about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

I am the product manager on the League Client Team here at Riot, and along with my team, would love to answer any questions that revolve around the client! I suggest you take a look at our latest blog post launched earlier this AM PST (and previous dev posts linked there), since it may answer your question. We will make our best effort to try and answer as many questions as we can!

Edit -- HI all, thank you for the questions, we will be stepping away for now and getting back to work, but I, along with the team will continue to respond to questions over the rest of the day when we can (we got a lot). Thank you all for the great questions

External link →
about 3 years ago - /u/Riot_Aotus - Direct link

Originally posted by popegonzo

Thanks for all the hard work on the client cleanup!

My question is around the loot tab: are there any plans to allow players to remove, or at the very least streamline, the animations? They were cool at first, and I'm sure there's a healthy portion of the player base who enjoys them, but I don't think I'm alone when I say that I just want to open a box. I don't need a neat animation to forge the key and then a neat animation to open the box.

Enabling low spec mode in the client will definitely improve your looting experience!

about 3 years ago - /u/Riot_Aotus - Direct link

Originally posted by [deleted]

[removed]

Could you please be a little more specific? :)

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by ifBlueIAm

Hi, whats the deal with "skip waiting for stats"?

Good question, LCT made the fixes on the front end last year for EOG (End Of Game), with the reconnect button showing when it is not supposed to & it freezing due to a sync issue with another service.

As we continued our investigation early this year, yes , there is a problem with players seeing skip waiting for stats, and the service is sluggish and not sending stats over to the client in a proper amount of time, this leading to the button not even working. We have started our investigation and could have some potential fixes to help with this, and LCT is coordinating with other teams on the services side to see how we can improve EOG long term

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by kakaleyte

Hi,

If i don't run the client with high performance nvidia processor, League of Legends and Windows crashes while i am in-game, screen goes to black and nothing works. It's like this for years. Are you aware of the problem?

Are you referring to an in-game crash it seems?

I do like your point on GPUs though, we plan to do a chromium upgrade this year, and we are working on tech tasks to get us ready.

The player benefits can be huge, as with every chromium (the front end of the client) release, they perform a full regression test of GPU/CPUs combinations, so as they encounter issues, it will be resolved with their releases. We also have a lot of client crashes that will hopefully be eliminated when we perform this upgrade. The last upgrade of chromium we did was Nov of 2019, so this is long due and the player benefits will be highlighted in our next post, we are looking at faster animations, potentially higher fps (less sluggishness), reduced crashes

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by OnlyAnEssenceThief

Quick question: What version of Chromium is the team planning on upgrading the client to?

We are going to kick off this discussion soon! version yet to be determined, we would love to be at the latest! once we move to the upgraded version, we are going to ensure we have proper cadence to update way more frequently, so we aren't stuck with a version over a year old.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by molenzwiebel

Just saw that you guys are deprecating/removing chip in favor of Ember for the social plugin. Have you guys considered using something like Vue or React (keystone uses react anyway) at all? I understand that stuff like the ember data binding is already battle tested for the LCU, but given the relative size/impact of the social plugin and your issues with (admittedly a lot of) ember apps in the past I'm curious if you considered a different framework.

A goal of the LCT is to reduce the number of libraries and frameworks that are all accomplishing the same goal. The current state of the client is that the majority of the UI is written in Ember, so it is a natural choice, rather than picking something new and continuing to have two different UI libs/paradigms

about 3 years ago - /u/givanse - Direct link

Originally posted by HoroTV

First of all, thanks for the hard work! Your impact is quite noticeable, so I'm interested in seeing on what you can do.

For my question. I've been following the new client since it's early dev posts and also was one of the lucky ones to get early access to it a few years back.

Looking at early dev posts, the idea of having the client being written using web-technologies and especially using ember, was so that there can be many different teams enabled to work on the client to add features.

Since you are actively trying to find bottlenecks with features and even removing some that were especially made for this new client, looking back do you think that using this approach of using web technologies to drive the client was the right one?

