League of Documentary - The TRUTH About Pay to Win Skins

skins the biggest source of income for league of legends the single reason that this quote-unquote free-to-play game is a free-to-play game if you purchased every single skin of the game at full price it would cost you roughly 10 000 usd some players have actually gone and purchased every single skin of the game their total purchasing amount is roughly anywhere between three to five thousand dollars skins have come a long way in league of legends the first ultimate skin in the game was pulsefire ezreal when he came out people were blown away by the effects that the skin had today many legendary skins have similar or better vfx than old ultimate skins such as pulsefire ezreal as league of legends grew so did the complexity and the beauty of the skin side in the game but as cosmetics get more complicated riot will have the expectation to continue evolving and improving as time goes on this adds new elements and new looks to old champions in the game there are some skins in the game that give very obvious advantages to other players riot themselves has proven data that says skins have differing win rates among each other in this video we will be going over each and every single one of the reasons that skins can give players an advantage how those advantages affect the game and what riot games has been doing in order to try and maintain competitive integrity against one of their biggest income sources this is league of documentary but first let me introduce you to the sponsor of today's video raid shadow legend ray chatter legends is the first game to bring you a true console level experience to your pc and mobile devices a mobile game with some of the most coolest artistic characters in the market today this month raid is releasing an insane amount of new content with new things to do first up they're releasing 11 new amazing champion with all sorts of new abilities and mechanics they're also going to be releasing almost 200 new brand new missions to complete with exclusive legendary champions as your reward if you manage to finish them and if that's not enough they're also adding five tough new levels with almost every single dungeon an incredible amount of free new content in just one month if you are a league skin purchaser that means you probably enjoy a lot of anime themed skins the new shadowkins are heavily inspired by the mythos of medieval japan along with a load more eastern influences they've got nimble ninjas sharp samurais ominous onis and a whole host of mythical monsters among my favorite things in league i love collecting the various champions of the game it's just like hextech crafting in league of legends with mystery boxes and surprise eggs even if the champion you have isn't great you can always upgrade them in the tavern download raid shadow legends with my link in the description today when league of legends was new the skin artists didn't think much about the competitive integrity they were just artists looking to make something cool there are a long list of old skins that have problems and issues in terms of competitive integrity in fact certain skin lines are completely banned altogether most professional players also only play on the lowest settings for vfx when it comes to their skins it wasn't until very recently that riot actually made a conscious effort to start fixing any clarity issues in the game in the past league skins only really had to do three things be cool sell well and have no major bugs now riot skin artists have a long list of things to check off before they can ship something to pbe this 40 panel guide is the basis of what all skin artists need to think about when they're designing a skin it includes everything from the way that a champion is supposed to look to the color palette to the timing of abilities these strict guidelines are used for future skin makers to set the law for what good clarity in the game would look like but as thorough and detailed as these guidelines are the fact remains that these guidelines have only really existed for the last few years which means that there's over five years of skins that don't meet all the standards for competitive integrity in league of legends and although a large portion of skins don't actively break the rules of competitive integrity there are many that will unlikely go unchanged here are the main reasons that a champion can be considered paid to win or paid to lose number one silhouette as league of legends artists become better and better they will continue to feel the need to show off more although that leads to some very very cool skins in the game it does lead to a very obvious problem recognizability without knowing the skins can you even tell who these champions are being able to tell who you're playing against and who's on your team are two pretty important factors in a game of league of legends with over 150 champions and an average of four skins on each champion there is going to be some obvious overlap with some champion skins that are going to look like other champions or other skins and the biggest problem that occurs from this is that many times these skins make the champions not look like themselves take thresh for example thresh is a warden of souls bones and skulls life and death yet his spirit blossom skin he looks like a korean makeup model i mean look at those abs like good abs those are cut [ __ ] abs i don't know what souls taste like but i'm pretty sure they don't have the protein content in them to get abs like those if women can complain about having too many boobies and too many titties in the media then i can complain about muscles that shouldn't be on certain things like zack look at those [ __ ] shoulder muscles why is a champion made of lime jello so jacked one of the biggest elements that keeps a champion recognizable is something that we humans use to judge each other every day and that is the way that champions walk michael jackson is remembered for a lot of different things being the king of pop his pedophile face and the fact that he had a white face but one of the biggest things that transcends every single culture is the way michael walked his moonwalk a person's stride can tell you a lot about who they are their confidence their hobbies how they view other people many champions have a distinguishing stride as well when you're used to seeing the way a certain champion walks it helps you unconsciously identify who that champion is this is part of a champion's silhouette the three most important factors in identifying a champion silhouette are usually going to be their head their weapons and hands and anything extra that sticks out from their body such as wings or clothing this is why you won't ever see champions like senna have a revolver or champions like yumi become a penguin although penguin yumi might be an amazing skin to make and would sell very well it doesn't really help with the idea of skin clarity but of course there are a number of skins that look a little too cool for their own good their skin artists put so much into them that we as players could no longer even recognize