I remember someone requesting a feature to save threads that you've been working on; I just lost a rather lengthy post I had been working on, wondering if there were any updates on this? I remember some Reds saying there was some function in progress, or that they would like to add to Boards. Thanks!
Pendragon2 votesThis is something that we would love to do at some point if it makes it to the top of the list but is not actively being worked on.
MrBuffington1 votesThanks for the update Pendragon, guess I should break out the word processor more often :D
Daen1 votesWould it be possible for the community to have a glimpse at this list? It would be awesome to be able to see the thought process and direction behind the Boards.
Hyrum Graff1 votesWould it be possible to see this list, so we can weigh in on which features are higher priority for us, or do you think that would end up turning into the classic, "If we were coding instead of arguing about what's more important, we'd be done already" scenario?
Pendragon4 votesI'll bring up potentially doing a post like that- generally though at a high level we're working on
After that round of features - I'd expect (hope) that we're in a bit of a content overload place and we'll start focusing on things that allow people to narrow-down that overload which could include
disclaimer: everything I say is probably wrong and we'll likely do something completely different
Daen1 votesCool, thanks for the info. I'll be super excited to see subscriptions and tracking if/when they come out!
disclaimer: everything I say is probably wrong and we'll likely do something completely different
From my limited perspective of the community, it's usually a lot more interesting to get information that could turn out to be wrong than not to receive information at all. Thanks!
Pendragon4 votesYou have to remember that our words get used against us a lot. When you have millions of people read something you say - it's super easy for it to get picked apart. Maybe our minds changed from something we thought 6 months ago - and all of the sudden we're contradicting ourselves, maybe we've made a controversial decision for a good reason - but sometimes you just know the decision is controversial and it's going to be a bit of a battle. Or maybe some urgent issue came up and we have to slip back 2 weeks, 2 months or sometimes never - and all of the sudden we don't "keep promises".
The reality of software development is that you have a constant set of inputs and you have to re-prioritize very frequently when there's a new reality to contend with. Some of it you guys can see - maybe all of the sudden there's an exploit that allows people to spam, so we've gotta drop everything and deal with that. Sometimes though you can't see it - maybe the audit logs that we use to verify moderator actions stopped writing reliably and 40% of our actions aren't logged, or a caching function went down and put the live service at risk - even if there was no downtime.
We also have needs here - but as we roll these boards out to other languages and regions their players, (and moderation teams) sometimes will have needs that aren't relevant here, etc. It's a big constant balancing act
I personally like the over-communication, (and subsequently frequently make mistakes) approach but that just means you guys will have to give me some flexibility to say stupid stuff and not hold it against me too much.
I'd rather speak frequently and casually and have be given a hard time sometimes than force everything I say through a strict filter to think about all the ways it can be taken wrong
/2c
Banuvan2 votesYou have to remember that our words get used against us a lot. When you have millions of people read something you say - it's super easy for it to get picked apart. Maybe our minds changed from something we thought 6 months ago - and all of the sudden we're contradicting ourselves, maybe we've made a controversial decision for a good reason - but sometimes you just know the decision is controversial and it's going to be a bit of a battle. Or maybe some urgent issue came up and we have to slip back 2 weeks, 2 months or sometimes never - and all of the sudden we don't "keep promises". http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/site-feedback/ENHBMVrd-update-on-the-save-thread-feature?comment=00010002000000000000#toolbar-formatting-guide The reality of software development is that you have a constant set of inputs and you have to re-prioritize very frequently when there's a new reality to contend with. Some of it you guys can see - maybe all of the sudden there's an exploit that allows people to spam, so we've gotta drop everything and deal with that. Sometimes though you can't see it - maybe the audit logs that we use to verify moderator actions stopped writing reliably and 40% of our actions aren't logged, or a caching function went down and put the live service at risk - even if there was no downtime.
We also have needs here - but as we roll these boards out to other languages and regions their players, (and moderation teams) sometimes will have needs that aren't relevant here, etc. It's a big constant balancing act
I personally like the over-communication, (and subsequently frequently make mistakes) approach but that just means you guys will have to give me some flexibility to say stupid stuff and not hold it against me too much.
