Forum Suggestions to Improve Riot-Player Communications

Hyrum Graff·Apr 8, 2014·10 votes·5,878 views

TL;DR: To help your PR and communication with your playerbase, add a "Read by a Red" feature so we know our feedback is being noticed, and a "Riot Approved" sticker for official posts/announcements, to encourage Reds to post unofficially without worrying about repercussions.

In the past month or two, you've obviously (and successfully) been attempting to increase communication with your playerbase.

One difficulty I've seen several Riot employees mention on the subject is that it can be difficult to make everyone feel like they're being heard, because with the millions of LoL players, Riot can't possibly respond to each one. As a player and forum lurker, I also feel this is an issue - when I write something in the hopes that a red will see and consider my post, unless the red responds to me directly in a post (I've never had this happen), I have no way of knowing if my post has even been seen. As someone who's passionate about the game and loves to help, this can be frustrating.

To help mitigate this, I propose a new forum feature: "Read by a Red." It would be pretty much what you'd expect: there would be a button next to the upvote/downvote/quote buttons, visible only to Reds, which they could click to indicate that they've read the post. This could be visible in a couple different ways:

Only to the poster
As a seperate number, like the upvote counter, of the number of Reds who have seen the post.
Optional addition to #2: mouse over the number to see which Reds have seen the post.

This is an easy way for players like me to know we're being heard, without requiring obscene amounts of manpower from Riot.

A second issue that I've seen reds post about is the difficulty of writing forum posts. When a Red posts in the forums, it's often taken as something official. At the same time, there will always be a section of the community who is upset about something and liable to respond negatively to said Red post. As a result, Rioters who are on the forums feel that they need to

Be careful about what they say, and
Be careful about how they say it. Worrying about that kind of stuff makes posting on the forums a stressful and generally unpleasant thing to do. I'd guess this is a good part of why, before the recent surge in community outreach, Reds on the forums were rather scarce.

To fix this, I suggest giving riot employees an option to tag their posts as "Riot Official," and then making it very clear that anything that isn't Riot Official is still up in the air and/or the opinion of that particular Rioter only. Maybe you'd even want to go so far as to have a banner reading "Not Official" for all other Red posts.

Hopefully, this would relieve the pressure Rioters feel on the forums, and encourage them to stop by more often.

I'd love a red response, even if it's unofficial, and only to say that this post has been Read by a Red.

P.S. I'd also love to know what gets your attention - is it popular threads? Those with enough upvotes? Threads that happen to be on page 1 when you stop by? People adding "red bait" to their posts? In case it's the last,

@Reds @Mods @Lyte

32 Comments

RiotHeintzerApr 9, 201410 votes

Some great ideas here - we've discussed a "read by a Rioter" feature internally before.

There might be some drawbacks, though - simply acknowledging that we read something might not always a great experience for players. I worry it might feel almost dismissive, depending on the context. Acknowledging a bug report on the PBE forums? Definitely a good idea. But if a player has put a lot of effort into a really deep proposal or critique, I'm not sure simply knowing a Rioter acknowledged it is necessarily any better than receiving no response at all. It might feel like, "okay, Riot, but what do you think? What are you gonna do about it?"

I've also thought about letting Rioters opt out from the red tracker, or finding some way to convey that their post is "unofficial." Unfortunately this is pretty hard to convey, and the reality is, if you've got a Riot logo next to your name, you're representing the company. Putting "opinions here don't represent Riot Games" in your Twitter bio doesn't really mean shit, really. ;)

Once you're at the scale and complexity of a community like League (and a company like Riot), the forums (and any social media channel, really) can become a pretty scary place. The crowd is very smart, and they WILL tear you apart if your message isn't airtight. You can't possibly consider every player perspective out there, and you certainly can't respond to every single message. It's a tough proposition for a game developer - do I spend my time working on my craft, or do I take time out to give a lot of really careful thought to a player-facing message?

There's no "easy" fix or silver bullet here. The real solution involves a bunch of things, like...

Training: if everyone's empowered to be a company spokesperson, well, they've gotta become trained spokespeople. That sounds scary and draconian, but we're not talking about polishing game designers to be White House press correspondents - just helping them learn some rules of the road.
PR help: dev teams need to have folks at their disposal who are absolutely experts at communication - folks who sit with them and understand the nuance of what they're working on, and can help to make sure we don't stick our feet in our mouths, while still making sure we're out there talking to players a ton. That's guys like Pwyff, who sits with the game design team 90% of the time (BTW, while he does talk to the community a lot himself, you should see the amount of work he does behind the scenes to help those guys out!) BTW, we're hiring more Pwyffs: http://www.riotgames.com/careers/player-relations-specialist
International communications: Here's a rub you might not be thinking about: lots of League players don't speak English, and don't play on NA. How do we make sure they feel they're heard? This is a super complex problem and requires a ton of other solutions I won't even get into. :)

Anyway, thanks for sharing - sorry for the wall of text!

