Fun Fact: The current rate at which players unlock characters is mathematically lower than some gacha games.
I wish this was a joke, it is not. It has actually gotten this bad.
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Direct Purchase Currency Comparison From Pass Rewards
To use a point of comparison, Limbus Company, one of the more F2P friendly gacha games that also relies almost exclusively on a Battle Pass based progression system. It has also been running for multiple years and is consistently in the middle range of gacha revenue, so this is not a small title or an IP cashgrab.
A character in Limbus Company requires 400 Shards, you get 2 per shard box on average (1-3, equal weight), and can freely assign these shards. The Free To Play battle pass gives 380 Shard boxes that can be freely assigned, alongside 75 randomly assigned boxes. This totals to 1.9 characters at the highest price point.
https://limbuscompany.wiki.gg/wiki/Dispenser Link to page with cost per item and purchasable item list. https://limbuscompany.wiki.gg/wiki/Egoshard Link to page explaining shards and crates. https://limbuscompany.wiki.gg/wiki/Season_5:_Oblivion#:~:text=Extraction-,Season%27s%20Pass%20Rewards,-Collapse Link to full list of Battle Pass rewards.
League of Legends battle pass gives 4750 Blue Essence, with 6300 required to purchase a new champion and 7800 used to purchase the most recently released. This is slightly over 0.75 of a highest price point new character that is not currently on the front page splash art. Note that this will be increased in future passes, but that is over a month away and subject to change.
https://wiki.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/List_of_champions Link to official wiki page on champions that can be sorted by pricepoint. For the purpose of this claim, 6300 Champions were used. Claim still holds true for 4800 champions at this time, but may not hold true next battle pass.
Limbus Battle Pass gives 3 additional EGO unlocks. I don't want to get into the weeds of gacha game mechanics, so we will just be treating this as equal to characters. In game these are priced the same as characters, but are more valuable. These do not require additional money-linked currency to improve in any way, but do need to be levelled up because RPG gonna RPG.
https://limbuscompany.wiki.gg/wiki/Season_5:_Oblivion#:~:text=Obtained%20From-,Season%27s%20Pass,-Lasso Link to Battle Pass EGO rewards.
League of Legends gives 4 character capsules that give a random character and require Blue Essence to upgrade or can have their contents sold for Blue Essence.
https://wiki.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/V25.S1.1#:~:text=And%20others.-,Battle%20Pass,-A%20Season%20is Link to Battle Pass Rewards for League Of Legends. I could not find a precise value of everything in the current pass on the wiki itself, but it's available ingame if you want to count it up. Note that Riot has since changed BE value from post-completion rewards from 50 to 750.
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Rate of Battle Pass Rewards
Without quests, Limbus Company gives 3 Battle Pass Levels per run of its primary repeatable mode. This takes between 15 and 20 minutes to complete, and the pass has 120 levels. Weekly quests add another 31 levels over 3 runs or one hour real time. In a single week's play, it would take, with no other quests, 10 hours of play to full clear the pass. Additional quests are granted daily and weekly, and would remove approximately 4 runs, for 8 hours and 40 minutes.
https://limbuscompany.wiki.gg/wiki/Mirror_of_the_Dreaming#:~:text=Weekly%20Bonus%0ACharges%20Used Link to citation of income. https://www.reddit.com/r/limbuscompany/comments/123hwpj/how_long_do_you_generally_take_to_complete_a/ Link to player survey for how long a run takes people.
A League of Legends game takes between 20 to 40 minutes on average, with most games landing in the 20-30 minute range. Rate of pass rewards is heavily obfuscated due to a quest centric system, with the base earnings rate being around 50 BEXP per game. For the sake of factoring in quests, I will increase this to an average of 100 per game. This could be higher or lower. It takes 500 Battle Pass EXP to gain one level, making for an average of 5 games, and a 50 level pass.
https://lolvalue.com/blog/how-long-are-lol-games-duration#:~:text=Average%20Time%20for%20a%20LoL%20Match%20Across%20Different%20Ranks Citation for average match length. Note that I cannot verify this. If people have an official Riot or Riot-approved source, it would be appreciated.
