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Letter to RIOT; Community Prized Events Feedback

Sarah Ashley·5/23/2015, 4:06:36 AM·122 votes·9,306 views

Letter to RIOT; Community Prized Events Feedback

     First off, we as a community would like to say thank you to RIOT for supporting the community through prized events like you have in the past. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to compete in these events as amateur LoL players. Most of us will never be able to compete in the LCS or in any actual big League of Legends tournaments. These small tournaments give the average player the opportunity to compete in a competitive scene. For this and many other reasons, we thank you. 

     Recently, however; RIOT has tried to implement a new registration system and it has a few challenges. The major challenge is the registration for players that are competing. By requiring a “close” on the registration you are disabling the ability for ringers. With this new system you encourage pre-registration and discourage late registration. Which is great, however; for these types of online tournaments ringers are a necessity. Disconnects happen, emergencies happen, random events in our everyday lives impact our gameplay and our ability to game. By having the registration close at all you are impacting others games when we may not be able to find a ringer suitable to replace the user that has to leave the tournament. Forcing people participating to play at an unfair advantage. 

     The current prizing stands at 40,000 RP total for the standard 5v5 tournament. First place received 3200 RP per player and a Triumphant Ryze skin, second place received 2400 RP, third received 1600 RP, and fourth received 800 RP. I believe all of the smaller gaming communities that are a part of League of Legends can agree that this was a huge prize pool and an amazing opportunity for players to play League and win some of that greatly desired RP. **We all understand and agree that the prize pool needs to be decreased. **The amount that RIOT Is suggesting it be decreased though is drastic. The first place alone decrease is 62% from 3200 RP to 1000 RP. For second to fourth place the decrease is 100% for tournaments that have 8-16 teams. This cap extremely discourages small communities and encourages big communities. A lot of players out there like the feeling of smaller more intimate communities. Smaller communities allow players the opportunity to have a more comfortable setting  where you can get to know the people you play with. These new restrictions discourage smaller communities and smaller communities will lose out on the opportunities that are given to bigger communities simply because of their size. While we completely agree that in person tournaments deserve a bigger prize pool and more support because it does take more effort, time, and money to get to the place where the tournament is being held; we disagree that the online tournaments should take this much of a decrease in funding support. By taking away RP prizing to the second, third, and fourth place winners a lot it discourages people from even participating because the chance is so small to win first place. Also by only giving 2-8th places a 4 win IP-Boost the IP Boost does not help those players that have been playing League of Legends for years and have more IP than they know what to do with. I have one friend that I know has every champion and every rune in the game with so much IP to spare that it’s ridiculous. Players who are like this would have no incentive to participate in the tournament. We agree that the prize pool needs to be lowered but by doing what you have outlined you are killing smaller communities and seriously hurting the participation in tournaments all together.

http://i.gyazo.com/4cf263fdb905f2f687926511850cde1c.png

     The impact of implementing the new prized packages could be very damaging to RIOT/ LoL/ and Communities in general. Communities might have to resort to cash tournaments or registration fees so that communities could buy the RP to fund the tournaments. The direct and immediate impact that this course of action would cause is a low turn out for tournaments. 

     We sincerely thank you for all the prized support you’ve given out to everyone over the past; we just ask that you please reconsider as you are impacting the entire League of Legends community.

67 Comments

M4yh3M5/23/2015, 4:28:19 AM16 votes

The new prize system takes away one of the main reasons that many people play LOL, those people may not be spending money to buy RP, but with LOL being the largest e-sport in history, any decline in popularity will also be an equal decline in profits. **Very **poor business decision.

Gekomon15/23/2015, 5:59:38 PM9 votes

The New Prize system will make it so people wont want to do Tournaments anymore the reason people did them was to improve there team work and get a big prize for first place or second and third now that its drops down to under 10$ To get 1350 it just makes it not worth the effert to put into the tournament that can last anywhere from 3 hours to 7 hours to end it so in my opinion I think it will be a bad change so please riot don't push the community away!!

