I really hope that riot games will be one day a monolith of the game industry however...

MOuHahaHAhahaaaa··32 votes·11,530 views

Beck, Merill, guinsoo, pendragon, Coronach, Volty, ezreal, morello :

Those guys worked hard to make one of the biggest games in the world.

Riot Games and league of legends has been threw very difficult phases in the past but they never left down players and always tried to keep quality even with low budget.

Those guys could make you a triple A game without huge $ investiments because they invested their free time, their life for the game. They wanted it to be a succes and hoped for a better future. Thank to this mentality they cared a lot for the players feedback. When community had suggestions or wasn't happy they didn't lose time : they directly communicated and announced changes.

Nowadays morello doesn't work on lol anymore and one of the worst thing that happened to league was Coronach departure from riot games. This guy alone has created around 1/5 of lol champions and his designs were rock solid. Since he left riot lost a monolith in champion designs and developpment. The new unexperimented rookies wanted new approachs and innovative designs... the unexperience of those created a lot of mess in the game.

What i find terrible is that those guys i mentionned before they made a triple A game without a lot of money and got it close to be balanced.

Nowadays riot makes 1.6 billions a year and does worse than riot and lol at his beginning. Riot has now high budget but the quality by the actual strandards of gaming industry is very low.

2014 : new map rework 2018 : changes on the old chest keys system which was way more friendly to the players 2018 : still a lot of old champions to visually or to gameplay update 2017-18 : popular champions favorised by gameplay improvement and skin comception 2018 : destruction of a processus of balance that took around 9 years to be optimized Every champion was meant to be balanced around runes and masteries. 2018 : crazy metas, crazy champion designs, unfinished and non polished ideas that were brought live. 2018 : extremely low communication with players, non consideration of players feedback, riot had to wait the rage streamers and of the pro players to began to act... 2018 : the massive amount of players lost have brought them to unbann permantly banned accounts.

Does all of this looks like a 1.6 billion profit a year gaming company ?

You are trying to be like blizzard but you are getting closer to ea games.

As i said earlier the guys mentionned at beginning made it better faster and with higher quality (for its time) with perhaps only 1/100000 of the profits riot currently has.

The uptades were better they focalized on the players need and feedback. The communication was better and they didn't wait 6 months to makes big changes going in the direction of the community. If players were massively complaining about something the next week it was solved.

So tell me why do you do worse with more money, more employees and with a big reputation ? In the past riot games worked way better.

Did you decide to rest on your laurels and to wait for money coming from the sky ?

Blizzard would have updated visually all the existing champions one month. In 2 months they would have updated all the old existing kits. It has been 4 years now since map update and the promise to update all champion we still have potato malphite, kite anivia, toilet paper amumu, 3bit caitlyn, candy skarner, flintstone udyr, power rangers pantheon etc...

You want to look like the amazing blizzard, rockstar games or even ncsoft ?

Well you are light years aways from the speed and ratio quality/speed they work. They work fast/ they adapt fast to their communities/ and they release high quality content at high speed.

Riot you are more like an old diesel engine. By working slow your content quality should be way higher than the companies listed above. But you can't. You tried this year to release content way faster than in the past it was a big failure. Why ?

You need to listen to your gaming comunity and you need to hire experienced employees and some rookies that will be formed by the old guys.

This year was really bad but not a failure because you finally reacted !

Don't become like ea and everything should be fine. I hope for you all the success possible because i do love riot games and its game league of legends. What i hate it's when riot games try to alienate his game to bring more players to it.

Let's hope for a good season 9 and that we players and riot games will continue to walk together and with communication this time.

23 Comments

Anatera11 votes

Won't happen, unfortunately. People only change when they have to. As long as Riot makes "acceptable" amounts of money, they'll keep doing whatever BS it is they're doing. They've made it clear they'll only take action when they have no choice.

Nea1044 votes

I agree, but still I think there are actually wrong people in the wrong positions. I mean, inadequate people. Then, inadequate people do make bad choices without even noticing that.

I think the game is seriously compromised, at this point. That's why they are now trying to do pretty sad things like "do a mission with a lev. 15 pal", or "let's unban permabanned accounts". They actually are in very bad waters, but they noticed it only in the last month or so. Veeeery late, for supposed professionals.

