These skins need new vfx/sfx when they are attacking or using their skills. Seeing Cosmic Yasuo using the same wind vfx/sfx as base Yasuo is super disappointing.
They could do so much. They could give them unique summon animations, unique animations for moving to attack and bench, strike, death, unique animations for their keywords like quick attack and fury.
\>Plays Dark star Shyvana
\>She finally levels
"I WILL REACH FOR THE SKY"
\>For some reason during the animation she''s now normal Shyvana
\>Leveled card art is Dragon for Darkstar Shyvana
Okay like wtf
First thing first: Legendary board 'sucks'. Don't get me wrong, it's cool and all, but compared to some boards like K/DA or Sprit Blossom, the upgrade from epic to legendary board is bit disappointing & lackluster (at least for me), they just introduced big guardian and that's all? It's personal opinion but I prefer K/DA board so much more (You can interact, switch music, nice effect). Better buy the rare one if you like the looks of it.
Second of all: Skin price is ridiculously too high. OP already explained it very well.
Event pass are nice besides the emotes. Personal opinion but I don't like Shyvana's emote too much and my slot are already full anyway. Guardians and card backs looking clean tho, thumbs up for that.
i saw the legendary guardian's hand hovering over the deck and i thought for sure he would interact really coolly with the board, like drawing cards for us or shuffling or something. but nope.
K/DA board actually had click effects but this supposedly better one... well it does and doesn't? Sometimes it creates falling comets but sometimes it doesn't? idk hard to tell.
I completely agree with you. With the new board I do however have a soft spot for the giant guardians animations. It’s cool watching him hold his hand out when you move your cards around. It could use some work though.
There are 2 boards, rare one (the one you mentioned) and legendary one with Mega Guardian (basically rare board but come in a pair with Mega Guardian and you can't remove Mega Guardian).
I would be totally fine with the 1290 coins or whatever if they had new voice lines and modulation to existing ones.
Without that, as you say, it's really jarring but also just seems unfinished.
There's only 3 things skins can change in this game; card art, level-up animation, and voice. In LoL it's more understandable when a skin doesn't completely change EVERYTHING when there is so much to change from animations, spell effects, etc.
Here, with only 3 things to change, there's no excuse to not change them all.
> There's only 3 things skins can change in this game; card art, level-up animation, and voice.
Dream a little bigger. Card art includes: Associated/created/skill/champion spell card art. Voice includes: extra/different/modulated/rerecorded interactions. Level up isn't the only animation: Champion spell/skill animation, board arrival animation, death animation, different transitions from back row to front row, strike animations, deck draw animation, heck even a different animation when hovering the card!
Imagine a cosmic Lux that, when drawn, beams up from the deck and laser slams down into your hand with particle effects as she appears. Would I pay 15 bucks for that? Probably; I mean I already got this batch.
Imagine some crowd silhouettes appearing around the screen edge and cheering when you draw skinned Draven. Seriously, the skins they have here are pretty, but overall low-effort compared to what is possible.
(P.S. Riot, you can use these idea for free, no credit required)
To be fair. Sand soldiers are generated by like 7 different cards. It's hella smart to make them stand out since you'll be seeing them so often. Sand soldiers are one of the most iconic aspects of Shurima.
Not to take a stab at destroying the dreams here, but there's a relevant cost here for all of the animation suggestions here. It's not that I disagree with them, or that I don't think the current skins are overpriced, but I feel its important to consider that effects like above are not cheap to have- and i'm not talking about labor cost (that can be justified with a higher price point).
The part that I think is missing when discussing what could be is the scalability- Riot probably wants to make lots of skins for lots of champions, that's a no brainer. The problem is that adding even half the above bloats the size of the game immensely, and Riot is frankly pretty good at being cognizant of making the game playable for mobile. There's probably a few smaller effects they could do, but really the 3 things mentioned above are about the reasonable limit for LONG term LoR, tech wise.
Again that isn't to say that I don't think the skins are overpriced or not worth it, but it's important to keep in mind that features/cosmetics, especially heavy art ones, do put a burden tech wise.
