Can we maybe not act like Riot cancelled Clash on purpose?

Kairoptra·May 26, 2018·23 votes·8,185 views

I mean really, where’s the logic? How does it not cross your mind that they are just as disappointed?

Of course they thought everything was going to be fine; look at how much testing they’ve done. However, no amount of testing can completely account for the possibility that something will come up at the last second.

Of course they wanted to hype it up; look at what Clash is. So stop taking your anger out on Riot. After all the time they put in, don’t you think they’re frustrated, too?

This was not a matter of incompetence. It was random chance. It’s unfortunate, but there’s nothing to be done except wait.

36 Comments

AJStarhikerMay 26, 20187 votes

I suspect the last minute cancellation announcement wasn't due to incompetence, but rather desperately trying to fix it so they didn't have to cancel. Could they handled the announcement better? Probably. But if they didn't want to cancel? Yeah, it probably did look like scrambling when they did.

IfnethMay 26, 20181 votes

The problem with that excuse is that they should have been prepared for the possibility of the last-minute fix not working. The deadline for a major, hyped product feature’s being complete, tested, and ready to ship should be well before launch day. If the team cannot make the deadline, then either delay launch or be prepared for launch-day bugs.

Working until the last minute to fix game-breaking bugs, while no doubt thrilling and part of the crunch fantasy, is gambling with your reputation and your customers’ patience. It’s not so much incompetent as irresponsible, reckless, and short-sighted. We would have been much less disappointed to hear, a week ago, that they needed two more weeks to assure quality.

Emerald FangMay 26, 20186 votes

Are people saying that? Wow*[zombie-brand-facepalm]*

Also everyone honor 0 and 1 is laughing diabolically right now. Including me. :)[sg-miss-fortune]

JimTheSnailMay 26, 20181 votes

Imagine a bug making it so people below honor level 2 could play is the reason they canceled it. xD

afmghostMay 26, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Also everyone honor 0 and 1 is laughing diabolically right now. Including me. :)[sg-miss-fortune]

Ditto everyone who has to work, or has something called a life. Dude, it's supposed to be nice for most of America. Grill out, meet up with your friends, or just enjoy the Indy 500. Christ, these people act like the world is ending because they don't get something for nothing, like entitled little kids.

sonic boom1324May 26, 20186 votes

the reason people are mad at riot isnt because they purposely cancelled clash but how they handled it. They ended up cancelling 2 hours before and then instead of compensating players for their time and effort they just said "oops we messed up our bad".

VyupraxMay 26, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=sonic boom1324,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=AaxEFnaT,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2018-05-26T02:42:04.297+0000)

the reason people are mad at riot isnt because they purposely cancelled clash but how they handled it. They ended up cancelling 2 hours before and then instead of compensating players for their time and effort they just said "oops we messed up our bad".

But they did, ARURF, not even the good urf

KVbqbFsC8eMay 26, 20186 votes

This was not a matter of incompetence. It was random chance. It's unfortunate, but there's nothing to be done except wait.

Bullshit. It was absolutely a matter of incompetence and the way they announced it was completely unprofessional and inexcusable.

KairoptraMay 26, 20182 votes

You know, you can't just say "ur wrong" and then insult Riot if you want to be taken seriously. You actually have to make an argument.

KVbqbFsC8eMay 26, 20188 votes

So if you hype something up for weeks, beta test it, and then have it not work 6 months later, and then not announce that its broken until half an hour before release, what do you call that? "Unlucky"? For a multi-billion dollar company being unable to launch something they promote for months?

Thats called incompetence.

KairoptraMay 26, 20184 votes

With the amount of testing they did, how can it be called anything other than unlucky? They did everything in their power to try to make it come out spotless, but that's just not how it worked out.

Imagine a you're going to a concert. The band is unable to show up because their vehicle breaks down. Do you blame the band? No. Of course you don't. They have the funds to finds a means of transportation that is reliable and will most likely get from point A to point B. So what happened? Bad luck.

Same thing here; they have the means to test things to near-perfection and did so, but unfortunately, they can never account for everything, no matter how hard they try. It's not any less frustrating, but you can't just project your anger onto Riot when it's not warranted.

