Adressing Riot's absence from the gameplay board

King Braum·Jun 10, 2018·10 votes·6,628 views

This is an open letter to anyone in Riot,

Hello, I'm King Braum, I've played this game for over 4 years, longer even if you count the time I played the game on and off around season 1, and ever since I've started playing this game, I've loved it. To save my allies last moment from teamfights, fighting along side them as I desperatly try to keep everyone alive, slowly pressing forward to the enemy nexus, collecting champions to add to my collection and staying up late at night to learn everything I could possibly about them from their abilities, to their cooldowns to even their lore. I found players, a community, friends to share my passion with.

This is quite possibly the greatest community I've had the pleasure to be a part of and this is a game I will always look back fondly off and I want to keep it like that but there's a problem, the game feels like it is in shambles, jungle is ruined, ADCs cry out as the botlane slowly becomes more and more obsolite to the game, more and more damage is added as towers are made paper thin, the game feels rushed with tanks and glasscannon seemingly standing on a hill of the skeletal remains of champions that cant survive in this new meta. the runes have taken away the identity of players, blue essence the spoils of war as the game feels unrewarded. and the community cries out. it begs for answer in the one place where we hope for answers, but in return we find nothing.

EDIT: most of this was writen as a massive rant after noticing the mass amount of players in the gameplay section being bascially ignored. yes, Meddler is doing well with his posts, answering various questions of the playerbase but I feel like more Riot members should be active in the actual gameplay section or otherwise, more Rioters should hang around Meddlers post answering the various questions people have. Either way this is somewhat of a minor complaint written mainly out of frustation so dont pay all too much attention to it

21 Comments

RiotBazerkaJul 7, 20188 votes

raises hand I'm here! I'm definitely not an expert in development or gameplay balance, but I can at least point you towards the resources we've put out on the topic! There are plenty of posts on the boards made by Riot Meddler and Riot Fearless about jungle and gameplay balance as well as ample videos and articles about the subject on the /Dev blogs.

That being said, I totally hear you there aren't enough posts & resources to cover 100% of why the meta is the way it is currently. Succinctly put we can't give 100% insight since that would be crossing the line into players privacy and data trends that give us (I would imagine) a competitive edge with our game. Its kinda like why KFC keeps their recipe under lock & key, or why companies wont release the source code to their software.

On top of that we have to consider that if we give 100% visibility into our decision making process would be a massive time investment. If you think about it, there are quite literally tens of thousands of hours that go into each balance patch. Compressing all of those hours into a digestible format for the community once (not even thinking on a 2 week basis) is a herculean task. To be clear I'm not saying "because its too hard we shouldn't do it at all" nor do I think thats whats been done in the past. However, we have to pick and choose our battles. Any time we spend on comms and optics is time not being spent on making the game better, but a lack of optics and comms makes the developers seem aloof and in accessible (like waiting for a package without a tracking #). Ideally we balance both, and I think thats what we are trying to find right now. Hope that helps :S

DNFVixenJul 9, 20183 votes

{quoted}

raises hand I'm here! I'm definitely not an expert in development or gameplay balance, but I can at least point you towards the resources we've put out on the topic! There are plenty of posts on the boards made by Riot Meddler and Riot Fearless about jungle and gameplay balance as well as ample videos and articles about the subject on the /Dev blogs.

That being said, I totally hear you there aren't enough posts & resources to cover 100% of why the meta is the way it is currently. Succinctly put we can't give 100% insight since that would be crossing the line into players privacy and data trends that give us (I would imagine) a competitive edge with our game. Its kinda like why KFC keeps their recipe under lock & key, or why companies wont release the source code to their software.

On top of that we have to consider that if we give 100% visibility into our decision making process would be a massive time investment. If you think about it, there are quite literally tens of thousands of hours that go into each balance patch. Compressing all of those hours into a digestible format for the community once (not even thinking on a 2 week basis) is a herculean task. To be clear I'm not saying "because its too hard we shouldn't do it at all" nor do I think thats whats been done in the past. However, we have to pick and choose our battles. Any time we spend on comms and optics is time not being spent on making the game better, but a lack of optics and comms makes the developers seem aloof and in accessible (like waiting for a package without a tracking #). Ideally we balance both, and I think thats what we are trying to find right now. Hope that helps :S

Bazerka you are one of my fav Rioters but I am sorry to say that the company you work for and the Dev/Balance team currently SUCKS they no longer go by the phylosophy that made the game GREAT and has just went down hill every season from season 6 onward. AKA this philosophy.

https://euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/features/dev-blog-design-values-league-legends

I miss the Balanced (more then now) Fair game play of back then and not this high dmg high mobility fuckfest.