RiotXelnathApr 9, 201412 votes

What if I want to be a white-house press correspondant, Mr. Heintzer?

RiotHeintzerApr 9, 201412 votes

Permission denied.

Sir ArmaMalumApr 9, 20145 votes

Personally I'm a fan of the option for a rioter to leave an "I was here" mark without commenting. If it's anonymous I can see it being a nice thumbs up, but then again I don't pretend to think it's a perfect addition, there will always be risks. That and naturally it's up to you guys in the end. :)

Two questions vaguely on this subject.

Do rioters have smurfs or alternate accounts so they can roam the forums relatively freely or is there a policy against that?
Is there an internship position for player relations? I found out about the Riot internship program like a week before the deadline this year and I would love to really put my best foot forward next year and I think this would be my favorite possible spot. I feel like I have everything except the 3 years experience. And of course that's insanely important. :)

RiotHeintzerApr 9, 20147 votes

We'll think about the right approach here.

That gets a little uncomfortably close to astroturfing, which is a big no-no. There's a grey area (it's probably not strictly unethical if they aren't trying to sway public opinion), but Rioters really shouldn't be posting without disclosing that they're Rioters.
No internship this summer, unfortunately. I will strongly consider adding an internship for the next season! Experience isn't really what it's important, but it's what you've learned and how you apply it that is. We need people who can hit the ground running and have great, time-tested judgment with regards to PR and community.

Sir ArmaMalumApr 9, 20143 votes

Makes sense, was largely a curiosity thing.

I will look forward to it, thanks for the reply! It's a bit difficult to put my name out in a field outside my current study, but I'll do my best! XD

RoaranorApr 9, 20142 votes

Do you think it would be possible to set up a AMA with you and Riot Pwyff and/or other PRS (or even the QA Analysts as that's somewhat relevant) covering working in PR and everything that it entails some time in the near future?

I double major in CS and in Philosophy and enjoy them both very dearly, but even before that I've been fascinated by human behavior from an objective perspective just about my entire life. Needless to say, I always look for a chance to "politely interrogate" those who get to work in the field for a living and I'm sure others feel the something similar.

Sir ArmaMalumApr 9, 20141 votes

I will race you there if that happens!=)

RoaranorApr 9, 20141 votes

You are an interesting one to observe yourself, but you won't win this race! summoner 6

Sir ArmaMalumApr 9, 20141 votes

summoner 12 c'mon.....c'mon......

RoaranorApr 9, 20141 votes

Shen Thanks for the headstart hehe.

Sir ArmaMalumApr 9, 20141 votes

This is gonna take some fancy footwork! item 3284

ShadowNinetailsApr 10, 20141 votes

Hecarim + summoner 12 + item 3270

c ya lata

Hyrum GraffAug 11, 20141 votes

Zilean + summoner 12 + summoner 6 + item 3270 + item 3174 + item 3165

MoobeatApr 9, 20141 votes

More Pwyffs? That sounds fun =)

Hyrum GraffApr 9, 20141 votes

First off, thank you very much for the reply. Having your opinion validated, especially by somebody who's in a position to make change, feels really good. And I don't mind walls of text, so long as it's all useful/interesting information (it is). Here's my wall in return :P

Second, I see your point, that a simple acknowledgement could feel more like dismissal than validating. However, I think it's not an inherent problem with the feature itself - instead I think it's more of a pitfall to be wary of; if it starts replacing Red posts instead of supplementing them, or being spammed to the point where players wonder if it really means anything.

The specific scenario that I see the feature being most useful is in threads where you're trying to get player feedback, to avoid situations like this.

I've felt the same thing a while back when I was commenting on this thread. I gave my opinion on what we could do to preserve Diana's ability to be a bruiser or an assassin, situationally, but nerf her ability to be both at the same time. Vesh was very present in the thread, yet I wasn't able to garner a response. Looking back, I don't have any problem with this: the thread is over 100 freakin' pages long, and there's no way Vesh possibly could have answered every question, much less evaluated each suggestion. However, at the time, it felt like "Other people are getting responses, why aren't I? Are my ideas no good? Has he simply not seen my reply amongst the hundreds of others?" Even though I put a lot of time into my post, as a Diana main, just knowing that my feedback wasn't falling on deaf ears would have made for a much better experience.

Here's another example of a place where the feature would have come in handy.

Third: "the reality is, if you've got a Riot logo next to your name, you're representing the company."

What if, when you opted out of the Red Tracker, your name appears black like the rest of us, with no riot logo? I suppose many rioters still have "Riot" in their name, and even if they didn't, your point would still apply. But I think the point of the opt-out feature wouldn't be to completely disassociate that post from Riot, but to take a little pressure off of Rioters, so they can feel ok with posting a reply that's thoughtful on the level of a game designer with some PR training, instead of being afraid to post without a message that you'd expect to see from a white-house press correspondent. I'm not sure if that is in conflict with "Rioters really shouldn't be posting without disclosing that they're Rioters," though.

