[2019] Riot Blaustoise on Champion Popularity

If we made skins relative to playrate Kai'Sa would get more actually.

This is a assuming that we don't need to adjust for when a champion was released, how many skins they already have, etc, but strictly "how likely is she to get a skin given her playrate" since her launch per each "skin launch" since then... I think she would actually have more (also I'm not counting the IG skin in here). Last time I looked she was #2 or #3 most popular champion in China.

Does that explain?

A lot of people have said that about Kai'Sa, but there have been times where even if she was still getting picked in pro, her non-pro power/winrate (ranked, flex, norms, blind) was pretty low. Maybe it was the perception that she was meta.

There's more analysis to be done here, but you can look at winrate sensitivity of champions to see how much their playrate is affected when they're high/low winrate. Champs like Yasuo and Lee Sin are played regardless of their winrate, I think Kai'Sa is closer to them than to some of the champs that are more winrate/power sensitive.

I wouldn't be able to answer if you did ask me. I'm just trying to bridge the information gap around champion popularity. I think u/DudeToManz answered it well below: my job is gameplay data, but here was something that had a bit of overlap with skins as they relate to playrate.

Now if you want to ask me about tiktok...

What's also interesting is that the distribution of champion popularity changes by region.

NA has less variance across champion popularity (popular champions were played less, unpopular champions were played more relative to the global avg).

Meanwhile regions like China and Vietnam have higher variance (popular champs are played even more, unpopular champs are played even less relative to the global avg).

On an unrelated note I've been on a binge of looking into how different regions and playerbases engage with the game differently, and this is just another example of that. Can definitely lead to a "wtf is riot doing" if NA believes one thing, KR believes something else, and EUW is off doing EUW things... makes it so that the trend of sentiment in NA (on reddit, twitter, twitch, etc.) is super unified where it might not be on a global scale.

I think this is kind of true. And I think it was more true historically.

But then we look into how many games on Yasuo and Lee Sin people have... and even the "casual-just-playing-lee-sin-for-fun" people often have a TON of games and high mastery on them. This gets into our Breadth vs Depth Report that Riot Novaasterix (forgot his reddit name RIP) did that looks at not only how many people play a champion, but how much they play that champ

hi :)

Yeah to be clear it was Jan 1, 2016 to 2019.

We don't actually collect that demographic data unless you opt into it in a survey.

I have champion affinity by gender from the Mass Champion survey. It's not behavioral data (what champion you're actually playing, etc.), but it's what champions people say are most appealing, either visually, gameplay, overall, a bunch of other Qs too.

Are you looking at ranked only? I'm looking at all SR queues. I actually think things like blind or normal can be more representative of what people want to play (have fun with) because they're not as worried about playing what's optimal or strong in ranked.

Also this is aggregate for all regions. ALSO you're looking at playrate (higher % numbers, basically saying "did this champion appear in this game") and not selection % (did this champion get picked in this single instance)