when that part of the video came up I said to myself "she was the first champion with an on release legendary? what about seraphine" although true, seraphine's is just three legendaries in a trench coat at ultimate pricing. you could even go as far as to say it's a legendary and two chromas.
Well all you have to do is put an arbitrary time limit on when you can buy it, make it exclusive and pander to whales with nothing else to spend their money on. I have seen waaaaaaaay too many people with the jinx gacha skin, I really figured it might be a rare one, but it shows up nearly every game I have a jinx now and often players rag on the jinx for being an idiot and buying in.
@@hrodvithit The funny thing is its manufactured scarcity which is why they are so expensive. To produce people to get the rare skin. But so many people are pumping $250 in so its not even rare.
The only thing Legendary about new skins anymore is the voice change at this point. They might as well be 1350 tier skins, but even then the 2015-2020 1350 skins are better than what we're getting now from Riot visual and sound effect wise.
We called it when the Ahri skin came out. Riot is limit testing. Idiots still bought it, so they will keep trying to add more FOMO tiers. I pity the fools. They spend all that money on a dying game. In 5 years, when this ship finally sinks, their investment is turned into dust.
This is the inevitable fate of publically traded companies. Being profitable isnt enough. Profits must GROW quarter to quarter. Increasing quality can bring in new sales, but you will hit diminishing returns. After that... enshitification in the name of profit is the inevitable choice. No amount of outrage will bring the old riot back. Things will only get greedier from here.
sad, makes me wanna stick with smaller games from indie devs like i've been doing lately more for you mooney and with reasonably worth for your time and money
Yeah I was actually surprised when they decided to give so many skins for free. They should have made passes and sales like 10 years ago instead of giving so much free skins. Now there's no comming back.
@@moresah it's just brutal being cut off from rewards like that, now it's super duper incremental and close to NOTHING at all from playing, only source of ANYTHING is from the battlepass. IT really feels horrid
Current Riot CEO started almost 2 years ago which lines with 2025 monetization changes. The CEO was a finance bro from Goldman, which makes perfect sense as to why skins are becoming worse.
Yeah behind the scenes I can only imagine what’s going on. there’s def people who want to make good stuff at riot but their hands are being forced to do things they may not personally agree with morally.
This is how I saw the skin tiers before they introduced the two new ones: 750 skins: Base model change 975 skins: Base model change + New particles on some abilities + New sound effects (sometimes) + Recall animation (sometimes) 1350 skins: Base model change + New particles on all abilities + New sound effects + Recall animation + voice filter (sometimes) 1850 skins: New Model + New particles on all abilities + New sound effects + New animations + different voice lines 3250 skins: Multiple Models for the skin, each comes with unique particles, sound effects, and voice lines + animated background + unique particle effects for killing a unit
After Riot got the idea of escamted skins, way before SF samira's skin, they decided they were going down this path: 1350 skins: Base model change + New particles on all abilities + New sound effects + Recall animation + voice filter (most likely remaining only to older skins) 1850 skins: New Model + New particles on all abilities + New sound effects + different voice lines 3250 skins: New Model, sound effects, and voice lines + animated background 32K skins: 3 new "models"(base skin + chroma +prestige) + new VFX and SFX + new voicelines + animated background 64K skins(skin?): 2 new models(1 being a separate skin) + new VFX and SFX + new voicelines + animated background + evolution mechanic to slightly alter the "expensive" version of the skin + Signature of pro player on the "expensive" version that appears when destroying towers TLDR: they robbed some of the features of legendaries to make the escamted tier more appealing, and while the transcamdant actually look really good, they aren't worth the price
@@raulbrenes778 What’s crazy to me is that they were just starting to create legendary skins with more features than expected. Project Ashe puts on her mask depending on where she is on the map Project renekton has a ctrl + 5 toggle Winter blessed Diana has a pentakill map change animation Winter blessed Senna changes her model temporary when she ults Cosmic and Dark Cosmic Lux puts a filter on your death screen if you die by her ultimate Dark Star thresh lantern changes depending on stacks Psy ops Sona changes her model on lvl 6 And so on
Let me clarify that 975 RP skins always had a new model, new particles and a recall. The animations were the same and the recall wasn't the greatest thing ever but it was there. Even the new skins of the new BP are of worse quality since they don't even have a recall.
There are exceptions to the 1350 tier that are almost legendary. Surprise Party Fiddlesticks is pretty much a legendary skin but cheaper. Zombie Nunu, Zombie Brand, or the Praetorian skins which replace all spoken voice with zombie grunts or robotic chatter respectively. Cyber Pop Zoe is a release skin featuring a new voiceover that is almost all unique, making it pretty much the same tier as the Ambessa skin. There might be more examples that I'm not aware of. One thing I'm certain of is that they will never make a legendary-like 1350 RP skin ever again.
the trajectory of winterblessed diana > mythmaker irelia > soul fighter samira is so sad, it seemed like legendaries were actually going up in value, but now it's like they were just testing features to add to 'ultimate' and exalted skins
@@chadam88I think he meant that Winterblessed Diana was the peak of quality in legendary skins, and then from there they started getting worse/lazy in the quality
@@chadam88 theyre saying that legendary skins peaked at the end of 2022 with diana/pyke. 2023 legendaries were all pretty good except for soraka/riven, but they were a step down in quality from diana/pyke.
man I love your videos. Makes me appreciate a lot of the work animators put into some champions. Sad seeing Riot cares less and less everytime about their quality standards, just like they did with game modes when they realized they weren't making a huge profit
I checked Ambessa and she does have facial rigging. She closes her eyes and opens her mouth when laughing. But they didn't bother to animate her sometimes (she has a neutral expression when stunned lol). As a side note, the newer stunned and knocked up animations look lower quality for some reason. They look "blocky" (I'm not an animator, I don't know how to describe them).
Animation quality drop has been bothering me for some time now and you’re right about portions of it looking off. Example that bothers me the most is probably Aatrox latest legendary skin’s dance loop because his feet aren’t even anchored properly to the ground so they awkwardly jitter around.
I'm guessing it might have to do with performance issues of the client, they are probably cutting down on a bunch of features to make room for other stuff. Most players already struggle with constant bugs, lag or regular full disconnects. Not saying this is the definite reason for this as opposed to simply underpaying animators (which is just as likely or both these things are true).. Personally I have a lot of gripes with how Riot is handling the artistic aspects of the game.
I did not make it clear, but CoTW Ambessa does have a unique voiceover. I mean, just like AS Viktor, it's nothing impressive... but they do have a unique voiceover. Yeah
I stoped carring about Epic, Ultimate, Legendary when they added Chets, i remember starting to play league from High School, that was around 2014-15, there was no chets, all i had was a Reedem skin code for Alistar and Tristana lol, and whenever there was peoples with skin it would be awesome, cause you KNOW they brought it because they WANTED not because they got it. So it was more easier to see what peoples enjoy to buy rather than now, when everyone got all the skins, even if they didn't wanted/ Example,i'm alistar main and i only got Ali skins, which mean i would not had skins on other champs, but if i would play Alistar peoples could see i like him and i brought the skins i liked for him. Anyway Legendary , ultimate, epc, bla are usless sience chests were relased. I miss to pop on league, and in loadin to be like "Dayum that's so ugly skin why this person paid for it" lol. But now you can't assume anymore if someone brought the skin or got it from chests. 😭
What a pretty sad season to play league 😂. I mean even the exalted pity should be capped at 40 instead of 80. That way more player can access the skin. But hey...RIOT has become much greedier after Ahri's Transcendant skin LMAO.
As customers, the only "voting" power we possess over big corporations is our wallet: as long as there are people willing to pay a premium price for sub-par products, Riot Games will continue to undermine lower tiers in order to reduce the effort for the same amount of money paid, and simply move the "added features" to the higher tier for higher price. I've stopped playing League seriously years ago, and I always hated buying skins, unless something really caught my eye as an outlier in the scheme: remember that the exception confirms the rule, so if the exception is being good quality, the rule is mediocre at best. Be emotionally mature and stop falling for the FOMO, stop caring about digital products unless you value them dearly or they are of exceptional quality...it's the only way we can hold the company accountable for their bad work ethic, sub-par products and greedy schemes. Sadly, people simply don't care. Sad times indeed to be a League player, and I'm happy I stopped taking this game seriously; as for the company behind it, in my eyes, they lost all my trust. Addendum 1: to be fair, if you look at newer games with skin system, like Marvel Rivals, you see an abyss in quality and model animation from skins to other "tier"; this means that for the same price or even lower (10$-20$) you obtain better features than what Riot is putting in their product. They have vision, they are fun and a breath of fresh air for the characters. League is old, has a dated engine and don't get me started on the client and the server issues. Be mature, and stop playing garbage out of nostalgia. The game we grew up with and loved has slowly "died" over the years; now it's something else entirely.