With the assumption of 25 minute games, it takes approximately 104 hours and 10 minutes. However, this assumes all quests are available, and attempting to single week grind is functionally impossible.
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Post Pass Rewards
Limbus Company offers 1 manually assigned Shard Box per pass level. This is 0.5% of a character, or 1.5% of a character per individual run. Additional quest rewards exist, but only offer 0.2 of a level per day from this, being functionally irrelevant. Weeklies add an additional 16.5% of a character when factoring for both weekly bonus and quests.
https://limbuscompany.wiki.gg/wiki/Season_5:_Oblivion#:~:text=Extraction-,Season%27s%20Pass%20Rewards,-Collapse Bottom of rewards list lists post-pass rewards.
League of Legends offers 750 Blue essence for 4 of the 5 levels, for an average of 600 Blue Essence per level. This is 10.5% of a character, and requires 5 games per level assuming a standard average rate of 100 BEXP per game. Or 2.1% of a character per game. However, most quest rewards are frontloaded, likely resulting in this value being higher than actual experience earnings and thus lower practical value. Due to obfuscation, this is hard to calculate, but tentative assessment is at sub 1%.
https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/game-updates/patch-25-s1-2-notes/#:~:text=We%27re%20increasing%20Blue%20Essence%20from%20repeatable%20milestones%20from%2050%20to%20750%20BE.%20(Live%20with%20this%20patch)) Citation of current patch value.
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Gacha Currency
Limbus Company offers 1050 Gacha currency per week, or 8 rolls, untethered from the Battle Pass, as well as a fixed 650, or 5 rolls, and 12 direct rolls, for 8 rolls per week + 17 flat rolls from the battle pass. The statistical odds of one of these rolls acquiring the item the player is rolling for is 1.45%, with failed rolls being worth 1.5 Shard Boxes, assigned randomly in the worst case scenario, or 5 or 25 Shard Boxes assigned randomly for higher rarity items that are already owned by the player. The player only needs to acquire any given item once, with no bonus for duplicates.
https://limbuscompany.wiki.gg/wiki/Lunacy#:~:text=Mail%20sent%20to%20the%20player%20after%20game%20maintenance%20will%20typically%20contain%20a%20reward%20of%20300%20Lunacy Citation of weekly maint reward of 300. 750 is shown in Mirror Dungeon rewards. Page also shows costs per pull.
Shards acquired by failed rolls may be used to acquire the featured item. Shards acquired by other means may also be freely used to acquire the featured item after one week, or any non-featured item at any time, subject to very few restrictions.
(Not giving citation due to above links proving statement)
League of Legends does not offer players free gacha currency. At all. The mathematical odds of hitting the target item is 0.5%. There is no non-gacha way to acquire the featured item, and failed rolls do not help. At this time, there is no way to acquire a featured gacha item that is not currently available to be rolled on.
A single roll in Limbus Company costs ~$1.75 USD. A single roll in League of Legends is ~$3.75 USD.
https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/RP#North_America_(NA):~:text=based%20on%20region.-,North%20America%20(NA),-RP:~:text=based%20on%20region.-,North%20America%20(NA),-RP) Citation of League of Legends pricing. Value was calculated by taking the lowest package that could result in a gacha roll.
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In summary, congrats League Players, it's officially less exploitative to just play gacha. The current rare of earning new characters via *direct purchase* in at least one major global gacha game is now more rapid than it is in League of Legends. Woe betide any new player coming into League, because League has more characters than most gacha games too.
If I made any errors, feel free to point them out. If someone has a better calculation of the rate of BEXP for League, I'd love to hear it. Additionally, Mods, if I have failed to offer sufficient citation on any claims, please notify me. I will be more than happy to edit in any further evidence required on any point. This was all I could think of.
A few caveats to consider however. Mirror Dungeons get faster in Limbus with a more invested account, and League of Legends games get faster on average at higher ELO, resulting in average times being slower in both with newer or less skilled players. They are also still different games, and you can just be a Garen main with 50000 Garen games and be fine if that's your thing.