User blog comment:PurpleWii/What makes a quality skin(for you)?/@comment-26815373-20160519210028

My biggest concern with skins (and new champions) is whether or not they eat up another champions flavor and theme design space, or that of future characters.

The most blatant examples I can think of, is the relatively newly released Elderwood Hecarim, which eats up any possibility of a forest-spirit-stag-nature-god type creature, with gameplay evoking that theme.

Does Spirit Fire Brand eat into the design space for a Tabu / 'shaman' type character? (Granted, is League's shaman, but I think his brand of shamanism and animism is unique enough to allow other flavors of shamanism.

Do skins like Program Lissandra, or Infernal Diana, or Freljord Taliyah eat up the design space for an Oracle champion, future 'fire' champions, or what could have been a water-bender champion? Of course they do, some bites are just larger than others.

I love so many of these skins (Soulstealer Vlad comes to mind, who eats up the possibility for a 'soul stealer' necromancer, in some ways) and I have to wonder how much longer the game can go before it starts eating itself. I want League to succeed and endure, but I have no way of knowing if anyone at Riot thinks about these kinds of things.