Of course you're right, none of these are silver-bullet solutions; those don't exist. They're just things that might hopefully make your job a little easier, and make the player experience on the forums a little better.

Thanks again for your time,

Hyrum Graff

Sir ArmaMalumApr 9, 20142 votes

Hey popping in again, a related idea I threw around once or twice before is to have the option for trusted and proven community members have the option to 'flag' a post for red attention. Their status and actions remain invisible to the playerbase but act as a nice "I suggest to look at these first" marker for things like civil tone, legitimately good questions or helpfully specific problems.

It wouldn't produce the possible issue of imagined 'dismissal' and still have another tool to help Red responses sift through insane number of posts. It has its own problems of course, but as food for thought, you know?

Thanks again for the replies and have a good week!

DaktushApr 9, 20141 votes

How about "A Rioter likes this?"

Edit: The symbol can also be a play of the Riot Fist thingy lol.

Also how am I posting from my EuW account on the NA community?

RoaranorApr 9, 20141 votes

They opened up the Community Beta Forum to EU regions for testing.

DaktushApr 9, 20141 votes

How long ago?

Sir ArmaMalumApr 9, 20141 votes

back in January I believe

RoaranorApr 9, 20141 votes

Yep, they announced it 1/31.

RoaranorApr 9, 20141 votes

Here's the update post for it.

Hyrum GraffApr 24, 20141 votes

I've also thought about letting Rioters opt out from the red tracker, or finding some way to convey that their post is "unofficial." Unfortunately this is pretty hard to convey, and the reality is, if you've got a Riot logo next to your name, you're representing the company. Putting "opinions here don't represent Riot Games" in your Twitter bio doesn't really mean shit, really. ;)

Some new inspiration: the Whist phenomenon.

Hyrum GraffApr 25, 20141 votes

Some clarification about what I mean: Riot Whist (and BaconHawk, to a lesser extent, but over a longer period of time) have consistently been on the forums making posts that are just forum banter. As a result, the community:

Sees them in a good light, and
Doesn't take everything they say as a Riot official announcement (the way they take everything Morello says, for example).

These two things just work well together to create a relationship that where they can talk to the community, even doing "official" information gathering, without it being a stressful time for them (I think/hope). I think if a lot more rioters frequented the forums, even when they had nothing to say about their work, it would go a long way towards making the forums a more red-friendly place.

According to Sir Armamalum,

Rioters had this relationship a while back but with League rampant growth and steady decline of the average poster it created a very hostile atmosphere towards any Rioter participation in the community. Personally I hope the CB can be a nice 'reset' and we can get that going again! Cheers mate!

To that end, just to plant an idea: I think it could be a really cool tradition if, every day [arriving at/leaving] work, rioters went on the forums and made 1 [post/reply] about anything at all, no minimum length or content restrictions.

TL;DR getting more rioter posting on the forums for fun can change the dynamic from "Riot is (or is not) in touch with the community" to "Riot is the community, so we know they're in touch."

Hyrum GraffApr 27, 20141 votes

Popping in: another example of a place where "read by a rioter would be nice"

Hyrum GraffApr 29, 20141 votes

Throwing out another thought: I'm not aware of a comprehensive listing of rioters and their positions. I think something like this would be useful, so that when someone wants to make suggestion or give feedback, they'd know the right team to send it to.

ploki122Aug 11, 20141 votes

Kind of necro'ing this, but the issue came up again, although differently, and I was wondering if something like having the Rioters post as regulars by default, but be allowed to check a box for a "Riot/In-field opinion" message. Unofficials rioter messages would be white with in-game icons just like everyone else's, and "official" ones would have a red border and the fist icon. If you apply the same styling to the Red tracker it would help filter out "official" posts without filtering the unofficial ones entirely.

Also, isn't saying that a fist icon is associated with a Rioter's opinion kind of running away from the problem instead of facing it? It's obvious that Rioters not being able to truly express themselves because they fear the community backlash is gonna cause troubles in the long run, and I feel that starting to reform the playerbase sooner than later is preferable...

RiotBuboBuboApr 10, 20145 votes

No one has answered your PS yet so I'll take a shot:

I usually look through the first 3-5 pages for any threads with titles relevant to eCommerce (my team), quantitative things (my background), LCS or threads with a red post. Also if a thread gets a lot of discussion or upvotes then usually I'll read at least the initial posts.

I skim the champion specific balance posts but this isn't my forte and usually the level of conversation is too deep/nuanced for me.

I skip or bounce from frothy negativity but get a ton of value from calm criticisms, questions or players sharing their frustrations/solutions.

I also really like skin concepts that have pictures!

In terms of responding, Welcoming threads are easier to participate in than curse laden upset ones. Those are still worth reading to understand what is causing player pain but not really a good place for conversation.

I try to respond when I feel I can add value by commenting and decidedly not on things that are another team's purview.

Hyrum GraffApr 10, 20141 votes

Thanks, and good to know!