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Overall Disappointment for the past year.

Shiralune·10/17/2013, 1:01:36 AM·208 votes·15,083 views

I miss the Riot that used to do small things, like free RP over Christmas, or bonus sales for their holiday skins (Yes, they had it. That's how I got Silent Night).

I miss the Riot that was clear with what they were doing. But I guess as companies grow, so does the fog.

Nowadays, we have a Riot that increases skin prices for popular old skins, while making goals that are dropped within 2 months. You know how they said 1350 won't be a common price tier? Ha.

We have a Riot that focuses more on esports, less on anything else. We went from themed Summoner Rift maps to one themed map (when we had to decide between Winter and Harrowing) to NO new maps.

We went from lots of Harrowing/Snowdown skins to this year's 1. Don't even try to tell me Officer Vi, who seems like a part of their new "officer" lineup, is a Harrowing skin.

And I'll be willing to bet that when Riot releases the old skins back out, they will ALL be full price. You wanted that Ice Tobaggan Corki? Enjoy; 1820 rp for a new model and that's it, no price reductions. BUT IT'S PERFECTLY OKAY TO RAISE OLD SKIN PRICES.

I understand the company is growing. I understand with growth comes a larger need for money to sustain the company. In the end, though, the price that comes with the growth seems too steep.

I want to see more openness. The Riot before the Ambassador fiasco.

I want to see more effort into the events. Not half-baked ones like the Frejlord one where we couldn't even see the winner in the end. Edit: It was half-baked in the sense we didn't get to feel the sense of a victory/loss. Was there an announcement? Honestly, it's hard to remember, because the event began strong, then... just faded.

And most importantly, I want Riot to stick to their word. Like, don't turn back on promises. Or if you do, acknowledge it. Say you understand you're turning back on something because you couldn't hold it. It's better than shoving it under a rug.

I'm not going to quit or anything. This is just your average poster, playing for more than 3 years now, giving a simple feedback in the form of his disappointment.

Here's hoping you guys will be the first company to listen to it.

Posting this here, because apparently there's a chance it may get looked at it here more.

126 Comments

SmokingPuffin10/17/2013, 1:29:37 AM48 votes

I feel bad about the current volume of skins being produced. I do love the quality level of most of the product, but I think Riot is forgetting that relatively simple to produce skins at a lower price point is also interesting to people. I also think that the well isn't close to dry on these sorts of simple skin designs. I absolutely love my Monarch Kog'Maw, for example.

I genuinely wonder where all the resource at Riot is going. The game has blown up huge in the last couple years. I get that Riot is spending more effort on each skin, but it doesn't seem like any more man hours are going into skins. Champion design does seem to be pushing more unique mecahnics and more complexity, but is that really not offset by the smaller number of champions per year? It feels like Riot could be doing more with the game, given how much excitement and buzz LoL has generated recently.

I wish that the very cool cinematic content that was released this year would have been more lore-oriented. Why is Twisted Fate fighting Fiddlesticks and not Graves? How about some content about the Noxian invasion of Ionia?

On the positive side, I absolutely loved the comic book thing for Udyr and the Jinx music video is totally awesome. I think that the Freljord event was a good first step into that sort of content. I love our spiffy new ARAM map.

Bulletgasm10/17/2013, 2:45:18 AM21 votes

This is one of my favorite posts as far as addressing the issues the playerbase is having with Riot while not sounding like a screaming, entitled child. Kudos, and I share the sentiment. I was hoping for a slew of skins to grab a hold of, as a very loyal customer that has spent lots of money on this game, and am saddened at the small amount.

I don't know if it will ever return to the "glory days" of yore, but I hope this is a lull and not the first step in a downward transformation into the Wal-Mart of MOBAs.

Zoram10/17/2013, 2:26:03 AM20 votes

I agree I liked their rewarding players for being good or giving compensation for server melt downs. They haven't pressed the button in ages when the server explodes to stop ranked queue and loss forgive anyone affected.

they raised prices on some skins and lowered them on a slew of others, you are cherry picking information. the 1350RP price tier sucks I agree, I still don't like dragon tamer lulu. However the zyra skin kind of takes a lot. They simply are trying hard on a few skins, and thus they are higher prices for more interesting content.

This IS a competitive game, they've always tried to balance things so that top tier play isn't ruined by stagnation and must pick/bans, however I admit, certain champions have kits that are just broken and need fixing like rengar and everyone with a transformation.

I am also confused as to the lack of interesting harrowing skins. While the Vi skin isn't bad, it doesn't fit the harrowing/halloween feel at all. nonetheless it IS a harrowing skin. While 2 is few, it is a zyra skin and it is impressive.

We have yet to see any snowdown showdown skins it isn't even november yet.

You are making a wild assumption about pricing on old content being re-released that was Limited Time. It isn't really good to assume things.

