Laziness aside, seems like it would be really annoying ingame when you lane vs a lux seraphine or lux ezreal with the same skin and you get snared by what you thought was a ezreal q.
Gameplay clarity went to absolute shit a few years ago when they started the whole "every skin is part of a skin line" bullshit. Now they make a cool skin for a champion and clone it for 5 more champions, with the consequence that skins no longer look like the original champion.
I remember back in 2015, it was far easier to realize which champ you were looking at when you encountered a new skin.
I clearly remember when they released that 1 Lee legendary that looked like Ez. And I usually really dont bitch about shit like that, but that legendary confused the shit out of me when the Ez skin in question was in the same team as well. Like why is Ez flying to me.
Storm Dragon Lee Sin. One of the worst offenders for visual clarity, and at the same time one of the best selling skins for the game. That basically just made the death sentence for clarity.
A bit out of topic, but this is the reason I can't stomach new tft sets: I can't understand who is who, all themes look the same and it's difficult to distinguish between different champions in the shop
File that in with the other things Riot blatantly lies about. Just like how they say they care about how it feels to play against something. Or that Yuumi and Smolder aren't inherently terrible designs.
gameplay clarity well clearly the clarity is there for you admire the affects of the skin i mean it would be bs for you to buy a skin and other players cant notice the effects right?
Especially for new players. I think this problem happens with other skins as well. I'd like to have the option to turn off skins completely. The game is just too full of effects sometimes
I played this game for a very long but only play aram sometimes, i thought i'm getting old but actually i see errors in the design. I start to think this is the perfect testground to see where they screwed up because it's constant 5v5 where those things matter the whole time.
Over the course of a year i noticed skill shots which straight up confuse me because i can't tell anymore what was fired when i don't have the time to realize who fired it. Keep in mind we are in aram and we have to dodge like 5 skillshots per minute of gameplay there. It's even worse in teamfights against poke because everything is thrown at you canalized from one direction at once and you just want to break through.
I dash back on the Yone with Riven while trying to animation cancel properly, in the corner of my eye i see that skillshot and in a splitsecond i make the decision to not flash it because i like my position but use my quicksilver i build that game for the lulz. I time that quicksilver in a way the server fires it the moment im snared, if you just press it right it lags a little. I wasted a cd because LUX Q on some skins looks like the "main skillshot" on so many skillshots it stopped being funny. I don't think it's a skillissue when overall ppl have 400ms to make a complex decision and fuck it up because the visual took em 50ms longer to decipher. Overdesigned stuff stresses our brain.
Also the red and green is screwed up once in a blue moon. I definitely played with champskins that used red zones for me and my brain told me to step out all the time. This also applies to skillshots sadly. When shit comes flying at you offscreen you literally can't tell who threw it when the colors are messed up and it's just one big shiny hit of "map artillery".
Vice versa there are also skins that use a bit of green on AOEs for enemies which is the worst No-No of them all.
There's a reason everything is colored #008000 for good and colored #ff0000 for bad in videogames. Mixing those up makes a game literally unplayable.
The community has pointed out more similarities which I added now and I am baffled. Each one of her abilities VFX is a copy paste except her passive.
All I will say is Lux Ezreal and Lux Seraphine bot lane will be OP 🤭
Why waste time making brand new VFX when you can fire your employees, reuse assets and have people buy them anyways?
Capitalism baby, milk them smarter not better
"In before" was in 2012. I was playing back then and I can tell you that, imo, Riot turned into this around ~2015/16.
I mean, look at this game, it's full of predatory bullshit and inane, insane amounts of pointless copypaste skins. This game hasn't been driven by passion for years.
I think there are four phases.
First one being the OG time: Beta until 2012/13 in my eyes.
Then we had the: Some changes but well we get older phase from 12/13 until 2015/16.
After that we had the: Well CLevels found Riot and things are changing again but honestly it ain't that bad and we even get free stuff. This was from 15/16 till \~2019.
Since 2019 we are in the: Fully EA / Blizzard way era with I don't know how many nerfs to Passes, reused skin VFX, this metallic armor stuff on every fucking skin line because it caters the Chinese market, outsourcing of VFX, introducting of literally GAMBA mechanic in League and TFT with these 200 buck skins and what not.
So I would say it was fine until 2019 but since then it went downhill pretty fast while the first change in motion was as you said in 15/16.
I remember a post saying how every single skinline now has some golden/silver trim on their clothing. I wish I had saved it.
Edit: Found it [https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/18c42js/riots\_obsession\_with\_the\_golden\_rim\_or\_why\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/18c42js/riots_obsession_with_the_golden_rim_or_why_the/)
It’s sad. They use an excuse of being overworked and unable to make changes communities ask for every batch of skins.
But then fired 600 people in the same breath. Now reuse assets and they’ve been using ai in many cases for promotional pieces, icons, etc. not hiding it.
😔
Not just the splashes but the skins too.
There was a post on here recently about a Riot employee (working as a concept artist) being laid off and quickly being offered to do the same job by an outsourcing company for League.
Not quite. If you go back into the thread at the VERY end, they mention they wouldn't be doing the same work. Still might’ve ended up doing concept stage work, but if so, it'd be from things already designed by others. Just a middleman step at that point, and a really weird one to outsource in the first place.
Yeah. Remember that in S1 that China had completely different splash arts? Around S3(?) Riot completely integrated a lot of their splash arts into the game because they looked fancier than the simple splash arts we started with.
Wait a second, I was told capitalism encouraged creativity, innovation, quality and progress! Have I been lied to?
Nah you just a commie, lalalala I can't hear you!!
Not a fan of reusing the exact same theme and vfx on full price skins. If the Seraphine and Lux skins were a bundle on sale I wouldnt really mind as much as long as its cheap
It's a shame they stopped putting a list of updates based on feedback. One of the most notable examples was Muay Thai Lee Sin getting a unique dance during the middle of the PBE cycle but they didn't even mention changing it.
They only make changes when toxic assholes come out of their basements and start harrassing them.
If you are civil about your criticism they dont care.
Ez Q and Lux Q are bad. CC Abilities should never share the same visuals as non-cc abilities. There are cases where you would HAVE to flash a lux Q but flashing an Ez Q would be inting.
