Why has Pendragon not replied to his pinned topic on GD? Is he listening to our feedback there?

Jesus is Savior·Sep 20, 2013·14 votes·3,674 views

http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=41575727

You made this topic on GD advertising your new platform. It is at 88 downvotes and counting. People are giving you feedback in that topic. Most of that feedback is about why they would leave the community if this went live and/or replaced the forums.

Are you listening to that feedback? Because you haven't replied to the topic, if you are.

I bet most of the people who post there are like me:

-open beta link-
"nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope"
-press back button-
-post in pinned topic, downvote pendragon-
-never open the beta link again, and never post feedback here-

The only reason I opened the link again (days later, mind you) is because you haven't replied AT ALL, and I want to make sure you see that people are unhappy. An overwhelming majority are unhappy. And you can't expect to see that in this beta feedback section, because most of those people won't tolerate this page for more than 10 seconds before closing it and never returning.

17 Comments

ModCaptainMårvelousSep 20, 20139 votes

Ok so we talked in length about this but really, people who refuse to actually help are the worst thing for this site. Yeah, I'm not a fan of the reddit-based format but they're not making a second reddit. They're trying to create their own thing here. Furthermore, people should actually provide feedback to this.

NO, "THIS SUCKS I HATE IT" IS NOT FEEDBACK. Give them legitimate feedback. Tell them "I'm not a fan of this as is but I think we could improve it if we <xyz>". You may not be a fan but complaining that this is terrible and that nothing could ever be done to improve it is not going to get anything accomplished. I've been in the chatroom and plan to continue submitting ideas and feedback to improve this layout and make it better. In reality, if people really cared, they should strive to make it better.

The main issue I'm seeing is aversion to change. Yeah, it sucks, but nothing was ever great fresh out of the gate. This is an incredibly rough beta and they are stressing how much they want feedback to make this better. Do I think everything can be improved here? No, I don't think this will ever be really useful for someone like roleplayers, per say, but we can still try to make it better overall.

I can understand the disappointment with pendragon not responding but you have to understand that a good chunk of those people he'd respond to would be those that refuse to ever accept a new layout. They don't want to change and they refuse to help. What gets accomplished trying to reason with those people? Nothing but upset community members who think that those in charge of this are out for blood.

Give it a chance, try to help it improve and be willing to let go of the forums. Change does suck but if you can help make it better than maybe change won't suck that hard, no?

SlumlordThanatosSep 20, 20135 votes

I can understand the disappointment with pendragon not responding but you have to understand that a good chunk of those people he'd respond to would be those that refuse to ever accept a new layout.

Except that having a confusing layout that looks like Reddit is a perfectly valid complaint, and the biggest one I've seen.

So Riot wants to change the platform so that it's easier to develop for and easier to moderate. That's totally fine.

Hey, they've added a form of post tracking! That'll help a great deal. They even let us use our summoner icons as avatars! Granted, I'll miss Toki Wartooth whipping his hair around, but that's a small price to pay for something new. I'm sure someone will put out something like FEK to let me have it back.

But it's not even really the layout of the forums that's the biggest problem. It's that the forums looks like a subreddit. That is a HUGE problem, because if it looks like Reddit, first-time users will just assume it works exactly the same and just go to the LoL subreddit, where there is a much bigger population. The way the layout looks will make this site redundant, especially if Rioters continue to post in the LoL subreddit and hold their AMA's there.

If Riot wants people to come here instead of the LoL subreddit, they need to differentiate between the two. Instead, they're just copying the layout and hoping that people will come here instead.

Arechon GendSep 20, 20132 votes

Yes it is. It's not useful feedback, but it is feedback. If that kind of feedback is ovewhelming (as it is) then it shouldn't be ignored.

ZielmannSep 20, 20135 votes

Couldn't be because he's busy in this section of the community and listening to our feedback here. Heck, they even have a chatroom in the client where a few of the devs working on the feature are going to be available to chat with about the new community in realtime.

I can't blame him for not responding to that thread. There's a lot of knee-jerk reaction in there of people that are simply just opposed to change. They're comments by people making blanket assumptions about what Riot is trying to do without even experiencing it for themselves.

At least when people comment here, they know that that member at least came in here and took a look at it before posting.

