The Player Caught in Between Riot, the Community, and the League of Legends

Reaper Felix·Jan 30, 2015·26 votes·2,938 views

http://e-shuushuu.net/images/2014-05-04-647439.jpeg

As of lately, anyone who goes on boards can easily tell Riot's getting a lot of flak lately on balance. Whether it's well-deserved or not, I leave it up to you guys. What I find frustrating is how the community reacts with one another and how Rioters have handled the flak.

I've started playing since Season 2. I quit for awhile, and came back around the middle of Season 3 and have stuck around since then. I used to only be a top laner back then, but have now become familiar with all the roles (ADC being my worst). I am a jungle main since my friends usually shove me into that role for the most part.

I really love and hate Season 5 so far. I love that mages are being brought back to their season 2 roots where you actually ran out of mana, yet I hate how strong mana-less champions have become in doing so. I love that the new jungle gives smite bonuses, how new dragon and baron function, and even the new little vision crab. I hate how I can't jungle anymore as anyone but Fiddlesticks and J4 if I want to have any impact on the game (rip Assassin Noc, I mained thee well...I hope?) I really love all Riot's done for the players, but I also hate how little they meaningfully interact with us (PBE changes will go through no matter what, red posts mostly show up either to quell a negative reaction or to talk about poros). I love the new rift, but I hate the retcon (League of Legends doesn't exist) that came around the same time as it. I love how awesome, united, and hilarious our community can be at times, but I hate how toxic and immature it can be as well. I think I've stomped this love-hate relationship, so I'll move on.

@Rioters: Look, I get it. Rioters are humans just like us; but several of their mistakes in the past have yet to be mended. A person can only have so much patience, especially in this community. My faith with y'all is like a roller-coaster at this point. Right now, it's probably at the lowest point, and I can only hope it climbs from here. What really ruined my faith with y'all is the discovery that our feedback in PBE has little to no say on some changes (I.E. Sona, Cassiopeia), and especially with how the retcon of the League of Legends was handled by Riot Opeli (I'm still salty about the situation, and how she handled the twitter posts, btw). However, I want to especially thank the rioters who do respond back to feedback meaningfully, or are just plain awesome to the community (looking at you, KateyKhaos, even when you had to be the bearer of bad news on Sweetheart Annie and particle effects

@The Community: I also get it. We're gamers, and we really love this game. The idea of this game potentially going downhill is really scary. We get passionate and start getting vocal with raised pitch-forks at Rito, hoping the problem will be solved. Even I am a part of this mob at times, cause I really love this game.

There's not really much else I can say to y'all, cause we all think differently. I just wish we could get along better. To all the QQ-ers, just have a little bit of reason and understand the situation Rito's in with all the changes as of late. To all the "Stahp QQ'ing, Riot's human, etc." realize that QQ-ers are also human, too.

TL;DR: Just a jumbled post of my feelings on the current state of League of Legends. I feel it's a big love-hate relationship with everyone, to put it in a nutshell. But seriously, just read this, it's not as long-winded of a read it could have been.

Feel free to share your feelings on my post, about so-and-so champ being op, or whatever you want. I'm honestly expecting this to get downvoted, especially after half my post got deleted. ; _ ; (Rito boards, plz.) And to all who've read this, I wish you a good day.

Edit: Hope it's okay to put this under Miscellaneous. Don't want all the hardwork in this to get deleted... ; _ ; And no clue what happened with the picture. Still kind of new to posting on boards.

23 Comments

disregardableJan 30, 201514 votes

Seriously, if every department had a Kateykhaos, Riot would be such a better company.

Reaper FelixJan 30, 201511 votes

KateyKhaos is love. KateyKhaos is life. I also forgot to mention she was literally the shining glimmer of light during the holidays when all the rioters were recharging their batteries on eggnog and whatnot.

MrBuffingtonJan 30, 20156 votes

I think it's generally easier to get swept up in the gravity of a strong opinion; I see a lot of balanced opinions and honest discussion in threads that maybe get a handful of upvotes and comments, where many of the posts that make it to the top of the "Hot" sorting express some very strong, polarizing opinion. I personally am guilty of being swayed by these popular views, as well as expressing some very strong and exaggerated opinions myself.

This isn't to say that I don't think the game has glaring issues; perhaps I'm just more optimistic than most people (I've seen changes that I personally suggested on Boards make their way into the game). It does always surprise me when I see a Red post come up on a thread that got buried under all the QQ threads.