Keano5/23/2015, 7:27:01 PM6 votes

The new prize system takes away one of the main reasons that many people play LOL, those people may not be spending money to buy RP, but with LOL being the largest e-sport in history, any decline in popularity will also be an equal decline in profits. Very poor business decision.

I agree completely. Doesn't make much sense that this is happening.

Brighter5/23/2015, 7:30:29 PM6 votes

I agree with Sarah and smaller communities will be affected please fix this riot thank you :)

Dayblazer5/23/2015, 4:39:50 PM5 votes

thats a huge decrease.

Báng5/23/2015, 10:35:50 PM5 votes

The new changes suck. Riot thinks that this is going to put more money in their pocket when in reality it's going to drive people away from the game itself. The money that you 'think' you are losing due to giving away RP isn't even accurate. The people in our tournaments purchase RP regardless of if they win a tournament because it's a bonus to them- another skin.

You assume 'we gave out 500,000 RP last month' 'that is $3333 we could of cashed in' Really? Your $3333 tax write-offs aren't worth the 1 Billion dollars in revenue in 2014?

I personally only play this shitty game because it's the only popular game; as soon as a new popular game comes out there is nothing tying me down now that tournaments are effectively being ended by these changes. ACTUALLY... HEROES OF THE STORM and SMITE are now offering Prized Tournaments.. Hmmmm... I wonder what would happen if half the community of NA changed to a different game. Because as it stands, my community I'm in are recruiting for other games :)

I do not purchase RP because of shit like this- it goes against my morals to support a company. I have been playing the game since season 1 and picked up on the Chinese money-grubbing market style Riot likes to hide. And I'm not joining a tournament hub because the teamspeak community of a hub is garbage. People like EVG/HKG/MSG are just hubs for RP hungry thieves and toxic players. And even knowing the owner of HKG, I do not go against what I said.

Tl;dr fuck yo couch riot, I'm not recommending your game anymore and I'm blocking you on facebook.

Sarah Ashley5/23/2015, 8:28:10 PM5 votes

Or make it the same prizes across board so that small communities don't get punished.

SKARNER SPAM Q5/24/2015, 12:47:01 AM4 votes

Ehh sort of a waste of time to do tourneys now... I don't need IP in the first place

Catrysa5/23/2015, 7:25:58 PM4 votes

I agree that the prizing, as stands, is very costly to Riot's profit margins, and the need for them to find a way to mitigate this cost. However, I'm not certain that this degree of prize-nerf is the most effective way to go about it.

In that regard, a brainstorm solution could be this: Tier System Communities for prized tournament registrations.

Communities would need to show a consistent average numbers of logins and League of Legends playing members per week to move from one tournament prize package tier to the next. Starting communities (ie those with creation/application to Riot dates earlier than others) would be given a smaller prize package than the older more stable communities. Same with those with smaller versus larger logins, etc.

Inspiration: Amtgard LARP Group.

Just some random thoughts before I head out to LARP today. :)

<3----# Catrysa

Sarah Ashley5/23/2015, 7:31:32 PM4 votes

Or when a community is made make them register and give them a probation time where they can not apply for something like 3 months. but after 3 months if they are still around then allow them prizing support after that

Nunusto5/24/2015, 12:56:26 AM4 votes

The way it is is pefect, if they want to do something about the RP how about they just cap the amount you can win a week