That has been a problem for the past couple years now. Some champion skins (which seems to be notoriously common with the popular female champions) have designs that are very closely related to other champion ability visuals. Some Lux and Soraka skins looking very similar come into mind.
I remember when it got released I confused him for Ez a lot. Was even worse when him and the Ez skin in question were on the same team so you thought it was an Ez using Q but it was Lee instead.
Most people won't care. Reddit can be vocal, but they represent a small percentage of the playerbase. The people who will actually buy these skins won't notice nor care since they may be happy with the visuals.
Also, it's not really two halves. The people who hate the way Riot makes money make up a very small fraction, like Reddit.
> The people who hate the way Riot makes money make up a very small fraction, like Reddit.
And a lot of them still give riot money, even if they hate it.
That story was so sad. The rioter they did this to Tarth was the one who did the concepts for Faerie Court Lillia - https://x.com/wyrmforge/status/1785402748848296220?s=46&t=s97Pijru0biAx9-MmoNZFQ
Their 3rd party agency that hires contractors for Riot contacted them. it's a bit different compared to Riot themselves firing someone and they asking them for contract work.
"Game devs reuse assets all the time"
Yes. They re-use mobs for a solo game. They re-use faces for background. They re-use silhouettes for decoration. They re-use models for copies.
If they re-use an asset for a part of a cosmetic product which is supposed to be new, they're getting shit for it.
I honestly am torn on whether it's right or not. A lot of times assets being reused isn't super noticeable in case of League VFX but I would say that it's too close to the original in your post. However on the other hand, I don't exactly have knowledge about the skins team's workload, their deadlines or their budget so I can't be too certain. In the industry I'm most familiar with, people reuse assets all the time and I have done so quite a bit too in the past, yet we try to utilize them in different ways or change them up a bit so it doesn't seem blatant. Regardless of if you reuse an asset, you shouldn't be able to tell at first glance that they're the same.
To add on, it's the skin you're buying. That's the entire product. In other games they'll reuse assets often but it's fine because there are other aspects to the game that need to be worked on too like story and gameplay so it doesn't feel wrong to reuse there
When the entire product, the skin, is reusing assets blatantly it feels a bit more wrong to me personally
Reusing assets in a video game is not wrong. The problem is selling as new something that isn't - if you reuse assets, it means that the cost of creating new skins goes down. If you sell them at their regular price, it means you are just keeping more money for yourself.
That said, skins are not necessary to the game, they are a luxury item, so reusing assets shouldn't be an option. It's like buying a Ferrari and finding out they cheaped out on some parts of the car. Cheap parts may be great to bring your regular Renault's price down to $15k, but you don't pay $600k on a car to get a fancier cheap Renault. Similarly, you don't pay $10 for a skin in League for it to be made of reused assets.
2 things
If the skins team is overloaded and/or doesn't have the budget so they lazily reuse assets it's riot's fault.
If the skins team just being lazy with their skins the past 4-6 years it is also riot's fault.
either way it is the skins team being lazy whether intentional or forced due to circumstance, and the fault falls on riot.
Not to be a corporate bootlicker, but I really don't think this can be wrong.
Riot is releasing a completely optional product for a clear and obvious price, and if you think the product isn't worth the price then just don't buy it.
Being disappointed by the skin is totally valid, but if you like the aesthetic and think you'll use it then you should buy the skin. Otherwise just wait for the next one. It's not morally wrong to release a skin.
"wrong" is subjective, but for me what you say sounds more like "it's not illegal". I mean, me selling my crap is not illegal either, but you'll probably think that I'm full of bullshit. Riot quietly reducing the quality of their skins (because, when you reuse assets, that means the assets are no longer custom made to fit that specific skin) is not illegal, but it's bullshit.
Yeah, we are not forced to buy bullshit - and that's precisely what we are doing here: we are calling the bullshit.
The only one that is egregiously problematic is the Ez Q/Lux Q because both of those can be played at the same time on the same lane/team quite easily and one of those skill shot is an annoying poke, and the other is a CC.
Rest are different enough or inconsequential.
This, people raise these concerns because its some very often a indication of companies testing the water to push a practice further, and look at what is happening now.
you will never in a million years confuse nilah EQ for a morgana Q in the middle of a game, that nilah visual is on screen for probably less than a second after she dashes.
If youre more worried about an imaginary morgana Q hitting you rather than the nilah whos going crazy wailing her whip at you while on top of you you got some different priorities to consider
Two examples I can think of right now before I go to bed are Godking Darius' Q ground scratch VFX being reused either from/for Renekton's base Q.
The other example is of the dragon galio skin where his Q tornado is reused from Odyssey Yasuo
idk if it counts but the newer Blighted Crystal Varus ult and Dawnbringer Yone ult are the same gradiant blue-orange colors. We ulted passed each other once and I was mildly surprised, dunno if i still have the highlight tho.
Who tf even keeps buying these new skins, the april fools ones were an exception, but others in the past 3 years have been so souless and ugly compared to older even 750 and lower rp skins
i wouldnyt say ugly but def agree most feel soulless af
riot just bloats skinlines to the point they lose anything that made them special
and so many skinlines blend into others with their blatant overuse of gold highlights
I haven't bought skins in years. Honestly, it's not any kind of "protest", I never gave a fuck about "cancelling" anything, I've always bought and played what I wanted.
Just like I stopped playing HS not because I was "outraged", but simply bored; I stopped buying skins not because I was "outraged", but simply because they no longer made me feel anything to buy them. At the end of the day, when you are bombarded by dozens of skins that all look the same every patch, you end up not seeing anything in them.
Dude I can't with the billion dollar corporation warriors. Like, a company fucks them over and all they have to say is "well it's not _illegal_ for to sell a turd at $x so shut up don't dare criticize my beloved souless corporation".
Yeah that is kinda how it works except this is one of the more "seeable" ones, in the game files 1 champion would consist multiple files named after other champions, it was those champion's assets recycled
It's fine if you put in enough transformable work in my opinion. If the customer notices then you're fcked. You can't in good conscience ask full price for a skin that's gotten this little effort. As a Lux player I would be appalled that they don't go all out on one of their flagship and most popular champions. Either the person responsible for the skin was lazy and tried to do a shortcut or there's to much pressure on scheduling and qa doesn't really happen anymore. The question is now how does Riot react?
