Idea for reducing player frustration that they're never heard, without more work for Riot employees

FlashnFuse·11/16/2017, 8:53:49 PM·5 votes·1,687 views

Well, without work for MOST Riot Employees.

A large amount of frustration seems to be centered around the feeling that Riot doesn't hear us and that a lot of these posts are just yelling into the void. My idea is add a functionality to the boards website, ideally something auto activated on Riot employee boards account but that they can turn off if wanted, that will mark a post a Rioter has viewed as "Seen by Riot".

Ideally, this will help people feel they've been heard even though a Riot employee may not necessarily be willing to make a statement on it.

8 Comments

Funkin Dunkin11/16/2017, 9:25:52 PM6 votes

Then you'll get the next phase of this tragedy. People will see that their post was viewed by a Riot employee but they couldn't be bothered to respond.

Taterbug711/16/2017, 9:24:03 PM3 votes

I don't know, man: there's not much on this planet that's more frustrating than being left on "Read".

On a serious note, I actually think it's a good idea because then you feel that you're at least being heard.

Flownominal11/17/2017, 12:32:01 AM1 votes

Update Aatrox please and thank you :)

Teridax6811/18/2017, 7:34:30 PM1 votes

I'd very much like a feature like this. Right now, the issue is that Riot claims to go on the Boards regularly and read through threads (which I believe), but there's often no evidence in favor of this, particularly when Riot also goes into radio silence for months on end on whichever feature is being discussed. On top of that, many Rioters have repeatedly claimed that they're often too busy to spend much time on the Boards, that the Boards are not the most appealing environment for them, etc., so the end result is this accountability limbo, where Riot gets to claim they've read as many threads as they've wanted to (though they rarely specify which ones they've read), but also never get believed by the playerbase. Something as small as a check mark could help this significantly, though the Wardens would also have to control for attention-grabbing threads that may shitpost just to get Riot's attention.

Hyrum Graff11/25/2017, 8:19:50 PM1 votes

I suggested this, along with allowing Rioters to opt out of the Red Tracker, so they can converse informally, without feeling as much pressure to represent the company, 4 years ago. Here was the response:

{quoted}

Some great ideas here - we've discussed a "read by a Rioter" feature internally before.

There might be some drawbacks, though - simply acknowledging that we read something might not always a great experience for players. I worry it might feel almost dismissive, depending on the context. Acknowledging a bug report on the PBE forums? Definitely a good idea. But if a player has put a lot of effort into a really deep proposal or critique, I'm not sure simply knowing a Rioter acknowledged it is necessarily any better than receiving no response at all. It might feel like, "okay, Riot, but what do you think? What are you gonna do about it?"

I've also thought about letting Rioters opt out from the red tracker, or finding some way to convey that their post is "unofficial." Unfortunately this is pretty hard to convey, and the reality is, if you've got a Riot logo next to your name, you're representing the company. Putting "opinions here don't represent Riot Games" in your Twitter bio doesn't really mean shit, really. ;)

Once you're at the scale and complexity of a community like League (and a company like Riot), the forums (and any social media channel, really) can become a pretty scary place. The crowd is very smart, and they WILL tear you apart if your message isn't airtight. You can't possibly consider every player perspective out there, and you certainly can't respond to every single message. It's a tough proposition for a game developer - do I spend my time working on my craft, or do I take time out to give a lot of really careful thought to a player-facing message?

There's no "easy" fix or silver bullet here. The real solution involves a bunch of things, like...

Training: if everyone's empowered to be a company spokesperson, well, they've gotta become trained spokespeople. That sounds scary and draconian, but we're not talking about polishing game designers to be White House press correspondents - just helping them learn some rules of the road.

PR help: dev teams need to have folks at their disposal who are absolutely experts at communication - folks who sit with them and understand the nuance of what they're working on, and can help to make sure we don't stick our feet in our mouths, while still making sure we're out there talking to players a ton. That's guys like Pwyff, who sits with the game design team 90% of the time (BTW, while he does talk to the community a lot himself, you should see the amount of work he does behind the scenes to help those guys out!) BTW, we're hiring more Pwyffs: http://www.riotgames.com/careers/player-relations-specialist

International communications: Here's a rub you might not be thinking about: lots of League players don't speak English, and don't play on NA. How do we make sure they feel they're heard? This is a super complex problem and requires a ton of other solutions I won't even get into. :)

Anyway, thanks for sharing - sorry for the wall of text!

Krigjer11/25/2017, 8:32:09 PM1 votes

Your thoughts and opinions being seen is not the same thing as being heard.