Listening(TM) The New Soon(TM)
Where to start with this? Riot's track record for the pass year has been pretty bad about taking community feedback, and actually iterating on it. The only examples in recent memory of GOOD feedback loops are the Lee Sin and Skarner changes. Lee Sin's are pretty self-explanatory, when your playerbase plays him like he is going out of style, you're going to be tentative going against them. And Skarner's poor initial rework, and solid albeit slow followup fixes was an excellent example of a designer at Riot taking his work and it's lack of success personally, and doing everything in his power to make it up to the Skarner fans. (Skarner threads totaling 644 pages here and here)
Everywhere else at Riot, is lacking in this passion. I'm not going to hammer certain individuals, or even whole departments because there are hundreds of threads here and thousands on the old forums that do it. The Lore retcon was a disaster, and the lack of communication before, during, and since is abysmal. For a company that prides itself on being "The most player-focused" the handling of the lore retcon was not only bad, but EA levels of bad.
Cass's rework, Karma's rework, Trundle and Skarner's retcons, Azir and Gnar release bugs, eCommerce's lack of real conversations about refunds and other features commonly requested to be addressed. The list goes on, and on, and on.
So here is where we stand, Riot claims they are listening to us but they aren't always going to act on our feedback. And you know what, this makes sense to an extent. To an extent as far as balance is concerned. Most of us aren't game designers, we don't know if Tristana's Q needs a 30% AS nerf or a 10% AS nerf. But when it comes to reworks, lifetime RP rewards, or Lore, why isn't our input taken into consideration?
Ghostcrawler: We have some experience making games and hopefully we've hired folks with some natural talent for game development, but at the end of the day players are going to decide if they play the game or not. To put it in a bland business sentiment, this product is for you. The biggest challenge here is that players rarely speak with one voice. It may seem to you that "everyone" wanted a champion changed in a certain way or even all the "X players" really liked a specific identity that we decided to change. It's just rarely that cut and dried. (And man, this job would be so much easier if it were.)
Hippalus: So we went back to the drawing board and came up with plans for scaling rewards that we also tested by survey. While those scored better with RP spenders, they were negatively received by the majority of the player base that hadn't spent money.
Tommy Gnox (but really the whole Narrative team): The point is simply that League of Legends constantly evolves, and, as it does, its narrative needs to evolve as well. We couldn’t be more thrilled to share this process with you and to hear what you have to say about it. More than anything, we want to rekindle the conversation with you. What stories do you want us to tell? What parts of Runeterra would you like to see?
My answer to this question is that Riot is Listening(TM). It's their way of covering their ass from the community's lashback, and all it does is piss us off more and more. "How can they be listening?" We ask, "It's not like they EVER listen to their community about things, right?" Well, that is because they're Listening(TM). They want to make you feel like you're heard, but not actually act upon it. It makes you feel better, and it allows them to ignore the feedback no matter how actionable it is. And when the community lashes out at Riot for not communicating or being silent, Riot cringes and pulls back thinking to themselves, "Why would I WANT to communicate with these people? They're vicious!" Well yes, they're going to be vicious when they feel systematically ignored.
#What Can Riot Do?
They can stop going silent for weeks on end. Sure, we get it, trying to respond to a 200 page megathread is tedious and often takes several hours out of your day to sift through feedback, BUT THAT IS PART OF YOUR JOB. A MOBA is a constantly shifting and adjusting platform, and as a developer it is your JOB to be constantly sifting through feedback and input and making adjustments yourself. If we, as players, were to look through the Redtracker and ignore any threads of random Rioters commenting on Community Creations or acknowledging bugs, we would be left with a number of substance posts per week that could be counted on one hand, maybe two if we're lucky.
If Riot wants to nip this Listening(TM) thing in the ass before it turns into another blemish on their company like Soon(TM), I'd suggest they start actually engaging the community in conversation. Stop ignoring, and start talking. You get paid to talk as well as develop, so perhaps this is the time that you need to come out and do the shitty part of your job that nobody likes, which is to take a beating because it is going to make you a better developer in the long-haul.
2 years since this thread, and I honestly can't tell how far we've come.
EDIT: for links, quotes, and final sentence.