Reaper FelixJan 31, 20152 votes

I definitely know that feeling. It's really easy to get caught up in all the hate trains on Lee Sin or FotM champs. I kind of have to wonder what kind of criteria Red posts follow when choosing a place to post (be it here on boards or reddit), or if they just post whenever they feel like posting.

Edit (I probably need to get some sleep, can't believe I misread that last sentence...): Thank god for red tracker for cases like those though.

missinggraveFeb 1, 20152 votes

I may - or may not have - been slightly and entirely swayed towards the, "AHRI GOT NERFED WHERE IS MY ASSASSIN BB" QQ opinion. So I can see what you're saying too. I think it may be safe to say that because of the extremes that we see with either white knights or warring mobs, Riot has a hard time finding what they can see as true constructive criticism.

However, on that same note, Riot should still know that if almost the ENTIRE community mutually agrees on something and they refuse to resolve the matter it can have an effect on whether or not we trust them as a company at times. It's one thing to ignore controversial issues due to the fact that they usually resolve themselves, but I really wish that we saw more things get reverted back to the way they originally were if the community as a whole requests it (( #BetterNerfSona )).

MrBuffingtonFeb 1, 20152 votes

Haha, it's also difficult to tell whether people expressing these particular opinions are informed about the topic, or if they're just armchair theorists (something I get accused of every once in a while, since I'm not great at the game nor do I really play that much; I do think however, that my opinion is fairly well informed much of the time because I'm largely echoing lessons I learn from more informed sources, such as coaches or high elo players).

There is also the misconception that the entire community of Boards is representative of the entire LoL community; even though there's quite a bit of traffic here, it's still a drop in the bucket when you take into account that overseas players often aren't posting here (aside from EU and OCE; I don't see many Chinese or Korean accounts on here, for example), let alone the other 70 million players that don't use forums, etc. If a post on here gets like 200 upvotes, that post is considered super popular, but on the subreddit, it isn't uncommon for posts to get 1000-3000 upvotes, and still that isn't representative of the LoL community since a lot of people (myself included) don't even have a reddit account.

This is an unpopular opinion, but I do generally agree with Riot's approach where they give more weight to a good argument than majority opinion when it comes to balance. Of course there are still mistakes made but I think far less than if they pander solely to popular opinion; I see stupid ideas get tons of upvotes every day.

Alderon WolfBaneJan 31, 20154 votes

"a Red post come up on a thread that got buried under all the QQ threads."

That is one of the saddest thing i have seen :(

HutchTheWolfJan 30, 20152 votes

What do you have against poros? Huh?

Reaper FelixJan 30, 20158 votes

Everything. I hate them with so much of a passion, I even bought an icon of them.

kitcat300Jan 31, 20152 votes

It is a good sign that I have seen 2-3 other "stop hating riot/each other" threads pop up. I guess people are finally getting tired of the top of the hot list being nothing but complaints.

One even got ghostcrawler to talk.

Reaper FelixJan 31, 20152 votes

Ironically, it's cause of these "Stop hating Riot" posts I made this thread. Not saying my thread was the first "neutral grounds" post, but still.

pcfmYiJC8RJan 31, 20152 votes

Only Riot should see peoples suggestions, other then that people shouldn't be allowed to voice opinions on other peoples threads because frankly no one cares about other peoples opinions. People just like to troll

Reaper FelixJan 31, 20151 votes

I disagree with this. I understand that some people do nothing but troll or breed toxicity everywhere they go (I would like to think these are children rather than grown adults), but that doesn't mean we should silence perfect opportunities where discussion can be made. However, I do think QQ-nerf-this-champ do get pretty stale pretty quick since nothing else can be said, other than try to get a Red's attention on the matter.

SolaxoJan 31, 20152 votes

So community doesn't consist of players?

Reaper FelixJan 31, 20151 votes

It's more I, as one player, vs. the community, the playerbase, in case there's any confusion with the title.

blueberrypancakeJan 31, 20152 votes

Idon't get why people keep on complaining about Sona, she's getting buffed on the pbe, they just wanted to decrease her damage output. As a Sona mid player, sometimes her damage output can be ridiculous, late game her Q power chords could almost oneshot somebody, now it increases the variety, but then again her slow with 700 ap is 70% so (still lots of burst there and most likely a dead adc). I didn't care about the damage amount decreases, but I did hate the movespeed nerf because it decreases your harass range during the laning phase so you can't keep on poking. Just to let you know what they were buffing is her movespeed back base health and mana regen (last I checked) check the pbe for yourself, i believe it was the same patch they added the marauder skins.

