes have only been in effect for a few hours, but it already seems like some changes might be on the horizon as early players have taken an issue with the way you unlock Champion Mastery levels six and seven, under the game’s new currency system.

After today’s preseason patch, all IP was turned into Blue Essence, the same crafting currency used to buy Champion Mastery levels. Unfortunately for players, those levels also got a little more expensive with the patch — much like everything else that cost Blue Essence — in order to account for people having way more of it.

Players quickly took issue with this and created two separate, popular threads on the League of Legends subreddit about the issue. The specific issue that seemed to be brought up over and over again in the comments was that spending BE on Champion Mastery was preventing players from spending it on other cool things like champions themselves. The other issue that was brought up more than a few times, though not entirely related, was that gaining BE seems like it might be slower than gaining IP was on the previous patch.

With those complaints in mind, Riot’s Cactopus took to the threads to help assuage some of people’s more pressing concerns. One comment, which came in response to a player mentioning that they spent their BE without realizing they still had champions to buy Mastery seven for, stands out:

“Hmmmmmm yeah that does feel bad. I think we didn’t really consider that spending BE on champ mastery could feel worse in the new system because it now comes at the expense of other good shit. Thanks for pointing this out. We’re gonna think about what we should do.”

In other words, don’t worry too much everyone, Riot has heard your grumblings and a solution is on the way.

As for the comments that said earning BE isn’t as fast as earning IP, it turns out that isn’t quite true for most people. Technically, thanks to the first win of the day bonus to XP, you should be getting levels fairly quickly and a better currency per game average than you were before. In fact, this is something that Riot mentioned a few months ago in a forum post:

That being said, Cactopus does mention that Riot is looking into a solution within the next few patches for players who end up a few BE short of their next big purchase after leveling up, to avoid it feeling like you could be ten more games away from your next BE gain.

As with every new addition to the game during preseason, it appears that Blue Essence, and the new level up system, are works in progress and Riot is closely monitoring feedback to help make them appealing and rewarding to players.