The problems with the client are not inherent to the tech stack, web in this case. Many of the issues stem from the way its plugin architecture is implemented. Not even a plugin architecture is necessarily the culprit alone.

For the tech-savvy, picture this, at one point, the client was made up of over 150 plugins (web apps). All of them had their own build config (Webpack), and then, most used different versions of Webpack, Ember, Babel etc. The lack of uniformity and the boundaries that exist between features (plugins) made it very hard to maintain a improve the client.

about 3 years ago - /u/givanse - Direct link

Originally posted by OnlyAnEssenceThief

Quick question: What version of Chromium is the team planning on upgrading the client to?

We try to upgrade to the latest stable version. But that it isn't always possible within a reasonable amount of time.

For example, the last time we upgraded Chromium we wanted to go all the way to version 80+, but had to settle for 74. On 75, some core APIs changed and upgrading our code would delay the upgrade for a couple of months. Since then, as we do other work, we improve the old code knowing that another upgrade is imminent.

about 3 years ago - /u/Riot_Aotus - Direct link

Originally posted by showmeagoodtimejack

how did it get this bad? what was the QA process like throughout development?

A lot of the issue players see in the client are inconsistent at best, due to many factors like hardware, connection (yes, sometimes it's lag), antivirus software, and other programs a player might have installed. The things we can get accurate repro’s for are the things we can start fixing (depending on the severity of the issue). Depending on the type of work we do during a given patch we will run focused testing along with regression testing (full sweeps of the client) on the areas we specifically touched. At the end of each patch we run what we call an exit sweep to make sure everything in the client is working as we’d expect.

Something to keep in mind is that not all bugs are seen the same. If something is ear-flicky, that bug might sit on our backlog longer due to us prioritizing more critical work.

about 3 years ago - /u/givanse - Direct link

Originally posted by showmeagoodtimejack

how did it get this bad? what was the QA process like throughout development?

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by Meijis_Wife

How do you deal with the toxicity regarding the client? Does your team feel the pressure of all those years of broken promises? The client has been a meme for a long time within the community. I'm pretty sure you're aware of that, but does it make the job harder?

Good question, I am fairly new to the team, it will be one year In May!

One thing I wanted to do when I started on this team, I wanted to get a survey out globally to get a measure of sentiment around the client (you may have gotten it). This gave me a good idea of what we should work on in the second half of the year, which was champ select and End Of Game, since players reported issues with those two the most. As we implemented fixes over the past 5 months, we have seen really good trends in these survey results.

For example, the % of players who are very/somewhat dissatisfied with the client when we launched the survey was 50% in Brazil, North America, and South Korea. We are now trending towards below 40% for those three regions combined, which is a really positive trend, but we still need to do more to continue to move in the neutral/positive direction

We have also made good trends in month-over-month sentiment, with more people saying the client has improved with each patch, but again we still have 10% saying it's gotten worse (but was at 29% at the launch of the survey)

I love responding to player concerns around the client on Reddit, I have done it frequently since I started, because I truly do care about getting this product in better shape, and I am confident with our plan over this year, it will continue to get better.

about 3 years ago - /u/Penrif - Direct link

Originally posted by bibbibob2

Hi love the work!

Many of us wonder why is not a better solution to simply make a new client rather than spend all this time looking through the current one fixing numerous bugs and memory leaks.

A common example was the wintermint client etc. I am sure it is a lot of work to make a new client, but from the looks of it having a dedicated team working in and out for over a year to fix this current client seems to be quite the investment too?

Any insight on pros and cons of making it from scratch?

Thanks for the question! This is a deep one and is going to take a bit of history, so let's go for a little walk.

League, since the very beginning, has had two pieces of client software - the out-of-game client and the in-game client. For brevity, let's just refer to "the client" as the out-of-game one - the in-game one isn't what this AMA's about. Originally this was implemented on top of Adobe AIR, and went through a major rewrite a few years back, implemented on top of web technologies.

