One major request from the League of Legends community this current season has been for Riot to carry out more reworks.
Although there have been significant visual and gameplay updates to a good number of champions, only Dr. Mundo has received a complete facelift -- something that has caused discontent among players.
The two major problems when it comes reworks
Bryan "Riot Axes" Salvatore has explained that the process of visual and gameplay updates is much more expensive than players think. In his seven-year-plus experience, there are two main problems that make it practically impossible for there to be more reworks throughout the year -- polarizing the community, and the cost of production.
Delving into these two situations a bit further, Salvatore explained how all League of Legends players want a higher VGU rate for champions they don't play, while only a few want their favorites to change.
It's a situation that leads to a significant number of disgruntled fans, even in well-executed reworks. To put it in his own words, "a well-executed VGU gives something cool to play with, it also takes something away that someone loved."
This situation adds to a problem with resources. Although we might think that carrying out a rework is much less expensive than creating a new champion, this assumption is far from the truth.
Complete updates require work on a good number of existing skins that must be completely redone. For example, with Shyvana's rework, eight skins must also be reworked. This is something similar to what happened with Dr. Mundo, whose relaunch had to be delayed due to problems with his cosmetics.
Salvatore does sympathise with the community, however.
"I get the "smol indie company" memes, but the reality of trying to hire, say, VFX artists is that there are never enough to go around," he said.
While he says Riot would like to do more, "the rate isn't likely to go up enormously in the near future."
Mordekaiser was the main protagonist of the infamous Juggernauts patch that revolutionized League of Legends six years ago, and is considered by many to be the strangest champion that Riot Games has ever released.
