Hello!
There's a lot to unpack here, but I'll do my best to address the points you've made in this thread.
Why was Lux selected for a Lunar Revel skin this year?
I pinged my product owner for a reply for this one, since he's more deeply involved in the selection discussions than I am myself, and I didn't want to misconstrue anything.
"From early on we decided to do Warwick and Nasus for year of the dog, with the idea of exploring good dog and ‘bad’ dog. As we developed the idea further with them being divine door guardians we coupled it with having a powerful godly princess they would be protecting to balance out the skin offering. Lux was the champion that fit the best for this fantasy and since her last skin was over a year ago we felt ok with adding her to the group for this year, and she is also an extremely popular champion in countries that celebrate Lunar New Year, so we also feel these players will appreciate having her be part of this celebration. Other champions that could have also made sense, that were less fitting on the role anyways, were not available due to having other skins already planned or in other cases having either gameplay or full re-works coming up. "
What's the deal with the Illaoi skin?
We realized that Illaoi had waited quite some time for a skin, and felt that letting players vote for a thematic would be a great way to involve the community, as opposed to just popping a new skin on PBE. We submitted three concepts that were vastly different from each other to give everyone a variety to choose from. Granted, not everyone's favorite would be selected, and as such, not everyone would be super happy about the result, but imo, having a voice in voting is better than having us say, 'here's an Illaoi skin, kthxbai.' This project also enables us to really show what goes into creating a skin, which may shed some light on why we make choices, why things do and don't work, etc.
Okay, but there are a bunch of champions who are in desperate need of skins.
You're absolutely right. Some champions that you've named had pending reworks in 2017, such as Eve and Urgot, which made them ineligible for new skins. Swain's currently sitting on that waitlist right now. We tried to tackle some of the champion who needed love last year - Viktor, Cassiopeia, Yorick, to name a few. We have a ton planned for 2018, and I can assure you we've considered champions who haven't seen a new skin in a while.
Xayah and Rakan skins, though?
We felt that this was a no brainer for this year's Valentine's Day skins. They're love birds. They're an adorable couple in Runeterra, it seemed like a really good fit! This pairing of skins - Sweetheart - was one of the most suggested thematics from players for these two when they first released.
Riot's a business.
Yep, we are, but we truly do strive to be the most player focused games company in the world. I understand that we aren't perfect and that we do fall short at times - who doesn't?
I'd highly encourage you (and everyone!) to continuously give us constructive feedback - both positive and negative - tell us why something does or doesn't suck, seriously. It's honestly the best way for us to know what we should keep doing and what we should do better.
You aren't going to hurt our feelings, so please, be honest like you have been in this thread.
