A larger issue than people not wanting Vel'Koz reworked...

Baron Von Bangin · 2016-01-22T23:06:02.765Z

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/leagueoflegends/images/0/03/Velkozpromo.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/800?cb=20141010235031 Is that the playerbase doesn't seem to _trust Riot to even think about it. While I am of the personal belief that Vel'Koz doesn't need to be touched and there are champions in greater need of fine tuning, I find it interesting that most players (from what I've seen) feel that Vel'Koz will be worse off if he receives changes. Now, I understand the belief is that if he is changed by Riot he will be in a worse or misaligned position (see Morde, Cass, Karma etc) what can Riot do in order to alleviate those concerns? Often times players are faced with Riot telling them what the changes will be and are surprised when they recieve overwhelming negative feedback from players and (unless it's Lee Sin) will go through with the changes anyway. This is useually because the changes are discussed with players early enough, resources are locked in or different projects are scheduled and more time can't be spent revisiting the champion rework. Riot is asking for input now and that looks like a shift in the right direction but I challenge them to give us feedback as well. Tell us plans BEFORE they're locked in. Let the players discuss the pros and cons with you. It seems like that would be a potentially powerful solution sinc the Dev team has admitted to often misunderstanding what players like about a champ. So talk to us, Riot. Don't just ask for feedback, start a conversation early, before it's too late. Play ball with your players :) EDIT: A lot of the discussion seems to be aimed at Vel'Koz specifically. I am more invested in Vel'koz than the other mages being touched so I might have talked about him more specifically, but I made this thread with the intent of discussing how Riot can avoid misalignment with reworks by starting an early TWO WAY dialogue with players about what changes they want to make before they're locked in.

NefasJan 23, 201646 votes

It's more of a request along the lines of "tell us stuff before its locked down" so that we can give feedback that is actionable rather than "tell us stuff once it's locked down and changes can't really be made"

RiotRiotRepertoirJan 23, 201640 votes

It's more of a request along the lines of "tell us stuff before its locked down" so that we can give feedback that is actionable rather than "tell us stuff once it's locked down and changes can't really be made"

As in, tell you the goals before locking them down? The specific changes? Tell you the general direction? I'm curious what the expectation here is. It seems like change aversion is a primary driver toward much of the conversation going on here, as very little about actual changes has actually been detailed. Even internally, there isn't a single one of the 'big six' mages whose changes are final, so I'm interested in hearing all your opinions on what information you're expecting to have at this point.

SuperLuigiLXIVJan 23, 20164 votes

{quoted}

As in, tell you the goals before locking them down? The specific changes? Tell you the general direction? I'm curious what the expectation here is. It seems like change aversion is a primary driver toward much of the conversation going on here, as very little about actual changes has actually been detailed. Even internally, there isn't a single one of the 'big six' mages whose changes are final, so I'm interested in hearing all your opinions on what information you're expecting to have at this point.

In essence?

People are really desperate to head off the Mordekaiser/Quinn of the Mage patch, and most people feel like it's going to be Vel'koz, as he's in a similarly "balanced but not quite there" state that the other two were.

NefasJan 23, 2016125 votes

It doesn't have to be at this point, but the request is that you don't go silent until June or whenever mid year the reworks are released and then have a ta-da moment. If in a few weeks or months you could come back and say, this is the sort of direction we are looking at on these champs (for the champs I care most about: eg Vel: we are going to increase ult-passive interaction, Cass: we are going to look at how poisons can also apply debuffs, Malz: we are focusing on improving voidlings spawn rate/damage). If you can only do broad strokes, then do broad strokes. If you can do more detailed stuff, then that. But for me and this is how I understand the OP, we don't want to get to mid year, see a champ get something like Skarner's spires, and not be able to fundamentally change that. Because once Skarner was shown off, there was no going back from his spires. That was a done thing. Other, smaller stuff might be changeable but the big direction wasn't.

lightdragoon88Jan 23, 201627 votes

This post...THIS POST!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ytAZGNdCBY

This is all we want. We don't want shush shush until the reveal of reworks for surprises factors (We get enough of that on new champs and Visual Updates) we want to make sure the changes are something we will enjoy to play.

