Riot caught a lot of criticism around the release of the legendary Alien Invader Heimerdinger skin, though it wasn’t just about the legendary skin. Most players think skins are in general too expensive, and I have to agree.
I’ll include Riot’s full official response here, if only because it’s so weird:
Summoners,
We have a couple pieces of good news for you. For the next release of skins, we are going to be shipping out 6 skins, all for 520 RP, including the much-anticipated French Maid Nidalee skin.
We have heard the community requests for more low-priced skin options and a more clear definition of Legendary skins. In response, we are doing a one-time release of skins at 520. Players have anticipated the release of French Maid Nidalee at prices up to 10,000 RP, but we are releasing her with the other 520 skins to start to balance the skin pricing. We are also releasing the other following skins at 520 RP:
• Caterpillar Kog’Maw
• Sonoran Kog’Maw
• Goalkeeper Blitzcrank
• Striker Ezreal
• Blast Zone Heimerdinger
Please note, we will be releasing skins at other price points in the future.
Going forward, per suggestions from the community, Legendary skins will have:
• Texture changes
• Model changes
And at least one of the following additional features:
• Some New Animations
• Some New VO
• Some New Effects
Finally, we wanted to share our plans for skins going forward. We are getting very close to meeting our goal of having a skin for each Champion. Once we reach that goal, we will move forward with creating downright awesome skins, and more player options in skin prices. To reach that second goal, we will be adding inexpensive skins for Champions that only have high-priced options, and we will be adding cooler skins for Champions that already have an inexpensive option. However, it will likely take a few months before we have multiple skins for every Champion.
We will keep listening to (rational) feedback, and we appreciate everyone who has contributed ideas and suggestions for how to improve our skin offerings (a lot of them are in this post). Please let us know if this is a step in the right direction.
– RiotChris
For starters, why does it take a huge community response to not take a lashing on skin prices? And why does the post make it sound like this is some kind of favor? It’s also a little disconcerting to see that the primary goal so far has been churning out skins and that Riot will focus on quality later. If these are just the slush pile, how much will the “downright awesome” skins cost?
All of this could be my own obsession with the wording, but this post really rubbed me the wrong way.
