Okay fine, go to hell Riot

OlafRagnarson·Oct 26, 2015·3 votes·388 views

A while back I emailed Riot and posted here suggesting they let players change the color and shape of the cursor in the game so that people with visions issues, like color blindness, can pick a combo that helps them pick up the cursor easily while playing.

As it stands, apparently Riot could give a shit about their players. I guess ill just keep playing at a disadvantage being red/green color blind and losing the cursor against certain colors while in frantic team battles.

Its cool. Your silence, Riot, speaks volumes. Its an easy thing to add it.

13 Comments

Emperor CynricOct 26, 20153 votes

its all bout Esports and $$$$$$$$$$ now. A once great indie company lost to money.

But Im NunuOct 26, 20151 votes

They made a colorblind mode for many other aspects of the game, why not the cursor? I think it would just be a recolor

øHaruøOct 26, 20153 votes

I mean..if a lot of people were complaining sure...if you had petitioned for it sure..but. It's not like Riot's just going to get up and say "You know what? I like Jim, okay guys drop what you're doing for this one player."

I mean...yeah..... get those glasses that helps you see colors.

But Im NunuOct 26, 20151 votes

I think it's quite costly to get those glasses (though idk for sure). Furthermore, they made a colorblind mode for other things, why not the cursor? I think it would just be a simple recolor, is it not?

NiyumiOct 26, 20151 votes

Welcome to the world of "F2P," where the customer and the product means nothing to the company, and money is all that they even care about. If you're not a whale, they don't even know you exist! Would a colorblind color picker make them any money? Of course not. So why would they bother?

Gotta remember, Riot has to hoard every penny they can, or they might just go out of business! Not like they make billions every year or anything, oh heavens no! That's hardly a living wage!

But Im NunuOct 26, 20151 votes

The thing is, if they assist colorblind, along with other limitation, they potentially increase their player amount. Which potentially increase the chance of the amount of people buying RP. Potentially xD

NiyumiOct 26, 20151 votes

Well, thing is, colorblindness (like, bad cases) aren't common enough to warrant them spending money to do so. Even if 90% of their population was colorblind, they already have colorblind options. : /

So I wouldn't hope for much.

OlafRagnarsonOct 26, 20151 votes

Spending money? How much could it possibly cost to put in the function to change the color of the cursor??????

NiyumiOct 26, 20151 votes

Well, you have to pay programmers to add the functionality in, you have to pay artists to make the different colored versions and a GUI to change it, you have to pay the QA team to test it, you have to pay the managers of all these departments... you have to pay for just about everything.

And no F2P company gives a damn about their game, and no F2P company will spend several thousand to make the game better -- they don't care.

But, to answer your question, several thousand. What would take one person an hour or two would take a team a few weeks, and paychecks aplenty.

But Im NunuOct 28, 20151 votes

I think the phrase "no F2P company gives a damn about their game" is false. It's a cliche and an over exaggeration. If Riot, for example, doesn't give a damn, there wouldn't be new champions or bug fixes, etc. I agree there are still problems, but that phrase is a fallacy.

Furthermore, I don't know for certain, but do Riot employees get paid by projects or by the hours? Do they have a list of things they have to do and deadlines but still get paid by the hours? If so, then it's simply bump another project down a bit. Comparably to others aspects, the cursor color change is, arguably, one of the easiest things they can do. So similarly to how you (yourself, not the Riot team) could do a simple arithmetic problem before resuming a ten page paper, they (the Riot team now) could simply do this real quick.

However, if they get paid by projects, then I agree with you that it could be costly. On the other hand, according to a couple of quick searches on google (which, I know, isn't exactly credible but just for a rough estimate), there is about 8% of men who are color blind and about 27 Million people play league of legends. If half of that amount is male (there's significantly less female who are colorblind so we'll forget about that), 13 million, and 8% of those people are colorblind, which is about 1 million. Let's say even 1 percent of those people buy rp on a regular basis (er....$100 each? idk man xD), that would mean Riot gets about $1 millions. Surely that would cover the cost of "several thousand" and then some. I know this is a really, really, really, ~~not~~ really, rough estimate but I think you get the idea.

NiyumiOct 28, 20151 votes

No, it's really not false. You know why they add new champions and fix bugs? It's to keep people happy and willing to throw money at them, not because they actually care about the quality of their game. How much money do you think they made on Kindred's release? All the stories and things they do are to hype you up and make you excited enough to spend money to buy RP 'cause you don't wanna wait to grind out IP for that champion. F2P is just a horrible business model (and DLC as a concept is as well) that breeds greedy companies and piss-poor quality, all in the name of money. 10-20 years ago, video games were made by people who loved what they do, and didn't obsess over money... yeah, I can't say that about any company with a straight face these days; even Nintendo is becoming more and more money-obsessed. It's just really depressing to watch a hobby you love dearly slowly die in front of you because of greedy little assholes who can't live without humping their gold and diamond-lined wallets.

In most companies, they're salaried workers that get paid by the hour. As with any company though, even the most frivolous thing ends up turning into a monumental undertaking because people can't work together. What would take me a couple hours to code and debug would take them a week or more. What would take me a few days to animate and whatnot would take them weeks. I don't know if it's just to drag out their pay check or because they grossly incompetent, but most companies work at the speed of a snail.

Color blindness is fairly common, but it's not color blindness as you're thinking about it. A lot of people have trouble differentiating between certain shades of green and yellow, and blue and purple, and so on. A very small amount of the 8% that's "colorblind" is actually colorblind -- and even fewer yet are literally colorblind. So, cut the amount of people that would require assistance down to maybe 250k.

But Im NunuOct 30, 20151 votes

I understand they don't really care about the game IF people don't pay them to make it better. But in this case, they indirectly do. Riot continue to make new changes/additions because people are paying for them (and only because of that like you said), that's why I had my speculation of how much changing the colorblindness setting would bring in for them.

I know colorblindness could simply be not being able to differentiating between two colors (I have friends who fall into this category). That is why the colorblind mode have different an contrasting colors, so it would be easier for colorblind players to see. However, I must admit I was tired atm of writing my reply (and was supposed to be writing an essay instead xD) and forgot to take it into account. Though, I think, even if Riot only get 250k from players who truly need it, there are groups of players out there who would look at the fact that Riot does care, at least to a certain extent, about their players. That's just more "points" and reasons that they would refer their friends.

On the other hand, I admit you make a strong argument; furthermore, you truly thought out your argument unlike certain people who just say something along the line of "I'm right, you're wrong. noob." Thank you for that at least. :)