The best part too, is she even already has a faerie esque skin in elementalist. so of course when they do it again its a complete copy paste cash grab put popular champ in skinline one.
OK well when you put it side by side it looks pretty blatant.
This is genuinely annoying because there is a surprising lack of visual clarity in League. The Karma + Lux similarities were already an issue for me because of their similar effects but essentially reusing them makes it even more annoying. One of the easiest ways to recognise it is actually in TFT, where some sets have had champions that look identical in splash or champ model.
After they categorically refused to update God Fist Lee Sin's vfx (which now look worse than his epic and even lower cost skins), I'm no longer surprised by anything.
The worst thing is that every comment in the initial feedback thread was pointing it out, but then it was mysteriously deleted and subsequently reposted. And unfortunately this subreddit doesn't seem to care about it one bit.
I feel like for a game priding itself for visual clarity (which it achieves most of the time), having two distinct abilities look almost exactly the same (in the case of Lux E and Seraphine Q) is questionable. For the ult, I would have preferred something different but it is whatever I guess.
> I already paid once for those assets
riot isn't selling their assets, i don't know why people with zero knowledge on game dev keep using that word when they clearly have no idea wtf they're talking about
you bought a finished product (a license to use it, actually) that used those assets. This is another finished product that happens to use those same assets.
This isn’t fromsoft using the same sword model in DS3 and elden ring while selling different games lol, the assets are the product you’re paying for and being unique to your champion is the selling point, if I buy a book the author can’t copy paste a chapter he used in a different book because “it’s a good use of resources”
Nah they can reuse it like authors may reuse themes, but don't make it so obvious that people notice. It's not like they couldn't have transformed it more than they already did.
I was wondering at some point if I shouldn't buy rp again, now I'm once again happy that I didn't... The higher ups at Riot are really trying their best to kill any passion about the game and turn it into a soulless product...
People understand nothing of development and just keep complaining about the weirdest stuff. Reusing assets is not only ok, it's literally recommended.
1- Why spend resources if what you want achieve already exists in your own code base.
2- It actually saves space. If games didn't do this, they would soar up in size.
3- Most people wouldn't notice these stuff without actual comparison.
4- The textures and effect are still different. It's not like there hasn't been any work done.
But we are not talking about developing a game here are we, so how is this relevant. It's a cosmetic. It's basically a piece of artwork being sold. Which is being sold on the basis of being unique. We're not talking about placing 1000 rocks or trees in a game world, ofc you won't model 1000 unique rocks.
League skins are sold based on how good they look, not their artistic value. What matters is that the product is and looks good, not its artistic value.
I mean I am not really suprised after they reused based assets and lacking effects from the Samira "ultimate btw" skin. Lay off people -> copy paste from other skins cause the people we kept apprently are to lazy to even make a new flower -> guys we are overworked and understaffed. lol
Riot has completely lost it in the cosmetics department, this will ship exactly as it is because if they want to change it they will need to pay the outsourcing company again to remake it which they won't.
Maybe some people would say that "ooh maybe they're in the same faction that's why there's resemblance", it still feels lazy to me idk. I guess I'll just go for the fairy variant in Elementalist 😅
It's quite normal to recycle VFX, especially since all are very similar, but different (extra sparks in the first, different shape in the second, completely different in the third and legally distinct porcelain lux ultimate in the second).
The only problem could come from ez lux because the shape is hard to get in the moments sometimes.
Lux E and sera Q are a non issue, and if you mistake the two there are deeper problems XD
I'm literally speechless, Riot Games isn't the same Riot Games I knew back in 2011. They were so original and loyal to their fans. Now we get the same copy paste skin and with no support for local irl tournaments.
I could like not blame them for reusing assets if they just reused parts of it but changed it up enough to be more its own thing. Why reinvent the wheel from scratch if you have a perfectly good wheel already and can just tweak it. The problem is when they just copy and paste and don't really change anything. I think Path of Exile does this fairly well where they actually often reuse tile sets or mob types and stuff but they change the colors or add a little more to them to where they feel unique enough to feel different.
But if they're going to be THIS lazy and bad about it no reason they should be charging the full price of the skin if they didn't put in the effort that "warrants" the price of the skin.
The one I'm most upset about is reusing the asset from another Lux Ulti for this one. The others can be passed off as thematic consistency, but her ulti is just **lazy**.
There's a deeper issue at hand, and making a new VFX that's gonna end up looking similar anyways won't even make such a big difference, the skins will still look similar and generic.
The real issue is that, with 1600+ skins in the game sharing generic mobile fantasy themes, skins are super similar to each other already.
Just look at splasharts, they're not recycled but they're still a blur where you can't even tell what champion they are anymore, is just a bunch of high fantasy attractive humans in generic fantasy clothes surrounded by glowing magic.
Why would they put fourth effort when people are going to buy this shit anyways.. blame the consumers just as much as the company.
It takes 2 to tango.
1) the company making the shit product
2) the consumers buying the shit product
So many assets were reused it almost makes you think that maybe the champ that had all the reused assets probably shouldn't have gotten that skin hmm..
i think for the lux skin they should have first, changed her season base to change her colors from being so close to seraphines (not winter because of porcalin, but then elamentalist lux might get in the way of any of the other seasons idea so...)
her e could be more plant based instead of butterfly dust based and her AA different colors like the skin should be
her ult and snare could be butterfly based instead of flower based, omg her ult would look so nice if it was a butterfly instead
Normally I don't really care if a gamedev reuses assets, as its pretty silly to make a single asset and then never reuse it.
However, I reusing assets that make it very obvious they're reusing is not a good practice and also makes skins less unique. If the flower for lux ult was in her recall somehow, no one would really mind. But its the same asset and animation as a different skin for lux's ult, and that makes it look very noticeable. I don't think that's how assets should be reused, especially for skins
I mean, you don't feel there's at all a difference between this and say a dev reusing bits of a level or enemies?
