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Chromas are targeting the wrong audience and are going to sink again, please hear me out.

Namazu Ebisu·8/6/2016, 12:54:57 AM·50 votes·2,896 views

After the latest news about Chromas, i feel like Riot is missing the whole point of why Chromas failed in the first place and need a bigger rework.

The first thing i didn't like with Chromas when they came out is how random they are and inconsistent. Riot choose skins to have chromas out of thousand skins and the community has no word on it. Why is this a problem you ask ? Well let's take a look with some maths :

  • Teemo gets a Chroma on Cottontail Teemo.

  • Teemo has 2,95% pickrate this patch. Out of...let's say 50 million players, that makes approximately 1,5 million teemo players in the world (and most of them are not mains, just played or tested etc...)

  • Out of all those Teemos, i figured that over 50% of those Teemo players don't own a skin and for the few people that own a skin on Teemo there is even fewer people that own Cottontail Teemo (because he has a lot of skins). Maybe 10% of all 1,5m Teemo players.

  • And out of that 10%, how many of them are interested in buying a Chroma for their skin ?

Do you understand where i'm going ? The numbers are INCREDIBELY SMALL, even for other skins, because most of those skins are not a safe value for money.

Now let's take this on another angle : what if Chromas were mostly or only for default classic skins like Zac or Fizz ? That would be much more approchable, since people can buy those champions for IP, and if they can't afford to get a skin, they'd have two options :

  • Wait for the IP sale (twice a year and i feel like this is a scam)

  • Mastery, as Riot stated they're still working on it, here's how i see it : if you get to mastery 5 with that champion, each game you have a very low chance of getting a chroma token that you can use 2 or 3 of them to craft a chroma for that champion, exactly like mastery tokens ! (only with rng involved).

Don't you really feel like this is better ? Every champion could have their own chroma, and most people in the game could enjoy them and own them. The way it is now, we target a minority of people owning a bunch of random skins that might not even want to get those Chromas in the first place. Chromas are just a color swap, which would take 10 minutes for one to accomplish since textures are 2D based and can be easily recolored using the right tools. I don't feel like such content should be this random.

Thanks for reading, and i hope this gets to a lot of people.

51 Comments

Randomonium8/6/2016, 1:13:31 AM20 votes

The community has said of a really, really, really long time that chromas should be a mastery award. Riot refuses to listen though even though making chromas "free" would actually encourage people to buy more skins.

For example, let's say I unlock a chroma for high noon yasuo. I don't own high noon yasuo. However, now I have this chroma sitting around for him that I can't use. Now I am much more likely to buy high noon yasuo if it goes on sale or buy a bundle with high noon yasuo in it because I feel like I am getting a better deal since I would also unlock a chroma.

Furor Nexis8/6/2016, 1:16:12 AM12 votes

Wat.

I was legitimately going to learn how to play Zed, buy his shockblade skin, and wear dat' pink chroma skin.

I wanna have fun lmao and being pink and zed would be hilarious.

specter4248/6/2016, 1:04:53 AM11 votes

Heroes of the Storm has recolors for skins for free

ReZisT Lust8/6/2016, 5:30:30 AM4 votes

o wish teemos chroma was on omega and have camo on him

Handy Sandy 8/6/2016, 1:06:00 AM4 votes

I swear, I had this name and didn't even know what Chromas were.

Blue Moon Wolf8/6/2016, 6:36:20 AM3 votes

I don't think chroma tokens woulds pan out well. Personally I believe every game can do better than use RNG and if my time farming cloths and skills in Dragon Ball Xenoverse has taught me anything, it's that trying to get RNG based rewards causes more frustration than it's worth.

Oleandervine8/6/2016, 6:06:51 AM3 votes

I think Chromas, if the must cost RP, they should cost at max 200, and ideally, probably around 150. That's about as much as a Hextech box or key costs. Why would you buy a single recolor for more than the half price cost of a 520 skin on sale like Statue of Karthus, Karate Kennen, or Pharoah Nasus? And let's not forget the actual recolors still in circulation like Dryad Soraka.

WhiperSnapers8/6/2016, 6:28:03 AM3 votes

Dont forget that some chromas had multiple colors that were either too close to the original or another color in the pack. Morgana is a great example of this because of the 3 colors, one of them is a slightly darker shade of the base skin (so you are basically getting 2 for the price of 3). The point of a chroma is to stand out from the base skin, you should be able to tell imediately if someone is using a chroma. If you see a pinkZac, you know its the chroma.

Leona 's chroma pack is beautiful, but if you did a side by side comparison of all 4 (base skin + 3 chromas) how many people would be able to tell you which one was the original? Probably just the people who own the skin

Noblewind8/6/2016, 5:16:19 AM2 votes

I think chromas are really really cool. My only issue is some choices of skin. The chroma skins like Fizz, zac, and Lucian's are awesome, and so are the new Zed power ranger chromas. But who made the decision to make one for High Noon Yasuo? If I were to go through a list of champs and their skins to change up, this would be like choice #300+ but that's just me.

cocacolalips8/6/2016, 9:48:01 AM2 votes

I think all chroma skins are ugly and not amount of marketing shenanigan is going to make them any appealing.

If they are going to pursue with this idea, the only interesting and profitable option for Riot is to give the player the option to edit the color of their skins themselves (with some restrictions), the same way you customize your Sim in a Sims game.

  • For 100RP, you can customize the base model/skin and change its colors.

  • This skin cost 950RP, for 950RP+100RP you can customize this skin and change its colors.

  • This champion has 5 skins, for 250RP (number of skins*100/2), you can customize any skin you already have.

Bam, you have a product that appeals to everyone regardless of taste and preference and skin or lack of skin already owned.

Keepe8/6/2016, 1:57:01 AM2 votes

I thought Chromas were a scam from day one. STILL DO.

Stars Shaper8/6/2016, 9:51:19 AM2 votes

I don't like how much they seem simple colors mash up without any consistent thematic and neither fitting in the entire model, it seems like some1 poured random paints on them.

General Esdeath 8/6/2016, 4:25:16 PM1 votes

Don't tell them, let Riot and Tencent figure out the hard way.

Iageri8/6/2016, 1:09:54 AM1 votes

If you own a skin...

Do the chromas come with the skin? or is the Chromas something you buy separately?

Rito Staff8/6/2016, 2:13:21 AM1 votes

I dunno why it didn't work out :pp Because I'd love to have chroma for Lucian, they look awesome, maybe it's not cool on every champion

Ebonmaw Dragon8/6/2016, 1:00:57 AM1 votes

Yasuo has 22.4% Pick Rate