This split is not something that many games do. I struggle to think of an example really - the vast majority of games, including the other ones Riot makes, implement their out-of-game experience in the same piece of software that the in-game experience is delivered on. This has a lot of benefits, but the biggest of them is that the same experts that are tasked with making the in-game experience snappy and responsive can apply the same techniques to the out-of-game experience. The artists know how to make optimized assets for out-of-game because they have to for in-game, designers....ect you get the idea.

I can't speak to why the original split happened in the long, long ago, but when it came time to re-write from the AIR client, League's in-game UI technology was in absolutely no place to hold all the features required to execute the out-of-game experience League deserves, so the split had to remain. Web technology was chosen as the new fundamental base because the in-game UI tech could not be brought up to capability in a time frame that matched the urgency of the project. League invested in all that it took to make that shift, and the result really is considerably better than what we had on AIR, lest anyone get rose-tinted glasses about that.

So back to the point - pros and cons of making it from scratch? Well, if we were to do so without changing anything fundamental, there's no reason to expect the result to be any better. In fact, it'd probably be a lot worse - the current implementation has gone through a lot of battle-hardening and while it has its problems, they're a lot fewer in number and lower in severity than a fresh implementation off the press would have. On the other hand, changing fundamentals can take a very long time, which makes the investment quite large.

When it comes down to it, there's two routes available - change the fundamental technology again, or iterate on the existing product. The ingame UI technology has advanced considerably since the last time it was evaluated for this purpose, which makes it the clear choice for the next big leap. In fact, the out-of-game experience of TFT on mobile is implemented on top of it. There's still a sizable gap to close there in order to capture all that League would need, and even if it were ready today there's a helluva lot of software to create if we were to bite off that project. For now, we're committed to iterating and improving the existing, but that does not lock out the option for us to undertake the huge project of moving to in-game tech somewhere down the road.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by TellMeGetOffReddit

My question is, what's your goal with this AMA? Are you looking for feedback? Looking to shoot the shit? Is this a "for fun" thing or is there an actual goal behind this.

I guess I'm asking, what kinda questions are you guys looking for? For fun questions? Or serious detailed questions.

anything you desire!

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by Eruptflail

Is there a reason why you all are looking to fix the client rather than completely remake it or integrate it within the game itself?

about 3 years ago - /u/givanse - Direct link

Originally posted by dahyunxsana

is 1,75 billion revenue not enough to hire a competent it crew and just completely remake the client?

We need more engineers, they are hard to find, send them our way:
https://www.riotgames.com/en/work-with-us/jobs

about 3 years ago - /u/givanse - Direct link

Originally posted by Xaliuss

I'd like know about possibilities and/or timeframes for some improvements for collection tabs

  1. Champions - Integration with universe page - biographies, stories, links to other media.
  2. Skins - seeing descriptions in shop and being able to view skins in not only one order (by champion, by theme, so on).
  3. Skins - adding video previews, for example from SkinSpotlights.

I would like to know too.

u/Am1t8 when? #RitoPlease

about 3 years ago - /u/Penrif - Direct link

Originally posted by Spideraxe30

Hey guys I wanted to ask if there are any major differences or learnings applied to the Valorant and/or Legends of Runeterra clients because they seem to run smoothly for the most part compared to the League client

The major difference is being implemented with game engine technology vs web technology, for the most part. This allows for all the optimizations and standards that make the game run smooth to apply to the out-of-game experience as well.

I went into a fair amount of detail as to where League's on that in a different reply.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by Musical_Mayonnaise

When will account transfer be available again? Also, any plans for voice chat?

The question - Why should we be forced to re-evaluate our opinion on the rune edits.. not once, but two times ["Save > Yes/No"] instead of it being auto-saved immediately after the edit?