It's not *actually* the same but it is extremely similar, given that Shyvana's rework got cancelled around the same time I wonder if it was meant to be Shyvana's reworked animation and got reused for Ambessa.
@@o3ohno123It absolutely can, they reuse a ton of animations from the base skin. She literally reloads her guns despite her line that the best part about magical guns is that no reloading is needed.
Samira's ultimate looks like a slightly rushed legendary, the new legendaries just look like glorified epics, and even calling them glorified is being a bit too nice lol
I hope your channel blows up, man. I used to be such a huge Riot fanboy - I even wanted to work for them as a 3D artist - and now I'm just glad I was simply too early to make that mistake. Riot ain't what it used to be.
My dream job was to be an artist or writer for Riot. I still have some art pieces I made for my portfolio--if the company didn't change, I would have applied for an internship last summer. ...yeah, kind of glad I didn't go to art school and listened to my mom about getting a different degree.
I never really comment on youtube but your videos are amazing. Love how you focus on such details. The community needs a voice like this right now. Keep up the good work
They basically dragged every skin tier down in quality. Exalted are the new ultimate (and even that is being generous), ultimate are the new legendary, and legendary are the base skins with little glow ups if they feel like it. Don't even get me started with the new quality of base skins. "here you go! these are free with the battle pass!" and they are glorified chroma garbage with not even unique recalls. It's been YEARS since we've had skins of this low quality, even the honored skins (which you also got for free just from being a normal player) has more freaking soul put into it. It just baffles me how they are sinking so hard into skins when they don't even care about the quality of the damn things. Where did the passion and artistry go???
inevitable destination for any public company, once the quarterly profits start to diminish, the enshitification process starts. i'd say the only thing keeping league going after 5-10 years is the inertia its built up. its already going the ea route of horrendous mtx in everything and even gambling
@@klyxes it was not, even with all memes about league dying it was crescent until 2023 with a little down in players but was pretty away from being dead, but from all shits in lately dead game gonna be truth in no time
@@klyxes I mean they had it kinda right until 2023, they where not in decline but started making everything to see people droping last time they had something going on for good was last Anima event last year but they did not wanted to trive it seens
"Ultimate" Samira even used animations from the base rig, and its voiceover is shorter than base Samira even while cluttered with skinline-specific interactions. It has no novelty, which is the key feature of an ultimate skin which was supposed to be the takeaway from Miss Fortune's ultimate To give props to Mythmaker Jhin, his gun is a fully-animated dragon that flies around when he reloads, and the voiceover is delightful compared to Dark Cosmic.
20 minutes of unique voice lines. I love that. The reload animation is definitely the highlight of the skin. Sad the other stuff is so basic, as pointed out in the video. Might have to wait for a sale in the future.
the drop in quality didn started now, but now people are noticing, you can see the drop in quality back there on Miss Fortune GG , High Noon Leona, or even Ahri rework that gived the legendary skin animations to the other skins and they never bothered to fix the legendary skin tails like they did with the other ones, you can see the drop in quality way way way back in morgana rework where they remove lots of effects from the blackthorn skin and others of her skins, or even the aniversary skin, annie skin was Legendary tier but sivir? the champion with less effects and particles get the aniversary because they didnt wanted to put work on a free skin anymore.
Sorry but I’m calling bs on a lot of this. GGMF is an underrated skin. It’s not as dazzling and unique as its predecessor ultimates, but riot lowered the cost for GGMF specifically knowing that (should’ve done it for samira honestly). High Noon Leona is also a very well done skin. It hits all the bases. All of her animations are unique, the model is honestly one of the most beautiful in the game, the vfx are great. How is ahri’s rework drastically improving her base animations a downgrade in quality? Thats a blatant upgrade. And I will side with SG ahri’s tail textures not being updated. I think it looks great as it is, I much prefer it to the stark lack of textures on her modern tails.
I think it started back in the days of Shadow Isles season. I got the Sentinel Vayne (a legendary skin) from a chest a few days after it had been released. It hit me how little features it got compared to other legendary skins, say Ashe's High Noon or Xayah's SG.
@ leona high noon W animation is the same as base and has way way less VA is way inferior than Sun/Moon leona, and i said they give ahri legendary skin animations to the other ones and never improved the legendary skins, ahri legendary skins still have the buggy tails, if you are ok with that its you but is lame that they fixed every skin tails and never the legendary ones, do you really think is a upgrade giving ahri cheap skins the legendary animations and not giving the legendary anything new? not even fixing that damn tails? im calling bs on what you said
@ You argue Ahri’s legendary skins as if they started doing that with her. With your argument, you should say the downgrade in quality started with Caitlyn’s ASU, where they touched nothing. Less voice lines argument goes farther back than high noon Leona. That started with viego when they announced they were cutting back.
I really REALLY like the way you made this video. I don't have the language for it, but i enjoyed the text format and the sound effects, the whole thing felt very cozy, which is a first for a league video. Subbed :D
Remember when Riot's first excuse (with Mythmaker Irelia) was that her animations weren't jank / still good enough to warrant reusing them? Remember Solar Eclipse Sivir?
For some reason, the reason why Sivir doesnt have extra unique animations such as one where she catches her Q, is because the person who directed the skin, a Sivir main, wanted to basically get the same feel as base. Which completely ruins the entire point of a legendary skin in the first place.
@@bulletcola7890 Idk about everyone else, but I loved the Exlipse sivir skin. It's gorgeous, the effects r nice, and it gives a nostalgia on old legendary skins
project pyke and high noon senna also share a lot of animations with their base skins, but the video was on point. i always loved seeing new legendary skins releases because it was fun to see how riot could reinvent champions. these last few ones have been disappointing :/
Thank you for the video. It was informative and showed me all the other ways Riot is lowering the quality of their cosmetics. I did not know that Ambessa had a legendary skin or that it was mostly recycled. I didnt notice that many of Riot's recently released skins are starting to recycle more and more. I dont play Jhin, but it was interesting to learn his animations from his legendary skin were unique. I really liked that they put that effort. It makes it all the more disheartening to see the downgrade. Your video format has been both entertaining and does an excellent job showcasing Riot's lack of quality and raises the awareness of the average consumer like myself who wouldnt notice the lower quality differences. Thank you again for your video.
This guy deserves more recognition or just work for riot entirely. Anyway, your way of showing stuff is just the best, only big youtubers with big channels are somewhat better. For just starting making stuff you got a good quality content, keep up the good work! I just have some advice to share with you as a viewer. - Some of the cuts of your videos are too long to keep up with this generation attention span -You could do some quick paced skin reviews for animation, SFX and overall looks of the model, also keeping up with the format. -time stamps would be very much welcome for longer videos if you plan to make some in the future
As a ((no this generation)) viewer I love this edit format and I really appreciate it, and I’m sure a lot of us too being veterans we can understand better how much quality Riot gave us in the past. Nowadays younglings want everything as fast as possible, you could see 30 frames changing in 3 seconds and it’s super exhausting for the eye (plus the sound effects) This kind of video even has soothing music and you can get mad at Riot but in a surprisingly calming way 🥺
The worst part is that the exalted tier has less love put into it than older legendary skins too. Like, they look like legendary skins that you can change the chroma of in game. Legendaries have also been going down, but mostly because they decided that every patch needs a legendary skin now. So instead of them being an uncommon occurrence that pulls a story together, like Star Guardian Jinx, they just follow the set piece and have a few new lines
This might be very poor timing, but some of my buddies and I were discussing League and this exact issue, and what you get for the skins you buy. And just for fun, we decided to poke around at what other Mobas are doing, and you know what we found? You remember smite? The third person moba based on gods? I never really got into it as third person was never really my style, but we went to a youtube page that was basically their skin spotlights and started scrolling. We started watching some videos and realized that not only did a *lot* of skins have the standard unique look and particle effects, a *majority* of them had a full suit of fully custom voices, animations, and rigs. There was a Cthulu skin where the skin had skin forms with four different voices, and it's old news over there. There are pool noodles and crab rave skins that had full voices and unique rigs. Some characters had chibi skins that completely changed their proportions and were still made to work. And that Cthulu skin I mentioned? Hardly over 40$ in it's time, if you didn't earn it from the event. 40$ for triple the content you'd get out of the 250$ Jinx skin, or god forbid the Ahri one. It's not enough for us to play smite, but we were astonished.