IGotScuttleCrabsJan 23, 201620 votes

What we REALLY want is a "this is what we're THINKING (not doing yet)" what do you think. Before you go "this is where we're heading and we've already assigned people to sfx and vfx so ITS HAPPENING". We can make number changes but overall we decided the change already without you.

We really just want to be part of the decision before it's made like you've done in the past.

Yea the idea of a grand reveal like a champ reveal that's actually amazing, sounds awesome but you have a 50/50 track record to be generous.

Baron Von BanginJan 23, 20168 votes

All of this. Same wavelength. Perfect.

BastionKrossJan 23, 20164 votes

While I agree with this, I do urge caution for both sides. Back near the end of Season 3, one Rioter (I forget exactly who) started on the Yorick rework. This Rioter did everything described in the post above, and then some. There was an entire thread back on the old forums where the Rioter would say something like "Okay, I'm thinking E needs to be changed like this" and players were responding "That's not bad, but what if E did that instead?".

And this went on for over a month. To the point where the Rioter actually made up two kits and had the Yorick players vote on whether they liked A or B better. That's great communication, but in the end it just took too damn long. The Rioter had to shelve the project to begin work on the Season 4 changes, and Yorick is still in need of help now, years later.

So let's make sure there's a balance between communication/debate/discussion and actually achieving something. Too much one way and you get a rework that's great but never happens. Too much the other way and you get Cassiopeia.

RISE Shlack123Jan 23, 20166 votes

That's more of an internal timetable / time-management problem than it is taking the relatively short amount of time it takes to communicate with the playerbase. You can get good feedback on champion kits within 2-3 days. That doesn't set a champion rework back far enough to say it's the reason the champion's rework was delayed for 2 years.

What Riot should do is take the initial feedback phase into consideration and make it PART of the champion rework/design process. They don't have to take much, if any, of our feedback, but it would be much better for the playerbase if they at least tried.

ModKnightsKemplarJan 23, 20169 votes

Specific changes. I think people want to see the changes and be able to debate them BEFORE you are committed to them. And I do understand that.

For instance, when Morde was reworked, Riot released the story about what he could do with dragon, and I hated it. I have always hated it, and I continue to hate it. I would have begged to get that alone removed, but by then all the art resources, all the countless meetings I'm sure you had about it, all the coding was done. I understand, at that point, why no one wants to lose that dragon ghost.

That's what the community is asking for. It would be better if someone said "we are thinking about giving Morde a dragon ghost to help make him viable in bot lane" so we could all go "GOOD GOD NO" before anyone started working on it. Or, maybe if we knew about it soon enough, we could've gone, "that's a cool idea. let us ruminate on that and try to get behind it whilst coming up with ideas about how to mitigate changes we do not want done to poor Morde." I imagine that rework could've been a lot different if Malicious Metal made a mega-post about all the great stuff about Morde BEFORE the work was done.

Karma DeifiedJan 23, 20168 votes

Perhaps a play-by-play all the way up to release. From what I've seen on forums, and this post here. The issue is players being asked for opinions, then something being released that didn't take those opinions into consideration.

As I see it, having a general idea of what's being talked about in the "board room" is better than hearing "We understand x is important and want to keep it that way." or "Don't worry, we're not changing too much.". As in, "We're thinking about giving x a slow on his E.".

One thing we hear a lot about is preserving identities but what identity is everyone talking about when they're back there discussing what changes they're going to make? And did that idea change after the feedback? If not, why?

So

The outrage that seems to be present among certain champion mains would probably lessen if they know why their opinion wasn't agreed with.
Feedback is much better if each step of development/iteration of a kit/buff/nerf is known.

We’d love to have your guys’ feedback and opinion on the Mages before and during their development process rather than only at the tail end - especially for the “big 6” (Malzahar, Vel’Koz, Brand, Vladimir, Cassiopeia, Zyra).

If that's what this means, then I think there'd be nothing left to discuss in this thread.

AuroramancerJan 23, 20165 votes

I'll use an example from a prior rework that was not well-received: Mordekaiser.

The kind of feedback we'd have wanted to see was the GOALS and SPECIFIC CHANGES in mind.

We'd have wanted to know "we, the Champion Update Team, have plans to move Mordekaiser into the bot lane".

