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With Pool Party winding down, maybe it's time for some feedback?

ModCaptainMårvelous·6/21/2015, 6:26:19 PM·5 votes·1,093 views

So hey everyone. Today's the last day for pool party points and I think it'd be a good idea to put together some comments, criticisms and otherwise for this event. Feel free to put whatever you want in this thread, I'm just going to be sharing some of my personal criticisms and comments about this whole thing:

#The Good

  • Promotes a sense of community: Gifting players, making teams and otherwise basically pushed me outside of my solo-queue zone and made me start playing with friends once more. The gifting was also nice but I didn't have cash to donate so oh well.
  • Decent rewards: A free champ, icon, skin, and more were all really nice rewards. Pool party minions were nice as well.
  • A good time frame: A week for 55 million points isn't so bad, considering the size of the playerbase.
  • First Time wasn't an utter failure: I've seen game companies try giant player events before and some were absolutely awful. Kudos for at least not entirely botching it.

Now comes the actual criticism.

#The Bad

  • Awful scheduling: You guys put this during E3, The Steam Summer Sale and many student's exam week. While I can assume you wanted to compete with these events, it was really terrible planning.
  • Arbitrary point earning: I get it, these events are supposed to encourage players to spend money. It's true for basically every game. Still, only being able to get 5 points for a premade team win is -really- bad. Even one point for a loss would have been better, not to mention excluding the TT and Co-op playerbase. It made the whole event reek of "Earn points by paying money...oh and playing too I guess."
  • Reward Placement: Pool party minions at 35 mil? IP weekend at 45? While cool, these rewards sandwiched between a free champion and a free, newly released skin is poorly thought out.
  • No real "event" tied to it: We didn't have pool party exclusive unlocks, we didn't have special pool party mode queue, we were just asked to play the game as we always did. It kinda sucked that there wasn't any sort of special queue or automatic party building system.

#Final Thoughts

Pool Party was decent. It could have been a lot better but it also could have been a lot worse. While I expected better for a community event, I won't utterly write you guys at Riot off for not trying. Still, this is your first event and overall the bar has been set pretty low IMO. I sincerely hope the next event improves but as far as things go? This was an ok event marred by some rather poor decisions.

Poll at the bottom as well, if you'd rather just rate the event versus giving written feedback.

5 Comments

Kinjishi6/21/2015, 6:48:00 PM1 votes

"Arbitrary point earning: I get it, these events are supposed to encourage players to spend money. It's true for basically every game. Still, only being able to get 5 points for a premade team win is -really- bad. Even one point for a loss would have been better, " Have posted on this already during the event, but this was horrid. Not earning points for losses was in very bad taste. It pitted the community against itself.

Pretty much agree on all those points, Capt. However, with previous events, these rewards didn't have to be earned by the community as a whole. For example, you could get the icon for playing one game and be done. This could have been a turn off as well. While those of us that did play and/or pay did earn it, it felt like the requirements for achieving an icon were too steep (Reward Placement). Hope that Riot doesn't look to this as a new standard for their events without a lot of refinement.

Centuros6/21/2015, 6:53:43 PM1 votes

I feel the point earning from gifting had so many points attached because there weren't going to be nearly as many instances of those points earned compared to matchmade game wins.

Shaved Teemo6/21/2015, 9:33:56 PM1 votes

A pool party login screen should make a difference.

4nth0l0gy6/21/2015, 9:50:07 PM1 votes

I think you laid it out very well, CaptainMarvelous, I don't have much to add.

I think the point-earning was my least favorite part. 5 points is fine for a win, but you should be rewarded for doing it at all, even a point or two. I also don't think the event should have been incentivized with actual cash purchases; at least, not to the extent that it was (double and even quadrouple points versus simply playing).

Also, I think this could be an important takeaway for Riot: regardless of game mode, I'm always more inclined to like playing with my teammates when I get to chat with them a bit before we're locked in a queue together. The fact that so many people were led to do so via chat rooms and queueing up in a pre-game lobby made it all the more obvious to me. It's a simple bit of humanizing before a match, the simple ability to choose your teammates, that makes me enjoy the game a significant amount. I know we've always had the option to make a chat and queue up, but it's not encouraged at all by Riot. You can't even find chat rooms in the client anymore unless you know what they're called beforehand.

DamienSolta6/22/2015, 1:30:48 PM1 votes

I actually had a phenomenal time with this pre-pool party event, especially once I really got into it and used the pool party chat room(s). I wouldn't say it was perfect as you could probably finagle with the numbers such that you have the same results but gave one point to each player in each 5v5 game, and there was no direct feedback in client to say "Hey summoner pool party buddy, you just added this many points to the community" (though this is likely a lot more trouble to program/implement).

I do wish one of the rewards was tropical summoners rift, cause SR skins are awesome and I never got to play any of them. More promotion would have helped I think as well (i think there needs to be more pool party art in general cause some of that stuff is just supergreat and most of the champs are adorable or just so wonderfully warm and pleasant).

Also, probably my favorite part was that I really did go and do random games with random people from the pool party chat room. The mixed skills and experience was a mixed blessing, but it lead to some amazing games for me (and only one of them wasn't fun and totally positive). I added so many people to my friends list just because of how fun they were.

Sure it was also a promotional event for the skins, and it was a money making event (gift sales) for Riot but I'm a fan of capitalism and the game is a game I enjoy so I don't mind that spending money was a component (especially an optional one). I do wish it would have been arranged such that the numbers were faked so we get Mundo anyways (free stuff is awesome and would honestly be a great reward in general for people who support the game or help and play nice with other players) but I can also understand that if we don't get him, it is no great loss. (Mundo does go where he pleases though).

Overall I haven't had as much fun playing League in a long time, and Pool Party Leona 's sunflower umbrella is the best.

Edit: Also Pool Party minions. I want them forever plz. They are so great looking.