Boards›[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous

I think we are too hard on riot.

ThatH1N1··79 votes·3,344 views

This thread will probably get a lot of hate, but, please, read at least some of it before down voting unmercilessly.

Riot has a large game. Probably a lot larger than they ever expected. Bugs pop up and the community freaks out like "Rito you don't do enough". I think we need to take time to realize that for the majority of people at riot this is their baby. This is their family this is their relationship above everything else. I think we need to realize that at this stage of development when things go wrong it is not an easy fix. Riot is constantly adding new things to the game and with that things will go wrong unexpectedly. I think we need to sit back and take a moment to be thankful for the things we have and not complain about the things we want. I am sure to most people out there they think "hey, Riot makes millions they should be able to fix everything in a quick and timely manner." I really don't think that is the case. Running multiple large servers is expensive. Paying employees is expensive, bandwidth is expensive, space to work in (all over the world) is expensive. Sure we may come to a point one day where lol esports breaks the barrier and becomes as big or bigger than the NBA, NFL, MLB but until that happens we should be thankful for the work that goes into all this. Sure it is easy to get mad at the broken yasuo, brand, tryndamere, riven etc. Think about it though, does anything really stay broken for more than like 2 weeks? I think riot is doing a great job for the resources that they have and I think that they are truly passionate about this game. Before you complain and blame the company think about the dev that spends 12+ hours away from his family to work on this game FOR YOU. Think about everything that goes into the game and think about how when it comes down to it they could just stop at any point. Nothin' lasts forever and we both know hearts can change. I would like to take this time to thank riot for all their hard work. I think they are doing a great job. Preseason wont last forever and we know that balance can change.

64 Comments

Sarutobi20 votes

I think a lot of people are too hard on them. But then there are things that have been wrong with this game for years. It shouldn't take that long to fix something that has been broken for 3+ years.

james12123413 votes

"alot of people are too hard on them" "shouldnt take this long to fix something that has been broken for 3+ years"

do you read what you type? how can you go hard on someone who cant listen or get their shit together in 3+ years? that employee would be fired years ago. Idk why people are soft on the biggest game in the world that cant make easy and simple changes to better their game and have leaned towards being more greedy the past 3 years.

Sarutobi2 votes

Because there are some things that people call them out on that isnt even their fault, or they blame the wrong person/section. That's what I meant by that. Anything server/client related I'm all for calling them out on it. It shouldn't be takin this long to fix/continue to fix. But I feel like champion reworks/releases/update are going on a nice pace, but people still complain that it's taking too long.

UrPalAl2 votes

Did you not read their article earlier this year? Literally their ENTIRE client is fucking broken, and they're working hard in an effort to essentially rebuild it again.

Also where are you getting the idea that they've become more greedy? What about all these sales, extra RP, and HUGE events that give free icons (Bilgewater for example).

Or what about the fact they spent a fortune making a music video about Amumu that literally had ZERO financial gain?

Or maybe the Bilgewater map that they made JUST for the event?

Or the amazing music that they give us to download for free?

Or how about that it's a FREE game that isn't pay to win for once?

Or how about that they're one of the highest rated companies for employee satisfaction?

Yeah, I guess they have become greedy over the past few years, huh.

ralsei3 votes

There are many things in League, and some things take priority over others. What we mean by "too hard" is that people tend to exaggerate problems that exist (not all the time), and then blame Riot for not fixing that issue right away or at all.

Some things have to take priority over others in order to keep a company going. As much as I'm sure they'd like it, they can't have a team for everything that happens. They have to take on tasks one for every team at a time, then move on to the next one. And sometimes, if something isn't popular enough, or too harmful, it won't take priority for awhile.

Riot is still young. They're still growing and learning. Their popularity isn't going to make the programmers program any faster, or have the artists create art any faster.

And sometimes, the little changes might be hard to implement due to restrictions made by building a game from the ground up, and might require them to rewrite a large chunk of code.

Kürama1 votes

This.

Kürama1 votes

What's taken them 3+ years to fix?