Let's be honest, here. How many of these people are really going to follow through on their threat to leave the community if this does change? How often do you see empty threats about leaving this community for any number of other reasons? Outside this community, how often do you see people over-react to changes made to site like facebook, and insist that they're going to leave it or boycott it, but they never do?

I've now talked with some of the rioters both on the forums and in their chat in the client. They've got a lot of ideas for where they want to take this. And they're fully willing (and excited) to work with the community to build something that both Riot and the Community can be happy with in the end. The advantage they have is that they are writing this whole feature themselves, so they can make it into whatever they want. It's not just going to be a copy of Reddit. It might look similar at the moment, but they're talking about adding a lot of capability that you couldn't dream of having added to Reddit.

But these people making their knee-jerk reactions due to their inherent resistance to change wouldn't realize that because they haven't taken the time to check it out, talk to Riot, provide feedback, and hear some of what Riot has in the works for the community.

Jesus is SaviorSep 20, 20135 votes

I still haven't "checked out" Reddit, and it's been around for how many years? I'm not sure if I've ever actually typed www.reddit.com into my address bar and gone to the main page. If someone sends me a link, I'll click it, read a few comments, and then eventually get annoyed at the threads inside threads inside threads, and close it.

If I've never actually bothered to USE Reddit, why would I use something that copies it? We already have surrenderat20.net to keep track of updates and red posts.

I have used forums for every game I have ever played. I have never been forced to use a threaded-tree-mess of a "forum" like this beta site, ever. If forums work for World of Warcraft+Starcraft+All Blizzard games, Ragnarok Online, Runescape (haven't touched that in a long time, I assume they still use forums?), Team Fortress 2 + all Steam/Valve games, Phantasy Star Online + all Sega games, Phantasy Star Online private servers, Ragnarok Online private servers, private servers for any major game, and the list goes on, if forums work for all these games and more, why do we need to be different? If our millions of players are used to using forums for gaming, why change that with one of their games? You really think it will work? You really think it'll be an empty threat? And if we have millions of players, we probably do have a lot who no longer play but stick around, and I'm almost certain most of those will leave.

ZielmannSep 20, 20133 votes

I've never used reddit, either. At least no more extensively than what you said you have.

But if you've never experienced it, how can you be so positive that it can't be just as good as, if not better than, the forum format? Without knowing what Riot's plans are for this community format, how can you know it's 'bad'? (Hint: there are a lot of feature Riot is working on, or at least mulling over. But you wouldn't know that without actually actively interacting with them here)

Also, just because every other company uses existing forum frameworks for their communities, does that really mean it's best? It's just the easiest to get up and running because the basic software is readily available, and in a variety of formats. WoW uses a monthly subscription fee format, and it works for them. Does that mean you want LoL to follow suit? I mean, if other successful games do it one way, that clearly makes it the best possible option available.

Jesus is SaviorSep 20, 20132 votes

There are many free games and many subscription games. And to be honest, I see the free games making more money. The bad ones cough iRO cough will nerf items so you have to buy new ones from their cash shop, and nerf NPCs and features to do the same. So no, I don't want LoL to be a subscription based game (which is also what killed HoN and let League get to where it is today). But I have never seen a successful game NOT use forums.

SlumlordThanatosSep 20, 20139 votes

I would be one of those people who would "really leave." I love how open that Riot is with their playerbase...but right now, I'm feeling a little insulted, and I don't like being insulted by the company that has otherwise been willing to listen to us.

Earlier this year, Riot tried something similar on the beta site before it launched. The announcement was rapidly downvoted, and Riot listened to us and pulled the Reddit-style forums from the beta site.

Now they're bringing it back, which seems to me like they listened to our feedback and chose to ignore it.

So, I would hesitate to call this reaction "knee-jerk."

There's also the issue that forum-goers have been clamoring for basic upgrades for YEARS. Avatars, post tracking, etc. Basically, stuff that almost every other forum on the Internet has built in...and we have to download an extension to get it. Their excuse? "vBulletin wasn't designed for use on such a large scale, so it takes a lot of work." Apparently creating all-new forums is simpler than adding a few simple features. Something smells fishy here...

