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Why Riot Games is a bad company.

IonCannonKarthus·3/9/2015, 3:31:41 AM·13 votes·1,871 views

Over the years of dealing with Riot and being a League of Legends player, I've come to the conclusion that Riot is a terrible company. Now, this does NOT mean that Rioters are bad, on the contrary the majority of Rioters are very talented and very passionate. The problem is that Riot's management is shit. Riot has consistently been inconsistent over the years and has never released a finished product and supported it, here are a few examples:

  • Dominion, it was released and completely forgotten about by Riot for roughly 1-2 years before they finally started map specific balance changes. Dominion's lack of popularity can be traced back to Riot's unwillingness to support it and grant it a ranked queue to give players a reason to play it. Dominion already doesn't have a queue on LAN and I wouldn't be surprised if it started to get removed from other servers.

  • Honor System, it was released and then abandoned entirely. Lyte toted it as a new system to promote less toxic play and reward people for being honorable. Instead we were given an arbitrary number that gave us a nice ribbon. This is a prime example of a waste of resources from Riot, granted pretty much everything Lyte's done is a fucking waste of resources so that's not a big surprise.

  • A New Client, last year Riot hired AstralFoxy, the creator of the Mint league client, to come and work on a new client for them. We have heard literally nothing about a new client and rumors that they haven't even touched on it yet.

  • Ranked System, we all know by now that ranked is pretty pointless apart from Diamond 1/Master/Challenger. Riot has made this painfully apparent with the removal of decay below Platinum but that isn't the point. Your rank below Diamond 1 doesn't even match up with Riot's judgement of your skill, AKA MMR. Riot's ranked system is a shiny wrapper to make people feel good that in no way ranks people's skill. If Riot was actually serious about ranked they'd have people play vs people 1 division above or below them, not entire leagues above or below since the players are trying to climb above their current rank it only makes sense to match them vs people of the same rank.

  • Tribunal, it went down for maintenance over a year ago. Where the fuck is it?

  • Art Team, in particular splash arts for VU'd champions and skins. Remember the promised Nidalee splash arts? Nidalee was VU'd in the Vi patch on December 14, 2012. It has been over 2 years and we STILL do not have the splash arts for Nidalee or other VU'd champions.

  • Centralized Servers or East Coast Servers. People have been begging for this for years and the only thing we've gotten from Riot has been "we're looking into it" and "we're 'migrating' servers to a different part of the same building.

  • Balance Team, do I even need to explain this one?

  • Magma Chamber, Ao Shin. I'm just tacking stuff on here for the hell of it.

Now, how can Riot improve itself to become a halfway decent company instead of an EA that delivers on it's promises less often and charges you more for less? There are a few ways:

  • Replace or actually hire management to keep the departments working in a timely manner. I'm going to pick on the art team here because they are the most visible in this regard. Get your fucking shit together and focus on champion splash arts instead of Esports bullshit.

  • Cutback on esports. Seriously, everyone knows its a black hole for your goddamn finances, stop throwing everything into it.

  • Communicate with the community. You guys used to do it, you were good at it. Now you mainly hide out in reddit and occasionally send out your QA people in the jaded homegrown reddit you've created. You wonder why people here aren't as calm as reddit? We're tired of your bullshit, it's that simple. We've put up with it for years and it has only gotten WORSE.

Riot has very talented and very passionate individuals, but their management is worse than the United States government. People can dog on EA all day long, at least EA gives products in a timely manner and comparatively speaking, reasonably prices their products. Sad fucking day when EA is ran better than Riot.

TL;DR Riot's management is shit.

http://www.interpretllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/riot_games.jpg

17 Comments

Matthias91193/9/2015, 4:16:02 AM3 votes

Low quality bait, but, I can touch on a few of these...

{quoted}

  • Honor System, it was released and then abandoned entirely. Lyte toted it as a new system to promote less toxic play and reward people for being honorable. Instead we were given an arbitrary number that gave us a nice ribbon. This is a prime example of a waste of resources from Riot, granted pretty much everything Lyte's done is a fucking waste of resources so that's not a big surprise.

They've stated they are working on updating the honor system along with the Tribunal.

  • Tribunal, it went down for maintenance over a year ago. Where the fuck is it?