Deadly Wolf5/24/2015, 1:59:42 AM4 votes

Making it so that only one team wins makes players not want to play because their odds of winning are a lot smaller. Also if you look at the larger communities they usually have more brackets (or divisions for different elo skill bases) and they only get 25 teams in each case, meaning that they are not affected as hard by the change. The smaller communities, like myself will be. Yes, the prize for first place will be larger, however, people won't want to play because their chances of winning RP will be lower and would then turn to the larger communities to have better odds. Right now there is a problem, as a growing community it is difficult to compete with the big guys. Look at small town grocery stores competing against Wal Mart. In most cases the little guy looses their business and they can't compete against the big guy, which is what will happen to the smaller league communities. The little guys are going to loose members, they are slowly going to crash, and then after we can no longer afford to keep our communities up and running is when you will see how bad of a mistake this is. No offense to the larger servers, but they are either out to make money or become popular. I use to work on a larger server which is how I knew how to start my own community. I started my community because I saw how corrupted other servers are and they let people get away with things that should never happen. On my server, yes, we have people who are still learning and make mistakes often but we are closer with our members. We give people second chances, where you will get banned without asking on other servers. Just like the grocery store case, walking into a Wal Mart you don't know hardly anyone, maybe a friend or a co-worker are in there buying groceries. Walk into the local grocery store and get welcomed every time by the same man who was working there when his father first opened up the business. Yes, sometimes Wal Mart is nice with the convince of having a lot of products in one place and cheaper prices, but having that human connection will be lost if you let the big guys take out the little guys creating a desensitized community and possibly creating more trolls and toxic players.

Thinking that this is a good idea, or "hey, lets try this for a month and see how this works out" is playing a game that everyone in the community thinks is a bad idea. Yes, members are going to say that they want to have better chances of winning RP, but at the same time they don't realize how much better a smaller community is on helping them become better people (this is of course depending on the community and how it is being run)

ovodrew5/24/2015, 10:07:54 PM4 votes

Regarding the new change, I don't believe that this will make players content. It has mostly caused outrage within most team speak tournaments that i have personally visited. Generally, League of Legends players come to play these tournaments that are held for one main reason; and that is to win Riot Points so that they can satisfy their needs or their friends. Sure, the prize pool is pretty sufficient and a large amount, but that's what keeps players coming back over and over again to play.

For myself, however, I do these tournaments mainly for competition and as a learning experience. I find it to be very difficult and exciting to win, I also get to meet new friends on the internet and share some qualities and games with them. Even losing in the tournament makes me come back the next day or the next week just to play again to try and win.

Now, I don't want to be bias because that's not the point here, I want to share my view points of both sides so we can get an understanding of how this change will affect a lot of things. I guess from a business standpoint this change mainly benefits Riot so that players are more engaged in spending their own money since only one team is allotted Riot Points. This change will also affect many team speaks, including Absolute Gaming. Mainly because they are fairly new, and have generated nearly a few hundred new players within a certain time frame.

In my opinion, I guarantee this change will not make a MAJORITY of players come back because they don't find that they can still come in second, third, or fourth and win RP.

Icey1175/24/2015, 1:26:57 AM3 votes

I have to say from my view I'm kinda disappointed in this choice that Riot games is making, after all taking away such prizes from the tournaments removes any sort of reason to play, no body plays in a competitive tournament for fun, I feel that this is a terrible move and it takes away the reasons to play in these tournaments, please Riot reconsider your choice here.

Sincerely, your beloved bronzie, Icey117.

Troll Status5/24/2015, 12:32:29 AM3 votes

WTF RIOT

there is not point doing this!!!! Its like you dont want us to meet new people every other day. plz dont do this my dudesss. or i will be sad as a Amumu

darkorpse5/23/2015, 5:11:27 AM3 votes

http://redd.it/36y9f3

feel free to add this to our reddit thread. Rioters tend to weigh in faster on reddit than their own boards sadly.

MuteBoy6/13/2015, 1:06:44 AM3 votes

Hey I have a better solution, why not have a riot representative to always check up on these tournaments to make sure they teamspeaks are lying, If the teamspeak owners are lying, you just disable their ability to host tournaments permanently. Each riot representative has the power to see each player's IP address, and if a teamspeak is wronged, then they have the IP address of every player who is running the tournaments so they won't have scammers ever again.

