[2023] Riot Reav3 on the community sentiment that League is in "Maintenance Mode"

Originally posted by NerrionEU

Also we have been investing into so bigger things that won't ship for quite some time. But words won't change how people feel, and certainly this random reddit response won't either. The only thing that will change peoples opinion is when we ship content.

My question is are those things being developed for the game League of Legends or just other game projects. Because why would I be excited for other games that I might not play ? If people only want to play League itself what is in store for them is the problem here.

Originally posted by StopDyingMan

Reav3 my beloved.

Honestly I love this dude, he's always been here to talk with the community about a lot of things.

Thanks for that u/Reav3

Originally posted by Zeddit_B

Thank you for the words. Too us hardcore league players, they do mean a lot.

Any way you're able to say what the range of "quite some time" is?

Originally posted by wayofLA

I appreciate the post. But I just want to give you a piece of my perspective (and possibly others). I have faith in riot to deliver a great product for us league fans but it just doesn’t sit well with many people when we see Valorant, TFT, Wild Rift getting all this attention (not to mention the butchering of the LCS), and us League fans left out to fry with little to no communication for quite some time. Moving forward being transparent would be extremely appreciated by the fans and beneficial to you all at Riot as well. I hope that makes sense.

Originally posted by Dracyoshi

I don't doubt that League of Legends is receiving just as much attention from Riot developers as other Riot IPs, but I understand why so many people are perceiving it that way. When I glance at a game like Valorant or Wild Rift, I see a game that's packed with polish in every corner. Everything is up to modern standards.

But when I look at League of Legends, I see the poor condition of the engine and client, along with the state that a lot of older champions are in with their low-quality models and animations, and then think to myself "this is being neglected."

Neglect usually occurs because of a lack of attention and care, something that makes it easy to jump to the conclusion that Riot isn't paying as much attention to League of Legends as their other IPs.

So it doesn't necessarily matter if Riot is giving more attention to champion development, skin development and balancing than the entirety of Valorant. For as long as there are aspects of the game which aren't up to modern standards and have remained that way for years it'll still feel like the game is being neglected. It's all about perception. Same goes for the delay of Nexus Blitz and the disappointing cinematic, it all adds up and I suppose that this was the breaking point that led to players perceiving the game as neglected.

And speaking personally, I'm satisfied with the communication but it's likely because I actively follow /r/leagueofriot. Riot provides far more communication than any other developer that I follow, it puts Nintendo and Blizzard to shame. But I imagine that if users aren't following sources like these then they might not be satisfied with the communication; informative comments about the state of development like yours aren't usually shared on the official blog or YouTube channel.

Originally posted by darkacesp

The cinematics say it all, Valorant got a good cinematic with Revelation, plus the Lotus and new Skin trailers. Saw so many content creators watching and hyping up the Valorant characters in the cinematic. Maybe because it’s a smaller roster.

League got a Flyover of Summoner’s Rift that screams Intern project, even though it might not have been.

A league season cinematic with some actual unknown lore would be nice, with animated league characters. It doesn’t matter if the characters are new or old, but seeing some lore aspect or whatever wouldn’t be bad.

——

Also this is a side note, but can League actually get a good battle pass? Something that rewards us over an entire season instead of something we buy over and over again. Especially now that the season is splitting up. Fortnite and Valorant and OW have I feel genuinely better passes that don’t make you immediately grind in a period of a couple weeks.

Having a pass every event feels super greedy.

Originally posted by mystireon

I really wish I could have more trust when it comes to this stuff, but League's been feeling like it's been on a gradual decline for 3 years now, with the only real sentiment we're getting back now is to be patient as our feedback is being taken into consideration for the future.

I'm glad Esports is popping off but that's not the game I play so until I see some actual big positive changes to the game, I'm not gonna keep my hopes up.

Originally posted by StrwbryAcaiPanda

I think in addition to what others have said, I think you could even compare League to itself here. Official channels of communication from you all (i.e. the News page on the main site). We no longer get Ask Riot articles. We get less frequent dev articles. We have less champ roadmaps. We no longer get quick gameplay thoughts (these were HUGE for communication). Now we get like one "big" drop at the beginning of the year and a couple champion insights articles.

I understand it's hard to balance not making promises you can't keep and being transparent, but I think communication was so much better a couple years ago.

Originally posted by tankmanlol

Thanks for commenting here.

