Official league of legends replay system?

Elven Moon·Sep 26, 2016·46 votes·2,346 views

I'm just wondering. When will Riot ever make their own replay system so that we don't have to depend on third parties to make it for us?

27 Comments

Rakan GarfieldSep 26, 201610 votes

You must be new here.

Inquisitor KaneSep 26, 20163 votes

My guess is it will happen right after majority of players leaves for other, newer and better games.

Then we will have replay system, tribunal will come back, we'll get rewards for honors and we will be able to unlock chroma packs by gaining certain mastery level....

...but at that time it'll be too late.

They go by the idea of - why waste money on things (replays in this case) when others will do it for us and we can save the money and buy new cars? So far it is working like charm so why changing it.

SlythionSep 26, 20163 votes

they have gotten generally more selfish in their decision making, but I haven't completely lost faith yet

Inquisitor KaneSep 27, 20161 votes

{quoted}

they have gotten generally more selfish in their decision making, but I haven't completely lost faith yet

I'm in the exactly the same state of mind :) Let's hope it won't get too bad anyt8me soon.

Spaceman5pffSep 26, 20163 votes

But why SHOULD they waste resources on making their own if there are good 3rd party ones available? There is no good reason to do it other than to appease people who are too lazy to do the research to find and set up a good one.

eatmoreketchupSep 26, 20162 votes

I used to play on PBE and some time ago, maybe two or three years, there was a replay system introduced there which seemed to work perfectly fine. Then they dropped it without giving any explanation.

So there's that.

Spaceman5pffSep 26, 20163 votes

They dropped it because they would have had to store the replays serverside for stability / security reasons.

Storing them serverside would bog down the servers massively. So they probably had issues figuring out how to solve this issue and just said "Eh, the 3rd party ones are pretty damn good" And here we are now.

Inquisitor KaneSep 27, 20161 votes

{quoted}

But why SHOULD they waste resources on making their own if there are good 3rd party ones available? There is no good reason to do it other than to appease people who are too lazy to do the research to find and set up a good one.

The reason is exactly the one you just said - to appease the players. It's 2016 already. Technology advances and games are evolving. You have to keep up with the standards.

Also calling people lazy is far fetched. I use Plays.tv and replay.gg both. Plays.tv takes unnecessary space on my disk and I would gladly ditch it if I could. But thx to plays.tv i can see what I was looking at during the game so I am keeping it. Replay.gg is good for overall view of the game and getting better at makro game and predicting enemy movement for the future. But i had to register there and watch it from website and after new patch old replays are unusable...

Call me lazy but there are so many hoops to get through just for a stupid replay...

Main point is that it is easy to do and especially for Riot. Sure, it will cost some money but they can make up for it with just few new woins and chromas.

Even stupid Nosgoth had replay system built in. And what a shit game that was....

Spaceman5pffSep 27, 20161 votes

But it ISN'T easy. Specifically for the reasons I stated earlier: -Storing them (the replays) serverside bogs down the servers without massive financial investment into new hardware. -Storing them clientside makes for stability issues. We saw what people did to graves with just a tiny bit of clientside info, we don't need to give them more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCLJP98RiH0

Inquisitor KaneSep 27, 20161 votes

{quoted}

But it ISN'T easy. Specifically for the reasons I stated earlier: -Storing them (the replays) serverside bogs down the servers without massive financial investment into new hardware. -Storing them clientside makes for stability issues. We saw what people did to graves with just a tiny bit of clientside info, we don't need to give them more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCLJP98RiH0

And then how does replay.gg works? They provide tons of game replays, it's free (unless I missed something)and it's already working.

Spaceman5pffSep 27, 20161 votes

Replay.gg has its own servers DEDICATED to the replays and only the replays. Using the existing riot servers would cause in game connection instability, compromising the ability for many people to have a satistfactory playing experience. Also, replay.gg doesn't host the viewing service of the replay, as you know, the replay is watched through the client. I am not 100% sure of the techie nature of this, but I am willing to bet it is designed to reduce stress on replay.gg servers.

Think of how the store goes down when a new champion comes out (not always but sometimes) or we get login queues.

Think of the server as a big bottleneck; only so much shit (requests) can flow through at once. If we increase the requests that the server is responsible for, we will have speed and stability issues MUCH more often.

That is the basic nature of it. You can get a lot deeper into the tech but that should help you understand why we can't store it server side. And if you still don't get why we need to limit client-side info... well then I don't know what to tell you.

