Banning specific skins from competitive play

Jefftiffy··1 votes·1,010 views

The point of skins is to show off something you like. It isn't supposed to influence gameplay. I think in instances where it can be proven that a specific skin negatively influences gameplay for the other play it should be disabled in competitive play (ranked, LCS, tournaments, etc.).

Blood moon Shen looks a lot like Zed almost too much. It's enough that the first .5s I think oh shit it's a Zed then register there's no Zed on their team and then proceed to fight as if it's Shen. Nightbringer Yasuo has a really dark color pallet and his abilities are a lot harder to see as another example of what I am talking about.

It's one thing to have super flashy if not over exaggerated particles and abilities like some skin, as it doesn't effect gameplay and actually is more clear than the base skin in some cases. Final Boss Veigar seems to have much more accurate particles and a better synced hit box than his original skin for one example.

I know people like to express their love for their champions with their favorite skins, but I really feel like some skins are getting to the point where we may have to look into doing this to keep things fair from a F2P standpoint. If a skin gives you an advantage it makes P2P almost a necessity in a F2P game with cosmetics.

Edit: apparently a bunch of you are dumb and don't realize that I am refering to reflexes and are assuming I am forgetting the enemy's team comp. The whole point of this is to either change or ban the skins with deceiving effects. Most of the time you aren't going to forget there is a Shen because of his mini map icon. Nor Zed. You are going to screw up because of a .25s window during an engage when 2 similar skins are present because if you take a screenshot of most organized team fights you can barely tell wtf is going on. And then there are deceptive abilities which is where I brought up Nightbringer Yasuo. That have hard to see abilities that often blend in or are harder to see than normal making them harder to dodge. This isn't about forgetting team comps. If you thought that maybe you should learn to read. No where in here did I say anything about forgetting their team.

9 Comments

Primaquarius1 votes

Im pretty sure SG Janna's Q is still the easiest to see coming from anywhere

Jefftiffy1 votes

{quoted}

Im pretty sure SG Janna's Q is still the easiest to see coming from anywhere

It's not the point about making things easier to see. The point is some skins either make champions look too similar or disguise crucial effects that you have to pay attention to.

Ever seen a team with a Blood Moon Shen and a Blood Moon Zed? There's 2 ninjas with the same color scheme and same design but slightly different appearances and 2 completely different roles.

Gigglingdeath1 votes

I mean most people, especially pros, have the ability to remember when a specific champion isn't even in their game. The only issue I have similar to this is Varus vs Thresh dark star splash art. That's it. In game, I know who's who.

Jefftiffy1 votes

{quoted}

I mean most people, especially pros, have the ability to remember when a specific champion isn't even in their game. The only issue I have similar to this is Varus vs Thresh dark star splash art. That's it. In game, I know who's who.

I mean so do I, but if you even think for a 1/4 of a second that it's someone else because of a skin it can really screw you over. That's my main reasoning behind the Blood Moon Shen and Zed being too similar.

DariusDemiurge1 votes

They did have bans on stuff like dark ice anivia and iblitz. I can't remember the others though.

Jefftiffy1 votes

{quoted}

They did have bans on stuff like dark ice anivia and iblitz. I can't remember the others though.

Yes, but they haven't done anything else since and it only effected LCS if my memory serves me correctly.

Warlord Scrap1 votes

Steel legion lux as well

Shuyin1781 votes

They fixed all of the champions/skins that had readability problems in competitive play already. If you forget what the enemy team has in their comp that seems more like a you problem than Riot's fault.

Jefftiffy1 votes

{quoted}

They fixed all of the champions/skins that had readability problems in competitive play already. If you forget what the enemy team has in their comp that seems more like a you problem than Riot's fault.

It's not forgetting. We are talking about reflexes here. Reflexes are something that you for the most part cannot control. And if you have 2 skins that look extremely similar on the same team in a chaotic team fight or even on the initiation. That whole .25s it took you to realize the difference can make a huge difference.

It's not even about forgetting who is on the enemy team. It's about the ability to read and predict your enemies. If they have both a Shen and Zed using Blood Moon you essentially have to waste that .25s to determine who is who in an intiation and if they both dive you then have to keep track of 2 models that look extremely similar.

And you forget that they only addressed the old skins. With new skins being released all the time, there are skins the receive very deceiving if not broken particles. You can't sit there and say Riot addressed this in the past when that was over 2 years ago. There have been over 50 skins since then and skin quality is going up meaning that you get more particles and more changes with each skin you apply the newer it is.

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