@IronStylus re:The traditional skin program and Tristana

Flatly put, I don't get why Tristana didn't get a traditional skin with her update.

I should have made a topic on this closer to Trist's release, but I've been away from the game for a while and only really had time to digest the results of the update recently. I'm sure this is far too late to actually effect anything if that was ever even a possibility, but it's something that'll likely continue to bug me if I don't at least air it.

Let me start by saying that I think the Trist visual update was well made. The art, the animation, it's great. If it had been a new character. I take some issue with the fact that I don't think that the new Tristana looks anything like the old Tristana. I've dug through a few old threads talking about the decisions made in the VU process and I'm under the impression that the changes made were done deliberately for the purpose of conforming to a new morphology for the yordle species. I can understand that, but I don't understand the changes beyond her new ears and physique. I'm not really here to pick apart the VU though. Rather, I'm curious why Tristana didn't get a traditional skin.

From what I understand, the traditional skin program was discontinued due to changes with the update team's goals. You guys felt that if properly done, a traditional skin wouldn't be required because the update should fully encompass the original character's appearance to the point where a traditional skin would feel redundant. This made some sense in regards to the Sion update, which if I'm not mistaken was the first big visual overhaul to not get a traditional skin. The old Sion was pretty crude and didn't really have much in the way of distinguishing features. His identity was more tied to his hulking undead nature than his features as an individual person like say his face or voice. Tristana however is quite different. Being a part of a race with contemporaries, her recognizable identity is much more tied to her features as an individual. You wouldn't differentiate her from poppy just by who has a hammer and who has a cannon, you'd tell them apart by the shape of their head, their eyes, the hair, their voices. The same way we tell people apart. By changing her features so much, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the visual update team didn't meet the goal of re-imagining the character so seamlessly that a traditional skin wouldn't be distinct from the new default appearance. Unlike Sion, there's nothing about Tristana's old appearance that couldn't stand alongside the rest of the roster, or even her new base appearance. A slightly narrower face, blue skin, and heavier combat gear (I thought you were all about the armor too, man) on the new body frame doesn't seem like it'd thrown the paradigm into the wood chipper. Her old new splash was great and was popularly received. A traditional skin seems like the ideal way to retain ties to the identity that now only exists in a weird way as non canon fan work.

Another reason I've heard as to why traditional skins were discontinued was that they saw extremely little use. But that hardly seems like fair criteria since the only traditional skins so far were

Trundle- Extremely unpopular pre update, now just not very popular Karma- Very unpopular pre update, still not very popular Sejuani- Very unpopular pre update, still not very popular

Considering how unpopular those champs were and that traditional skins couldn't even be bought post update, their low use seems easy to account for. Tristana would be the first real opportunity to determine just what kind of potential use traditional skins could see, being both popular and widely owned/cheap/free to acquire.

While I can't say I'm 100% happy with the update, it doesn't seem like anyone brought up the issues that I have with it, so maybe it's only me who has any problem with it. Either way I'd mostly just like to hear what someone on the update team has to say about the subject. If I misunderstood the reason traditional skins were discontinued, if something about Tristana precluded the criteria for traditional skins, or if it was simply a case of oversight, where the program was turned off for Sion and nobody thought to consider it for Tristana.

I'd love to have all kinds of conversations with Ironstylus or the rest of team about champ updates, Sejuani, Eve and Morde in particular, but this is already a huge wall of text that'll likely scare off the intended readers and I think keeping it to 1 topic for 1 thread is probably for the best, so I'll leave it at that.