Mage update - puts CDR on every single item. Wants to fix Annie's zero counterplay playstyle, but managed to make her deal even more damage than before. Swain, Malz and Vlad - nuff said. A staggering amount of poor quality reworks which are not up to par with Riot's standards.
Saw Blizzard had DQ in HoTS. Decided to go ahead and copy the idea to everyone's displeasure.
Continues his dispruptive work to mess up League just like he did with WoW PvP.
RiotGhostcrawler182 votes(4) Drinks on the job.
zenzilla17 votesSeriously Sir, if you are going to reply at all, I (for one, i'm speaking for me) would appreciate a real response.
I used to play this game 5-8 hours a day for about 2 years on 4 accounts. Now I find it hard to force myself to grab my "first win of the day"... thanks....
Gixia51 votesIf you want a real response, it helps if the OP is asking a real question instead of casting blanket blame for every perceived slight on one man.
Point 1 is the only one that can even be remotely blamed on Ghostcrawler since he's on the champ design team, but it's still exactly that, a TEAM. Which means that everyone plays a part. Furthermore, the issues with those champs are basically balance numbers. Design-wise, all of them (except for arguably Malz) are improved over where they are before. The issue is their numbers tuning, which is on the Live-Balance Team, not the design team.
Point 2 I can guarantee you Ghostcrawler had nothing to do with because that has nothing to do with champion design. So when you blame a guy for something he had no involvement in, of course he's not gonna give you a real response.
Point 3 is just confirming the guy already had prior bias against Ghostcrawler to begin with, and again, it's blaming him for something he didn't even do. Once again, Ghostcrawler does design, not balance. He's not responsible for messing up League, and contrary to the memes, he didn't mess up WoW either. In fact, general consensus is that ever since he left working on WoW, it's actually gone even further downhill, which means he was the one holding it up, not bringing it down.
RiotGhostcrawler40 votesIf you want a real response, it helps if the OP is asking a real question instead of casting blanket blame for every perceived slight on one man.
Point 1 is the only one that can even be remotely blamed on Ghostcrawler since he's on the champ design team, but it's still exactly that, a TEAM. Which means that everyone plays a part. Furthermore, the issues with those champs are basically balance numbers. Design-wise, all of them (except for arguably Malz) are improved over where they are before. The issue is their numbers tuning, which is on the Live-Balance Team, not the design team.
Point 2 I can guarantee you Ghostcrawler had nothing to do with because that has nothing to do with champion design. So when you blame a guy for something he had no involvement in, of course he's not gonna give you a real response.
Technically speaking, I'm not on the champ design team. I'm accountable for League design holistically. In practice, it's is not possible for me to be present for every discussion, or even every design meeting, so I'm certainly not directing individual teams to put CDR on every item. You are better off talking to designers or other team-members who are making the champion updates or changing the corresponding items. That said, if you're not happy with any aspect of League, I am more than happy to take the blame for it. It is my job to set up a system by which good design decisions get made, so when they aren't being made, that is my problem to fix, even if I don't have context on every decision that gets made.
You may also find it to be generally more constructive to give your feedback on features or direction overall than on the individual developers themselves, but I have pretty thick skin, so you can pretty much say whatever you want about me personally. :)
Dominick Destine8 votesTechnically speaking, I'm not on the champ design team. I'm accountable for League design holistically. In practice, it's is not possible for me to be present for every discussion, or even every design meeting, so I'm certainly not directing individual teams to put CDR on every item. You are better off talking to designers or other team-members who are making the champion updates or changing the corresponding items.
And this, my young acquaintances, is what we call plausible deniability.
The idea of a bureaucratic system is precisely to do what Ghostcrawler just did; Whenever anyone screws up, it can never be pinned on any individual because they are not presenting a target. The idea is to never have anyone answer for anything.... at least in the Morello days we could all point to Morello and say "FUCK THAT GUY" .... little did we know he was the greatest LoL developer we would ever have.
Morello, you were good to us, we just didn't know it yet.
