Reav3 confirmed on Reddit that AW will be adjusted

Sir Saltarin·Mar 6, 2019·14 votes·11,101 views

Reav3's comment from discussion "Aether Wing Kayle Aether is being significantly lower in quality than both recent and non recent legendary skins. It has no unique movement, attack animations, removed the iconic attack sound, no special death animation, the same face model, significantly less voice lines and interactions, etc"

Here's a copy of his comment:

Reav3:

Hey all, lots of great points brought up in this thread. With legendaries the amount of unique anims and how drastically they change can vary from Champion to Champion. With newer Champions they can sometimes have massive animation suites, so rather then give them 100% unique anims we just tweak the base ones. This was a approach we took for both Nightbringer Yasuo and and Dark Star Thresh since they were much newer Champions. New Kayle has a enormous animation suite, between 4 forms, enraged/non-enraged AAs, Melee/ranged AAs, High Attack Speed/Low Attack speed AA, so we had to chose carefully where to put the unique animations for Kayle. We ultimately chose to put the unique anims into her mechanical wings, which do have a new animation suite compared to base Kayle as we felt her mechanical wings are the most unique aspect of the skin. The Death anim is a good call out though and we will be adding a unique death anim to her soon, targeting next patch. We will also be adjusting AWs Auto attack SFX to match closer to old AW SFX.

18 Comments

rtbf225618241Mar 6, 201910 votes

Why are they cutting corners to begin with? Are they that low on budget and staff that they can't afford to commit to changes that people can pull off in a couple weeks by themselves?

I mean this VGU has been in the works for a year at least...and Kayle literally has only a couple thematically enhanced skins, not a bajillion of them like Varus or Vayne.

IfnethMar 6, 20199 votes

Yes. Riot’s profits are down 2-300 million.

GelsominoKillerMar 6, 20191 votes

I repeat once again: a drop in revenue doesn't mean jack shit if we don't know how much they are actually investing...

And we all know that Riot has a new game in the works ("legends of runeterra")

IfnethMar 7, 20191 votes

A drop in revenue means either fewer players or less revenue from each or both. It’s never good news. The company must lay off workers and cut corners on its products until and unless it can raise revenue. The revenue of even the most popular games usually peaks and then trails off, as competitors enter their market and other genres are established.

League has retained its playerbase because Riot has found a genre, MOBA, that allows highly variable and interesting experiences from a slowly growing content pool. As players and champions have improved, those experiences keep rising with our expectations of what League can be.

The real problem is making the game last. Its fundamentals are from over a decade ago, with two-dimensional movement and graphics designed for even the simplest machines. The game’s learning curve is steep and not helped much by even the improved tutorial. Yet the crispness, complexity, and change needed to create League’s rich strategy are why neither of these problems has changed much.

While some might say its best days are behind it, we might alternatively say that the game has established itself and may now comfortably continue filling its niche for years to come. Meanwhile, we can only hope that a larger-scale update might revolutionize the fundamentals and attract an even larger audience.

Jennifer420Mar 6, 20191 votes

its more like riot is known for never putting in much effort. i dont get why people are still so surprised by this fact lol.

Tomoe GozenMar 7, 20191 votes

Why are they cutting corners to begin with? Are they that low on budget and staff that they can't afford to commit to changes that people can pull off in a couple weeks by themselves?

There are no "cutting corners" here. Kayle's AW skin is close to an Ultimate Skin, given it follows the paradigm of 4 forms/ascensions. If each of said forms had their own unique animations, VFX and SFX, death animation, recall, etc. we'd be talking about 3250 RP price at least or close to it, given this isn't exactly an Ultimate Skin tier.

rtbf225618241Mar 7, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tomoe Gozen,realm=EUNE,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=EBK6rcmQ,comment-id=00010002,timestamp=2019-03-07T00:37:41.303+0000)

There are no "cutting corners" here. Kayle's AW skin is close to an Ultimate Skin, given it follows the paradigm of 4 forms/ascensions. If each of said forms had their own unique animations, VFX and SFX, death animation, recall, etc. we'd be talking about 3250 RP price at least or close to it, given this isn't exactly an Ultimate Skin tier.

It follows that because of the way they designed her kit. An "Ultimate" challenges the techincal boundaries of modern standards.

By this, you could say her normal skin is an "Ultimate" because it evolves. Or that Kha'Zix was a prototype in of itself. And that Kai'Sa is a repeat of that.

It's a 1350 RP skin right now. An Ultimate involves a complete overhaul without special techincal changes. Think Eclipse Leona, which is nothing like Classic but does not have her change forms or ascend to a separate fantasy.

And you are setting a pretty low bar for an Ultimate if you think 4 forms is enough for it. The way you put it would be the equivalent of the least Ultimate skin we have - Gun Goddess Miss Fortune.

Elementalist Lux alone has 10 forms with unique voice overs, VFX, death animations, Recalls, audio.

GreenLoreMar 6, 20196 votes

Its nice to see them working on this even after the VGU has shipped. I feel like this happens far too rarely(and kinda hope that they consider giving Kayle a belt to cover her purple crotch area).

OleandervineMar 6, 20195 votes

It's great they're fixing this skin. Now they just need to fix the 975 RP skins for Kayle and Morgana that are nothing but 750 RP quality.

QMightyMar 7, 20191 votes

He also said that they're fixing (most) of them, and giving unique effects to Battleborn, Silver, Judgement and Riot Kayle and adding the leaves back to Blackthorn Morg. Nothing on Succ Morg or Unmasked Kayle.

OleandervineMar 7, 20191 votes

{quoted}

He also said that they're fixing (most) of them, and giving unique effects to Battleborn, Silver, Judgement and Riot Kayle and adding the leaves back to Blackthorn Morg. Nothing on Succ Morg or Unmasked Kayle.

That's improvement!

SukishooMar 6, 20193 votes

They've now confirmed that Riot Kayle, Silver Kayle, Judgement Kayle and Battleborn Kayle will all have recolored effects, and Blackthorn Morgana will get her falling leaves returned. So we are getting them to do more for these! :D

Reddit Post

The23rdGamerMar 7, 20191 votes

I'm excited :)

SukishooMar 6, 20191 votes

That's awesome, at least that is one legendary rework that can feel better.

Jerry SeinfeIdMar 6, 20191 votes

What does that mean for people who already own the skin?
If they already cut corners on the legendary why didn't the other skins get unique visuals like pretty much every rework since WW has had? Iron inquisitor in particular. I get that they don't meet the price standard but shit that combined with the aether wing shit and the horrible base skin makes it feel like they did kayle real dirty.

14daysuspensionkMar 6, 20191 votes

Did anyone else also notice that the live version of Kayles new splash art is actually slightly different from the original updated one? They added some armor to her boobs.

SukishooMar 6, 20193 votes

It was updated on the PBE before it came to live.

14daysuspensionkMar 6, 20191 votes