For the past two years or so Riot's been squeezing this game dry, seeing how little effort they can turn into a maximum amount of cash. The execs are probably very happy with themselves right now, but this is not sustainable. People get tired, people get disillusioned, people stop spending and people quit. If Riot doesn't turn ship, in 5 years League will be where Overwatch is now.
I think that’s the plan : milking the cow until it’s dry, then move on. Nobody from the original dev team is still here today, today’s devs don’t give 2 shits about league, they want to make their own games at Riot, and league players’ money is the mean to their end. Once they see League doesn’t even earn enough money to pay for the servers, they’ll close the game.
sad to see the route that riot has chosen. although part of me still chooses to believe that tencent is forcing them into this, I wouldn't be surprised if they began this themselves
@gerdsverer721 also the new ceo of riot came from the financial departament... Tencent is not forcing anything at this point, Riot just are eager and eager to proft like the game is really going to the end road
Sad to see the game I’ve loved for years take some meaningful steps into the grave. Amazing video though, love this editing with the music and text noises.
Your video format is impecable. Few things I can thank youtube for, but this recommendation was on point. Simple, cozy, and the sounds&music choice are great too. Good job.
if they're supposed to work harder to make 250$ skins worth the price, then I expect a RIOTer to deliver it home to me and to give me free foot massages for the next 10 days.
your videos are so easy to watch and not overwhelming as a new player - thank you. I've consumed lol content for years but just recently actually decided to play! This is such cool info to know, ty
I think people are beginning to understand why regulations exist. People cannot be left to their own devices else everything devolves. It's why utopian societies cannot exist. Humans don't make rational decisions. "Competition" is not enough. A new company/game could come along and be OBJECTIVELY better, cheaper, and more fun than League of Legends but it would still die, because humans are irrational. People are already addicted to LoL, sunk cost fallacy, people spent too many hours, too much money, are too loyal, etc... Regulations are the only thing that can save us from ourselves. It's literally biblical. "Man cannot direct his own step."
Very good video :] though I do have to slightly disagree that it's a thing that happened since sanctum introduction, because some of the ""older legendaries"" (Project pyke , eclipse sivir, so called ultimate SF Samira, sg xayah&rakan for example) were met with same criticism, but you're still definitely right :D ((also as a personal bias i need to complain that Soul Fighter Viego doesnt have facial animations or a new wraith form in E unlike his base or epic skins and Ill forever be mad about it)
Videos like this get so many views cause it’s just so aesthetically clean. I can easily watch the whole thing. Don’t even have to be on camera or use your voice.
Okay I'm discovering your channel and I absolutely love the format ! But yeah I think they're lowering the Legendary skins quality on purpose so the exalted ones don't look too crappy (they still look horrible compared to Elementalist Lux or Spirit Blossom Ahri)
thank you for bringing this back to light. this all began with Soul Fighter Samira, and the lack of unique animations within the skin. I can't believe the league community allowed riot to have success with that launch and provide them an avenue for lackluster and unforgiving legendary+ skins.
I am so happy as a Katarina main that riot did a PHENOMINAL job on Battle Queen. That shit is sooo good. Ever since then, it's had a decline. Not a steep drop till recent, but a slow decline
Did you know though that BQ Katarina had a Ctrl+5 bug that interrupted her airborne status? Check this out, min 3:31: th-cam.com/video/0EWC_s1zg1M/w-d-xo.html
I wouldn't consider it such a recent problem and attribute it to the inclusion of the gacha system. People have been talking about this since the release of Star Guardian Xayah and Rakan, I remember. It also happened with Coven Morgana. Riot even addressed it around the time they released Project: Pyke.
@@ex_oLL It is, and they have addressed it themselves. It mostly sounds like a lazy excuse, since it was along the lines of "newer champions have really good animations already, so they don't need to be changed much for their legendaries". However Dark Cosmic Jhin is exactly a very good example of a champion with good animations (so good that Riot didn't change them much for the newest skin), yet he could get an entirely unique Legendary anyways. In any case, it's nice to see people still bringing this up, this has been one of my complaints for a very long time (SG Xayah really was a turning point on how much money I spent on League, cutting it down to almost none), but relating it to the gacha just feels deceptive and forgiving of their previous "mistakes", as if it's something that only now happens.
I totally agree! All those Dark Star Jhin animations are so damn good. Night Bringer Yasuo is also like having different animations, especially for auto attacks is sick! Sad, that for the same price is is worse quality. Also, quite cool style for video! :D Thanks for the video!
I remember hearing a long time ago that champions are designed with a bone limit in mind for their rig Ambessa's facial expressions were cut possibly as compensation for the amount of bones her weapons require within the chains, along with her silhouette focusing on her hair and weapons
Man I remember paying top dollar for Spirit Guard Udyr back in the day. Just being the one in the HD model put the fear of god into the people I played against 😂
When that one Riot dev got extremely defensive on twitter over Ambessa "not looking anything like Shyvana's animations" and having everyone point out how that seems wrong, I started to get the vibe things were going this way. I cant relate to a company who wont go all-out on their animations for paid skins - expensive ones at that. They generate many millions PER SKIN in the long run, for perspective.
Thanks so much for putting this all together. I thought I was going mad seeing the drop in animation changes for legendary skins. It's nice that they put animation work into the emotes...but realistically when you're playing the game, you don't use/see them that often. Ability animations are what change the feel and use of a champion. I remember seeing Project Vayne and her Condemn (E) made her leap into the air and thought that was insane. Sad times now esp with the introduction of Exalted skins :(
I stopped giving riot money in 2015 I think, the first year they didn't gift RP for Christmas, also they used to gift icons just by playing, not anymore! I'm glad I stopped playing when anticheat arrived. I'd be so mad of these changes if I'd still play
Arcane savior Viktor’s splash art, his vfx and sfx all look cool to me I love the skin, but seeing no unique animations during the game apart from like base recalls etc is actually sad like there so much missed potential for Viktor specifically with this skin I know some artists behind it put out a lot of love and passion into him but yeah this doesn’t translate well for a legendary :(
arcane savior viktor would've been so cool... if it didn't miss the entire point of the character and the legendary tier. Viktor's whole point is that machine (perfection) > humans, but the skin is completely humanized and it ignores the fact that in arcane viktor's body was full of metal when he got those powers. The design is honestly cool, and i get that alternative universes exist, but riot not satisfied with ignoring the character's lore they decide to not give one single legendary trait to the skin (besides his voice). I hope they bring a good legendary skin to viktor in WR bc i'm a huge viktor fan and i'd really like to have a legendary skin of respect instead of a rainbow homeless-looking man.
But the skin is from a different moment in his story, the base version is the final form, and completely forget the idea of the old Viktor, that no longer exists.
@@Forgotten_Doll no, arcane viktor did not and would never get rid of the "perfection" on his body (metal). That's not from a point on his story, that moment never happened, the only thing that actually happened was viktor entering his jesus era to create a peace cult, but not even their vision of "evolution" is the same
@@Forgotten_Doll they could've have very well created a skin accurate to the show AND the moment of his ascension as the herald of the arcane, but instead they made a completely new viktor with different ideas
Arcane Viktor (Or Vincent for short) is an afterthought for Riot, they rushed the whole second season amidst multiple layoffs, the result was this grey slop in game, still with the same past bugs, and horrible skins, which also resembles nothing of his counterpart in the show.
We should make a petition for Riot to completely undo their choice of making gacha systems in League it is outrageous the amount of money required for such, especially if you factor that in different currencies, such as mine for example, something that goes for 250 dollars actually goes for 1500 bucks. There's no way I'm going to spend that much money on a skin, but eventually skins from champions we all love will be held hostage by this system, one by one. And maybe you don't care right now, but eventually all your neighbours will be gone and only you will remain, and who will care for you then? I don't know how we could do this, but I really think we should try.
I agree on everything in this video except one thing. there is no way that a skin can be worth 250$ let alone 500$ for the Ahri one like, stick your head out of the "skin economy" and see it in relation to entire games. for 70$ you get Persona 3 Reload, for 60 Persona 5 Royal. Both games with 100+h of gametime each, well written stories, good graphics and diverse characters. those "high class" items in league are just greedy cashgrabs and should never be something acceptable
Although I agree completely with everything, I'm mostly gonna mention how much your video has a "feelgood" feeling. It's just cool to watch. Loved it. Thank you !