The player that is opening Rune pages is doing so with intent to edit or just check the current selection. It should be logical that the game auto-save any edits done while the runes are open since your sole purpose of opening it was probably to "edit" the selection. This would also allow us to easily switch between different pages without being forced to save previous edits.

Hello, I just poked the team working on this;

re: account transfers - They have uncovered more problems are originally anticipated, but the good news is that they are actively working on it and should be available soon. The bad news is I don't have an exact date to share.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by Moonwalking_Eren

  • Why does the client work so well for me while others say they encounter bugs continously?
  • Which is your favorite programming language?
  • Which is your favorite esports team?
  • When will Riot IDs replace Summoner Names?

Hey! This is an answer from one of our engineers, not me :)

  • This is an interesting question, and one possible explanation is that differences in network conditions, regional services, and the state of a player's account can all play a part in bugs that show themselves in the client. In the best case, the client has a way to handle a downstream issue and degrade the experience gracefully,  but there are also times where the edge case isn't covered, which is something we continuously look for to patch.
  • For work? JavaScript. For fun? Rust is pretty cool.
  • Cloud9 has always been a favorite of mine
  • I don' think there is a date set for this, or whether the LoL dev team has finalized the plan around any sort of transition. Stay tuned. If or when this happens we will communicate it broadly.
about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by givanse

I would like to know too.

u/Am1t8 when? #RitoPlease

These are all good feature requests to enhance the collections tab. Unfortunately, the team's primary mission is to make the client more performant and reliable. We are not there yet, but as we move closer, we can look to introduce feature enhancements, we just can't commit to them until we are happy with our client improvements.

about 3 years ago - /u/Penrif - Direct link

Originally posted by S890127

Hi, seriously asking: Which is the easier way to fix the client?

Rebuild a brand new client with new codes(Have you guys actually considered this option?)

or

Fix bugs from the current client codes

about 3 years ago - /u/givanse - Direct link

Originally posted by Am1t8

These are all good feature requests to enhance the collections tab. Unfortunately, the team's primary mission is to make the client more performant and reliable. We are not there yet, but as we move closer, we can look to introduce feature enhancements, we just can't commit to them until we are happy with our client improvements.

Okay, pull request incoming.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by IncProxy

Is there any new feature planned for the client that you can talk about?

Hello, I just poked the team working on this;

re: account transfers - They have uncovered more problems are originally anticipated, but the good news is that they are actively working on it and should be available soon. The bad news is I don't have an exact date to share.

I would love to be in a position where we are doing new features or enhancements. The team's mission is to make the client more performant and reliable, and we are not there yet. We have made really good progress, but we have a good amount of work to do until we can say we are happy and met our mission.

about 3 years ago - /u/Riot_Aotus - Direct link

Originally posted by Dracoknight256

Honestly,my biggest issue so far is post-game. Honor screen crashes my client 66% of the time.

Have you noticed if you crash after you’re clients been running for a long time or are you seeing this after starting up and playing a game or two

about 3 years ago - /u/Riot_Aotus - Direct link

Originally posted by EuroNati0n

Moving this comment over to the thread from your og post, but what's going on with the key fragment bug?

This one has been a tricky one. We haven’t found a definitive way to reproduce this yet. Have you noticed any patterns for when this happens? Does it happen every single time you receive a key frag?

about 3 years ago - /u/Riot_Aotus - Direct link

Originally posted by Am1t8

anything you desire!

@amit8- what’s a hidden talent no one knows you have?

about 3 years ago - /u/givanse - Direct link

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

It can make it harder sometimes. But a lot of that toxicity exists within Reddit only and not the broad player base. Sometimes players will message me (in-game) to offer encouraging words and report that they've never had a significant client issue. When that happens, I appreciate it very much, it helps too!

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by LordButtlet

Hi Riot, do you guys know that ranked season 2021 has begun?

Season start notifications as well as several of the popup modals that are shown when a player first logs in are implemented using the same system.

While we have made improvements over the past year to the system (with our data, after we implemented multiple fixes we have seen a dramatic drop in this issue), We know that there are still problems where the local settings file resets on players' machines.