RiotGhostcrawler71 votes[{quoted}](name=Dominick Destine,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=ydAqrpb4,comment-id=00030003000300000001,timestamp=2016-07-09T01:01:43.283+0000)
And this, my young acquaintances, is what we call plausible deniability.
The idea of a bureaucratic system is precisely to do what Ghostcrawler just did; Whenever anyone screws up, it can never be pinned on any individual because they are not presenting a target. The idea is to never have anyone answer for anything.... at least in the Morello days we could all point to Morello and say "FUCK THAT GUY" .... little did we know he was the greatest LoL developer we would ever have.
Morello, you were good to us, we just didn't know it yet.
I just said that you can blame me for anything on League that you don't like. It's my job to make the game good and my fault when it is not.
But that doesn't mean I walk into champ designer meetings and say "NERF ANNIE!" then take a sip of my martini and peace out.
LankPants47 votesBut that doesn't mean I walk into champ designer meetings and say "NERF ANNIE!" then take a sip of my martini and peace out.
Have you ever tried to see how people would react? TBH that sounds pretty amazing.
Hige7 votesUhm interesting, so the direction of the game itself IS your doing, if you may answer... are you currently happy with the state of the game? A lot of things have changed for LoL in this season, specially the adc role (my so called main) can't say it's all bad but adapting have been hard.
I guess what I'm trying to ask, even though I think I know you can't answer, is: What's LoL current direction?
AMYS GRAVE1 votesaw come on, martinis are your drink of choice?
BloodyTompon14 votesShaken not stirred. The name's Crawler. Ghost Crawler.
Commando Yi11 votesI just said that you can blame me for anything on League that you don't like. It's my job to make the game good and my fault when it is not.
But that doesn't mean I walk into champ designer meetings and say "NERF ANNIE!" then take a sip of my martini and peace out.
i died to red buff trying to jungle swain the other day how could you let that happen?
Ralanr19 votesBravo good sir. Please get some better underwear because your current ones clearly cannot hold your massive balls.
The Yetii Rider18 votes(4) Drinks on the job.
With idiots like this one blaming you for everything, I'm not surprised.
Keep up the good work. We love the game you've helped bring to life.
MoarCowbell9813 votes(4) Drinks on the job.
that feel when literally no fucks were given
Papa Slothy18 votesfor number 2, you forgot "then after HoTS removed dynamic queue in favor of solo queue, riot refused to put in solo queue"
RiotGhostcrawler16 votesHowever, I am unhappy with how good a job you do at communication about all the other facets of League. DQ being the most current example, but also clubs, series, social features, matchmaking...
I may not have the answers to very specific questions, but what about these topics do you wish to see addressed?
RiotGhostcrawler16 votesHow the biggest issue with Dynamic Queue is that it CANNOT be an accurate measure of skill with so many variables in queue groups being a part of the equation. It cannot be accurate for people who play in groups or accurate for people who play solo, and it being a RANKED system that should always be the VERY TOP priority over anything else.
I just want my rank to matter again, to be accurate, if that means SoloQ or some other solution like different ladders but same queue.
Hope to hear back from you :)
Ranked was never that accurate a measurement of skill, and duoing has been a thing for some time. But that is begging the question. We understand there are plenty of players out there who want to be able to measure (and display) their personal skill as accurately as possible. We are exploring things like filtering ladders by the solo/non-solo emblem and similar ideas. While we need to have a single queue for matchmaking purposes, we don't need to have a single list for evaluation purposes. And as I said above, we want to make players feel that even when they do join a team with a premade or play against partial premades, that they do have a fair chance of winning.
RiotGhostcrawler16 votesThis doesn't fix the problem IMO. There can't be competitive integrity as long as players who are far worse than me can be boosted up by their friends who are slightly higher than my level. I see this all the time, a player in my game plays at a level I'd expect from my Bronze friends, after I lose the game I look them up and see that they play terribly almost every game and only win games while playing with a specific player.
But this is nothing new. Duos could queue for ranked even before, and it's a lot easier to find one other player to play with than to try and form a threesome. Now maybe you're arguing that even duos compromised the competitive integrity here, and I would probably agree. What I am trying to say is that the competitive integrity really never existed, but it's still an desired component of the game and maybe there's a better way to offer it.