I definitely hope this is not the future of league I love this game so much even with all the toxicity But this new direction that they are going spell doom to their game For now I just going to go back playing Dota 2 At least you don't have to spend 6 years to get all the hero there
Thank you for clarifying what has been happening regarding Riot Games' greed. To complement your video, I’d say this drop in quality has been going on for a while now (I was really disappointed with Soraka’s second legendary skin, which just recycled the models from the first one). If I had to guess, I’d say it started shortly after Tencent gained total control of the company, likely when Riot began dealing with a lot of money. I would say the initial decline began in 2017, when they "updated" old splash arts into NASTY chinese splash arts, and them, the real wave of shady practices began around mid-2019. Where money comes in, love (in this case, genuine love for the art and the game) dies, hehe. As far as I’m concerned, may the game rest in peace, because the company doesn’t deserve another cent from its loyal audience.
welp, looks like league its the riot boost for another projects so stuff like 2xko, arcane, the mmo and hytale could do their own thing at a normal pace, the price for the good things to come i guess
The funny thing is that skins that only changed voice lines but didn't touch much on the animations were some times part of Epic tier or lower, and most of the time they were also a champion's release skin - like Sand Wraith Pyke, recontextualizing water with sand while also adding actually NEW voice lines.
Ruining your game since season 5! This is not to say season 5 was bad, I loved season 5, but they reworked minion aggro and it's still broken 10 years later
I'm a veteran at this point, playing league since season 2, and I remember way back in the day, when League's department at Riot used to have a soul, they set out to fix their pricing. In the forgotten days, most skins were just recolors, and as the game evolved they were able to invest more money into the art department. This lead to a situation where you had basic recolors costing as much as skins that gave you a different model, animations, sfx and vfx. So, Riot made a post about this issue and reorganized their prices, with very clear definitions of what each skin tier entails and why they cost more than the tier below. 425RP were recolors, 975RP you get a proper skin with the same effects and voices, and as you go up you get newer animations, sfx and visuals. And as the skin department got crazier with their designs we started to see 975RP skins with new vfx, sorta like a skin deflation. This eventually led to the creation of the chromas, since it didn't make sense to have recolors as stand alone skins anymore. I used to respect Riot because of that. It was a fair system: the game is free, you give us how much money you want, you get the skin you want. Each tier will meet the base requirements but we can go above and beyond sometimes. They ironed out the flaws in the system, like runes, and while I was skeptical about the chests at first (and not entirely wrong after all), I remember being somewhat relieved when I saw how Riot was just giving out those chests for free and how at the end of the day players got more IP than before (and now even free skins). For all you could say about league's community, the game itself, at least the monetization side was a model system. Now Riot became everything I would praise them not to be, and honestly, it kinda stings a little. Even if I only play occasionally, it's so sad to see a company that used to be about respecting players to turn to the worst possible practices in the industry (and it's not even as if they NEED that to survive, LoL is extremely profitable as it is). Though, to be fair, it's not like all is lost. When you look at LoR and other side projects, even Arcane, it's clear Riot's soul is still in there, and there are veterans or at least people who carry their vision within the company. But unfortunately whoever owns the project decided that League must be milked dry.
@Bilbo122333 as someone who works in this industry i have the obligation to say that the past year and a half of layoffs in the game development industry is one of the worse we've seen. Its understandable that folks outside of it dont see the issue as the companies doing this play down the severity of what they are doing to their own industry. I have friends who are out of work with no benefits as the companies that laid them off replace them with ai or force their work onto smaller teams with no increase in salary or benefits, this is called job creep. I highly, highly encourage you to look into the issue yourself and see what is happening. Thousands upon thousands of people who make the games you love are struggling without work while the folks at the top get richer while feeding you with lower quality product. Don't fall to easy slop that some of these companies offer and support artists, programmers and designers by standing up for them! In addition it is very difficult to get a job because with these layoffs no one is hiring below senior level positions which spells for bad news for the future of our industry.
@@Bilbo122333 we're seeing the quality drop in real time because riot laid off a fuckton of employees, and we KNOW that some of the ones that were laid off made some of their best most popular cosmetics, we have those examples, stop coping
@Bilbo122333 As someone who works in this industry the layoffs have been incredibly disheartening and terrifying. The past year and a half have been some of the worst we've ever seen. Thousands upon thousands of the the artists, developers, and programmers that make the games that you love are struggling to make ends meet because of greedy upper management that are replacing us with ai and by implementing job creep practices at unsustainable levels. In addition it is very hard to get jobs back or to get a job in the industry as a new person because there are so few new jobs, and the only positions out there are senior level positions or unpaid internships. This makes our industry unsustainable and consumers will continue to be given lower quality product at higher prices. If you care for the games you enjoy, stand up for he creative that make them and reject corporate greed.
Every legendary this year I’ve had the same reaction of “wait, THATS a legendary skin?!” Almost all of them look like mediocre 1320rps, really sad to see the direction Riot has gone
Damn what a unique and visually interesting way to showcase League stuff. Subbed!
I don't even know what to say... thank you, Mr Dumbs
@ex_oLL finally someone who realizes this, thanks, I thought I was the only one and didn't know how to say it publicly
Its like 90s games style. I got it while seeing legendary viego swinging like Street Fighters
@@T1internacionalfanaint no way 😂 nice profile pic brother
ofc i would be recommended this amazing video when its commented by the youtuber i was already subbed too haha
I didnt even know ambessa has a legendary skin until i watched this video and my friend plays with this skin and i still didnt realise.
when that part of the video came up I said to myself "she was the first champion with an on release legendary? what about seraphine" although true, seraphine's is just three legendaries in a trench coat at ultimate pricing. you could even go as far as to say it's a legendary and two chromas.
@@DoopIiss chromas don't change voiceover or ability vfx. So no, Seraphine is just bundle of 3 legendary skins together
got ambessa skin from the chest for free...
it isn't even worth 525 rp
@@o3ohno123 tried it with skinchanger. Zak base "piss" chroma looks better
Yeah the Seraphine legendary are awesome quality. The little quest storyline that comes with them is cute too @@kruange3761
its even crazier too when you consider the 250 dollar skins are just the legendary skins but an additional 230 dollars more expensive
Well all you have to do is put an arbitrary time limit on when you can buy it, make it exclusive and pander to whales with nothing else to spend their money on. I have seen waaaaaaaay too many people with the jinx gacha skin, I really figured it might be a rare one, but it shows up nearly every game I have a jinx now and often players rag on the jinx for being an idiot and buying in.
@@hrodvithit The funny thing is its manufactured scarcity which is why they are so expensive. To produce people to get the rare skin. But so many people are pumping $250 in so its not even rare.
The only thing Legendary about new skins anymore is the voice change at this point. They might as well be 1350 tier skins, but even then the 2015-2020 1350 skins are better than what we're getting now from Riot visual and sound effect wise.
We called it when the Ahri skin came out. Riot is limit testing. Idiots still bought it, so they will keep trying to add more FOMO tiers. I pity the fools. They spend all that money on a dying game. In 5 years, when this ship finally sinks, their investment is turned into dust.
First time viewer ur videos are so comfy and well made. Keep it up, it's super CUTE!
This is the inevitable fate of publically traded companies.
Being profitable isnt enough. Profits must GROW quarter to quarter.
Increasing quality can bring in new sales, but you will hit diminishing returns. After that... enshitification in the name of profit is the inevitable choice.
No amount of outrage will bring the old riot back. Things will only get greedier from here.
sad, makes me wanna stick with smaller games from indie devs like i've been doing lately
more for you mooney and with reasonably worth for your time and money
Yeah I was actually surprised when they decided to give so many skins for free. They should have made passes and sales like 10 years ago instead of giving so much free skins. Now there's no comming back.
@@moresah it's just brutal being cut off from rewards like that, now it's super duper incremental and close to NOTHING at all from playing, only source of ANYTHING is from the battlepass. IT really feels horrid
@@deicide9514 I know. It turned out riot actually likes money. Who would have guessed :)
@@moresah corporate hyper greed strikes
Current Riot CEO started almost 2 years ago which lines with 2025 monetization changes. The CEO was a finance bro from Goldman, which makes perfect sense as to why skins are becoming worse.
Oh that completely explains everything
skin literally made on fiverr, no animator required
Yeah behind the scenes I can only imagine what’s going on. there’s def people who want to make good stuff at riot but their hands are being forced to do things they may not personally agree with morally.