Finally, it's not that we are resistant to change. It's that said change is going in a direction that we don't want it to. As has been said several times before...if we wanted Reddit for League of Legends, we would go to Reddit. That wonderful place that Rioters frequent, post in, and even hold their AMA's.

And from what I'm seeing right now, the Community site is no different from Reddit. As it stands now, it is a slap in the face to everyone who frequents General Discussion.

So I want to hear what Pendragon intends to do about it. Preferably in a place I'll actually see it, like...General Discussion.

ZielmannSep 20, 20132 votes

In my personal opinion, if something as simple as the format in which you are able to have your conversations with strangers about an online game is enough to make you leave, then it sounds to me like you aren't really that connected to the community to begin with. If something that petty is enough to make you go all DRAMA with your reaction, there are deeper issues at hand which Riot can't fix.

On the PBE community experiment they did, it was probably just that at the time: an experiment. I participated on there some, and can tell you that it definitely wasn't nearly as polished as this rendition of it is now. They likely removed it because that in the state it was in at the time, it wasn't able to properly serve its intended function. Removing it at that time isn't a promise that it'll be gone forever (just as throwing this concept back out here again isn't a promise that it'll go live in its current state).

Also, this isn't a Reddit clone. Riot has been very adamant about that when talking to them. It currently has a very Reddit-ish aesthetic, but there are a lot of features being looked at here that are very distinct from Reddit.

The main point is that people should actually take the time to explore it and see what it feels like before they blindly hate it because it looks similar to something else. Read through some of the devs' posts here, and you can get an idea of the sort of things they have in the works. Better yet, go talk directly to the devs themselves in their chatroom in the league client.

Riot is building this whole thing entirely from the ground up, because it'll allow them to add whatever features they want to it. They're not stuck with trying to work around or modify somebody else's boxed code (vBulletin).

If people find things about this that they don't like, that's find. But vocalize those to Riot, and in a constructive manner. Explain the features you would like to see, give detail on why you prefer one format over another, etc. Riot is listening to all our feedback on this (and very excited to do so), but they're more likely to take things to heart that are constructive and very clearly expressed.

Just because Riot hasn't replied back to a thread on GD that is full of less-than-constructive criticisms, doesn't mean they aren't listening to people as a whole. Believe it or not, there are quite a few of us that have actually opened our minds, come in here, and tossed around various ideas for improvements directly with the devs. And trust me, they're willing to entertain just about any idea (for example, the possibility of allowing people to sort threads into subthreads as well as strictly chronologically has been at least discussed with them).

SlumlordThanatosSep 20, 20136 votes

So, here is my biggest problem, and an explanation as to why I'm leaving if the Community site goes live.

Once upon a time, I played World of Warcraft. Like League of Legends, they have a forum that I frequented and posted in. It was far better moderated and cleaner than what Riot has now, but that's not why I left.

No, I left World of Warcraft because the blues who would post in the forums were basically corporate robots. For more information, look up the outcry when Blizzard implemented the cross-realm zone feature. Basically, very few people wanted it, Blizzard went ahead and implemented it, and it was a disaster. The game was unstable for weeks afterwards, and checking back to my old server (Dragonblight-US), the changes effectively killed what economy it had.

I love League of Legends (and continue to play League) for one reason only: Riot's willingness to interact with their playerbase. They actually talk to us, and very rarely is their response corporate double-talk because they don't want to address the issue.

They're also not above just having fun on the forums, and each and every one of them are passionate about their work. Despite the forum trolls and spammers, the community here is just more enjoyable.

But, just looking at the Community site and some of their responses, all I'm seeing are excuses. I see a site that looks and behaves an awful lot like Reddit. When asked why they went with this format, their reply was "they wanted to take examples from other popular sites and use their ideas." When asked why they don't simply just improve their existing forums, their answer was "that since vBulletin isn't designed for use on such a large scale, working with it is difficult."

These responses worry me. They're starting to sound like Blizzard. I questioned how making all-new forums was somehow "more work" than creating entirely new forums, and all I'm greeted with is silence. Others are questioning why they are simply copying another website's format instead of just sticking with something that is actually good for having a conversation. More silence.

Hell, they're not even responding to the pinned topic on GD, despite the fact that GD is where the majority of people who would give feedback are located.

And the final nail in the coffin is this terrible layout.

