Boards›[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous

Why is Riot Flaming a Thing

The Lonely Cloud·11/19/2014, 5:59:18 PM·55 votes·26,606 views

I often browse the forums (excuse me the boards) and notice that a vast majority of things posted on them are just people flaming riot for the choices they make. I constantly see things like "Riot is ignoring the players" or that "Riot is the shittiest company because they didn't Nerf (insert champion I lost last game to)" and I was wondering, where does all this hatred from riot come from. Clearly Riot is a popular company, I mean there are millions of us that play League of Legends, and millions who spend real money on the game to support them, and yet we have constant flame for Riot. People pretend that they never do anything for us players (Which is just incorrect. You think worlds was cheap?) just because they don't balance champions based on the sole opinions of the players, who for the most part know very little about the balancing of the game due to the fact that they don't have insight on the changes planned for the future. Anyway when it comes down to it, what I'm wondering is why do people flame at Riot so much for no readily apparent reason? Is it just because they are looking for someone to blame when they lose games?

181 Comments

Pendragon11/19/2014, 7:47:01 PM26 votes

People expressing their opinion can certainly be healthy. Generally we'd prefer for feedback to always be constructive, rational, and actionable, but I'd rather people express than not express. Different types of mechanisms can certainly influence how people react. Forums can often represent a more extreme view than average just by the nature of who chooses to participate in them and the mechanics for certain content to become visible.

We many methods to receive feedback and understand the perspective of players - we have community forums like these, reddit, etc. We have raw data - everything that happens in every game, we run lots of surveys, focus groups, usability tests and so on. Looking at many of these channels together gives us a healthy and balance view of what players feel.

redniwediS11/19/2014, 6:07:25 PM20 votes

It has nothing to do with Riot. People like complaining, and a (mostly) faceless company is always an easy target.

Look at the forums for literally any other game and you will find the same hateful comments.

Pryotra11/19/2014, 6:53:27 PM19 votes

Well, when the shoe fits...

Seriously though, I just wish they would stop straight up lying to their customers. As a S1 player, almost every single team under Riot has done this. Take the LE skins as an example. LE meant never to be sold again. Now it means "sold when Rito needs more money". I can now no longer trust anything riot says about skin sales anymore, because their one most basic promise was sold out to for some quick holiday money.

Another example is how they treated the move over to the boards. No matter how you look at it, someone lied. They claimed that this platform was better for communication and using it would increase communication, forced everyone over here despite it not being ready and community protest, and now don't communicate any more than they used to, and still hide conversations on reddit without so much as a link over here.

I think the biggest lie of all is that they don't actually listen. They do as they please, it is their game, and they will treat it as such. Then they get mad at us for not being happy with it, or their communication over it. This particularly is displayed time and time again by multiple teams, lore team is the most recent offender here, and if they were just straight up about it, and came out and said "yeah, this is how we are doing this. whether you like it or not is irrelevent." then I don't think there would be as much of an issue. Thing is, they expect to maintain their player oriented reputation, but do nothing to actually deserve it anymore. Since I started looking at their company like this, about 100% of their decisions make sense.

Basically, laugh and point when they fail, but pray they don't accidentally their game.

Sir ArmaMalum11/19/2014, 6:17:58 PM13 votes

As with all communities, the discontent are louder than the content. As you said, League is a popular game, so when you look at the ones "Riot bashing" with the rest of the playerbase you realize they're a minority. However, with enough frenzy posting it's not as easy to see it that way. Not to mention just because they're a minority doesn't mean they're opinion isn't important. However, a lot of the times people take that idea of a minority opinion and suddenly expect their statements to be insightful simply because they're the underdog opinion.

A lot of the times I see posts expecting Rioter attention when it's an obvious trap post (impossible argument, cherry picked "facts", opinions == facts, etc.) and then proceed to get offended when they don't get said response. They then get into a frenzy, feed off of others doing the same thing and all that boils into bash rally posts like half of what GD was in vBulletin. Very little logic behind it as well as near zero thought behind the actions, but then again it's pretty difficult to think clearly when you're working yourself up into a rage over something as simple as Grave's Cigar being missing or something.