This is especially true when multiple accounts share the same PC. We have work on our backlog to holistically address how we save player preferences and persist the state of what they have seen or not seen, and hope to have more details later.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by LordButtlet

Hi Riot, do you guys know that ranked season 2021 has begun?

Season start notifications as well as several of the popup modals that are shown when a player first logs in are implemented using the same system.

While we have made improvements over the past year to the system (with our data, after we implemented multiple fixes we have seen a dramatic drop in this issue), We know that there are still problems where the local settings file resets on players' machines.

This is especially true when multiple accounts share the same PC. We have work on our backlog to holistically address how we save player preferences and persist the state of what they have seen or not seen, and hope to have more details later

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by LordButtlet

Hi Riot, do you guys know that ranked season 2021 has begun?

Season start notifications as well as several of the popup modals that are shown when a player first logs in are implemented using the same system.

While we have made improvements over the past year to the system (with our data, after we implemented multiple fixes we have seen a dramatic drop in this issue), We know that there are still problems where the local settings file resets on players' machines.

This is especially true when multiple accounts share the same PC. We have work on our backlog to holistically address how we save player preferences and persist the state of what they have seen or not seen, and hope to have more details later

about 3 years ago - /u/Penrif - Direct link

Originally posted by Hawxe

You keep saying web technology. What's the stack on the client? It's not using electron is it? Please tell me it's not using electron.

edit. You know what an actual question:

Why are so many companies using javascript based stacks for things like this as opposed to something more native? Is it meant as a holdover until a future League 2 with a combined client?

It's not using Electrion ;)

It's built on top of the Chrome Embedded Framework, with a custom-built foundation underneath.

As to your larger question of why the JS stack is sometimes picked over native solutions - I can't possibly speak for the entire tech industry on that, but I'm happy to give my personal opinion based on what I've seen in general industry trends.

I think there was a lot of hype super early in the development of the interactive web that had people believing the future of the native application was limited. The Google suite in general gave that a lot of ammunition - if you can compete with MS Office using web tech, what can't you do? That's a sane, reasonable conclusion to make if you aren't aware of the massive amount of work that goes into making those products as smooth as they are. As with much tech industry hype, there is a lot of value inside of it. Web-based applications are hugely valuable and solve many problems that native cannot. But native solves certain classes of problems categorically better, and as the hype cleared, their value was sort of re-discovered by those who were caught in the hype.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by IntendedRepercussion

these replies are actually genius or just accidental and ironically genius

lol ;)

about 3 years ago - /u/Penrif - Direct link

Originally posted by Hawxe

That's fair and kind of what I expected.

Knowing all that, if you could restart the project/make the decision now, would you go the same route or go native?

I've never had experience on a piece of software that large so I'm curious.

Native by default, with CEF to cover the pieces that truly are best covered by JS stack. Best of both worlds.

Don't suppose you have a magic wand I could borrow?

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by AetherialSpace

Is there a world where we will be able to

  • Select our Level borders?
  • Have status' not have the "<--->" anymore?
  • Have Collection/Champion icons be small again so we can view more than 10 champs at once?

Aside from bugfixes, I feel like there were a LOT of reverse QOL changes that worsen QOL instead of improving it.

I do appreciate and notice bugfixes (even if it's still a long way to go) but tons of these other changes seem like just "change for the sake of change".

We really do appreciate and read this type of feedback, and our devs talk about these types of changes all the time.

Our specific team is focused on improving the overall client performance and reliability, while feature teams across League of Legends maintain many of the features you ask about. While I can't speak specifically to the features you ask about, we can ask our colleagues on the teams that own these experiences to see if they are got any plans to adjust and/or update

about 3 years ago - /u/Penrif - Direct link

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

Please take a deep breath and re-read my post. At no point am I blaming the backend, and the fundamental change of going to native is what most of the post is talking through. The part you quoted is covering the idea of re-implementation without any fundamental changes - ie, take another swing using the same tech stack, which I think you'd agree would be folly.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by PraiseTheStun

How do you deal with the constant complaining that you read in forums (ignoring whether you think they're justified or not)?

