Copying? or Paying Respect?

The last two champions, Neeko and Sylas, both use their abilities to copy other champions' appearence or abilities. Speaking with a lot of people online and in real life, most of them think it's because Riot ran out of new ideas and just decided to copy, while I say the opposite, that it's paying respect, an homage for the older champions that made this game what it is today, and that Riot did say they were going to focus on the older champions rather then new champions, and that this is part of the way that they're doing it. So I wanted ask you, what do you think? Copying? or Paying Respect?