Red Post Collection: More on Legacy Vault & Mystery Skins, Improving Bug Report Communications, Grumpy Monkey Sculpts, and more!

More on Legacy Vault and Mystery Skins

Both Udyr and Hippalus spent some time on reddit answering questions about the upcoming Legacy Vault  and Mystery Skin promotions.

Responding to criticism that the legacy skins return too often, Udyr commented that this is the first time in nearly a year they have been available for purchase.

"This is the first time in a year that the Legacy Skins have been directly available for purchase (and were only recently in Mystery Gifting). 

It was always messaged that Legacy Skins (like these retired ones) could come back in the future."

When asked if there will be any sort of compensation for players who previously owned these legacy skins ( akin to the limited skin promotion for the returning LIMITED holiday skins ), Udyr replied:

"No, these are Legacy skins that were originally in the store and retired, as such there will be no refunds/compensation for these."

When asked why the legacy skins haven't been repriced to fit the new pricing structure either because they don't have many features or because they have too many features after a visual ugrade, Udyr commented:

"We don't reprice Legacys. 

If there is a visual upgrade for a Legacy skin, it's a nice addition (assuming you like the new style)."

When asked about the old legendary 1820 skins returning and being discounted, Udyr reminded players they were on sale last year and summoners who originally purchased them for 1820 were compensated then and the price protection was lifted.

"We did compensate players that originally purchased Firefighter at 1820 when we did the Legacy skin sale last year. 

Firefighter Tristana is no longer price protected and will be 50% off on December 7th."

When asked to elaborate about price protection,  Hippalus explained:

Good question! Those skins were originally Legendary skins that were price protected, meaning that the players who bought them at that price would receive compensation if they were ever sold a lower price. They were briefly on sale at 50% off in December 2012 which triggered the compensation for all owners at that time. 

They are no longer price protected and players can buy them either at their regular price (1820) or their sale price (910). 

New Legendary skins like Infernal Nasus are price protected.

He continued:,

"Price protected means if a skin ever becomes available for a lower price, players are refunded the difference in price. We have always honored price protection on Legendary skins. 

The definition we changed based on player input was Limited Edition skins. Limited Edition now means that if it ever does come back, original owners will receive a full RP refund (while keeping the skin), a first edition icon, and first edition treatment in the game loading screen. 

We do not change our mind lightly, and try to make it right when we do."

As for Mystery Skins, Udyr clarified that they are self only and that the Mystery Gift feature will return for Snowdown

"This is just self purchase. 

Mystery Gifting will return during Snowdown"

Udyr also commented that Riot Singed is not available from the Mystery Skin promotion because he is a limited skin:

"Riot Singed is Limited, so he isn't included."

When asked if the TPA skins will return to the shop for normal purchase at a later time, Hippalus commented:

"They will make a return to the store sometime in 2014"

When asked if the PAX skins ( i.e PAX Twisted Fate, PAX Sivir, and PAX Jax ) will ever show up in a simliar promotion to the Mystery Skins, Udyr commented:

"Contractually, those skins were exclusives for PAX (if I remember correctly, don't quote me, not a lawyer, etc etc) and I don't believe that we could bring them back even if we wanted. We don't have plans to try and bring them back. 

This information may be incorrect though!"

Finally, Hippalus also commented on the sudden burst of promotions this season - Legacy sale, Mystery Skin, and the return of limited skins:

"That's a fair question. We like bringing back the retired legacy skins during the holidays as some players like to send them as holiday gifts. But it's definitely a lot of content all at once, so maybe next year we'll spread it out some more."

Update on Skarner Rework

RiotScruffy dropped off a small update on the Skarner rework that's currently on the PBE for testing, noting a bug fix  and an upcoming change.

"Quick update about the Q attack speed buff. We found a bug internally that this buff was stacking much higher than it actually was supposed to. After fixing this bug, the impact of the attack speed seemed lower than what we intended so we also increased the values to compensate.

After the next pbe update, this bug will be fixed and his Q attack speed will be up from 4/5/6/7/8% to 8/10/12/14/16% per stack."