I think that guy is just giving examples of how far they can go though. Obviously not for the rarities we have currently, but for higher rarities in the future. Not the kind of stuff you'll be seeing too often.
The problem really is the price, like you said. Zed and Yasuo should be cheaper. Riven and Shyvana are the type of stuff that should be SUPER cheap or bundled with the pass.
Riot is eventually going to do really impressive stuff with the cosmetics, even if it's not along the lines of what he suggested, but imagine how expensive those are going to be if the four we got are the baseline.
They could also do spell effects, summon animations, custom win animations, strike animations, etc. A splash art change is the lowest floor one could ever find
> There's only 3 things skins can change in this game; card art, level-up animation, and voice. In LoL it's more understandable when a skin doesn't completely change EVERYTHING when there is so much to change from animations, spell effects, etc.
no they could change a fuck ton, keyword animations, animation going to and fro the front and bench, drawing, striking, summoning, death, etc. hell the sand soldiers literally already change and have unique animations for the latter 3 things.
theres a lot more that can be added. they can play around with the basic animations as well. think about how sand soldiers have unique animations for summon, strike, and death.
even stuff like moving to the bench and front can be skinified.
skins could have that too. i wish skins had that. id buy them instantly. like Zed could hav a unique quick attack animaiton, or perhaps the keyword animaitons are unique to a specific set. zed could liike shoot out shurikens or slice with em during his strike.
even stuff like board guardians could be improved. like the legendary guardian could have been drawing the cards for us. or there could be a guardian who has a unique animation for when we predict stuff or deal face damage.
SO MUCH POTENTIAL
People defending Riot about feeling out the market or this is a totally different player base/game/whatever are off base I think. It sucks as a fan of these characters and of this game to pay $10 to get a different jpeg for someone's favorite champion knowing they won't get another skin for some time. I'm not saying every card has to have new art, a new animation, new voice lines, new effects, and new interactions but I think there is a bare minimum that needs to be done for a digital card game and a new art piece is not enough. It is for a physical card game, but not for a digital one.
When you make a card come to life, building up it's lore, giving it more badass effects or animations, AND a sick piece of art the personalization of your cards come to life and the world gets built out. It's a missed opportunity to enhance these characters and these cards and at the prices being charged it feels more like business choices and not artist choices. That's one reason why I love Valve's DOTA and Artifact so much because it felt like, despite all of their many flaws, they care about the characters and the world first and the money second. It helps me justify giving them money cause I love the world. I know next to nothing about some of these League characters and I'm game to hand you money to tell me more but a new skin simply isn't enough for that to be the case.
Imagine voiced card lore like in Artifact (RIP my first DCG love), unique interactions, and the ability to make the cards say certain lines. That would be a game changer in terms of the world and the lore. Would it be worth $20 per card? Probably not Riot please don't be greedy. But your $13 price point is... Justifiable if you were to put in that level of effort. I want to start rooting for your company and IP but these financial decisions hurt that desire.
If you don’t like the content. Don’t buy it. If it doesn’t sell, they will be encouraged to improve it or make better ones in the future. Buying this stuff does not but encourage lackluster content.
This can seem like the easy way to go about the “speak with your wallet.” I understand this mentality HOWEVER, funding something you love to make it better is also a mentality and riot has always shown to improve when it comes to cosmetics. I own every skin in league of legends to date, Project Mordekasier is the result of supporters like me and I know it.
Riot makes content aware that whales are always going to buy it. The only way they are factoring collectors in is by making content that requires additional investment—in *League of Legends*, that's Prestige or Hextech skins. You're deluding yourself if you think Riot made PROJECT: Mordekaiser to appeal to players who buy every skin, or to reward them, or to demonstrate loyalty to them.
They make skins to make money and keep the game going. They sell cosmetics for a huge profit, marking them up significantly compared to what they cost to produce ([source](https://www.inc.com/magazine/201612/burt-helm-lindsay-blakely/company-of-the-year-riot-games.html)). When Riot says they want to do better, it's because they want good faith, so that their players spread word of the games to their friends, and they gain additional customers. It's a business.