"Ok but they will fix it in S9". Mmm... Not sure that the same people who have messed up this much are able to actually fix anything. Even if, they could have lost their critical mass/number, and that could be a point of no return.

Sire Hippington8 votes

popular champions favorised by gameplay improvement and skin comception 2018 : destruction of a processus of balance that took around 9 years to be optimized Every champion was meant to be balanced around runes and masteries. 2018 : crazy metas, crazy champion designs, unfinished and non polished ideas that were brought live. 2018 : extremely low communication with players, non consideration of players feedback, riot had to wait the rage streamers and of the pro players to began to act... 2018 : the massive amount of players lost have brought them to unbann permantly banned accounts.

About all of that started in 2016 actually, it just got even worse since then and reached new highs in 2018

LegitBusinessman6 votes

::Creates most popular game in the history of the world::

"Hey guys, we really need to innovate this product"

Illabethe1 votes

The popularity actually originated in the innovation. The entire project was based on the idea that instead of a gaming company diversifying by creating many games, they could basically update the same game in ways that made it a new game. Aka verticle development rather than horizontal.

That's WHY it's so successful.

If they had produced multiple games:

-They would compete with one another. -They would have less manpower to devote on any one game's success, creating back logs, lack of support/feedback, and content. -They wouldn't be able to E-Sport. -The earlier games would already be in Legacy status (League being one of them). -Prices per game would be MUCH higher.

GenoXx5 votes

Yea, I'm quite sure Riot is still flying the " We know better" flag and possibly wont change route into destruction. Base on the way they are going? I predict the game will be fully dead by 2020.

Illabethe1 votes

Games never ever fully die unless they had no cash reserves to begin with.

BigBrotherAniki5 votes

Wait?Did you call Buzzard the best company?XD Dude cmon.No balance in games.Champs in HOTS that makes no sens.Same thing in overwatch(The almighty baguette) And i should suck Buzzard dick cause they update some champs?I would rather wait 9 months from rework to another rework/new champ than get useless clusterfuck like Blaze or Yrel EVERY BLOODY MONTH.

Starcraft243ver4 votes

I just can't take these posts seriously when they forget every single terrible meta and balance we had at some points in EVERY SINGLE SEASON.

MagicFlyingLlama3 votes

blizzard, rockstar games or even ncsoft ?

Who get even more whining from their players about stuff they dont understand, and who all make 'dying' games.

At least with WoW, it actually was dying after multiple disastrous expansions.

MOuHahaHAhahaaaa2 votes

Want it or not they still listen to their playerbase. For example blizzard announced the vanilla wow servers which the community was asking for years.

But it was more to cite big companies with multiple AAA success games.

Jamaree4 votes

{quoted}

Want it or not they still listen to their playerbase. For example blizzard announced the vanilla wow servers which the community was asking for years.

But it was more to cite big companies with multiple AAA success games.

Uhhhh, have you been on their forums?

Illabethe3 votes

You do realize Tencent has owned Riot from its onset? Even in its Angel Investor Phase Tencent was a 30% Investor, before they bought it outright during League's development.

In other words, it's been under the exact same management since its inception, other than developers.

And, you need to realize something to understand the way these games are managed:

The market for MOBAs/multiplayer games is overcrowded and competitive, and generally, companies invested in them are moving away from them, because there is a high operational profit risk. Games only make up about 2.1 Billion of Tencent's 21 Billion Profit per year. What they are actually invested in is telecommunications, networking, and software development.

So..... Tencent is beginning to treat its gaming wing as something they calculate as less reliable revenue than other sources. They only mention 2 of their games in their annual reports: League of Legends and Dungeon Fighter. They own over 10,300 games.

That should indicate what a blockbuster their investment in Riot was, and still is.

They're adjusting their market models to compensate for a seasonally adjusting player base and to gain more revenue out of each player. That's part of the business.

But ..... it's always been there too.

OniSeiji3 votes

Blizzard lmao? HoTS has the same complaints that we give Riot daily. They recently reworked 2 champs and the community is complaining that they were shit reworks, asking for reverts from like day 1. I'd rather have Riot take their time and actually give us something than to have them throw something out and say "Here, we did it." And of course, they can update the visuals on champs faster. All champs just have recolors as "skins" with a some having actual different skins. And we aren't talking like 2 recolors, it actually around 4-5+ recolors and the skins aren't even impressive. Riot's skins have amazing art and sometimes even lore to it. The old models in LoL are an eyesore, but that shouldn't be a reason to say Riot isn't listening to the community.