I do look at every client related post when they are posted, and I respond when I feel like a have a good answer to the concern, and I am extremely data-driven. For Example, we have data from our survey results and show a positive trend from people being very upset with the client towards the more neutral/positive side. I want to share more of these findings with players when I can. Does this mean we are done? hell no, if you see in our latest post, we need to do many things to upgrade chromium, which will provide big player benefits, and fixing JS errors, continuing to reduce memory leaks, etc.

I deal with the constant complaining by looking at the data we have, and it provides me comfort knowing we are making the client better for our players globally, and if this trend reverses, I will be the first to tell you.

about 3 years ago - /u/Penrif - Direct link

Originally posted by LacklessLuck

Does that mean we will never have a perfect client because implementing out-of-game and in-game in the same piece of software, which apparently is the most efficient way of building the client, would take too much effort and time? Can't a company with the resources Riot has make it happen?

"Never" is not applicable here. It is a large effort, but League has invested in large efforts like that before - we just don't do so lightly.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

We posted our latest this AM, the link is in the post.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by Blackout28

This might not be in your realm of knowledge, but has there been any discussion at all about just building a new client?

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by thegreatkatzby

No question here, just advice - stop doing AMA go back to work

We just did!

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by -Puffin-

i just wanted to say you guys are doing a great job, and i hope with how well this has done so far, that other "league health" teams are formed for league. its starting to show alot of age in alot of places. the client was one of the worst offenders and you've guys made it so consistent, i just hope for more of that across league as whole. things such as website work, in game bug work, hell even a team to look at hard outliers in the game and try to bring them up in small ways, like diana or brand style changes.

Thank you, appreciate the feedback, but we still have more to do!

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by Monteveous

Hi Riot, the client has been having this permanent message for the past 4 months - something about account transfers? When is that going to actually be touched?

Hey, i posted this in an earlier thread

re: account transfers - They have uncovered more problems are originally anticipated, but the good news is that they are actively working on it and should be available soon. The bad news is I don't have an exact date to share.

about 3 years ago - /u/givanse - Direct link

Originally posted by NeoAlmost

150 different plugins with different build configurations sounds pretty messy. Since you said "at one point", does that mean that there are now fewer plugins, or that the client no longer uses a plugin framework?

We are down to:
- 48 plugins
- about 4 build configurations

It breaks down to 3 plugins with 3 special configs and 45 with the same build configuration. The ideal would be to get rid of the plugin system and have a single app. We are working towards that. The last few special configs are very tricky to get rid off.

about 3 years ago - /u/givanse - Direct link

Originally posted by MSTRMN_

I wonder if you've been thinking about third-party libs that are dependencies to your code/frameworks that you use. Do you have a common store or you ship dependencies for each plugin in their own packages?

Common store so that code is never duplicated.

about 3 years ago - /u/Riot_Mort - Direct link

Originally posted by gingerkid427

/u/riot_mort might be able to answer this one, I seem to recall him (or someone on the dev team) saying that you wouldn’t get the missions for this set until you played a game of TFT.

This is in for the core missions, but unfortunately the weekly missions got messed up :(

Hopefully we'll have that fixed soon.

about 3 years ago - /u/Penrif - Direct link

Originally posted by Masalar

That ignores the part that they felt they had a deadline. Making those changes would have taken longer, possibly substantially longer, during which players would be stuck with an increasingly bad client. (and the old client was bad, let's not kid ourselves here).

There were problems with each choice. It's easy to envision a world in which we'd only get the positives of the other option and not all the negatives that would have gone with it.