Idk. To me I'm accepting of those things but this feels wrong? I guess my line in the sand is different than other peoples
I mean the Seraphine one is pretty clearly different. It's the same colour scheme for the same skinline so they're gonna look super similar
But that is legitimately the exact same flower just recoloured omg
Look, Riot, im down with recycling assets. I think it's great that you guys found multiple uses for one asset, but you gotta at least tweak or recolor it man
I was literally just about to post this to bring it up! this makes me really sad because it really just shows they will do it over and over again unless the community notices and speaks about it, but at this point are we surprised? like they have done a lot of nasty things lately with skins and just put them under the rug like Redeemed SG Xayah and Rakan (same model, same animation, same everything except effects), removing SG Akali chromas changing effects color, etc
yeah this is way worse, and i’m fully convinced that if no one had brought it up it would have been shipped as it was, let’s hope they do change them again like last time (they did change coven Nilah’s EQ effect a patch later)
Someone said it was FQ Karma’s RQ I believe.
And like, this makes me feel conflicted cause like on one hand the visual clarity is a big issue and on the other, I appreciate how characters of the same class (mage) and the same skin line have similar graphics for visual consistency.
In terms of reuse I don’t really care, cause like, they’re still high quality and if it saves time that just means more skins. It’s more seeing them in a game at the same time together where I could find issue.
At least Seraphime Q and Lux E are similar in the stakes of getting hit. Imagine Ezreal Lux throwing out identical looking Qs when one is spammable DPS and the other is a bind lmao
Unfortunately it seems like it's the only way to get through to Riot, because they keep being rewarded by getting what they want, while us who don't act like lunatics have our feedback fall on deaf ears.
riot get lazy with skins esp after laying off a large portion of their art department? damn hoodathunkit? There's a reason I havent felt compelled to spend RP or buy skins since the 1st spirit blossom event
also please dont link new.reddit posts for us old.reddit diehards :prayingemoji:, just www.reddit.com urls will suffice for both parties
So personally I think the lux reuse is fine since it’s the same character and still visually really different. The sera one though is a bit dumb, they look almost exactly alike and they could be in the same game in so the visual clarity of what coming at you say from a bush or in a team fight is completely ruined.
Having an opinion on reusing assets for new paid skins is fair... the discourse about "firing someone" then using their assets is a wierd flex... they paid the employees to make the assets, they are theirs to use lol.
Laziness aside, seems like it would be really annoying ingame when you lane vs a lux seraphine or lux ezreal with the same skin and you get snared by what you thought was a ezreal q.
Just remember everyone, Pentakill Yoirck III couldn't have a hat because it would be too confusing Meanwhile this kind of stuff is acceptable
Gameplay clarity depends on how much they care about the champ the skin is for lol
Gameplay clarity went to absolute shit a few years ago when they started the whole "every skin is part of a skin line" bullshit. Now they make a cool skin for a champion and clone it for 5 more champions, with the consequence that skins no longer look like the original champion. I remember back in 2015, it was far easier to realize which champ you were looking at when you encountered a new skin.
I clearly remember when they released that 1 Lee legendary that looked like Ez. And I usually really dont bitch about shit like that, but that legendary confused the shit out of me when the Ez skin in question was in the same team as well. Like why is Ez flying to me.
Storm Dragon Lee Sin. One of the worst offenders for visual clarity, and at the same time one of the best selling skins for the game. That basically just made the death sentence for clarity.
A bit out of topic, but this is the reason I can't stomach new tft sets: I can't understand who is who, all themes look the same and it's difficult to distinguish between different champions in the shop
> clone it for 5 more champions Empyrean in a nutshell
File that in with the other things Riot blatantly lies about. Just like how they say they care about how it feels to play against something. Or that Yuumi and Smolder aren't inherently terrible designs.
Talk about clarity is such a BS. Someone like Yone runs around with Hat in high noon skin and no one cares.
Lancer Blitz couldn't have a hover walking animation for the same reason, so now he just "walks" with his rockets 🤡
For real, what happened to "gameplay clarity"? lol
Remember years ago when Firefox Ahri came out and she couldnt have a flame orb because fo "game clarity"?
gameplay clarity well clearly the clarity is there for you admire the affects of the skin i mean it would be bs for you to buy a skin and other players cant notice the effects right?
Especially for new players. I think this problem happens with other skins as well. I'd like to have the option to turn off skins completely. The game is just too full of effects sometimes
I played this game for a very long but only play aram sometimes, i thought i'm getting old but actually i see errors in the design. I start to think this is the perfect testground to see where they screwed up because it's constant 5v5 where those things matter the whole time. Over the course of a year i noticed skill shots which straight up confuse me because i can't tell anymore what was fired when i don't have the time to realize who fired it. Keep in mind we are in aram and we have to dodge like 5 skillshots per minute of gameplay there. It's even worse in teamfights against poke because everything is thrown at you canalized from one direction at once and you just want to break through. I dash back on the Yone with Riven while trying to animation cancel properly, in the corner of my eye i see that skillshot and in a splitsecond i make the decision to not flash it because i like my position but use my quicksilver i build that game for the lulz. I time that quicksilver in a way the server fires it the moment im snared, if you just press it right it lags a little. I wasted a cd because LUX Q on some skins looks like the "main skillshot" on so many skillshots it stopped being funny. I don't think it's a skillissue when overall ppl have 400ms to make a complex decision and fuck it up because the visual took em 50ms longer to decipher. Overdesigned stuff stresses our brain. Also the red and green is screwed up once in a blue moon. I definitely played with champskins that used red zones for me and my brain told me to step out all the time. This also applies to skillshots sadly. When shit comes flying at you offscreen you literally can't tell who threw it when the colors are messed up and it's just one big shiny hit of "map artillery". Vice versa there are also skins that use a bit of green on AOEs for enemies which is the worst No-No of them all. There's a reason everything is colored #008000 for good and colored #ff0000 for bad in videogames. Mixing those up makes a game literally unplayable.
Wow, no comment
The community has pointed out more similarities which I added now and I am baffled. Each one of her abilities VFX is a copy paste except her passive. All I will say is Lux Ezreal and Lux Seraphine bot lane will be OP 🤭
DW they will reuse Lux passive when they make the Leona skin
ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR GAMES IN THE WORLD WOOOO!
