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Regarding "chroma packs"

hazushikatta·4/7/2015, 3:11:37 AM·537 votes·94,513 views

edit: some people asked for a video, I made another chroma (that I'm actually happy with and will be using) for a video, complete with particles and everything. My friend told me that Riot said that editing particles was impossible or very hard to do but it's actually literally the easiest part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5q4Ue_Ih2M&feature=youtu.be

http://puu.sh/h5XlB/d76a9e206a.png http://puu.sh/h5XmE/b5ebdb1c7a.png http://puu.sh/h5XnC/1522238663.png http://puu.sh/h5Xo3/a493c88647.png

edit again: the same friend told me to do a blue zac one and to put it here too so here you go, this one literally took less than 5 minutes ಠ__ಠ

http://puu.sh/h5SjV/571f8844e8.png

http://boards.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/general-pbe-feedback/FOhsMJB0-introducing-chroma-packs

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/page/frequently-asked-questions-about-chromas-packs

"The community has been asking for recolors for a long while, but despite testing and experimenting with a few internal ideas, we couldn’t find a way to build them that satisfied our high standards. The current price reflects the work we put into crafting them.

Yeah, it’s possible to do a quick and dirty overlay, or shift a slider left in an editing program, but we think you would call us on that bullshit real quick, and as players ourselves, we wouldn’t be satisfied with such a hacky solution."

You were right, Riot. This is in fact bullshit.

I've done my own recolours before, both the base skin and the particles. I wish I could find screenshots. (Update, see below)

It looked just as "professional" as Riot's provided screenshots, and you know what? It took me an hour to do. And I'd never done it before.

Riot are showing their greed. You could sit down the coffee intern who has no art training at all at a computer with photoshop and all the skin textures, come back in a week and he could have easily made three recolours of each skin in the game.

If they made it unlockable through champion mastery, which is currently terrible (CHAMP SUMMONER ICONS. RIOT. ARE YOU DEAF.), it would be a good feature. Or even IP.

But charging money for a level of effort equivalent to changing the name of a folder? Yeah no, Riot.

Updated: I went into Photoshop and messed around with a random skin (happened to be Foxfire Ahri, in hindsight I should have picked someone with more... visible clothing like Twisted Fate for example, or even Anivia or something), like literally scribbled here and there without caring too much.

They can claim it takes effort all they want but the simple fact is that I have no training in doing this, spent less than half an hour, and basically made a "chroma" which they want to charge us for.

I picked completely random colours, I can do the particles too if you'd like. They take even less time than the actual skin itself, literally all you have to do is use the colour replacement tool and scribble all over it.

http://puu.sh/h4n9j/8493a4a97b.png http://puu.sh/h4ncq/2239be20cb.png http://puu.sh/h4ne3/902dfb413a.png http://puu.sh/h4ng5/76886a6e03.png http://puu.sh/h4mZH/266a3c1a70.png http://puu.sh/h4n1a/a738c75d42.png

tldr triggered

408 Comments

Migrañaboy4/7/2015, 4:02:12 AM166 votes

What people dont know:

Chroma packs were intended to be obtained by methods other than RP. They have a great idea, and first state its a RP exclusive. Then they "deliver" by doing what the community asks. Now Rito is seen as a community-oriented company.**

You read this first here. :^)

Rinky Dinky4/7/2015, 5:20:59 AM70 votes

People cannot read.

"All options are still open in the future, including earning additional chromas through champion mastery, but we’re sticking with RP-only at launch, in line with our historical approach to cosmetic content"

RIP entire thread

It's really popular to hate on Riot it seems. Guess that is what happens when you run the most popular game in the world. Shit was just announced today, and we have people threatening to quite the game.

Yet you people had no problem buying those URF emblems for unique finishers that will be useless in a week.

Blawynn4/7/2015, 4:05:03 AM30 votes

There is really no reason at all to charge for this.

Fueled By Coffee4/7/2015, 5:06:04 AM27 votes

Real talk? LOL That face...

Honestly though thats pretty cool and Im gonna try it out.

