Category: Editorial (Page 12 of 34)

      How do you define OP?

      October 24, 2011 /

      I found an interesting thread on the forums that made me ask the question in the title of this post: how do I define OP? The author of that thread thinks an OP character is one that defies countering, a champion that doesn’t require teamwork in order to perform well. I can’t really agree with that version of OP, if only because so much of League of Legends happens in the laning phase of the game, where champions are essentially on their own.

      My own version of OP looks more like something I saw a Rioter say about Irelia. To me, overpowered champions are those that, regardless of the odds, rarely find themselves in bad situations. Irelia is a perfect example of this problem. In lane she has excellent farming skills and a powerful nuke that becomes a stun once she’s in trouble. Once the teamfights start she gains CC reduction for every enemy around her. She farms well enough that she’s never hurting for gear in that situation either. But this version of OP doesn’t cover everything, either.

      Let’s look at Akali. Once Akali hits level three she produces burst unlike almost any champion out there. She also has her Shroud to keep her safe from enemy harass in lane, all the while gaining ground toward level six, which is when things get particularly ugly. Because Akali can solo so well, she ends up several levels ahead of bottom lane and often the enemy jungler. With that level gap her burst can almost always guarantee a kill, but the damage doesn’t stop there. Her ult, which is one of the longest-range dashes in the game (of which she also gets three), refreshes when she gets kills and assists, further increasing her mobility and killing power. She’s very different from Irelia but I would still consider her seriously overpowered.

      This will always be the problem with OP champions – there is no one way to define them, no one skill that unifies them. There’s also the fact that not all players can effectively utilize OP champions, which makes for a mix of data on Riot’s end. Certainly they have a lot of highly ranked players that can accurately assess these kinds of champions, but when the champions are being used to great effect across the board, what’s the sense in nerfing them?

      My main point here is that OP can start to look pretty subjective when you consider all of the variables that determine whether a champion needs a change or not. It’s why we still have champions like Akali and Irelia at their current power level.

      Champions, Editorial, league of legends

      Riot Kills Mac Client, My Remaining Faith in Their Customer Service [RANT]

      September 8, 2011 /

      Note: This is the rant version of a post on communication I wrote earlier today. This is centered on Riot’s Mac Client shutdown. It is long. If you’d rather read suggestions for solving the problem, here’s the link to my earlier post.

      I’ve been trying to give Riot the benefit of the doubt over the past 6 months. I got a bit cynical for a while there, but the bottom line was that I was enjoying their game, a game that experienced such explosive growth that very few companies could possibly have maintained, and if I wanted to play with new friends they could jump in the game for free. All of that is great stuff.

      There were a few bumps along the way – we were promised things we never got. We were promised reparations for some customer services snafus and never got them. We’ve been promised new features for more than a year and they still aren’t here. But today a friend of mine sent me a thread that trumped it all and effectively killed any remaining faith I had in Riot as “the most player-focused game company in the world.” As of this past Tuesday, Riot officially killed the League of Legends Mac client.

      I’m not here to bitch about the disintegration of the Mac client. It had been unsupported for months, and though it ran, some fairly serious problems would pop up from time to time for many of the users. I understand that maybe it was just more work than it could ever be worth, or that it just might never get to an acceptable state. I get that. What I don’t get is the method Riot used to communicate the change, the way rewards are being handled, and the message Riot is sending to a portion of its playerbase.

      Forums have a couple problems, not the least of which is the amount of data they generate. Important posts get buried and can be incredibly difficult to find again, and that’s only for the forums you actually read. When a platform has been unsupported for months, chances are good that players stopped reading the Mac Client forum. Hell, who says they were even reading it in the first place? I know for a fact my brother didn’t read it, and the Mac client was the only way we were able to play LoL together since his PC died.