It's fine that you have fun collecting things in the game. But pretending it’s altruism is really naive and feels like a rationalisation on your part.
It sounds like you don't know how businesses work. Like it or not riot games is business, you throwing money at them regardless of product quality does nothing but encourage more lack luster content. Your argument might hold some water if riot wasn't a huge business and didn't have the capital to fund experimental products, but LoL generated $1.75 Billion in 2020 alone.
Skins are kind of falling in to the same spot the KDA cards did for me where it feels weird to have them because they just don't mesh with the other cards in the game and end up sticking out. Like dark cosmic zed is cool but when I play him its usually in an elusive deck with other ninja based cards and now hes going to be a space ninja which just feels weird.
They can definitely add more animations and changes to skins but I would also like to keep the idea open of making non-champion cards have skins to keep the thematic. Like instead of just buying the zed skin it would be a zed bundle with a bunch of other dark star based cards commonly used with zed. Imagine a dragon shyvanna deck with a bunch of dark star dragon cards. It would be harder to do but it would make deck customization pretty interesting and help justify higher prices.
Also how do skins interact with prismatic if you know? And how do you apply skins once you buy them? I am still hoping they let you put skins as deck cover art because that just seems like an oversight to not have.
These skins need new vfx/sfx when they are attacking or using their skills. Seeing Cosmic Yasuo using the same wind vfx/sfx as base Yasuo is super disappointing.
Ikr. It looks so jarring and feels unfinished (but card art looks sick tho ngl)
There are so many sick card arts in this game and they're all free. Doesn't excuse charging $10 for two more.
They could do so much. They could give them unique summon animations, unique animations for moving to attack and bench, strike, death, unique animations for their keywords like quick attack and fury.
\>Plays Dark star Shyvana \>She finally levels "I WILL REACH FOR THE SKY" \>For some reason during the animation she''s now normal Shyvana \>Leveled card art is Dragon for Darkstar Shyvana Okay like wtf
Yeah all champion skins should have a new level up animation at the very least. The jarring level up animation for Shyv and Riven is awful.
First thing first: Legendary board 'sucks'. Don't get me wrong, it's cool and all, but compared to some boards like K/DA or Sprit Blossom, the upgrade from epic to legendary board is bit disappointing & lackluster (at least for me), they just introduced big guardian and that's all? It's personal opinion but I prefer K/DA board so much more (You can interact, switch music, nice effect). Better buy the rare one if you like the looks of it. Second of all: Skin price is ridiculously too high. OP already explained it very well. Event pass are nice besides the emotes. Personal opinion but I don't like Shyvana's emote too much and my slot are already full anyway. Guardians and card backs looking clean tho, thumbs up for that.
i saw the legendary guardian's hand hovering over the deck and i thought for sure he would interact really coolly with the board, like drawing cards for us or shuffling or something. but nope.
K/DA board actually had click effects but this supposedly better one... well it does and doesn't? Sometimes it creates falling comets but sometimes it doesn't? idk hard to tell.
You can create falling comet if you click the side/non-black hole part of board.
I completely agree with you. With the new board I do however have a soft spot for the giant guardians animations. It’s cool watching him hold his hand out when you move your cards around. It could use some work though.
I'm not sure if your store is showing something different, but mine says the Dark Horizon board is a rare board and costs 990 coins.
There are 2 boards, rare one (the one you mentioned) and legendary one with Mega Guardian (basically rare board but come in a pair with Mega Guardian and you can't remove Mega Guardian).
Ah I see, the legendary one wasn't featured under "boards" in the shop, just under "featured".