I'd rather speak frequently and casually and have be given a hard time sometimes than force everything I say through a strict filter to think about all the ways it can be taken wrong
/2c
I've been playing for a while Pendragon and I remember you from way back when. Hell, I even watched your stream quite frequently.
Let me first say that I understand exactly what you are saying. Being prior military you learn to understand that sometimes shit happens and priorities change.
The issue that most people have with Riot is the fact that they rarely, if ever, follow up when things get delayed or canceled. Go look at the stickies in GD about team builder and the instability of the servers. When was the last update for the community?
I'm not saying divulge confidential business information but explain what you can. In today's world people are used to having more information instead of less information. To deny customers that information really ticks them off and only hurts the credibility of those that work at that company.
Individually there are some of you that have been fairly open. As a whole though Riot just does NOT communicate with the community like it used to. Yes, there are more players now so communication is more difficult and on a much larger scale.
I hate to say it but you guys kinda brought that on yourselves by allowing the forums to be unmoderated for so long.
Pendragon4 votesThe nature of prioritization means that we are doing is explicit - and what we are doing is mostly implicit. By choosing actively to do one particular thing we're passively choosing not to do other things. That doesn't necessarily mean always that something is "cancelled" it just means that it could be in limbo until we explicitly decide the next thing that we're doing.
Maybe something seemed super important - and something became more important and it took second priority, then then it happened again and again and again. It's not necessarily that it was "cancelled" it just didn't make it to the top of the list.
Second thing - and I think it's not great to be in this position but it's tough emotionally to say something you know isn't going to be received well no matter what your intentions behind the message are, so as humans naturally we're not as great at that as we certainly could be.
As many folks know who have been playing awhile - I've had to deliver tough messages before and the weeks/months of rage/hate/death threats/whatever because we had to make a hard decision that really made 2% (of 70m is still over a million people) lose their minds - who wants to do that?
Now - there are some areas where it doesn't matter what the reason is and we just have to get great at making sure the feedback loop is solid. Downtime and outages, security, privacy, account management, etc. the times we do we fail there - there's just no excuse for non-communication.
Other things - feature prioritization, design rationale, lore? It's a little bit more of a grey line. I've gone through the cycle of anger enough times that I I think I look at it petty rationally these and hopefully I can separate out the meaningful feedback from the blind aggression but that sense takes a long time to develop.
Banuvan1 votesYou have to understand is that the nature of prioritization means that we are doing is explicit - and what we are doing is mostly implicit. By choosing actively to do one particular thing we're passively choosing not to do other things. That doesn't necessarily mean always that something is "cancelled" it just means that it could be in limbo until we explicitly decide the next thing that we're doing.
Maybe something seemed super important - and something became more important and it took second priority, then then it happened again and again and again. It's not necessarily that it was "cancelled" it just didn't make it to the top of the list.
Second thing - and I think it's not great to be in this position but it's tough emotionally to say something you know isn't going to be received well no matter what your intentions behind the message are, so as humans naturally we're not as great at that as we certainly could be.
As many folks know who have been playing awhile - I've had to deliver tough messages before and the weeks/months of rage/hate/death threats/whatever because we had to make a hard decision that really made 2% (of 70m is still over a million people) lose their minds - who wants to do that?
Now - there are some areas where it doesn't matter what the reason is and we just have to get great at making sure the feedback loop is solid. Downtime and outages, security, privacy, account management, etc. the times we do we fail there - there's just no excuse for non-communication.
Other things - feature prioritization, design rationale, lore? It's a little bit more of a grey line. I've gone through the cycle of anger enough times that I I think I look at it petty rationally these and hopefully I can separate out the meaningful feedback from the blind aggression but that sense takes a long time to develop.
Oh I remember the days when you were in the smiting role on the forums and would put people down. I can't imagine the feedback you received.
I didn't just say canceled in my post. I had delayed in there as well. Like I said, I understand that things get put on the back burner. It's the nature of business for that to happen.
My biggest gripe is the lack of communication for the vital areas that truly matter in the long run. As you said, downtime, outages, security etc are all vital to your customer base. Those are what is important to me and most other people.
I dont' care when new champs come out. I don't care who gets a new skin or who doesn't. Lore used to be important to me but i'm a fantasy nerd who really likes that stuff. The total degredation and lack of lore over the years made me realize that it wasn't a priority so not to expect it. Then the bombshell that was dropped today well, you can see the reactions and i'm sure Riot is reading them.
The problem Riot is facing now is the game is getting to an unplayable level. I'm not talking DDOS attacks or anything like that because that is outside of your guys control. I'm talking about the fact that I haven't moved for 5 years. I have had the same internet provider in the same location for 5 years. Nothing has changed on my end other than I have come to be able to afford better internet than I had 5 years ago.
Over the time I have been playing ( I started in 2010 while I was on leave after coming back from Iraq ) my ping has doubled from 40-50 to 80-90. Over the last year the lag and ping spikes have gotten worse. I have watched Riot blame everything under the sun except for themselves.
This is a very serious issue. Today I got home from work and tried to play a custom game to check out the new Caitlyn skin. In a custom game my ping was spiking to upwards of 500 and staying there making the game unplayable. I don't dare go into a ranked game.
With this becoming a progressively worse and worse problem the communication from Riot has gotten less and less. Updates are fewer and fewer and there is no light at the end of the tunnel so to speak.
Daen1 votesI will preface this with an apology; this is a ridiculously long reply, and I'm sorry for that.
You have to remember that our words get used against us a lot. When you have millions of people read something you say - it's super easy for it to get picked apart.
Definitely. It's pretty annoying to watch players do that, especially when there's clearly good intent behind the message.
That being said, the flip side is that there will always be a vocal minority trying to tear everything that is ever said by a Rioter apart. Nothing will really change that, but lowering the amount of transparency can have the opposite effect of what might be intended. An uninformed playerbase is more likely to try to pick out faults, since they are potentially unaware of why certain decisions may or may not happen and just assume outcomes.
A great example would be the people that complain about Riot being greedy. Is Riot greedy? Of course not, but they have to make money. With clear policies and information around eCommerce, it is likely that sort of complaint would be considered baseless or ridiculous by the vast majority of the community rather than people getting sucked into the negativity spiral of that vocal minority.
I personally like the over-communication, (and subsequently frequently make mistakes) approach but that just means you guys will have to give me some flexibility to say stupid stuff and not hold it against me too much.
Honestly, as long as communication isn't perceived as out of touch by the community, things tend to go pretty smoothly. Rioters make mistakes all the time, but it's when those mistakes make the community feel as though the response is canned or not actually addressing anything that people get frustrated.
I'd rather speak frequently and casually and have be given a hard time sometimes than force everything I say through a strict filter to think about all the ways it can be taken wrong
I'm not sure if you have to choose between those two options, necessarily. Many of us, especially the ones that are truly passionate about the Boards, understand that software development is all about change. Hell, I've experienced this myself (albeit with a much smaller community, around a thousand people). Really well-crafted responses from people in perceived positions of power, even if they don't necessarily match the opinions of the playerbase, tend to be very well received.
TL;DR: It sucks that people read way too far into comments. For those of us that are reasonable, it's really frustrating that this distinct minority is able to influence interaction so much, and a lot of us really do understand that Rioters are human and that mistakes are just part of daily interaction.
I would love to see what might happen if, at least for a little while, you guys working on the boards could trust us not to tear you apart. I know it's hard, and we as a community have a lot of work to do to make that possible. We have this tendency to beat on Riot for what hasn't happened rather than commend you for what awesomeness has happened or what's being worked on right in front of us, and that shit is not OK.
kayakninja1 votesWith as much as I've seen Rioters stuff taken out of context or flat out misquoted, I'm not surprised they're gun shy at this point. IronStylus even has a big old image macro he throws into his posts whenever he makes something that looks like a prediction.
EMOFRATPARTY1 votesI totally concur with the idea! I know it's been around for a while, but it would be great to see this implemented.
In the meantime, I've just used Google Docs to write my posts and then copy them over when completed. I learned my lesson after the first post was lost.
MrBuffington1 votesyea, I just made a post about Trist I had to re-do since I hit backspace, which, instead of deleting the letter I was trying to, sent my browser back two pages. I usually just open MS word when I know I'm making a long post, I just didn't realize with this post that I was going to take so much space.
EMOFRATPARTY2 votesYeah, it's a good idea to get into the habit anyways. It's happened to the best of us haha.