Red Post Collection: Snowdown planned for later this week, Lunar Goddess Diana discussion, and much more!

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Snowdown Later This Week?

In a reddit thread trying to guess the date when this year's Snowdown will start, Hippalus swooped in to comment that he believes it will start later this week!

"I'm not in the office but I'm fairly certain Snowdown is currently planned to start later this week (probably sometime on the 19th)..."

More on Lunar Goddess Diana

For reference, here is the LG Diana skin as it appears in the 12/14 PBE Update

Following up on the discussion from a few days ago, IronStylus dropped this off regarding the Lunar Goddess Diana feedback:

"Hey guys, just wanted to pop in here to say thanks and give some thoughts on what I've seen.
First of all, thank you for all this feedback! Honestly, it's a lot of feedback, so if I do get the chance to mess with the skin I'm of course going to have to pick and choose what to do. So, there's a pile of good ideas in here, in the end, I probably won't be able to cater to everyone's tastes (sorry!).

Also, again, A DISCLAIMER. As I've said, I'm going to try to work with the team to see if we can make some edits.Emphasis on try. While there's probably a while between now and Lunar Revel, the holidays are coming up and I'm not sure what sort of bandwidth the team has. We have a lot on our plate, and the last thing I want to do is put pressure on anyone before the end of the year. That said, I'm going to see how the team feels about the feedback. Again, no guarentees. I only say that simply because anything can change, or not change. Things might change drastically, or they might not change at all.

About the general feel of the feedback given and the changes people have suggested. The paintings, drawings and other reference is extremely helpful. It'll help zero in on common trends as I pick through it.

I'm generally a fan of keeping her hair dark, as it's contrast to a rather light skin, especially if I bring some of the values up so they're not so deep, which is something I'm considering, including her skin tone. Though it might be a good idea to go cooler with her hair than a warm brown.

I'm partial to the crown, but I think I might be able to do something with the symbol to emphasize it, cut a hole in it, make it more regal, whatever. Problem is that it's geometry and that might be past the point of changing. I'll have to check.

I'm not in love with the jade mainly because I feel Tryn has that territory covered in this batch of skins. Also, I'm going to shy away from black/white color pallettes, because this is an opportunity to have a bit softer of a feel to the skin over all and her base is pretty monochromatic. I'm going to experiment with things, but my gut is that the purples or at least pastels will probably be the way forward, as referenced in a lot of the Chang'E art people have posted here. There's a softness there that I think is appropriate to the theme of that reference.

I do like the idea of light armor in select places, but not bulky. There's some reference that seems to strike a nice balance between flowing cloth and decorative "armor" or at the very least, thicker material in general.

It's stuff I'm going to try, among other things.

Again, sorry to be a broken record, I hope I can make adjustments. I'll be assisting with the changes if the team thinks it's the way to go, but I can't say anything is for sure.

Thanks a ton for the reference, paintovers, drawings, etc. Really helpful! Thanks very much for keeping this thread overwhelmingly positive! You have no idea how helpful and productive that is. It's inspiring rather than discouraging, and gives me something to actually act upon if there's an opportunity to make changes.

Thanks again!"

He continued later, commenting on some of the communities skin ideas and talking and urging summoners to maintain a calm approach when reacting to new content.

"Gunna take a slightly hard line when responding so this, so excuse me, not trying to be confrontational, just trying to keep it all in perspective.

"Why does this skin mean no Diana skins for a while? We're talking what.. 6 months or more? I don't feel that's the end of the world. Also, if we have an opportunity, then we'll make something new and awesome. As I've said, she would have had a skin out earlier except that skin was pushed in order to make room for Lunar Revel. In all honesty, that proposed skin was more like the "Eclipse Diana", but honestly, I wasn't really happy with it in it's simplicity, and it would have crowded out other skins. The Change'E inspiration was elegant, unique, and something we'd certainly not get a chance to do for a while. So, even if you're not partial to it, we've at least got it checked off the list and can move onto more ideas that hopefully you will like. 

Zyra is a very particular case. Zyra has pretty much the most skin assets in our entire game. Making skins for her is extremely demanding and requires a ton of work in terms of model assets, VFX and animations. Diana is definitely easier than that. 

Also, remember. You're pretty much talking to the guy who wants TONS of skins for Diana. I want an elegant skin along the lines of Eclipse, I want something crazy gory along the lines of Blood Lord Vlad, I'd like to see the Solari Diana come to life, and I'd REALLY like to see a bananas crazy legendary skin for her at some point where she's all Awakened Being or something nuts. Believe me, I have some ideas.

I understand the lack of some transparency, and I'll do what I can to advocate for more. I don't know if that'll happen. Not everyone is as active as I am or likes.. ya know.. writing.

Again, I do like that we're having this discussion. I treat the votes in this poll as saying half of the people voting for the skin like it so long as it has a few tweaks, and for the others, it's not their particular cup of tea as it stands on PBE, which isn't even it's finished state. If it's not those people's favorite, no problem. There will be more skins to come for her."

"You honestly think scrapping the skin is a good idea? So.. kill the skin, go back to the drawing board, and have nothing for her for however many months? Don't you think that's a little unreasonable?"

Morello Grab Bag - Next Lux Skin, Ao Shin, Preseason, and More

When Steel Legion Lux first debuted on the PBE, there was a massive discussion on Lux's available skin types and how the community didn't really want another military themed Lux skin. At the end of this discussion, Morello noted the team would work hard to push out another, more apt Lux skin.

Many, many months later, here's Morello's response to a forum thread regarding that promised Lux skin

"Soon(TM) 

Though in all seriousness, we still want to do this. What form it takes and when is still up in the air a bit. No news yet!"

When pressed for more info or a timeline, he replied:

"Well in what world do we announce timelines? :P

I just want to mention this is not forgotten or abandoned, which =! now"

 As a follow up, Morello also answered a question regarding how long it takes to produce a skin:

"Depends on the skin - normal skins are faster to make than Legendaries of course. Ultimates are massive undertakings - I think 9+ months per, considering new tech and bugs also.

Mindbullets actually has this kind of information, and it's morphed quite a bit since I worked more closely with the skins team"

He continued, replying to a question on why another Lux skin wasn't expedited out as fast as he had wanted:

"To be honest, I thought that too, but we (and I think correctly) focused on making sure to do skins for some underserved champions first. That changed the equation a bit too."

Continuing on the topic of things we haven't heard about for a while, Morello also replied to a question about the mysterious Ao Shin concept we saw a while back:

"Needed to do some more work after we explored the concept additionally, so no news yet!"

As for how Morello feels on the preseason changes first pushed in patch 3.14, he commented:

"I'm happy with vision, I like the support changes direction, but more work to be done on gold and tuning.

Overall, the issue I think remains is tuning and balance, and gold items themselves. Wriggle's needs a bit of work. I like it overall because it gets us closer to a world that's a better game at a cost of temporary disruption."

He continued, elaborating on what he considers the problems for the support changes:

"I think the scaling and itemization for traditional supports is a bit weak and myopic."

When asked if the team had ever thought of doing a "dancer" themed champion, Morello commented:

"We've toyed with the idea - I generally think it's a good archetype (especially when you have a lot of the "core" ones covered, too).

It's a bit more challenging of a kit to make, but by no means impossible."

New EU prepaid options 

Riot has unveiled a slew of new prepaid card options for EU summoners! Check THIS POST for more information on card options, retailers, and more.