them in game the best example of this was storm dragon lee sin to begin with lee sin has a pretty difficult silhouette he doesn't really have a distinguishing walk and he doesn't carry a weapon he has no wings and he doesn't really have any distinguishing clothing when storm dragon lee sin first came out he had a ponytail on him and this ponytail was flapping behind him although it looked pretty cool in game this simple little detail confused the [ __ ] out of players and had no idea who this champion even was some people thought the ponytail was a wing some thought it was an actual tale and some players even thought that this skin was a cane skin it just goes to show how important the three basic areas of a champion are to how we as players identify champions so if you are a skin maker and you cannot focus on a champion's silhouette then you have to focus on a champion's abilities ability animations is the majority of clarity issues in terms of league of legends most of the skins that players complain about as pay to win usually have animations that give them an advantage problems include can we see the abilities are the ability hitboxes accurate to the art and how do the abilities look in comparison to the rest of the other skins now a lot of ability issues come from the fact that many players cannot see certain abilities so the obvious solution usually would always be to make every single ability in the game as upfront and clear as possible but that's actually not the best way to approach balancing clarity in the game let's take two champions for example blitzcrank and ezreal ezreal's q is basically an enhanced auto attack it reduces his abilities cooldowns by 1 and doesn't do that much more damage than a regular auto attack so ezreal's q animation doesn't have to be all that impactful for blitzcrank on the other hand his cue is life or death a single hook can change the entire outcome of a game this ability needs to be clear so think about your champion and their abilities maybe one skin has an animation that is less noticeable or looks like it has a smaller hitboxes some skins do have animations that are less noticeable or have hitboxes that don't accurately represent the images in them historically speaking the worst offender of clarity in terms of visibility of their skills has always been syndra syndra's kit revolves around her dark spheres it's very important that we see all of the dark spheres but every single one of syndra's skins changes her dark spheres into a blue one red one yellow one so syndra inherently becomes harder to deal with when you just put her on any skin so why is it so difficult to make good clarity in league of legends and why does it take so many resources there are a number of different issues the first is the visibility of skills against a changing background summoner's rift is mostly a green and brown background the river is a dark blue background howling abyss is a light blue background not only do they have to deal with the changing colors of landscape they also have to be considerate towards colorblind players there are two main types of colorblindness red green which is what i have known as deuter anomaly and blue yellow known as triton these graphics give you an idea of what we see in game all these considerations all these different color schemes inevitably there's going to be some abilities and some champions with problems of visibility in the game but according to riot it's only a matter of time before things change sound one of the most important parts of a skin the league music department is famous around the world and although it's rarely talked about sound does actually contribute a lot to the enhancements a player has when playing on certain skins but what does a sound vfx person actually do in the same way that visual vfx artists have strict guidelines when creating skins sound vfx artists also have those same types of guidelines there are two main types of sound organic sounds which occur in the real world around us and synthetic sounds which are computer generated there are a lot of different ways to make sounds but at riot games they often like to record and make their own from scratch different things in real life mimic other sounds and create violent or impactful things here's how riot games made xayah's auto attack combining the sounds of a slingshot yoga band air pump and crumpling plastic you get the sound of zaya's auto attacks here are some of my favorite examples of stupid sound stuff that they often do creating elder dragon's roar from a violin bow across a chicken wire and trash can [Music] poor footsteps made from paint brushes on gravel thunder sounds of elementalist lux made from microwaves and hair clippers and my personal favorite making zach's globby sounds by filling a condom with dog food and beans then smashing it against a wall a sound vfx artist is a lot like a painter who takes different base colors and puts them together in order to make something new one thing that a lot of players will tell you is that certain skins feel better when they farm minions they feel like they hit more cs their abilities feel smoother or their auto attacks feel faster obviously that's not the case every single skin has the same frames as the base skin and the champion's auto attack speed never goes up but the main reason that a lot of players feel this difference has to do with sound let's take orianna for example orianna's bass auto attacks sound like this a simple straightforward sound close to the damage instance of her auto attack now let's take a listen to dark star orianna as you can hear there's a slight difference in the timing of damage instance of her auto attacks sound is one of the biggest cues for us humans to recognize something in a game some skins have different sound effects that change the timings of important moments for a champion's kit this is a big reason as to why some players will say certain skins make them feel like they're last hitting better or do more damage it's because the skin's sounds give you better audio cues in order to identify last hits as you can see from these audio lines there are different peaks in this ability even though the peak is less than a quarter of a second from the original it's still enough to throw someone off or make someone feel like the skin is giving them an advantage when it comes to farming riot games usually does try to base all of the skin's sounds off of the base skins but with so many skins and so many new effects eventually something somewhere is going to go wrong so with all the advantages that we have shown so far with skins the real question is do these skins actually translate into a higher win rate are certain skins so pay to win that they actually affect the outcome of your game that's a difficult question to answer according to riot they do actually track and look at skin win rates but the win rates on skins are affected by a lot of different factors it's really hard to just take a look at a skin win rate say a win rate is better than the other one and say that skin is broken one of the highest win rate skins in the game is pax twisted fate but if