Prestige Eve4/7/2015, 12:44:53 PM17 votes

Just gonna paste something I posted in the last Chroma pack thread.

{quoted}

Well when everyone voted and commented in Riot's survey and thread last year regarding skin recolors, the polls said that almost nobody agreed with their last price range. The idea was either scrapped or postponed for the time being only to return a year later at a higher price in the form of a bundle. That just seems too convenient.

Let that sink in for a sec

Daen4/7/2015, 4:14:46 PM16 votes

There is likely a reasonable amount of QA and overhead that goes into this (research into the right champions/skins for chromas, overhead for picking color palettes, making everything perfect rather than scribbles, etc.), but even when including all of that stuff this is pretty damning. If it takes a complete novice less than an hour to create a chroma for a reasonably complex champion (art-wise), this becomes reeeeeally questionable.

Math!

Let's say there are five main parts to this development process:

  • Research
  • Recolor
  • Assessment/QA
  • Iteration
  • Release

I'm going to use extremely rough numbers and probably be way off base, but I'm going to err on the side of overboard because it paints a better picture (cwutididthar). Let's assume each step of the process requires the following work:

  • Research - 5 people, 40 hours each
  • Recolor - 1 person, 8 hours
  • Assessment/QA - 3 people, 40 hours each
  • Iteration - 10 people, 40 hours each
  • Release - 5 people, 8 hours each

This works out to a total of 768 hours, though I would be pretty surprised if a single Chroma pack took this many man-hours to complete seeing as the OP did it in half an hour. Let's also assume that everyone working on this project was paid an average of $40 an hour, or roughly an $80k salary per person. This works out to a total cost of $30,720 for each chroma pack, and assuming each chroma pack costs $5 in RP Riot requires 6,144 sales.

Assuming a community of 50 million people (it's much higher by official numbers, but whatever let's make the numbers look as good as possible for Riot), this is about 0.0001% of the population, or about a tenth of the number of people in Diamond in North America. I would be very surprised if that sale percentage isn't feasible from Riot's perspective, selling six thousand units of a desirable product to a population of 50 million people really shouldn't be that difficult.

TLDR, here are the numbers as per above:

  • 768 total man-hours for a set of chromas
  • $40 cost per hour
  • $30,720 total cost
  • 6,144 sales to break even

Riot needs to make money, and I get that these cosmetics are the main source of revenue for the entire company, but it's a little concerning that either a simple recolor takes such an extraordinarily long time that it warrants this cost or the profit margin is so astronomically high.

kile1474/7/2015, 8:03:28 AM16 votes

All I got from this post is that champions look creepy as hell when you smash them into a 2-D image.

Gapybo4/7/2015, 2:39:35 PM15 votes

Yeah I'm tired of their bullshit, trying to justify the prices and how much work it takes. These chromas are 10 minute work , especially for an experienced people Riot is supposed to hire. Your recolor is actually way more detailed than what we got from them, seriously they only changed Lucian's coat. Too bad people will still buy this shit.

OneDragonArmy4/7/2015, 8:48:49 PM13 votes

I'm usually on Riot's side, but this is pretty damning evidence tbh. More reason to make these champion mastery rewards only.

insaiyanbacca4/7/2015, 3:18:13 AM10 votes

i dont see a problem tbh there is a reason you get 3 for 590 rp they are super easy to make and dont change much so each of them is only worth like 190 ish rp. so its 5 bucks and you basically get 3 really cheap skins

Aheadatime4/7/2015, 7:03:36 AM6 votes

Wait though.. I understand very well that skins themselves are a massive rip-off, let alone re-colors, but I'm not sure that I understand your post. Are you saying that you hopped into photoshop and simply re-colored a static image? Isn't this very different than programming a skin that is going to move, interact with the environment, dance, taunt, etc? I don't think that it would be very much work either way, but I think what you did is simpler than what Riot is doing, if I understand correctly.

aaronautumn4/7/2015, 3:16:00 AM6 votes

where did u get that skin?