It was less than a year ago, and I saw something recently (maybe last month?) saying they're still working on things. In addition to functionality upgrades they're also trying to get it rolled out globally, which requires a ton of work on localization as well as building out way more infrastructure for it.

  • A New Client, last year Riot hired AstralFoxy, the creator of the Mint league client, to come and work on a new client for them. We have heard literally nothing about a new client and rumors that they haven't even touched on it yet.

They've certainly made some changes to the client. It's hard to judge what they might have swapped out under the hood even if it looks the same. It could certainly be shinier but it works.

  • Ranked System, we all know by now that ranked is pretty pointless apart from Diamond 1/Master/Challenger. Riot has made this painfully apparent with the removal of decay below Platinum but that isn't the point. Your rank below Diamond 1 doesn't even match up with Riot's judgement of your skill, AKA MMR. Riot's ranked system is a shiny wrapper to make people feel good that in no way ranks people's skill. If Riot was actually serious about ranked they'd have people play vs people 1 division above or below them, not entire leagues above or below since the players are trying to climb above their current rank it only makes sense to match them vs people of the same rank.

...uh, okay.

  • Art Team, in particular splash arts for VU'd champions and skins. Remember the promised Nidalee splash arts? Nidalee was VU'd in the Vi patch on December 14, 2012. It has been over 2 years and we STILL do not have the splash arts for Nidalee or other VU'd champions.

Didn't they literally just roll out some more updated splashes in the last patch? I mean, okay, you can whine about the pace of it not being faster, but most of the new ones are awesome.

  • Centralized Servers or East Coast Servers. People have been begging for this for years and the only thing we've gotten from Riot has been "we're looking into it" and "we're 'migrating' servers to a different part of the same building.

They've been making network upgrades for the last 6 months and they're supposed to be doing some sort of server migration/centralization later this year. They've been posting about it occasionally in Help+Support.

I'll admit I'm a little baffled at the decision not to split into a US East/West like many other games do, or even East/West/Central/South given the number of US players.

  • Balance Team, do I even need to explain this one?

I'm not sure anybody is ever happy with the balance of any online game that isn't perfectly symmetrical. But your vague complaint is duly noted.

  • Magma Chamber, Ao Shin. I'm just tacking stuff on here for the hell of it.

Yes you are.

Sarutobi3/9/2015, 4:28:12 AM3 votes

I completely agree with everything stated here. they seem to be so focus on things that aren't really that important. i mean its pretty sad to see in their eyes whats more important is a new stadium to host LCS/Worlds is more important than say fixing/upgrading their servers so people don't disconnect from their games for no reason!

If there is one thing i wish they'd actually talk about is Tribunal. I've been using that since day one, and in my opinion its a great way to see what as a community of players is deemed right and wrong with this game. you can see what is Pardon and Punished, and they took it offline to be improved. But its been close to a year now and nothing, not one update of anything aside from its being working on has been stated about the issue. The way i see it (along with everything else with is game/company) is that they want to be Perfect and that's just not going to happen. No company/game is perfect so they need to get that mentality out of their system. The longer we have to wait the more impatient people will be, which in turn will make us think you guys aren't doing anything about it. You have again close to a year of work to show us and we get nothing! I don't even see why Tribunal needed to be reworked. The one thing i know people would have liked from Tribunal is Video, or more visual help to decided if people were in the wrong, or needed to be punished for their action! why it would need to take a year to do that is beyond me, and in my opinion show that this company priority are in places that are not that important at this time!

This goes with Server as well. Its sad when other/newer games come out and have better servers than Riot's very own. This company obviously isn't broke so I'm sure they can dish out some time/money/effort into getting more servers to help with the obvious problem! Again they have had more than enough time to at least get something going, but again because they want to be perfect its just a continuation of work that will just never be release because there will always be something better! I know they have that fear that if the servers get DDoS, or attacked it would be put on them, but that should help them to know why they were attacked. They are a big named company, and just like others who were attacked its not something that can be dealt with so easily, but you shouldn't be that company who want it so that it will never be attacked again because that will only lead to more attacks. It would be better to just try and improve, and update when/if an attack happens. This is what companies like PSN/Xbox, and other online gaming company do because they seem to understand that there isn't a way to stop this at least for the time being, so what better way then to improve and keep at improving till some way in the future we can stop DDoS, or other attacks like this from happening.