you take a look at pax tf's animations there's not really that much special about him no crazy recall no crazy animations auto attacks are pretty much the exact same as base tfs so in terms of the skin itself there's really not much special about it but the reason that pax twisted fate has one of the highest win rates in the game should be pretty obvious if you're willing to spend a thousand dollars on a single outdated skin for your champion you've probably put a lot of games on that champion the real advantage that a lot of skins often provide to players is the way that it improves your mental behavior how does this skin make you feel does this skin make you feel stronger does it make you feel like you're a better player whether it's the cool animations the character model the sounds of hitting stuff in game it just makes players feel like their champion is stronger as a result players are more likely to play aggressive they can play more confidently and they're less likely to tilt skins are basically like sugar pills they give you a nice placebo effect to make you think that you're better than you actually are one of my favorite skins in the game is pool party renekton the skin itself doesn't look that great and there's a lot of other cooler looking renekton skins but the reason that i love this skin so much is because of its recall animation the stupid life chair pop-up alligator looks so fun to play especially while you're csing in lane it's extremely distracting extremely stupid and extremely fun to do recall animations are one of the best times for vfx artists to really flex their skills since these effects rarely ever affect a fight recall animations can be extremely flamboyant and excessive but the problem with these recalls is the hitboxes themselves if you're recalling on pool party renekton the visual hitbox makes him look different from the actual hitbox the actual hitbox of a champion when he's recalling doesn't actually change it's always going to be this circle on the ground even if the champion changes positions or dances around or does cartwheels the hitbox itself never moves so even skill shots thrown right on top of your champion visually doesn't actually damage that champion and there's a lot of different examples of this in the game this is a pretty obvious clarity issue but here's the thing if riot removed this feature on the skin i would want a refund on him because the stupid pop-up lifeguard chair was the only reason that i wanted this skin in the first place take vayne for example vayne's lore is that she is a hunter of monsters who mercilessly strikes down and hunts evil in the night yet in her project vain skin she's got a motorcycle does vayne on a motorcycle look anything like vayne at all vayne is supposed to be a demon slayer not a harley davidson enthusiast but if you ask players who have this skin they don't care they just look at it and think it's [ __ ] cool there's always going to be some level of trade-off in terms of clarity and making something new and interesting and there are some skins in the game with pay to lose clarity issues the recently released battle academia caitlyn has an anime manga cutaway effect when she casts her ultimate this effect could potentially limit your vision during a team fight but the weebs that pick up the skin don't care about the half second of lost visual clarity in a team fight they just think about which anime protagonists they're currently pretending to be at the end of the day there's always going to be some level of compromise over adding new things to league and balancing that with game clarity there's always some price to pay when you add something new but for most fans they don't really seem to care much when riders go back and improve on old skins or old champion base models riot isn't actually making any money off this creating new skins creates new sales going back and improving the visual clarity on old skins isn't going to be as exciting basically what these rioters are doing is they're fixing the old roads that already exist and are broken repaving them and making them more modernized but this type of work just isn't as exciting as building something new from scratch if you look at other games like dota or overwatch these games have some pretty bad clarity and they often don't get solved unless they're major issues because there's very little hype or monetary incentive to do so so if you've learned anything from this video please don't flame the rioters working on the game when it comes to issues with league of legends skepticism and criticism are healthy when it comes to improving things but doxing these people on social media is just one of the worst things that you could possibly be doing in order to encourage transparency between us and ride games this is riot beardilox he is one of the vfx leads on the league of legends skins team his twitter account is constantly being bombarded with requests to players to update and improve the vfx on their favorite skins and champions the rioters that actually go ahead and fix vfx issues in the game are often doing it during their time off they're not always being paid and they're often doing it as a passion project so when beardy locks took time during his week off to fix mordekaiser's vfx one of the buggiest characters in the entire game did the people on twitter all unanimously thank him for his amazing work on the champion no instead they were spamming him with [ __ ] like fix my champion now or do this champion but what about this guy or this thing although it would be nice to have every single champion receive the same amount of attention the fact is is that certain champions just have significantly lower play rates than others and if you're a developer looking to fix major issues in your game you're probably going to be focused more on the popular champions so when a writer takes the time to actually address an issue on a niche champion don't flame them don't spam them don't harass them about how [ __ ] they are at their job or how bad of a company riot games is just go there and say thank you thank you for the work that you do to improve our game thank you to the writers who make our game look beautiful thank you guys very much for watching this video you can check out more of my content at youtube.comhua if you want to watch more of my videos you can hit the notification button to see when new videos are up you can also partake in my community polls to be able to see what new topics i'm going to be talking about in the future you can follow me on discord and twitter as well for more updates like share and subscribe and that's it bye

Channel: DongHuaP

Views: 538,955

Keywords: league of legends, dong huap, Skins, lcs highlights, documentary, lol skins spotlights, league of legends pro guides, league of legends skins, p2w skins league of legends, best skins in league of legends, best skins lol, league of legends pay to win skins, league of legends upcoming skins, visual clarity league of legends, League of Legends montage, Pentakill, Skin spotlights

Id: KD21ZfK_sMY

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Thu May 27 2021