Talk:Ao Shin/@comment-1948780-20140126045131/@comment-1330314-20140408005212

League of Legends had its engine built pretty much from scratch by a relatively small team, and so is fairly limited in power and scope and still poorly optimized. Dota 2 runs on the Source engine, built in 2004 and continually improved and renovated since then. The latter's arguably the best game engine ever made, not just because it can output high-quality graphics with far better efficiency than any other engine, but also because it allows for pretty much any kind of graphical style and still makes it look awesome. When Dota 2 was created, the engine to support it was pretty much ready-made by a company that had already been massively successful for over a decade. Riot Games hasn't yet really devoted that many resources to assembling a strong enough team to overhaul its old tech: improvements like the removal of years-old vision bugs are a milestone for the tech team, so something a hundred times more massive like a complete renovation of the game engine could be a long while ahead.

I don't think that's why Ao Shin was put on the backburner, though. is proof that Riot can implement smooth animations and handle non-humanoid champions properly. From what the red posts indicate, the problem mainly comes from the theme and his kit, which they haven't quite pinned down yet. He's meant to be a support, and supports are the hardest champion role to implement. The fact that he was announced before the Season 4 support overhaul also probably delayed his launch, as it likely put all the design decisions regarding his kit back to the drawing board.