About "The Hunt is On!" and more eCommerce goodness.

Continue reading for a few red posts concerning the Rengar / Kha'Zix interactions and a few posts from Hippalus about future eCommerce stuff.

Our first set of posts deals with community concerns relating to the "hidden passive" interaction between Kha'Zix and Rengar, titled "The Hunt is on!"

Screen cap taken from this video, which demonstrates the whole process.

Essentially how this special interaction goes is that once Kha'Zix hits 16 and Rengar has a Bonetooth Necklace they both gain a buff called "The Hunt is On!" which encourages them to kill each other. If Rengar slays Kha'Zix first, he receives a new item called "Head of Kha'Zix" and it functions as a full stacked Bonetooth Necklace that doesn't lose stacks upon death. However, if Kha'Zix slays Rengar first he receives a fourth evolution point which lets him evolve his final ability ( as you can only obtain three evolution points through normal means ).

Morello responded to these concerns by saying:

"Currently, we're not considering removing it.

Simply put, it's very "cool and fun," as well as rare. Balance-wise, it doesn't have the impact people think it does - this also adds some strategic choice in picks that can be "gambity".

Regardless, I there's even this discussion internally - it's new and therefore can be contentious since we've never done this before. We're going to try it out because the reward greatly outweighs the risk here. If it does actually cause damage to the game, we can and will remove it - though I don't forsee that actually happening without some significant time in the wild."

 Additionally, Coronach chimed in by saying:

"I'll say that I was one of the people internally who had a lot of concern about the power implications of using a hidden-passive for a 4th evolution point on Kha'zix. However, this current implementation doesn't have a lot of the same issues as previous iterations. This is accessible only when an opposing Rengar is doing very well, therefore it becomes a minor comeback mechanic. The power of the 4th evolution doesn't exceed the advantage the Rengar has gained over the course of the game and has less impact that it potentially sounds. While some edge cases may pop-up, they seem extremely unlikely in competitive scenarios where kills are harder to come by. Overall, we're definitely very sensitive to things that have a competitive impact, but the gameplay here should be isolated to epic normal games."

Secondly, we have another post from Riot's eCommerce Director, Hippalus, where he discusses his new "eCommerce Question of the week". This week's question wanted to know if we can expect to see more theme skins, that is skins that are along the same lines as Pulsefire Ezreal.

"This question can be better answered by our Skins team, but I'll take a stab at it based on what I've heard in the hallways.

Theme skins like PFE take many multiples more work to develop than even legendaries, but most agree they are worth the effort, so expect to see more in 2013. There are a couple of concepts in the works but they have a long way to go, and I expect 2-3 theme releases/year would be the most you could ever expect to see.

One related change we will be making in the LoL Store this year is to put PFE into the Skins tab and eliminating the Themes tab, but likely not until we have a new tab to put in its place.

Also, keep an eye out in the next week or two for some new skin release prices..."

More Themes and New skin release prices? Boy howdy you guys better get your wallets ready!

 Any who, Hippalus also talked about the possibility of an upcoming sale on name changes:

"Great poll, great comments, and a convincing result. It will take at least a few weeks to properly set up a cleansing of inactive names along with a name change sale, but we are on it."

Who will be the first to change their name to "Moobeatisawesome"? Hrrrmmmm?