He's gonna fire a fuckload of people, quit, make a shit ton of money and move to a different company and do the same
>Goldman
This is how I saw the skin tiers before they introduced the two new ones:
750 skins: Base model change
975 skins: Base model change + New particles on some abilities + New sound effects (sometimes) + Recall animation (sometimes)
1350 skins: Base model change + New particles on all abilities + New sound effects + Recall animation + voice filter (sometimes)
1850 skins: New Model + New particles on all abilities + New sound effects + New animations + different voice lines
3250 skins: Multiple Models for the skin, each comes with unique particles, sound effects, and voice lines + animated background + unique particle effects for killing a unit
After Riot got the idea of escamted skins, way before SF samira's skin, they decided they were going down this path:
1350 skins: Base model change + New particles on all abilities + New sound effects + Recall animation + voice filter (most likely remaining only to older skins)
1850 skins: New Model + New particles on all abilities + New sound effects + different voice lines
3250 skins: New Model, sound effects, and voice lines + animated background
32K skins: 3 new "models"(base skin + chroma +prestige) + new VFX and SFX + new voicelines + animated background
64K skins(skin?): 2 new models(1 being a separate skin) + new VFX and SFX + new voicelines + animated background + evolution mechanic to slightly alter the "expensive" version of the skin + Signature of pro player on the "expensive" version that appears when destroying towers
TLDR: they robbed some of the features of legendaries to make the escamted tier more appealing, and while the transcamdant actually look really good, they aren't worth the price
@@raulbrenes778 What’s crazy to me is that they were just starting to create legendary skins with more features than expected.
Project Ashe puts on her mask depending on where she is on the map
Project renekton has a ctrl + 5 toggle
Winter blessed Diana has a pentakill map change animation
Winter blessed Senna changes her model temporary when she ults
Cosmic and Dark Cosmic Lux puts a filter on your death screen if you die by her ultimate
Dark Star thresh lantern changes depending on stacks
Psy ops Sona changes her model on lvl 6
And so on
Let me clarify that 975 RP skins always had a new model, new particles and a recall. The animations were the same and the recall wasn't the greatest thing ever but it was there. Even the new skins of the new BP are of worse quality since they don't even have a recall.
There are exceptions to the 1350 tier that are almost legendary.
Surprise Party Fiddlesticks is pretty much a legendary skin but cheaper. Zombie Nunu, Zombie Brand, or the Praetorian skins which replace all spoken voice with zombie grunts or robotic chatter respectively.
Cyber Pop Zoe is a release skin featuring a new voiceover that is almost all unique, making it pretty much the same tier as the Ambessa skin. There might be more examples that I'm not aware of.
One thing I'm certain of is that they will never make a legendary-like 1350 RP skin ever again.
@@ciaacho1 and they fired a lot of the passionate people who took their time to add those features too. Definitely not seeing them again.
the trajectory of winterblessed diana > mythmaker irelia > soul fighter samira is so sad, it seemed like legendaries were actually going up in value, but now it's like they were just testing features to add to 'ultimate' and exalted skins
Sorry, but what about Winterblessed Diana? I got it in a chest and i adore that skin 😊
@@chadam88I think he meant that Winterblessed Diana was the peak of quality in legendary skins, and then from there they started getting worse/lazy in the quality
At some point ceo went « you know people could pay more for less ? » and this went downhill from there
@@chadam88Ultimate tier skin IMO, just great stuff
@@chadam88 theyre saying that legendary skins peaked at the end of 2022 with diana/pyke. 2023 legendaries were all pretty good except for soraka/riven, but they were a step down in quality from diana/pyke.
man I love your videos. Makes me appreciate a lot of the work animators put into some champions. Sad seeing Riot cares less and less everytime about their quality standards, just like they did with game modes when they realized they weren't making a huge profit
I checked Ambessa and she does have facial rigging. She closes her eyes and opens her mouth when laughing. But they didn't bother to animate her sometimes (she has a neutral expression when stunned lol).
As a side note, the newer stunned and knocked up animations look lower quality for some reason. They look "blocky" (I'm not an animator, I don't know how to describe them).
Animation quality drop has been bothering me for some time now and you’re right about portions of it looking off. Example that bothers me the most is probably Aatrox latest legendary skin’s dance loop because his feet aren’t even anchored properly to the ground so they awkwardly jitter around.
I'm guessing it might have to do with performance issues of the client, they are probably cutting down on a bunch of features to make room for other stuff. Most players already struggle with constant bugs, lag or regular full disconnects.
Not saying this is the definite reason for this as opposed to simply underpaying animators (which is just as likely or both these things are true)..
Personally I have a lot of gripes with how Riot is handling the artistic aspects of the game.
knocked up animation????
@@rubis5904 Yeah, when your champion gets knocked up in game. Volibear has a very distinct knocked up animation if you're trying to notice it :)
@@peerieks ante has very dump knock up animation
Oh well. This game became an awfull car crash that's impossible to stop looking at
I did not make it clear, but CoTW Ambessa does have a unique voiceover.
I mean, just like AS Viktor, it's nothing impressive... but they do have a unique voiceover. Yeah
I stoped carring about Epic, Ultimate, Legendary when they added Chets, i remember starting to play league from High School, that was around 2014-15, there was no chets, all i had was a Reedem skin code for Alistar and Tristana lol, and whenever there was peoples with skin it would be awesome, cause you KNOW they brought it because they WANTED not because they got it. So it was more easier to see what peoples enjoy to buy rather than now, when everyone got all the skins, even if they didn't wanted/ Example,i'm alistar main and i only got Ali skins, which mean i would not had skins on other champs, but if i would play Alistar peoples could see i like him and i brought the skins i liked for him. Anyway Legendary , ultimate, epc, bla are usless sience chests were relased. I miss to pop on league, and in loadin to be like "Dayum that's so ugly skin why this person paid for it" lol. But now you can't assume anymore if someone brought the skin or got it from chests. 😭
What a pretty sad season to play league 😂. I mean even the exalted pity should be capped at 40 instead of 80. That way more player can access the skin. But hey...RIOT has become much greedier after Ahri's Transcendant skin LMAO.
The new Jhin skin is also a charity skin… so. Doesn’t excuse the lack of quality tho
As customers, the only "voting" power we possess over big corporations is our wallet: as long as there are people willing to pay a premium price for sub-par products, Riot Games will continue to undermine lower tiers in order to reduce the effort for the same amount of money paid, and simply move the "added features" to the higher tier for higher price.
I've stopped playing League seriously years ago, and I always hated buying skins, unless something really caught my eye as an outlier in the scheme: remember that the exception confirms the rule, so if the exception is being good quality, the rule is mediocre at best.
Be emotionally mature and stop falling for the FOMO, stop caring about digital products unless you value them dearly or they are of exceptional quality...it's the only way we can hold the company accountable for their bad work ethic, sub-par products and greedy schemes. Sadly, people simply don't care. Sad times indeed to be a League player, and I'm happy I stopped taking this game seriously; as for the company behind it, in my eyes, they lost all my trust.
Addendum 1: to be fair, if you look at newer games with skin system, like Marvel Rivals, you see an abyss in quality and model animation from skins to other "tier"; this means that for the same price or even lower (10$-20$) you obtain better features than what Riot is putting in their product. They have vision, they are fun and a breath of fresh air for the characters.
League is old, has a dated engine and don't get me started on the client and the server issues. Be mature, and stop playing garbage out of nostalgia. The game we grew up with and loved has slowly "died" over the years; now it's something else entirely.
Did you notice that Ambessa's walk is THE SAME as Shyvana?
first time i saw her i couldn't figure out if it was renekton or shyvana
It’s not.
It's not *actually* the same but it is extremely similar, given that Shyvana's rework got cancelled around the same time I wonder if it was meant to be Shyvana's reworked animation and got reused for Ambessa.
@@treeaboo not cancelled, delayed
@@treeaboointeresting idea. Makes sense, since they might of had a tight timeframe for making the skin
Let's not forget that this was anticipated by Samira's "ultimate".
samiras ultimate at least now looks like an ultimate by comparison cause wtf is going on with the new shit
i mean, her ulti has only feeling that it's missing something, it can't be in comparison to these skins
@@o3ohno123It absolutely can, they reuse a ton of animations from the base skin. She literally reloads her guns despite her line that the best part about magical guns is that no reloading is needed.
@@jeph7434 Samira skin feels nowhere near as an ultimate skin should feels like, you're just delusional
Samira's ultimate looks like a slightly rushed legendary, the new legendaries just look like glorified epics, and even calling them glorified is being a bit too nice lol
You know why? It's because they keep laying off a lot of the artist responsible for making these new skins and animations 🥰
I hope your channel blows up, man. I used to be such a huge Riot fanboy - I even wanted to work for them as a 3D artist - and now I'm just glad I was simply too early to make that mistake. Riot ain't what it used to be.
exoLL content is unique,no one does this,i hope they blow up too!
@@arigatameiwaku I for one does not wish for exoLL to meet a sudden explosive end 😢
My dream job was to be an artist or writer for Riot. I still have some art pieces I made for my portfolio--if the company didn't change, I would have applied for an internship last summer.
...yeah, kind of glad I didn't go to art school and listened to my mom about getting a different degree.