Malefîcent11 votes

No we are not hard enough with them. Just take a look at Valve. They come up with retarded balance changes, community releases a shitstorm, valve takes it back and everyone is happy again. Riot fucks balance again and again and again and again, people accept it, jump from Fotm to Fotm and keep buying RP.

edit: I am referring to CS:GO

mikemcparty11 votes

Because Riot has more players than just the ones who are vocal on the boards. They use numbers to make their changes, not people whining on the boards. The voice of the majority is the data, while the voice of the minority is the people complaining on boards.

UrPalAl1 votes

CS:GO is a lot more simple and easier to balance. When the R8 was broken, all that needed to be done was to NOT have it 1 shot. Everyone knew that, anyone could see that's how you fix that.

For League, there are FAR more variables to consider. Back when Veigar mains were making countless threads on the boards asking for buffs, Riot finally gave him a small AP gain buff from kills, and a QUALITY OF LIFE fix, and made his W feel better, by a .25 second difference.

Then he became the most broken champion for a patch.

UrPalAl1 votes

Another problem is that people on the boards are louder and also always have the idea that they're right, and when Riot makes the change that they wanted, they get yelled at anyways.

TurquoiseYoshi1 votes

To be fair, it is a lot easier to balance CS:GO than it is to balance League. Any League change requires huge amounts of research and testing to make 100% sure it's balanced. Riot doesn't have that kind of time, so some things slip through the cracks (Veigar, overbuffed Skarner). In CS:GO, making one item will likely have little impact on the game as a whole. When you fuck something up that bad in CS:GO, even if you revert it, it's fucking unacceptable. All I had was one short overheard explanation of the item when it came out and I wondered who at Valve was high enough to release something like that.

Malefîcent1 votes

{quoted}

To be fair, it is a lot easier to balance CS:GO than it is to balance League. Any League change requires huge amounts of research and testing to make 100% sure it's balanced. Riot doesn't have that kind of time, so some things slip through the cracks (Veigar, overbuffed Skarner). In CS:GO, making one item will likely have little impact on the game as a whole. When you fuck something up that bad in CS:GO, even if you revert it, it's fucking unacceptable. All I had was one short overheard explanation of the item when it came out and I wondered who at Valve was high enough to release something like that.

I agree that CS is easier to balance, however it's fucking unacceptable and I'm wondering every patch who is high enough at riot to make it happen when they nerf Champs like Twisted Fate, Swain, Karthus, Anivia, who all aren't very dominant in neither Proplay nor soloq, while there is a shitton of cancer-by-design champions who are inherently broken like Tahm, Lee, Yasuo, Ekko to a certain extent, last not least Illaoi.

And even that would be kinda okay if it was the only problem. Bad servers on every region except NA, 10000 of bugs and glitches known for years and never been looked upon, the new minion block which screws this game over so hard.

What bugs me personally the most however is the random, totally out of place marksmen redesign. Old graves was one of my favorite champions, so i got 2 skins for him. Suddenly outta nowhere, beloved certainlyT reworks them MASSIVELY which makes me feel betrayed, cause i payed for something, which the company changed after i already bought it. I know i dont "own" the skins or the account, but this is unacceptable for me.

TurquoiseYoshi2 votes

Anivia didn't need nerfs? With all of those except Anivia, it was Riot having the foresight to figure out that some masteries interact too well (Swain/Karthus), and the meta interacts too well (TF).

And there are a few cancer-by-design champions, but the only ones you listed were Lee and Yasuo. Illaoi is a juggernaut designed as a juggernaut, Ekko has been balanced since Tankko was nerfed, and Tahm can get some small changes to get into balance.

The servers might be worse in other regions because 1: Riot is in the US and 2: You're normally closer to the server by default (because NA is pretty large).

I honestly don't know if they look into these bugs or not. We don't know because we don't work at Riot. Probably.

The minion block was changed back. Yes, minion block sucks, but it was changed back to pre-5.22 functionality.