I feel like what players are telling us is that they want a goal to strive for, that they want to a reason to play another game, and that they probably even want to show off these accomplishments to other players. Maybe ranked wasn't great at offering that, but it's really all there was, and now it is worse at that than it was before. Great. Let's build a system that actually delivers on those desires.
Kobold9 votesI feel like what players are telling us is that they want a goal to strive for, that they want to a reason to play another game, and that they probably even want to show off these accomplishments to other players. Maybe ranked wasn't great at offering that, but it's really all there was, and now it is worse at that than it was before.
** Great. Let's build a system that actually delivers on those desires.**
I will hold you to this then, as the last few attempts of "Let's Build a system that delivers" were less than satisfactory from what I have seen in the responses to them.
RiotGhostcrawler16 votesGhostCrawler kinda just proved whats wrong with riot atm with what he is writing... after his first "funny" comment he should of just left.
Can you elaborate? I feel like I am hearing from some players that they appreciate the communication.
RiotGhostcrawler16 votesRiot admits and owns mistakes? Since when? I haven't seen Riot own up to their mistakes and communicate with the community on how they can improve and do better since like, season 4.
The way we launched Dynamic Queue was a mistake. We didn't have enough buy in with players, we didn't justify why we thought it was a good feature, and the feature itself had a lot of problems at launch. Another mistake was launching it so close to the start of the season. We should have delayed the season or had the entire feature slip to mid-season or next year. If I could do it all over again, I would strongly advocate that we launch the new champ selection, deal with all of its problems (such as long queue times and failure to get your primary role often enough) and once that felt stable and players felt pretty good about it, then start to explore increasing premade size.
RiotGhostcrawler14 votesWhat incentives do solo que players get RIGHT NOW?
We haven't focused on incentives for solo players, because we aren't having any trouble getting players to queue solo. By contrast, we've had difficulty getting players to queue as premades, for a few reasons: we prohibited queuing of 3s+ before, it's difficult to play with someone with a huge skill gap, and it's just inconvenient. I think for most of us if we see a friend is already in a game, given the length of League games, we will probably just queue ourselves rather than wait 20+ minutes for them to finish.
Now again, some players have no interest in queuing as anything other than solo. The barriers above don't apply because they aren't interested. But we also have a lot of players who are interested, and the incentives are help overcome those barriers.
I don't think we are in any danger of most players queueing in 2s-5s, but if that happened, solo incentives might be more necessary.
Now all of that said, we are also not trying to send the message that we don't care about solo players or they aren't important to League. Clearly some players feel like we are trying to send that message, so we have some work to do.
Vanjie22 votesBut you are doing it. As of right now and the past few months, Premade Groups receive better rewards. Solo Players that are forced to group in a Premade Group do not get the same rewards a premade does when they win a match. You are forcing Solo Players to actively be put on a team with Premade Groups, so wouldn't it make sense to give them the same rewards since you are forcing them to be "just a number"?
No matter how you explain this to me, I cannot get passed the idea of giving Premade Groups more rewards than Solo Players. If you are forcing a VERY SPECIFIC group of players to fill in spots for Premade Groups, they should receive the same rewards if they win a match. As of RIGHT NOW Solo players are going to be placed with Premade Groups regardless. There is no reason why a Solo Player should be queing because they have the same que times as a Premade Group. You are not having trouble with Solo Players queing by themselves because regardless they are being paired with and against Premade Groups. That entire statement is irrelevant.
What incentives do solo que players get RIGHT NOW? You are forcing them to group with Premade Groups and you have no systems in place to make it easier for them to find and communicate with Premade Groups. I'll answer the question for you then. The answer is you don't intend to give Solo Players any reason to que by themselves and you will continue to give Premades the rewards they do not deserve. Dynamic Que matches Solo players with Premade Groups without their permission, so the rewards Premades get is not deserved.
