Cho’Gath might not be the most visually appealing champion in League of Legends, but Riot is looking to make him a bit more attractive by improving the visual effects of his abilities.
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While the Void champion recently received partial updates to his kit last year that quickly put him into a pick/ban spot due to his power in the jungle and in the top lane, his abilities didn’t receive such an update. Cho’Gath is one of the older champions in League, and though his abilities are fairly straightforward in terms of their visuals, they’re going to be improved as part of a new partial update system that Riot is planning on implementing in 2018, according to Riot Meddler.
“Something we’re going to be doing a bit more of this year is updating a single element on a champion that’s not up to the standard of that character as a whole. We’ve been doing that for quite a while with gameplay and things like updating old loading screen art. We’re looking to do more of it for other stuff as well too though.
“First up, probably in 8.3, will be new visual effects for Cho’gath. Cho’s base VFX are really rough. His model’s showing its age somewhat too, but not to the extent his spells are. We’re not expecting we’ll do a VGU on him for quite a while, so addressing his spells in the meantime makes sense.”
Visuals aren’t the only projects that’ll be worked on in these partial updates. Meddler noted that Riot would likely move on to a voice over update for a different champion yet. Elsewhere in a reply to a reader’s comment, it was also said that champion models could also be included in these updates based on other variables.
“Model only updates might happen, particularly depending on your definition of what model only means. If a champion’s model needs work, but their animations and rig (skeleton that the animations/model are built on) are good, then replacing the model’s not too bad a task. We did that with Maokai a couple of years back for example and I think the result looks pretty good (if you’ve never seen it, worth looking up old Maokai). Some champs on the other hand have really poor animations/rigs, so even if they don’t need other work replacing just the model’s not an option. We can still do texture work on them (changing what’s drawn onto the model), but there are limits to how much that can improve things and we’ve hit most of the texture opportunities already at this point.”