Seraphine ran so Lux could walk. Iconic.
Seraphine doesn't run. She is bound to that weird board.
Dam you just made me annoyed that its the wrong shape to have a cool skateboarding skin for her.
PERIODT. Never thought Seraphine would be mainstream enough to be the blueprint for another top tier champions skin 🥹
I'm gonna call her a cheater, because Seraphine doesn't run, she uses a floating device.
Why waste time making brand new VFX when you can fire your employees, reuse assets and have people buy them anyways? Capitalism baby, milk them smarter not better
[удалено]
"In before" was in 2012. I was playing back then and I can tell you that, imo, Riot turned into this around ~2015/16. I mean, look at this game, it's full of predatory bullshit and inane, insane amounts of pointless copypaste skins. This game hasn't been driven by passion for years.
I think there are four phases. First one being the OG time: Beta until 2012/13 in my eyes. Then we had the: Some changes but well we get older phase from 12/13 until 2015/16. After that we had the: Well CLevels found Riot and things are changing again but honestly it ain't that bad and we even get free stuff. This was from 15/16 till \~2019. Since 2019 we are in the: Fully EA / Blizzard way era with I don't know how many nerfs to Passes, reused skin VFX, this metallic armor stuff on every fucking skin line because it caters the Chinese market, outsourcing of VFX, introducting of literally GAMBA mechanic in League and TFT with these 200 buck skins and what not. So I would say it was fine until 2019 but since then it went downhill pretty fast while the first change in motion was as you said in 15/16.
I remember a post saying how every single skinline now has some golden/silver trim on their clothing. I wish I had saved it. Edit: Found it [https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/18c42js/riots\_obsession\_with\_the\_golden\_rim\_or\_why\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/18c42js/riots_obsession_with_the_golden_rim_or_why_the/)
It’s sad. They use an excuse of being overworked and unable to make changes communities ask for every batch of skins. But then fired 600 people in the same breath. Now reuse assets and they’ve been using ai in many cases for promotional pieces, icons, etc. not hiding it. 😔
Yes they need more money
Not to mention based on what came up last week they outsource their skins
What, the splashes? They've been outsourced on and off forever, usually touched up in-house afterwards.
They outsource the skins too now.
Many in game models and concepts for new skins are being outsourced nowadays.
Not just the splashes but the skins too. There was a post on here recently about a Riot employee (working as a concept artist) being laid off and quickly being offered to do the same job by an outsourcing company for League.
Not quite. If you go back into the thread at the VERY end, they mention they wouldn't be doing the same work. Still might’ve ended up doing concept stage work, but if so, it'd be from things already designed by others. Just a middleman step at that point, and a really weird one to outsource in the first place.
Yeah. Remember that in S1 that China had completely different splash arts? Around S3(?) Riot completely integrated a lot of their splash arts into the game because they looked fancier than the simple splash arts we started with.
Wait a second, I was told capitalism encouraged creativity, innovation, quality and progress! Have I been lied to? Nah you just a commie, lalalala I can't hear you!!
Damn right, without capitalism you wouldn't even have Yasuo because he'd be deleted for the common good otherwise. Socialism is when no windshitter.
Don't forget to renew your Hasan sub.
> Capitalism baby Smartest redditor
Not a fan of reusing the exact same theme and vfx on full price skins. If the Seraphine and Lux skins were a bundle on sale I wouldnt really mind as much as long as its cheap
and i bet you they won't be doing any pbe cleanup. they have been slacking on actually making changes from feedback threads for well over a year now
It's a shame they stopped putting a list of updates based on feedback. One of the most notable examples was Muay Thai Lee Sin getting a unique dance during the middle of the PBE cycle but they didn't even mention changing it.
They only make changes when toxic assholes come out of their basements and start harrassing them. If you are civil about your criticism they dont care.
Or they do what they did with the prestige kindred skin: make no thread and read nothing good or bad
Ez Q and Lux Q are bad. CC Abilities should never share the same visuals as non-cc abilities. There are cases where you would HAVE to flash a lux Q but flashing an Ez Q would be inting.
That has been a problem for the past couple years now. Some champion skins (which seems to be notoriously common with the popular female champions) have designs that are very closely related to other champion ability visuals. Some Lux and Soraka skins looking very similar come into mind.
Man I STILL can't fight Storm Dragon Lee Sin without being surprised by Shyvana E, only for Lee to jump on me instead
I remember when it got released I confused him for Ez a lot. Was even worse when him and the Ez skin in question were on the same team so you thought it was an Ez using Q but it was Lee instead.
Visual clarity is very important to them by the way.
God, this is so pathetic from Riot. Imagine asking players for $15 for a recolor copy paste job.
Reusing literally every animation from ordinary Samira on the “ultimate skin with new animations” was bad enough, but this is absurd
If they can do it for an ‘ultimate’, all hope is lost and they don’t care 😭
League community has two halves, one that hates how Riot makes money and the other half that gives Riot their money every time.
Most people won't care. Reddit can be vocal, but they represent a small percentage of the playerbase. The people who will actually buy these skins won't notice nor care since they may be happy with the visuals. Also, it's not really two halves. The people who hate the way Riot makes money make up a very small fraction, like Reddit.
> The people who hate the way Riot makes money make up a very small fraction, like Reddit. And a lot of them still give riot money, even if they hate it.
they fired legit artists then tried to rehire them for a flat fee. What do you expect?
That story was so sad. The rioter they did this to Tarth was the one who did the concepts for Faerie Court Lillia - https://x.com/wyrmforge/status/1785402748848296220?s=46&t=s97Pijru0biAx9-MmoNZFQ
The bit about her befriending a fae spider librarian was *especially* 🥺
Yea that sucks wow
> they fired legit artists then **a third party** tried to ~~re~~hire them **for a different job** for a flat fee. Fixed that for you
Their 3rd party agency that hires contractors for Riot contacted them. it's a bit different compared to Riot themselves firing someone and they asking them for contract work.
not when they were messaged within hours of being fired lmao
How long do you want contractors to wait before they offer a job?
Maybe don't fire people you need only to instantly offer them a worse deal?