Maybe you should have left everything alone until you came up with a system that doesn't take the entire ranked season to figure this out. We are half way through the season and the problems involving Dynamic Que and Solo Players will not be addressed until 2017. You guys have single-handedly made this entire ranked season irrelevant. This ranked season feels very one-sided and unfair. You guys have yet to do anything about it and we are half way through the season. I really hope you guys are considering giving everyone that has participated in ranked this season, all of the rewards regardless of their rank. It's not fair to punish the players because you guys decide to release a bad matchmaking system that is completely one sided.
Again I am not trying to hurt your feelings and make you feel bad. I am telling you exactly how a player who prefers to que by himself, is being forced to group with toxic Premade Groups and doesn't receive the same rewards they do. It's not fair.
RiotGhostcrawler14 votesHonestly, this whole ordeal about DQ could've been avoided if you just hadn't even made it in the first place. All the frustration and anger wouldn't be here if you hadn't shipped a shitty system onto us. No matter what you guys do to try to lessen the blow (do you really think crappy emblems will help at all? No!), people will still be forced to be playing in this awful system with premades. Thousands of people have left the game because of the state of this season, and more are doing it everyday.
If "thousands of people had left the game" then of course we would conclude it was a bad system that is hurting the game and we'd turn it off. But the results were actually really positive, which is why we considered it a success. Ranked participation is up. Number of players is up. Churn is down. Player behavior problems are down. (I will say again, that some of those benefits are from new champ select and some are from the premade component, and no they aren't all from really casual players who were somehow just waiting to be able to queue with friends in order to invest time in League.)
We don't trumpet those numbers a lot, because we don't think they do a lot to make players who hate the idea of premades feel any better. The analogy we use a lot is that if you don't like chocolate, it probably doesn't sway you if you show you all these stats about how many people like chocolate and how much they like it.
The feature definitely still has some problems, and as I've said, we think lack of solo recognition (or maybe skill expression is a better way to put it) is among them. But it mischaracterizes the situation to call it some kind of huge failure. It is fine if you personally don't like the feature, and we will absolutely do what we can to try and fix the things you don't like.
RiotGhostcrawler13 votesFirstly I'd like to thank you for taking your time to answer our questions. Lately we often feel like we're being ignored by RIOT... thanks so much for chatting with the players, it means more than you can know:)
If I can get one message across, it's that you guys are NOT being ignored. We have struggled to come up with the right mechanism to communicate with you all that scales well. We have tried blogs and videos and AMAs. We'll keep trying. :)
RiotGhostcrawler13 votesNot trying to be rude but the number of times you have used these sentences in the last year is significantly more in comparison to other games I follow. I'm actually really disappointed in it because it doesn't seem sincere anymore as it is just a recycled phrase and there seems to be no real improvement overall in actually communicating features to the community. It's become a PR sentence that makes (in how I take it at this point) it feel as if you are behind a PR wall that separates the people who are supposed to communicate to the players from actually getting the information from the players so they are just doing the same thing over and over without hearing the player's concerns.
I don't want to dismiss your concerns, so I hope this doesn't come across as defensive, but I will say that one of the things I love about Riot is the company's willingness to admit and own mistakes. I have worked at places where I would get in trouble for ever saying "Sorry, we were wrong," for PR fear of the company getting a reputation as being sloppy or "company admits error" would make headlines on gaming new sites. So it's possible you don't hear that in comparison to some games you follow because those developers may not be able to tell you how they really feel. It's also possible they don't make as many mistakes of course. :)
There is no PR wall here. Rioters are encouraged and expected to talk to players, pretty much as much as they want. There aren't people who are supposed to communicate to players. There are just people.
But we do have communication challenges. Riot was founded as a small studio with a handful of relatively inexperienced developers, and those guys spent a lot of time on social media, and especially Reddit, talking back and forth with players. The player base grew, and expanded into a lot of regions where English isn't the first language, and Riot grew as well. Suddenly it wasn't possible for anyone in the company to know everything that was going on. I get asked questions all the time about specific champion balance changes, or skins prices, or player behavior punishments, and I often just don't know those answers. That tends to make Rioters quieter, because they are scared they will look uninformed, or they're scared they will say something that contradicts something someone else says.