I'll continue to stick around here and give my feedback, but the issue is this: this layout looks an awful lot like Reddit. Until that changes, it doesn't matter how different it actually is from Reddit; as long as Riot continues to use their subreddit, this site is redundant and reeks of an excuse to do away with their existing forums because they don't want to mess with moderating them or giving them actual features.

And if it goes live, I'm out.

PendragonSep 20, 201310 votes

When asked why they went with this format, their reply was "they wanted to take examples from other popular sites and use their ideas."

There are some very specific things we like – like better ways to surface relevant content and discussion threading. We didn’t take them “because they’re used on popular sites”, we used them because we think those ideas help address problems that we have today.

There's also the issue that forum-goers have been clamoring for basic upgrades for YEARS. Avatars, post tracking, etc. Basically, stuff that almost every other forum on the Internet has built in...and we have to download an extension to get it. Their excuse? "vBulletin wasn't designed for use on such a large scale, so it takes a lot of work." Apparently creating all-new forums is simpler than adding a few simple features. Something smells fishy here...

Making these forums is more work than adding those specific features. Who would claim otherwise? We think the (development) cost to value ratio is very different though. I think avatars are neat but will not make or break the forums. I think forums live or die by the content and discussions that are on them and people’s ability to find and interact with that content. We also have made a technology platform that scales better, interacts with our other systems, and is much easier to develop on. We can release changes here in hours that would take days or weeks to do on the old platform.

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it – we’re experimenting and we expect to have the freedom and benefit of the doubt to experiment. We do everything with the interest of our players in mind and this is no exception. Progress is controversial. Removing denies, releasing the game for free, reworking the jungle, our decision to start the LCS – were all met with incredible criticism. Also, for every successful innovation we have some that weren’t as successful and that’s just life.

There is a pretty big difference between this platform and our forums, and that adaptation takes time. I would not expect that anyone can fully appreciate the difference enough after a day or two to be able to form a really thoughtful opinion – I know I couldn’t. We’re listening to the folks who say they don’t like it; we’re watching the stats of people who visit once and don’t come back and they factor into the equation. We’re also going to listen to the people who do like it, and the people who think they’ll like it with some changes.

We’ll do the diligence, make tons of improvements based on feedback, continue to evaluate usage patterns, and player sentiment, and we’ll figure out a path forward when there’s one that’s clear.

Arechon GendSep 20, 20138 votes

You still haven't answered the main question here. Why aren't you responding to the sticky thread on GD?

Jesus is SaviorSep 21, 20135 votes

My feedback is: forced chronological for everyone, and dont allow threads inside threads. Then you have a normal forum, with all the new features and code you have written. Bam. Done.

Maybe keep "popular" and "hot" as a harder to access search function, so people can still use it, but it still acts like a normal forum, and not a Reddit clone.

MoonJuiceSep 24, 20138 votes

"I would not expect that anyone can fully appreciate the difference enough after a day or two to be able to form a really thoughtful opinion – I know I couldn’t."

Then why did you ask us for feedback? If you aren't going to actually listen to our feedback but instead just rip at it and tell us that it isn't thoughtful enough then why ask for it? headhunter228 took the time to write down not just "hey i don't like this" but an actual extensive reply explaining what he doesn't like and why. Your reply to that is "you haven't used it enough". Really?

CynicattSep 20, 20135 votes

I don't think they're going to bother to listen to the people that dislike this format. I think they're only going to bother to read and respond to people that want to get used to it or already like it.

I think it's safe to say they've decided upon this. They're happy with it even if a lot of us are not, and I guess that's good enough for them. I need to stop spending time on the forums anyway, and this is will definitely stop me from doing so.

In a way I feel like this is their plan. To stop a good bit of the community from posting, to have a slower moving forum community that is easier to moderate and for Reds to keep track of, to have discussions that go slowly and end quickly, to grey personalization and player individuality out so that we don't have popular forum goes that gain a following like Captain Marvelous, to change the forums from what it is entirely(the good with the bad), which I guess I can understand.

Also, why was a thread like this at the top of the page when it has so few responses and hasn't been commented on in 8 hours? Is this really the most recently active thread?

Jesus is SaviorSep 21, 20131 votes

bump

Jesus is SaviorSep 23, 20131 votes

bump (even though it doesn't do anything)