The format chosen by the developers may not be what the community was hoping for, but former League of Legends champions are in for a treat. Riot Games is increasingly releasing updates for outdated characters. The well-known comprehensive overhauls have been joined by major visual updates like Caitlyn’s, mid-range gameplay changes like the one Taliyah is about to receive, and even comprehensive skill changes like the one Taliyah is about to receive. by Aurelion Sol. However, there is a hidden workhorse in this process: full champion particle (VFX) overhauls.
Riot’s alternate plan for former champions
Champion ability effect updates are a process whose importance has been revealed by Riot Games over the past few months. If the developer has always made these kinds of adjustments, the cadence of these slowly increased. Previously, they only seemed to focus on the most urgent cases that violated the developer’s clarity rules. However, League of Legends received more and more of these small improvements, so much so that the latest patch 12.7 introduced changes for three champions.
Given the increasing importance of these changes, the company wanted to explain to the community some details of how they work. The goals are to fix issues that old visual effects cause on gameplay, improve clarity, and even deepen the theme of the character in question.. There are priorities, but the end goal is always the same, which is to revamp some elements of League of Legends that have been neglected for years.
How do visual effects updates work?
The developer wanted to take a closer look at the decision-making process with these updates. The truth is that they are not as planned as it seems. With so many champions who could benefit from such changes, it’s still up to the artists to choose which champions to focus on. They pick the ones they spot in their games, the ones they like the most, or the one on the long list of champions awaiting adjustments. They have to need it and the update has to be useful, in the sense that it can solve their problems.
So they start working on the main skin and sounding out the whole design team at Riot Games until they get the general green light. It’s then time to start working on the other appearances. This process is particularly complicated and things are more structured here, as only a certain number of changes can be made depending on the price of the skin…
- All skins will receive the necessary changes to use the new base skin changes. For example, if an indicator is enlarged on the base skin to better match gameplay, all indicators should be the same size for all skins.
- Skins that already had modified or unique visual effects before the update will retain that same level of distinction.
- 750 RP skins (or less) can only receive one small adjustment if warranted.
- 975 RP skins will receive a slight recoloring if warranted, and additional elements if warranted.
- 1350 RP skins will receive entirely new visual effects if they don’t already have them.
- 1,820 RP skins and more will receive entirely new visual effects if they don’t already have them, and may receive visual effects for their emotes when/if warranted.
Community reaction to updates
The release of the update comes after all changes have been made, bugs have been fixed, and the product has passed all checks by Riot Games’ quality team. The update is first released on the PBE, and that’s where the community comes in.. The developers spend the two (or four) weeks leading up to the live server release gathering feedback and applying changes. This is, however, one of the toughest tasks the update team can face, as it is impossible to satisfy all players.
While most updates of this type are very well received by the League of Legends community, there are always players who are harder to satisfy or roles that are a little less fortunate. Recently, this was the case for Elise. In this regard, Riot Games employees asked the community to provide constructive feedback and ensured that it was heard. This way we can all make sure the company is moving forward with this kind of work.
In life, there are certain things where everything comes together so harmoniously that you can’t help but think that if these events were put in a movie, the public wouldn’t believe it. This is what happened to these players during an unusual game.