Most recently, we have experimented more with videos and devblogs, because the reach of those is much greater and they can be translated into multiple languages. What those methods of communication lose though is the back and forth. As an individual player, you lose the ability to ask a follow-up question, express concern, or even call us on bullshit.
Personally, I have tried to experiment with a lot of different channels, from Twitter to Ask.fm to Twitch, as well as the videos and blogs. As I said, I will try to spend more time here as well (acknowledging that the reach is low), so that when we say something that sounds weird (in this case, maybe the message unintentionally ended up being "We don't care about solo players and we want to broaden League's appeal") you can just ask.
Nefas13 votesExcept it doesn't feel like there is improvement in communication over time. We are in Season 6 and let's be honest Riot's communication on soloq was a shit show.
Year in and year out it is "We are sorry our communication sucks [on lore] [on reworks] [on Dominion] [on insert your area of choice]". When is it actually going to get better and not just be more promises?
Arakadia6 votesWhy is there 0 comments or replies about the DQ/SQ conflict? Silence is not a good answer, and you will regret it.
RiotGhostcrawler12 votesOn thin many players are noticing is that game is becoming more casual. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but is it your intention to attract new players at the cost of veterans?
I think it's a bad thing. It's also not a conscious effort on our part, and I think it's debatable if it is really happening. I think sometimes "more casual" gets used as a synonym for "I don't like this design change." :)
Fundamentally, compared to a lot of games, League has never really struggled to attract players. We place a lot more energy in keeping current veteran players happy. Yes there are more niche games and more hardcore games, but overall, League has thrived because of its depth, not its accessibility. We have no interest in changing that model.
If you want to talk about individual features, I can discuss our philosophy about them. DQ gets mentioned as a casual feature a lot, but from the inside, I can tell you that feature was never about attracting new players. We wanted more League players to have the experience that pros have or that teams have in organized tournaments, where you get to build up a strategy around a core of known entities rather than randos that have to learn to communicate and coordinate every single game.
For me personally, this casualization claim gets applied from my tenure on WoW, where I was sometimes blamed for trying to make WoW more casual and approachable. That is an ironic turn of events, because WoW players also got angry at me for trying to make the game more challenging and hardcore. (For example, as a dev and player I preferred a dungeon and raid design that required a lot of group coordination.) Overall there is a phenomenon where players (and probably all people) like to blame those names and faces they know when they disagree with something.
RiotGhostcrawler12 votesSo, why not make a solo Q and a dynamic queue? Remove normal draft, slap a rank on it and add solo queue. If the answer is "solo will canibalize dynamic queue because no solo player want to play with premades" isn't obvious wich queue is the right one for the game?
It's not as simple as which one is more popular. If 51% of players prefer one version and 49% prefer another and you go with majority rules, then you end up with a lot of unhappy players.
We wanted to launch a separate solo queue, and we even made that announcement, which got us in trouble when we realized mathematically that it wouldn't work. The TLDR of that is that if even a sizeable fraction of solo players enter solo queue only, then queue times for DQ get longer and longer, which then pushes more players out of DQ and into SQ, until DQ becomes a ghost town. This is similar to what happened to the original Team Builder, where some players really loved it (and still miss it) but as queue times became longer, more players abandoned it, driving queue times to be even longer and so on.
If the premade size is duos and 3s, why not restrict to solo,duo and 3s? The biggest complaint I have with dynamic queue is being left in the dark in a 1/4s game. Sure, there are benefits but the solo players get shafted in the process.
We are talking a lot about if there is really a ton of benefit in 4s. Anecdotally, we hear a lot (even internally) about what a bad experience they can be for the solo player. So far our data doesn't support that conclusion though. We're not dismissing the feedback -- just trying to understand why there is a discrepancy.
Why not specialize and restrict the key stones? Does graps need really to do damage? Why not just sustain so tanks can be the CC tanking machine designed for that?
