Hey folks. My name is Bellissimoh and I’m the Product Lead for Personalization on League.

“People don’t want 720s.” Over the last several years we’ve seen really poor engagement for this category of skins. Not only do we not see people engage with them but also in surveys players cite them as being lower quality, being unhappy with them when they purchase them, and wish their champion had gotten a 1350 or 1820 instead. Don’t get me wrong, while there are players do like 720s, they’re just not of a large enough audience size for us to focus on. (As an example, many of our lower play rate champs have larger audiences than the folks who show up for 720s)

Another thing that we look for as far as measuring player satisfaction and engagement on skins is how many times people use a skin in-game when they own it. 720s also really under index here.

So in summary, people don’t really buy them, when they do they generally aren’t happy, and don’t use them nearly as much as Epic or Legendary tier skins.

We’ve made a very intentional decision to make less of these as a result of all the above factors. We have to be diligent about how we spend our time, and our hope is to focus on making stuff that you love, you’re happy buying, and that you’re satisfied with when you use it in-game.

Spideraxe30

My issue isn't that I feel locked out of cosmetics because of the higher price thresholds, it's that a result of Riot focusing on higher tiers for skins is up selling.

This is valid feedback. It’s also why we try and regularly deliver lower price purchase opportunities like Your Shop.

Definitely taking note of this sentiment as time goes by. Thanks for sharing it with us.

TheeOmegaPi

Hey /u/Bellissimoh, we've talked before about the lesser-played champs, I have a question about the engagement/satisfaction points:

1. Is there a difference in engagement/satisfaction between older and newer champs who receive a 750 skin? (As in, will a player of an older champ with a ton of pre-existing skins report a different level of satisfaction compared to a newer champion with 1-2 skins?)

2. Regarding champions with already "beautiful" skins (Cosmic Reaver Kassadin comes to mind), how are decisions made surrounding making newer skins for them? Like, people on this subreddit in particular say (quite often) that they don't see a reason to purchase another Kass skin again because of Cosmic Reaver being so amazing. I've heard the same thing about Muay Thai Lee Sin.

Great questions.

To the first question. No significant or noticeable difference. (Which is why for any low play rate champ skins we make, they will be of at least Epic quality)

For the second question, whenever there is a skin that is high satisfaction for the players of that champion, the biggest influence it has on our decisions is working to understand what about it players liked to inform future skins for that champ, but also taking note of the thematic space it takes up in order to ensure we differentiate moving forward.

Also while people cite things like you mention, not everyone is happy or pleased with every skin. There may be a player or set of players that love Cosmic Reaver Kassadin, but there also Kassadin players who don’t like that skin as well. Hence the difficult job of trying to find thematics and executions of thematics that hit as many players as possible.

Pascals_Tricycle

Have you guys ever toyed around with the idea of letting people spend 720 rp to get a random 1350 or 1820 skin? I feel like it'd make you more money overall.

Mentioned above but this is where things like Your Shop or skin sales come into play. Also many people do engage with loot in order to get skins at a price that is on average lower than purchasing one directly at the trade off of agency and choice of which skin.

Spideraxe30

Appreciate this reply at least, even if it doesnt lead to direct changes, FWIW even if it feels like content is being up sold I at least feel I’m getting a bang for my buck most of the time.

Thanks for the feedback Spideraxe30. We’re constantly keeping an eye on whether or not players feel like they’re getting their money’s worth so it’s meaningful to hear that from you.

TerraRising

This post just leads to other questions:

• Are these players getting teased/bullied for buying/using a "low tier" skin and just don't want to deal with that again? This happens a lot with F2P games, it seems.
• Are these players truly not interested in "lower tier" skins because of a perceived lack of quality or effort from Riot? (They cost less, so obviously Riot must not have worked as hard making it as a higher priced one.)
• Were the skins really of a lower overall quality (effort, concept, marketing) than one that costs 1350, hence why players don't want to purchase them?
• Was Riot's decision to not raise the overall standards of a 975 skin to a 1350 one and keep to that price point instead of just focusing on the 1350 tier a researched factor in why engagement is so low?
• Is the 975 RP cost too confusing for players when a $10 card gives 1380 RP?

I have no problem believing the data says that players aren't engaged in low-cost content. I have no problem believing that the data says that some champs aren't worth making new skins for. I have no problem believing that the data says anything you want it to, because the data can be skewed in any direction you want it to be.

Frankly, I'm more interested in seeing if anyone at Riot's PIE team ever asked "why" instead of just accepting what some data-driven corporate pencil pusher says is real.

You make a very solid point here. While we look at data and statistics in order to understand what players are engaging with, that data doesn’t tell us the why. This is why we combine quantitative methods like looking at raw numbers and qualitative information from talking to players in playtest labs as well as surveying players across different regions globally.

To answer your overarching question directly, yes we ask why, and we’re very careful about taking data at face value.