Boards›Gameplay

Annie's Summon Tibbers and Thematic Clarity

XBraveHeartX··31 votes·1,646 views

I first want to start off by saying I've been playing Annie a lot for a while now and I love her VU. One thing that has caught my eye though and that has been a little grating ever since, is the fact that when Annie summons Tibbers, she is still holding him in her hand. I can see this make sense if she released tibbers spirit from the teddy bear and summoned him, with the teddy bear acting as a cage or holding place but the cinematic A Twist of Fate tells other wise. In the cinematic it's clearly expressed that Annie's Teddy bear is indeed tibbers but just in a magically sealed plush form as his lore states. Because of this, I think it would be really cool if when Annie summoned tibbers she no longer holds her teddy bear and instead of having him just appear she could throw him like she does in the cinematic(although I could understand this being problematic due to the fact that a cast animation would have to be implemented and might interfere with her combo/burst.) I believe not only would it fit in thematically with the way Tibbers works, but also clarify that annies teddy bear is indeed tibbers.(unless he's not :'<)

10 Comments

Ironclad Dragon3 votes

It's a hard life, animating girls and their infernal grizzly bears.

HigeR2 votes

It's a good suggestion so I upvoted you, though, in reality I believe this is harder to pull off than what we can think off... first, it would require Annie to have 2 separate models or "stances" if you will, one with the teddy bear and another without, this means all of her skins now require another stance and that's a heavy load of work for a very small almost unnoticeable but nice feature. All in all the effort would be too big and the gain veeeery small so perhaps when Riot's plate is a tad emptier they could tackle this!

Nahara1 votes

it would require Annie to have 2 separate models or "stances" if you will, one with the teddy bear and another without

Actually, it's a heck of a lot easier than that and could probably be done in a couple ways, two of which I can come up with off the top of my head:

  1. When Annie uses Summon: Tibbers, after the animation goes off where Annie throws the stuffed bear, the opacity of the texture skin gets set to 0, making it effectively invisible (still there in her hands, but we can't see it), and then reset back to 100 when it ends.

  2. If Riot can't do #1 for some reason, after the animation goes off, the stuffed Tibbers model just gets moved a bit below the floor of the arena and gets returned to her hand once Tibbers is killed or the duration expires (I believe this is how Zac's bloblets work).

Pikmints2 votes

While that would be a good way for handling it if Riot were doing so earlier in their career, now doing so would cause some issues that people would call out almost immediately.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some areas we never see around Annie's arms and hands because Tibbers is always there, thus Riot never textured them and doing what you suggested would make it so that you see the opposite side on Annie through the hole in her model. Then there are the animation nuances, like how Annie hugs Tibbers against her chest in one of her animations, doing this would cause her to do that animation, but with a hole between her arms an herself.

While I would love for Riot to do this (and finally add some counterplay to her ultimate AoE stun + damage with the throwing animation), I admit that this would be a bit of an undertaking on their part to make sure that everything looks good and is even worth splitting their efforts.

A Boojum Snark3 votes

The teddy bear is already an entirely separate mesh from annie and is only put it her hand by animations. You can see it (if your net isn't too fast) on the model viewer before the animations are downloaded. http://www.lolking.net/models/?champion=1&skin=0

There are enough champions with model parts that are not always seen (transform ults, evolves) that I don't think this would be a difficult change.

XBraveHeartX1 votes

I didn't even think about the counterplay which is a good point. One could have a 0.5-1 second window to dodge or avoid the aoe as opposed to having him plop on you with no warning or sign.

Nahara1 votes

I didn't even think about the counterplay which is a good point. One could have a 0.5-1 second window to dodge or avoid the aoe as opposed to having him plop on you with no warning or sign.

The animation of Annie throwing the stuffed Tibbers could be as fast or slow as Riot wants it to be, but I think 0.5-1 second seems like too long an animation. A 0.3 or so second wind-up to the animation would give very attentive and slippery characters a chance to avoid it, while still allowing players the satisfaction of being able to Flash+Tibbers the enemy team.

Nahara1 votes

Then there are the animation nuances, like how Annie hugs Tibbers against her chest in one of her animations, doing this would cause her to do that animation, but with a hole between her arms an herself.

While I hadn't thought about that as I was writing the post, I still don't think it would be difficult to do. To get around the awkward animation issue, I'd think Riot could put conditional flags on those animations, preventing them from activating if Tibbers is active.

Gavran2 votes

Likely easier (and less disruptive to gameplay flow) than implementing a throwing animation, there could be a vfx animation of (toy) Tibbers burning up (then hiding the model in some way.) I don't know if vfx is actually easier for everyone or if it's just because I'm terrible with every other kind of animation though.

HasZack1 votes

hmm

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes