I love you all, but this is the most gutless community I've ever run into

There are two factors that play into any business/service/product, which are hygiene and motivation (in this case motivation would be in terms of the player buying something from Riot). In terms of this discussion, let's forget about employees/business and focus on the consumers and the products/services they are receiving.

Hygiene - These are factors that need to be there for the consumer to be contempt with what they are receiving. If they aren't there in the first place, then the consumers would become less inclined to use the product/service as time goes on and as new iterations of it are produced. These factors are not what the consumer looks for in a product when initially purchasing it, rather, are things they notice aren't there as time goes on (i.e. replay system and various other things Riot could push out).

Motivators - These are the factors that lead the consumers to enjoy the product/service they are using and push them to continue to use it as time goes on. They are the cosmetics of a game, characters within the game, and various new features the company continues to add on in an effort to keep the consumers happy and satisfied. They motivate the consumers to continue to use the product/service and purchase new things the company pushes out (i.e. skins, champions and free gamemodes like URF).

So when talking about Return on Investment (ROI), you need to take in account for both factors. The company needs to realize that they might not exactly make a profit with one decision (much like how Riot has been pretty public with the fact that the LCS and Worlds has not driven a profit in the past), but it will help them retain a player base by keeping the product/service healthy and refreshing to the player.

From my personal experience, the one thing that will probably drive me away from this game more than anything else will be the former topic: hygiene. Riot does an amazing job at keeping the game new and exciting through new, motivational aspects, but they tend to be hit or miss when it comes to hygiene. I know it wouldn't be an instant change, but they should seriously consider whether or not that kind of stuff will drive a ROI in the future, to put it in similar terms to your post. I think the future of their company will be very interesting based off of these kinds of crucial decisions.

/r/leagueoflegends Thread