We are looking at keystones. Part of the problem is that it's some pretty old code and pretty fragile, so when we make changes at all, it's really easy to cause bugs. That's not acceptable so we are going to rewrite the code and the question is to what degree. If it's a medium size update, then there isn't much point in changing the current masteries because a new update might be soon(tm). If it's a large update that takes longer, then it probably makes sense to work on keystones again until the new system can come online. Hope that explanation makes some sense.
Cenobite Azaziel9 votesIt's not as simple as which one is more popular. If 51% of players prefer one version and 49% prefer another and you go with majority rules, then you end up with a lot of unhappy players.
Sure. Some players will be unhappy, but isn't dynamic queue hurting the pro scene? When ranked feels like a clown fiesta because of premades and pro players are playing in private servers so they can have a decent match, doesn't it hurt the investment in e-sports and the feel of progression since the system isn't measuring your direct skills because it is heavily influenced by your premade? (See the Korean server).
So far our data doesn't support that conclusion though. We're not dismissing the feedback -- just trying to understand why there is a discrepancy.
There are two reasons why there is a discrepancy in the data.
Sure, the same scenario could happen in a soloq match, but you will get the feeling of carried while contributing, instead of "irrelevant". He will not vent on the boards/redit, but if there is a topic about it he will contribute to it. "I felt like I was irrelevant. Played a 20 game with no chat and won because they were good".
He doesn't blame the premade. He blames the system. That is the reason why the 4/1 made nightmare is rarely displayed in your charts but is popping on the boards.
I suggest, again, to restrict the max 3s premade in all elos. That will shut up 90% of the noise and end with the 1/4s posts.
A sign of which ones were in the premade, even if it is post match or post chat would feel great so players don't feel that riot is making up the statistics. Transparency works great and players can find one way or another with some API searchers that show "recently played with".
Could you give the players that as a sign of good will?
We are looking at keystones. [...]. Hope that explanation makes some sense.
I get it.
Thanks for answering again.
seraph1m9 votesIt's not as simple as which one is more popular. If 51% of players prefer one version and 49% prefer another and you go with majority rules, then you end up with a lot of unhappy players.
We wanted to launch a separate solo queue, and we even made that announcement, which got us in trouble when we realized mathematically that it wouldn't work. The TLDR of that is that if even a sizeable fraction of solo players enter solo queue only, then queue times for DQ get longer and longer, which then pushes more players out of DQ and into SQ, until DQ becomes a ghost town. This is similar to what happened to the original Team Builder, where some players really loved it (and still miss it) but as queue times became longer, more players abandoned it, driving queue times to be even longer and so on.
so instead your not giving anyone any choice and deciding for them. like the time you told people that you enjoy their tears when you nerfed ret paladins or how frost mages were clearly favored and you kept nerfing anything that came close to competing with them
solo players want solo q give them solo q people REALLY want to play dynamic q then let them wait
you claim well if 51% want it then people will be upset why not set up a simple question in the client for level 30 accounts (make sure you explain DQ is not the new champ select because you released them at the same time so people would conflate the 2 of them) and find out what people want instead of speculating
RiotGhostcrawler11 votesChamp select is wayyyy to long dude!
We agree. We wanted to err on the side of making sure players could understand the new design, and it didn't help that selection often timed out in the first few weeks because players (understandably) thought that indicating preference was the same as locking in. We think we can shave some more time off of it. I don't have an estimated date for that.
RiotGhostcrawler11 votesRiot lied to us about solo queue just to push dynamic queue down the throat of the community
From my point of view, nobody lied about anything. "Lying" implies an intention to deceive. When we saw the reaction to the launch of DQ, several of the leads got together and made the decision to launch a solo queue as well. Lyte then communicated that decision. As we got into the implementation stages, we realized that the math just doesn't work out to support two queues. It would have been great to have known that before we made the announcement of course, but in this business (and probably any business) you often have to make calls with limited information.
We then made a couple of additional mistakes -- there was a tweet or something -- which also implied solo queue was right around the corner. We also accidentally turned on the old (and non-functional) solo queue for a short period of time. It was an embarrassing comedy of errors for sure. But the intent was never to lie to players.
