First let me caveat this by saying I'm a Software Engineer at Riot Games, but I don't work directly on League and I don't have the context to know exactly why "the Emporium is built, tested, and shipped in a... not so great way that takes astronomically more work than any reasonable person would fathom." Quote taken from this post.
That being said, I feel like this objectives of this post are unclear. Let me explain. First by addressing the original point and then by following up with what I think the objectives are and some commentary on that.
It's not possible for the blue essence emporium to need so much work. And I will tell you why.
Whenever I do a software engineering interview, one of the things I hope to always hear from a candidate is "what are the limitations or restrictions that should be considered when solving this problem". It's pretty common in software engineering that your solutions will vary wildly depending on your constraints and software engineers are tasked with finding, understanding, and weighing the benefits and risks of possible solutions to these constraints. Depending on the constraints, it makes total sense to me that it may take "astronomically more work than any reasonable person would fathom."
This has been a solved piece of work for decades. The tools and resources we use for this work are common and quick.
This is true, but it's also an assumption that we're using the tools you're referring to. There can always be constraints that eliminate the usage of industry standard tools that solve these problems well. Perhaps a very complex legacy order or inventory system (whether it's unnecessarily complex is a separate debate). Or maybe the existing tools aren't allowed for legal or geopolitical reasons.
I believe the goal of objective of this post is one of two things:
1. You want the Essense Emporium to be a priority and don't want it to disappear or take years to rebuild.
If this is the objective, then debating why it's impossible for the current one to take so much work to maintain misses the true point (imo). I'd argue the true point is that fixing the Emporium should be a priority over other features and work. And if you believe that and other players believe that, then as a collective your voice will get heard and Riot very much shifts priorities based on player sentiment. I'd submit the title of the post should be "Rebuilding the Essense Emporium should be a high priority for Riot to fix this year." This is a completely reasonable stance to take.
2. You don't believe the post and perceive it as misdirection or just straight lies.
First let me submit, that in the many years I've been at Riot I've never blatantly witnessed comms folks purposely attempting to misdirect players, but I have seen Riot be tone deaf or out of touch with what players really want. Seeing players believe Riot is purposely trying to misdirect or lie to them is saddening to me because I know a lot of people work hard to communicate with players but we don't always get it right. When players give us feedback that we're focusing on the wrong things I've seen the company shift countless times. The last that I can remember off hand is the Chemdrake. I'm not sure how much, but I bet a ton of work got shelved because players hated how the game felt and though we felt we could balance it we listened to players and removed it.
Regardless of how I feel, I think it's completely fair to believe that any company would utilize misdirection. And if you feel that's the case, then I think debating whether it would take a lot of work to update the Emporium is muddying the issue. If you feel like you're being misled, it'd be great to know what other times you've felt this way and have a discussion about why these comms feel misleading.
I promise you, player trust is an important metric at Riot and if there are things you feel Riot is doing to break that trust plenty of Rioters would be interesting in hearing what those are.
That said, when I see a post like the one we're discussing I completely believe what's being communicated (again because of my experience at Riot and our history of sometimes misunderstanding how important some features are to players). And my automatic reaction to these posts is to assume #1 that you want this feature to be prioritized.
Anyway I posted this whole thing because I want y'all to get what you're really after and if that's better comms that don't feel like misdirection let's focus on that but if it's to prioritize the Essense Emporium then I think it came across like you're actually talking about #2.
For the record, I'm also sad to hear the Emporium is going on hiatus and I personally, would like to have some idea of when it's coming back even if that date shifts. And if it keeps shifting in the wrong direction, I'd expect players to call us out and let us know how you feel.
devtrackers.gg