u/BotomsDntDeservRight

First i thought Caraxes was bigger than Sheepstealer but after thorough comparsions, Sheepstealer is definitely bigger.

According to global op.gg she has only 0.10% pick rate more than Zilean, who is considered as incredibly unpopular.

It pretty much shows how important her being a shield bot was to majority of her players. It’s kinda sad to see, because out of all enchanters she had the most skill expression I think, and could potentially ruin teamfights with her ult, if not used wisely.

Another interesting context is how Riot kind of allowed this to happen? Like, at one point she was a 22% pick rate support. I would’ve assumed Riot would intervened to save it from falling this low.

Its hard to imagine her walking upto a big ass dragon and it just accepting her?? Is this another Silverwing case where Dreamfyre accepted the first rider it saw?

Summary from Weibo's AI:

On June 22, 2026, Love and Deepspace suddenly dropped its sixth male protagonist, "Ao Yin," without any story buildup. His Western-style werewolf character model clashed severely with the art style of the five existing male protagonists, triggering massive player backlash. The official response of spamming "Sorry!" only intensified the conflict. The comment section has accumulated nearly 600,000 negative comments, and this has rarely united fans of the other five protagonists in a joint protest. 

I. Incident Core: New Male Protagonist Controversy
On June 22, 2026, Love and Deepspace suddenly revealed a sixth romanceable male protagonist, Ao Yin, via a concept short. Set as a 189cm werewolf leader/CEO, scheduled for July 9. Customer service had previously denied plans for a sixth protagonist; this abrupt drop, with no story buildup, was seen as a betrayal.

II. Reasons for Boycott

• Aesthetic clash: Ao Yin's rugged Western model sharply contrasts with the refined East Asian style of existing male protagonists, mocked as a patchwork design, and his name sounds like a wolf howl, sparking ridicule.
• Unequal resources: Main stories of the five original protagonists have stalled (e.g., Xia Yizhou 500+ days no update), yet the new protagonist received a full promotional package; players call it a double standard.
• Worse gacha: With six protagonists in mixed pools, pull probability for a favorite dropped from ~20% to ~16.7%; scheduling concerns for future cards.
• Story conflict: Ao Yin is the core leader of the villainous EVER group that has harmed all existing protagonists; players reject romancing someone who hurt them.

III. Official Response & Backlash

• Response: Officials ignored core issues (model, gacha, buildup) and spammed "Sorry!" while pushing lines like "look at his bright eyes." They also declared all protagonists heterosexual for the first time, seen as deflection.
• Player reaction: Seen as force-fed promotion and an ineffective apology. Veterans noted that when old protagonists faced rumors, the company stayed silent, but now frantically defended the newcomer, highlighting a double standard.

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P.S. Many Chinese female players hate "wolf/bear" type characters because they think the characters look gay. They don't want to attract gay male players and don't want the dev to fawn over male players.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk0e_YV4VAQ