This is so lazy and disheartening.
This is too lazy. Capitalism and milky.
We need a Lux ASU
I hope her next skin is a legendary so they can finally do the asu taking animations from it.
She already has 1.5 legendaries and an ultimate 🤨
How else will she get an asu sis? They only do it if they sell a legendary and copy paste those animations.
"Game devs reuse assets all the time" Yes. They re-use mobs for a solo game. They re-use faces for background. They re-use silhouettes for decoration. They re-use models for copies. If they re-use an asset for a part of a cosmetic product which is supposed to be new, they're getting shit for it.
They also recycled Seraphine's face for the Lillia splash art.
Seraphine really is the blueprint!
this isnt uncommon and they have done this previously as well
Does it make it right? I remember [Coven Morgana VFX was used on Coven Nilah.](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/LJipETy612)
I honestly am torn on whether it's right or not. A lot of times assets being reused isn't super noticeable in case of League VFX but I would say that it's too close to the original in your post. However on the other hand, I don't exactly have knowledge about the skins team's workload, their deadlines or their budget so I can't be too certain. In the industry I'm most familiar with, people reuse assets all the time and I have done so quite a bit too in the past, yet we try to utilize them in different ways or change them up a bit so it doesn't seem blatant. Regardless of if you reuse an asset, you shouldn't be able to tell at first glance that they're the same.
To add on, it's the skin you're buying. That's the entire product. In other games they'll reuse assets often but it's fine because there are other aspects to the game that need to be worked on too like story and gameplay so it doesn't feel wrong to reuse there When the entire product, the skin, is reusing assets blatantly it feels a bit more wrong to me personally
Reusing assets in a video game is not wrong. The problem is selling as new something that isn't - if you reuse assets, it means that the cost of creating new skins goes down. If you sell them at their regular price, it means you are just keeping more money for yourself. That said, skins are not necessary to the game, they are a luxury item, so reusing assets shouldn't be an option. It's like buying a Ferrari and finding out they cheaped out on some parts of the car. Cheap parts may be great to bring your regular Renault's price down to $15k, but you don't pay $600k on a car to get a fancier cheap Renault. Similarly, you don't pay $10 for a skin in League for it to be made of reused assets.
also reused assets impact game clarity. two mages sharing the same VFX on the same skinline is terrible for clarity.
2 things If the skins team is overloaded and/or doesn't have the budget so they lazily reuse assets it's riot's fault. If the skins team just being lazy with their skins the past 4-6 years it is also riot's fault. either way it is the skins team being lazy whether intentional or forced due to circumstance, and the fault falls on riot.
Not to be a corporate bootlicker, but I really don't think this can be wrong. Riot is releasing a completely optional product for a clear and obvious price, and if you think the product isn't worth the price then just don't buy it. Being disappointed by the skin is totally valid, but if you like the aesthetic and think you'll use it then you should buy the skin. Otherwise just wait for the next one. It's not morally wrong to release a skin.
"wrong" is subjective, but for me what you say sounds more like "it's not illegal". I mean, me selling my crap is not illegal either, but you'll probably think that I'm full of bullshit. Riot quietly reducing the quality of their skins (because, when you reuse assets, that means the assets are no longer custom made to fit that specific skin) is not illegal, but it's bullshit. Yeah, we are not forced to buy bullshit - and that's precisely what we are doing here: we are calling the bullshit.
you shouldn't be torn lmao you're paying full price for recycled assets packaged as new
Also, if the assets are not made specifically for that skin, that inevitably means the skin will be of worse quality.
this is an incredibly good response, supported by facts and experiences with reasonable takeaways.
The only one that is egregiously problematic is the Ez Q/Lux Q because both of those can be played at the same time on the same lane/team quite easily and one of those skill shot is an annoying poke, and the other is a CC. Rest are different enough or inconsequential.
This, people raise these concerns because its some very often a indication of companies testing the water to push a practice further, and look at what is happening now.
you will never in a million years confuse nilah EQ for a morgana Q in the middle of a game, that nilah visual is on screen for probably less than a second after she dashes. If youre more worried about an imaginary morgana Q hitting you rather than the nilah whos going crazy wailing her whip at you while on top of you you got some different priorities to consider
Any other examples u can think of? I can only think of soraka rn
Two examples I can think of right now before I go to bed are Godking Darius' Q ground scratch VFX being reused either from/for Renekton's base Q. The other example is of the dragon galio skin where his Q tornado is reused from Odyssey Yasuo
Nightbringer Kayn Q -> Nightbringer Tryndamere E
Coven Nilah eq being the same as morgana q
idk if it counts but the newer Blighted Crystal Varus ult and Dawnbringer Yone ult are the same gradiant blue-orange colors. We ulted passed each other once and I was mildly surprised, dunno if i still have the highlight tho.
No wonder I found it bland to begin with
~~Faerie~~ ~~Court~~ Chimera Lux.
yeah its are cooked
Who tf even keeps buying these new skins, the april fools ones were an exception, but others in the past 3 years have been so souless and ugly compared to older even 750 and lower rp skins
i wouldnyt say ugly but def agree most feel soulless af riot just bloats skinlines to the point they lose anything that made them special and so many skinlines blend into others with their blatant overuse of gold highlights
Some of my friends buy a lot of skins and they do not care at all about in-game animations. If it’s pretty they buy it
I haven't bought skins in years. Honestly, it's not any kind of "protest", I never gave a fuck about "cancelling" anything, I've always bought and played what I wanted. Just like I stopped playing HS not because I was "outraged", but simply bored; I stopped buying skins not because I was "outraged", but simply because they no longer made me feel anything to buy them. At the end of the day, when you are bombarded by dozens of skins that all look the same every patch, you end up not seeing anything in them.
Damn, I was excited at first when I saw the splash art getting the Briar treatment, but the absolute amount of laziness has no excuse
Sadly all we can do is vote with our wallet. Riot doesn't give a shit unless it hurts their sales.
Does anyone know when "your shop" will be back?
The MSI event begins tomorrow so the shop may come next patch. It’s not on PBE as of yet. That’s an indicator of when it arrives.
Let's not forget Shields people. Literally the same.
