Unreasonable complaints and why they are so

First of all, this is going to be long so bear with me. In the following post I will attempt to clear many misconceptions and rumors about Riot and why they do things the way they do, instead of how it appears.

**Complaint #1: Riot only releases champions OP to then nerf them after everybody purchased it. ** This type of thinking appears everywhere and is also known as the personal incredulity fallacy. Simply stated, it is the fallacy where because someone finds something difficult to understand, or unaware of how things work, it is obviously not true.

While you may feel this is the case, it is not only a bad business practice, but also one of the fastest ways to lose business for a company like Riot who depends on the long term instead of the quick sale. While many champions may be released out of tune, complaints are only usually made when the champion was so out of tune as to be toxic for everything else. Oftentimes small adjustments are made and believe it or not, many champions have even been buffed after release.

Complaint #2: Riot makes stupid things like Jinx music videos which is a waste of funding. If they put that money towards champion development then we would have ______ more champions by now.

While it is technically true that Riot could always throw more money at a department, there reaches a point at which saturation occurs and speed will not be impacted in the slightest no matter what. If you imagine that the Jinx video cost $100 to make and that the $100 could be spent in the design department to release something faster, it still doesn’t take into account that the people in design are already multitasking on multiple things already. Extra money won’t suddenly allow them to multitask more than they are already doing.

This brings up the argument that they can simply hire more people to do things faster and use the money from the video to do that. Well, the video was a one-time expenditure while a full-time employee is definitely not. In addition, they cost a whole lot more than a few minute music video.

Complaint #3: Riot doesn’t care about the players and are chronic liars! Remember when (some rioter) said something about ______ and now they are saying something else.

Perhaps one of the most frequent types of posts seen on the forums and this relies heavily on the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. This particular fallacy involves cherry picking data and finding a pattern or argument to fit the data. Recently, the largest example if this kind of argument involves Ghostcrawler and attempting to nitpick every sentence he says rather than accept that he is genuinely trying to help.

Complaint #4: If riot pulled people from other departments, all the issues would be fixed instantly.

I don’t even know where to begin with this complaint except to say that I see a post of this kind every single day. While Phreak may be good on the live balance team or as a shoutcaster, do you honestly want to have him working on 3D animation for the next champion? Well…maybe you do if you think the mental picture is hilarious (which it is), but I doubt he would be very productive. The same thing goes for having RiotAmes attempting to handle eSports management or Lyte attempting to do Shoutcasting. People are specialized because they were hired for what they were good at doing, and while some people may be able to overlap such as IronStylus with champion relaunch and concept artist, that is not the case of everyone.

Complaint #5: Riot has no idea how to release a champion without it being completely broken or completely unplayable.

This is a dangerous argument to make mostly because Riot themselves has admitted they make mistakes. However, this in no way implies they did not consult people outside of Riot for feedback. They constantly consult high Diamond, Challenger, and even Pro players on testing and changes and even have them help with internal tests many times before it is even released to the PBE.

The main issue is that the eyes of a few are not the same as the eyes of millions of people. When you take a champion and throw him into the hands of that many people, an astounding amount of data will present itself especially when it comes to players learning how to effectively deal with them. Most champions seem OP at release for a reason, that being that the new champion is not understood as much as the others. Once the champion is understood, if they are still dominating to the exclusion of others, there is a problem. Yasuo is a recent example of this being that he was considered weak at release and suddenly turned into a monster.

**Complaint #6: Riot never buffs, only nerfs **

I hearken this more to selective memory than anything as we as humans are more likely to remember things that annoy us rather than make us happy. This is why when our favorite champion gets a nerf, we complain about it to our friends, family, and the internet as a whole while we rarely, if ever, discuss how happy we are about a buff (at least not for very long). This is due to the fact that when you add more good to something you already think is good, then the result is more good.

However, when you do something bad, even if very minor, to something you believe is good, it is suddenly bad rather than less good.

Closing remarks

I could go on and on, but the long and short of it is believe it or not, Riot has it in their best interest to keep us happy (within reason of course) as the value of a short term gain does not nearly equal that of the long term. No, they will not do everything we ask of them simply because we use the argument that we are a paying customer and so they must do so. As with everything, Riot is a business and they will take good suggestions and work with them, assuming it has a place in the game for them. However, this doesn’t mean they must implement every idea that is presented.

In the end, Riot does what it does for a reason, they are not infallible, but at least they do admit they make a mistake and try to learn from it.

TL:DR If you are going to try and attack what I wrote, do so with actual evidence or real discussion. While it is almost a given that someone will disagree with what I said, attacking me directly with no real argument behind it is just an example of ad hominem and hence meaningless.