Experts say gaming will be the first real use case for blockchain, revamping the industry and making games more immersive than ever. How gaming navigates the remaining hurdles will become a case study for other industries considering mass blockchain adoption. Topic: Does buying a bad skin for a low popularity champion, even if not worth the money, have any impact on that champion receiving future content? Category: Introduction:
Buying skins is a popular way to show support for your favorite champion. However, some skins are worth more than others, and it’s possible that buying a skin with less popularity will not have an impact on the future content of that champion.
So, I suppose I’m at a loss on where to begin.
The main choice I’m attempting to make here is whether it’s worth it to spend money on a terrible skin for a champion in the hopes that Riot would see it as lucrative and release more stuff for them.
Here’s the situation. My name is Kalista, and I’m a Kalista OTP.
Kalista debuted on November 20th, 2014, with her most popular skin, Blood Moon, according to what I’ve gathered from the Kalista community. This skin was released for 975 RP and is still her favorite. Championship Kalista was launched a little less than a year later, at 975 RP, and with her overall strong influence over worlds that year, it seems logical that she was awarded the Champ skin. Despite Riot’s best attempts to offer Bang a Sivir skin rather than a Kalista skin that season due to her popularity, Kalista received her second skin the next year, on August 18th, 2016, for 975 RP. Now, I can’t recall the source, but I seem to recall Riot saying that worlds skins don’t interfere with the champion’s normal skin roadmap (if anybody has the reference, please send it to me), implying that it had been a little over 6 years and 2,234 days since she had received a planned skin. Even without it, the period between her most recent skin, SKT, and her most recent skin, SKT, was a little more than 4 years, or 1,597 days.
I’ll be referring to this article often, so I’ll simply leave this here:
https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/state-of-skins-and-events/
I’d want to bring out all of the inconsistencies between what occurred to other champions vs Kalista, as well as how frequently we as a community seem to be overlooked.
I’m fairly active on the Kalista Mains discord server, and although we don’t represent the sentiments of every Kalista main out there, I believe we represent a sizable enough portion of the more dedicated Kalista mains that I’ll refer to us as such. I’m just speaking for myself here, but I think the most of them would agree with the majority of this article.
Marauder Kalista is despised by the vast majority of us. For many of us, it seemed like Riot released this filler remake of an old 750 RP skin line (although I loved the old Warden and Marauder skins, they were amazing for the low price) for less popular or niche champions simply so they could claim they hadn’t gone xxx+ days without a skin. So they gently clean up those old looks and try to pass them off as 1350 RP level skins, with the hopes of removing all those champions who had been without a skin for a long time off the list. While this was certainly a smack in the face, some of the events that have occurred after the skin’s release have been much worse.
Here’s a quick rundown of a handful of the things that occurred following that.
In the PBE subreddit, there was a post asking for comments on the skin.
Many of the comments went unnoticed, which was disappointing. We were disappointed that, after more than six years, her sole non-worlds, non-975 RP skin would be so close in color scheme to her launch skin, which many Kalista fans still consider to be superior than Marauder Kalista. The loudness of her auto attack noises compared to the rend sounds was a source of contention. While it’s probably not important to most people, distinguishing the rend from the auto has some mechanical intricacies that aren’t easily understood by someone who doesn’t play the champion on a regular basis or to a higher level of skill, so failing to respond to something that has an impact on gameplay felt like an oversight. However, I believe the comment on the chomas was the most significant. Many of us were prepared to ignore the fact that the skin itself didn’t seem like it was worth 1350RP in exchange for some good color choices. Riot, for whatever reason, refuses to listen to our complaints about the chromas. Marauder Kalista’s basic color is red, but the chromas transform her whole model into various, usually monochromatic hues. Her model sits with the chroma-colored spear in her hand, but when she throws it, the spear returns to its original base red hue. It seems to be a disaster. And there was a lot of pushback in response to this allegation. “Chroma projectiles do not alter for everyone.” Yes, but some do, and it looks terrible if they don’t in this instance since it’s so inconsistent. “They probably couldn’t code them to be various colors,” says the narrator. “They probably couldn’t code them to be other hues.” “They wanted readability, and if they altered the spear color, no one would be able to identify that they were her spears,” says the designer. If this were the case, there would be no chromas for other champions that changed their hue significantly, or even skins that varied projectiles. They’d alter the color of the Zed model in Withered Rose Syndra’s recall, but not the most crucial component of Kalista’s kit?
Despite our best efforts, any comments we made were deleted from the main League subreddit, and any replies we received on the PBE feedback thread seemed like an attempt to redirect our dissatisfaction to a place where no one would listen.
Since this has all occurred, here is a short list of things that come to mind that make us feel quite overlooked in all of this.
They altered the size of Yuubee’s eyebrows because the community was dissatisfied with it, despite the fact that it had no effect on the gameplay.
Senna players complained that the weapons didn’t change colors fast enough with the chromas, so Riot changed them all.
J4’s walls have been changed to match each chroma, and Dawnbringer Vex’s chromas have been adjusted to make the colors blend more smoothly overall, according to the patch notes from 10/6/2021.
It just seems so insulting to have every complaint we had directed at an already hated skin, one we were simply trying to save, disregarded while other champions appeared to receive the modifications they deserved with ease.
