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As we know, full reworks of heroes really helped the league in terms of visual quality and smooth gameplay. Many of the reworked champions as Mordekaiser, Pantheon, Aatrox became fans favorites, and brought some interesting threads to the Lore. The number of champions that look like a literal potato has dropped significantly, but we still have heroes that urgently needs a VU in the game.

We can divide it into two groups. Characters that need an urgent change, because their appearance and sometimes their history does not meet modern standards and the way how they work in Lore. We can mention here: Amumu, Skarner, Rammus, Shaco, Kassadin, Singed, Rumble, Corki, Cho'Gath etc.

And heroes who don't need a major design changes, but could use a new model with smoother animations. We can mention here: Graves, Twisted Fate, Leona, Diana, Veigar, Lulu, Anivia, Blitzcrank, Ashe, Malzahar, Malphite, Zilean etc.

It's terrible that Riot has cut it to one rework a year, especially when their game, some champions models, still looks like from the 2009. For such a huge company, where the League of Legends is the first child, the priority should be changes to modernize the game for millions of players. It's a pity to even mention the Reshape idea, which in my opinion looks like an attempt to escape from the problem of old models and animations.

Thank you for your attention. What do you think about this problem? How should Riot take care of him?

PS. Sorry for any possible grammar mistakes. I am not native speaker, so I hope everything is understandable :)

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over 2 years ago - /u/RiotAxes - Direct link

Originally posted by _AIQ_

I do not (or at least "hope not") think that Riot is reducing it to 1 a year. This year was unique because of Covid and because of their dislike of VGUs in general they were put on the back burner.

VU IMO are very important in that a EZ/Morg level update would help so many champions feel better.

VGUs on the other hand just need to be peeled like a bandaid. Riot just needs to do it and get them over with.

Corki, Shyvana, Shaco, Quinn etc... they know the list already, just do it and complete it. VUs will always be accepted better than VGUs as no one will generally complain that Chogath is changed from the 2009 pixel mess he is now to an actual void creature that does the same thing kit-wise.

Riot needs to weigh the opportunity cost of losing half of a .5% play rate champion and realize the amount of players they could get instead if the champions fantasy was more modern. They need to stop making excuses that they "care" about the players of those champions because if that were true they wouldn't be in their crap states to begin with.

So yes go for as many VGUs and VUs as needed or just blow up LoL and go for LoL2.

Just to be clear, we don't dislike VGUs. We're facing two issues that limit how many we can/want to do at a time, though:

1) They cause churn among existing players of the champions. Even the respectful, lower disruption ones cause some players of the champion to quit. Everyone wants more VGUs of the champions they don't play, but few people want their main's gameplay to change meaningfully (except when it'd be a revert of a previous mini-update or something). We need to bear in mind that while a well-executed VGU gives something cool to play with, it also takes something away that someone loved.

2) They're far more costly than a new champion due to updating all of the skins. And yes, we do see a sales spike on those skins... but not nearly what we'd see just doing the same number of new skins. This cost is largely on the art side, so shipping VUs instead of VGUs doesn't help us much here. (And yeah, I get the "smol indie company" memes, but the reality of trying to hire, say, VFX artists is that there are never enough to go around)

We would like to do more VGUs than we've done for 2021, but the rate isn't likely to go up enormously in the near future.

over 2 years ago - /u/RiotAxes - Direct link

Originally posted by Pedrinhodanight__

When you f**k up reworks of course people drop those champs, for example, Amumu has been an actual good rework, minor tweaks, and some interesting changes, while with Lillia you guys f**ked up her early game and gutted her mos fun mechanic (Prance), is it really surprising that people would stop playing a champ you guys make unrecognizable instead of actually solving their issues and talking to mains to at least make them feel similar?

No but seriously, it isn't just when we mess up reworks. Even the reworks that have gone over best cause churn. The Sion VGU caused churn. Pantheon did. Irelia did. Volibear did. It's the reality of this opportunity space. All of those things did more good than harm, but they do have additional downsides that content like new champions don't.

We still do them because we believe that doing them raises the quality bar of League of Legends over time. We do less of them than some folks tend to ask for because we're balancing the good that they do against the downsides, and also because our resources are finite and the opportunity cost is higher than most other content we could do.

over 2 years ago - /u/RiotAxes - Direct link

Originally posted by Swiftswim22

We would like to do more VGUs than we've done for 2021, but the rate isn't likely to go up enormously in the near future.

Weird, cuz y'all had previously said you were only doin 1 vgu in 2021 cuz of covid?

Sucks major ass tbh, esp wit the current poll system. The votin def the best way to get the communities opinion, which I appreciate y'all doin greatly! But it also means y'all recognize that there are 5+ champs that NEED updatin & ignorin all but 1 for an entire yr. Like what does that say about your priorities if y'all acknowledge issues & then do nothin bout em, sometimes for 2+ yrs like in the case of shyv & nocturne. Not trynna flame you directly or anythin, I understand there's prob a whole slew of people involved in makin these decisions, but it really is awful to have your fav char look like dogshit for so long & then constantly be strung along wit changin info bout when that won't be the case lol

Yeah - something is being lost in translation here?

I said:

We would like to do more VGUs than we've done for 2021, but the rate isn't likely to go up enormously in the near future.

Expanding on that a bit - we want to do more than 1 in a year and are pretty likely to do more than 1 next year. It's not going to replace all new champions for a given year or anything like that. If we can find clever resourcing tricks to get the rate higher, particularly on less disruptive stuff (true VUs, or Ezreal-style light VGUs for champions like Jax), we would certainly pursue that.

over 2 years ago - /u/RiotAxes - Direct link

Originally posted by Pedrinhodanight__

Never seen things through that perspective, it must be hard seeing people hate your work and working around such a toxic community such as League's, I guess I am just salty because I really disliked the Lillia rework (plz bring old prance back Lillia is legitimately depressing to play)

It would be a lot harder to see people just not care than to have a lot of people love it but some people really hate it.

I'm comfortable with the fact that sometimes I'm going to explain where we're coming from and it's going to piss someone off. I wasn't under any illusions that I was going to farm upvotes by explaining why we aren't able to do as many updates as people ask for, for example. It's still better to put it out there.

over 2 years ago - /u/RiotAxes - Direct link

Originally posted by AmWhaleIRL

On the note of VFX Artists, is the job seriously that highly in demand that it's a struggle to Hire one? To clarify I'm not asking in a faux sarcastic tone, I'm genuinely curious. This information could be an avenue for aspiring Gamers that wanna join the Gaming Biz.

Yes, good VFX artists have been in very high demand in every studio I've worked at. Most of the more technical/specialized art roles are.

over 2 years ago - /u/RiotAxes - Direct link

Originally posted by AmWhaleIRL

Wow that's so interesting, thanks for the insight! I'd love to ask more questions on Gaming VFX, mostly on how/where to get started, what's needed to make a career out of it, etc. But I imagine this may not be your specialty. Is there anybody you know who I could pick the brain of?

I don't, unfortunately. That's far enough from my area of expertise that I wouldn't be comfortable endorsing any of the resources I could find.