For a full change list for the Skarner rework, click here.

Improving PBE Bug Report Communications

Here's RiotAether with an update how Riot will be communicating with PBE players regarding bug reports:

"Hey guys, 

Thanks for all the feedback you’ve been posting so far! Since we rolled out the new tester structure to the PBE, the quality and volume of your reports has been incredible - so much that we needed to significantly increase the number of dudes who work on PBE bug reports. You guys have massively upped your game and we want to do so as well. Specifically, we want to start by providing better indication that your reports are in our system. 

For the 3.15 PBE testing period, we’ll be trying something new that we've seen League players adopt on a couple of other sites: a bug megathread that lists which reports we've been able to verify. Verified bug reports are tester reports that have gone through our internal process—for example, if a tester reports that Special Weapon Zac’s passive blobs are invisible, we’ll probably test to see if it’s skin-specific and if other revive passives are also affected before starting work on a fix. The megathread will be updated several times throughout 3.15 and closed once we move on to 3.16. We hope this gives testers a better view of how their feedback is being used. 

We do want to mention that verifying a bug doesn't mean we've found a fix - depending on what's broken, it might even take a few patches for us to build out a solution. 

This is only the first communication experiment we're running, and we don't plan on stopping here. There are still lots of improvements we want to make to ensure we draw out the full value of tester feedback loops. Let us know what ideas you guys have for tools and methods we can use to better communicate with you!"

You can find the current 3.15 Bug Megathread by clicking here.

On Counterpicking and Safe Picks

RiotWrekz, a champion designer who I do not believe we've seen a champion from yet, replied to a thread discussing drafting and counterpicks, reminding players that a safe pick is often best when picking into an unknown lane opponent:

"If you are high in the pick order you would be well served by making a more strategic pick and playing a champion that is going to be relatively safe regardless of lane matchup. Jax is a good example of this in top, a lot of top laners can bully him before 6 and then the lane flips because he gains a lot of consistent power. Naturally this also depends on you playing the lane correctly when in an unfavorable matchup. 

If you identify when the enemy laner is going to be getting the most out of their power you can plan the lane around engagements are specific level breaks and play defensively outside of those windows. Barring cases where two champions do not belong in a lane against each other the fundamental toolkit that identifies a champion belonging in X lane should give them the tools to interact with likely opponents in that lane.

Counters inside that context (mage vs mage) are minimal and can frequently be responded to by shifting playstyle and responding appropriately to being behind. Understanding you are behind and shifting to a defensive playstyle can even allow you to get back in the lane as the aggressive player will cause the lane to push and open opportunities for ganks."

He continued:

"I believe you are misinterpreting my response. I'm not encouraging you to pick "flavor of the month OP champion" I'm saying that if you play high risk champions that excel in some matchups but not in others you are going to feel like the game has more counters. If you play champions that are pretty flexible in terms of who they can lane against and are well suited for the lane you are taking them then the consequences of losing a lane are nowhere near as high.

There is a clear difference between a champion being "overpowered" and a champion having a strong and versatile lane phase. There are a number of champions with powerful team fight potential that struggle during lane phase in many match ups. Finally, "countering" a champion doesn't just mean picking someone that can win a lane against them, it means evaluating what they bring to a team comp and where you can slot the response to that. As an example, you don't run Zac in mid to counter nidalee, you run hard engage throughout your team to stop her from poking and disengaging."

Bonus Armor and Magic Resist Penetration

CertainlyT dropped off a comment on the bonus armor and magic resist penetration seen on Yasuo's R, noting he'd like to see Last Whisper changed to a simliar mechanic.

"Unfortunately, the stat is actually different from Armor Pen. Yasuo only ignores bonus armor, the stuff you get from items, not the ~15-75 armor champions have innately. I would love for us to change Last Whisper to operate on this mechanic as well, and add new or more stats to compensate for any power lost."

Grumpy Monkey Sculpting Heimerdinger and Singed Models

Over on his twitter account, Grumpy Monkey shared a link to a video of him sculpting some models for Heimerdinger and Singed in zbrush!