[Feedback] Spoilers?

DoWeQ·Mar 11, 2014·3 votes·2,326 views

Hi,

I love to watch the LCS - EU and NA. Since I am not able to see everything live, especially in Super Week, I am watching the replays. A lot of the excitement of watching LOL Games is wondering, hoping and praying for a certain outcome. However, the fun of this is drastically reduced if you know the outcome before - to a level where the whole game becomes boring.

Now I am trying a lot to not see a spoiler when watching the LCS. So I appreciated the "Hide Spoilers" option a lot. Sadly, it is mostly useless.

Today I went to lolespoerts.com, and on first glance, I saw a feature "TSM and C9 end super week 4-0". Below, there is "recent results", where it is stated that CRS won against EG. It happens that I am a huge EG fan, but before watching a single game of super week, I already know the outcome of 3 of the 4 games. Although I activated the hide spoilers option. This is really frustrating!

To watch a game spoiler free, you must save the schedule ahead(!), then navigate to the according game on youtube (avoid lolesports!) and try to start the video without glancing at the comments. I do not believe that you WANT your site to be avoided, so please fix your spoiler environment.

Since there is really a whole lot of spoilers, here are some ways you spoiler:

The recent results section ignores the hide spoilers option
Features on your starting page have titles which spoiler some results
When you choose a best of 3 or best of 5 game, and there are only 2/3 games to choose to watch, you know the outcome after the first game. Offer empty videos, as you did a year ago!
When the Youtube Video has 10 minutes left, there are 15 minutes in game and one team is 2 kills and a tower ahead, there is little excitement about the outcome. Add some empty time at the end of videos, as you did in your first days.
If you press play on a video, you see the interview about the game before. With a member of the winning team! So if you don't watch them in proper order, you can see in the first second of a video the winner of the previous game. Add the interviews at the end of the according game, not at the start of the next.
If there is a K.O. tournament running and you see the "next matchup" at the top of the page, you can easily guess who survived the current round... (this happened in worlds when I wanted to see FNC :( )
Since you allow voting during running games, you can see some drastic vote discrepancies between the vote at the start of the game (which is always announced by the casters) and the vote after the game. Nearly always, the winning team has about +3% compared to the pre-game-vote, so you can guess.

I would love to use lolesports to watch my favorite game, but right now, this is impossible without destroying the fun. Please consider a rework!

5 Comments

RiotomhalodilMar 12, 20143 votes

Hey folks. Thanks for the great feedback on spoilers. In general, our philosophy on our site is that we want to enable our fans to be able to find the latest news and results. This means that we're going to be publishing articles that aren't spoiler free (recaps/analysis/etc.), and making sure standings, schedules, and brackets are prominent and up to date. At this point, we don't have any plans to invest in making sure every corner of lolesports is spoiler free. As DoWeQ pointed out, there are tons of places all over the site that would have to be modified and implemented twice if we were to make the entire site spoiler free. That being said, there is the key scenario around catching up on VODs that we don't do that great of a job of supporting on the current site.

We've done some thinking on this area, and to solve this issue, we've explored some initial designs around a dedicated VOD archive on lolesports.com that has an option to hide results so that you can easily find the game you missed and catch up without being spoiler. Our thinking is that you could bookmark this page and always navigate there when you've missed a match. Would that meet your needs? Are there other important scenarios besides watching VODs in which you're looking for a spoiler-free experience?

Keiran13Mar 12, 20141 votes

That seems like a pretty reasonable compromise. I wouldn't honestly expect for every front-page article headline to be vetted for potential spoilers before being posted.

I would like to chime in on agreement with making sure there's 5 videos (or graphics that appear to be videos) for best of 5 and such. Making the minimum video length 70 minutes or so would also make it much harder to know the outcome well in advance. When I'm watching the videos, I can see by the video length of 40 minutes that somebody got stomped by 25m, and past the first 10 minutes of the match there's no suspense. When I see a video that runs over an hour long I get excited Jinx , because I know it's a close one that comes down to the wire, well worth watching. I'd happily trade not knowing in advance that a match is good to have the other matches stay suspenseful though.

That said, I really like just about everything concerning the esports productions themselves. The new 30 minute preshow will be great if they keep doing champion mechanic breakdowns like they did with Lee Sin. And I really try my best to keep up and watch the games live. (Because let's face it, it feels strange and awkward urging your team of choice on when the match is already long over. o.0)

Maybe it's because I'm getting older and turning into my father, but LoLEsports has brought out a sports fan I didn't know existed inside me.

Keiran13Mar 12, 20141 votes

I wouldn't have a significant problem with the fact that interviews are shown at the start of the next video if they'd only put the Youtube playlists in the correct order! As it is, if I don't double-check which match is up next and navigate to that match manually before it loads up the next video in the sequence which is usually out of chronological order, there's a significant chance of spoilers because of immediately seeing the winners of some other match I haven't seen yet.

I put that it's a problem I can live with, because I can work around it, but I have to admit that I can't use the lolesports site at all when I'm behind on viewing. (which was all of last season, Riot, that I couldn't use your esports site!)

I have the direct link to their Youtube channel bookmarked, and as long as I carefully select what order the videos play in I can avoid spoilers, so when I'm behind I go there first. Their main site has way too many things not covered by the spoilers option to be safe going there.

DoWeQMar 15, 20141 votes

Having a video only site, as you suggested with your archive, will solve a lot of problems, so if you bookmark it, you get to a spoiler-free environment. Yet two problems persist: You can still tell the outcome of a best of 3/5, if there are less than the maximum possible number of game videos; and if you have an interview about the last game shown at the beginning of the next, you have a spoiler. Remember - even a thumbnail can contain a scene from that interview, so just visiting the site would show you the thumbnail and thus the outcome of the game before.

So please, if you add such an archive, make the interviews as own videos (with non-spoilering thumbnails) or, even better, add them at the end of the game (when you are all hyped and want to know about that awesome win ;) ). And add blanco videos for those best of 3/5 games which didn't happen.

And tell the players to always! make them happen, so we have more games to watch :P

SeaCat o SolarisMay 21, 20141 votes

Thank you for posting this thread. I'm new to the game and really enjoyed the worlds on a random 3rd party youtube, which made me download and try the game.

Now trying to follow EU LCS has been a nightmare and i'd given up, just watching korean games on youtube.

Why is the 'hide spoilers' not on by DEFAULT?