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How hard is it to do a simple color swap on abilities?

iLuma·4/30/2015, 1:51:00 PM·30 votes·13,395 views

I mean, this is a serious question. Not at all trying to be offensive because I honestly have no knowledge of creating skins or anything of the sort, but with these new skins coming out for Ezreal, Mordekaiser, Shaco and Syndra, you would think that there would be a little more drastic changes.

Simply put, I'm not asking for a giant change like a legendary skin or anything like that, but how difficult is to just at least change the colors of the abilities. Syndra's spheres could be like pink or something, or even Shaco's clone something other than green. I know that this is still in PBE, so changes may not be final, but on a similar note I started getting upset about this when the Valentine's Day Annie skin came out. Tibbers and Annie both had nice new skins, but their abilities were exactly the same. If they had been at least a pink or yellow or something, I would have instantly bought.

I just think that the skins and splash art for these skins look amazing, but I don't find it worth spending money when things will be exactly the same. You came out with Chromas, is there anyway to implement that into particle effects or something?

tl;dr -- I don't know how hard it is to make skins, but is it possible to do a little color change on the abilities of these new skins?

108 Comments

RiotRiot Galetta4/30/2015, 6:39:25 PM27 votes

Yo!

So there are several factors that prevent us from simply changing particle colors on skins. The first and biggest issue is time. We have a limited number of particle artist on the team, they are ALWAYS busy. You have to keep in mind that they are working on multiple skins at a time that range from Legendary to 975 RP skins. When someone says "Hey, just change the particles", that would require an artist to stop working on their current skin and start work on this new project. That takes time and it would break our schedule and cause multiple skins to be delayed. There are only so many hours in the day and only so many artists.

We plan out skins months in advance so we can create as many skins as possible each year and if that schedule gets interrupted by a delay there are ripple effects. :<

The 2nd issue is testing. All of our skins go through rigorous testing and different test suites depending on the changes to the skin. 750 skins go through a smaller test suite that requires less time to complete due to the fact that fewer changes were made.

We see it time and time again that the more changes we make to a skin the more bugs we find on that skin and on the older skins that champion has. Again we only have so many testers and so many hours in the day.

Additionally if we were to overhaul Syndra and make her a 975 she would have to go through testing all over again which would delay her greatly.

Raptamei4/30/2015, 3:53:54 PM6 votes

Let me change the colour of a Skyrim spell. BRB.

Baron Von Bangin4/30/2015, 9:26:08 PM6 votes

I feel pretty screwed when it comes to Ezreal. I mean seriously, SEVEN skins that don't change his particles? Only Pulsefire changes his particles in any significant way and you have to shell out thirty dollars. Talk about feast or famine.

Not to mention Ezreal probably wont get a new skin in a long time. Just look at how long it took for Lux to finally get her magical girl skin, yeesh.

Krigjer5/1/2015, 8:49:13 AM4 votes

I don't buy skins without particle changes anymore. It's not worth the price to me.

Even if it's a simple enough particle change to only make it 975, something is better than nothing.

Best Darius KR4/30/2015, 1:56:40 PM3 votes

Changing the effects color is the same thing as changing the model, but a little more complex since it has more layers.

The thing is, unlike with the models themselves, the color of the effect has to match with what the effect is: e.g. There is no pink fire

Do you get what I'm saying? It's just a little harder, that's all.

And besides, don't forget skins that have new VFX cost 975RP, not 750.

ModKnightsKemplar4/30/2015, 3:20:43 PM2 votes

I think it's harder than it looks at first. People in boards have, for awhile, been showing up with their apparent "5 minutes in photoshop" changes to coloring on champs. I saw a blue Zac that was particularly bad, but the guy who made it seemed to think it was fine.

That's my deal. People who don't value the visuals or the art seem to think that this is an easy task; I just want a blue Zac, how hard could it possibly be? Well, when you care about the quality, pretty hard. It takes a while to do that kind of thing.

I've recently been spending some time learning how to make high quality figures of molecules for my own work. I've been floored by just how difficult it can be to display a simple molecule in a clear way, and the colors are actually the hardest part to get right (it's mostly the only part that I care about anyway). Now, the program I use (Diamond, for any curious chemists out there), lacks some features that would make this easier... but for me, the point stands. It doesn't look good if you just slap a blue filter on Zac's model and abilities. It takes real work if you want it to share the same high quality as the original model.

From a business standpoint, Riot has no reason to hold back on this. If we show them, by spending money on those upcoming chromas, that we want this feature and are willing to make it worth their time, they will continue to provide it. But it's an investment.