Organized Board Discussions by Champion

dubwad·Aug 10, 2014·8 votes·7,856 views

#The Problem: At the moment, the boards feel cluttered to me. There are so many summoners with so many great ideas but I feel like many of these ideas fall through cracks. My solution to this would be to create a subheading or interactive menu underneath the main board title that sorted the posts by champion. I honestly don't frequent all of the boards but I feel like certain boards, Champions & Gameplay and Skin & Champion Concepts (to name a few), would benefit greatly from this move.

#Just a few benefits that this change might bring about:

Players could sort through posts quickly and easily because, lets face it, not everyone's champion interests are the same.
Rioters would be able to systematically and routinely go through each champion's posts, as well as new champion ideas, allowing a closer to fair amount of riot attention for each champion and champion skin ideas and concerns.
Would give a more organized feel and clear up clutter.

I envisioned something along these lines but this is just a picture I threw together. Very rough. http://i.imgur.com/29VPL5D.png A summoner would just be able to click on the champion of interest, and then see the "Hot | Best | Recent" posts for that champion or for new champion ideas. The reddit style would still be there, just under a champion sub-folder, or one could just scroll down past the champion interface and look at all of the posts, sorted by "Hot | Best | Recent", just as they are now.

Let me know what you guys think and whether or not this might be something Riot would consider.

21 Comments

RiotIts Tamat DamatAug 12, 20144 votes

Wanted to weight in here. The concept is great, but it would require a much greater volume of players posting for it to be valuable. If we were to do that right now, there would be 100+ ghost town boards. Yeah the Teemo boards would be the shit, but other then that, content would be sparse. We've had this conversations a number of times internally, and that's sort of remained my stance.

But wait ... a caveat...

There are a couple of things that could make this a possibility:

Copious amounts of players entering the platform. We think 100,000 daily active users (DAU) is a critical milestone, but we'd love to have more than that!
More than 50 daily discussions created (DDC) about a specific Champion. If we start seeing a sustained average of like 50+ daily discussions created about Draven, I'll create that board myself!
You create it. We haven't kept this super secret, but we're planning to let you guys create and govern your own boards with little to no oversight from us down the road. We haven't narrowed down a date yet, but sometime in 2015 is the current aim.

Ultimately, what we really need at this point is a lot of activity in the Boards. So many of the amazing possibilities are going to be unlocked with more traffic. Tell your friends, and trust me when I say that there's some amazing stuff planned. :)

JingerbeardmanAug 12, 20141 votes

there is actually an alternate way to go about this. I agree that making a champion specific board for all the champions is daunting and tbh would have quite a few that felt very sparse. If you went at it a different way though it could work.

I had this very thought last week with regard to the boards and came up with the same cons. I then approached it a bit differently. Rather than champion specific discussion boards, Role specific discussion boards. want to talk about your sweet J4 support build? head on over to the support discussion board and have at it.

It isnt exactly like having a different board for each champ but it is close enough for the time being I think.

MansanaAug 12, 20141 votes

Thanks for posting this. I always wanted to do one on Kassadin. I feel like he hasn't gone anywhere. No matter how much the necromancers nerf or adjust him, he still ends up being banned since he is considered in"God" Tier pick. And if you nerf him too much he becomes null and void; just useless. I would really like for him to receive a VU along with reworked kit. When I say reworked I mean his Ult is changed to something more significant that shows his identity like his nether blade rather than a map hopping sweeper. But that's just my opinion, and that's why I would like to work with the community to solve this problem. SMITE has something similar I believe in their forums where the community plus the game devs share their thoughts on how "balanced" a champion is. Although it doesn't guarantee anything, it feels really interactive and you feel like your making a difference to a champ that you like. We did one with Skarner, and I got to say we successfully helped Scarizard balance a champ despite none of our full ideas coming through. Shout outs to him, and keep it up Riot. If we can see more of this type of stuff like Xerath rework via Xelnath and community, I'm sure more people would love to participate in the forums.

Sir ArmaMalumAug 12, 20141 votes

Ultimately, what we really need at this point is a lot of activity in the Boards.

I'll be damned if I'm not trying with the concept community at least :P

dubwadAug 12, 20141 votes

I love the feedback! Thanks for your post and for the info. #3 will definitely be on my list of to-do's when everything comes full circle. More options as far as formatting and things design on personally created boards would be amazing!!! (if, of course, that sort of thing is in the works)

I'll keep my friends and anyone I play with coming, and hopefully we can reach those sustained averages! I'm fairly new to posting but I'll keep the relevant and meaningful discussions coming as long as I have ideas. Hopefully they'll be interested enough to keep people will keep reading.

I can't wait for all of the stuff you have planned! Thanks again good sir! :D

dubwadAug 12, 20141 votes

As an afterthought, I feel like there is a positive correlation between the number of positive and healthy posts, and the number of Riot posts. I realize that you probably can't or don't need to post on every discussion, but I do feel like the Rioter comments make summoner's feel important and heard. Almost like writing a letter to a senator. If him or her writes back, even if he doesn't agree, I'll probably present concerns more often than if I never got any feedback at all.

MajorPain9Aug 12, 20142 votes

Why not something simple that at leasts let posters catch the eye of fellow champion mains. Like an option to select a champion for the title of a discussion and a specific color of that champion. Like giant purple words before the title

Ie: (Imagine this is Purple) SKARNER: Why skarner deserves the ultimate skin!

Linna ExcelAug 10, 20142 votes

I don't think it would help or hurt overall. I wouldn't be against it being tried though.

gubigubiAug 11, 20142 votes

Fiora Is grayed out. IDK what this means but I don't like it.

dubwadAug 11, 20141 votes

Haha whoops. I don't actually own her yet! Didn't mean to offend anyone :'(

gubigubiAug 11, 20142 votes

lol np I was just being forum scum :p

MagnummmAug 11, 20142 votes

I like it!

DaenAug 11, 20142 votes

Something kind of pedantic but still important: Your survey is extraordinarily vague and doesn't necessarily relate to the original topic. "Would organizing by Champion make the Boards better?" might be a better question, as I don't think anyone would disagree that more organized boards would make them better.

dubwadAug 11, 20141 votes

Yea. I guess that is a good point. Not sure if I can actually change the Question and answers at this point in time though :(

Willahelm FulberAug 11, 20141 votes

One thing I thought when looking at this, the greyed out champion icons referred to everything on their topic being read by you already.

dubwadAug 11, 20142 votes

That's an interesting idea. I'm not sure you could read it all. These forums are pretty busy. But riot could use something along those lines to say that you've visited that Champion's board already. Kind of like a hyperlink being grayed out.

Angry MonsterAug 11, 20141 votes

Riot already said they are not going to do this. They do not want to support a board with 120 sub groups.

dubwadAug 11, 20141 votes

Would you mind linking where they said that? I hate to be repetitive.

Angry MonsterAug 11, 20141 votes

actually i did not save the red thread where is was brought up. Sry

So on the previous version of beta your idea was suggested. Then when the boards rolled to this current version riot addressed the idea of 1 area for every champ. Their reason was they did not want to maintain a board for every champ. Also that not every champ board would be used equally therefore wasting mod time in moving between extra areas.