      Then there’s the timing. The announcement was made on September 2nd. The shutoff date was September 6th. That’s four days. Four days. That has to be a joke. It’s not just that the notice window is so small, it’s also that the consolation prize for Mac testers can only be verified within that window. Here’s a quote from Tamat’s post:

      Riot would like to give all active participants in the Mac beta a code that unlocks the Champions Pack, as a token of appreciation for the time they have dedicated to helping us evaluate the Mac client and our sincere apology for not being able to have the testing work out as originally planned. To qualify for the reward, you must have a majority of your logins come from the Mac client, and you must login to the Mac client and click on the Store button between Friday, September 2 and Tuesday, September 6.

      So if you aren’t actively reading the Mac Testing forum (which is probably most people) and don’t log in for four days, you get nothing but a giant middle finger to stare at. This might not affect millions of customers. This might not affect even a thousand customers. It will affect some, though, and the message from Riot to those players is loud and clear: We don’t want you. Despite the time you spent testing the stillbirth that was our Mac client, we’re only going to offer a thank you once, and only for four days.

      It’s pretty easy to imagine a situation in which players wouldn’t be able to log in for four days, or that they might choose not to. You know, like if they had been planning for the end of a season that was delayed without explanation. If they made the grind to Bronze or Silver or Gold status and then decided to check out other games while they waited for those rewards to come through. Gee, wasn’t that also a holiday weekend? You don’t think anyone may have been traveling or otherwise away from a computer that entire weekend, do you?

      Well, we actually don’t know the answer to that because, as far as I can tell, Riot hasn’t been back to that announcement thread since Friday. I say “as far as I can tell” because that thread is now more than 100 pages long, and I’ve only been through about 30 of them. I would use Riot’s DevTracker, but it’s actually more polluted than the thread itself (more on that in today’s earlier post). I would use CL Gaming’s redtracker, but I can’t filter for the Mac Testing forum because, again, no one reads it or posts in it.

      So I’m done. I’m done digging through thousands of forum posts for information that should be easy to find. I’m done assuming Riot knows best. Most of all, though, I’m done believing that somewhere Riot has a plan, that when the timing is right they’ll let us in on it, or that they’re actually in touch with their playerbase at all.

      Come at me, most player-focused game company in the world. Prove me wrong.

      Editorial, league of legends

      Riot needs a new communication channel

      September 8, 2011 /

      I’ve written about this in the past, but recent events have once again brought to light the fact that Riot desperately needs a new way to communicate important information to players. The forums just aren’t cutting it anymore. Important threads are getting buried, relevant threads are getting downvote-locked, and announcement threads are being relegated to obscure forums because of the giant LoL troll population.

      Community Involvement vs. Communication of Important Information
      Riot has always excelled at community involvement but failed at communicating important information to the community at large. That sounds contradictory, but there’s a big difference between community involvement and the communication of important issues.

      Community involvement includes responses to threads like “Break the game in one sentence,” or “@Riot my 1000th win.” Don’t get me wrong – Riot responses to these threads are valuable, but on a different level than the important information. Riot responses to these threads build community relationship and strengthen the tie players feel to the developer. Involvement makes us feel like a part of the Riot family, like we’re in on the joke.

      Communication of important information relates to things like the Riven patch delay, the delay of the end of Season One, the Mac Client shutdown, ELO decay, the AoE bug (sorry, official forum post has been deleted), Dominion, champion changes, customer loyalty issues, feature teases, and so on. You see what I’m doing there?

      There are countless issues that are important to some or all of the playerbase, but they’re scattered all over the forums, buried in the middle of long threads, written as secondary red responses and just generally difficult to locate. When handled improperly, these issues make the playerbase feel ignored, unappreciated, and give the impression that Riot is out of touch.

      A Place for Everything
      The solution is pretty simple – each communication channel should have a clearly defined purpose. The forums are a great place for Rioters to interact with the community. This is where we should see the comments about the new Kennen plushie, the requests for games with Rioters, the Songs of the Summoned, the contests, the podcasts, the new databases, the in-house leagues. All of these things add value to the community, but they need to be separate from the communication of important information.

