I was worried this would happen. As the end of Season One drew to a close, I had a goal in mind: I wanted to get gold rating. There wasn’t really a personal reason, either. There was a reward; a reward that I wouldn’t use very much, but still, it was something I could point to and say, “I got that because I did X.”

It was a grind, too. I had to play a lot of games to hit gold. The grind pretty much killed any desire I had to play Lee Sin beyond the finish. I got incredibly close to the 1520 mark and then dropped ELO several times. But still, it was a goal. It was something to shoot for. It was a lot of fun.

Fast forward six weeks or so and I’m having a little trouble enjoying the game like I used to. There aren’t any in-game goals for me to strive for. I could try to rank up my solo queue ELO, but to what end? More ranking up? Not exactly a compelling sales pitch.

I know League can’t always be my number one game, but I do think there’s a lot more to be done to keep veteran players interested in the game. The Jarvan skin was a great idea – why not produce more skins that could be tied to certain achievements. Win 250/500/1000 ranked games, get a cool skin. Play 10 ranked games, get a one-time, one-day IP boost. These kind of things don’t cost a lot of money to put into the game and encourage more players to try more things. My assumption, which I suppose could be totally wrong, is that the more time players spend enjoying games, the more likely they are to spend on content.

Even if that assumption can’t be backed by data, it certainly breeds goodwill with the playerbase. Why not reward players for spending time with the game?

What are your thoughts? Are you still going strong with LoL or are other games starting to steal your attention. Has Dominion been enough to keep you coming back?

I’m a big fan of Riot’s various skins for the champions in game. A lot of them are pretty damn cool, and it’s nice to be able to show your pride in a particular toon by playing with one of the skins. Buying all of them would be a little ridiculous, though, and there are a few standard models with no skins at all. Thankfully, a small community of artists has cropped up to provide custom skins for free.

If you head over to heroesmod.com you can have a look at the skins available for any character. The site has full instructions for installation. My personal favorite is the Necron Blitz I used for the picture, but there’s also an Iron Man Blitz, a pretty cool Nidalee skin, and a nice replacement for Morgana. The skins only exist client-side, so your friends/enemies won’t see them, but it’s a nice way to add some flavor to the game. Did I mention it’s free?

Start with the tutorial for simple directions on installation. A lot of the skinners on the forums suggest you mess with a zip file in your DATA folder and it’s just not necessary.