I’ve had a couple particularly bad games recently, mostly thanks to unapologetic trolls or unbearable wannabe pros. In a couple games I’ve tried to be a force of change, asking my teammates to not be so negative, but for the most part I prefer to just drop everyone on ignore and be done with it.
It seems the community attitude, at least the worst of it, has been wearing on the Rioters lately as well. Guinsoo recently tweeted that he was sad to Irelia do well in a test game after he had nerfed her. The community jumped all over that, hoping to stave off a harsher nerf. Guinsoo replied as pictured above:
And you guys wonder why we don’t post here?
All I did was say that it made me sad that she can do this. There are so many overreactions and hyperbole here it’s not even funny.
Good day.
It’s not surprising that he feels that way – I’d imagine any company with as much public interaction as most game developers have feel less than warm toward their customers from time to time. It is surprising that he would come out and say it on the forums. I see it as a pretty clear sign that the community is in bad shape, and it’s not the only evidence, either. The formation of leagues like the Runeterra In House League also point to the fact that players are unhappy with the queue experience and want a higher quality play experience.
I’m hoping that last part will help drive some change in the community. It’s tiresome to play with trolls and know-it-alls, and even more so when the forums around the game don’t offer any relief.
If I had to pick one thing I love about Riot, it wouldn’t be the frequent champion releases, the skin sales, the contests, the fact that they provide a free game, the commitment to not sell power, or the long overdue Garen nerf (I am really happy about that last one, though). Out of all the things Riot does to give us a great game, the thing I love above all else is community involvement.
Of all the developers I’ve seen, I can comfortably say that Riot does the best job of staying involved with the community and using the forums to quickly and consistently address player concerns as soon as they’re on the radar. Sure, there are a few places the Riot staff has dropped the ball, and the occasional trolling still upsets me, but by and large, Riot’s pretty great about keeping the player base informed about the design that goes into a game.
The reason I decided to write this post today is actually because of Cataclysm. I know not many of you are playing, so I’ll try to cover the issue as briefly as possible. Blizzard made some major adjustments to the PvP system, most notably the way that you progress and earn gear. The honor system still exists but, unlike every other number system in the game, there has been point deflation. Items that used to cost tens of thousands of honor now cost 2200, max. A five-piece set of PvP gear now runs a total of 9900 honor. Obviously, battleground rewards have been scaled back, so players are earning less total honor, but about the same percentage related to gear as was the case in Wrath.
Cataclysm also introduced another world PvP zone named Tol Barad. Like Wintergrasp before it, Tol Barad offers raid access to the faction that controls it, a fight for which is waged every two and a half hours. When it launched, the defending team had a massive advantage and was able to win nearly 100 percent of the battles. To counteract the issue, Blizzard increased the reward for successfully attacking Tol Barad by a factor of 10, literally. The assaulting faction now receives 1800 honor (more than the cost of several of the pieces of gear) for a victory instead of 180. It’s a big problem because it has artificially inflated the gear level for a lot of PvP players and made running battlegrounds seem paltry by comparison.
The design issues this change raises belong to another post. The interesting part for the purposes of this post is that Blizzard hasn’t responded to the change at all, despite the fact that it just went live this past Tuesday. The latest blue posts are a full two and a half days old, one of which says we should look for a blog post after the new year discussing the design direction for Tol Barad. I realize two and half days isn’t that long, but this is prime playing time for a lot of people with the holidays in full swing and this change has already had major impact on the game, an impact that might be compounded if the fix is to re-nerf the rewards. It basically nullifies the gear reset for anyone who makes it to 85 after the change gets reverted.
I have never wished Phreak was a Blizzard employee until now.
The best part, of course, is that it’s made by a girl, so most of the comments in the thread are something along the lines of “lol a gurl letz make out.” As weird as stuff like this is (I’ve never understood crafting stuffed video game characters), it’s also a sign that the community around LoL continues to grow and grow with increasingly dedicated fans. On the whole I’d say that’s a good thing for the game. Hopefully it means more money for Riot, which means they can hire more people to help resolve the scaling issues with which the game continues to struggle.
