Why the Chroma skins are a good idea, and what can be done to make them perfect.

I'm a relatively new player, only having owned the game for about 3 weeks, but I know a lot about cosmetics. They're a great way to express oneself, customize gameplay just a little bit more, and cosmetics done right are money in the bank. I have a long history of playing games that offer a vast array of cosmetic cutomization (Team Fortress 2, Halo Reach, Super Monday Night Combat), and all of them did cosmetics well.

Concerning Chromium skins, when they were first announced and I saw the post on the league subreddit, I was super hyped. League has a unique way of doing cosmetics: the skins in-game are all really unique, well done, and obviously took a lot of work and love to make, but since they're all separate 1-piece skins and don't have interchangeable parts, there are problems where unlike other games, your choices for cosmetics are few and far inbetween, especially with Champs that either have a very small amount of skins (Zac) or most of their skins are legendary/vaulted and unobtainable (most Champs). It wouldn't be hard to find a skin you love for a Champ you play, but at the same time it's just as likely you'll find a lot of skins that you'd never consider picking up, even if they were on sale.

Basically, Chromium skins are great because they allow for customization where there might have been none (Zac, Bard, Lucian, Rengar, just about any champ with only 2 or 3 alt skins), and aren't so overly flamboyant that they could be free and nobody would bat an eye. Here are my suggestions to improve the Chromium skins:

1. As I see it, the main appeal of Chromium skins, at least concerning how it was phrased in the blog post for the patch, is customization on a deeper level, but not too jarring to regular players. Originally, I assumed players that bought the Chromium packs would be given 3 skin slots, much like custom rune/mastery pages, where you get to choose from a certain but impressive set of colours for different parts of a character's skin, and create their own uniquely coloured-but still fitting in-universe skins. From what I understand now, it's just a set of 3 specific colour palette swaps, which not only kind of ruins the point of the advertised packs (I can't very well rep a competitive gaming/sports team if I only have 3 colours to pick from, each of which being so common in competitive scenes that they could easily be mistaken for any other team). So, basically, the appeal of the chromium packs should be the ability to truly customize the skin in colour. This could be easily done by, as I imagine it, giving the player a screen where they can see the champion's skin (much like lolking's modelviewer), and have a few separate menu panels containing maybe 7-10 colours each, depending on the character (IE Ashe's default model would have 2 panels, one containing around 15 colours for her black dress/boot sections, and one containing maybe 4-5 colours for her dress/boto details). This way, Riot can control exactly how crazy the skins can get in appearance (nothing like TF2 has where there are players with neon green/pink hats and miscs), while still providing an adequate amount of customization. Keep the colours fitting for the character's palette, but don't be afraid to let players go far: as an example, Ashe's first palette tab for her main colour (black on her default skin) could contain: black, gray, white, dark green, dark red, dark blue, purple, and dark pink. Her second tab for her detail colour (the gold trimmings) could contain: dark red, black, white, grey, dark blue, and yellow. That's a fair amount of options, while not going to extremes.

2. Decide how exactly to distribute these skins. If done right, these skins could be an easy buck while still keeping the community happy. The current idea I have for this is, as follows: Give each player one chromium slot for one specific character's skin for either 200 RP or 2500 IP, while also keeping the current system of a bundle, but bringing the price down to only 500. The current price isn't a bad idea, but when it's 3 pre-determined colours and the only way to get them is to spend around $5, is it really worth it for anybody except the customization-crazed?

3. Finally give Pro masteries a use: when a player gets a mastery as any pro, give them an exclusive chromium skin slot, containing unique, special colours. You could really go in any direction for the colours, but I personally like the idea of, say, gem/metal colours with inherent shines (ruby, sapphire, gold, bronze, silver, etc). Or, alternatively, give a unique chromium skin using special colours for the mastery. Either way works, but the general idea is the same: finally have a reason to get mastery for a certain champion. Maybe even let the player choose which skin (that they own) gets the exclusive colours.

4. Take all of the current strictly palette swap skins and vault them. This is mostly personal opinion, and I really don't view this as necessary to actually make the Chromium skins worth it in the long run.

Basically, Riot, Chromiums are a great idea, but you need to actually give customization options like you advertise, you need to lower the price (but you can keep the bundle) and give an option to buy them with IP, and finally, make exclusive Chromium skins for those who are dedicated enough to master a pro.