I read some comments so I'm going to rant.
1.
Lot of hate spreading around recently, and right on time there's some new hires that are in charge of moderating the Boards. Some nice people who try to keep things in check on the boards while sometimes showing abit of neutrality between both sides of the playing field. Referring to one instance where I actually saw a moderator disagree with a few things done/said by riot. Was really surprised at that and pretty happy.
I'd like to start off with something in support of Riot: Do not demand someones Job be taken from them. You'd think this would be abit of a common sense one. You disagree with them, you hate them, you think they're trash at their Job and even openly express those views, regardless of what the mods say or Riot says I believe you're entitled to those rights as a player. BUT, it's going way too far when you demand that a person loses their Job/career.
That's just wrong no matter how you slice it.
For the record if it seems like I'm cherry picking, it may be true. After I read through them I'm picking topics for discussion and leaving out anything that seems to be repeated from previous comments, or of course things I don't find to be important. If at any point you believe that there needs to be additional context or anything that I left out that that needs to be there then let me know.
2.
Which actually brings me to my next topic.
As you said, we will strive to lock or remove threads that are not constructive and consist solely of people calling for the firing of Rioters and/or saying they're shit at their job or similar.
Complaining about the game is fine. Making an entire post about how shit a person is at their job, instead of complaining about the work they've done, is not okay. The balance team is just that - a team. They work together, and it's unfair to call one person out for changes that were approved on many levels before making it into the game.
This is bullshit. Those are actually the exact same thing, just a different focus point. There is logically no difference between saying they're bad at their job and saying their work is a pile of crap. Granted, vomiting out a post that looks like something out of a bronze 5 chat log with blind hate and profanity accomplishes nothing. But this is basically saying: "You can say CertainlyT's champions are shit, but if you say he's bad at his job then that's going too far."
These people are designers, balance workers. They create and mold the game that we play. We have the right to say when they're doing a bad job of things. By denying that it is indeed censorship of the communities feedback against the developers.
Yeah, LoL's community is going to be a bunch of assholes. The game by design creates Toxic players, so naturally when you piss them off they're going to get rough with the feedback. All I can say to that League has been known as one of the most toxic games in modern day competitive gaming, being what is essentially a bullseye for players to target is something you need to be prepared for.
You can't block out all the scary people the moment the hate comes back in. Look at Ghostcrawler, can't say I like him but he's the perfect example of what you need to be like when you do things that piss off people in a large gaming community.
3.
The balance team is just that - a team. They work together, and it's unfair to call one person out for changes that were approved on many levels before making it into the game.
Wanna go back to this and focus on it. This..... this is a pretty BIG pile of bullshit.
You may do some level of deliberating as to whether or not something gets passed the design phase, and we can even call the team idiots for allowing it. But that doesn't mean we can't blame the person who created the concept. No matter what the design/change still came from that person. They thought of it, they designed it, and they presented to whoever the hell screens it and got it put in the game.
It is entirely unique to that designer. If this wasn't true then we wouldn't see such massive differences between the designers.
It's abit like video games in the fact that there's a developer and a publisher. We can hold the publisher accountable to a degree, but no matter what primary blame almost always rests with the original creator.
4.
None of us are in a position to scold someone who works for Riot. It is childish and not constructive to harass someone with no constructive feedback
You further must realize most of the criticism is opinion based on a small worldview, whereas the balance team must look at the entirety of the game. Just because you think something or don't like it does not mean someone should be fired or is bad at their job.
Another quote coming in. Once again saying they're bad at their job IS constructive feedback, to an extent. Maybe he meant this in the way of "Throwing hate at someone with no reasoning, information, or detailed opinions accomplishes nothing." If this is the case, and the case for all of the comments, then I apologize for misinterpreting you, and yes I agree with you. It just creates circle jerking, clickbait, upvote farms, and is rude towards the person who is being subjected to the hate.
But if you just mean calling someone bad at their job in general is not constructive, then you're pretty wrong. This is the design and balance teams we're talking about. Regardless of if I'm saying CertainlyT is bad at his job or Zoe is a horrible champion, it still means that I think he screwed up his job as a designer.
For the record, I think he's made some horribly balanced shit that ruins the fun of others, but I'll say that he creates the some of the most unique and potentially fun champions to play. Only person I have a major problem with is the person who ruined LoL for me by touching my main........ moving back onto topic.
5.
You further must realize most of the criticism is opinion based on a small worldview, whereas the balance team must look at the entirety of the game. Just because you think something or don't like it does not mean someone should be fired or is bad at their job.
Hell.....no. The current design and balance teams are NO WHERE near close to understanding the game at the level they should, to be doing the things they're doing. They will never come close to being on the same level as master, challenger, and professional level players.
This is something that everyone has known since the inception of league. The devs will never be on the same level as those who are at the top of the games skill ladder (This is true for every competitive game). This is why in a time where things were considered better than they are now, High elo players were consulted on changes. People who had the experience were consulted about specific champions. The devs listened to people who had the credibility to back their words.
