What we all wish Riot understood about communication

slippykitten··2 votes·249 views

These boards are supposed to be where Riot can communicate with the players but it isn't happening.

Right now, the only posts Riot comments on are ones they think they can spin in a positive light to themselves, and any actual issues are always commented by a Rioter from a different department. I can't tell you how many times I've read "well this isn't my area so i couldn't tell you" - Well then why would you bother commenting? just to let us know that you guys care just enough to pretend like you care?

What Riot needs to do

  1. Answer top posts regularly - If every day you are getting the same post, then maybe you have an area you need to post on your home page in news. I would love to see a red comment on the top ten upvoted/commented on posts every day.

  2. Only post if you know wtf you are talking about- Why bother posting on things that aren't your area and you know nothing about? You think we don't notice that the balance team comments on art and the art team comments on balance? We aren't fooled, you are purposely avoiding having to face your community for you own choices. **cut it out, and let us talk to the people that can actually address the issues we present. **

  3. Keep your word - If you tell us something will be happening, then make it happen. don't make promises to placate the community that you aren't sure you can follow through with. If you don't know, don't promise it. In any other industry of business, you not fulfilling your verbal contract with your clients would result in your demise so how about you stop taking advantage of us?

  4. Let us know what you know when you know it - You said tribunal would be back before the end of the year. It is really looking like that isn't going to happen. You know right friggin now if that will happen or not, so why aren't you letting us know? Keep us up to speed, stop leaving us in the dark for months and months on EVERYTHING.

  5. Listen to the community when you can, but give us the reasons why you don't when you can't - When the entire community cries for something and you do the exact opposite without any explanation, it really makes us feel like there isn't a point in being involved with you at all. We get that you can't do everything everyone wants, but if you have to go contrary to what the majority asked for, let us know why. Once again, stop leaving us wondering wtf you are doing!

  6. ** Own up to your mistakes and fix them** - We all make mistakes, most of us are cool with the fact that you will too. But when something is done and it is bad and then you go silent while we all wonder what happened, it is not ok. Cass rework was a mistake and a failure the entire way through and eventually you guys just stopped talking about her and hoped we would too. **What you should have done is say "Yup, this rework didnt go as well as we hoped, we are reverting cass and going back to the drawing board" ** or at least gave us the reasons why you felt it was a success and should be left alone as is.

  7. Be specific and succinct - More than half of everything you guys say is ambiguous. If you don't know, say you don't know. It's simpler, shorter, and communicates information better to simply state the truth in plain english. **Stop dancing around every issue and make the community have to interpret your posts like a holy book written in a dead language. **

The tl;dr is simply that Riot is trying too hard to look like they are communicating without actually wanting to communicate.

3 Comments

SmokedAlmonds3 votes

There are just too many people with too many opposing views. There is not a single thing riot can do that is not going to anger people. People need to understand that there are more people than themselves and every change that happens that they dislike is not some personal attack on them. I do mostly agree with your premise, especially responding to top posts. But at the same time, if you have nothing to say about a topic then why bother? Most of these responses are going to things like "not enough people want that".

Personally Id love to know every idea riot ever has but unfortunately there are too many people that can't handle that kind of information. They take every single thought posted by riot as some blood oath that needs to be upheld or heads need to roll.

Communication is a double edged sword with a community this large.

slippykitten1 votes

{quoted}

There are just too many people with too many opposing views. There is not a single thing riot can do that is not going to anger people. People need to understand that there are more people than themselves and every change that happens that they dislike is not some personal attack on them. I do mostly agree with your premise, especially responding to top posts. But at the same time, if you have nothing to say about a topic then why bother? Most of these responses are going to things like "not enough people want that".

Personally Id love to know every idea riot ever has but unfortunately there are too many people that can't handle that kind of information. They take every single thought posted by riot as some blood oath that needs to be upheld or heads need to roll.

Communication is a double edged sword with a community this large.

I agree with you, but Riots lack of communication doesn't make the community calmer. I can vehemently disagree with someone, but if they refuse to even provide me with the reasons why they did what they did, why even bother communicating at all?

The additional issue is that sometimes they don't see every angle and they are making a mistake and just maybe actually talking to their customer would be beneficial. Very few other industries operate in a "I'll tell you what you want and you will like it" model.

SmokedAlmonds2 votes

{quoted}

I agree with you, but Riots lack of communication doesn't make the community calmer. I can vehemently disagree with someone, but if they refuse to even provide me with the reasons why they did what they did, why even bother communicating at all?

The additional issue is that sometimes they don't see every angle and they are making a mistake and just maybe actually talking to their customer would be beneficial. Very few other industries operate in a "I'll tell you what you want and you will like it" model.

I do dislike the vague dance around answers they give to certain things(particularly east coast server threads), but in most of those cases I just feel like they shouldn't have said anything. Or at the very least I see pretty clearly what they wish they could say.

If they responded to half the things people wanted to you would look at the red track and see a million "not important enough".

Very few industries have their costumers interacting with each other the way games do, particularly league that is heavily based around solo queue. If sony changes something about the next generation of their blu ray player then everyone who was happy with the last one is still happy with it, even if they don't like the changes. In league if a million people love ahri and want her to be strong and 10 million people hate ahri and never want to see her again, then any nerfs to ahri make 10 million people happy, but 1 million people unhappy. Even though that is a net gain, that's still 1 million unhappy people and its also 1 million people that now probably resent the other 10 million.

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