I think a lot of it can be turned around with proper thought behind discussions and conversations and how to actually build an environment (i.e. build an OP) that allows for productive discussion instead of caps lock showdowns, but that being said it will never go away. Nor should it really, appropriate negative criticism is healthy.

Sorry for rant :P

Uiru11/19/2014, 9:44:46 PM7 votes

Still waiting on east coast servers, replays, ranked AFK protection, matchmaking, true solo queue, and for the balance team to stop nerfing underpowered champs while not even touching overpowered ones.

Also: I don't care how much Worlds cost. The negative impact of eSports on this game is undeniable and, frankly, needs to stop.

I've dropped an estimated $1200 since I started playing two and a half years ago. If I had known Riot was going to allow their servers to degrade to this point, leave east coast players out to dry, allow trolls and afks to dominate ranked, hint at basic features then go mia for 18 months when their aforementioned garbage servers couldn't handle it, and somehow make matchmaking even worse every time they try to fix it, I wouldn't have spent a dime. I'm on God damn LAN right now because I get ~60 less ping there- I'm still at 80, but that's better than 130-140 with the best internet available here!

It's a fun game. I love a bunch of characters, which is why I'm still here. But I regret ever giving Riot money and if I could have the time back, I'd have $1200 to waste on some other stupid thing. I'm basically waiting for Riot to get bought out by someone competent at this point, because there is no way this game could be managed any worse than it currently is.

"We just reworked Sejuani and it is one of the VERY few we're going to do right. Let's nerf her into the ground and let Lee Sin run wild."

"Assassins are pushing APCs out of mid. Lux is one of the few who can compete. Let's nerf Lux."

"That support stepped out of support. Nerf her into the ground while nearly everyone else can do at least two positions reasonably well."

"Mobility is something that champions pay for in other pfft hahahahahaha I almost got it out."

Just a small sampling of the failures of Riot's balance team.

Then there's the champion redesign department, who made Sejuani get dressed and then released a second naked ice country dude. Equality! They're coming for Evelynn next and I can't wait to see how ruined she turns out.

Gameplay reworks? All Nidalee needed was for her spear to not hit you when you were three character lengths away from it. Instead they go through all this effort and wind up buffing every one of her other skills, allowing her to murder you from the other side of the lane while throwing slightly less stupid (and still undodgeable) spears. Speaking of gameplay, AP Tryn was melee so he got deleted. AP Yi was melee so he got deleted. AP Trist? Ranged. Not deleted. Because melee vs ranged isn't skewed enough.

The tech exists to end games that are detected as 4v5s and Riot won't do it. Every other game does something about 4v5s, Riot refuses. Mindboggling.

So I'm pretty confused as to what there is to defend here. Since I don't play Lee Sin and don't care about eSports, there's actually quite a list of things to be upset about. And it's not like these are all recent complaints. Riot has had YEARS to fix some of these things. But they just don't want to. ~Uiru

Pendragon11/19/2014, 11:44:48 PM6 votes

But really what people are pointing out is that it's not that you don't want to make minorities happy. Because obviously why wouldn't you want to make them happy, its good for business. It's that the time spent in development of lore could be better spent in the development of things that would make 80% of people happy instead of 2%. It's impractical. If it wasn't you would have developed a strong lore team 4 years ago. It's the same reason me and all my friends who have been playing since season 1 have 100,000 - 300,000 ip and nothing to do with it. We only represent a tiny fraction of the population.

In the over six years I've been here - I've been part of the hiring process and have directly or indirectly brought well over a hundred people into Riot. They've varied from heads of departments to entry-level contributors. Hiring teams is actually super tough. You want someone who will fit well culturally, is an expert in their craft but also is responsive to players, someone who works with a team well - but also owns their work and is entrepreneurial. You want someone who is a gamer or a minimum someone who will take the time to become one, you want someone who is a leader in the field - but maybe doesn't have the baggage, or someone who isn't a leader but has huge potential, etc etc.

