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I think our art lead said yesterday that she gets hungry looking at Skarner claws and the team really liked the idea of going to a crab boil place to celebrate his release.....
Are you spying on us?
I think our art lead said yesterday that she gets hungry looking at Skarner claws and the team really liked the idea of going to a crab boil place to celebrate his release.....
Are you spying on us?
Hey Hey! We are having a look at Guardian of the Sands recall atm. We will try our best here!
Lexical, don't hate me but I kinda think you are hiding something like a surprise 4th champ this year! At least I'm getting the "there will be some big surprises later this year" vibe lol
No surprise champions! We are decreasing our roadmap size so we staff up Modes team etc. But I do want to make sure each champion gets their time and space to shine :D Sometimes that means revealing too much at the start would make things not as exciting!
omg, that's a long and detailed answer! I will honestly say here I prefer that devs choose the vgu because the result is much better if someone has an idea or inspiration for where they want the vgu to go, with a poll a champ can be chosen where no one in the devs have any clue what to do with them. well, now to my question, the sololaner will be talked about in the next roadmap right? I feel like u hid a lot in the last teaser image but I can't wait to hear the name!
I will see how much I can talk about in the next roadmap/ if there will be a roadmap because this year I think lots of champions will benefit from element of surprise haha.
Let me cook.
While I agree that its better to get inspirations first before embarking on the rework...if we leave it up to designers we might never get reworks 
So there is basic expectations for designers to be on a project and take it to finish line without having to come to the first meeting with a great idea. It is part of designers' jobs :D
Volibear and fiddle didnt took that long
I believe one of them was already started before poll results and the other one started after. Both took around 1 year.
Skarner actually didn't take too much more than that. However, we announced the poll before we were ready to start because Udyr was heavily delayed.
Udyr was heavily delayed because he was generally a very very resource heavy project. His various forms and ultimate skin took a long time especially during a global pandemic. TBH, during the pandemic, while I was not on champs, there were days where I was just heavily depressed and just wanted to sleep all day...
We also went through a period where we are training new designers, animators, VFX etc etc up on the team. This is good for overall health of League. It was how we are able to staff up modes. However, first projects are always a painful one for team to figure out how to work together.
Being honest, Udyr was not easy because of the bulk and Skarner started turbulent. We did not reall...
Read moreCongrats on getting Skarner out, I'm sure everyone in the team is relieved it's finally happening! Sorry to bother you with this, but do you have any update on when the next champ roadmap will come out? Is it still in April or will it be a bit later? And will you talk about the Arcane VGU or is that still top secret?
I will probably not be talking about the Arcane VGU till it releases! While I love sharing more with players, this is one of those that I think the fun is in the theorycrafting, guesses and surprise!
I just KNOW Earthrune Skarner about to go crazy
My fav is battlecast still :)
wow owo
We also found that large updates actually have a pretty good chance to turn away returning players (your most loved champion isn't like what you remembered and thus higher barrier to return) and turn off some mains of that champion
Wouldn't it be possible to just.. keep the old version of the champion as well? You'd for example have Fiddlesticks, and Fiddlesticks (Legacy). One has the new kit with his clone wards and AoE drain, one has the old bouncy bird. I'm in this camp you mention and I've lost two of my favourite champion kits to updates. Fiddle being one and self-root mpen Xerath being the other.
What is the difference of that to making a new champ (less baggage, less skins to update etc etc). All of the problems of the old champ will still be there (worse looking in the game, tech etc etc.)
You are also signing up for making double of all skins coming out.
what are the disciplines that are usually short? vfx artists, splash artists or smthing completely different?
TBH its like whack a mole(different discipline at different time)...because of several factors:
1) Different teams are working on different things so at different moments one discipline might be more available than another. Ex: When Arena first launched we were operating with very little VFX support because it was all hands on deck to help out with all of the different augments.
2) We can't exactly lock people to the team XD Ex: After covid while everyone re-assessed their lives bunch of folks decided to leave Riot, try new teams or even stay but switch up what they are doing. Ex: We had to re-staff up animation.
3) Quality bar, things like Splash Art ... we are looking for unicorns in the industry. Taking them from other teams is just moving the problem around.
4) Training, to restart a discipline we have to get existing folks to train up new ones. There will always be onboarding time no matter how good the person is at their role. That require time from the ve...