The soothing edit style made me care enough to sub
I never really comment on youtube but your videos are amazing. Love how you focus on such details. The community needs a voice like this right now. Keep up the good work
@risingsun4 thank you so much for the exception!
They basically dragged every skin tier down in quality. Exalted are the new ultimate (and even that is being generous), ultimate are the new legendary, and legendary are the base skins with little glow ups if they feel like it. Don't even get me started with the new quality of base skins. "here you go! these are free with the battle pass!" and they are glorified chroma garbage with not even unique recalls. It's been YEARS since we've had skins of this low quality, even the honored skins (which you also got for free just from being a normal player) has more freaking soul put into it. It just baffles me how they are sinking so hard into skins when they don't even care about the quality of the damn things. Where did the passion and artistry go???
> where did the passion and artistry go?
Fired and outsourced
inevitable destination for any public company, once the quarterly profits start to diminish, the enshitification process starts. i'd say the only thing keeping league going after 5-10 years is the inertia its built up. its already going the ea route of horrendous mtx in everything and even gambling
@@klyxes it was not, even with all memes about league dying it was crescent until 2023 with a little down in players but was pretty away from being dead, but from all shits in lately dead game gonna be truth in no time
@@gabrielgomessilva484 i don't see how your comment disagrees with me, assuming thats your intention
@@klyxes I mean they had it kinda right until 2023, they where not in decline but started making everything to see people droping last time they had something going on for good was last Anima event last year but they did not wanted to trive it seens
"Ultimate" Samira even used animations from the base rig, and its voiceover is shorter than base Samira even while cluttered with skinline-specific interactions. It has no novelty, which is the key feature of an ultimate skin which was supposed to be the takeaway from Miss Fortune's ultimate
To give props to Mythmaker Jhin, his gun is a fully-animated dragon that flies around when he reloads, and the voiceover is delightful compared to Dark Cosmic.
20 minutes of unique voice lines. I love that. The reload animation is definitely the highlight of the skin. Sad the other stuff is so basic, as pointed out in the video. Might have to wait for a sale in the future.
b-but ultimate samira has special homeguard animation! which is stole from lucian
4:00 and seeing how game getting worse and worse with more updates, i leaved the game at the start of the summer
the drop in quality didn started now, but now people are noticing, you can see the drop in quality back there on Miss Fortune GG , High Noon Leona, or even Ahri rework that gived the legendary skin animations to the other skins and they never bothered to fix the legendary skin tails like they did with the other ones, you can see the drop in quality way way way back in morgana rework where they remove lots of effects from the blackthorn skin and others of her skins, or even the aniversary skin, annie skin was Legendary tier but sivir? the champion with less effects and particles get the aniversary because they didnt wanted to put work on a free skin anymore.
Sorry but I’m calling bs on a lot of this. GGMF is an underrated skin. It’s not as dazzling and unique as its predecessor ultimates, but riot lowered the cost for GGMF specifically knowing that (should’ve done it for samira honestly). High Noon Leona is also a very well done skin. It hits all the bases. All of her animations are unique, the model is honestly one of the most beautiful in the game, the vfx are great. How is ahri’s rework drastically improving her base animations a downgrade in quality? Thats a blatant upgrade. And I will side with SG ahri’s tail textures not being updated. I think it looks great as it is, I much prefer it to the stark lack of textures on her modern tails.
I will however, agree with morgana’s blackthorn skin being downgraded and the anniversary sivir skin being lackluster
I think it started back in the days of Shadow Isles season. I got the Sentinel Vayne (a legendary skin) from a chest a few days after it had been released. It hit me how little features it got compared to other legendary skins, say Ashe's High Noon or Xayah's SG.
@ leona high noon W animation is the same as base and has way way less VA is way inferior than Sun/Moon leona, and i said they give ahri legendary skin animations to the other ones and never improved the legendary skins, ahri legendary skins still have the buggy tails, if you are ok with that its you but is lame that they fixed every skin tails and never the legendary ones, do you really think is a upgrade giving ahri cheap skins the legendary animations and not giving the legendary anything new? not even fixing that damn tails? im calling bs on what you said
@ You argue Ahri’s legendary skins as if they started doing that with her. With your argument, you should say the downgrade in quality started with Caitlyn’s ASU, where they touched nothing.
Less voice lines argument goes farther back than high noon Leona. That started with viego when they announced they were cutting back.
I really REALLY like the way you made this video. I don't have the language for it, but i enjoyed the text format and the sound effects, the whole thing felt very cozy, which is a first for a league video. Subbed :D
Remember when Riot's first excuse (with Mythmaker Irelia) was that her animations weren't jank / still good enough to warrant reusing them?
Remember Solar Eclipse Sivir?
@@ex_oLLis it bad i loved irelias and sivirs legendaries. they just look beautiful
@@juliez16 They really look beautiful till you starts to perceive that they actually sucks
For some reason, the reason why Sivir doesnt have extra unique animations such as one where she catches her Q, is because the person who directed the skin, a Sivir main, wanted to basically get the same feel as base. Which completely ruins the entire point of a legendary skin in the first place.
@@bulletcola7890 Idk about everyone else, but I loved the Exlipse sivir skin. It's gorgeous, the effects r nice, and it gives a nostalgia on old legendary skins
project pyke and high noon senna also share a lot of animations with their base skins, but the video was on point. i always loved seeing new legendary skins releases because it was fun to see how riot could reinvent champions. these last few ones have been disappointing :/
True, also High Noon Senna is pretty buggy, her horse sometimes just does not walk, it just slides across, i've had that happen many times actually
@Brieftaube. it's such a shame because it could be an awesome skin but they just decided to go with the lazy way and reuse most animations 😕
i need more league video format like this, its soothing to watch while riot hurt me from within
Elementalist Lux was the pinnacle. Cant believe the stoop so low after that masterpiece
Thank you for the video. It was informative and showed me all the other ways Riot is lowering the quality of their cosmetics. I did not know that Ambessa had a legendary skin or that it was mostly recycled. I didnt notice that many of Riot's recently released skins are starting to recycle more and more. I dont play Jhin, but it was interesting to learn his animations from his legendary skin were unique. I really liked that they put that effort. It makes it all the more disheartening to see the downgrade. Your video format has been both entertaining and does an excellent job showcasing Riot's lack of quality and raises the awareness of the average consumer like myself who wouldnt notice the lower quality differences. Thank you again for your video.
This was posted in the subreddit and got taken down xd
@@jaotrx7163 I did post it but I still see it up
This guy deserves more recognition or just work for riot entirely. Anyway, your way of showing stuff is just the best, only big youtubers with big channels are somewhat better. For just starting making stuff you got a good quality content, keep up the good work!
I just have some advice to share with you as a viewer.
- Some of the cuts of your videos are too long to keep up with this generation attention span
-You could do some quick paced skin reviews for animation, SFX and overall looks of the model, also keeping up with the format.
-time stamps would be very much welcome for longer videos if you plan to make some in the future
As a ((no this generation)) viewer I love this edit format and I really appreciate it, and I’m sure a lot of us too being veterans we can understand better how much quality Riot gave us in the past. Nowadays younglings want everything as fast as possible, you could see 30 frames changing in 3 seconds and it’s super exhausting for the eye (plus the sound effects) This kind of video even has soothing music and you can get mad at Riot but in a surprisingly calming way 🥺
The worst part is that the exalted tier has less love put into it than older legendary skins too. Like, they look like legendary skins that you can change the chroma of in game. Legendaries have also been going down, but mostly because they decided that every patch needs a legendary skin now. So instead of them being an uncommon occurrence that pulls a story together, like Star Guardian Jinx, they just follow the set piece and have a few new lines
3:00 You got me, almost thought you went the entire video without mentioning viego 😂
This might be very poor timing, but some of my buddies and I were discussing League and this exact issue, and what you get for the skins you buy. And just for fun, we decided to poke around at what other Mobas are doing, and you know what we found?
You remember smite? The third person moba based on gods? I never really got into it as third person was never really my style, but we went to a youtube page that was basically their skin spotlights and started scrolling. We started watching some videos and realized that not only did a *lot* of skins have the standard unique look and particle effects, a *majority* of them had a full suit of fully custom voices, animations, and rigs.
There was a Cthulu skin where the skin had skin forms with four different voices, and it's old news over there. There are pool noodles and crab rave skins that had full voices and unique rigs. Some characters had chibi skins that completely changed their proportions and were still made to work. And that Cthulu skin I mentioned? Hardly over 40$ in it's time, if you didn't earn it from the event.
40$ for triple the content you'd get out of the 250$ Jinx skin, or god forbid the Ahri one. It's not enough for us to play smite, but we were astonished.