Tychusfindlay9183 votes

I would be hesitant in looking up to blizzard after seeing what they did to starcraft 2.

Quikate3 votes

I hope Elon Musk buys Riot and fires every fucking ape in the balance team [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

Leonerdo3 votes

This was a pretty good post for the first third. And I want to agree with some of the other stuff, but you're making it really hard with bullshit like this:

2018 : changes on the old chest keys system which was way more friendly to the players

Chest and keys basically haven't changed at all. The only difference that I know of is the addition of honor check points, which are an improvement to clarity and transparency if anything. Oh, and these small changes, which all seem like buffs to me.

2018 : still a lot of old champions to visually or to gameplay update

Yeah, because Riot actually has decent standards now. The old one-new-champion-per-patch cadence is the entire reason that we have so many shitty, old champions in the first place. Good work takes time, no matter how big your company is. Do you want quality, or do you want more Karma reworks? (Sorry Scarizard, it wasn't your best work)

2017-18 : popular champions favorised by gameplay improvement and skin comception

Why wouldn't Riot focus more on the champions that people enjoy? They make more people happy that way. And it's not like they are leaving other champions in the dust forever. Not even counting the complete reworks, I've seen plenty of new skins, lore, and small balance changes given to old champions recently. Yorick, MF, and Volibear (respectively) are just a few good examples.

2018 : destruction of a processus of balance that took around 9 years to be optimized Every champion was meant to be balanced around runes and masteries.

Arguing in favor of the new runes is a pretty in-depth task that I'm not going to attempt here. But I can say that they haven't affected "processes of balance" at all. Champions are still balanced around their best rune setups, and if a rune is too strong, it's obvious (too many champions use it/it made those champions generally dominant) and it gets fixed. This isn't new. The same shit has been happening forever with masteries and items.

2018 : crazy metas, crazy champion designs, unfinished and non polished ideas that were brought live.

I'll agree on the first two. (Although I personally don't have a problem with the "crazy" designs, I understand Riot is pushing too hard on that front, for most players.) However, it's not fair to call any of it unpolished. There's always been a huge amount of "live testing" when it comes to League (and a lot of other online games). It's not realistic to expect new features/champions to be perfectly tuned (especially the crazy ones). It's an iterative design process, that involves player feedback, which they get a ton of after release. PBE can only get them so far, given the small playerbase and terrible match quality.

Could Riot spend 3 more months on every champion/feature/issue, to make sure it's perfect? Probably, but that would slow down the overall rate of improvements and new content by a lot. It's not a workflow I would advocate for. I'd rather have slightly unfinished designs, that are perfected quickly thanks to feedback from live players.

2018 : extremely low communication with players, non consideration of players feedback, riot had to wait the rage streamers and of the pro players to began to act...

There is no way this can be objectively argued for or against. It's entirely up to perception and expectations, compared loosely with other games/companies that don't even work the same way. All I can say is that I continually see Riot fix 80% of the hot-button complaints in the game. (The other 20% being infeasible to fix, or just stupid.) It's just takes them a while. Maybe too long... In any case, "extremely low communication" and "non consideration of feedback" are waaaay off target.

2018 : the massive amount of players lost have brought them to unbann permantly banned accounts.

Do you honestly think Riot is experimenting with unbanning players because they need more players? I've tried to be respectful with the rest of my comment, but that is actually ridiculous. Less than 1% of player get permabanned in the first place, so unbanning them would be a drop in the bucket. Seriously, unbanning players is such an incredibly bad business decision for so many reasons... Anyone who thinks Riot is unbanning people for any reason besides pure good-faith or generosity is sorely mistaken. I guess you could argue it's a good PR move, but any kind of AD campaign would be 10x better for their bottom-line if that's what they really cared about.

You are trying to be like blizzard but you are getting closer to ea games.

EA isn't even a game developer. They are a publisher. Regardless, I get your meaning, and I reject that as well. League of Legends is still a free-to-play game. With free loot. And the recent addition of free runes. And skins may be a bit more expensive now-a-days, but it's largely because they are higher quality. Speaking of which, even when champions get VGUs, their old shitty skins get updated/improved too without increasing those skin prices. Riot is nothing like EA.

