Bellissimoh

Yeah in the Quinn example, we can get a pretty good sense for how many people play Quinn and estimate what the rough demand should be for a Quinn skin.

So if a Quinn skin doesn’t perform, we look internally at our decisions, thematic choice, and art execution first.

If a skin doesn’t perform, that’s on us. We didn’t make something that Quinn players wanted, and it’s our job to figure out what Quinn players want the next time around.

Also we recognize that the cycle time or time in between skins for low play rate champs is long. We’re working on that as well and hope to talk about that more later this year.

Thank you for caring enough to engage with us and be constructive. We’re nothing without our fans.

Understand there’s a history. And you’re absolutely right. I can say a bunch of stuff here on Reddit but it’s our actions and what we deliver ultimately that matters. Going to have to wait and see if we meet expectations on that front.

Other than Void Hunter, are there are lore related themes you’re interested in seeing more of or exploring further?

This is an amazing set of feedback and suggestions. I’ll be passing this both to the thematic development team as well as some of our skins teams. Thanks for taking the time to write it up Predatoratorr. :)

Any thoughts on thematics (existing or new) that you’d be interested in seeing for GP?

Also giving context on why you like the idea is super helpful.

Zeus / God of Thunder Pantheon?

For any given champion, there’s an expected number of players that will engage with a skin for that champion.

Popular champs have large audiences, less popular champs have smaller audiences.

If a skin for a particular champion doesn’t perform well, we don’t see that as a signal to stop making skins for that champion, we see it as a opportunity for us to reflect on why the audience for that champ didn’t like it and what we can do better next time.

Understand your comment and why you might feel that way. Know that we’re trying to do better though.

Correct we did not forget about these champions. :)

As someone who mained Malz years ago I am so down.

Unfortunately I’m not here to make what I want, I’m here to make players want. (And maybe that is a lightning based malz someday, no guarantees) Ideally those things overlap but people are all very different as you already know. :)

Imagine that Nether Grasp tho. Could be a violent beam of lightning that crackles and initiates with a THWAPOW.

Appreciate the credit but we can always be better. ;)

It’s true that we’re a business that needs to be supported with revenue. It’s false to assume that every effort we undertake is focused on revenue.

Let me use Dark Star Shaco as an example. Shaco is one of the lower popularity champs in League. This means that if we chose to make a Shaco skin, the possible number of players who would be interested in the skin is significantly lower than other champions like the recent meme-fuel examples Lux and Ezreal.

That being said, if we were a company that only valued revenue and was trying to min-max for that, you wouldn’t see skins for Ivern, Shaco, Udyr, Galio, etc.

We believe that the audiences for those champions need to be served still, but so when we choose to make something like Dark Star Shaco, our top goal isn’t revenue, our core goal is to make something that Shaco fans really love.

Sometimes we succeed at this, sometimes we don’t.

I’ve worked at several game companies over the course of 15...

So this year we wanted to expand the SG universe a bit and introduce an evil force / villain. Zoe is the ultimate evil power in the SG universe and even has the power to corrupt other Star Guardians. (In this case, Xayah and Rakan)

When we have ideas or concepts like this that change or alter the core of a thematic, we usually test and do player labs where we collect feedback from players in different regions. In this case most players really dug the direction we were going with our villains so we decided to trick forward.

Glad to hear you like it. Excited to hear everyone’s feedback once all the skins are released and folks get to experience them for themselves. :)

Really appreciate the suggestion and you laying out why the theme is interesting to you. Will definitely pass this onto our Thematic Development team as we’re always looking for new ideas and trying to develop thematics that you guys will hopefully love.

(I also completely agree that the SFX for something in this space could feel super powerful and satisfying in-game).

;)

We definitely that that into account. We absolutely see that some thematics perform well on some champions or even classes (tank, mage, etc) than others.

Notes on your Bard suggestion but can’t make any promises. :)

Skins are reviewed for competitive gameplay clarity and some don’t make the cut for pro play. Some of that is based on pro feedback, other cases it’s because a skin might be confusing for a new player of League who’s being exposed to it through watching a pro game for the first time. I unfortunately don’t have that list on-hand.

Historically we would do a spread of concepts and and then pick a few champions we thought were the best fit.

Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. Dunk master Ivern is an example where we think we could have done a better job of understanding what Ivern mains wanted before selecting that thematic.

Today we do a lot more. We survey mains of a champ and try to understand what thematics interest them as an example.

Our goal moving forward is to work harder to understand what players want for any given champion and do our best to really deliver, particularly for mains of any given champ.

All that being said, everyone still likes different things, and we’re not going to be able to please everyone all of the time, but know we’re trying to do our best. :)

It is true that we make skins for popular champs. These skins reach the most players and our goal is to serve as many players as we can.

It is not true that lower play rate champions do not get any skins. In 2019 we’ve hit Anivia, Nunu, Ivern, Shaco, Udyr, Shen, Galio, Veigar, Nocturne, and more to come.

As a side note. We’re trying to build more skins per year with the goal of reaching as many champions and players as possible. There are more than 140 champs in League now so it’s getting harder to serve large groups of players with a single skin, but we’re doing what we can to scale up to meet the needs of players.

This. As Product Lead for the Personalization Team, we do not have any influence or say on what pro players play skin wise in any League.

The onus is on our creative teams to make awesome skins that pros then choose to play. In our view this is good as it serves as a forcing function to push us to make better and better skins.