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Mogwai has released several videos in the last few days about the meta, patch, etc. In all of these, but especially his latest, he has gone after the people in the community who have criticized him and others for frequently complaining about the metagame. He's claimed in his latest video that this is in actuality the more positive approach.
We got things to change... I would much rather be a whiner than be a false-positive Andy
Thing is, Mogwai's right. Riot themselves have said they make changes in their approach based off of our feedback, and those of us who care about this game should voice our concerns if we don't want Runeterra to end up with the same problems as other cardgames like Hearthstone. Unfortunately, I think that he has been unintentionally encouraging less-than-positive behavior from players in his following that fail to make the distinction between constructive criticism and nugatory whining and that is going to continue to create more toxicity in this game community.
First, let's start with some distinctions. It should be said that there is, in fact, a difference between constructive criticism and nugatory whining. Constructive criticism aims to identify problems and potential solutions to said problems. Nugatory whining is just that: complaints that serve no purpose other than to complain, and whose 'solutions' are usually just mega-nerfs to cards or archtypes that they don't like.
CC Examples: "Fiora-Shen is currently too oppresive, perhaps if fiora lost some durability she would be slightly easier to deal with in the mid game", "Aphelios generates too much value even if you kill him, maybe if his weapons cost more, it would slow him down slightly", "Azir and Marshal provide too much value and are too difficult to remove, perhaps if they were easier to remove, they wouldn't be as much of an issue".
NW Examples: "I'm a silver player who doesn't know how to play against Fiora so I think she should be removed from the game", "I hate Aphelios weapons, he should only make 1/game", "Blade Dance should only work when you have the Attack Token, rendering a third of Azirelia's cards useless every other turn"
When Mogwai says things like : "Everybody who whined and complained about the meta... good for you(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZJtjo_9pAY&t=432s)" he is not just encouraging constructive criticism, but everyone who complained, and I personally do not want to empower or validate those who fill the conversations with so much useless noise that its harder for us to solve issues in the first place. I can't imagine how challenging it must be for riot to go through community feedback when more than half of it is 'remove this card from the game', 'make irellia an allegiance card or I quit', 'riot's a bunch of dum dums who don't know what they're doing', etc. So yes encourage others to make their opinions heard but encourage critiques to be well thought out and positive, not just sh*ting on things you don't like.
Mogwai has also lashed out a lot at those who have criticized him and others for 'complaining about everything'. But silencing these people has a similar effect to silencing those who are speaking out about issues in the game. You see, not everyone can be lumped into the category of 'whinning Timmy' and 'false-positive Andy'. There is another category of player, one who I would name the 'logical Chadwin'. This player does criticize Riot when they think there's an issue, but not before being patient and waiting for more information, instead of jumping to conclusions and hating things they lose to. And unlike false-positive Andy who tries to hush out all the negative so that they don't have to hear any of it, Chadwin supports other players' critique u n l e s s that player is spreading useless negativity that serves no positive purpose, then logical Chadwin challenges the person making his games' community objectively worse. When Mogwai 'calls out' all of those players criticizing the complainers, he is including the Chadwins, who are actively filtering out the useless toxicity in the game. You're doing the lord's work Chadwins, don't let Mogwai or anyone else convince you otherwise.
Finally, lets just talk for a moment about an attitude that I think is problematic: This pompous attitude that 'I, the player, know what's better for the game than riot does'. Lets be real for a sec, most of us just make shots in the dark about balance changes we might want to see, and never have to suffer any negative consequences for our bad ideas because we're not the ones making the actual changes. Developing a game around an actively evolving meta is hard and even our developers aren't perfect and yes, will make mistakes. But they are game developers by career choice with lots of experience (Yes, I know, 200 years kekw) have probably more data on the game than even mobablytics does, and also know what's going to be coming in the future, so I think its fairly safe to say they are the best equipped out of all of us when it comes to balancing this game. Our feedback should be aimed to try to help them, not do their jobs for them. You can listen to Mogwai talk about Riot Dovagedys here(https://youtu.be/qZJtjo_9pAY?t=201) and sort of see what I mean. The post Mog refers to was one where Dovagedys commented on another's redditor's post about how there's examples in the past at how focussing on buffs can sometimes have little impact, and imho Mogwai really overreacted to what he said. And then Mogwai stated that this new Riot Reddit post was Riot doing a 180 on their opinions, when it really wasn't. Even Mog's entire, "It would be unproductive to criticize Riot on realizing how wrong they really were" attitude just comes from such a 'better than thou' place thats just really hard to watch(unless you're in the same headspace). Lets just work with our devs, voice our concerns when they come up, and work together on this, instead of making this game community like League of Legends where every bronzy thinks they could make a better game.
In conclusion, I am (currently) less concerned with Mogwai himself, and more concerned with the toxic portion of his viewer base who he is constantly and consistently now empowering in his videos. I don't think Mogwai is doing this intentionally, I think he takes a lot of these critiques very personally and applies them to just how he behaves, and doesn't always consider the different interpretations of his videos that other viewers might have. Nevertheless, I think its a problem that we need to speak up about. In the same way that we should voice our concerns to Riot for the betterment of the game, I think we should voice our concerns to Mogwai as well as other influencers for the betterment of the community.
Lastly, some answers to common responses below:
You're just a Mogwai hater trying to trash my guy Mog. Why you do this?
I...literally said Mogwai was right in like the fifth sentence. Did you even read this? I like Mogwai as a creative deckbuilder, I just think he's doing some unintentional damage, hence the title.
If you don't like Mogwai then just don't watch Mogwai
Again, this isn't about whether or not I like Mogwai. Overall I enjoy his content. I just think he's encouraging some of the worst in our community and not just those who want the game to be better and somebody needs to say it.
You can't blame Mogwai for any of this. He's Spanish after all, there's fire in his blood
I will only say this once. Under any circumstances involving anything at all, no one's background is an excuse for their behavior. No one can change where they're from. Everyone can change how they behave.
Godwai UwU
(⌐▀͡ ̯ʖ▀)=/̵͇̿̿/'̿'̿̿̿ ̿ ̿̿ ⊂（゜Д゜⊂
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