I've been making games for awhile, and it inevitably backfires if you try to lie to players. Players are smart and inevitably figure it out anyway, and then you've burned even more trust. It's better to just be honest and be as transparent as you can. You can be totally transparent, but you can be as transparent as you can.
RiotGhostcrawler9 votes@ Ghostcrawler has there been any talk as to take a page out of the Dota 2 book and have a solo ladder and "dynamic" ladder but both play on in the same Queue?
Having one queues but two ladders is totally on the table.
RiotGhostcrawler8 votesI've heard they're changing the rune system. All runes will be free and also you can pick runes in champ select.
Any changes here aren't imminent. We do agree that the rune system hasn't aged well. It was originally conceived as some form of progression, but it doesn't really feel that way now, and often just serves as a barrier for trying out some new build. Even the builds themselves aren't that interesting, since runes are all about passive stats (which frequently have a right answer) at least compared to masteries or summoner spells.
Runes in champ select would be cool, but the system would have to change more for that to be feasible. I predict it will happen at some point, but perhaps not soon.
RiotGhostcrawler7 votesAt a high level what are some other facets of design in this game? I would assume item, map design is some of the stuff, but I'm sure there is way more than meets the eye
Live (balance) Champion Champion update Game systems (gold, turrets, items, etc.) Store (Snowdown Shop and things like that) Holiday and other events Rotating game modes Overall economy stuff (IP, RP) Hextech crafting Client (tons of UI here) Matchmaking Chat Player behavior Ranked system Clubs Skins Developer tools In game UI Tutorial Bots Maps
And more! It's a big game.
RiotGhostcrawler7 votesDQ is not the new champ select you are purposefully conflating the 2 of them again
Internally, we consider it one feature. It was built by one team and both component launched at the same time. I totally agree there are two components (new champ select, and being able to queue with larger premades), but when I say Dynamic Queue, I am referring to the whole package.
In terms of player behavior, there were improvements from both less arguing for position and because larger premades generally leads to less fighting in game.
AMYS GRAVE16 votesIf you are trying to gather feedback on dynamic queue but are conflating it with new champ select you are going to miss the point of why people dislike it. New champ select has lowered toxicity immensely, but dynamic queue only intensifies toxcity because premades who flame a solo seem to flame more intensely.
RiotGhostcrawler7 votesThis is one of the points that made me wonder the most, why did it happen? Riot has had a history of announcing content that they could not deliver (from Magma chamber to the replay system, i'm sure on reddit you can find plenty of lists :P).
This is a common problem in game development overall, but probably hits Riot particularly hard because we do try to default to transparency. The risk, as you point out, is that we build hype for something that we end up not being able to do, and then players understandably feel disappointed if not betrayed. But the alternative kind of sucks too, because then we can't provide sneak peaks, talk about how upcoming changes may fix future problems, or even gauge public interest over certain features or changes.
I think we backed off a little too much, which led to players wondering what we were even thinking about or if League is even still a priority for us (it absolutely is). If we can earn enough player trust, then hopefully you guys will understand when we do have to pivot on something or even when we launch feature you don't like.
RiotGhostcrawler6 votesWould it be possible to do away with runes and masteries and create a per-champion progression system?
In my mind, those are two different features. Runes and masteries were originally intended as a progression system, and as I mentioned (and it seems you agree) haven't filled that spot well. What they do however is give you a way to customize your champion before a game starts (meaning something outside of the item choices you make in game). As a designer and player, that seems like a cool system in a generic sense -- noodling around with whether I want this choice or some other choice is fun in a lot of games, whether it's a sphere grid from Final Fantasy, perks from XCOM or talents from WoW.
RiotGhostcrawler6 votesHey Ghostcrawler, do you think lack of clarity on who is in a group and who is not is something that's contributing the perception that players hate DQ? Or ... that DQ is ruining the game?
For the record, I think the games state is just fine - thanks for doing what'chya do!