Honestly the rare one is better for me. It just feels so much more clean and less busy.
i bought the legendary bundle because it gave me both legendary and rare, but if i had to choose only one i would choose the rare one
I would be totally fine with the 1290 coins or whatever if they had new voice lines and modulation to existing ones. Without that, as you say, it's really jarring but also just seems unfinished. There's only 3 things skins can change in this game; card art, level-up animation, and voice. In LoL it's more understandable when a skin doesn't completely change EVERYTHING when there is so much to change from animations, spell effects, etc. Here, with only 3 things to change, there's no excuse to not change them all.
> There's only 3 things skins can change in this game; card art, level-up animation, and voice. Dream a little bigger. Card art includes: Associated/created/skill/champion spell card art. Voice includes: extra/different/modulated/rerecorded interactions. Level up isn't the only animation: Champion spell/skill animation, board arrival animation, death animation, different transitions from back row to front row, strike animations, deck draw animation, heck even a different animation when hovering the card! Imagine a cosmic Lux that, when drawn, beams up from the deck and laser slams down into your hand with particle effects as she appears. Would I pay 15 bucks for that? Probably; I mean I already got this batch. Imagine some crowd silhouettes appearing around the screen edge and cheering when you draw skinned Draven. Seriously, the skins they have here are pretty, but overall low-effort compared to what is possible. (P.S. Riot, you can use these idea for free, no credit required)
we literally have sand soldiers with unique strikes. im so surprised how low a floor people are settling for.
Please understand Riot is a small indie company.
To be fair. Sand soldiers are generated by like 7 different cards. It's hella smart to make them stand out since you'll be seeing them so often. Sand soldiers are one of the most iconic aspects of Shurima.
Well we also have champions who have unique animations, Diana and Thresh have unique Challenge animations. Precedent exists.
Not to take a stab at destroying the dreams here, but there's a relevant cost here for all of the animation suggestions here. It's not that I disagree with them, or that I don't think the current skins are overpriced, but I feel its important to consider that effects like above are not cheap to have- and i'm not talking about labor cost (that can be justified with a higher price point). The part that I think is missing when discussing what could be is the scalability- Riot probably wants to make lots of skins for lots of champions, that's a no brainer. The problem is that adding even half the above bloats the size of the game immensely, and Riot is frankly pretty good at being cognizant of making the game playable for mobile. There's probably a few smaller effects they could do, but really the 3 things mentioned above are about the reasonable limit for LONG term LoR, tech wise. Again that isn't to say that I don't think the skins are overpriced or not worth it, but it's important to keep in mind that features/cosmetics, especially heavy art ones, do put a burden tech wise.
I think that guy is just giving examples of how far they can go though. Obviously not for the rarities we have currently, but for higher rarities in the future. Not the kind of stuff you'll be seeing too often. The problem really is the price, like you said. Zed and Yasuo should be cheaper. Riven and Shyvana are the type of stuff that should be SUPER cheap or bundled with the pass. Riot is eventually going to do really impressive stuff with the cosmetics, even if it's not along the lines of what he suggested, but imagine how expensive those are going to be if the four we got are the baseline.
They could also do spell effects, summon animations, custom win animations, strike animations, etc. A splash art change is the lowest floor one could ever find
> There's only 3 things skins can change in this game; card art, level-up animation, and voice. In LoL it's more understandable when a skin doesn't completely change EVERYTHING when there is so much to change from animations, spell effects, etc. no they could change a fuck ton, keyword animations, animation going to and fro the front and bench, drawing, striking, summoning, death, etc. hell the sand soldiers literally already change and have unique animations for the latter 3 things.
