League Of Legends’ New Skin-Line Has Players Up In Arms About Low Quality Content

There was a time when Riot Games could do no wrong in the eyes of the League of Legends community. However, after successive controversies, including a sexual misconduct class-action, a round of layoffs and the addition of a $430 skin to League of Legends, players now have far less patience with Riot.

Although Riot’s art and music teams have been praised for the quality of recent cinematics, that quality, according to players, has not carried over to the associated skins. This happened recently with Grand Reckoning Alistar, which Riot removed after admitting the skin had quality issues.

Declining Quality

The upcoming Spirit Blossom releases are Ivern, Bard, Varus, Zyra, Lux, Ashe and Irelia. Ivern, in particular, is attracting a lot of criticism from players for both its splash art and in-game model.

There are several threads on Reddit lamenting the loss of opportunity with the Spirit Blossom Ivern skin, which is in a skin-line that he should be perfectly suited for: “This might be the worst splash art since 2010,” writes ted0dorit0.

In a thread dedicated specifically to Spirit Blossom Ivern, CJ-03-FIRE writes “I’ve waited for a new Ivern skin for so long, then I heard he’d be getting a skin within the perfect skin line for his character and we get given, this? This is a glorified chroma, his basic design lacks anything that makes him stand out, the splash art is not the quality of which we are used to it at all, and other than the colour palette, what about this is Spirit Blossom exactly?”

The ability visual effects have also been getting flack for changing very little or in some cases, as with Daisy, removing some of the default detail from the model.

Ivern isn’t the only target of player’s ire; the line’s legendary skin, Spirit Blossom Irelia, has also been criticised for its lack of unique visual effects. In a thread by hytrhtry, players discuss how four consecutive legendary skins have been of a poorer quality than they’ve come to expect from Riot. The prevailing theory is that Riot considers the price point for legendary skins to be too low to justify the work it used to take to create them, and so higher-quality skins have now been bumped to “gacha” prices.

Although there are plenty of additions to League that Riot has been praised for this season, the declining quality of skins continues to be a bugbear of the community.

League of Legends

Systems

Released

October 27, 2009

ESRB

T for Teen: Blood, Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco