Why isn't Riot Games doing this?

MonkeyMadness·3/2/2017, 1:55:42 AM·3 votes·692 views

So I'd like to share a little story about an experience I just had: I was playing Overwatch the other day, and all of a sudden, my connection to the game servers went completely bat shit. I continuously disconnected and reconnected for the remainder of the game (obviously our team lost). After the game ended, I reset my router, rebooted my computer and restarted the game, and my connection seemed sound. However, upon attempting to hop back into a competitive match, I found that I was suspended for the next few hours for leaving too many games. For some reason, because I kept disconnecting and reconnecting continuously, the game counted each leave as a separate event, resulting in roughly 10-15 leaves in a short window, which would normally justify such a suspension if not for the fact that this only occurred during a SINGLE game (note: I do not leave games normally, so I had not incurred penalties previously). Now, if this was League, I'd still be waiting for my support ticket to be answered, and when they finally got around to it, it would read something like

"we do not tolerate [insert toxic behavior here] and your [insert punishment type here] is entirely justified based on trends we have seen on your account (the evidence of which we will never show you). If you continue to [insert toxic behavior here], your account will be permanently banned. I will consider this matter closed."

However, because Blizzard is a company formed of actual people with actually measurable amounts of humanity, I submitted a request for live chat support. Within minutes, I was talking to an actual human at Blizzard about my specific issues. Not a single canned response was given, and after explaining the situation and after a couple of minutes of verifying my complaint, my ban was lifted. I was also very nicely explained the mechanism by which the punishments escalate and how to generate good standing for my account if I did incur penalties in the future (something that Riot Games actually refuses to do, and even has the gall to JUSTIFY not explaining).

My question is this: why the fuck does Riot not understand the importance of player support??? These automated responses are literally the fucking worst. I have had many legitimate issues with this game, and each and every time I file a ticket, I wait a week for an entirely canned response that simply forwards me to some FAQ page that has literally no answers for my particular issue. Why does Riot treat us like this? It's not like they can't afford to have a live chat support (in fact, I would be willing to bet that Riot Games has more money to put into League than Blizzard has to put into any of its individual games). So what's up Riot? Are you just that lazy, or do you just care that little?

10 Comments

RogueWill3/2/2017, 2:15:18 AM5 votes

The short answer is they are to big and they can afford to let players go as their fame will attract more.

Support was much personalized when the company was small, back when I started wasn't uncommon for support to go with you through the whole installation process and you could trade conversation back and forth yo solve technical difficulties. The company was relatively small and well...they needed the players (I started playing on early season 2 before the big boom on players and the standardized meta)

Now they are just too big and having the same kind of support woudl be too expensive and not very cost efficient and thus they don't do it anymore. Over watch is still a new game, wait a few years and see if the support continue to be like that (most likely it won't)

Handy Sandy 3/2/2017, 2:07:23 AM2 votes

Well a bunch of ppl asking for their account to be unbanned would be like

Riven "FUK U AND UR MOM $#%#$^!@#$ UNBAN ME NOW RIOT"

Garen "Excuse me, could we talk about t-"

Riven "STP FKING IDIOT ROIT BROKEN CHAMP NERF TEEMO U SHOULD BE ABLE TO LEAVE THISGAME IS UNPLAYABLE"

Garen"I'm just gonna go ahead and consider this case clo-"

Riven "FKING SUPPORT WITH SMITE OFC I LEFT MANY TROLLS EVERYWHER THIS GAME SUCKS UNBAN ME NOW!!!"

Garen "Oh nvm let me go ban them instead of you, you're fine now."

o0O Madoka O0o3/2/2017, 9:05:25 PM1 votes

League tickets used to be answered by real humans and non-generic response too, but the league has grown much bigger, and has much larger active player base. Things have changed ever since. Right now the league has more active players than blizzard, and most importantly, blizzard's games are mostly pay to play, meaning every player is a customer, and they will have different altitude.

I have not dealt with Riot support much recently, my last interaction was about 2 years and a half ago, and that was before the bots were implemented. I got a definitely not pre-crafted response in a short time.

My rage is fairly controlled to myself most of the time (1 in 500 game rage for me?). So I'm not quite sure how bad they are right now.

How bad was your last interaction?