User blog comment:KaiserLos24/Skins- Symbolism or Just For Show?/@comment-1836772-20140103075801

They're superfluous and serve no real purpose from a gameplay perspective. From a social perspective, they're also superfluous, and prove nothing about a person's abilities. That's the unfortunate part of this game in the grand scheme of things. Skins, the honor system, the number of wins, even ranks to a degree, they prove nothing about a person's own individual abilities. Someone with four friends can cheese the system by having them all honor him until he gets the emblems, or be supported in the rank system until he is in gold or diamond or whatever.

I don't know how a person got their shiny medals, emblems, ranks, or skins, and even people with 1000+ wins can be incredibly toxic trolls who act like they're three and feed the enemy team for the sake of it. A blind loyalty to the meta doesn't give a person the skills of a professional, just the piety of a foolish zealot. The same applies to skins. At best it shows a person favors that specific champion. At worst it shows that person can afford to be frivolous, like the people who buy the new champion bundle the day of their release. The problem is you can't tell the difference between the two, and with no absolute factors it renders a preliminary judgement moot.

My point is I pay no attention to any of that stuff. If a person picks Vayne, I'm going to assume the worst  you can expect from Vayne, and prepare for it accordingly. That goes for any other champion, skins and wins be damned.