Inquisitor KaneSep 28, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Replay.gg has its own servers DEDICATED to the replays and only the replays. Using the existing riot servers would cause in game connection instability, compromising the ability for many people to have a satistfactory playing experience. Also, replay.gg doesn't host the viewing service of the replay, as you know, the replay is watched through the client. I am not 100% sure of the techie nature of this, but I am willing to bet it is designed to reduce stress on replay.gg servers.

Think of how the store goes down when a new champion comes out (not always but sometimes) or we get login queues.

Think of the server as a big bottleneck; only so much shit (requests) can flow through at once. If we increase the requests that the server is responsible for, we will have speed and stability issues MUCH more often.

That is the basic nature of it. You can get a lot deeper into the tech but that should help you understand why we can't store it server side. And if you still don't get why we need to limit client-side info... well then I don't know what to tell you.

Ok, this seems legit and thank you for the info. Appreciated much.

But then pops up the question - why not just make new "replay only" server? It won't be as big as game server, it can work like replay.gg - through client, and it won't fck up game server.

Ofc it will be possible only with new client that can be cod3d to withstand data transfer between 2 servers, which is not so hard since replay server will be called only if you wanna watch replay.

Also I understand it will cost money but let's say for the sake of argument, that for company like Riot money are not such an issue.

Wouod this solve the problem?

Spaceman5pffSep 28, 20161 votes

I'm sure it probably would solve the problem. However, this requires: -New server hardware -A building in which to house the new server hardware -Property on which to place that building -Staff to monitor / maintain the server

With a task like that, we really can't just ignore money as a factor, as there is far more than just hardware and setup costs.

The Sword SaintSep 26, 20162 votes

Should be by the end of this season according to their announcements in the preseason.

That announcement included other things like the League Friends phone apps (which came out and have been around for a while now) and the new client (which is now in alpha and plenty of people have their hands on it) so I doubt they'd just quietly not release replays this year considering the history it has with the community.

Billy VoHagenSep 26, 20162 votes

The reason Riot doesn't make a replay system is because there are many good 3rd party replay systems that you can use. That may change, however.

KillerjaysSep 26, 20162 votes

Do you happen to know which 3rd party systems match your "good" criteria?

dunkeroniSep 26, 20162 votes

I would suggest replay.gg I haven't used it much so far, but it's easy to work with. You don't have to install any third party software, and it automatically records your games online. All you have to do is run either a batch file or command line that they provide while your league client is open to view any of your past games in the spectate client.

MaliciousXSep 26, 20161 votes

You dont even have to do all that anymore. U can watch it right there on the website now.

dunkeroniSep 27, 20161 votes

Yeah, but that interface is slow, shitty, and poor resolution.

MaliciousXSep 27, 20161 votes

The resolution gets up to 720p. It just takes about a minute. The first minute-ish is poor resolution, but it gets better

MonkeyMadnessSep 26, 20161 votes

The reason Riot does/doesn't do something is exclusively money. Don't pretend that Riot has our best interests at heart with any decisions they make, they just want to maximize profits.

devdev463Sep 26, 20161 votes

They said basically it would cost far too much to be worth, and that the replay sites out right now were good enough.

Since I don't know how much it would cost them it's hard to judge whether they are wrong or not with this current stance.

PunkkeeSep 26, 20161 votes

there will NOT be a built in replay system because

That cost money
Money = more furniture in the offices
They are completely fine with players having to use third party programs like play.tv to record

OuijaBoredSep 26, 20161 votes

Replay.gg is approved by riot as a source to watch your replays through.

dunkeroniSep 26, 20161 votes

I've tried replay.gg, but I've always worried whether or not it was officially approved. Do you have a source for that claim?

OuijaBoredSep 26, 20161 votes

Unfortunately I do not have a source that comfirms 100% that riot said it's okay. There have been board posts in the past asking questions about the website and riot has responded to them without saying anything about it being wrong to use it. I found out about replay.gg through a group of people (plat-diamond) who would help coach lower elo climb. This was one of the websites they gave me to help me improve my gameplay; on the actual link they sent me with a page full of useful tools they said they had gone through extensive research to make sure that all the programs they were using were riot approved. I've been using all of their sources for over 5 months now without any kinds of problems or messages from riot themselves. Granted I do not use it religiously!

MaliciousXSep 26, 20161 votes

Theyve said many times they dont inted to do one. Their stance is other 3rd party ones are pretty good, so why would they? Use replay.gg