[2023] After playing jungle throughout preseason, I don't really get the point of jungle pets

Newer junglers playing the game don't understand why any of the wall of text mechanics on the previous jungle item work. It's easy to understand for people who've been playing for years, but it's a more intuitive metaphor for why things are happening for newer players.

Pet gives an understandable metaphor for why camps are getting damaged, why you get healed, why jgl gets bonuses from clearing camps and an understandable metaphor for why the unlocks happen when they do (evolution), catchup mechanics (pet is starving) rather than some arbitrary rules. For newer players, this is far easier to understand.

Plus it's just better fantasy and yeah the emotional support doesn't hurt 😊

The goal is if you didn't read what it did and I were to ask you after the game what the pet was doing for you, you'd probably get about 60% of it. In the old jungle item, it'd probably be closer to 0-10%

We know new players don't really read. That's why the colors are red, green and blue and why many games piggyback on this color trichotomy

We will not release skins for the pets. We have come out and said this previously.

Releasing skins would mean that the mechanic must stay in the game for the rest of its existence, which isn't a commitment we want to make.