The new Graves rework was actually pretty good. The only one that missed the mark was Koggles. We had known for a while that the preseason would bring along a marksman redesign, and we got tons of new, interesting items to use on a class that used to build IE first every time.

james1212345 votes

[deleted]

mikemcparty5 votes

"I've been diamond since s2 and now I'm a salty PoS. blah blah blah. You are silver, so your opinion doesn't matter. blah blah blah" Never heard this before.

Even though he has been playing the game for TWO years and is going into his third season. He knows Riot well enough to state his opinion, so don't come in and start spewing off shit about who is right and who is wrong. If you don't like the opinion, downvote and move on. Clearly, you are in the minority if this post is on front page.

For the record, he may not play ranked, like myself. I play placements and about 15 games and then I just play unranked matches for the whole season.

Stupafly1 votes

i agree 100% with you..... other than "if you dont like the opinion, downvote and move on."

That is NOT what a downvote button is for.... the boards should be about civil discussion, one point of discussion vs another. Once someone starts flaming or is posting stuff completely irrelevent to the topic, THAT is when i think you should downvote. the downvote button shouldnt be "you have an opinions that goes against my opinion..... downvoted"

... rant over.

mikemcparty1 votes

I agree. My issue is when someone can't add any civil discussion and they choose to add toxicity. In that case, just use the button and move on.

ThatH1N16 votes

{quoted}

"this is their baby" sold the rest of its stock to tencent because its the best time to BUYOUT of their own game. This is basically just an uneducated dickriding post. If you actually think riot is doing a great job you dont play or watch league enough to make this kind of statement because its incredibly false. Last worlds was RUINED by the pick ban phase having two super broken must ban champions. So manly simple abundant problems that they could fix but they dont. Thats why people constantly complain. We all say its a good game but these guys actually get too much slack as it is. Your post sounds as if riot is a small company and they cant handle this type of shit but guess what? they have tons of Chinese investors and people they hired to deal with it so they have the man power to be able to deal with most of these simple to fix problems. Hell if they made their pbe actually decent we wouldnt have all these broken champions for a month. But we all know how pbe is. This is probably the most dick riding uneducated about the topic post ive read in a while because these greedy bastards really need to step it up. Sincerely diamond player since season 2 who actually plays the game a decent amount and watches the game when he isnt playing. Not Silver for two years in a row still doesnt even know how the game actually works or the history OP.

Sorry diamond senpai I will never have an opinion again.

AlphaKappaPika5 votes

{quoted}

Sorry diamond senpai I will never have an opinion again.

that guys a dick, rank has nothing to do with your opinion on riot as a company and how the community treats them. Although I disagree with your opinion 100%, I will not attack you personally for your opinion.

Keitron4 votes

You are kidding right? Riot has favorites like LeeSin TahmKench and they never nerf them ever. i mean look at Karthus he was nerfed out of the blue now he can rarely keep a 50% win rate even with a 1.5% pickrate.

Solitair2 votes

Therein lies the issue. Sometimes the community has really valid balance-related concerns, but in general, the community is really bad at knowing what balance is. Riot has information to go off of that the community does not, and often community reports are based off of knee-jerk emotion, conformity, and groupthink. LeeSin gets a ton of unfair hatred. While his popularity is unquestionable, I personally have concluded that Lee is a very healthy champion. He's difficult to play, difficult to master, and requires very fast reflexes to be played to the team's benefit rather than their detriment. If a Lee Sin beats you, he outplayed you, and that is the end of it. He has many ways with which he can outplay you, but none of his options leave you helpless to react or so oppressed that you then have to flee from the patriarchy The community also overreacted to Swain nerfs but didn't even take into account that he had gotten a series of frivolous buffs due to his lack of popularity. They refused to acknowledge that his braindead teamfight power and overtuned numbers were just a bit too cheesy for such a simple champion, and cried needlessly over completely justified nerfs despite not actually knowing what it was like to fight against a Swain. Then there's the obvious fact that the community can never make up its mind on balance issues. Look at the mess around Veigar Up until recently people still cried about RekSai , calling her a favorite despite her having a history of nerfs by then.

