Do you feel like posting here is pointless?

but. at least there are a few that aren't like that =P

Thanks for chatting with us, NurseFlan. I wanted to address a few things; this isn't necessarily reflected at you, but it's a sentiment I see in a lot of Rioter posts on the Boards.

There will always be a minority of people that are angry or complaining about something, and this is an unfortunate truth of the internet. That being said, the idea that it's scary to communicate with the community is really concerning. I understand the minority is difficult to deal with, but avoiding that minority avoids the vast majority of the community not being that way.

Something we all seem to be forgetting here: The community's gut negative response is almost always directly correlated to a previous or perpetuating lack of communication on a given topic. One of the big reasons Rioters can end up getting eaten alive by the community, in my opinion, is that people are just trying to be heard and thus dumping everything they care about onto the poor Rioter that has ventured out into the forest.

People naturally take the past of least resistance/greatest reward and appeal to the highest relatable authority. If a Rioter that works primarily as a NOC Technician has a chat with the community and no other Rioters are perceived to be around, that NOC Technician is going to be swarmed with requests that he or she is unable to answer. The only perceivable authority in this scenario is the NOC Technician, so there is nowhere else for the community to go with their comments.

People aren't intentionally deciding that you (or any Rioter) should know the answers to all their questions; they are taking the path of perceived least resistance to try to feel heard. No one wants to go out of their way just to talk to the clearly wrong person (unless they can't follow basic logic), it's just not efficient. If there's a clear way to directly appeal to the person to which a concern should be directed, that is the most optimal choice.

{quoted}

Sure, we can work on that :) Transparency can be a little tricky though - I can't reveal what skins we're working on and when they'll come out...but I caaaaaann tell you we're working on skins in general, haha >:]

Work on what?

To be honest, a lot of the transparency requests I see are not asking for specific feature clarity. A huge amount of the ones I notice are generally the following:

• High level direction of game design - Plans for the jungle, itemization, bruiser rework
• Communication goals - Methods of communication, mediums, platforms
• Design philosophy for different features - Goal for Honor, Team Builder plans, Lore changes
• Plans for previously announced projects - Ranked system improvements, Replays, alternative map support

The community, overall, doesn't generally ask a ton of questions about the specific new projects being worked on (what skin is next, for example). Questions are more along the lines of discussing currently existing content, improvements to currently existing content, and high level direction.

For example, what is the goal for skins over the new year? Is the intent to stay with less frequent but higher quality releases over the year, and are any other cool things coming out of that team?

Not just with skins, i have 100% faith on your skin making awesomeness, I've yet to see another ARTS do it better than Riot, but in terms of balance, well, with the whole #betternerfsonagoing around, we'd like a little more transparency on balancing. In terms of transparency, we'd also like you to listen to us on balance issues, because some of us have some good ideas (the keyword being some.)

I think a lot of the issue stems from the the friendly Rioters, like you, taking the time to talk to us on stuff that you're able to talk about, but the issues those people are able to talk about haven't been the issues players need Riot to talk about.

Someone already brought up the whole "People start shouting 'Nerf Lee Sin! Fix the Servers!'" at you, and it's not your area of expertise. But the people whose area of expertise it does belong to do not engage in legitimate discussion with the players these days.

Phreak is the closest thing we've gotten to balance discussion in ages, and he's not on the balance team any more, he's a shout-caster instead, and even he left the last thread once the discussion went into more depth than his "Win rate = balance" defense (shortened version, no disrespect meant).

We finally after ages got some insight into the server roadmap, and that was great! I'm sure a lot of people were glad to see the discussion come up.

The point is that the Rioters who will talk don't work on the issues that are infuriating the playerbase and need talked about and fixed. The ones who do work on the issues, however, insist on either completely ignoring the community, or writing off anything they say as "nah, I work at Riot so my opinion > your logic" and hop out of threads after a few short posts.

I'm well aware the community is full of anger sometimes, and much of it is unfair anger, but the frustration is certainly reasonable. I think many of us are just tired of the same balance issues, and the people responsible plugging their ears and shouting "LALALALA" and running out of a thread the second they see an argument that more strongly supports a claim against what the people responsible say is the case.

If you don't work work in Balance, Design, or Systems, I can (almost) promise you that you have nothing to fear because the issues that NEED talked about are all in Balance, Design, and Systems. But those people don't come talk about them. As long as you're working on skins, chances are nobody (at least nobody who knows you work in skins, anyway) is going to rage at you, because everyone is happy with the skins (I think? I know I am, though I'm still waiting for my Dragonmaster Swain and Jurassic Kha'zix -sad face-). The topics people aren't happy with are the ones that are vital to a healthy game state and balanced upcoming ranked season, yet the Rioters who could speak with us about them won't do it either out of fear or spite or just plain apathy.

You know we went through almost an entire preseason (y'know, the thing where sweeping balance changes can be made to adjust for the upcoming ranked season?) without Rioters coming to discuss major balance/design issues? Like, at least Warwick got noticed, thank god, but I think a blind person who doesn't even play League would've noticed Warwick was broken. Anything less obvious than that got no discussion, and that's why people are mad. Sure, we may get a post here or there, but I'm talking about real discussion and debate over balance and design issues, that extends beyond reds coming in and saying "Nah, what I say is fact, your information is irrelevant, peace I'm out betches".

We usually hear the "sorry, those guys are just working too hard to post" (which, and I'm well aware I don't work there, but I think is a super lame excuse and probably an unfair one after a whole preseason), or the "we read your threads! We value your input!... as long as it's in line with what we believe" responses. Suffice to say, that's not.. uh.. ideal... And I think the community just sort of gets forced to bottle up a bunch of rage because we know these things are important, because we're playing the game and are affected by them regularly.

I fear the thread will shift to "Omg Riot read this post, it's gonna happen!"

Either that or "OMG Rito red my post, y they no respond? Rito is ignoring their community again #clarity #narrative team #better nerf irelia "

As Rioters, I'm sure you have certain privileges/permissions on these boards. So, how bout when a certain Rioter reads a bug/skin concept/etc a checkbox will be available for a Rioter to note that they have seen it and are working on it (or it has been added to the list of ideas/projects). Saves the confusion

Yeah I remember getting my "LoL" Kleenex out for Sona for a completely different reason. Now it's to dab my tears that they're constantly nerfing her.