Boards›Gameplay

Understanding the "masses" and Riot's situation.

Shaabanglyy·8/7/2015, 4:15:28 PM·36 votes·1,569 views

Before I really get to far into this I want to lay the ground work by stating that I am not contending that any choices made by Riot were good or bad. I am not really even interested in making my thoughts on this known at this time.

The point of this post is to address something that I feel is not considered by people who decide to post these very adamant and lengthy posts condemning Riot for not caring.

I want to emphasize something. And this point may really hurt to accept. But a post on a forum with 300 up-votes and a few thousand views does not by definition represent the feelings of the masses.

It does however represent the feelings of the vocal portion of the community that is active on the forums. But you need to understand that by the very nature of people, if someone isn't upset, they usually just don't say anything. Its psychological. People who are satisfied with their experience are less likely to show up to shower praise on a company because they EXPECT to enjoy the product and when they get what they expected they aren't compelled to anything more than just continue to enjoy it.

I see a lot of comments like "EVERYONE HATES", and "NOBODY ASKED FOR", or "THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY IS ANGRY." And I understand what compels people to say things like this. Its natural when you come to the forums and see other posts expressing what you think, that everyone agrees.

The problem with this thinking is that its just simply not true. A lot of people are waiting to actually experience the changes. Or understand that not every change is going to make them happy, but that over the course of time Riot will figure it out.

And the other sad reality for a lot of people, is that Riot isn't the same company and League isn't the same game that you all were playing in closed beta. I know a lot of the most active forums posters are folks who have been here from the beginning and while you opinions are probably well thought out and based in experience, the game is simply growing. Perhaps this means that the game is no longer for you. And while that may be upsetting, your personal feelings of abandonment do not reflect how every member of the community feels. The game is growing and changing. Mobility is here to stay. Slow methodical team fights are a thing of the past. The winds of change are blowing in the direction of more reactive game play and twitch reflexes and further away from tactics and strategy.

Again, if these points mean that the game is no longer for you, than I implore you to stop spending your time and money on something that isn't making you happy. That is how you send a message to Riot.

The problem is that clearly enough people are happy and spending that maybe the community really DOESN'T hate the game. Just like in pro football the league has been for years changing the game to facilitate bigger plays and higher scores and more offense, this is unfortunately the route that Riot has chosen to take for their game. And since the player base is still growing and spending, maybe they were right?

Because at the end of it all, we need to remember that Riot is a business. They are not our friends and they will do what the feel is best for the game. And that includes finding ways to keep making money.

I respect and appreciate everyone's opinions. But maybe it isn't that EVERYONE is mad? Maybe the vast majority of folks are just out there enjoying the game? These are just some thoughts I have had on mind as of late and I hope that the responses here can be polite and maybe lead to a decent conversation.

Good luck on the Rift.

TLDR- Just read.

20 Comments

fractalfantasies8/7/2015, 9:32:56 PM5 votes

Agreed, good post OP.

The majority of what this board refers to as 'cancer champs', including those champions designed by certainlyT, are in fact, extremely popular at all elo's and very visually appealing to watch when played correctly.

Shaabanglyy8/7/2015, 4:54:12 PM4 votes

One more bump.

Shaabanglyy8/7/2015, 4:28:33 PM4 votes

Bump for vision

LilxPaprika8/7/2015, 5:50:33 PM3 votes

Inability to bump is one example of how boards lack a way of unearthing good posts.

KaisadiIIa8/8/2015, 2:12:20 AM2 votes

I want to emphasize something. And this point may really hurt to accept. But a post on a forum with 300 up-votes and a few thousand views does not by definition represent the feelings of the masses.

This "argument" is pointless and is getting annoying. Of course, people commenting on the forums/reddit/youtube/etc are just a tiny fraction of all the players of this game, but that doesn't mean anything.

Imagine that you make a study about, for example, smoking. You take a small sample (for example, 1,000 people); you ask them if they smoked when they were under age. Let's say 60% of them say "Yes. I smoked at least once while I was under age". You publish your study and someone tells you "There are 8,000,000,000 people in the world, and you only asked to 1,000. They are a minority, so, in fact, 99.9999% of world's population never smoked when they were underage."

This is the same: While not everybody is commenting on the forums, the people that is active here is just a sample of all the people that is playing League of Legends. And, yes, people that aren't happy with how RIOT manages the game are more prone to post it on the forum, but that doesn't alter the sample too much. The fact that I'm answering this to you is the prove that people from all opinions post in the forums. Also, you have to exclude all the "very casual" people that play the game for fun and just don't care what RIOT does. They could remove half the roster for no reason and these people wouldn't say anything just because they don't care, they just play this game for fun.

