Riot to nix level cap and bring big changes to League of Legends

Riot Games is about to make some major changes to League of Legends. But before telling what the changes are, let's know why they're needed. Last year Riot looked into "big, long-lasting problems" that the players had with the game's core mechanics. And they spotted the most annoying ones:

"1. Spending IP on runes doesn’t feel good and comes at the expense of unlocking champs
2. Grinding to unlock champions takes too long, especially for newer players
3. Lots of players have huge IP balances with nothing to spend it on
4. The leveling system hasn’t aged well and offers nothing to longtime players"

So to address these issues, as soon as the pre-season starts they're making Runes free, introducing uncapped levelling (removing the previous 30 level cap), merging IP (in-game currency, not Internet Protocol) with Blue Essence and modifying the reward system.

Watch the video below to get a better idea:

Riot says, "there’s a few reasons we’re nixing the level cap and tying rewards to the leveling system:

First, we want to give players something to work toward beyond just champions. If reaching high levels earns you something cool like a unique emote, you’re more likely to feel recognized for your time investment.
We also want to focus the rewards experience around content drops that feel far more substantial and cool when you earn them."

And they give the following reasoning for merging IP with Blue Essence: "By combining IP and blue essence into one currency, we’re connecting a bunch of disparate systems (leveling, rewards, and loot) together. Before, if you got a shard for a champ you didn’t want and disenchanted it, there wasn’t much you could do with your blue essence. Now, though, you can just take it to the store and get whatever champ you want."

There are a bunch of other smaller changes coming too. See detailed information on everything here.