Today we’d like to address a very common community question: Why don’t our skins look more like this?
In large part, it’s because of our “parts and pieces” system. This system allows players to mix and match bodies with accessories, by carving player models into several separate parts.
Unfortunately, this system is restrictive on our skin designs. Every head has to work with every body. A backpack can’t clip through the geometry on another skin. We have very, very small safe zones to work in when we design skins, as you can see from these images.
Sometimes we have great ideas, but they just don’t work. For example, this Grohk skin from early beta was never released — much to the community’s disappointment. That’s because of our “parts and pieces” system; We could never get the head and body to separate cleanly and place nicely with our other skins. It’s the same problem we’d run into on any of those Paladins Strike skins.
And the more skin we create, the more issue we face. A simple collar or ribbon can torpedo an entire skin…Or just make the finished product look a lot less cool.
This system also has significant impacts on performance. Instead of needing to load one mesh per character, we need to load several. As we continue to optimize Paladins, the performance hit of our “parts and pieces” system becomes more and more apparent.
Lastly, the system makes our UI very complicated. Our UI team has to maintain multiple screen, tabs, filters, and store functions that take valuable development time away from others issues.
We’re not happy about any of these things. We want to make better skins. We want the game to run better. We want our UI to be cleaner, less buggy, and easier to understand.
Taking all this into account, we have decided to eliminate the parts and pieces system, effective in OB68. We understand this may be upsetting to players who really enjoyed mixing and matching Champion Skins, but ultimately we believe the pros outweigh the cons. This is an important step froward to improve the overall quality of Paladins.
What does this mean for existing Skin owners when OB68 releases?
- All Body + Accessory Skin Collections will become one-part Skins.
- If you owned any part of a Skin (Body, Accessory or Voice Pack), you will be retroactively awarded the full Skin at no cost.
- All standalone Accessories will become one-part Skins, combining the Accessory with the base Champion model.
- Players who owned those Accessories will be granted the new Skins at no cost.
- Weapon Skins will remain independent. Players will still be able to mix-and-match Champion Skins and Weapon Skins.
- In a few specific cases, we will be removing redundant skins from the game.
Genie Ying and Nova Strike Kinessa
- These skins featured several different Accessories, all paired with the same Body.
- We will choose the best looking version of each Accessory and pair it with the Body to create a Skin.
- Other Accessories will be removed from the game, and owners will be compensated.
Common and Uncommon Recolor Skins
- Each Champion will now only have one recolor Skin available.
- That Skin will be purchasable with Gold.
- Common and Uncommon Recolor Skins
So what kind of skins are going to be possible with this new system? We’re excited to share some awesome concept art that our team has been working on.
No more hairband recolors here. These skins are transformative, unrestricted by our “pieces and parts” system. For now, these are just concepts — skins we may or may not actually make — but we hope you are as excited about the future as we are.
One final note: As part of our overhaul to the “pieces and parts” system, we will be changing how Voice Packs work.
- Voice Packs are now tied to a single purchase: Each Champion’s default Voice Pack.
- If you own a Champion’s default Voice Pack, you can access any Voice Packs for skins you currently own or purchase in the future for that Champion.
- Players who previously owned skin Voice Packs but not a default Champion Voice Pack will be retroactively awarded that pack.
We will continue to improve quality and perfomance throughout the year, and this is a big first step. See you in the Realm, Champions!
TL;DR:
- We want to improve skin quality and in-game performance, but our “parts and pieces” cosmetic system sucks.
- We’re doing away with the “parts and pieces” system, replacing it with an easier to understand system: All Champions cosmetics will now be either full Champion Skins, or Weapon Skins.
- All players who own any part of a skin collection (Body, Accessory, or Voice Pack) will receive the rest of the collection. All players who own Accessories without an associated Collection will receive a new full Skin, combining that Accessory with the Champion’s base model.