For the past two years or so Riot's been squeezing this game dry, seeing how little effort they can turn into a maximum amount of cash.
The execs are probably very happy with themselves right now, but this is not sustainable. People get tired, people get disillusioned, people stop spending and people quit. If Riot doesn't turn ship, in 5 years League will be where Overwatch is now.
I think that’s the plan : milking the cow until it’s dry, then move on. Nobody from the original dev team is still here today, today’s devs don’t give 2 shits about league, they want to make their own games at Riot, and league players’ money is the mean to their end. Once they see League doesn’t even earn enough money to pay for the servers, they’ll close the game.
Gosh who could have seen laying off so much of your comapny would hurt
sad to see the route that riot has chosen. although part of me still chooses to believe that tencent is forcing them into this, I wouldn't be surprised if they began this themselves
they got chink'd, typical western devs and chinese supercompany relationship
most rioters who were there at the golden age are either put on new projects or got fired
@gerdsverer721 also the new ceo of riot came from the financial departament... Tencent is not forcing anything at this point, Riot just are eager and eager to proft like the game is really going to the end road
@assgardiano that and new workers who only see the game as a job rather then a passion project and you get this
When the "But here's the problem" music comes in I can't old my laugh
I really really like the vibe of your video! Its so cute and warm. Refreshing from a league of legends video.
Thank you so much
One of the coolest video in a long time of my TH-cam binge, so creative ❤❤
thank you so much for the compliment!
Sad to see the game I’ve loved for years take some meaningful steps into the grave. Amazing video though, love this editing with the music and text noises.
Your video format is impecable. Few things I can thank youtube for, but this recommendation was on point. Simple, cozy, and the sounds&music choice are great too. Good job.
if they're supposed to work harder to make 250$ skins worth the price, then I expect a RIOTer to deliver it home to me and to give me free foot massages for the next 10 days.
such an awesome video, feels very fresh and i love your style - I always learn something new too. subbed!
2:01 he even reloads nothing with his second hand lol
Oh dude, with this style, you're bound to make it big on TH-cam. Love it, keep it up
It's crazy to think Arcane Savior Viktor is priced the same as the Jayce skin lmao
@@Meddyyy Jayce skin is better because of course they couldn't recycle default Jayce rig or else it would have been so damn blatantly absurd lol
love your content, it's so well made and you hit such important fact as the constant decrease in quality over years
your videos are so easy to watch and not overwhelming as a new player - thank you. I've consumed lol content for years but just recently actually decided to play! This is such cool info to know, ty
I think people are beginning to understand why regulations exist. People cannot be left to their own devices else everything devolves. It's why utopian societies cannot exist. Humans don't make rational decisions. "Competition" is not enough.
A new company/game could come along and be OBJECTIVELY better, cheaper, and more fun than League of Legends but it would still die, because humans are irrational. People are already addicted to LoL, sunk cost fallacy, people spent too many hours, too much money, are too loyal, etc...
Regulations are the only thing that can save us from ourselves. It's literally biblical. "Man cannot direct his own step."
amazing quality video and i like the cozy vibes with the music ! also w omori pfp
Very good video :] though I do have to slightly disagree that it's a thing that happened since sanctum introduction, because some of the ""older legendaries"" (Project pyke , eclipse sivir, so called ultimate SF Samira, sg xayah&rakan for example) were met with same criticism, but you're still definitely right :D ((also as a personal bias i need to complain that Soul Fighter Viego doesnt have facial animations or a new wraith form in E unlike his base or epic skins and Ill forever be mad about it)
Videos like this get so many views cause it’s just so aesthetically clean. I can easily watch the whole thing. Don’t even have to be on camera or use your voice.
Okay I'm discovering your channel and I absolutely love the format ! But yeah I think they're lowering the Legendary skins quality on purpose so the exalted ones don't look too crappy (they still look horrible compared to Elementalist Lux or Spirit Blossom Ahri)
thank you for bringing this back to light. this all began with Soul Fighter Samira, and the lack of unique animations within the skin. I can't believe the league community allowed riot to have success with that launch and provide them an avenue for lackluster and unforgiving legendary+ skins.
I am so happy as a Katarina main that riot did a PHENOMINAL job on Battle Queen. That shit is sooo good. Ever since then, it's had a decline. Not a steep drop till recent, but a slow decline
Did you know though that BQ Katarina had a Ctrl+5 bug that interrupted her airborne status?
Check this out, min 3:31:
th-cam.com/video/0EWC_s1zg1M/w-d-xo.html
@@ex_oLL Something I indeed did not know
The visuals are so amazing what the heck, great job!!
TYSM!
I wouldn't consider it such a recent problem and attribute it to the inclusion of the gacha system. People have been talking about this since the release of Star Guardian Xayah and Rakan, I remember. It also happened with Coven Morgana. Riot even addressed it around the time they released Project: Pyke.
@@mari_zz You're probably right. The problem might be rooted deeper.
@@ex_oLL It is, and they have addressed it themselves. It mostly sounds like a lazy excuse, since it was along the lines of "newer champions have really good animations already, so they don't need to be changed much for their legendaries". However Dark Cosmic Jhin is exactly a very good example of a champion with good animations (so good that Riot didn't change them much for the newest skin), yet he could get an entirely unique Legendary anyways.
In any case, it's nice to see people still bringing this up, this has been one of my complaints for a very long time (SG Xayah really was a turning point on how much money I spent on League, cutting it down to almost none), but relating it to the gacha just feels deceptive and forgiving of their previous "mistakes", as if it's something that only now happens.
SG Xayah and Rakan are excellent legendaries, what could people possible dislike? I wasn't playing league when they were released
@@petrueshhka That they reuse multiple animations.
Thats what happens when a small indie company makes the years (or something like that) most expensive series.
I dint know how bad it really is. Good showcase.
The edit is everything 10/10 for the cozy vibes !!! Hits every spot
2:21 technically speaking it should be Seraphine who launch with -3 Legendary- Ultimate skin
I totally agree!
All those Dark Star Jhin animations are so damn good. Night Bringer Yasuo is also like having different animations, especially for auto attacks is sick!
Sad, that for the same price is is worse quality.
Also, quite cool style for video! :D
Thanks for the video!
i love how cozy this video is. i think you should create the coziest discord server for us to join
2025 is either the year that will save league or my last year on this game.
@@louisgari4294 "2025 will change League forever" - LaserPooPoo or whatever it's spelt
I remember hearing a long time ago that champions are designed with a bone limit in mind for their rig
Ambessa's facial expressions were cut possibly as compensation for the amount of bones her weapons require within the chains, along with her silhouette focusing on her hair and weapons
Man I remember paying top dollar for Spirit Guard Udyr back in the day. Just being the one in the HD model put the fear of god into the people I played against 😂
When that one Riot dev got extremely defensive on twitter over Ambessa "not looking anything like Shyvana's animations" and having everyone point out how that seems wrong, I started to get the vibe things were going this way. I cant relate to a company who wont go all-out on their animations for paid skins - expensive ones at that. They generate many millions PER SKIN in the long run, for perspective.
Thanks so much for putting this all together. I thought I was going mad seeing the drop in animation changes for legendary skins.
It's nice that they put animation work into the emotes...but realistically when you're playing the game, you don't use/see them that often. Ability animations are what change the feel and use of a champion. I remember seeing Project Vayne and her Condemn (E) made her leap into the air and thought that was insane.
Sad times now esp with the introduction of Exalted skins :(
I stopped giving riot money in 2015 I think, the first year they didn't gift RP for Christmas, also they used to gift icons just by playing, not anymore!
I'm glad I stopped playing when anticheat arrived. I'd be so mad of these changes if I'd still play
Remember eternum nocturne or the old aetherwing kayle
finally, the truth bearer comes out
Ambessa leg skin is just basically “Richer” version of Ambessa with those gold
Arcane savior Viktor’s splash art, his vfx and sfx all look cool to me I love the skin, but seeing no unique animations during the game apart from like base recalls etc is actually sad like there so much missed potential for Viktor specifically with this skin
I know some artists behind it put out a lot of love and passion into him but yeah this doesn’t translate well for a legendary :(
I'm surprised you didn't bring up heimerdingers new skin which is literally the exact same as the base skin
arcane savior viktor would've been so cool... if it didn't miss the entire point of the character and the legendary tier. Viktor's whole point is that machine (perfection) > humans, but the skin is completely humanized and it ignores the fact that in arcane viktor's body was full of metal when he got those powers. The design is honestly cool, and i get that alternative universes exist, but riot not satisfied with ignoring the character's lore they decide to not give one single legendary trait to the skin (besides his voice).
