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Issues with riot and the community

Fisk·8/6/2015, 4:12:57 PM·5 votes·1,366 views

Intro- This is really long I know, but I feel like its important and worth the read. I would like to hear where people agree and disagree with me and would love to see a rioters thoughts on this. Sorry for the wall of text.

Throughout my time playing league of legends I have spent an extensive amount of time on league of legends forums. I've been here since it was the OLD General Discussion (most toxic place on earth), I saw the boards created and I've spent a lot of time on the subreddit and I have watched riot and the community interact, observing issues that have constantly come up as friction between players and creators. Largely I have found three core issues that appear fairly consistently in interactions between rioters and players.

First players who are (rightly) upset by major changes tend to lack constructive feedback with helpful pros and cons of changes, balances and the gameplay of league of legends. Good feedback will generally have the things about a change that are positive or helpful (such as darius gaining power on his ult) but will state the things they dislike (thematically the way its created doesn't feel quite right, for example). This type of review leads to rioters actually getting the feedback on reworks THEY WANT so that they can understand why we the community actually don't like even beneficial reworks. This is helpful to them and they go out of there way to listen to this type of feedback rather than the classic witch hunting that is here on the boards (which I will say more about in my second point). There is way to much pitchforking rather than open and constructive conversation and we as a community need to end this paradigm of thought. Nothing good ever comes of it. Only angry players and scared rioters.

Now second, please don't witch hunt rioters or riot as a whole (at least not as much). On the boards threads sayings "wow riot" or "why riot is ruining league of legends" or something similar is not uncommon at all. There is no reason to act this way. Witch hunting is a serious issue because it makes rioters not want to talk to the community. It makes them not want to listen to the garbling witch hunting a-holes with pitchforks. Its upsetting to rioters (seriously even cruel people on the internet cause stress and anxiety, ask any pro/someone in the limelight), irrational of the community and even if there is a good reason behind it it doesn't encourage any sort of change from riot or the community. It only creates distance between riot and the community as rioters are afraid of player feedback and players feel like riot doesn't listen. This is a vicious cycle and it really causes huge issues between riot and the community.

Finally my third and final issue, riot does need to take players more seriously. I understand that this is their game and if they want a certain change to go through THEN THEY CERTAINLY DO HAVE THE POWER TO DO THAT. We the players cannot always get what we want and that's ok, we probably do not know champion balance as well as riot. That said, it would be nice if riot would be less afraid to rollback changes that they had created that players STRONGLY disliked. They do this to a degree, this is seen with a rioter working with a garen main just recently to find out his core issues with the rework and that's great but, some changes should not have gone through. Certain things like olafs rework, Cassiopeia's rework, karma and trundles reworks and a few others (but no guys, not veigars rework I strongly feel that one was in the right direction), while an improvement for overall game health and in a lot of cases the champions health felt like they detracted from the champions identity or gameplay in ways that made important and loved elements of that champion irrelevant (rip karmas fans).

Riot has without a doubt improved this over recent years but honestly I would like to see a few more "our bad guys, we will come up with some thing new" or "we will work with players until we feel like we have something we like" type of posts. I wouldn't even mind if some rioters friended players that main the champion and pm'd them (with their consent obviously) about what they like/disliked and wanted out of changes. I feel like that would have been especially great for Cassiopeia. Again (and I cannot stress this enough) riot has improved greatly on this, with transparency posts, the garen rework, and the rioter to community posts they have been creating. I value those and I think we should as a community as well. But that doesn't mean certain things can't improve.

Tl;Dr I'm not here to pass blame. I'm not here to crucify anyone. I'm here to remind everyone that it should feel like a positive collaboration between rioters and community members so we can all get what we want. Riot has definitely been improving on this front, but should recognize player feedback more. But also its up to us a community to provide constructive feedback and avoid witch hunting anyone so the boards feel like a safe place for everyone to throw their ten cents into the discussion. Thanks for reading.

Edit- clarity and readability changes

10 Comments

Trylobyte8/6/2015, 4:38:38 PM2 votes

Much better, thank you. Having a structure makes it easier to read.

The two issues you raise are intertwined. Players tend to give Riot a lot of garbage feedback and irrational hatred, which causes Riot to ignore the players, which leads to genuinely unpopular changes being pushed through, which leads to more legitimate anger and irrational vitriol. The way I see it, this isn't on Riot's end to stop, though - It's on the players and the community as a whole to learn to communicate in a way that doesn't resemble a screeching pack of howler monkeys, and to censure the ones that do get out of line. Riot has a pretty good history (for a company their size) of at least acknowledging rational discussions, debates, and arguments so long as they stay civil. But once the howler monkeys get involved you can forget Riot replying - They don't want to deal with it. After all, if you could avoid sitting next to the lady with the two screaming infants on a 6-hour flight, wouldn't you do that?

However, once the discussion does become more polite, then it's in Riot's court to act on it. If they don't, they'll lose the trust of the players and we'll be right back to square one. Some would say this has already happened a couple of times.

Stelrin8/6/2015, 9:32:39 PM2 votes

I honestly think that Riot is doing a great job by ignoring those who deserve to be ignored and having a debate with those who deserve it. More also, The community can't walk to the straight way from one day to another, people are different, individual's characters can't be alike whether we like it or not. Sorry for that english :d

Radnar the bold8/6/2015, 4:17:31 PM1 votes

This post has the same NASA has at the moment...........Having issues getting to space. I mean I get you make great points, but in school they taught us that any argument or posts need space to keep the readers attention. TL;DR is good but you need alot more space in this post to keep anyones attention.

Trylobyte8/6/2015, 4:20:43 PM1 votes

I'll come back and read this once it has paragraphs.

Oerba No Naja8/7/2015, 12:45:21 PM1 votes

well this is a great thread , everybody wish that could be true but actually its just a dream "rioters friended players that main the champion and pm'd them (with their consent obviously) about what they like/disliked and wanted out of changes. I feel like that would have been especially great for Cassiopeia " once riot answered to a complain about cassio they kinda said " we have better things to do actually , u can forget a " bring back the old cassio identity" , when they was supposed to work on cassio again lol and now i see that the garen/skarner mains GOT WHAT THEY WANT and RIOT HEARD THEIR COMPLAINS . im sadly frustrated . and the cassio threads are still ignored by riot . better buff teemo