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Response to Gosthcrawler about addons on league

mauroc0·4/22/2014, 8:14:58 PM·1 votes·2,383 views

Ghostcrawler said (link:http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=46645813#46645813):

"*I think this brings up a great philosophical discussion. We tried hard on WoW not to "save players from themselves," and on the occasions when we did I'm not convinced it ended up well. One result of this philosophy is we gave third-party mods great latitude in how they re-sculpted the UI of the game. It's clear many players enjoyed the ability to customize or express themselves, and it's probably also fair that the default UI didn't provide all of the information it needed to (which is why we're having the conversation about jungle timers for League).

On the other hand, it's one of those great power comes great responsibility deals. I always felt the boss addons for WoW for example frequently provided way too much information just because they could. (Sure they were customizable and players could turn off things they didn't strictly need, but I'm not sure how many made that effort.) When your HUD resembles that of a commercial airliner, it's hard to know what are the bits as a player that you actually need to pay attention to. Does that mean we should have stepped in and tried to prevent the over-UI-ification of the game? I'm not sure. Thoughts?

I know slippery slope arguments are a potent weapon in the arsenal of the internet, but that doesn't mean League add-ons have to go this route either. We think there is room for a lot of improvement in the default UI of League, and we want to support and offer guidance to third-parties who want to do their own thing. How do we all (and I'm purposely including you guys here) know when things go too far and the add-ons cross over into garish or bloated constructs that bury players in barely-useful displays?*"

My response:

I see your concern for the UI clutter, but really the major concern should be the fact that allowing addons is gonna change an UI that has been so far a fair playing field for most people. What is fair to be automated by an addon and what is considered a skill in LoL cannot be plainly shown to everyone so that everyone can agree (map awareness, las hitting, skill timers, jungle timers, damage calculation, etc.) So i don't think any arbitrary opinion based on a experience of the game should decide this, so everyone should get the same UI options (meaning an official UI and no addons from third parties)

This is not just a slippery slope argument I'm talking about curse voice that is allowed already:

If riot and the majority of the community want the allied ult timers that CV provides , then everyone should have them by default in their UI,same with voice chat that's easy to access for random teams in soloque (obviously with the option to turn on and off). Letting addons provide such useful information and tools will skew the fair playing field.

Also you should know all the trouble addons can cause bugs and problems keeping up with the official game updates and having to uninstall them when you run into bugs but this is just secondary point with my main one being enough reason to stay away from them.

edit: why do html format commands don't work?

19 Comments

RiotGhostcrawler4/23/2014, 10:55:46 PM3 votes

Gostcrater? Gothcrawler?

Seriously though, we appreciate the feedback. We realize this is a multi-faceted issue with a lot of nuance and strong opinions.

As I mentioned recently, we're still gathering feedback before we talk about our next steps, and I'm not directly a member of the team coming up with our improved guidelines for players, though I am part of that conversation.

Sir ArmaMalum4/22/2014, 9:07:36 PM1 votes

on the P.S. : independent platform, click the question mark in the top right of the comment box for a basic formatting guide. I made an advanced one if it is wanted.

As this is a public discussion I would suggest to link the post where Ghostcrawler said this so we (well, me at least) aren't just taking your word for it.

my $0.02: Let's use voice chat as an example. It's a clear strategic advantage, LoL does not have it default and it's actually a (imho) horrible idea to be implemented for numerous reasons which I can go into in detail if wanted. To get around this a lot of players use Skype and other 3rd-party voice sharing services to communicate. While this does give a small advantage everyone on the call is (I'm assuming) on the same team and has access to the exact same information so they cannot glean anything they couldn't have by themselves in the exact same moment it just makes it easier to relay across the board.

CV does the same thing but automated. From what I understand of CV it does not advise a course of action or otherwise direct you anywhere it just displays current information that the current UI also shows, it just makes it more obvious. I attribute more to like using reading glasses to read, some may flat out need it and most will eventually find them convenient but there are yet others who can go on without them and be perfectly fine.

And on the side-note for updates, imo Riot should specifically not care about mod updates and their compatibility. It's the mod author's job to keep the mod usable. If that becomes a problem then the issue is with mod and its creators not Riot or their game.