Was their announcement timing poor? Obviously. They should've given us some heads up that there was something wrong and that they might not be able to fix it in time. However, you seem to be jumping to some conclusions as to when this problem cropped up. Who's to say that it wasn't after they'd already posted the video and the website? They should've said something, but don't create some narrative like they knew about it and did nothing when you have no evidence.

sKz Aaron DMay 26, 20182 votes

Not the best example. If you properly maintain vehicles, breakdowns don't really happen at random. You may purposefully delay maintenance or replacement parts to save on costs, which means you'd be aware of potential failures.

This is more akin to them not noticing that the vehicle they rented didn't have tires.

IfnethMay 26, 20182 votes

To the contrary, if you properly maintain vehicles, then breakdowns can only be random. Since proper maintenance prevents all breakdowns caused by things you know about or can control, the only breakdowns that remain possible are ones that are caused by things you don’t know about or can’t control.

KVbqbFsC8eMay 26, 20181 votes

That entire analogy doesn't work anyway as the band is not going to be the ones who designed and manufactured the vehicle. A third party would be involved. No such third party exists in Riots failure to launch Clash.

KairoptraMay 27, 20181 votes

The fact remains that it would fall to the band/their management to procure the most reliable means of transport. If it would be anyone's fault, it would have to be the band's/their management. However, they went with the best possible option, and had them check and double-check and whatnot, and yet a random break-down did occur.

IfnethMay 27, 20182 votes

All software has some chance of catastrophically failing. This chance is higher for software that has not yet been launched and highest on launch day. It’s a risk that you just have to take.

Therefore, that Clash did not work suggests what we already know, which is that Riot is a software developer. Whereas, Riot would be incompetent if it did either of the following:

Launched without Q&A. Had Clash worked anyway, it would have just been luck.
Have Clash crash later. This suggests a foreseeable error in the code, since it was not even plausibly provoked by launch.

You can’t just call a company incompetent because it tries something that doesn’t work. All companies do that. The word has to mean something about whether we could rely on them to make their product work, which Riot’s near 100% server uptime and competitive-grade game sugggests to be the case.

KarunamonMay 26, 20184 votes

I don’t blame them for having clash broken.

I blame them for canceling it with 2 hours to go when the same problems had been happening in every other region. 20 hours is enough time to rejigger schedules. 2 is not.

Teridax68May 26, 20183 votes

I don't think anyone's accusing Riot of deliberately breaking clash. Rather, the issue is that this feature was cancelled almost immediately after its release due to a game-breaking bug, despite requiring payment to access. For sure, some bugs can slip through testing, but when the bug was that immediate and that serious, it suggests that the testing process wasn't done right. Moreover, if the issue was that something had a chance of breaking from mass testing, then it would've been better to just make Clash free to all for an initial period, instead of charging immediately. Generally, when one buys a product that turns out to be defective, one would want one's money back, or some form of compensation, and it's this same kind of feeling that has generated frustration among people who bought Clash tickets, only to have the mode they paid for get cancelled for not working properly.

afmghostMay 26, 20181 votes

{quoted}

I don't think anyone's accusing Riot of deliberately breaking clash. Rather, the issue is that this feature was cancelled almost immediately after its release due to a game-breaking bug, despite requiring payment to access. For sure, some bugs can slip through testing, but when the bug was that immediate and that serious, it suggests that the testing process wasn't done right. Moreover, if the issue was that something had a chance of breaking from mass testing, then it would've been better to just make Clash free to all for an initial period, instead of charging immediately. Generally, when one buys a product that turns out to be defective, one would want one's money back, or some form of compensation, and it's this same kind of feeling that has generated frustration among people who bought Clash tickets, only to have the mode they paid for get cancelled for not working properly.

While it is true that Riot should have done a better job of checking for flaws in the system, people act like they were just trying to piss people off. I mean it's not like they made it buggy on purpose and said, "whoops, bugs. Sorry, but it's off." It's more like they busted their butts to try to make a legitimate product and eventually went "oh, shit, it's buggy. We gotta fix this," but couldn't fix them in time. I mean everyone who had plans to do clash has every right to be disappointed. Making such strong accusations is just being juvenile.

