EDIT: Thank you everyone for joining in the conversation and not flaming us too hard. We're
signing off for the night! Hopefully you don't hate the next karambit! XD

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TL;DR: Sean and Preeti are here from the Premium Content (cosmetics) team! Some of you’ve told us that you don’t like the equip animation for the Prime//2.0 upgraded melee and are asking if we can change it. We typically don’t make changes to live products unless competitive integrity is violated because some players did purchase/upgrade that skin due to its existing design. We are investigating what a skin level toggle system would look like and as a result of these discussions, we are committing to shipping a feature that addresses that this year. We also realize that we missed the mark here on what was expected from an upgraded equip, so we’re using your feedback for any future karambits.

Preeti ( u/Riot_Preeti ) and I collected your feedback, talked to a bunch of folks on the team, and now we want to talk to all of you!

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We’ll be around for the next 1 hour to answer questions! (Also, if you want to ask us random questions we can answer those too since we like talking to you all.)

What did we (the skins team) do?

• We made a Prime//2.0 karambit melee that evolves!
• The karambit melee Level 1 uses the standard “assassin” equip animation, which is also used for the Elderflame, Reaver, Ruin, etc. melees.
• For Level 2, we decided to create a unique equip that we thought would be more exciting based on feedback that you all love the unique equip animations we’ve done on other skins. We moved the spammability of the equip from Level 1 to the inspect animation, so you’d still get the same “spin it on your finger” feel AND get an equip that feels special on Level 2. Hey, we thought it was a win-win.
• It was a decision based on our creative taste that we were genuinely hyped for and thought you’d all love it too.
• Typically our Level 2 equips—if they are different—feel more additive to the base, whereas this one was something entirely different.
• We always provide in-client videos of the skin upgrades so that everyone can preview and know what features are included at each level before spending RadP to upgrade.

What happened?

• Not all of you liked the equip animation, including Mendo: https://twitter.com/Mendo/status/1366806260230676480?s=20
• BUT a lot of people did love it, which we’ve seen on social media as well. So, what do we do when the community is seemingly split?

What did we learn?

• In the future, we should find a way to keep the karambit equip on Level 2 still feel just as satisfying. We don’t have another karambit planned for this year, but we’ll take this into account for the next one we do.
• Taste is subjective and you all won’t always like something we think is cool. This was a good reminder.
• As mentioned in the TL;DR, as a result of this convo, we are prioritizing the development of a skin level toggle system for this year (it takes time!).

What’s next?

• Why not just revert it for everyone?
  • It sounds simple but we can’t change it because it would upset those of you who liked the Level 2 animation enough to make a purchase.
  • Our rule is we don’t change a cosmetic unless it’s violating competitive integrity in-game, which in this case, it’s not.
• We’ll be sure to highlight the karambit equip animation on our next karambit melee. Soon TM.

- Sean ( u/oniram177 ), Preeti ( u/Riot_Preeti ), and the Premium Content Team