Riot is really really new and doing decently well. Do you remember when there wasn't enough server capacity on normal days back in pre-season 1? I do, those days sucked. I still played despite that. The real outrage is that different regions exist now and get different things when there are server issues. Yes, the 1k RP and silent night sona thing in Korea was totally unwarrented, and Europe deserved something for similar issues. When you look at valve doing DOTA 2, they just simply already had the infrastructure, man power, and money to do it. They hit the ground running. Riot has literally started from nothing but their knowledge to make everything for this. I almost always take their mistakes with a grain of salt because of that. When I don't I usually step back later and look at things again. Its the right thing to do. However I must say 1k RP never forget.

You want riot to be more open? They just did an AMA...They are on track, they have always posted on forums, we have the PBE. Riot is open. When we found the 5v5 all champions thing everyone thought we would be banned, but then they said, no its okay for now, don't worry about the TOS on this one this time. That was cool of them and then they even expounded that they were going to start doing a thing where new game modes for fun like ARAM will come, but they will be swapping them out to keep it fresh. They opened up.

Lissandra won the Freljord event....Also how was it half baked? It was Fully baked and then frosted.

want to be specific about this whole promises thing? I haven't seen a "promise" in forever.

For my opinion, I find that riot has had a shift in focus in season 3. They went aggresive on starting item balance, and also about items in general. Now we have more choices and unique build paths. There changes caused huge issues, some I think were foolish mistakes, league of cleavers was just dumb. However overall it kept us happy after that was patched out. The only thing is that because of their need to focus on events and end of season stuff and championships work has been a bit stale. Again that comes down to man power.

art teams have ramped up their production value and that is why there is less content in that area in part. the other part is visual updates, which is re-creating the champion from the ground up, and then all their skins. Updating content doesn't make as much money as making new content, but it needed to be done.

On that front same with the rework team. Remember eve 2012? We finally got her changed, eve still is sort of broken because you have to pink ward to see her coming, but at least she is able to be balanced. I feel bad for these guys because they essentially have to make a kit, but it has to be like this old one that is flawed, but still fit a champion theme.

Arc Noir10/17/2013, 1:14:22 AM16 votes

Yeah I've been kind of dissappointed too, it's less outrage and anger though. It's kind of just a massive sigh, since back in the day the company seemed so cool and different from other companies. It felt like it was a project of love and they appreciated all the fans and feedback... now not so much.

Eyrgos10/17/2013, 3:21:32 AM15 votes

I think Riot frustrates its players more than it pleases them.

E.G. Vi gets a skin before Diana (Vi was released 4 months later...)

Alice Twilight10/17/2013, 1:52:42 AM13 votes

Dat 975 cost on pink taric... seems lagit

RiotIronStylus10/18/2013, 4:41:54 AM11 votes

I honestly can't comment on prices, promises, and certain other things simply because I have no context on those. However, I think the transparency thing is valid. I've come to love transparency and visibility as my time here has progressed. I like knowing how teams I work with are doing on how it might relate to the team I'm on, and I get frustrated when that visibility drops, so I can understand the feeling.

I'd like us to be open, responsive, and agile when it comes to these situations that cause any sort of dismay. It's a big task to do so however, and personally, I'm not sure we can do it effectively in the old forum format. So hey, here we go with this approach over here. It's also a big challenge for the developers inside Community itself. It's a huuuuuuge audience. I do not envy their task! They are braver souls than I when it comes to figuring out how to best serve communicating with the player base.

Personal accountability is a thing too. I know I haven't been around much simply because I've been busy. Lots of people have been. It's been a crazy year, and a good year, but really really busy. Certain forum-goers have dialed back because of internal tasks or things shuffling around. Any number of reasons honestly. Lots of the people you've see post en masse in the past have actually moved up the ladder to fairly prominent roles, and have entire teams to manage or different responsibilities.

It's happened to me as well as I've stepped onto Relaunch. We're a small team, with a lot to do, and it's taken me away from context on certain aspects of skins and champion development. As some of us float back and forth to different aspects of content creation, we loose info on what we might have posted a lot about in the past. Things change.

However, agreed. I think maybe we can do a better job at transparency. This forum will help test that out. Believe me. We want to talk about the cool things we're making. We want to message properly. And we want to engage positively with the player base.

MadLock10/17/2013, 2:50:13 AM10 votes

I love Riot as a company compared to others. But the way they are handling their PR is downright maddening. If I didn't enjoy the game so much I would have left.

Mr Bipolar Bear10/17/2013, 7:26:21 AM10 votes

My biggest problem is no more end of season skins to thank us for playing and supporting them for the season...I don't want a 1350 quality skin just something to say i was here in season 2/3 and supported riot back then.

Vo0d0ochild10/17/2013, 2:42:45 AM8 votes

Higher amount of upvotes = no riot posts. Negative feedpack too hard to handle

Verandure10/17/2013, 1:50:32 AM7 votes

Riot claimed that a good amount of the new skins in this new pricing paradigm would be retextures in the 750 range -- no new particles, no new vfx, no new voice overs.