Boards›Live Gameplay Balance

Lee Sin, Reddit, Red-Posts, and Community Concensus

daft inquisitor·3/19/2014, 3:58:24 PM·1 votes·856 views

I'm sure you're all aware of it by now, but all of the Lee Sin changes have become quite the hot-button topic. People have been raging left and right over whether the changes were good, were bad, were stupid, weren't going to change anything, or were going to change way too much.

After a week or so of all this debate, Riot-Chun came to the Reddit forums and made this post: http://dd.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/20qrd9/lee_sin_lessons/

Almost immediately, there was backlash. A lot of it. The entire thread almost entirely burnt down to the point of, "Pros told Riot it was a bad idea, Commentators and Castors told them it was a bad idea, regular players told them it was a bad idea, and they're just not listening."

This actually leads me to an important point. When it gets to topics like this, when the community consensus is SO OVERWHELMING that the changes are going to have such a negative impact on the game, what does Riot see when it comes to this? Is there a certain line it has to hit before someone things, "Listen, maybe LITERALLY EVERYBODY has a point here, and we should think about this a bit more?" When does it get to the point where Riot actually comes back and directly responds to the criticism? When does it get to the point where Riot gives ANY feedback and lets us know they at least HEAR what we're saying?

Almost immediately after the initial post, Riot-Chun abandoned the thread altogether, not even bothering to reply to a lot of very valid (and very calmly-worded) counter arguments. There was no discussion, there was no feedback, there was simply "This is how it's going to be, the end."

As much as Riot has been gearing themselves towards community feedback lately, I think this particular instance was very toxic, and just sets a bad precedent altogether. Especially damning was the point that, on several occasions, we've had Rioters say they're more than happy to have discussions with us if it's done in a civilized manner. In this instance, it was, and there was no discussion whatsoever.

Any Rioters that would like to comment on this, I would love to hear what you think. I'm not here to witchhunt or browbeat, I just want your thoughts on how this could have been handled better, and maybe get an open forum here about what some of the community's expectations should be in a situation like this.

I just want to set a good precedent.

5 Comments

Abel92103/19/2014, 7:30:24 PM3 votes

I honestly think that while the Lee Sin changes are definitely play-style changing, I would rather see how they play out on PBE instead of engaging in pitchforking and shit. In fact, I actually like the idea of Lee Sin getting a better scaling to lategame via his passive, even though it's an odd point to rework around.

That said, I am extremely tired of this mob mentality thing. Doesn't help that for some reason, this is a common trend with Reddit posts. Very few of the comments in that thread show a shred of objective thinking, and a large majority of the comments seem to miss the point or are just bandwagoning off the qq train while conveniently overlooking the points where they actually listened to you (Safeguard no longer costs 100 energy to actually cast, Dragon Rage no longer punishes you for doing the Insec and still retains its bonus AD ratio).

I think that in the end, you should be thankful that they actually communicated their intentions and took some feedback. Their first draft of changes was way over the top, but if they really didn't want to listen to you, they would've just gone ahead and pushed it out onto the PBE and eventually live, and then you would have a case for your qq.

Sir ArmaMalum3/19/2014, 6:19:20 PM2 votes

I'm confused on your point, the linked OP was a direct response to community feedback. That's feedback and actual changes based on replies from the previous Lee Sin discussion. Respectfully, were you expecting even more discussion within this thread (Lee Sin Lessons)? Or were you expecting nothing short of canceling the changes?

As for the OP in question and the behavior of the comments....

From what I see this is just more example of pitchfork mobbing. I don't consider myself a decent authority on Lee Sin, but there were very few actually constructive comments in that thread or the previous one, a lot were just "What are doing??? OMG why??". Yes their opinion still matters but I honestly feel (or at least hope) that there are people like me who don't immediately come to a conclusion seeing something on paper. I wait until the changes are there so I can experience them as a player and not a wannabe game designer. These previews are to test waters and get coarse adjustments, not ask permission.

The fact is, what can a game designer say in reply to "I heard Riot Chun doesn't play Lee Sin often and has very low stats on him" or "And you just killed top-lane Lee-sin thanks"? The atmosphere there in the comments was not to have a discussion but to refuse any change at all and eventually devolving to attacking Riot Chun personally.

The problem is these changes address something a lot don't consider a problem, but a player's perspective and a game designer's perspective are quite simply very different. No, Riot is not infallible, but they have more information to go on and other issues to address that can affect their thinking.

BossKiiwi4/8/2014, 7:40:09 AM1 votes

lee sin needs to be held to the same standard as any other champsion. At this point he is like pikachu on the pokemon tv show.