CaptainAntiHerozJul 9, 20182 votes

Can you point me to a board to discuss supports... Or point someone who has influence over supports to the post I made about why supporting us rough right now Please and thank you (if at all possible)

RiotBazerkaJul 10, 20184 votes

{quoted}

Can you point me to a board to discuss supports... Or point someone who has influence over supports to the post I made about why supporting us rough right now Please and thank you (if at all possible)

I'd recommend going to the dev blog (https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/#category/dev) and searching up "Support". There are a ton of articles written on the topic. However, I don't think many of them are recent. Again we run into the "there isn't enough time to write about and execute". Its really unfortunate

CaptainAntiHerozJul 10, 20183 votes

{quoted}

I'd recommend going to the dev blog (https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/#category/dev) and searching up "Support". There are a ton of articles written on the topic. However, I don't think many of them are recent. Again we run into the "there isn't enough time to write about and execute". Its really unfortunate

Couldn't find anything about support items or the meta for supports that was recent, found a pyke ultimate post and a rune reforged post If I put in a ask Riot about the support items what's the likelihood that it would get answered? Also thank you for responding, it means a lot

RiotBazerkaJul 10, 20182 votes

{quoted}

Couldn't find anything about support items or the meta for supports that was recent, found a pyke ultimate post and a rune reforged post If I put in a ask Riot about the support items what's the likelihood that it would get answered? Also thank you for responding, it means a lot

Ah unfortunate :(, tbh I'm not sure if thats a good way to get a dev blog question answered? A more direct way would be to ask the question in the dev corner forum? I know a lot of the core gameplay team is on that forum and could be a good way to get a response? Good luck friend

CaptainAntiHerozJul 10, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Ah unfortunate :(, tbh I'm not sure if thats a good way to get a dev blog question answered? A more direct way would be to ask the question in the dev corner forum? I know a lot of the core gameplay team is on that forum and could be a good way to get a response? Good luck friend

Ty I'll try that

Emmy Cha0sJul 17, 20183 votes

{quoted}

Ah unfortunate :(, tbh I'm not sure if thats a good way to get a dev blog question answered? A more direct way would be to ask the question in the dev corner forum? I know a lot of the core gameplay team is on that forum and could be a good way to get a response? Good luck friend

The problem with that suggestion is Meddler and them blatantly and openly ignore most serious questions that are presented to them. This is especially true in regards to inquiries about supports and Sona in particular. I've seen Meddler openly ignore some 13+ questions about Sona within a single blog post, for several blog posts in a row. It's not even like they were from the same person or asking the same question, it ranged from gameplay to in-game models to lore to posts directly asking him "Why are you ignoring literally every single question about Sona?"

Unfortunately, certain topics are taboo for Rito & Meddler to discuss. Supports and why they always intentionally get the short end of the stick is one of those.

RiotBazerkaJul 19, 20184 votes

[{quoted}](name=Emmy Cha0s,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=UVhPQ69A,comment-id=000100010000000000000001,timestamp=2018-07-17T01:31:49.665+0000)

The problem with that suggestion is Meddler and them blatantly and openly ignore most serious questions that are presented to them. This is especially true in regards to inquiries about supports and Sona in particular. I've seen Meddler openly ignore some 13+ questions about Sona within a single blog post, for several blog posts in a row. It's not even like they were from the same person or asking the same question, it ranged from gameplay to in-game models to lore to posts directly asking him "Why are you ignoring literally every single question about Sona?"

Unfortunately, certain topics are taboo for Rito & Meddler to discuss. Supports and why they always intentionally get the short end of the stick is one of those.

I'd like to say that blatant and openly ignore i believe are the poor words to use. The decisions that are made certainly might not be widely shared as to their reasoning behind it, but don't mistake that lack of visibility as blatant ignorance of the question. There are many good reasons why we might choose to not share a change, or maybe we don't address it cause we ourselves know its highly experimental (all these things are guesses, not actual cases). Do I think we could be more visible with patch and balance notes? Sure, the answer is always yes. Do I think its the best use of time to type a 100 page paper on game balance as it increases exponentially with each new champ? No. Our time is better spent working on the game rather than spending thousands of hours explaining ourselves. A fine line has to be walked, but the sad thing is in that line communication does suffer :S

I'd also like to say, I've literally sat it multiple hour long meetings all talking about how to help supports. However, the role is tricky and we also don't want to pigeon hole the players into one specific style of play or engagement. Hence the creation of Pyke and Rakan and other "styles of support". Its just that with supports the stick looks different than for other roles, its more subtle, less obvious, and more... supportive in nature. The question is how to promote and celebrate that support.

