@MODS: Upgrading the discussion experience for gameplay related subjects - suggestion
The following subject is completely theoretical and experimental. As stated in the title, it is about the gameplay section of NA boards. Communication there has improved significantly throughout the last week which is a good sign, but I still want to talk about an issue that has not been affected by that yet.
The gameplay section has such a bad reputation that it already swappes to the rest of the boards on other plattforms. That reputation is already being generalized towards the whole boards which makes the other sections suffer from that as well. Many players come to boards to show their personal frustration and find each other in an assumed majority - a conclusion that says: "League of Legends is in a horrible state, everyone here says the same, which is proof enough". Many players write threads full of frustration, anger and toxicity - attacking game balance, matchmaking and basically every change that is being made. Flaming, ranting and bashing the game is a daily occurence which is - sadly as it is - allowed as long as users are not attacked personally. A notable amount of that anger is aimed at Rioters, which is even worse that just attacking the game.
Not only the extend of negativity is problematic, but also the amount of negative threads flooding the section that leads to objective, open minded and qualitative well written threads to just drown in the masses of pure rant posts that try to give unreflected answers to the way too complex relations the game bases on.
There are still quality discussions being posted, threads that took much time to write and think about, but thatare drowning without any recognition which leads to frustration for that visible minority. The result is that positive users are leaving the gameplay rather then negative ones, which leads to an overall decrease of quality and and a very negative discussion climate.
On top of that, the "angry visible majority" has their own reading culture, that adds on top of the already mentioned problems, that are as follows:
a) Users don't want to read long texts. It doesn't even matter how well the text is formatted and design to grant a positive reading experience. Short threads including one or less sentences are clicked way more often than such that involve more than 2000 signs. The very long posts don't get replies on top of that because even when clicked, barely anyone continues to read after the first couple of passages.
b) Users don't want to read subjects that are not about balance. It is obvious that a huge part of gameplay threads is about "champion [...] is OP because [...]" or "THIS is how you fix champion [...]" or even "champion [...] really needs work". Same goes for items overall. Leaving that category results in a significantly increased chance to be ignored.
c) Users don't want to question paradigms (Definition: a paradigm is a concept that is accepted to be the nearest to "truth" by a majority of experts in a discipline. Please note that there are different definitions for this word depending on the context) about gameplay. Questioning "irrevocable facts" like supports being taylored towards a bottom lane marksman is interpretated highly negatively by said users. Arguing about "changing and redesigning existing systems" is being defended as "doesn't work because it is designed that way".
d) Users don't want to think about systematic changes because they either fear it as a threat to their game knowledge, because their ken does not include the ability to imagine the change at all or because they are convinced that big changes are overall negative.
Threads that suffer from these issues are usually drowning very fast without getting any attention or discussion or get negative responses. The change I'm going to talk about below is aiming at giving players and subjects a room for moderated discussion that don't find their place in the gameplay section, while being restricted to that section at the same time. It is also a place for everyone who is just interested in thinking outside the box in regards to league of legends gameplay to just find said topics easily because they are focused in one area. This should increase the overall quality of gameplay as a topic of NA boards and the quality of NA boards as a whole.
#Introducing: "Promoted gameplay"
Here is where the discussion starts that basically revolves around the following questions:
- How should the section look like, how is it being build up?
- How is the section and threads in it being moderated?
- What are specific rules for posting and commenting?
- What are selection requirement for posts that are being "promoted" to that section?
Maybe you stumbled while reading these questions, because it is based on a very different moderation feature: Threads are only being unlocked/activated by mods after some sort of "quality assurance".
**This is how my idea works: **
- Players may write their thread as usual, but they have to submit it instead of just publishing it.
- A moderator checks the thread in regards of qualifying and disqualifying factors that are defined for that section. There's of course going to be a "get started" that explaines the rules and quality factores for threads. Mods may debate about cases on the edge.
- The moderator either activates the thread, gives a short feedback to cases on the edge that could be activated after being polished or decline the thread.
#Quality assurance
Now let's talk about requirement for posting threads - the quality assurance if you say so. The points that I have though of are grouped into 3 categories. The order symbolizes the process of that a mod will run through when reviewing a submitted thread. Short version is:
- "does the thread belong here?"
- "does the thread even qualify to be promoted?"
- "is the thread good enough to be promoted?"
thematical aspects
*Aspects that define the section thematically. Helps to clarify if the subject fits the "promoted gameplay" category or is just a "standard gameplay subject" that should be posted in gameplay instead.
- (+) Gameplay mechanics: Purpose, fantasy, design, possibilities, ideas E.g. "What is vs how should be the purpose of crit-system; how was it formerly designed and why; what do we want to achieve and what solutions are possible and why?"