In my personal experience, people on the forums are an accurate representation of people's opinions. More than half the people I personally know that have any opinion about the game don't like Mordekaiser's rework at all, for example. And almost everyone I know thinks that RIOT's opinion about Sandbox mode is ridiculous.

tl;dr: People on this forum being a minority of the player base doesn't mean that everybody that is not posting here has a completely different opinion.

LilxPaprika8/7/2015, 5:39:36 PM1 votes

Can't bump mate (imagine if bumping was allowed XD) , I agree with it to some extent. We as a community should find better tools means to get riots attention and really iron out our reasonings and present it to them in a more formal fashion. It would be nice if these tools were provided in part by riot to give us better way of being heard get valid constructive points across, highlighting great ideas etc to more readily catch their attention A bit like in government passing bills up for approval

But I do think riot is the least responsive company I've ever share ideas with. And that's saying something as I've contributed in many games forums. They're okay with tickets however. Just not with the boards (game play and balance in particular/especially) And I also think its not likely acoincidence that this game's balance issues were to have anything to do with their absence in this subsection of the boards. Granted its also the game that has the biggest player base I've played yet.

I realize that i just have to put more effort into my ideas to catch peoples attention help them see what I see. Here's one example of my efforts https://mocklolpatchnotes.wordpress.com/

But in all the volumes worth of text I've posted here not once have they touched upon my queries. And tbh if you bother to glance at my countless posts, nothing can be said to save face for riot in this regard

Hard4Hamsters8/8/2015, 12:22:03 AM1 votes

I love you.

LilxPaprika8/7/2015, 6:07:53 PM1 votes

Another thread that might interest you http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/Psil3lec-is-it-even-relevant Wrote this

Ive been on these boards for a while now and can agree. While i enjoy posting my ideas for all to see, and may find that the majority of my posts aren't met with a much approval by the community. Ill occasionally come up with an idea that gets considerable upvotes. I've also seen a couple of threads like these pop up that get lost in the void, since they were never picked up by a red.

Solution would be to assign/appoint veteran board frequenters/volunteers a sort of mod status whereby they objectively look for/select quality posts and tag them to give them priority status to be reviewed by reds. To obtain said priviledges a member would need to show exemplary behavior. They would meet criteria and get approved by riot, following an examination of sorts.

They could only tag them on like a friday and no more than 5 per week. with 5 mods thats 25 tags. So during the course of the week they would favorite/bookmark their preferred posts. on the friday they would tag them (that way they won't just tag the first thing that catches their eye). There would be a section devoted to tagged threads. For each tag they would require a small explanation as to why they tagged.

At the end of each week reds answer the previous week's tags in a sticked thread. Answer whether or not they see fit to add a feature or explain why not.

DaBaiXiong8/8/2015, 5:09:29 AM1 votes

I would love to use these boards more often, but they are just so fucking terrible. This whole reddit style upvoting is just absurd. I want my posts in chronological order so I can read them like a human.

These boards are god awful. I've made posts, and they were immediately lost to me.

I cannot find a single good reason to make them this way.

That is the reason I don't post here. Not that the game is devolving.

Sassmast3r8/8/2015, 6:25:54 AM1 votes

I think one issue is the fact that a lot of people, although do realize that this game has changed into quick reflexes, mobility, and flashiness, that they simply cannot let it go. They can't let go of what was once something so enjoyable for them. Believe it or not, this game has been massively impactful on many's lives, so to see this game deteriorate, although frustrates them (and leads to these frustrated forum posts we see all the time) they don't want to give it up. They want change. So it begins to make them feel like they don't matter anymore, which leads to even further aggravation and in the end, tons of rude forum posts condemning Riot. Just a thought.

Piggy81748/8/2015, 9:16:27 AM1 votes

I just posted a less impressive and thought out version of this as a comment in another post. Thank you for posting this. While I feel for the people who are angry over the changes that came to their char, I don't honestly believe that they are the majority and by yelling at Riot over all the change, which in my opinion is good change, and making them revert it, they are just making Riot less likely to continue advancing league or telling people about the changes coming simply because of all the hate they get from it before hand. I feel like people make up their minds on weather or not they like it before hand and than just give Riot a hard time about it because they don't like change. But again, thanks for posting this.