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Critisism = Hate. Discussion About Riot.

Dextix LT·7/4/2016, 6:36:26 AM·40 votes·1,573 views

Greetings everyone, there are currently many discussion brewing about Riot and them as a company, but what got me is that critisism and discontent is marked as hate that should be ignored by some people.

The thread that pushed me to make this one (Probably wont get that much attention).

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/miscellaneous/1Lt3fVVI-league-ranked-overwatch-ranked

It starts as a discussion about dynamic q and comparison with LOL and Blizzard in that department. However over the many edits OP expresses clearly, that only positive suggestions should be made and that everyone else who disagrees is a hater who wants to see the game die.

This has bothered me for a long time now. So Lets discuss community and that critisism is not hate.

  1. Forums are not the entire LOL community. This is an argument often used to silence board members and to say that they are wrong because the majority don't even visit the boards. I disagree with this assesment. Boards, Youtube, Facebook, Reddit, these are the places that the Harcore LOL playerbase resides in. Those are the places that people who actually like the game go to. Because if they didn't care, they would just simply play the game.

At least to me, people who simply care and don't go to boards are unimportant. The same way if an election happens and people don't vote, they are unimportant. They want to play the game, but, don't really care about its innerworking as much as those who visit the forums.

  1. Critisism, is not hate. As you can see in the linked thread, the person states clearly that critisism is hate and should be ignored. He also states that Riot should not ever interact with the boards because again, "Hate". What he states is that we all have to be positive and nothing else. This kind of mentality, is wrong.

Critisism and praise, are both important, and they are earned.

As an example we can use Riot Repertoir and some other balance Rioters. When Riot Repertoir came and asked people about the garen rework and then worked closely with them to create the garen that is today. He was treated as a messiah, he still is. He symbolizes what a Rioter should be. He did his job with the help of the community despite hitting some worse patches. Other simmilar Rioters are also praise, upvoted and liked when they come and tell everyone their decisions and why they took them. They also respond to critisism given and ignore the real hate that is sometimes thrown at them.

Then we can look at what happened with Mordekaiser and CertainlyT, who is a polarizing person to the community. As he is notorious for being set on his vision and creating extremelly inbalanced designs. Just like Repertoir, he came into the boards, and just like Repertoir, he received critisism. Unlike Repertoir however, he ingored all critisism and tried to explain his vision. He was arrogant and treating players as if they didn't understand the game at all after that, unlike repertoir, he left, and did not come here for a long time. As such, he is not a liked persona. But whose fault is that?

Riot, with its decisions, earns both praise and critisism, hate too. However, outright hate is rare. More often than not it is always praise or critisism. Art, Sound, Narrative, these teams are constantly praised and rarely critisized when they make good decisions. The same is with the balance and creations teams .

  1. Boards are not a hatefull troll filled entity. It is a place where the harcore playerbase is, those who care, those who argue and those who want the game to prosper. They don't want the game dead. Riot however takes bad decisions so the community talks against them. What i cant understand is such a broad brush that we are painted with, just because we are discontent.

As a reminder, the same things happened in WOW and Runescape. 2 Sides clashed. Those who disagreed about the direction of those games were called haters despite the valid critisism they provided. What happened? Well, those games are now but shadows of what they were and could have been.

Because they did not listen to their playerbases.

Riot should not be babied. They should not be praised for everything they do. They should work and be praised and critisized on their merits, which currently are not good.

Critisism does not = Hate.

Have a good day.

15 Comments

Leetri7/4/2016, 10:52:30 AM14 votes

There is however a difference between "I don't think this idea will work because..." and "omg u r so fuckin dumb this is the most retarded idea ever". Both are criticisms, but one is constructive while the other is destructive. Sadly, a LOT of the comments on the boards are the latter type and would be classified as hate.

Ryzing2Diamond7/4/2016, 7:57:57 AM7 votes

Though you're right that Criticism does not = Hate, you must also recognise that Hate does not = Criticism.

oh that zed7/4/2016, 6:40:43 AM3 votes

Critisism doesn't = hate, but critisism is mainly negative, otherwise there wouldn't be much of it. there's only so much critisism a human can take, and since alot of it seems to highlight negative aspects or whatever subject it's about, people tend to mistake it for hate. Some people are also just weak hearted and can't take an opinion unless it's something positive. tis human nature

UnwardiI7/4/2016, 7:19:53 AM1 votes

I mean, when I spout off about things on here, it's definitely hate filled.

I hate this game, I hate this community and the only reason I continue to play it is that I massively enjoy wrecking people's day with Jarvan.

VanixAtTheDisco7/5/2016, 12:54:57 AM1 votes

While I agree that criticism is not supposed to mean hate, a vocal majority of people on these forums DO seem to have serious contempt over Riot. I had friends quit League, not because of the game, but specifically they didn't like what Riot was doing to the game. It's always about Riot. Nobody believes that losing interest in a game is a thing.

My brother recently 'quit' league (considered coming back though), and after showing him the Ryze update, instead of being excited that an old champion got a visual update, he mocked Riot for giving Ryze another rework. Riot literally releases something free to the game that is intended to be an improvement, and people disregard it because they don't have solo queue or they don't have sandbox mode or Riot didn't nerf Azir or delete Yasuo forever.

It's okay to criticize. New champions in particular are definitely worthy of criticism, but the problem is this community will take something that one department did and flip it around and blame the entirety of Riot for releasing something "stupid" when they could've had their precious replay system that was promised 5 years ago. Too many people don't understand the way Riot is set up, or how Game Design companies are structured, so they assume that Riot is out to steal money when they release 4 new skins, when in reality, the department involved with those skins were working on them while other departments are working on other future aspects.

Also... we aren't in control of Riot. Yes, I know we can all leave and destroy their playerbase and their game, so in that regard we ARE in control, but we aren't in control of their decision making. Too many people here think that their balance decisions matter or that they somehow deserve something from Riot. The truth is is that if Riot implemented everything that was suggested by the playerbase, the game would be far worse. There are so many things that need to be looked into before implementing things, and people forget that there is more to Game Design than making skins and changing premade permissions in ranked. They have specialized teams for that reason.

Edit: I forgot to mention... the friends that I had that quit league; Yeah, they quit because one of them was pissed that Riot's lore was too shitty (in the middle of the lore-update). And that anger snowballed from there until both friends absolutely despised Riot.

Dealth7/5/2016, 1:01:44 AM1 votes

A lot of things boards complain about are completely unjustified or flat out wrong. The hate against Dynamic queue holds some water but everything else on here is just people posting rhetorical questions in the title (example: "Is it just me or is this game just not fun anymore") and then blaming Riot. There will never, EVER, be any constructive discussion in the comments. Whoever agrees gets up voted whoever disagrees gets down voted. This is because the majority of LoL players have not developed proper communication skills (considering they spend most of their time on the computer, and are usually in their teens). They don't know how to hold civil discussions. Just my two cents though.

EDIT: And ironically, the people who post in the meme section are typically much, much smarter than those who post in the gameplay section.

XIII Vanitas7/5/2016, 11:38:38 AM1 votes

Wrong. When the banning of tyler1 happened, the boards were outrageously downvoting Riot Socrates' post. Does that mean that the overwhelming majority of the community liked tyler1 and wanted him in the game? No.

Boards aren't really representative of anything, considered the fact that there are millions of players from all over the world.