Lucifer Eden5/24/2015, 12:35:09 AM3 votes

I think that the change of RP is way to drastic. I understand why the RP should be reduced for smaller communities, but it does not have to be this drastic. I believe the IP boost is useless. Players don't desire IP. They desire competition, small friendly communities, and RP worth the while. If the RP is this drastically reduced, all the small communities would lose a lot of players and be swallowed by big communities. The big communities will have more players than they know what to do with. That leaves the communities' players to have a very low chance of achieve RP that they won't even bother signing up. The big communities will have so many players that it would probably take around 5-10 games (that must be won) to even get a chance for the RP prize. The advantage of small communities is that you'd only have to play around 2-3 games and win them to get RP.

Sarah Ashley5/29/2015, 6:37:12 PM3 votes

144 votes that it's too drastic... Help us by commenting and upvoting!

PotatoMaster32645/24/2015, 12:48:42 AM3 votes

rito plz, these changes to league are even worse then when you added Bard to the game

Sir Bastian5/24/2015, 12:53:07 AM3 votes

Amumu

darkorpse5/23/2015, 1:13:10 PM3 votes

I don't think riot realizes just how much their tournament support is the ONLY thing that sets them apart.

Remove the -amazing- support they have been providing (or nerf it as they plan to) and all of a sudden HOTS and SMITE are going to gain a LOT More traction as smite has a moderate prize package (better than the new one way worse then the old one offered by riot for small events) and of course blizzard is annoying to work with for tournaments but hey, why not at this point?

BøoBear5/24/2015, 12:28:30 AM2 votes

if u change this they is not point play :pitem 3512 LET THEM COME

Kindred Lamark5/24/2015, 12:43:19 AM2 votes

RITO please, the revenue stream loss from tournament RP isn't going to make or break your PL statements. When tax season rolls around you'll see some benefit roll around but the main benefit is the Goodwill you will create.

Also I bet you would have more information on the statistics of people who buy rp/skins but for me personally the more skins I bought the more likely I was to purchase more RP.

Food for thought.

East Coast Servers PLZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Rush Lionheart5/24/2015, 12:47:42 AM2 votes

Riot you have lost your soul to the dark side, I know longer know your light and it makes me sad. So come back to the light and remember the joy of all the players love.

Sarah Ashley5/24/2015, 1:38:06 AM2 votes

I believe that instead of punishing smaller communities you should make the tournaments the same across the board. If you want to do the 5k cap fine then do ALL the online tournaments like that. You are really punishing smaller communities.

Xgames3605/24/2015, 1:58:55 AM2 votes

Kinda makes doing a tounry worthless...

FireStorm215/24/2015, 2:46:06 AM2 votes

I do honestly think 8 player tournys have huge advantage over big ones, but the current change imo is stupid. All i would do is maybe make it half the rp for 8-16 teams and keep rest of it the same. the ip boost i do like and i think it should be given to the top 25% of teams. i personally would make the rp 2400, 1800, 1200 for top 3 teams in a 8-16 man tourny and give top 25% of teams 4 win ip boost. I would make 17+ team tournys 3000, 2200, 1400 rp and again top 25% 4 win ip boosts.

Ezet6/4/2015, 5:20:39 PM2 votes

I do also think it is too drastic and here is why. I am trying to start a new tournament community but for me to able to "compete" with the already established online tournaments like VG, NxGamers, EVG, etc. I need to offer the same RP rewards (if not more). Currently I was only given then 1k RP package and plan on compensating the difference through my own funds. However, it greatly increases the costs and risks of starting a new endeavor as hard as starting a new tournament is.

sKz Aaron D7/26/2015, 12:01:13 AM2 votes

As my name shows, I am a member of Victorious Gaming. As it was already the largest online tourney, it has not been affected anywhere near as badly by this. However, I shudder to think of how drastically this change has affected smaller servers like Absolute Gaming or inFuXion Gaming. They already can't run tournaments as often as the bigger servers can, and now they're giving prizes that are simply inferior.

I know it's not fair to say that there is a problem and not offer a solution. I know one problem you're trying to fix is the RP farmers - by making the prizes for tournaments less of an incentive, and harder for them to receive. I understand what you're trying to do - but much like the changes to every jungle item ever, I don't think you realize what you have done.