Now what? Everyone in high elo consistently mocks how the balance and design teams go about their work. Even when they say something it's just ignored. Professional players might have more weight behind their words, but they don't have the time or liberty to worry about balance. They have jobs to attend to that involve playing the game as best as they can.
I think the only person who probably doesn't care is faker himself. He's at a level where he doesn't care about balance, he only cares about how he can beat it. Maybe it's an excuse, but I don't think we're fakers waiting to happen. We're probably not close to getting his capability to ignore the balance any time soon.
6.
That's a public entity who serves the public. There's an extremely obvious difference here with a private company and private individual who you are not obligated to interact with in any way if you don't want to, versus the public utility for a city.
Oh, now that one crossed a line. The ol' classic "If you don't like it then don't play it". Used most commonly by people defending something they love when they have no other argument. I personally will say that it's because I like the game and certain aspects of it that I'll sit down and type out my feelings on it.
Ya got me, I could leave and it wouldn't do anything. You can safely say that and if 1-2 people leave then who gives a shit, right? But say that phrase enough and then a few more leave, then a dozen leave, a few dozen, at some point a hundred, then a few hundred, then a thousand, a few thousand, ect.
That's how you drive people away. I think that's a stupid thing to say for a Free 2 Play game like league. Alot of people will argue a free to play title means the developers don't hold any obligation towards the players, I personally believe it to be the exact opposite. See with a paid game once people buy it, that's it. The developers get their payout regardless of what their product is like and the person who bought it is screwed. There are certain platforms and such where you can get a refund but they aren't all that common. That's why a certain publisher exists that we all know and....... "love"
Free 2 Play titles? They get their income from a consistent player base. They need to draw in players and keep them to make money off of whatever type of micro transactions they can get. For a large game like league that also means income sources like sponsorships and the LCS.
So when you choose to not try to keep your playerbase happy and even go as far as saying something like that, then that's bad business and childish. Maybe the guy is tired from trying to communicate with and manage the boards, understandable. But there are somethings you don't say.
Without posting reworded repeats, he actually says these things a few times.
7.
No, you don't call out the person. You call out what's wrong with the game and the employees, their leads/managers, and HR will see it and if a person's projects constantly get ragged on they'll make changes internally.
You don't complain about the person for no reason asking for their firing - it does absolutely nothing except harass them.
I'd like to say that once again, this is abit of a steaming pile. Many things and people have been called out over the years by the community. In most, if not all cases Riot never actually does what the community wants. Most of the time things are pretty thoroughly ignored, or at the very least work arounds are put into place to try and satisfy the community without ever trying to fix the problem.
Riot just doesn't ever compromise. They implement a problem into the game and then do everything they can to work AROUND IT rather than fixing it.
Don't take this out of context though, still not saying people should get fired or ever have their job endangered over this.
8.
You have no way of knowing who was responsible for something. 99% of the decisions that are made are made after team deliberation. The team takes the blame. Not the person.
Well..... Whose fault is that? One of the things the community has consistently asked for a good few years but still never receives is communication.
I can sympathize. It's not particularly easy to just have a Designer or balance worker walk into the forums and start chatting it up. That's a disaster waiting to happen.
Hell, come chat with me. We can have a nice conversation for awhile and I'll neither bark nor bite. Back to topic.....
Doesn't mean it's impossible though. If everyone is truly a well coordinated team, then everyone would more or less has an idea of what's going on at all times. I don't think it'd be that hard to have a dedicated person outside of the team keeping tabs on the team and relaying any information when available.
I also think the community should be apart of the champion releases and balance decisions, but that's for another post.
Point is, it's wrong to blame people for giving an opinion with no information to back it when you're not presenting them with the information in the first place.
9.
Then lets talk abit about Ghost crawler. I think the forums need to chill and stop witch hunting him. Why? Well I can actually agree that he's doing something wrong, but it's rude to him that everyone is directing their anger towards him for all the wrong reasons.
You see the average GC hater's thought process is that they've been convinced that everything they hate about the game is purely this mans fault.
Like simply everything they see as wrong with league is just something he did and no one else is involved. This is false. The balance worker or champion designer is always going to be the one at fault for whatever they bring into the game.
But if he's not involved then why is he still at fault? Because, he still has a responsibility to fulfill that he's failing at and this is the real reason why people should be mad. When everyone else fails to stop a bad idea in the design process and prevent it from releasing, he is responsible as the team leader to be the most unbiased and neutral party that is capable of recognizing when something is just not right and stopping it in its tracks.
Perhaps I'm uninformed of how his job works. It's just logical to assume the person in the lead position is in charge of managing the team and what they're doing.
I was thinking of adding more but it's already almost 3 AM. I have Supernatural to binge watch and then go to sleep, though I will be periodically checking in on the post.
To anyone mentioned in the post, both the Moderator who's comments I quoted and other Riot Employee's, no hard feelings intended if It came off as such anywhere in the post. As I said I have no amount of hate towards anyone besides whoever reworked fizz, I have a vendetta against him.