Reaper FelixJan 31, 20152 votes

Yeah, the movement speed nerf was definitely uncalled for, imo. I don't have the full context on why they did it, but I have a strong feeling it was because of her E, which they should have nerfed instead. I think the major concern is Sona becoming even squishier than before post-level 4 in trade off of having 15 more hp at lvl 1. I just find it really weird how Riot was against the notion of Sona being super aggressive in lane, but did little-to-nothing to changing how her Q works (other than the whole aura rework, which I think was a step in the right direction of more meaningful gameplay)

FantasySniperFeb 1, 20151 votes

Reducing her [E] basically meant making it of less use to her teammates and/or herself, so they "fixed" part of the problem by reducing her MS.

Didn't even feel it. It was such an insignificant change that they're already reverting it on the PBE.

I don't even know why in the fuck they are giving her better early game stats, but then again it could make her hyper-powered late-game easier to shut down.

Changing her [Q] is hard. It's iconic and it'll probably never become a skillshot (more like shouldn't ever), so there's very few options left if you insist upon it.

Reaper FelixFeb 1, 20151 votes

Just played a recent game with Sona (been awhile), and yeah, I didn't really feel the movement speed nerf much (or enemy Vayne and Janna didn't capitalize on whenever I went in to harass). I can understand why Riot's nerfing her health post level-4, since after the first back, I honestly expected to start falling off a little in lane, when that was far from the truth. After upgrading the spellthief's and getting a few mana pots, I was still chunking away at Vayne the whole game, to the point she says "Wow, it takes a lot of skill to just press E (fail) all day as Sona"

Only meaningful thing I can think of is keep her early game strong but tie her late game more to her ult/initiates versus having raw damage on her Q + Autos. But I'm not a Sona main, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

FantasySniperFeb 1, 20151 votes

Her ult isn't much of an initiate, you have to burn flash or just get lucky with positioning to do that, it's mostly useful as a counter-engage and CC lock tool.

They really need to cut down [Q] primary damage and move it to the secondary (aura) so that it's just plain harder to harass without someone by your side. Puts focus on her support role, there's less collateral from the second projectile, and she may even get a slight power boost into the late-game.

YOU BEEN WARNEDFeb 1, 20151 votes

Community gold thread right there.

YOU BEEN WARNEDFeb 1, 20151 votes

On another note, these guys need to be fixed.

Cassiopeia Ahri Zed Azir Leona Kalista

And item 3512 should be returned to it's 5.1 former glory.

Oh, and can ADCs not be a 400% opportunity effective class please ? Sieging, laning, teamfighting and being the strongest lategames are too many features. Pls delete 1-2 of those.

And by the way;

Why does this motherfucker have an escape ? Braum Supports don't get escapes, all the supports are living sacrifices and the same should be applied to this pussy-playstyle bitch.

Reaper FelixFeb 1, 20151 votes

I never got to try out item 3512 in 5.1, but when I used it in 5.3, it didn't feel as awesome as early vids made it out to be (or my placement sucked with it) ; _ ;

On a different note, I don't really feel like discussing much about some of these champs since I'd repeat what's already been said in other threads, but here's my thoughts on the ones that haven't been talked as much.

Kalista Her mobility is insane. Got destroyed in a recent game by one who only had Blade of the Ruined King and Runaan's Hurricane and she was jumping all over the place. I feel the only justified nerf is to keep her passive "hopping" be constant no matter the direction she goes, even if it's towards an enemy champion.

Leona I'm kind of happy with where she stands. If you want a cc machine support, she fits the niche (Alistar/Braum being a close contenders if we're talking meta/conventional supports, otherwise Nautilus support is where it's at baby!). The only thing I'm not a big fan of for her kit is if your team's ahead, she will make winning team fights much more easier, but it's hard whenever the team's behind for her to be useful.

Braum Not really sure what you mean by an escape. Are you talking about his ability to hop to allies/minions (ala Katarina/Lee Sin/Jax, but without ward hopping)? His ability to disengage with Q (versus Nami/Janna Q)? The movement speed boost from his E (versus Sona's E)? Not really sure why you're singling out Braum specifically, but I don't think any support should be a living sacrifice.

Times have changed in league, and I used to think like that as well. But with gold changes for supports, I think they definitely deserve a little love in building towards a late game fantasy, than being just a sacrifice/cheerleader for the team.