I feel like Riot's skin team isn't on the same page as champion design.

Destínum·11/18/2014, 9:09:01 PM·25 votes·12,173 views

It's never been a secret that Officer Caitlyn is supposed to be a "stripper-dressed-as-a-cop" rather than an actual police officer. It's acceptable because the skin was made when Riot was still in their "teenage" years, and Caitlyn is a pretty sexualized character anyways.

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111005043436/leagueoflegends/images/2/23/Caitlyn_OfficerSkin.jpg

Then the champion designers goes and creates Vi: A tomboy that isn't afraid to show that she is female (ex. pink hair), but is definitely not eyecandy.

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121212052715/leagueoflegends/images/a/a0/Vi_OriginalSkin.jpg

Then the skin team gives her a skin of the same theme. I'm personally not a fan of it because it doesn't fit the character, but I can look the other way considering it's a "matching skin" (since she and Caitlyn are partners) and it was released as kind of a halloween costume. The also only made her sexualized because it was part of the skin theme.

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20141116061957/leagueoflegends/images/2/20/Vi_OfficerSkin.jpg

And then they make these in the same skin serie:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y0IaO5dv_KY/VGrjohKzaVI/AAAAAAAAdik/wo1Y4LZC5a4/s1600/Trundle_Splash_4.jpg

Oh look, now there's a troll and a bear who are easier to take seriously than the two people who are actual police officers lore-wise.

Other skin-themes have the same problem. The medical skins for the ninjas for example (although those skins are older, but still).

I feel like while the rest of Riot's design team are growing up, the skin team is still locked up inside it's mom's basement.

89 Comments

Plus50g11/18/2014, 9:24:04 PM19 votes

I agree, it's kinda the same problem I have with a certain Riven skin that I won't name out of fear of being burned in a bonfire, just it's worse here as, what you just said, Voli and Trundle, look a lot more like cops, then, well the cops.

+1 Riot Plz

PentaSho11/18/2014, 9:10:18 PM18 votes

Skins are for fun, and not connected to the lore in any way.

Chaos Concordant11/18/2014, 9:40:05 PM11 votes

Welcome to the reason why most of us older gamers sometimes feel uncomfortable admitting such in public. Tits and ass. There's an embarrassingly small roster of female warriors who look like they're actually dressed for a fight. Kayle actually wears armour! A full set of plate armour! Then you have Kat or Jinx who looks like they're wearing a kinky outfit for their significant other's titillation.

Final GirI11/19/2014, 1:14:26 AM9 votes

I like the sexualization. I'm a gay man. I think it looks sexy, so there for, I like how it looks, I like playing good looking characters. I'm not going to buy a boring skin. If you don't like it, don't buy it. The whining here is literally deafening.

Diahane11/18/2014, 11:24:17 PM7 votes

I'm probably stepping in a den of lions, but whenever I stumble upon threads like this a question comes to my mind: why any display of sexiness from a female figure makes people scream about the objectification of women and of strippers (as if they were evil incarnated and didn't have any human dimension), while an analogous display from a male character doesn't raise any objection nor commotion? The male body too is objectified, just look at the latest movie trends when it comes to muscles, the bar has been raised a whole lot and shirtless scenes are really common. I'd say there are actually two male body types being enforced to us as society's standard: the skinny one and the good-looking-muscled one (as opposed to the strongman-muscled one, which is very different). Why isn't anyone discussing it? Why it's always a matter of how much skin female characters show? Why can guys be represented as muscled and shirtless but female wearing miniskirts are deemed "strippers"? Why should the profession of stripper be used as a denigrative term? Can't strippers be human being like all the rest and have a human dimension which goes beyond the act of stripping they perform at work? Besides, scantily clad women equating to "strippers" or to sexualized objects or to "whores" is pretty primitive and goes back to the chauvinist conception that women who dress like that are no good. Can't a woman choose how much of her body show, in which manner and what it does mean for her? Are miniskirts and cleavage showing dresses only a sign of low moral or the will to play the sexual object part? Can't a dignified and proud woman just dress however she pleases and maybe feel good about it, because she thinks she really looks beautiful that way, without having to think about people pointing her as an object?

I'm a man and if I were a handsome muscled one I would have no problem showing it (not going shirtless though, we're not in a movie and scantily clad women don't do that either), but would that mean I would be a male stripper? Would that mean that I'm bending myself to the image of men the media feed us and just being an eye-candy for women?

How a person dresses and presents her-/him-self has obviously a lot of repercussions in the interactions with those surrounding said person, but it should be kept in mind that looks are not a sign of moral fibre and people should be free to express themselves with their looks as a mean of self-discovery and self-satisfaction too.

Dax Ayrton11/18/2014, 11:41:16 PM6 votes

A few things:

First of all, they're not part of the same skin line. There is "Officer Caitlyn" and "Officer Vi" on one hand (that because they share names, they share the theme of "skimpy, over-sexualized"), and then there is "Captain Volibear" and "Constable Trundle", (which share a splash art, so those two are free to follow a different theme).

Also, I have to ask you to look at that splash art again. Do Volibear and Trundle really look like believable police officers? They're huge, muscley, and are non-chalantly walking away from an explosion. These two skins are as much a non-sensical parody as the Officer skins are.

BtchAssJ3Cub11/18/2014, 10:02:01 PM4 votes

Sexualisation of any given character is a fairly troll-worthy opinion to have.

They're characters. On a screen. Completely fake and imagined to sell money. Inside a game.

A. GAME.

Get over it, seriously.

ViktoriousSecret11/19/2014, 9:25:36 PM4 votes

People look to deep into these kinds of things, nobody really cares, I mean realistically. I didn't buy the cait cop skin because I thought she was hot I bought it because I liked the way it looked. And it just so happened to be a stripper-cop. It doesn't fancy me an e-boner. Who really cares. We have champions like leona, strong, powerful, isn't sexually revealing in any way. And then we have vi a strong independent white piltoverian who doesn't need no man and she gets a sexualized skin and all of a sudden people treat it like its an epidemic. Its not an epidemic, its not a big deal I'm sick of these kinds of threads that come up every week.

MrBuffington11/19/2014, 2:19:50 AM3 votes
Athenes Lulu11/19/2014, 3:09:51 AM3 votes

Skins =/= canon.

Skins are meant to be in "an alternative universe", so it's not surprising if they look different from their original skins. Hey, at least those are the things that Vi and Cait would actually wear, since they probably don't mind too much about purposely showing off.

I can't find any worse offender than Battle Bunny Riven. Riven is definitely someone that is conservative (in terms of not showing off any clevages) just by looking at her skins and such. She looked as if she's FORCED to wear that skintight suit just for her... job?