This section is unrelated to the skin problem, but it does discuss how Kalista seems to be an abandoned champion, so skip it if you’re not interested in the backstory or gameplay flaws.
She had no visible role in the almost year-long narrative arc in which her uncle was the main character. Despite the fact that the majority of the narrative revolved on Viego’s origin story, Kalista was referenced just briefly in promotional material describing his relationship to other Shadow Isles Champions and side characters.
https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blt731acb42bb3d1659/blt29e3cb27f15c2631/607f6a8aea92433fc5138359/roots-of-ruin-big-en.jpg
Even now, I see individuals who are unaware of Kalista’s connection to Viego, much alone the other minor aspects of their history.
Despite the fact that Kalista was the cause of Isolde’s death and that she set out to locate the Blessed Isles for Viego, none of the tales published addressed any of this. But it’s not like it was retconned, as the article above proves. So, why did she seem to be forgotten?
During the occasion, a short tale was written for her, and she was referenced in a few brief lines towards the conclusion, although the piece wasn’t actually about her.
https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en US/story/in-sight-of-land/
The comics published clearly contradict Kalista’s mythology, claiming that Veigo discovered the Blessed Isles on his own. She is also a leader in his army and the reason Isolde was poisoned, so why are there just generic placeholder characters in all of the paintings depicting the assault, when it would have taken little effort to add Kalista instead?
https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en US/comic/sentinelsoflight
She isn’t seen in any of the Ruined King game’s advertising materials, but Braum is a playable character? Someone from the other side of the continent? Granted, not all of the information about this is public, so there may be some mythology that clarifies everything, but for now, it seems like she should be included in places where she hasn’t been. Kalista had some ghost nerfs done to her rend ratios during the last year, and the amount of time it took us to figure out all the statistics and the stress we went through before we found out why our rends weren’t killing when they should was far too high. If a champion like Yasuo or Lux had comparable problems, I believe the player base for such champions wouldn’t have to undertake all of their own research to convince Riot that anything was wrong; instead, it would simply be investigated.
For years, she’s had a glitch where if she’s struck with any kind of strong crowd control, her next auto attack just vanishes. She has a glitch where if you auto anything just as it’s about to die, she will stay still and you won’t be able to auto anything until you physically move her.
Blood Moon is the only skin she has that consistently plays the audio for her rend animation. Every other skin, including her basic skin, disables audio.
Pierce, her Q, is supposed to draw all spears to the next target, however this only happens with the first one. Anything they transfer to after the initial target is only given one spear. We think Riot purposefully included this flaw in the game, which is OK, but her kit description should definitely be reworded. The amount of individuals that inquire about a particular issue in the Kalista mains discord is depressing, and it’s even more depressing when we have to inform them it’s been in the game for years. They claim they’re going to submit a ticket or a bug report, and the members all laugh since this has never worked before, so why bother?
Sentinel, her W, doesn’t always go where it’s supposed to. There are a slew of additional issues she still has that have been overlooked or partially addressed by proxy, such as a glitch with Phantom Dancer before and after the item redesign.
We attempt to document every issue we discover, but it’s difficult when her passive seems like it’s written in spaghetti code.
Back to the skin’s primary problem.
Riot stated in the above post how they evaluate a champion’s sale rate vs. play rate vs. popularity, among other factors, to decide if a champion is worth considering for a new skin. They particularly mention Dunkmaster Ivern’s success, and how they question whether the players were so “hungry for content” that they were ready to purchase anything Riot had to give. I believe this is a scenario extremely similar to what Kalista mains experienced with Marauder Kalista. Many, but not all, of the Kalista gamers I know are dissatisfied with this skin. It seemed like filler material designed to say things like “haha, you guys got a skin, now we don’t have to offer you guys anything for the next 1000 days,” or whatever period Riot is attempting to guarantee champions receive skins within. Is Riot aware of this, though? I know a lot of Kalista players who didn’t buy the skin, including myself, just to prove a point that Riot didn’t deserve the money for this incredibly underwhelming skin, but at what point does Riot just assume that people don’t care enough to buy Kalista skins when, in reality, we care so much that we won’t settle for subpar content because we want better for our champion?
Finally, I’m curious as to how much Riot pays attention to comments from other communities. What about the underdog champions who seem to have gone unnoticed? Has anybody else purchased a skin they despise simply to get Riot’s attention? Did it have an effect on you? Do they realize how many of us hate this skin and how we’ve been treated because we don’t like it? Should we simply purchase the skin so Riot makes money and considers making another, or will they assume we loved it at the time and see no need to create a better one for a while? It’s been over a year since this skin was released, and I’m still not sure what I can do to help my champion see better. It just seems so insulting to me when they release four Zyra skins in a year or five Yasuo skins in two. Please believe me when I say that Kalista is not a popular champion. I understand that they will earn very little money off of us as a group, but couldn’t they do better after four or six years, depending on what you deem appropriate? I believe that many of us would be quite happy with receiving one very good skin and not seeing another for years, rather than being bombarded with low-effort material every now and then simply to keep their promise that they are creating content for everyone.
I dunno, it all aches and I’m weary as a Kalista main.
TLDR; Will Riot’s choice on whether or not to release material for Marauder Kalista be influenced by whether or not she is purchased, or is the Kalista fanbase so tiny that it doesn’t matter?
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