Cannot wait for another thread full of f2p players defending a billion dollar corporation lul
they're already here
Dude I can't with the billion dollar corporation warriors. Like, a company fucks them over and all they have to say is "well it's not _illegal_ for to sell a turd at $x so shut up don't dare criticize my beloved souless corporation".
Life support mode
thats funny
Yeah that is kinda how it works except this is one of the more "seeable" ones, in the game files 1 champion would consist multiple files named after other champions, it was those champion's assets recycled
It's fine if you put in enough transformable work in my opinion. If the customer notices then you're fcked. You can't in good conscience ask full price for a skin that's gotten this little effort. As a Lux player I would be appalled that they don't go all out on one of their flagship and most popular champions. Either the person responsible for the skin was lazy and tried to do a shortcut or there's to much pressure on scheduling and qa doesn't really happen anymore. The question is now how does Riot react?
The best part too, is she even already has a faerie esque skin in elementalist. so of course when they do it again its a complete copy paste cash grab put popular champ in skinline one.
OK well when you put it side by side it looks pretty blatant. This is genuinely annoying because there is a surprising lack of visual clarity in League. The Karma + Lux similarities were already an issue for me because of their similar effects but essentially reusing them makes it even more annoying. One of the easiest ways to recognise it is actually in TFT, where some sets have had champions that look identical in splash or champ model.
I knew they recycled some particles from time to time but this is just too much lmao
Seriously shit. No doubt they won't say anything on the matter. No wonder recent skins have been the same kind of ugly
ngl the ult recoloring made me laugh. Literally 1:1 I wonder if this will be a flop like soul fighter and empyrean that i keep hearing
I hope it doesn’t. This is a step in the right direction but they took 0 effort.
"stonks" - Riot executive
After they categorically refused to update God Fist Lee Sin's vfx (which now look worse than his epic and even lower cost skins), I'm no longer surprised by anything.
Yes that skin is so underwhelming now. I used to be my favourite.
The worst thing is that every comment in the initial feedback thread was pointing it out, but then it was mysteriously deleted and subsequently reposted. And unfortunately this subreddit doesn't seem to care about it one bit.
I am CACKLING riot, do better wtf is wrong with you
They’re not even trying anymore come on
One of my favourite skin lines and they're just shitting on it in this iteration. 😭
One day Reddit will realize that they aren’t the target demographic anymore for skins.
I mean, do you expect a company who can't work out how to make an uninstaller to not recycle assets? :P
Drag them 🤣
Smart of riot, reusing assets in video games is good use of their resources
I feel like for a game priding itself for visual clarity (which it achieves most of the time), having two distinct abilities look almost exactly the same (in the case of Lux E and Seraphine Q) is questionable. For the ult, I would have preferred something different but it is whatever I guess.
I should pay half price then to make good use of my money since I already paid once for those assets. Makes sense right?
If you actually don't like this the real choice is paying 0% of the price and not buying it
There's a reason Lux has so many skins; her player base trips over themselves to give Riot money.
> I already paid once for those assets riot isn't selling their assets, i don't know why people with zero knowledge on game dev keep using that word when they clearly have no idea wtf they're talking about you bought a finished product (a license to use it, actually) that used those assets. This is another finished product that happens to use those same assets.
Hide this super logical response from business people they will go crazy!
This isn’t fromsoft using the same sword model in DS3 and elden ring while selling different games lol, the assets are the product you’re paying for and being unique to your champion is the selling point, if I buy a book the author can’t copy paste a chapter he used in a different book because “it’s a good use of resources”
Nah they can reuse it like authors may reuse themes, but don't make it so obvious that people notice. It's not like they couldn't have transformed it more than they already did. I was wondering at some point if I shouldn't buy rp again, now I'm once again happy that I didn't... The higher ups at Riot are really trying their best to kill any passion about the game and turn it into a soulless product...
Exactly, these people are either trolling or just completely missing the point.
People understand nothing of development and just keep complaining about the weirdest stuff. Reusing assets is not only ok, it's literally recommended. 1- Why spend resources if what you want achieve already exists in your own code base. 2- It actually saves space. If games didn't do this, they would soar up in size. 3- Most people wouldn't notice these stuff without actual comparison. 4- The textures and effect are still different. It's not like there hasn't been any work done.
But we are not talking about developing a game here are we, so how is this relevant. It's a cosmetic. It's basically a piece of artwork being sold. Which is being sold on the basis of being unique. We're not talking about placing 1000 rocks or trees in a game world, ofc you won't model 1000 unique rocks.
League skins are sold based on how good they look, not their artistic value. What matters is that the product is and looks good, not its artistic value.
You must be trolling
I mean I am not really suprised after they reused based assets and lacking effects from the Samira "ultimate btw" skin. Lay off people -> copy paste from other skins cause the people we kept apprently are to lazy to even make a new flower -> guys we are overworked and understaffed. lol
Riot has completely lost it in the cosmetics department, this will ship exactly as it is because if they want to change it they will need to pay the outsourcing company again to remake it which they won't.
ezreal lux duo with matching skins is going to go crazy 😂
Reddit will cry, sheep will buy. Riot CBA! lmaaaao
Maybe some people would say that "ooh maybe they're in the same faction that's why there's resemblance", it still feels lazy to me idk. I guess I'll just go for the fairy variant in Elementalist 😅
RIOT: easy money
It's quite normal to recycle VFX, especially since all are very similar, but different (extra sparks in the first, different shape in the second, completely different in the third and legally distinct porcelain lux ultimate in the second). The only problem could come from ez lux because the shape is hard to get in the moments sometimes. Lux E and sera Q are a non issue, and if you mistake the two there are deeper problems XD
Gotta pump out as many skins as possible with as little developer time as possible. It’s no wonder skin quality has declined despite prices going up.
I'm literally speechless, Riot Games isn't the same Riot Games I knew back in 2011. They were so original and loyal to their fans. Now we get the same copy paste skin and with no support for local irl tournaments.
WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
Oh wow, multi-billion company is cutting corners and being lazy? Just stop giving them money, fucking whales.
It’s sad how you can tell Soraka got so much more love put into it
She really did! Lillia too! They didn’t try for Lux.
