Plagued by Chromas
While all you Team Fortress mercenaries complain about the appearance of your so-called Decorated Weapons, which appear to come in a billion randomized styles based on weapon collection, weapon rarity, weapon pattern and weapon rare, with a smaller chance of being strange or unusual for two out of four collections, us champions have been plagued by something far, far worse. I am talking about Chroma Packs, the newest paid for feature to pester the League of Legends with its presence.
The idea of a Chroma Pack is incredibly simple, especially compared to the Weapon Retexture Project that appears to be ravaging first the Counter-Strike community and now the world of Team Fortress. With the two latter games, these weapons are either found as random drops or, for rarer types, received by either purchasing them or completing missions or contracts. A player often has to buy a starting medallion of sorts that enables them to attempt these quests. They do not count as gambling, since although your reward will ALWAYS be random and you will often not receive something as valuable as your original purchase, you are guaranteed a reward. You will also probably not enjoy what you find and will spend a long time looking for something you want.
Chroma Packs are simply bought in the League of Legends store. They are only available in packs of 3, for 590 RP – About $4. They are currently available for a limited number of champions, in two types – Base Chromas and Skin Chromas. Base Chromas alter the colour scheme of a a champion’s default look. Skin Chromas change the colour scheme of one of a champion’s skins. The skin needs to be purchased first before a Chroma Pack for it can be purchased. You cannot buy individual Chromas, nor do you have a choice what colours you get. Every pack contains 3 colours only.
I was one of the unfortunate champions to receive such a Chroma Pack, for my base skin.
Looking at the picture, I stand on the left in all my glory. The rest of the image is filled with the hideous look of my three Chromas – red-pink with purple, purple and gold and white and whatever the last one is. And they had the nerve to dye my hair! I am still working out how to smite the people behind this in the name of Demacia, but it turns out Rioters are hard beings to target.
Now, why would I want to pay $4 for this? I am the Might of Demacia. I wear the royal colours of my home. And those Chromas, aside from maybe the purple one, look traitorous. They’re not even that good.
It gets worse. The Skin Chromas are palette swaps for skins that you have already bought. You essentially pay twice for the same thing, once for the original and once for the recolour.
The colours aren’t even that good. Pictured above is the champion known as Lee Sin, wearing his Dragonfist suit. Two of the Chromas in this Pack are inverted versions of each other! It’s actually rather common for a Chroma Pack to contain two similar colours. *cough*ZAC*cough*
Chromas are purely cosmetic. And you can only buy them with real money. You cannot earn them or trade them or save up for them. They can only be bought for 590 RP points, which often requires a purchase of $5 of RP. But these are simple palette swaps. While I am not particularly artistically inclined (although Lux very much is), I could simply open up the device you call Photoshop and do these with some guidance. This actually reminded me of something you beings have in Team Fortress 2: hat paints.
Apparently, hats have a normal texture and a greyscale texture, to which paint colours are applied. So why not just do that with my own textures and make a Garen of every colour of the rainbow, rather than these… things?
The simplicity of these things really is not worth $4, at least in my eyes.
On the positive side though, I have not seen many of these atrocities on the Fields of Justice. The few cases I have seen are the AI Training Bots. But unfortunately, those up there will continue to make them, as they are incredibly easy to create and cheap to sell. Quantity over quality.
Oh well.
For Justice, for Demacia.