You just need an early access system for VGUs. Update champions with only a couple of their skins, make it so people who buy those skins or own the current battle pass get access to the VGU, everyone else has to wait 4 months and has to use the old versions of the base or skins.
I have thought about this before. I think it will not win out skins in terms earnings and I might be burned at stake for trying it XD considering players don't like it when you take something they are used to having ( free access to game content) and lock it up behind a pay wall.
Oh.. okay that makes sense ..
but.. 🥺
what if 👉👈 lol
💚
I know lots of us bug y'all with the begging and pleading and I understand it's gotta be stressful to deal with the community so I really want to say I do appreciate you specifically, along with the others taking the time to answer our "questions."
I've been a player for 10yrs and hope to be for another 10 more! -hopefully LeBlanc will be updated by then uwu 🥹😆
Agreed! I think the long term success and perception of League is the one I center around when I make my case of getting more champion updates! It's a bit hard to quantify and usually not as compelling compared to: Here are the 100 fires that needs to fought today.
But I'm glad that the team members that do work on these updates are very well protected from the noise and are focused on the updates!
I'm sorry to get so agitated over this. I know that it's technically hard, and that it doesn't depend just on you. But I just wish Riot would at least try to get better with this and prioritize them a bit more instead of just accepting the current situation as good enough.
It's very frustrating to voice these concerns so many times and to see other people doing it too and at every turn get the same "well but it doesn't give us a lot of engagement/money" answer. This extends to other topics about the game as well. To see our personal human feelings ignored because "but the data says [X]" makes it feels like our voices don't matter.
We are trying to! Which is why we invested into investigations like outsourcing and porting etc. These things do take time though.
There are lots of asks and human feelings when players ask for more modes, better cinematics, more skins etc. I'm not in a place to say yours is more or less important. I can only look at the raw engagement data as a source of "how many" are asking for it.
The way I see it, the amount of players actively choosing to play with the content are the ones we can bias towards or it would become a game of following the loudest voice.
The reason I explain these things are not to say they are not important, but more so bring the realities of there are many many important things that needs to be done and we only have so much time.
On a personal level, I'm glad that Riot isn't an org that works Devs to the bone and pay us next to nothing. It makes the whole industry more sustainable and make game development a good place that...
Read moreWhy can't we just compromise and say that giving X champion a VU will result in future skins fitting the new model and maybe skins created in the last 2yrs will get updated but anything before will remain on the old model kinda like the old "Traditional" skins Karma, Lee Sin, Trundle, and Sejuani have?
For instance I'll use Cait as an example, her new model and old model still fit the same idea, body autonomy (she didn't grow an extra arm or tail), and uses the same weapon/tools. Easily this could have saved the trouble with remaking 5 or so skins that lets be honest are not being picked over her new ones and or aren't going to receive any new VFX anyways.
I know this would not work for EVERY update but it certainly could work for a good handful or so? I am certain the player base would much rather this than nothing at all.
When you change the base, alot of things on the champion itself is attached to the skins that was built on them. Thus, we can't port them over. This is also why WR conversions do not work all that well and require lots of work.
It is sometimes just easier to redo them. We look for time savings where we can like splash arts!
Also these skins will not just automatically work, without having the previous base in the game.
Hey Lexi how was Providence, was the seafood good enough to inspire you enough to make oyster bill a champion
Good ol'oyster Bill. I love that guy!
Was good! But I think my very asian taste prefers something a bit less salty haha. I do see the craftsmanship though! Very thankful to my bf for taking me :D
Oh sorry I didn't know that, I hope Rioters from skins team can respond my question
No worries! It's a bit confusing hahah.
You are brave for posting answers here a lot of people don't want to hear, but I do think most people appreciate the honesty even if it might be disappointing to some people
<3 TT^TT
I thought Arcane Jinx/Vi/etc was basically their non-free update. I mean, it’s basically an updated base skin, that you pay for.
Those were free to unlock when Arcane released!
Thank you for the very real insight. A lot of players will likely fail to understand the business side of this, so thank you for being so forthcoming.
I know it doesn't make me the most popular person ^^;
But I rather take some time and explain vs a very edited answer of: We are trying! We are continuously evaluating for potential or something.....
Hoping some will see is enough for me >w>
It'd be nice if we could get a clear idea of how many and what kind of updates we should expect in the future in order to avoid needless disappointment.
We announced the ones that we can commit to. We are trying things out on the side to get more for players, however those have risks of not working out (we had cancelled updates before Jax included a couple of times).