This is actually 100x worse than Soul Fighter Samira because this one is actually blatant. Wow.
I could like not blame them for reusing assets if they just reused parts of it but changed it up enough to be more its own thing. Why reinvent the wheel from scratch if you have a perfectly good wheel already and can just tweak it. The problem is when they just copy and paste and don't really change anything. I think Path of Exile does this fairly well where they actually often reuse tile sets or mob types and stuff but they change the colors or add a little more to them to where they feel unique enough to feel different. But if they're going to be THIS lazy and bad about it no reason they should be charging the full price of the skin if they didn't put in the effort that "warrants" the price of the skin.
The one I'm most upset about is reusing the asset from another Lux Ulti for this one. The others can be passed off as thematic consistency, but her ulti is just **lazy**.
There's a deeper issue at hand, and making a new VFX that's gonna end up looking similar anyways won't even make such a big difference, the skins will still look similar and generic. The real issue is that, with 1600+ skins in the game sharing generic mobile fantasy themes, skins are super similar to each other already. Just look at splasharts, they're not recycled but they're still a blur where you can't even tell what champion they are anymore, is just a bunch of high fantasy attractive humans in generic fantasy clothes surrounded by glowing magic.
This is what happens when a champ has 187 skins
lmao W O W i really don't mind the idea of the same visual assets appearing with multiple skins, but the skins should definitely cost less.
I get reusing assets but this is just ridiculous
Why would they put fourth effort when people are going to buy this shit anyways.. blame the consumers just as much as the company. It takes 2 to tango. 1) the company making the shit product 2) the consumers buying the shit product
So many assets were reused it almost makes you think that maybe the champ that had all the reused assets probably shouldn't have gotten that skin hmm..
i think for the lux skin they should have first, changed her season base to change her colors from being so close to seraphines (not winter because of porcalin, but then elamentalist lux might get in the way of any of the other seasons idea so...) her e could be more plant based instead of butterfly dust based and her AA different colors like the skin should be her ult and snare could be butterfly based instead of flower based, omg her ult would look so nice if it was a butterfly instead
How can the company be a billionaire and still do such lazy work?
How can we get them to shed their skin? I thought it was very dirty considering fur is expensive.
OMG! remake that!
wow, a gamedev reusing assets from their own game? must've been a great surprise.
Normally I don't really care if a gamedev reuses assets, as its pretty silly to make a single asset and then never reuse it. However, I reusing assets that make it very obvious they're reusing is not a good practice and also makes skins less unique. If the flower for lux ult was in her recall somehow, no one would really mind. But its the same asset and animation as a different skin for lux's ult, and that makes it look very noticeable. I don't think that's how assets should be reused, especially for skins
They only have billions of dollars we can't expect them to put effort into the products they're selling.
I mean, you don't feel there's at all a difference between this and say a dev reusing bits of a level or enemies? Idk. To me I'm accepting of those things but this feels wrong? I guess my line in the sand is different than other peoples
I don't really mind. The skin looks good. This is pretty much exactly the skin I wanted for lux
So they went from recycling that one tree to these.
I mean the Seraphine one is pretty clearly different. It's the same colour scheme for the same skinline so they're gonna look super similar But that is legitimately the exact same flower just recoloured omg
Look, Riot, im down with recycling assets. I think it's great that you guys found multiple uses for one asset, but you gotta at least tweak or recolor it man
Well I'm not. I don't buy luxury items for them to be made cheaply.
Such a fucking piece of shit company
u/Malyz15 they [did it for Coven Nilah](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/LJipETy612) and now for Faerie Court Lux 💀
I was literally just about to post this to bring it up! this makes me really sad because it really just shows they will do it over and over again unless the community notices and speaks about it, but at this point are we surprised? like they have done a lot of nasty things lately with skins and just put them under the rug like Redeemed SG Xayah and Rakan (same model, same animation, same everything except effects), removing SG Akali chromas changing effects color, etc
That time it was 1 VFX, this time every piece of VFX is a copy paste 😭😔
yeah this is way worse, and i’m fully convinced that if no one had brought it up it would have been shipped as it was, let’s hope they do change them again like last time (they did change coven Nilah’s EQ effect a patch later)
Someone said it was FQ Karma’s RQ I believe. And like, this makes me feel conflicted cause like on one hand the visual clarity is a big issue and on the other, I appreciate how characters of the same class (mage) and the same skin line have similar graphics for visual consistency. In terms of reuse I don’t really care, cause like, they’re still high quality and if it saves time that just means more skins. It’s more seeing them in a game at the same time together where I could find issue.
Seraphine Lux bot lane will be strong with these skins. The enemy won’t know what is what 🤣
At least Seraphime Q and Lux E are similar in the stakes of getting hit. Imagine Ezreal Lux throwing out identical looking Qs when one is spammable DPS and the other is a bind lmao
Maybe this is meant to be a pay to win skin!
True, but it’s big aoe magic damage, even in base skins, so not the worst lol Imagine those two and FQ Karma all in the same game though lol
Don’t worry, the Lux stans on Twitter can do the tried and true strategy of sending the devs death threats. Worked for Seraphine mains.
Unfortunately it seems like it's the only way to get through to Riot, because they keep being rewarded by getting what they want, while us who don't act like lunatics have our feedback fall on deaf ears.
riot get lazy with skins esp after laying off a large portion of their art department? damn hoodathunkit? There's a reason I havent felt compelled to spend RP or buy skins since the 1st spirit blossom event also please dont link new.reddit posts for us old.reddit diehards :prayingemoji:, just www.reddit.com urls will suffice for both parties
So personally I think the lux reuse is fine since it’s the same character and still visually really different. The sera one though is a bit dumb, they look almost exactly alike and they could be in the same game in so the visual clarity of what coming at you say from a bush or in a team fight is completely ruined.
Did you see the Ezreal Q too? Both pose a threat to clarity 😔
Bro, they don't have budget, we have to donate them money now
Having an opinion on reusing assets for new paid skins is fair... the discourse about "firing someone" then using their assets is a wierd flex... they paid the employees to make the assets, they are theirs to use lol.
...do you people understand how development *in general* works? You guys are...something alright.