Will Riot eventually submit to the community, or will their pride be the end of League?

Zarvanis·6/3/2016, 2:30:24 PM·50 votes·1,753 views

EDIT: I've thought about it quite a bit, and I feel I may have been a bit too hard on Riot. "Pride" is probably not the best word to use in retrospect.

Let's end the discussion just by saying that Riot needs to be more open with it's community. They need to give the people more of an idea of what they're doing, and what it takes to do it. It could be far more difficult and stressful than we give them credit for.

Or not. Again, we don't know.

I'm starting to get the feeling that Riot would rather let League burn and die than give the players what they want. This is exactly what happened with Blizzard and StarCraft II. They ignored the community, and the game died. There's a reason why Pride is considered the most dangerous of the 7 Deadly Sins.

At least from and outsider's perspective, it seems that Riot is only accepting statistics that reinforce their confirmation biases.

I'd like to clarify that I'm not claiming that League will die anytime soon. The game could continue to shamble forward for several more years before Tencent decides it's not worth the trouble anymore.

There are countless board post where people with a stronger understanding of the game than I explain what's wrong with it far better than I ever could, so I'll just leave this with a question:

Will Riot submit, or go down with the ship?

I now foresee a stream of down-votes from Dynamic Queue defenders and people who are just sick of listening to people talk about this.

EDIT: Another clarification. I'm not saying the game will be shut down completely, but that the competitive scene will shrivel up and "die". Of course casuals will stick around for many years to come regardless. It's the same with StarCraft II. People still play it, but it has no where near as many players as it once did.

23 Comments

Decrit6/3/2016, 3:36:11 PM9 votes

I think it is not a matter of pride. Actually, i hardly think it is ever a matter of pride, there is not such a thing in the game industry.

Simply put, players might be wrong. Or, if they are right, they are not right enough. What does it mean right enough? That the thought process done by a certain part of the community might make sense and might be of value, but that value is unintresting to the developer, or it is intresting but it is not a priority. This is not pride, this is having a view, a direction, and you can' t let it go astray by having it changed continuosly from sources that do not follow said view and just share personal opinions.

I think the problem here is the opposite, if there is any. Is the community that wants to coherce and have power over those who have it. The nerd that sits on its lazy ass would LOVE to dictate what a company should and should not do, to shape it as much seems fitting to it, regardless of what other players want beside the restricted view it has ( because there is no player that can have a wide and global view of the things, barely does the company itself sometimes!).

This might sound old-fashioned in the era where internet makes everyone a critic, but i honestly think that a company knows best what is the best thing to do. Simply, if many changes lead a game to be something i don' t like anymore, i pick up my stuff and leave if it is not worth the time. It is sad to see a game you loved gone, but such is the nature of online games - they are everchanging, and you can almost always expect them to turn into something you don' t like just due to the sheer amount of changes done to it.

PS: personally, loving the changes so far. hope i did not sound unreasonabily onesided.

Illiad6/3/2016, 2:36:20 PM6 votes

League isnt going to die, people can complain about the queue til the cows come home, they can agree with queue's til the sun goes up, League will always have a large following, 2 years from now, they will have changed even more, and still have a large following. You seem to underestimate the amount of people who actually play this game for fun

YordleJay6/3/2016, 3:04:30 PM3 votes

They've done what the community has wanted DOZENS of times.

Terozu6/3/2016, 7:04:17 PM2 votes

The most dangeroua of the seven sins is envy not pride

Lycanoon6/3/2016, 7:06:35 PM2 votes

http://www.quoteslike.com/images/794/majin-vegeta-s-pride-animated-gif-gifs-gifsoup-com-mJPxdr-quote.gif

Riot and their pride...be like vegeta's when facing goku... [zombie-brand-facepalm]

Azure Hamster6/3/2016, 7:32:25 PM1 votes

Anyone who thinks Riot is too proud to listen to the userbase hasn't been paying attention. It's the usual vocal minority who don't understand the pressures of maintaining a massively popular game. Riot is as good as Blizzard at maintaining a great game over a long period of time.

Caitlyn

M0b1us6/4/2016, 4:07:45 AM1 votes

They are going to see a rapid drop in players, then they might fix things after a year or so. By then it will just be a shadow of its former power. Everything has an end. 7 years running continuously is pretty solid. Even Starcraft took a break before SC2 was released.