Yeah, we are having a lot of discussions on that topic right now. We were concerned that pointing out premades ahead of time might cause people to dodge or just tilt, but you can often tell from club tags anyway, and in the absence of confirmation, people tend to assume every lost game is a premade. Plus you can't really see things like the MMR adjustment -- it's invisible and does't do much to make anyone feel better. So we might end up just calling out premades, and showing the adjustments you or they get as a result.
redfeenix7 votesHey I think this is an issue I have strong opinions about: the loading screen.
TLDR: You should try to SHARE more information with the players during the loading screen, not hide stuff.
Most importantly (for me): **Give us the option to see enemy borders. ** The loading screen looks half complete tbh. I'm not afraid to know the strength of my enemy. In fact I'm curious and I WANT to know how good the enemy is. Please give me the option to see borders for BOTH my team and the enemies. This includes mastery level (So I know if i'm vs a yasuo main, or not).
I think knowing the strength of my opponents will contribute to a better and healthier game experience.
Remember this information is being shown in the Loading screen, not champ select.. I don't think it negatively influences us too much at that point.
Is there any reason to keep this information away from us? Its making us use 3rd party websites to figure out this information, when you could just include it in the loading screen. Plus the loading screen would look MUCH nicer if I could see Borders for both teams. You could put this in options somewhere if you think people will be scared if they see a diamond border. I think it would actually be beneficial to the game experience in more cases than detrimental, as we will be more prepared especially in ranked. What do you think?
Other stuff:
Again don't shoe it in champ select to cause dodges. Blizzard does this currently, I believe. They use different colors for the various premades ( on both teams) it's useful for both allies and enemies . Good to know if your vs a 5 premade or not. You will play differently if that's the case.
Players can choose to display their emblem, if theyd like, while loading.
Put something animated on the loading screen. At least a spinning circle. So we know that the application hasnt crashed.
Cycle through tips (not just 1 static tip). Minor change that could add flavour.
Again, I'm not sure what the technical restrictions are on the loading screen. However I've always wondered how Hereoes loads up SO QUICKLY. I think they preload a lot of stuff in champion select. I'm not sure if this is a viable strat in this game, as you have 2 applications: 1 client, 1 for the game.
here is a picture of a nice looking champ select I found online ( someone's mockup) :
http://i.imgur.com/rjlm26g.png
I think you should put some resources into making the loading screen better in terms of appearence and information displayed. I think you're 'hiding' too much information for no reason, and you should strive to give us more to look at while we wait...
Any thoughts?
I think there are many positives for displaying enemy borders and masteries, and hardly any negatives. I think players would appreciate the honesty, and be better prepared in lane matchups. It will lead to healthier, more fun games If youo include enemy borders, masteries, and premades.
Plus it will finally shut down the excuse that I lost because I faced a 5 man premade, and might go well into promoting transparency and trust with you matchmaking system.
Marshbouy5 votes1 just like what people wanted. They wanted something more than just armor and AP on zhonyas. They got that. Imagine if they didn't hand out CDR, mages would be so goddam pissed. Swain is getting a full rework later. This was just to make him less boring in the now. Malz, was terrible, so what? Vlad is a lot, a lot better now. Just because he was busted doesn't mean its a terrible rework.
Because ghostcrawler runs tencent. right.
i got nothin. Havent played wow.
underscores2223 votestencent doesn't dictate what riot does with this game. They own a majority of their shares (and therefore own riot) but that has more to do with profits than oversight. Riot is still free to make the game how they want, provided they keep making a profit.
Marshbouy8 votesNo, tencent bought RIOT and now controls what they do. If they say, "get more players to play the game" RIOT has to. They are owned by tencent.
underscores2229 votesWhen one company buys another, it generally means they have bought the stock. Stock is a profit driven interest. The controlling company can force itself down into the workings, but from my understanding of the Riot situation, that is not happening in this case. Riot is still autonomous in decisions about the game, or was about 6 months ago.
Marshbouy6 votesyour understanding might not be how it is.
underscores2225 votesAnd that clearly makes your argument right and mine invalid. Gotcha.
Marshbouy12 votesyep. Notice how RIOT refuses to comment on tencent? notice how tencent has bled other games dry? notice how the game started to decline after RIOT was bought by tencent?
