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DJ Sona, the Sona Rework, and Voting With Your Wallet

Coldbird·2/26/2015, 5:52:51 AM·9 votes·1,264 views

TL;DR

  • DJ Sona is AMAZING. The creators should be proud.
  • However, the Sona rework was a disaster and a terrible design, and Riot handled it disgracefully.
  • Riot is still not acknowledging player complaints or joining a dialogue 9+ months later.
  • The only way Riot will listen is if we boycott DJ Sona and give them financial consequences.
  • (It's incredibly disappointing because DJ Sona is great, but they keep ignoring legitimate issues.)
  • Please help boycott DJ Sona until Riot addresses the rework issues.
  • Please vote your opinion below and thank you.

/TL;DR

The new Sona skin looks (and sounds!) fantastic and the amount of work that went into it really shows. The people that worked on it should be extremely proud. While the rest of this post is filled with less positive feedback, the quality of the skin is undeniable, and I want to properly express what a remarkable accomplishment it is to tackle the visual and musical aspects of the skin, as well as to introduce a meta-property in the form of the music toggle. It's therefore extremely unfortunate that the timing of its release (after the last 9-ish months) makes it appear as if it's a shiny consolation prize meant to appease or distract her fan base from the rework fiasco and its (still continuing) effects. I'm confident that it wasn't meant to be, but the coincidence is still damning.

There were a lot of issues with Sona's rework and the way that Riot approached the players about it. Like some others (both vocal and non-vocal), I'm not happy with the changes, and I'm especially unhappy with how it was handled. I will still play her, but I feel that giving Riot money for her new skin sends them the message that everything's okay with her and with their behaviour, and that's just not true.

If, like me, you believe that this issue needs to be addressed and Riot will only listen when it impacts their profits, then please vote with your wallet (and below!) to make your position known by not purchasing DJ Sona. While I know it's difficult to pass up the opportunity to play her right away (and the 25% discount), people have exhaustively tried to motivate constructive conversation on this issue for over half a year to no avail. The only recourse left is by affecting Riot's bottom line and making sure that they understand WHY.

I believe that I'm part of a small (but passionate!) minority, and I fully expect considerable disagreement, but it would be a pleasant surprise to find that there are many more here that feel the same way that I and others feel about this issue. Please vote in the below poll; whether you agree or disagree, thank you for taking the time to read through this.

DETAILS:

Ever since Riot's rework of Sona last year, there has been a sizable number of players expressing dissatisfaction with many aspects of it. Criticisms include (but are not limited to):

  1. the validity of many of the reasons stated for the rework, such as Riot's rejection of her incremental advantage style of play,
  2. the inability of the rework to address Riot's main complaint - her "hidden power",
  3. the gap that now exists between her creative identity and her mechanics,
  4. the destruction of her mechanical identity as the aura champion by losing persistent, self-centered, area effects (aka, auras),
  5. the lack of substantial additions and/or positive changes - an added shield and a tweaked Q and E vs. lower numbers in most skills,
  6. (rephrased) the lack of positive trade-offs or accommodations in return for her lost abilities/numbers and added 'counterplay',
  7. the inherent design contradictions now present in her Q, W, and E skills,
  8. the conflict between her encouraged, riskier play style and her (arguably, increased) lack of survivability,
  9. the apparent lack of awareness of how the changes to her cooldowns have severely impacted her Power Chord's strength and use,
  10. the nerf to the Q powerchord because it is favoured, without understanding that this is highly aggravated by lopsided cooldowns (8/10/12)
  11. a complete lack of acknowledgement on the severity of the range changes on the new "auras" - area of effect reduction is almost 90%,
  12. the hypocrisy of her being more dependent on her team members than before (e.g. her Q), while stating that she should have more direct impact,
  13. an excessive use of negative changes across multiple dimensions all at once - cooldowns, aura range, aura effects, lower numbers, power gating, and mana-regen nerfs (Athene's),
  14. it seems like obfuscation was attempted by having the rework accompanied by flashy, visual changes,
  15. responses to (requested!) player feedback has been generally dismissive and defensive,
  16. feedback seems like a (resented) formality, as the vision seemed predetermined and immutable from the start,
  17. communication to players has lacked transparency,
  18. communication to players has been inconsistent and is punctuated by multiple periods of silence of at least two months or more,