Then explain how you'd execute the above goal. "We want to give Mordekaiser an increased flow of experience, ramping Q damage, and stealing the dragon ghost".

The players can then properly give feedback on this, before it's locked in.

My experience of being a bystander, watching the reworks of the years, has been Riot saying "what do you guys want", the players saying what they want, then Riot says "ok thanks for the input". Goals and specifics are kept away from players until the changes are LOCKED IN, then players complain, the changes are pushed forward because they are locked in, then players are unsatisfied.

It's okay to retain the surprise element with new champion releases and complete champion overhauls, but don't keep us in the dark on champion reworks/updates.

Du Ma MiJan 23, 20167 votes

I think all the OP is asking for is really some random ideas thrown out there. Like, instead of saying "We've got s few ideas for Vel's passive changing", give us the ideas, then see if there are any outliers that the playerbase just thinks are flatout - and I use this word seriously - stupid.

Just keep us in the loop, that's all :)

ABlueQuakerJan 23, 20169 votes

The general gist of this thread is 'please proceed with caution'. And abandon your whole 'if it's on the PBE already, it will go to Live' mentality. That's how you screwed over every Mordekaiser main, ever. As soon as the Mordekaiser rework popped up on the PBE people were pointing straight to his W and R Passives as gimmicks that would break him on release and leave him incredibly weak and non-viable as soon as they were nerfed...

...and here we are.

M0b1usJan 23, 20166 votes

{quoted}

Having worked with Statikk on the "Mid-Year Mage Update" post, I can pretty confidently say that "starting the conversation early" was what his whole post was about. I'm not sure if that just didn't come across clearly, or if most players just looked for the names of the champions up for change and went straight into concerns/panic mode, or something else really.

To that end, and I don't mean to be disrespectful, I'm not sure I really understand your request. The thing that seems to be requested - a two way conversation - is something that we perceive ourselves to be doing in this case.

Well to be blunt, Riot in recent history has listened very little to negative feedback. Riot tends to actively seek out support for their plans and then mostly tries to ignore anything else. So when people get upset about a change, it seems that Riot's first reaction is to ignore it. Which they have demonstrated time and time again.

So, while Riot may PERCEIVE that they are doing a two way conversation, when it comes to something that they don't have majority support on it becomes almost entirely a one way conversation. It often goes along the lines of Riot telling the players the overall plans, then the changes, then the "here it is, now shut up and like it!". Then if their idea doesn't work, they then don't talk about it for years.

Baron Von BanginJan 23, 20165 votes

I want there to be a two way conversation in the ideation process. Right now you guys at Riot are asking what the players think about a champ and what they think makes a champ. That's great. Cool. Now I want to see what you guys get from that conversation and the direction you're planning to take a champion based on that.

I want to see specific ideas. If you're planing on replacing a spell and what will be replacing it. If yore going to add a new mechanic like spires or villains. We didn't get any of that from the last group updates and many mechanics and spells were locked in, so even if we thought they weren't a good fit we were stuck.

Riot has openly admitted that they missed the mark on several occasions (visually for Fiora and Trundle or gameplay for Cass and Morde). During those times you received a LOT of feedback but told us it was locked and said you were sorry and would learn from the experience.

So in order to avoid that I figured telling us early and letting us discuss it would help avoid the situations you said you'd learned from from repeating itself.

You'll have to forgive me if I didn't get the vibe from the earlier Dev post, but in my 6 years of playing any posts like that lead to pretty basic ideas and in a month or two you guys will ship what it is you took away from that. I figured a step between the post and the champ reveal could use some more community involvement.

Also, saying we're averse to change because it's change isn't fair at all. We loved the Sion changes, the Poppy relaunch, the Ashe changes, the original Shen rework, the Yi rework and many more. So the argument that we are afraid of change isn't t really fair.

GoosetardJan 23, 20164 votes

I'll personally confess to going straight panic mode over velkoz. I don't want to seem anti-mage update (and I'm not, I swear), I just:

Didn't understand why velkoz was listed in there
Am more invested in velkoz than the other champions

I also look forward to what you're doing with the others, since I think they're in various places along the boring/outdated spectum.

I'm glad to hear it's a light pass which won't alter his gameplay much.

A larger issue than people not wanting Vel'Koz reworked...

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