TyRamos1 votes

I don't understand where people come from "Lee Sin is difficult to play". He has ONE skill shot. ONE. I recently played him for two games, and literally laughed at how easy it was to simply press all the buttons on peoples faces and watch them die. Then you flash in front and press your TARGETED knocked back for a 100% chance kill. I was out dueling VAYNE. The champ known as one of the best duelist. There's a reason he's played in HALF of all games. There's over 100 champions in this game. and ONE is covering nearly 50% of all games. You can't say its because he's "fun" Gut his damage and suddenly hes no more "fun". Sure he's got a mediocre winrate, but any one champ covering half of all games will. You're gonna have people bad at playing them. No single champion should be played in half of all games. Clearly there's an issue.

Or look at Brand most recently, playrate nearly tripled after the new masteries came out. Must be because hes suddenly more fun. I guess winning is fun.

Next you're gonna tell me that Thresh is super hard to play just because he's got an identical winrate to Lee sin's.

Solitair1 votes

Amount of skill shots is not a direct translation into what is and isn't difficult to play. It certainly helps discern that, but a champion like Lee Sin has so much split second decision making to do. count Thresh in with that. It is exceedingly difficult to make the best or almost best decisions at all the right times for both of those champions. People play them because of the possibilities and because they've seen what pros can do, but most people cannot really pull off the kinds of things they would admire from the champion in the hands of a pro player. And even pros value other picks over these many times and depending on the matchup. Lee Sin particularly requires fast reflexes. A lot of training or natural talent will go into making an exceptional Lee Sin player. You can't just pick up either Lee or Thresh and expect to start cranking out easy wins. If it was that easy , then you could prove me wrong by doing it: just picking him up, farting out game changing plays, and prove that he's not difficult at all and is completely imbalanced.

As it stands, both he and Tresh have fairly overloaded kits, but they are not so overly gifted in any single area that they are inherently frustrating to play against. They reward skilled players who dedicate the time and make good fast decisons, but they are not able to be brainlessly abused.

Left Hook Larry1 votes

"THEY NEVER NERF THEM EVER"

Except lee has gotten many nerfs before

Spacesuit Spiff3 votes

Yeah pretty much. Just in terms of balance, this game is a huge ecosystem and they've learned that really heavy-handed changes can often throw things in weird directions.

Ill also add that they dont seem to mind some champs being gods for the first patch of preseason. They let yas/trynd by and then hotfixed them after a week, weedwick happened for one patch. Pretty sure they forecasted this but went "meh its preseason lets have this spectable" and i respect that.

Solaxo3 votes

Except in the past (season 1.. 2..) they actually cared. Maybe they have too much money now, or maybe it's their chinese overlords.. or just plain arrogance. Also they leave many issues untouched for YEARS.

MrWasjig2 votes

People are hard on them because they have passion for League and want to see it become as good as it can possibly get. When people get angry or upset at Riot it's because people don't think they're doing enough to achieve that, or they're damaging that goal.

Skim2 votes

I agree to an extent but they also bring it on themselves. Things come out that are broken/unbalanced because they do not listen to the feedback of the PBE. They created the PBE to fix bugs and deal with problems but when people on the forums try to tell Riot that something is wrong it is ignored. Graves rework and item 3124 are 2 recent examples of things that came out and had a negative impact on the game that could have been prevented. TONS of people from the PBE tried to communicate that they weren't balanced but they were ignored and look what happened. I understand that it's a huge game that requires massive amounts of attention. But I also feel that too much effort is spent of making skins and finding ways to get people to buy RP, and less on the game play.

TheDiff1 votes

More people already tune in to watch Lol Esports than MLB lol Baseball fans be like where is the love!! item 3151

Monkey D Luffy1 votes

Please don't say we as in to involve the whole community, I highly respect Riot as a company and their support is state of the art.

mikemcparty2 votes

state of the art** is the expression you mean :)

But, I totally agree. I am one of the players who thinks Riot is doing a great job. I even think the champ devs do a great job adding innovation. Most of the people who say "this champ is broken" are just following along with what they heard on a stream or are just saying it because they don't know how to play against whichever champ yet.

