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Riot - Can you explain why these popular small tweak requests to skins can't be done?

iainB85·2/4/2015, 7:58:21 PM·56 votes·23,443 views

Recently I've seen two threads that received massive community upvotes about small tweaks to skins that would make them seem a lot more thematically whole.

One was changing Sweetheart Annie's flames to pink (much like Frostfire has blue). The other was to make Marauder Ashe have more dark themed arrows than the default bright blue magical ones.

In both threads the response from Riot was, "Very nice idea but I'm afraid it won't be changed in the skin!" (paraphrasing).

Can I ask why?

From a technical standpoint these changes are extremely simple and I cannot imagine it would take more than 10 minutes of someone's time to change.

From a QA standpoint they are simple recolors, so I can't imagine it having much of an impact on the game that they could not be sneaked into the game late in the development cycle.

I'm honestly baffled as to why these small tweaks that receive a lot of community feedback keep getting denied. These seem like small victories that would be so easy to accomplish and get you guys back onto the track of having a reputation of a game company that listens to their community (which I see more and more people getting frustrated with as the years go on).

--EDIT: Including a little information on particles and how they work for context below--

To change the color of a particle, in most cases you just need to change the color of the sprite (the image(s) used to control the shape of the particle).

To better understand, here is an example of what is commonly known as a "sprite sheet": http://www.nordenfelt-thegame.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/explosion_opaque.png

Each of those images within the sprite sheet is played in succession to create an exploding effect, in this example.

Anyone familiar with Photoshop knows it'd be much easier to adjust a few sliders in the hue/saturation of the image to change the color than to create this from scratch.

Knowing this, I can understand why a particle **REWORK ** (completely new particles) could change the pricing tier of a skin, but a particle **RECOLOR ** (i.e. change the hue of Annie's flames from red to pink) is very minimal work and I can't see why it should change the pricing tier.

125 Comments

Riotmoonstones2/4/2015, 8:27:51 PM37 votes

Hey there!

There's a couple reasons why we didn't make changes.

When we set out to create a 750 RP, we allocate people's time accordingly. Since a 750 RP skin doesn't normally get new particles (aside from the quality of life particles like you've seen with Nautilus and Sivir), we don't allocate someone to work on the particles, and that person goes to work on something else that's in development (like DJ Sona!)

We test every skin that's coming out, as well as all of the other skins that champion has, which takes a decent amount of time. Making particles changes means re-testing everything (including all previous skins a champion has - and for champions like Annie, that's a lot of skins!). It's usually not feasible in the time frame we have, especially when we didn't plan to have particles on the new skin.

We also don't want to set a false precedence where if we release a 750 RP skin, and people want particles, it'll become a 975 RP skin. We're striving to create more skins in various tiers, so more players have an opportunity to grab a skin for a champion they enjoy, since not everyone can (or wants to!) spend a decent amount of money on a skin when they simply want a new outfit.

Hope that clears things up a bit. :]

GigglesO2/4/2015, 8:23:17 PM7 votes

{quoted}

I'm honestly baffled as to why these small tweaks that receive a lot of community feedback keep getting denied.

Here is something that I have learned over the years, either you do something or you make an excuse not to do it.

In this case:

[{quoted}](name=Riot KateyKhaos,realm=NA,application-id=A8FQeEA8,discussion-id=cGz40UQM,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2015-02-04T20:15:23.302+0000)

Annie was also a 750 RP skin. :]

Riot is a company full of excuses.

For example: We didn't nerf Lee Sin because of community outcry. Yet they continue to change other champions that players didn't want changed (sona).