      The new communication channel is the place for important, design/balance/timeline-related Riot posts. You could send me to the DevTracker, but the DevTracker is totally polluted with the Involvement posts I just mentioned. It can take hours to find the red post I’m looking for. We also have the Riot logo next to threads to which a Rioter responded, but that only shows the first response. Even third-party DevTrackers, like the one at CLGaming.net, don’t quite cut it. They’re definitely an improvement on Riot’s own, but they still don’t get the job done. We need one location for all the important, game-relevant information.

      Riot Should Consider a Blog
      My personal recommendation for the new channel is a blog. It’s what I know. It’s what I’m familiar with. It also has several technical advantages. First, the links provide information about the post. URLs to my LoL blog all contain the month, day, and year the post was published. In most cases they contain the title. For community sites, this is great. No longer will I be sending readers to “http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1185192” to read up on the Mac Client news. I could send them instead to “http://blog.leagueoflegends.com/2011/09/02/mac-client-closing-september-6th.” It’s a slightly longer URL but contains a nice preview of what they’re about to see.

      Blogs also focus discussion. I don’t want to dig through 400 pages of comments about upcoming Orianna nerfs, the majority of which (the comments) are three words or less. All of that discussion now appears in one location and, with a robust comment system, the quality responses can be voted to the top, where they will be most prominent. Yes, some things will still get buried – no system is perfect – but it’s far better than the current system, in which not just the comments are buried; the thread itself disappears.

      Most importantly, though, a blog centralizes information about this game. Someone requests design change information? Send them to the blog. How do I tell my friends about the latest Dominion update? Send them to the blog. Tribunal changes? Blog. Patch delay? You get the picture.

      Conclusion
      Forums aren’t the only way to give your playerbase information. They are one way, and they have a best use. Be clear about the purpose for each channel of information, Riot. It makes your intentions, designs, and struggles more transparent to the player base. We aren’t asking you to rush deadlines or put out underwhelming products just so we can have them. We just want easy access to information. We just want to know what’s going on.

      Current Affairs, Editorial, league of legends

      Season 1 Rewards and the Importance of Achievemnts

      August 31, 2011 /

      As the end of Season One approaches, players have been scrambling to rank up for rewards. I’ve been in the mix myself, finally pushing through and securing gold late last night. It was challenging, but that also made it fun, and as a result I’m going to get some rewards. The funny thing, for me anyway, is that I don’t care much about the rewards. I’m not a Jarvan player. I don’t post on the forums much, if at all, but the simple fact that there is a reward associated with a tangible goal made the journey toward that goal a lot more compelling.

      There was also an interesting side effect, which is where the whole “importance of achievements” thing comes in. As my rating edged closer to the 1520 mark for gold status, players were more helpful and level-headed. Granted, this is some circumstantial evidence, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that the attitude adjustment is due to the fact that players have a common goal beyond just winning.

      It’s rare that I play with people who don’t want to win, but there’s really very little incentive to winning beyond, well, just winning. The ELO grind really didn’t mean anything. Players at every ELO rank complain that the players in that bracket are noobs and trolls. There’s also the fact that ELO is an endless grind. I can hit 1800 but what then? More games? Maybe make it to 1900? Maybe fall back down to 1600? There is no tangible reward other than bragging rights to make the ELO grind interesting.

      This Season One reward is nothing more than an achievement system, and for me it worked pretty well. I know there are still a lot of players struggling with ELO hell, but let me reiterate this – getting out of ELO hell won’t make your games that much better. There will still be trolls. There will still be feeders. There will still be games you just can’t carry. I don’t think you’ll see a real shift in player attitude until Riot gives us something more than just a win and a ranking to worry about.

      Editorial, league of legends, Reviews

      Hunkering down for Hurricane Irene

      August 26, 2011 /

      As many of you know, I currently call Wilmington, NC home. Yes, that’s the same Wilmington that meteorlogists have been saying could soon be wiped off the map by Hurricane Irene. Alright, things aren’t that dire just yet, but I’ve left town just the same to bunk up with some friends in Durham. As such, I won’t be online in League for the next couple days and updates here might be a little sporadic.

      Editorial

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