Monkey D Luffy1 votes

thanks for the correction

mikemcparty1 votes

Welcome. Didn't want to come off a jerk!

Monkey D Luffy1 votes

im glad. it means if i mess up again i wont look silly :P

Leadpaintchips1 votes

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/riot-games/editorial/total-recall-or-time-we-disabled-ranked

This explains pretty well what they do behind the scenes, and I greatly appreciate it, even though my interest in the game has waned over the years (mostly due to the game being much more fun with friends, and I've moved a lot).

My biggest issue is that they talk a awful lot about clarity, but where is it? There releasing this article 6 months after the fact, and they even talk about how they tried to hide the facts from the players for as long as possible. A lot of their decisions are hidden from us, and it's frustrating for me at least.

Your player base as a whole understands you are all human, you make mistakes, and despite that you have an amazing game, and your passion for the game does shine through. It's just hard to see sometimes with all the smoke in the way.

FioraWillCarry1 votes

I'm curious. Are any of you guys programmers ? No, I don't mean if you can write excel macros. I mean have you ever worked on a mid to large scale project ?

AlphaKappaPika2 votes

{quoted}

I'm curious. Are any of you guys programmers ? No, I don't mean if you can write excel macros. I mean have you ever worked on a mid to large scale project ?

Im a programmer, of course I've never worked on a project even close to the scale of league, as I am still in school, but this is not a valid argument for defending riot for the following reasons.

  1. If riot wants to fix there game, they can do it easily, were not talking about adding champions and shit, were talking about simple fking balance changes. They literally go into code, and change variables around, that is literally all they do to balance. To change a champions numbers is NOT A HARD THING TO DO, In fact, I would argue that to change a champions numbers around, it could take a competent programmer a day, to change the numbers on EVERY server. (assuming he knew the structure of the code and where everything is)

  2. It isn't even "balancing" itself that is the issue here, its retarded decision making, you don't need to know how to program to know that riot is making stupid decisions. They LITERALLY RUINED the world championship by making it to where if you were on the red side, you were totally fucked in pick/ban phase.

  3. Another issue is clarity, doesn't take a dedicated team of 50 people working 50 hours a week to explain why the shit riot is doing what they are doing and also what their plans for the future are.

PS. What the shit is an excel macro, as a programmer I know for a fact that you don't need to have worked on a mid-large scale project to be as good, if not better than some of the employees at riot. (Im not but I know plenty of people who don't work as code monkeys at some game development company)

FioraWillCarry3 votes

{quoted}

Im a programmer, of course I've never worked on a project even close to the scale of league, as I am still in school, but this is not a valid argument for defending riot for the following reasons.

  1. If riot wants to fix there game, they can do it easily, were not talking about adding champions and shit, were talking about simple fking balance changes. They literally go into code, and change variables around, that is literally all they do to balance. To change a champions numbers is NOT A HARD THING TO DO, In fact, I would argue that to change a champions numbers around, it could take a competent programmer a day, to change the numbers on EVERY server. (assuming he knew the structure of the code and where everything is)

  2. It isn't even "balancing" itself that is the issue here, its retarded decision making, you don't need to know how to program to know that riot is making stupid decisions. They LITERALLY RUINED the world championship by making it to where if you were on the red side, you were totally fucked in pick/ban phase.

  3. Another issue is clarity, doesn't take a dedicated team of 50 people working 50 hours a week to explain why the shit riot is doing what they are doing and also what their plans for the future are.

