Riot Pupulasers gives new updates on LoL skins, shedding light on lore skins and their performance.
League of Legends skins are usually different renditions of champions’ base lore. For example, there’s the cosmic skin line, where the champions usually represent galactic and interstellar themes. However, there are a few skins that are related to the official canon of Runeterra.
For example, the ruination event was something that really happened in the LoL universe. Ruined and Sentinel – which were two groups in the event and are considered LoL skins. Then we also have Arcane, Spirit Blossom, etc, that are based on canon stories.
Player expectations, skin design, lore, in-game model, VFX, SFX – all of these influence how successful a skin is. Riot Pupulasers has recently talked about the performance of the lore skins. In this article, I will try to shed some light on that.
Read More: All Prestige Skins in League of Legends 2023
Lore Skins Performance in Lol
Thematical Differentiation
Most of the famous LoL skins are the ones that have wildly different themes than the base lore. For example, the high noon skin line represents the mystical Wild West, and High Jhin, Lucian, etc, are some of the most well-designed skins and garnered tremendous mainstream appeal.
The ‘definitely not’ skins are also very popular among the players. That’s why Riot Pupulasers says that players like the skins that are vastly different from the lore skins. But I think it’s because the lore skins, barring some, are not as creative as the non-lore skins.
Production Cost
Riot Pupulaser mentions that even though there are some production cost savings with the lore skins, they are usually not in the areas where it matters the most, which is the splash art. He also notes that splash art is their most bottlenecked area.
Skin Identity and Story
Usually, skin can be very appealing in a vacuum with cool designs and models. But Riot Pupulasers notes that what makes a skin truly compelling for players to buy is the story and unique identity.
For example, Victorious Aatrox suffers from not having a unique identity and that’s why it suffered a lot of bad reputation. Vayne’s Dawnbringer skin was also not as well-received due to its thematic similarity with Sentinel Vayne, another light-themed skin.
Lore skins often do not have that many unique identities compared to their base models. That’s why Riot Pupulasers asserted that they would try to look for similar opportunities to make the lore skins feel more unique and give them an interesting story.
So, expect better lore skins in 2024.
Season 2024 Release Date
League of Legends Season 2024 will go live across all servers from January 9, 2024, as Patch 14.1 drops.
