Letter I sent to Riot Games (Hopefully to Marc Merrill)

Dear Riot Games, My name for all purposes is NDR Fox and I have been playing this amazing game since preseason of season 4. I have spent 161 days since then playing this game because I find it super fun and exciting to play whether by myself or with my friends. However, I must admit this year I tend to play a lot more with friends and family than by myself; R.I.P solo queue. I fell in love with this game and all of the content you guys have been offering us and therefore have spent $2665 on the game and did not have any regrets until August 22 2016 when your co-founder and President, Riot Tryndamere, or Marc Merrill posted on an interview between Scarra and Andy Dinh, or Reginald. Whether or not you want to look at the original post or the revised one it still makes me sick.

I enjoy watching LCS and watch at least one series each day of the weekend. I found the new patch to be a little better for me personally to watch because I was more used to seeing what the pros are doing exactly when I actually play the game. With that being said, I think that Riot did an awful job on when they decided to make these changes. These changes had very little to do with non-competitive play and easily could have been done earlier in the season or before playoffs and worlds. This basically removed countless hours upon hours of practice from the players. For all you guys know maybe Echo Fox could be better than TSM with these changes! All season long Echo Fox had been playing and having to deal with lane swaps and that meta, perhaps they were great at 2 v 2’s and they were a playoff team? Maybe world contenders? I don’t know because the whole concept of early game just changed. Why are these teams in playoffs for a different game than they earned? Why was this patch issued out at this time? I guess I don’t understand. I understand that this makes the game more exciting to watch and I agree that it does by then why was it not changed earlier or could have been postponed until after worlds so that the teams there actually earned their spot? Did you guys not learn from last year with the Juggernaut patch? Tryndamere said that it was ‘sub-optimal’ changed to ‘terrible timing’. I don’t understand how you realize that last year it was bad but this is any different. Why make everything so much more stressful for the players and have them relearn a new game going into a world tournament?

I am not going to talk too much about the whole franchising and revenue of players and teams because honestly I do not know as much as I would like to about it. However, I do know that there are a lot of things that Riot games as a company could to do improve the scene as a whole and I think that they really need to. By the sounds of it most of the Organizations are running in the negative while putting their players first because they cannot make enough revenue. I think Riot needs to find a way to make more revenue for teams in the game. I think it’s great to have a summoner icon for my team but I wish I could have much, much more and I wish that all the proceeds, or at least most of it, would go towards those teams. Why can’t I have a flair like my level 7 bard for my team? I think it’s cool to see a nice badge but why not have an Echo Fox icon pop up? Why is that the only way for me to contribute to the teams I want to through your game? Why can’t I find any gear for Echo Fox or TSM or C9 on your site or a link to their site to find it? Why does the client not have anything for me to go to? Perhaps when you have your notifications on the games starting you could include a link to their respective sites? I know Echo Fox’s site has a cool chatroom that also streams the game. I want more content for the teams than I am getting.

I understand that you guys OWN this game therefore you decide what happens to it. I think that the company did a great job getting the scene up and going and that at the time making the LCS was a great thing to get League into Esports. However, now at this point I think something needs to change before this great empire you guys built burns to the ground. What happens if you lose TSM and C9 in the LCS? I bet a lot of those fans will stop watching the LCS. I know if Echo Fox got relegated I would probably watch it a lot less! Help those teams out! Help them get more revenue and stop making their lives living hell by changing things that don’t need to be changed at the worst moments year after year! I still love this game, but for lord’s sake, do not let people like Marc Merrill ever communicate with the public again. Hell hire someone to watch over everything he wants to say and do and make sure they think the public will be okay with it because although he is the co-founder he makes the whole company sound stupid as a whole! At least have him make a formal apology or something especially to Andy for singling him out and not talking about any other team or Organization because that’s just bad business. I doubt anyone important will actually read this no matter how hard I try but I know the ones who actually probably would agree with what I have to say.

Thanks for reading,

NDR Fox

Hopefully this is posted in the right area - most of this resorts to Esports in one way or another!