PS. What the shit is an excel macro, as a programmer I know for a fact that you don't need to have worked on a mid-large scale project to be as good, if not better than some of the employees at riot. (Im not but I know plenty of people who don't work as code monkeys at some game development company)

Well friend, I do programming and I have worked on large projects. I've even written psuedo-game engines. I know what its about and some of the demands I see around here tells me that the average person don't really understand what goes on when it comes to making changes to a production level application like League. Your assertion that all they have to do "is change variables" shows a serious lack of understanding of the programmer's point of view. You're over simplifying this a great deal.

ralsei1 votes

1.) Balance changes aren't always number changes. The amount of variables that go into code might be hard to change (static vs dynamic etc). They have to consider the ability interactions and synergy with items/team comps.

2.) Can you expand on this? I honestly don't know what your talking about considering you have the first counter pick + another priority pick.

3.) It might actually. Riot is consisted of teams, and sometimes the writers for Riot don't know what everyone is working on, thinking about working on, or planning on working on. Sometimes it takes personally interviews with teams. Sometimes people have to find time to talk to the writer out of their schedules.

4.) Of course you don't need to be a code monkey to be better at programming. I'm the top of my AP Computer Science class, but I focus more on art stuff. Does that mean everyone in my class suck? Of course not. So saying that was completely useless. They don't want the best programmers. They want programmers who are good at programming, but also have a diverse way of problem solving.

AninLegions7771 votes

See mate, when you love something, chances are you get emotional over it. We all love league. The fun, the thrills, the suspense, the plays, the regrets, ALL of it. But when we see the game going in the wrong direction and try to tell them how they can't stop it, they disregard us (even stopped going on PBE for a while after they still release juggernauts despite complaints). It's really annoying. They need to sit up and bring back the passion and enthusiasm they had in S1-s3.

The Soulforged1 votes

Some teams/rioters don't really care about player feedback much :/.

Mistress Madoka1 votes

I agree that there's a lot of people who are TOO hard on the company, but I also think if we're NOT hard on them, or too Lenient, They might get careless.

Vanjie1 votes

I disagree. I think a lot of things they can do better like champion updates, punishing griefers and afk players, and not waiting two months to fix something that can immediately be hotfixed. I think their champion update team is a joke. It took them a year to give attention to certain champions . . . . but they nerfed and buffed Vayne and Chogath how many times this year? Zyra still doesn't have a new passive and Cassiopeia is a joke. Besides the champion update team and tribunal, I am fine with everything else.

TurquoiseYoshi1 votes

I like how people complain that Riot doesn't listen to them. I kindly point them to Nintendo of Japan.

And when people complain about Riot being terrible at balancing, I point them to the R8.

I mean, the most OP champion (by winrate) ever in LoL was caused by us on the PBE complaining that he was weak, and Riot buffing him because they listened to us.

ThatH1N11 votes

After reading through all the responses on this thread I have to say that a lot of you make some really valid points. In particular, Riot has bitten off more than they can chew at this point. I do agree the state of the game currently is not well at all. However, I tend to skim through a lot of posts on the boards and it seems that people just get downright nasty about a lot of things they don't like. I just feel like if you have a legitimate complaint there is no need to be nasty. I believe Riot as a gaming company has good intentions (Chinese overlords aside). I would just like to see the community on the boards here be more constructive with their complaints rather than rage quitting and going over 9000 cry baby about things. Like I said the game right now is not in a good spot, hopefully Riot can pull it together. Also, I can certainly understand why Riot takes a lot of the community feedback with a grain of salt. As someone else mentioned they have access to a lot of data that we can't see and I think because of that they like to see things play out as other changes are made to see where it goes. I think Riot is a good company, I know they have brought me a lot of fun over my time playing and I am thankful for it.

Xillarius1 votes

Riot never makes enough balance changes during the season and overwhelms players in each and every preseason, giving some people this mixed impression that riot never balances their game, and some people think that riot balances the game too much. Overall I just think it's bullshit that riot spends so much time on the preseasons and don't actually listen to their fan base when it comes to seasonal patches. I remember the patches leading up to the preseason having so little balance changes the only reason to download them was to fucking play the game.

Madra1 votes

League of Legends isn't a large game, it's just cumbersome. I think most people are just waiting for the next big thing.

Taarki1 votes

But minion block...

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