Bring on the "Riot fanboy" comments. Riot is fine company to be a fan of, IMO.


Aight, I can't read any more of this. It's taken me too long to write all this anyways, just to get downvoted and ignored. Peace.

Nevrankroaton2 votes

You want to look like the amazing blizzard, rockstar games or even ncsoft ?

Blizzard and rockstar are example to follow now?

Like, it is a lot of talk for another "Past was better" post but this thing like immediatly came out for me. Who the fuck want to follow their example? I don't think you see the BS these two do in term of selling, marketing or even design idea.

I may afk2 votes

Riot "Games" shouldn't even be plural they literally only have 1 game and it's a blatant rip off of Dota Allstars. Riot is not and WILL NEVER be comparable to an actual gaming company like Blizzard or Valve that have developed numerous unique intellectual properties and helped pioneer online gaming.

Riot literally saw a free to play mod on WC3 and thought of a way to make money off of it by charging for skins and heroes. Found a bunch of investors willing to enable them to hire some of the people that worked on DoTa Allstars while blatantly ripping off the entire game mod and making it more way more noob friendly. Riot can barely keep up with the balance work on their 1 and only game don't compare them to ACTUAL gaming companies.

FutureSensei2 votes

[{quoted}](name=I may afk,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=otJt95Lg,comment-id=000a,timestamp=2018-08-06T15:49:12.007+0000)

Riot "Games" shouldn't even be plural they literally only have 1 game and it's a blatant rip off of Dota Allstars. Riot is not and WILL NEVER be comparable to an actual gaming company like Blizzard or Valve that have developed numerous unique intellectual properties and helped pioneer online gaming.

Riot literally saw a free to play mod on WC3 and thought of a way to make money off of it by charging for skins and heroes. Found a bunch of investors willing to enable them to hire some of the people that worked on DoTa Allstars while blatantly ripping off the entire game mod and making it more way more noob friendly. Riot can barely keep up with the balance work on their 1 and only game don't compare them to ACTUAL gaming companies.

You are only spitting toxicity. What is wrong with being beginner friendly? LoL has far more heroes to balance. Isn't DOTA 2 a rip off of the original Dota built on the Blizzard's engine? Both Valve and Riot paid the creators/maintainers of the WC3 Dota in a time when Blizzard was blind to its potential. Because Valve & Blizzard pioneered online gaming that doesn't mean that other companies can't grow on the seeds planted by the old.

"make money off of it by charging for skins and heroes." Having a business model to sustain a game with so many players, that is so evil, how can they do that?!

MCZerfexD1 votes

Riot saw a mod and they made it into a game. I think that should be applauded. 9 years later they still have a pretty good player base. They are earning billions. ALL THROUGH SKINS!

HassanSenpai2 votes

One thing needs to be said, riot games does not focus on the community at all, they make the majority of changes for the pro scene, which is very annoying for us the community. Balancing champions should be for the community and then the pro scene should adapt for it not the opposite. Like i used to love this game 3 years ago but now its to much. They literally dont make changes but for the pro scene. this needs to change before its too late.

Jerry SeinfeId1 votes

You want to look like the amazing blizzard, rockstar games or even ncsoft ?

... rockstar still promotes GTA as open world right?

isn't WoW still updating whatever models they can reuse during expansions? idk never played the game after they asked me to pay cuz i hit level 10. So i really doubt they'd have updated every single Model and Animation in the game in 2 months. You clearly have no idea how much time goes into it. Would it be possible to do? definitely. But it would probably require riot to hire a bunch of extra people to help their current staff, while also not putting out skins during that time.

as for NCSoft, they just made 4 MMO's, i don't know how much they differ from each other but other than the visual thematic it's still just 4 MMO's. none of them were ever as big as league was.

Truth is none of these companies are really bad. Overwatch was a great game that i quite enjoyed and hots was ok i guess. WoW and Heartstone still keep going strong too. GTA keeps up the good work they started with, the games' missions have some small annoyances but that's always gonna be the case. It's just not real openworld.

Aside from that Blizzard is really falling into the safespace trap with OW and rockstar can't do online for shit from what i understand.

I also want to point this out:

Morello still works at Riot, just on new projects. Projects that aren't league and might not even be tied to it's universe. New games that are coming sooner rather than later according to tryndamere/merrill https://www.dailyesports.gg/riot-games-next-game-league-of-legends/

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