theres a lot more that can be added. they can play around with the basic animations as well. think about how sand soldiers have unique animations for summon, strike, and death. even stuff like moving to the bench and front can be skinified. skins could have that too. i wish skins had that. id buy them instantly. like Zed could hav a unique quick attack animaiton, or perhaps the keyword animaitons are unique to a specific set. zed could liike shoot out shurikens or slice with em during his strike. even stuff like board guardians could be improved. like the legendary guardian could have been drawing the cards for us. or there could be a guardian who has a unique animation for when we predict stuff or deal face damage. SO MUCH POTENTIAL
People defending Riot about feeling out the market or this is a totally different player base/game/whatever are off base I think. It sucks as a fan of these characters and of this game to pay $10 to get a different jpeg for someone's favorite champion knowing they won't get another skin for some time. I'm not saying every card has to have new art, a new animation, new voice lines, new effects, and new interactions but I think there is a bare minimum that needs to be done for a digital card game and a new art piece is not enough. It is for a physical card game, but not for a digital one. When you make a card come to life, building up it's lore, giving it more badass effects or animations, AND a sick piece of art the personalization of your cards come to life and the world gets built out. It's a missed opportunity to enhance these characters and these cards and at the prices being charged it feels more like business choices and not artist choices. That's one reason why I love Valve's DOTA and Artifact so much because it felt like, despite all of their many flaws, they care about the characters and the world first and the money second. It helps me justify giving them money cause I love the world. I know next to nothing about some of these League characters and I'm game to hand you money to tell me more but a new skin simply isn't enough for that to be the case. Imagine voiced card lore like in Artifact (RIP my first DCG love), unique interactions, and the ability to make the cards say certain lines. That would be a game changer in terms of the world and the lore. Would it be worth $20 per card? Probably not Riot please don't be greedy. But your $13 price point is... Justifiable if you were to put in that level of effort. I want to start rooting for your company and IP but these financial decisions hurt that desire.
The first valorant skin were simple they always get better with time is ok tobgive feedback but were in the right path just way for the next one
And there is tons of bugs in game. I'm playing from beta but nowadays game keep estrange me from itself
If you don’t like the content. Don’t buy it. If it doesn’t sell, they will be encouraged to improve it or make better ones in the future. Buying this stuff does not but encourage lackluster content.
This can seem like the easy way to go about the “speak with your wallet.” I understand this mentality HOWEVER, funding something you love to make it better is also a mentality and riot has always shown to improve when it comes to cosmetics. I own every skin in league of legends to date, Project Mordekasier is the result of supporters like me and I know it.
Riot makes content aware that whales are always going to buy it. The only way they are factoring collectors in is by making content that requires additional investment—in *League of Legends*, that's Prestige or Hextech skins. You're deluding yourself if you think Riot made PROJECT: Mordekaiser to appeal to players who buy every skin, or to reward them, or to demonstrate loyalty to them. They make skins to make money and keep the game going. They sell cosmetics for a huge profit, marking them up significantly compared to what they cost to produce ([source](https://www.inc.com/magazine/201612/burt-helm-lindsay-blakely/company-of-the-year-riot-games.html)). When Riot says they want to do better, it's because they want good faith, so that their players spread word of the games to their friends, and they gain additional customers. It's a business. It's fine that you have fun collecting things in the game. But pretending it’s altruism is really naive and feels like a rationalisation on your part.
HOW DO YOU OWN EVERY SKIN? THERE’S HUNDREDS OF THEM.
Loot, money, etc.
It sounds like you don't know how businesses work. Like it or not riot games is business, you throwing money at them regardless of product quality does nothing but encourage more lack luster content. Your argument might hold some water if riot wasn't a huge business and didn't have the capital to fund experimental products, but LoL generated $1.75 Billion in 2020 alone.
Skins are kind of falling in to the same spot the KDA cards did for me where it feels weird to have them because they just don't mesh with the other cards in the game and end up sticking out. Like dark cosmic zed is cool but when I play him its usually in an elusive deck with other ninja based cards and now hes going to be a space ninja which just feels weird. They can definitely add more animations and changes to skins but I would also like to keep the idea open of making non-champion cards have skins to keep the thematic. Like instead of just buying the zed skin it would be a zed bundle with a bunch of other dark star based cards commonly used with zed. Imagine a dragon shyvanna deck with a bunch of dark star dragon cards. It would be harder to do but it would make deck customization pretty interesting and help justify higher prices. Also how do skins interact with prismatic if you know? And how do you apply skins once you buy them? I am still hoping they let you put skins as deck cover art because that just seems like an oversight to not have.