Emmy Cha0sJul 23, 20181 votes

That doesn't excuse knowingly leaving Sona as an unbalancable, unplayable, literal dumpster fire since Patch 4.13 went Live, when she could have been reverted as soon as it was apparent the entirety of the "rework" was a total failure. Players have concluded that the entire patch was a sum of 35+ simultaneous nerfs to her, multiple shadow nerfs & probably making her the most-nerfed character in the game, with far more nerfs within that singular patch than any other character has received in all their patch history. Despite this, she hasn't seen a single buff since & why would she? She's never received a buff in the entire history of the game.

When Rito decided Ahri's 5.1 rework was a failure, they reverted her. They reverted Rengar. They added Shurelia's back into the game. Rito is FINALLY getting over their unjustified arrogance of refusing to revert failures. It's 4 years overdue to revert Sona or just Sion her, because fact is: patch 6.14 just made things even worse. Pronouncing her design flaws 10-fold instead of trying to fix even a single. Fucking. One.

It's one thing to say your time is better spent acting than just speaking, but Rito isn't acting. So that point is moot. It's also another thing for a Ritoer to go OUT OF THEIR WAY and spend that precious time you seem to value very highly, to publicly lie about a character's viability, much the way Meddler, Jag & Fearless to name a few off-hand have done on multiple occasions apiece.

Trek StarJul 9, 20183 votes

I love you tactically avoid talking about ADC... smooth summoner 13

RiotBazerkaJul 10, 201813 votes

{quoted}

I love you tactically avoid talking about ADC... smooth

I avoid talking about it cause I know nothing about it. Not about to pretend XD

BattalionJul 10, 20182 votes

Friend, Bazerka is not a gameplay developer, simply a Riot employee who plays the game and has some opinions on what was in the original post. Would you rather they bullshit you with knowledge they do not have over a topic, or simply avoid talking about it in order to not distract from their intended post over material they do know or have formulated opinions about?

summoner 3

HyperionCHJul 23, 20181 votes

In my opinion, the activity of the gsmeplay team (Meddler etc.) is OK. I think it is impossible to answer all questions about gameplay etc.

But I have to say that the Riot activity of other departments are too low. For example there are several questions about the Ahri statue and after 4 months there is still no answer from Riot. I even don‘t know if the responsible Riot staff read the feedback.

ModKnightsKemplarJul 7, 20184 votes

Yeah, watch the dev corner posts by Meddler and you'll get a pretty good idea of where the balance team's heads are. They aren't as silent as people claim, nor is the game headed in as terrible a direction as people claim.

As Ghostcrawler wrote once on his blog:

Another way this is visualized as you being on one mountain peak, and wanting to be at an even higher peak, but having to go down the mountain into a scary valley of chaos before you can climb up to that other peak.

He was talking about other things at the time, but I believe this analogy applies to balance, as well. Sometimes you have to break systems a little bit to build better ones; we're in a period like that right now with Marksmen, and the game feels weird. That doesn't mean it will stay weird.

BattalionJul 10, 20181 votes

The post is about the absence of Riot employees who's jobs are related to game balance being present in the gameplay boards. It's not about an absence of Riot interaction through the Dev Corner, but scarcity within a specific board.

ModKnightsKemplarJul 13, 20181 votes

The specific cases he brought up, though, have been addressed. I don't think it's reasonable to ask them to come to the Gameplay sub-board to answer the same question 100 times. That's a big part of why they aren't as active as we want, imo. So it's relevant to the post.

aimlesswarriorJun 10, 20183 votes

I would lloooooove to see a riot video / community qa / or 4 hour podcast responding to the current state of the game. seems like 90% of youtube videos and most of the top boards posts are how horrible the current game play is.

remakoroJul 7, 20181 votes

Yea thats would be really interesting cuz riot keeps doing things that people ask them NOT to. Game feels more like dota patch after patch. And i dont mean it as compliment. Justification would be really interesting to hear.

the Anarchit3chtJul 7, 20186 votes

A very loud minority is still a minority. I implore you, figure out the number of people complaining and compare it the actual rest of the player base who doesn't complain. Astronomical by comparison. Its a lot easier to see loud complaints because when the game is fine and I enjoy it, I'm not going to post 93424235 threads about what is so good and why I like it. Bar them doing something exceptionally amazing, I wouldn't have a reason to complain. My continuing playing is proof enough that I think the game is in an ok state. If it wasn't, I wouldn't play.