KairoptraMay 26, 20181 votes

Well, the Clash tickets are getting refunded so that they can be used when Clash is fixed, if that helps you.

sKz Aaron DMay 26, 20182 votes

If I take a day off work to go to Six Flags with my friends, it doesn't help me too much if they close the park when we get there and say that my ticket is still valid.

Pika FoxMay 26, 20182 votes

Helps you more than getting on that ride and wonderring why everyone else went down and youre still going up.

losdougradosMay 26, 20183 votes

[deleted]

KairoptraMay 26, 20182 votes

After all those months of testing, how can it be called incompetence at this point? They’ve been working on it nonstop for months now and have probably worked out innumerable bugs. However, no amount of testing can make it 100% ready-to-go; there’s always the slim chance that something will mess up at the last minute.

I’m not saying that the bug popped up 2 hours before, but you seem to be under the impression that Riot knew about the bug for weeks and put off fixing it when you have no evidence. How do you know this bug didn’t pop up only a few days if not the day of Clash? Could they have given us more of a heads-up? Definitely. There’s a good chance that they spent some time trying to fix it, hoping to sweep it under the rug before release. They should’ve at least told us that there was a bug and to have a plan B in case Clash got cancelled. However, the fact remains that there was nothing they could do to keep it on schedule. If there was, do you think we wouldn’t be having this conversation?

Also, given how people are reacting and the content of my post, I would think it obvious that “want” is rhetorical, Einstein.

BlakiepugMay 26, 20182 votes

I don't think anyone is saying that. People are just upset because in all fairness Clash demands prior organization and cancelling Clash so close to its debut time not only puts that time spent organizing to waste but also ruins the night for players who had set aside their plans for the evening to stay at home and play Clash.

TheRossJanitorMay 26, 20182 votes

They did cancel it on purpose. Of course, they didn't make the bug on purpose but the decision to cancel Clash for the weekend was 100% their choice.

The real reason people are mad isn't because Clash is canceled, the reason they're mad is a combination of three things:

A billion dollar company as of 2017 who launched a successful Beta version of this event worldwide didn't catch an obvious game-breaking bug. The bug is extremely noticeable as well, meaning that the game testers either ignored it or they didn't test it at all.
They informed NA of its canceling 2 hours before the event was scheduled, and I even heard that in Europe, they were informed 30 minutes beforehand. For such an obvious bug, this should've been announced days before Clash was intended to begin. But of course, as the point above stated, the game testers are apparently incompetent and either a. forgot to inform Riot, b. completely ignored it, or c. didn't test it AT ALL.
Because of point 2 above, people cleared their schedules for no reason and now have nothing to do when they could've been hanging out with family, working, or preparing for deployment apparently. There is literally someone on the Clash thread who said Clash was the last thing he wanted to enjoy before military deployment.

When all these points are brought to light, there is no wonder people are pissed.

Fear the KaynMay 26, 20181 votes

Why did they cancel it anyway?

Also, they're cancelling the entire event because of a little bug? I know the LoL code is bad but holy shit.

InfernapeMay 26, 20188 votes

The bug was actually gamebreaking I do believe.

Fear the KaynMay 26, 20182 votes

{quoted}

The bug was actually gamebreaking I do believe.

Wasn't clash in beta for a while, and on live like a month ago? What went wrong between then and now?

MykedejongMay 26, 20181 votes

Even in the beta on EUW we had from the 4 trial days of clash that 2 of those days were canceled due to bugs/problems personally i find it quite weird that they didnt fix that completely >.>

SwiftKitten88May 26, 20183 votes

{quoted}

The bug was actually gamebreaking I do believe.

that implies the game hasn't been broken since 8.10...

The Letter HMay 26, 20181 votes

The only problem I have with riot canceling clash is that they did it only an hour before it started, when they knew the problem existed over 20hrs before the NA announcement as the problem occurred on the OCE servers.

SasogwaMay 27, 20181 votes

It would be beyond retarded to cancel Clash on purpose after all the hype they did. So ofc it's not on purpose

AJStarhikerMay 27, 20181 votes

Not every bug can be caught ahead of time--even with extensive beta testing. And since I don't recall hearing about any game-breaking bugs when they ran the Clash beta a few weeks ago, I'm inclined to believe Riot thought Clash was ready to roll out and the main flub was how they handled it after the fact.