It might be free, but will you still have to pay?
Project L | P2W?
Project L just dropped a bombshell the other day about being completely free to play. But were we even surprised? Riot is known for making their games available to all, but then adding cosmetics left, right and center to make money and until this point that has worked.
Why are we asking ourselves then whether this is going to be a Pay to Win game? Well, one thing that is key to a good fighting game is the availability of characters in the game and with League having over 150 at this point, we do think that there has to be some way to make character selection fun and flexible.
How Will Riot Release Characters in Project L?
Some champions from League of Legends are already known to be in Project L. Ekko, Jinx, Ahri and Darius have all been shown before and recently Riot released a dev post in which they dive deep into Illaoi and her Project L character.
But, with so many popular champions already known to be in the game one of the questions we ask ourselves is what kind of system Riot will have in place for playable characters? How will players unlock them? Is it going to be stuck behind a pay-wall?
Will Players Have to Pay for Champions in Project L?
In many games the base character pool is free. For example, in Smash Bros. players have to merely play the game to unlock most of the characters and for some 'special' characters like Sora from Kingdom Hearts for example, players will have to purchase a DLC instead.
Will Riot follow a similar model with the base characters that we've already seen being free to play, while other characters added at a later date will be playable through a pay wall? Riot did state the game would be free to play, but they never said there wouldn't be any payment options in the game, right?
Will Project L implement a similar system to MultiVersus, which is also a free to play fighting game. In MultiVersus players can elect to use real-money to pay for characters of their choice, or merely play the game to then accumulate in-game currency to unlock the characters they want? Hopefully it's this option, so anyone can play Project L without having to spend hundreds on character DLCs.
Will Project L Have a Free Champion Rotation?
If all 150+ champions will be in Project L – which we doubt for the debut – then we are also wondering whether Riot is going to implement a free champion rotation like they have in League of Legends where players will be able to test out champions on a weekly basis.
This could be an interesting way Riot will make the different champions accessible to the public. This way players can test out champions they like and then either pay with RP or something akin to blue essence to pick up the champions they want.
Riot to Make Flexible UI
Also, a flexible UI is going to be key if the Project L team ever does decide to add all 160+ characters to the game. How will they manage to fit that many champions into one screen? This is going to be key as well in the future for the game and the longevity of it.
So, with the announcement of Project L and more information hopefully coming soon, Riot is growing their repertoire of games. Now all we need is to find out more about the League of Legends MMO and when we get to finally play as a Yordle in Runeterra.