Once you bring someone in (typically it can take a year from identifying the need for a person to getting someone we believe to be the right person in the door). Then you have onboarding. They have to learn how the company works and how they make decisions, they have to build a plan for whatever they're working on, sometimes they then have to build a team - either by rallying people who are already here or by bringing in people who aren't here yet. This is a huge intense process.

If you brought in a leader and it turns out that they were the wrong fit - you missed something in the interview process, they struggled to rally the team, whatever. Sometimes that means you're going to start over from square one.

You can't just throw money at people and all of the sudden they come in and it's perfect. It's takes careful planning and cultural architecture and time to develop that environment and we learn at every step. The company has gone from ~30 people to 1500+, and one office to a dozen offices in 6 years. The rate of growth is insane but it comes with its challenges.

As you grow too you have to restructure - reform departments, move work around etc. Either because it's more efficient or it's more effective to do so, but the operating system for the company has to change from 30 to 100, 300, 500, 1000 etc.

You're looking at one example of something that we really want to be great at - building that immersive world that players really love and building the right team to do that, giving them the right structure - both the autonomy and freedom but also the right oversight. There's tons of those examples - things like mobile, responsive web, new client, SR visual update, all sorts of tech infrastructure, events, eSports, etc etc that we've gone through that cycle with before.

Cuix11/19/2014, 9:11:08 PM6 votes

The situation with Riot is... tricky. I've been playing since around the time Miss Fortune was released, back in Season 1, so I've seen them change a lot over time.

Season 1: Inexperienced company, dealing with buggy systems and a rushed architecture, but super interested in their fanbase. LOTS of communication. Very open, very honest, but having a lot of trouble. The game grew rapidly, and Riot had trouble dealing with that, but lots of happiness was around... well, actually, the game was just so-so tbh. The foundation was there, but BOY did it need work.

Season 2: They're still chatting a lot with fans, but at this point it's clear they can't keep some promises they've made. Communication is still pretty open and honest up to a point, but when something goes wrong Riot starts to clam up. Magma Chamber, stealth rework, reward delays, all of these things leave fans confused by the sudden silence. It's a bit hurtful, but the game is objectively improving and League is making huge strides in e-sports. Overall, we're hopeful. It's a great time.

Season 3: Skin prices are rising. Champion prices are rising. Runes are ever more necessary as the game, through being explored, becomes much more competitive. IP rewards and boosts aren't coming as often. On the other hand, balance is still getting better and League is so big that everyone on Twitch wishes they could get near even a fraction of those view counts. Lore is mysteriously vanishing, but Riot is... sorta talking more. At least they're addressing the problem issues. They're saying less, though, even as more words come out. They don't want to tell us what they're up to. They're honest with us, and they're around quite often, but it's not a conversation anymore. It's two monologues that occasionally vaguely overlap. Feels bad.

Season 4: Game balance is honestly incredible. Occasional outliers pop up, and folks complain about Lee Sin or Lulu, but honestly we're way better off than before. All the roles have something to do, and can feel strong. Competition is huge, exciting, and surprisingly close. Riot is mastering the art of big announcements, and their game is looking better than ever. It's weird, though. Lore suddenly jumps out of hiding, disheveled and bizarre, but with wide-eyed optimism declares a Big Decision which seems to do little but infuriate those who cared and baffle those who didn't. IP prices are starting to level off after peaking, but IP is harder to get than it has been in the past. Designers are ready to discuss decisions and actually listen to suggestions, and though there are casualties like Karma and Trundle the overall result is fantastic. However, they seem to be the only ones really being open to us. Lore, wounded by the backlash, seems determined to continue making big surprises until one of them works. eCommerce is content to stay largely ignored, though players are steadily less able to actually play the game without huge investments of money/time before accessing content. The art team is friendlier, but they seem to be essentially doing the same surprise-explain-retreat cycle as Lore only better, occasionally poking us to get a bit of data.