I hope they bring a good legendary skin to viktor in WR bc i'm a huge viktor fan and i'd really like to have a legendary skin of respect instead of a rainbow homeless-looking man.
But the skin is from a different moment in his story, the base version is the final form, and completely forget the idea of the old Viktor, that no longer exists.
@@Forgotten_Doll no, arcane viktor did not and would never get rid of the "perfection" on his body (metal). That's not from a point on his story, that moment never happened, the only thing that actually happened was viktor entering his jesus era to create a peace cult, but not even their vision of "evolution" is the same
@@Forgotten_Doll they could've have very well created a skin accurate to the show AND the moment of his ascension as the herald of the arcane, but instead they made a completely new viktor with different ideas
Arcane Viktor (Or Vincent for short) is an afterthought for Riot, they rushed the whole second season amidst multiple layoffs, the result was this grey slop in game, still with the same past bugs, and horrible skins, which also resembles nothing of his counterpart in the show.
Omori ubducting league characters into whitespace to explaim things. Thank you, Omori!
We should make a petition for Riot to completely undo their choice of making gacha systems in League
it is outrageous the amount of money required for such, especially if you factor that in different currencies, such as mine for example, something that goes for 250 dollars actually goes for 1500 bucks.
There's no way I'm going to spend that much money on a skin, but eventually skins from champions we all love will be held hostage by this system, one by one. And maybe you don't care right now, but eventually all your neighbours will be gone and only you will remain, and who will care for you then?
I don't know how we could do this, but I really think we should try.
they have whole china behind them, u really think that 1 petition w 20k subs will change shi?
I agree on everything in this video except one thing.
there is no way that a skin can be worth 250$
let alone 500$ for the Ahri one
like, stick your head out of the "skin economy" and see it in relation to entire games.
for 70$ you get Persona 3 Reload, for 60 Persona 5 Royal.
Both games with 100+h of gametime each, well written stories, good graphics and diverse characters.
those "high class" items in league are just greedy cashgrabs and should never be something acceptable
I am 95% sure this is Tencent's fault
Although I agree completely with everything, I'm mostly gonna mention how much your video has a "feelgood" feeling. It's just cool to watch. Loved it. Thank you !
I definitely hope this is not the future of league
I love this game so much even with all the toxicity
But this new direction that they are going spell doom to their game
For now I just going to go back playing Dota 2
At least you don't have to spend 6 years to get all the hero there
I really think it will continue like this. Unfortunately I won't be playing this game anymore
Thank you for clarifying what has been happening regarding Riot Games' greed. To complement your video, I’d say this drop in quality has been going on for a while now (I was really disappointed with Soraka’s second legendary skin, which just recycled the models from the first one). If I had to guess, I’d say it started shortly after Tencent gained total control of the company, likely when Riot began dealing with a lot of money. I would say the initial decline began in 2017, when they "updated" old splash arts into NASTY chinese splash arts, and them, the real wave of shady practices began around mid-2019. Where money comes in, love (in this case, genuine love for the art and the game) dies, hehe. As far as I’m concerned, may the game rest in peace, because the company doesn’t deserve another cent from its loyal audience.
welp, looks like league its the riot boost for another projects so stuff like 2xko, arcane, the mmo and hytale could do their own thing at a normal pace, the price for the good things to come i guess
Definitely agree, league has been out for 15 years, if its transitioning to just be a revenue generator for new projects that makes sense
lmfao coping
No. They could give high quality and all of the above. What actually changes is how much the higher ups get.
The funny thing is that skins that only changed voice lines but didn't touch much on the animations were some times part of Epic tier or lower, and most of the time they were also a champion's release skin - like Sand Wraith Pyke, recontextualizing water with sand while also adding actually NEW voice lines.
Again a good game being ruined by a GARBAGE COMPANY
riot never had a shortage of detractors since day one. it's such a wonder they are still growing isn't it?
Ruining your game since season 5! This is not to say season 5 was bad, I loved season 5, but they reworked minion aggro and it's still broken 10 years later
I'm a veteran at this point, playing league since season 2, and I remember way back in the day, when League's department at Riot used to have a soul, they set out to fix their pricing. In the forgotten days, most skins were just recolors, and as the game evolved they were able to invest more money into the art department. This lead to a situation where you had basic recolors costing as much as skins that gave you a different model, animations, sfx and vfx. So, Riot made a post about this issue and reorganized their prices, with very clear definitions of what each skin tier entails and why they cost more than the tier below. 425RP were recolors, 975RP you get a proper skin with the same effects and voices, and as you go up you get newer animations, sfx and visuals. And as the skin department got crazier with their designs we started to see 975RP skins with new vfx, sorta like a skin deflation. This eventually led to the creation of the chromas, since it didn't make sense to have recolors as stand alone skins anymore.
I used to respect Riot because of that. It was a fair system: the game is free, you give us how much money you want, you get the skin you want. Each tier will meet the base requirements but we can go above and beyond sometimes. They ironed out the flaws in the system, like runes, and while I was skeptical about the chests at first (and not entirely wrong after all), I remember being somewhat relieved when I saw how Riot was just giving out those chests for free and how at the end of the day players got more IP than before (and now even free skins). For all you could say about league's community, the game itself, at least the monetization side was a model system.
Now Riot became everything I would praise them not to be, and honestly, it kinda stings a little. Even if I only play occasionally, it's so sad to see a company that used to be about respecting players to turn to the worst possible practices in the industry (and it's not even as if they NEED that to survive, LoL is extremely profitable as it is).
Though, to be fair, it's not like all is lost. When you look at LoR and other side projects, even Arcane, it's clear Riot's soul is still in there, and there are veterans or at least people who carry their vision within the company. But unfortunately whoever owns the project decided that League must be milked dry.
0:58 I see no difference for the running animations
you must have cognìtíve ìssues then
@@teratoma.tell me one fucking difference between the two skins for both the running and running faster animation
@shrekivanov7515 the most obvious part are the arms
they are not doing wide arcs and are instead dangling downwards
Profits are ruining every hobby. Like literally every single hobby.
Profits proliferate hobbies too, or they'd disappear. It's a sad duality
This is why you don't do mass layoffs of your employees!
having more or less employees wont fix the problem. Plus lay offs happen in all and every industry get over it
@Bilbo122333 as someone who works in this industry i have the obligation to say that the past year and a half of layoffs in the game development industry is one of the worse we've seen. Its understandable that folks outside of it dont see the issue as the companies doing this play down the severity of what they are doing to their own industry. I have friends who are out of work with no benefits as the companies that laid them off replace them with ai or force their work onto smaller teams with no increase in salary or benefits, this is called job creep. I highly, highly encourage you to look into the issue yourself and see what is happening. Thousands upon thousands of people who make the games you love are struggling without work while the folks at the top get richer while feeding you with lower quality product. Don't fall to easy slop that some of these companies offer and support artists, programmers and designers by standing up for them! In addition it is very difficult to get a job because with these layoffs no one is hiring below senior level positions which spells for bad news for the future of our industry.
@@Bilbo122333 we're seeing the quality drop in real time because riot laid off a fuckton of employees, and we KNOW that some of the ones that were laid off made some of their best most popular cosmetics, we have those examples, stop coping
@Bilbo122333 As someone who works in this industry the layoffs have been incredibly disheartening and terrifying. The past year and a half have been some of the worst we've ever seen. Thousands upon thousands of the the artists, developers, and programmers that make the games that you love are struggling to make ends meet because of greedy upper management that are replacing us with ai and by implementing job creep practices at unsustainable levels. In addition it is very hard to get jobs back or to get a job in the industry as a new person because there are so few new jobs, and the only positions out there are senior level positions or unpaid internships. This makes our industry unsustainable and consumers will continue to be given lower quality product at higher prices. If you care for the games you enjoy, stand up for he creative that make them and reject corporate greed.
Whoever plants expectations reaps disappointment. Plant beans.
Every legendary this year I’ve had the same reaction of “wait, THATS a legendary skin?!” Almost all of them look like mediocre 1320rps, really sad to see the direction Riot has gone
This style.. I love it sm!! Subbed
I disagree with the last statement that they should work harder to deliver a skin quality worth $250.
Skins shouldn't cost $250 in the first place.
Agree.
They messing with last things, that was actually good
Thank you for this video! I Felt the exact same but didn't know how to express it
Thank you for watching
i stopped playing about 6 months ago cos everything was slowly going to shit and its things like this that make me think im not gonna come back
I like your textbox style of speaking, it’s very soothing!
It got indeed very cozy :) Thank you!
I discovered ur channel, and I love it there is so much truth . Keep it up !
Actually a good video, keep it up dude
By the look of it, those skins are like Red Baron Corki and Magnificent Twisted Fate legendary skins now.