Bug, Glitches, etc. I honestly think this game needs to go offline more than once every two weeks. its probably the reason why people are having problems with this game and not their other PC games. This is about the only Game online that is on basically 24/7 and that is not good. the only time this game seems to be offline is when there is a patch and even then its only offline for a couple of hours. With how big this game is its obvious not enough. it would be nice to have it offline for at least half a day so that whom ever is working on the server, or other tech people can look at the game and see what going on with their game/servers. Granted i know people will hate this because LoL is probably what most people only play but i rather have the game offline and improved from that than having the server crap on me, or my teammates, or having another attack which could have been prevented. Its even worse when there is "live" maintenance because most of the time they don't tell you unless after you are in a match and from then you have to actually finish your game to actually see it from the game client! There has to be better communication like a day advance to having live maintenance, or some ingame promp telling you something. And if this is the case a Lost Prevention should be in place at least for that match until you can see/know its happening!

With the Honor system I'm not sure how they could work it in, The system now is basically nonexistent mainly because people just jump into their next game right after. And i can agree with the whole not having honor be a numerical thing. Its going to lead to abuse and just friends/new accounts "farming" honors till they get one and using it as an excuse to do bad things with this game!

Lastly the LCS. i know its what Riot wants to be known for, and to an extent while I'm not as hardcore about it as most people to some extent i will watch it just because it is interesting to watch. But i have to admit its where most of their time/money/effort is going with the company and in my opinion that's just not right! When you purposely withhold nerfing, or buffing a champion/item because the pro players don't have enough time to relearn said champion/item, or because of those LCSplays it shows where your stance is about the game in general. To us you guys don't care about your game, or us as players/gamers since we obvious aren't the center of attention. its the LCS/Worlds that you seem to only care about when you do thing like this. I'm not trying to rag on LCS, or any of that because its obvious shows how Riot, and LoL has improved over the years, but it seem to be the only thing they care about when Riot/LoL has improved together from LCS, The Community, the company itself, and so much more. But when you put your focus on just one thing it shows your stance and its not right.

This also goes with Balance Team as well. One thing I really dislike about LCS, or any other tournament with League of Legends is seeing the same champs over and over again. with a roster of over 120 champions there should be some sort of verity when watching the game. it begs the questions of why are these said champions being played a lot, and why are some champions not played at all? they could be using LCS and all these other tournaments as a way to help improve on that especially since the community follows these players!

All in all. i just want to see this game improve especially since its a game/company i enjoy. I dished out a ton of money (that i am too afraid to ask how much) not only with champions/skins but now merchandise and other goodies because its something i enjoy. something i want to help improve, but i cannot do this alone just as Riot cannot do it alone. We as a community should help Riot every way we can, and just the same for Riot as well. They should see how we as a community feel about changes and while I'm not saying to agree/disagree with everything they have a say about, at least let us know/communicate with us just as we are doing with you guys!

Dark Topline3/9/2015, 3:46:55 AM2 votes

I really hope RIOT does eventually release a lot of what you've mentioned, as well as begin to listen to the community more. Being a fairly new player myself (about seven months now), I actually like RIOT as a company overall, as well as in what direction they've been moving in. I don't agree they're a complete "shit company." But it is hard to argue with your points as you're right for the most part.

Really hope this thread (and all the other threads made regarding this) are seriously looked at by RIOT. Up-voted the thread in hopes it'll be seen.

Only Mid Veigar3/9/2015, 4:31:08 AM2 votes

all of my upvotes.

disregardable3/9/2015, 3:47:38 AM1 votes

A New Client, last year Riot hired AstralFoxy, the creator of the Mint league client, to come and work on a new client for them. We have heard literally nothing about a new client and rumors that they haven't even touched on it yet.

I could've sworn I heard something new about that like within the last 2 months.

Also, isn't Ascension proof that Riot still supports dominion?

Not to mention everything you said about Ranked didn't even make sense...

Major Sparkles3/9/2015, 5:42:50 AM1 votes

Bla bla blaaa

Thresh Outta Fux3/9/2015, 4:36:04 AM1 votes

/signed

Pretty sure a red will close this without being named or even giving a reason.

bananaman3133/9/2015, 5:17:46 AM1 votes

boo

Rinky Dinky3/9/2015, 4:03:38 AM1 votes

but their management is worse than the United States government.

lol