WHY:

I've been following the reaction to the rework since last year and have been repeatedly impressed with the multitude of detailed and thoughtful analyses that many posters on here, and other boards, have given. In contrast, I have found the conduct of Riot ever more frustrating as time goes on. While I don't think I can capture the issues as succinctly or eloquently as others have, I would like to add my voice to the choir because I wouldn't be playing this game if Sona wasn't in it.

7 Comments

Pika3103/1/2015, 3:13:34 AM3 votes

Yes, you've done an excellent job at summarizing player issues in a simplistic somewhat-easy-to-understand form. I'd like to add on the fact that they simultaneously downgraded the quality on **ALL **of her skins in additon. Since this does fall into the skins team's area, I hold the belief they did this intentionally to make DJ look more appealing with its eventual release. The designs, details, coloring, shading, contrasting, hues and textures on every skin is intentionally bad/incorrect and ooze a sense of amateurish lack of quality.

Many players I've discussed with have already stated they will not buy DJ because of the 4.13 homicide and subsequent beatings of this dead horse. Yet they stated that they would have, if those offenses were not committed.

Sona's OK. Main after rework. Sona's OK. Never my main.

I find it amusing that their are players voting for these 2 options. Any player that chooses either is blatantly admitting that they are unqualified to weigh in on any Sona discussions and their opinions are inconsequentially obsolete.

Jamaree2/26/2015, 5:57:48 AM2 votes

Question, is Sona REALLY as bad as people make her out to be, because she has a 51%+ win rate with an 8% pick rate.

As for the whole boycotting thing, there are a lot of players who don't give a flying flip about balance and just play things they like and buy things because they are pretty, the boycott part will fail.

Delta F5082/26/2015, 6:41:46 AM2 votes

I love old and new Sona. The skin is awesome too. Also, she's a flippin beast champ. She is def a sleeper right now.

Elphrihaim2/26/2015, 7:08:01 AM1 votes

You, OP:

Wrong board.

edit: I even agree with the idea that Sona was better thematically beforehand--auras are awesome things and anybody that can't appreciate their strength is failing mathematics.

But, simultaneously, a permanent aura is difficult to judge how strong and effective it is. The current Sona, though much less fulfilling on that fantasy, is more readily balanced and no longer has to feel sometimes gimped.

I have no idea what you mean by #6.

And #7 doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You mean that the "auras" go away once you use a new skill despite only lasting for a brief moment?

#8 is exasperated by the fact that Riot nerfed her heal and added % missing amplification, then nerfed the heal and the % missing amplification--making it objectively worse than before.

9/10 seem like the same point to me

Except for those five, I completely agree with you.

But this is still the wrong board :/

Kamai3/1/2015, 6:16:27 AM1 votes

Even though I was willing to work with the original rework (the one that added the snuggle zone auras), even though it's power did at the end end up weaker, the fact that she's getting number nerf after number nerf is really pushing her to that razor's edge where any disruption will trash tier her. Her lanes are still pretty binary, either you get ahead and get enough AP to ruin everything, or you struggle to do anything as Leona (and others) chain cc you even when you land a good ult.

If this is the direction Riot wants to keep going, she's going to need to be balanced more like Karma and Orianna instead of true supports like Soraka and Lulu to make it work, because her power curve is getting closer to a solo laner's (can be shut down hard, doesn't deliver much without gold) than a support's.

On the idea of boycotting/refunding DJ Sona, I'm not going to do that. To me, with grabbing this for one of my favorite champions, I am intending to support the work and effort that they put into the skin, and the ability to take a crazy idea and bring it to 11. If I was so pissed off about this, I would be better voting by telling anyone who wants to play support why other supports are better, and that they just shouldn't play her.