Hi everyone, I’m Anna, and I’m the Lead Producer
for Skins and Events on League of Legends.
There’s a bunch of stuff I wanna chat with you guys about today,
so let’s get started.
Okay, let’s talk about Resistance Illaoi.
We’re so excited to finally release her.
This was our first time making a skin with you guys,
and it turned out to be way more fun than we were expecting.
We got to bring you through the entire process with us.
We took your feedback to heart at each checkpoint along the way
and after much spirited debate
we made sure her outfit was bit more... practical.
We even found a better name for her than Battlecast.
We also learned to never completely trust the comments section.
I’m still pretty pissed Deep Space didn’t win.
This was super fun for us
and it’s something we plan to do again later this year.
Next I’d like to talk about Gun Goddess Miss Fortune,
our latest Ultimate skin, who hit PBE today.
When we started working on this skin, we set out to make her an Ultimate.
And what we’ve created is a bad-ass, exo-suited, one-woman air force.
The original focus was gonna be mainly on her weapons,
but then we realized that the unique personalities
we’d created for each type of gun
could translate onto her entire kit.
You’ll be able to swap forms in game at your fountain.
And you’ll be able to do that as often as you’d like.
It’ll allow you to match your weapon to your mood
and give each game more variety.
So, something interesting happened while creating this skin.
When we think about what makes a skin an Ultimate,
we think about the entire experience.
We consider both the depth of that experience,
as well as what new feature or functionality
we can bring to League through skins.
Like, with Sona, it was the ability to change and share her music.
And with Lux, it was her transformation tree and the enormous volume of content.
Each of those skins provided both considerable depth
and brought something new to the game.
With GGMF, the depth of experience is
what you’ve come to the expect from an Ultimate
but because we were able to take advantage of tech we’d already built
she doesn’t bring that “something new” that other Ultimates have.
So we’ve chosen to release her at a lower price
and we’re introducing some flexibility into the pricing of the Ultimate tier.
And, we’ll reserve the 3250 price point for skins
that bring something truly different to the game.
We love how she turned out, and we hope you do, too.
So, some of you have noticed we’ve been making
a whole lot of Epic Tier skins lately.
I wanna talk a bit about why that is.
When we headed into 2017, we hadn’t planned to focus so much on that tier.
The lower-tiered skins used to sell really well,
but as the quality’s gone up, so have your expectations.
Now when we make lower-tiered skins
some do really well but most don’t.
What we kept hearing was that if a skin was coming out
for a champion you play, you wanted that experience to be of a higher quality.
So, yes we've shifted our focus away from lower-tiered skins.
But, that doesn’t mean we’ll never make them again.
In fact, we have some in production right now.
When we find a concept we feel we can deliver at a lower tier
in a way that feels great for a player of that champ, we’ll keep doing that.
We also realize that Epics just aren’t in everyone’s budget.
Things like the “Your Shop” feature were designed as a way
to get you meaningful discounts several times a year.
We’ll be bringing “Your Shop” back more frequently than we’ve done in the past.
And there’s more we plan to do here.
We're currently looking at even more ways to offer up discounts
so you can find the stuff you’re looking for at a price that’s right for you.
Let’s talk about some cool stuff coming up this year.
As you know, SSG won Worlds last year in China.
I immediately called the skins team from Beijing
and told them to tear up the SKT concepts they were working on.
And, now that the pros have given us the thumbs up on our plans,
I can announce which champions they’ve chosen.
For Crown, we’ll have Taliyah.
For Cuvee, Gnar.
For Ambition, Jarvan.
For Core JJ, Rakan.
For Ruler, Xayah.
And for Haru, Ezreal.
Just like last year, we’re working closely with the pros
to make sure their skins celebrate who they are as a team
and their amazing accomplishment.
As for other skin themes, our calendar’s filled with ones we know you love
as well as several new ones we’re hoping you’ll be excited to check out.
We might take a break from a few of the more popular ones,
but don’t worry, they won’t be gone for too long.
When I posted the State of Skins dev blog last year,
I mentioned that certain champions will get skins more frequently than others.
But I also promised a number of overdue champs
would be getting skins within 12 months of that post.
With the release of Resistance Illaoi, we’ve finally made it through that list.
But, what about 2018?
Well, you can definitely expect to see skins for even more overdue champs
including Shen,
Amumu,
Rumble,
Heimerdinger,
Vladimir,
Ahri,
Galio,
and yes, Aurelion Sol.
I’m just kidding about Ahri … maybe.
Those are the ones we have planned right now,
but we’ll do our best to sneak in a few more.
I’d like to take a minute to thank you for continuing to support
League of Legends by purchasing skins and other content.
It lets us keep investing in the game with things like new champions,
game balance and champion updates, new features like Clash
and all the other things that make League great.
We realize spending is a choice in League of Legends.
So, yeah, thank you.
So, last year we wanted to take a risk and change the way we do events.
We wanted to do them more often and also make sure that in each one,
you had both something to do and something to get.
From Blood Moon and Dark Star to Star Guardian and PROJECT,
you rode shotgun with us on this journey and I wanted to thank you
for coming along for the ride, providing invaluable feedback
and helping us get events to the state they are now.
You can expect to see more events this year with game modes, missions, loot, and skins.
I can’t tell you exactly what events we’ll be hosting, but I can say that VS. last year
it should be just as great, if not better.
And, we have an event planned for this summer that we hope will make a big splash.
We even have one we don’t think you could ever see coming.
We’re having a lot of fun hosting these events, but keep giving us feedback.
We want these to keep getting even better.
Okay, that’s it for now.
Our teams are hard at work bringing all this and more to League this year.
If there are any themes you’d love to see us bring back, or even some trolly emote ideas
you’d like to share, be sure to hit me up in the comments.
And thanks for watching!