Bingo. Hindsight being what it is, it's possible to think through what the other option would have taken and think it was obviously the right choice, but that's using information that was not available at the time, which is deeply unfair to the individuals that made the call in the moment.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by NocaNoha

Mmm.. did you miss the comment or? Regardless, thanks for the reply haha

Sorry, I did miss this, so we do not have any plans to make this change to runes at the moment. Prioritizing this against the massive amount of work to get the client continuously better takes priority number one. I look forward to the day when we are talking feature changes/enhancements because this community has a lot of good ones we do read all the time

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by Responsible_Stage336

Hey guys, I haven't really had any issues with the client in a long while and I kinda don't understand the constant complaints, however I'd like to ask something regarding player perception-

Do you guys think that even if you entirely fixed the client that the perception of it being shitty will remain? Because honestly it's reached a memetic status at this point, where I keep hearing my friends meme about the client being terrible yet when I ask them when they last had a major issue they'd say there rarely were any. How would you guys tackle the perception being kept up despite it being fixed?

I Love this question, because I do think about it often. You have a number of players that get told about the client and its issues, yet as in your example, do not get issues themself. I think more communication would help, I try to keep up with as many posts as I can here.

A good example was the doublelift post last week, where his champ select experience caused a dodge, but we unfortunately had a completely random database outage outside the client that booted thousands of players from client and in-game that caused that. We have looked at messaging displayed to players that explains the errors, but that investment would be massive since so many services connect to the client, and specific messaging around each would be tough

Takeaway, I would estimate that over half of the issues posted on this reddit marked as client are actually services related outside the client, but to a player, they see them in the client, so its a client issue.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by tdaniel_s

Why does the league client seemingly only change with ingame-patches? Is there a reason changes arent pushed more frequently

All teams on League work on the same exact release calendar

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by Vastator10

Communication to the user base about the client has notoriously been poor, to the point of it becoming a running joke among people. While the group that started work in early 2020 has done a good job and some evidence of progress has been noticable, communication of completed goals is still done poorly. For example a large number of people, myself included, were unaware of the 10.25 memory leak fixes, which is quite a difficult problem that was solved. What plans are there for 2021 in more thoroughly communicating intended goals to the user base and maintaining consistant follow-ups of those goals as they are addresed?

Good question, we try to publish all of our changes in the patch notes, so continue to read them, they will be there. As far as dev posts, it does take time to write them up, and they have to go through a process called localization for each country. I can't make a commitment that we will increase the cadence. If you see something in a patch note regarding a client, and want more information, send me a private message here on reddit

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by DJWhimSy

Appreciate the work honestly, it's amazing

How do you guys deal with all the backlash and snide remarks headed your way though? It seems awfully depressing to have to face that even after all your work spanning over a year

I have responded to some similar questions, but I like to use data to back up our success. We have seen really good trends in our survey results, and will hopefully continue as we deliver more work.

about 3 years ago - /u/Penrif - Direct link

Originally posted by PetMeFeedMeCuddleMe

What information wasn't available at the time? The foresight to see that rolling it all into one client was a better option?

How long it would take to do so. Webtech offered the ability to start work immediately, while going the game tech option would have required an unknowable amount of up-front development work to create the framework for content implementation before anything else could be done.

Having now put in that work in service of TFT mobile, we know how much it was. But that's not something that could have been known before actually doing it. Software development estimation is notoriously fraught.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by SergeantAskir

Do you think it is a good split if some teams build features for the client and other teams have to fix what they produce?

Why aren't those teams held accountable for the performance problems that their features are causing?

We don't have a large enough of a team to do this split, and love the second part of your question. There are over 30 engineers outside the client that do feature dev. in the client. We have kicked of syncs with them to knowledge share and most importantly show them our crash rates and errors metrics, so they can ensure any code they deploy doesn't impact these numbers in a negative way

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by ginandjuice43

Why did you ignore the voice chat option question?? After all it's a team game and more coordination helps. Valorant and Dota have it no reason league shouldn't when league requires just as much team play and more than valorant imo.