On things taking time - absolutely, stuff happens, stuff takes longer. But imo even though you can't always develop changes quickly, you can always communicate consistently. Maybe something like garena you can't address while it's happening idk. But for instance when there are updates to behavioral systems or lcs formats, and riot announcmenets seem way less interested in substance or reasoning than people like tyler1 or travis are, that's when it feels like riot has packed the bags and given up.

Which I'm sure isn't true - definitely believe people are putting in effort! Even if there's nothing tangible now I'm sure there will be. But it'd be great if you could put more of substance out there.

I would LOVE a recurring segment where tyler1 gets to spend 30 minutes lobbing questions at phreak like "why'd you buff xyz" or "why don't you ban people for xyz" or whatever. Even if he couldn't speak to all of them I feel like people would appreciate earnest and detailed responses (I certainly would) and the attempt to engage.

Imo a conversation would supplement the "these are our plans" videos/blog posts with more community input.

Anyways I personally think league was in a great state at the end of s12 although the meta got a bit stale.

Originally posted by BADxW0LF1

You can follow most of our designers, producers, etc. on twitter, or watch August on Twitch, or watch our dev videos, or read our blog, and get a lot of this info

This is why the riot forums were the best place for y'all to communicate. Too many places that we have to look at to get answers from y'all leads to people getting tired of looking and giving up. People shouldn't have to follow every single social media account of every single rioter out there. It's too confusing and too scattered. The one stop show was the best way to do things and y'all blew it away.

The only solace that we had WAS Surrender@20 but now that's sadly going away, it appears. There's zero hub for y'all's communications and it feels bad. The only way I know if any of you say anything is r/leagueofriot and that doesn't even cover Twitter or anything outside of reddit. It just sucks for the community. I don't want to have to follow all of your dang accounts. That's absurd and will bloat my Twitter feed with unnecessary shit and barely any of the useful shit that I actually care about and want to see (no offense to the things y'all enjoy, I just want to see news and responses from you all. Seriously...being back the forums. It was dumb to get rid of them in the first place.

Originally posted by TreeKeeper15

That's a very terrible way to think about it. For starters people are largely upset because there was no communication. For example, the community was expecting a real cinematic, while Riot knew that that wasn't happening. If we knew that there wouldn't be a real cinematic, sure some people would have been dicks, but it's the internet, someone is always a dick. But you wouldn't have seen the huge outrage that we saw this week. And even with that issue, as soon as the community got upset Riot went into radio silence. Almost no Rioters have commented on it and most of the comments were vague and dry.

Originally posted by anygoats

People have certainly been really intense. It's clear people are passionate. But to me it has definitely felt like a witchhunt rather than 1000s of people naturally reaching the same conclusion, as it certainly wasn't what I felt after watching or what I felt ppl outside of social media are thinking about it. The cinematic was obviously not on the same scale as last years but I've found the response intimidating even as a player...and this is just one thing. I'm not surprised if people are struggling to engage with the community, it's a lot of weight to take on to be so public facing.

Originally posted by newworkaccount

I've no doubt that the example is vivid because it is personal and horrible, and you either are, or know, know of, the person it was directed at. I don't want to downplay the effect that sort of vicious attack has on you all.

But...it also isn't fair to take that as emblematic of current criticism/frustration. You're right, that isn't passion. It's horrible. But you don't really think the person you replied to was calling that passion, do you? Surely that isn't what they meant.

It'd be like me saying that Riot doesn't have passion, because passion isn't farting in people's faces, ball tapping, and gendered pay inequities.

Especially when it comes to amorphous communities like a subreddit, I think you have to address yourself to, and treat that community, as if they were whatever segment of them is the segment worth talking to. Reasonable, non-hateful, true fans.

Because let's face it, you don't work on this for the other groups in that community that are horrible, and communication with bad faith is entities is just pearls before swine. And if you believe those folks are most of the community...what are you doing here?! Run! You know?

Originally posted by StrwbryAcaiPanda

I think the statement from the Twitter account was a huge step in the right direction. I'm glad you all responded so quickly to the criticism

Originally posted by bz6

The statement also stated: “We are committed to giving you more details about what that investment looks like in the next couple of days.”

No such announcement has been released. I guess even more unprecedented circumstances hitting the comms department or just pure lies 🤷🏽‍♂️