It really is sad how easily posts get to the front page for the wrong reasons

"New"

I never order the forums by "Hot". It's kinda like not muting the troll in game.

I get spam downvoted and drowned out for just saying that, barring a few exceptions, I like the current state of the game. People don't want discussion, they just want to circlejerk about how OP damage is right now, how busted tanks are, how busted adcs are, and complain about things that happened in their games with 0 context.

If you ask for cs/items/a replay on a post where someone is complaining about getting blown up by an enemy, you'll get downvoted and rarely get a reply.

It's really sad honestly.

There is a solution. We as board users have to take reponsibility. We need to downvote every single post that doesn't promote a constructive conversation. And yes maybe you think that zoe is op and needs to be nerfed hard, but nevertheless you should just downvote a post that just goes along the line of "Zoe is op", without any further explanation. All these posts on the frontpage have like 100 upvotes and 2k views. 95% of the board user neither upvote nor downvote. And this needs to change! Just straight up downvote every post that is unconstructive, even if you share the unconstructive opinion.

{quoted}I don't know what the solution is or even if there is one.

To some extent, this is a well-documented effect on the internet. There's a reason the most commonly linked news articles tend to have attention-grabbing headlines and, at most, cursory dives into content. It's far easier to get someone to read/comment on a controversial or quick opinion, and it's easy for people -- especially those frustrated by what they see as inaction on their concerns -- to dismiss a longer critique or analysis. There's also a secondary documented effect that shows that opinions that differ from our own and offer facts to support things we find an anathema to our beliefs actually tend to make us feel attacked, and make us less likely to engage in reasonable debate and be open to changing our opinions.

Additionally, a discussion is often harder to have upvoted, because people may disagree with your thoughts/opinions/direction. Saying "Zoe is OP" gets a ton of upvotes because tons of people agree. Saying "Zoe is OP, here's an analysis on why, and here's some suggestions" gets less because it's more reading, and a lot of people will not agree with your specific analysis and downvote you. I kind of tested this the other day on Gameplay -- a 3-paragraph post with a crit replacement proposal got a lot more attention than a 10+ page analysis of several possible crit replacement models and the pros/cons of each, for example. Mainly because the former is easier to digest, and easier to render an easy "yes/no" judgement on.

Personally, I think people need to start upvoting well-presented ideas and discussions, even when they disagree with them. But getting that to happen is hard.

There's also been some debate among our moderation team on whether or not a more curated discussion subboard might be valuable, but it's a LOT of work to maintain, so I can't say it's more than a vague idea right now.

Title: "Why does Riot hate me"

Body: Because they only care about money huey huey huey

Front page**

Implying the game is going somewhere that ISN'T downhill

That's why I tend to steer clear of discussions related to balance. With so many different skill levels, individual players' experiences are often insignificant to a larger discussion about the balance of the game, making threads a confused mess. You can't make an informational post about, say, Yasuo without 90% of your upvotes or downvotes stemming from players opinions on the champ, or opinions on threads about the champ, rather than the actual content of the thread you've made.

And yeah, I'd much rather somebody respond with why they disagree than simply silently downvote.

Agree completely. A lot of front-page posts don’t incite any discussion besides “THE GAME IS GARBAGE!!!!”, which ends up taking a lot of room that could go to more well-thought out posts.

A discussion you don't want to hear is still a discussion

If you are late to work at Riot games, they probably force you to search the boards for well presented ideas... you know as a punishment....

I generally try to avoid the circlejerk ADC etc. stuff, since all that is well-known and obvious by now. I'd rather get some discussion going on the not-so-popular topics...

This game never cared about the player base. It was always, "Buy more rp dumbass" From riot. And that's how it still is, just uninstall. Hope an actual competitor for the genre saves it, nothing more.

{quoted}

It really is sad how easily posts get to the front page for the wrong reasons

You mean like this thread which you just created?

Plenty of discussion happening on the boards - you have to be blind not to see it.

If you really want discussions the reddit page is the place to go.

I mean, most of these points have been discussed before and it leads to nothing. At this point we're just looking for Riot to see these messages.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/opinion/sunday/liberal-conservative-divide.html?emc=edit_nk_20180216&nl=nickkristof&nlid=74285142&te=1

"Decades ago, a media thinker named Nicholas Negroponte predicted that the Internet would bring a news product he called “The Daily Me,” and it has arrived. We now have the ability to seek out news that perfectly reinforces our own prejudices and helpfully points out how awful the other side is."

You don't understand. Because of people like you who are always there to buy rp and support riot, they don't give a flying fk about game balance and it's state and only aim their changes to make more money.

What they do is giving people sht product. Free or not you should not forget about your clients for the good of other clients who are easier to convince you buy rp. For riot it easier to give casuals and baddies freelo champs that require 0 skill and they get to climb, than actually balance the game like veteran players want, because it takes too much time for them and game has been put through too much sht to undo all that fast.