Anemia5/24/2015, 12:27:53 AM2 votes

If the RP changes go through many players will quit playing in tournaments due to the low payout and it will kill the small communities which cant get 64+ teams, and what is someone like me who owns all things that you can get with IP going to do with a 4 win IP boost other than change my name and then change it back with my 40k+ IP?

flarexxd145/24/2015, 12:31:52 AM2 votes

riot you are making a huge mistake on lowering the prize money from tornaments

jablewokeez9/5/2015, 5:53:41 PM1 votes

this is bad

Gigits Pony6/13/2015, 11:06:07 PM1 votes

Big brother_ please_ don't do this!

Draven Axe6/23/2015, 10:10:48 PM1 votes

THIS IS THE DUMBEST CHANGE EVER. RIOT YOUR CRAZY!

1st Edition6/25/2015, 12:56:41 AM1 votes

Riot wonders why not many new players are joining LoL, that just sounds appealing. Let's do 3-7 hours of work to get 5,000 rp. Oh wait that's not per person that's for the whole team to split. Here's your runner up prizes too 4 win ip boosts, you know those gifts Riot gives you when they fk up on a patch or a bug and this is to soften the blow? Whatever is the reasoning behind this change, be it money or some other reason completely. This will only result in driving the final nails into Riot's Coffin, in the end I guess you really are your own worst enemy.

hybrodien7/9/2015, 7:31:47 AM1 votes

upvoted

HalfKorean7/10/2015, 11:55:52 PM1 votes

Now a lot less people play in the tournaments cause of these cutbacks, riot, you guys have a great game but this idea of cutting back on the prizing is pretty stupid. Please change them back or at least add a little more than right now.

DroppinYoKoolaid7/21/2015, 12:38:33 AM1 votes

Although we win free RP, i still spend a good $50+ each month on league.. so it's not affecting much.... But it is greatly decreasing the outcome for tournaments and the fun it brings. Bring back our old prizing or fix it please!

Dharc Kaisor9/3/2015, 12:57:28 AM1 votes

Link to the Riot post where they announce a new prize system?

justacat3/22/2016, 12:59:34 AM1 votes

do it Riot! woo

Sarah Ashley8/12/2015, 5:11:51 PM1 votes

Thank you VG Sukhoi for your honesty and sincerity. On the same note with the tournaments; The tournament pages on the event page still do not have open registration. The registration still closes before the tournament even begins which does not allow for ringers or fill ins to be able to register properly to receive their prizing so please fix this as well RIOT.

darkorpse6/11/2015, 4:25:25 PM1 votes

So... I've left some negative comments here, as has everyone but after the initial shock of the changes have worn off, and proper analysis has been done... we may all be over-reacting a little bit.

Yes, new online providers will struggle. Yes, established online providers may get more prizing. Yes, live events will consistently receive more prizing. Yes, it will be a major adjustment period.

As much as it's unlikely, I hope these changes will actually end up leveling the playing field; forcing the massive players like VG who run 5+ brackets per night to consolidate to one larger tournament, which puts them back on par with the smaller providers who will be hosting easier to win (but less rewarded) tournaments. Couple with the system changes they will also prevent the major abuse that has been happening (such as SELLING tournament rewards for fake tournaments) which will be a major benefit to the Esports community (as much as it will hurt the scammers and RP purchasers of lesser moral)

It will also put the focus onto live events, allowing LAN centers to start jumping into the mix and potentially increasing the prevalence of LOCAL tournaments which are an amazing experience.

All in all, Riot... you may have actually put the forethought and planning into these changes that they deserved, but I'm still skeptical of the effect they will have.

Triiik6/13/2015, 1:04:58 AM1 votes

I dont wnat to stay up all night playing a my Favorite Video not earning real IP or playing ranked, but instead Playing a Custom game and getting only like 100 rp or a Ip win boost... KEEP THE 40,000!!!!! summoner 14 summoner 14 item 3751 item 3751 Teemo item 3751 item 3751 summoner 14 summoner 14