In the end, I'm still interested in the game. It's a great game. It's very fun, and improving steadily. I still think that a lot of really cool people work at Riot. Some of them are charismatic and practice, while others are still getting the hang of things. That's fine. However, I don't feel comfortable giving them money, and I don't suggest this game to friends anymore. The required time and money are just too much without being clear, and the company is too hesitant to engage in actual impactful dialogue. It's now the standard "frenemies" model of Company Vs. Customers, rather than the "benefriends" culture we used to share. Instead of feeling like I can chat with Morello about upcoming Fiddlesticks changes (his E used to bounce up to 10 times), I kinda just wait to see what happens randomly and, oh hey, sudden Cass rework, I hope this is one of the successes. Instead of watching Guardsman Bob's Udyr bring a whole new item into the game through a lore event, I'm left wondering why the transhumanist genius Xerath has been replaced with Tragic Backstory Jafar.

tl;dr: Riot was more open and honest, but their game needed help. Now the game is awesome, but Riot keeps us at a distance and the game is no longer actually F2P.

PhoenixSlayer1311/19/2014, 10:15:29 PM6 votes

People should call Riot out for their mistakes. Let's not lie, they've made a good number of them over the years.

What people shouldn't do is get all pissy and whine/degrade/rage at Riot. That's not going to help anything. Just say what you don't like and why you don't like it in a respectful manner and leave it at that.

Respect is important for both sides. We respect Riot, they respect us, and vice versa. Somewhere along the way that respect deteriorated pretty heavily, and it's not something that can be blamed on one side or the other. We all have to work on it.

Pendragon11/19/2014, 11:55:22 PM5 votes

We've never going to be able to exclusively commit to one platform or channel for communication - generally we believe that we should be making information widely available to players all over. Here's a short list of some discussions that we've had on the boards.

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/miscellaneous/1LJP1ovA-ranked-restrictions

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/skin-champion-concepts/oFAWgxY0-community-tell-me-your-skin-ideas

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/live-gameplay/xAQdUGK8-statikk-qa-completed

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/qlEEXEiO-kalista-qa-completed

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/story-art/5UhE9vyA-so-what-do-you-guys-wanna-do-with-taric

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/champions-skins/txxQETbY-champion-updateiupdate

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/summoners-rift/XXaotoAi-updated-summoners-rift-qa-117

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/service-status/REfQ8hps-regarding-recent-instability-on-north-america

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/zfz9XJpE-preseason-2015-qa-completed

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/bug-report/cpeMzjhN-help-riot-troubleshoot-the-mac-bug

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/champions-skins/bJ78j8nt-upcoming-nidalee-gameplay-update

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/zuL472BJ-cassiopeia-plans

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/champions-skins/4iUzAEEA-braum-qa-gameplay-completed

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/1jXwf2BP-latest-on-cassiopeia

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/miscellaneous/H004gAPw-ecommerce-qa

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/gFME3v51-on-the-future-of-cassiopeia-also-some-background

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/BTP5uwf1-this-rework-is-going-to-be-bananas-soraka-rework-preview-and-discussion

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/pentakill/Wg5v1qAx-pentakill-qa

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/story-art/83Q9LBlB-new-batch-of-texture-rebalances

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/story-art/6EofhoHW-lets-talk-biographies

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/A8YYtOo8-gnar-qa-gameplay-completed

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/riot-official/cpxR8zKn-amaa-riot-games-qa-careers-and-questions

KOSHER TACO11/19/2014, 9:17:21 PM3 votes

I just find it amusing that this red discredits all dissent by chalking it up to being whiny and entitled. Instead of trying to reconcile with this client, he just tells him to quit, because well it's easier I guess.

Quite frankly I would have just left this thread unanswered, as opposed to spraying lighter fluid onto the flames.

Graidon11/20/2014, 3:32:48 PM2 votes

@Pendragon - You bring a FREE-to-play game to millions of people who appreciate what you do. Rock on. We love you Riot.