- (-) Balance: champions, items, runes, neutral buffs - hard mathematics E.g. "This champion is good/bad designed because...; this item should be looking this way because its fantasy is...; X is not fulfilling its purpose because..."
- (+) Design: rune system, champion classes, subclass system, item classes, attributes (stats), attribute systems, power budget, high vs low skill ceiling / skill floor E.g. "Having very high skill champions and very low skill champions in the same game leads to problems that can't be solved by balancing" or "Comparing champions from the class X, what's their purpose and fantasy, what are their needs: What was, what is and what should be instead?"
- (-) Concepts: self made new champions or champion reworks. E.g. "Champion X is really bad, does not fulfill his thematic fantasy or has unhealthy gameplay design - here's an idea for changes."
general aspects
Aspects that definately have to be respected and automatically disqualify a thread from being promoted if they are missing
- Universal Rules of Boards must be followed.
- Language is english. Soft cap: It is understandable and does not lead to confusion.
- Thread is not based on missunderstanding or false information.
- Thread is not attacking Riot, the game, players or other ideas - responses to other ideas belong into the discussion of said topic.
- Thread allows or even asks for discussion.
- Thread must be worked out properly and explains the subject in a detailed and reflected way. "Detailed" does not require hard mathematics.
- Threads with more than 10.000 signs (excluding spaces) have a TL;DR at the end.
quality aspects
Aspects that determine the section's overall quality and decrease the amount of threads that are being posted to a standard where every accepted thread gets attention. The more quality points a thread satisfies, the more likely they are being accepted.
- Argumentation: The argumentation is objective and unbiased.
- Creativity: OP thinks outside the box or talks about a rare subject or idea.
- Detailes: Subject's past and present design/mechanic is well explained on top of the subject itself if possible.
- Foundation: Principles and theories the subject is based on, are explained if possible.
- Generalization: The OP does not pretend to speak for others than himself.
- Inconclusiveness: The thread does not end with "the one solution", instead gives room for further exploration.
- Language: the better you understand what is being said, the more likely it is accepted.
- Reflection: The subject is illuminated from different sides, OP shows pros and cons if possible.
- Self-adulation: The OP does not praise their rank or expertise to justify or prove their arguments.
- Systematization: Thread shows a systematic course of argumentation and conclusion.
#Discussion moderation and user privilege
To be sure that quality and behaviour in this section remains positive, we design posting as very special privilege and reserve to exclude users from partizipating when they showed inappropriate behaviour resulting in strikes. Collecting several strikes leads to a permanent exclusion from the section.
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Spaming submissions for threads that obviously do not fulfill the requirements. -> Users will be pointed to the official explanation of what qualifies a thread if they failed the requirements hard. -> Users will get a small feedback if their submission was declined due to quality or was an edge case. -> Users will be warned before receiving a strike.
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Having a negative posting history or warnings from moderators in other sections. -> retroactive
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Violating universal rules -> In the case of a mod bending the rules of not banning the user from the boards as a whole
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Attacking Riot, the game, other users ot other users' ideas -> Including talking other users down personaly
Strikes:
Hitting one strike disqualifies a user to submit any other thread to this section. Hitting two strikes disqualifies a user to post in any discussion.
The universal rule "boards ban evasion" is effective on strikes as well:
Boards Ban Evasion
- We will permanently suspend accounts of players who:
- Post on another account after receiving a permanent Boards suspension for severe or multiple violations.
- Post on behalf of a player who has received a permanent Boards suspension for severe or multiple violations.
Coming back to you guys (and especially mods):
I know that some of the things sound very strict and I hope you can overlook that for the real discussion. A big problem can be the possible amount of submissions vs the amount of mods that are willing to review them. We should definately show people when we are overstrained, deactivating submission for some time until things relax again. I think focusing on few discussions is not a bad thing, especially at the beginning of such an experiment. And the more submissions we get, the higher we could at least estimate the quality requirement. If users didn#t suddenly start spamming high quality threads, we should be ok with the amount compared to these posts that are posted in gameplay at the moment.
Regarding the initial questions: How do you see and rate the suggestive section of "PROMOTED GAMEPLAY"
- How should the section look like, how is it being build up? - How is the section and threads in it being moderated? - What are specific rules for posting and commenting? - What are selection requirement for posts that are being "promoted" to that section?
What points do you agree/disagree? What things would you change and how? Not thinking about whether or not such a thing works out: could that eventually work out and hit the goals set? Do you even agree with the goals? Let me know below.
One final note: We should think about not having these threads go to the front page as it could be some sort of "noob trap" because many users could end up clicking and inappropriately commenting on these threads before making sure what the special rules in this sections are.