Hey, not ignoring, just sorting through, but as for Voice and allowing chat outside party, I will need to find out the team that made the decisions to make it party only, is this your concern?

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by ginandjuice43

Why did you ignore the voice chat option question?? After all it's a team game and more coordination helps. Valorant and Dota have it no reason league shouldn't when league requires just as much team play and more than valorant imo.

Hey, not ignoring, just sorting through, but as for Voice and allowing chat outside party, I will need to find out the team that made the decisions to make it party only, is this your concern?

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by FishermanThresh

u/Am1t8 can you give a response please?????

Hey, im asking some engineers around for this issue, but i do not know why this would happen. Have you checked your memory as the client freezes? it could be an out of memory issue, which freezes up all those apps at the same time

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by OkQuote5

Works on my machine.

In all seriousness just wanted to say that ya'll really are doing great work and out of all the games I've played Riot has been the most transparent, engaged, and active with the community. I know companies don't need defending and its kind of cringe to do so but the level of support Riot gives the game and the amount of borderline abuse sent their way is staggering.

Appreciate the feedback, thanks!

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by commitsudokulolmods

So I’m pretty angry at the state of the client because ever since the first dev blog like 3+ years ago about the client team, it doesn’t seem to get any better. What can you say to make me feel better? 🤷‍♀️

Edit: Nothing I guess

Hi there, I am going to use this similar response to a general theme I am seeing around 'it not getting any better'. I responded to a question above but we have data from multiple regions around the world that is showing improvement in perception with the client. More and more players are moving away from being very upset towards neutral/positive. This is because of the number of changes/fixes we made over the last year, as highlighted in our latest blog post.

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by morojax

Get a new job! Your client has been shit consistently for 10 years!

Hi there, I am going to use this similar response to a general theme I am seeing around 'it not getting any better'. I responded to a question above but we have data from multiple regions around the world that is showing improvement in perception with the client. More and more players are moving away from being very upset towards neutral/positive. This is because of the number of changes/fixes we made over the last year, as highlighted in our latest blog post. We do still have work to do, and are confident that the client will continue to get better over the year

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by Resistz

Are you not embarrassed to provide such a low quality client?

Hi there, I am going to use this similar response to a general theme I am seeing around 'it not getting any better'. I responded to a question above but we have data from multiple regions around the world that is showing improvement in perception with the client. More and more players are moving away from being very upset towards neutral/positive. This is because of the number of changes/fixes we made over the last year, as highlighted in our latest blog post. We do still have work to do, and are confident that the client will continue to get better over the year

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by HappyLilAccident2020

How many shots did you do before subjecting yourself to this AMA?

Just a cup of coffee haha

about 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by Leyrann_is_taken

Why are there such big differences between people?

I have a good, but not great laptop (it cost 2k euros, but it's not a dedicated gaming laptop and I've had it for four years now), and I literally never have issues. Worst I get is that I sometimes have to wait a few seconds for the stats or get a fake key fragment notification.

Meanwhile other people report that their champion select messes up so often that they effectively dodge about one in every five champion selects. Something that I've never had - in fact it felt surreal to me last week to have champion select issues with clash on EUW (first time I participated), as it was pretty much my first time ever.

So yeah. Where do those differences come from? What is different about other people's clients compared to mine?

Regions where folks play is a big factor. For example, players in South Korea are the least upset about the client, while players out in Brazil are more upset. The biggest difference between the two regions is infrastructure and network, where folks in Brazil may not have the best/fastest internet available, while in South Korea, it's super fast. These latency issues can have a significant impact on client & in-game experience.

I have also Vacationed in both countries, and loved them! highly recommended!

almost 3 years ago - /u/Am1t8 - Direct link

Originally posted by olican101

It is now 2 months later and you still haven't fixed it. If you're removing a feature just remove it. Don't tell us it's coming back if it isn't... There are people literally waiting to use this feature...

2 months is not soon!

Transfers were re-enabled this past Friday