Dear Riot Games,

I downloaded your only video game to date, League of Legends, in August 2011. Since then I have gone through practically all possible stages for a player of this title: I have played ad nauseam, flirted with the competition when I walked by Diamond 1, dedicated entire days to follow or participate in broadcasts of tournaments, organized events and established some reputation as a content creator.

Over the years, as passionate user of the universe you've created, I have applauded and criticized many decisions you have taken. I am aware that, although you are proud to be one of the companies that listens to the suggestions of your community, you have to prioritize business objectives.

A long time ago I assumed that I'm not part of your target audience and therefore, when you publish a decision, I try to approach it from the point of view of a casual player. At the end of the day, this type of Summoner is the bulk of your audience, so it makes sense that League of Legends is modified to meet the demands of this group.

But if there's one thing that I cannot stand, as much as I complain about other aspects, it's falsehood. To say that you'll do something for, soon after, do the opposite. Statements like this, taken from Riot Pls August 2016, are the things that enervate me: "While we’ve heard some comments suggesting otherwise, it’s never been a goal for us to make League more casual".

Allow me to laugh. Posting that statement, taking into account changes such as the elimination of the active component of Muramana or the possibility to pre-cast Pulverize (Q) with Alistar to hit your target right after Headbutt (W), seems like a joke.

The following is an excerpt from the explanation you gave in patch 6.4 regarding the changes of Muramana: "These changes are about increasing accessibility such that you can count on the power that Muramana provides rather than chalking it up to human error why your big item purchases didn't help you win that last teamfight".

What is the problem about attributing the misuse of this object to the human factor? Precisely one of the most rewarding feelings of League of Legends, or any other game actually, is to make a play and know that you did everything possible to squeeze the maximum potential of your resources.

This change not only eliminates the possibility of feinting with the amount of damage dealt by basic attacks or skills with or without turning on Muramana's active, but also prevents the player to control his mana as he wishes. Everything to not overwhelm the player with the huge amounts — note the irony — of actives that he has to manage.

Your excuse to implement such changes is based, apparently, in that the players don't use these actives. According to Riot Games's commentators and statisticians, Veigar's win rate increased when Deathfire Grasp was removed because only a small percentage of players used the active.

I do not see this increase as something especially positive, since it is the result of a simplification of the game by removing the decision-making and diversity provided by these actives, which is infinitely greater than the variety granted by the flat statistics that most of League of Legends's items offer.

Something similar occured in the case of Alistar. As you said in patch 6.3, "It's not the easiest thing to pull off [the combo] 100% of the time (even in pro play)". Therefore, instead of rewarding the player who has mastered his technique with the character to hit the combo, the standard is reduced so that it is more accessible to a public that does not bother to increase their skills. Something that, let it all be said, should be provided in a sandbox mode which development seems to be underway.

You could argue that simplifications like Alistar's don't really affect the competitive environment — my focus of interest — since an elite player will be accurate under all conditions. However, cases like the Lee "Piccaboo" Jong-beom's against Origen prove otherwise. If the match had been played after patch 6.3, the Korean would not have pulled the trigger too early because there would be no risk of using the Headbutt too late afterwards and save Enrique "xPeke" Cedeño.

Despite all the above, mechanical simplification seems like a lesser evil. Most troubling is the constraint of ways in which the players, especially professionals but also casuals, can exhibit their expertise.

Probably the most significant example is your contempt for lane-swaps. Beyond the fact that you attribute to this strategy features which describe it wrongly, it seems that you do not appreciate the difficulty to strategize, implement and adapt this tactic. Again, although the arguments are fallacious, it is an understandable decision for your orientation towards the casual player.

But your last proposal, which is to introduce a number of plants in the jungle that appear in semirandom locations — such as Bard's chimes — with a previous temporary warning to make all players know where they are going to emerge, has been the straw that broke my camel's back.

What is problematic is not the implementation of new elements on the map that allow moments of action, but the argument that you wield to add these elements and their characteristics.

As you expose in one of your latest entries on the preseason, "Jungle optimization is an interesting skill, but right now one of the strongest routes is just going straight through the jungle [camps] in order".

This, directly, is false. You only have to watch some games of the World Championship to realize that the routes through the jungle vary significantly depending on the chosen champion. A couple of examples: the characters that do not require mana — such as Rek'Sai or Lee Sin — alter their trajectories in different ways to yield the Blue Buff to his mid laner and players like Alexander "PvPStejos" Glazkov have shown different routes with mobile champions, like Nidalee, to invade the opponent or avoid the wards.

Even if your excuse were true, it comes in a clear contradiction with what appears to be your design philosophy. Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street explains in this blog about development that the goal of Riot Games "is nearly always to add depth to the game by taking a system that is largely solved and try and make it unsolved (and ideally unsolveable!)".

A little earlier, he argues: "When there is always a safe, “right” answer to solving every obstacle, you may feel smart in the short term because you know the answer, but in the long run that challenge may get stale or boring. The decision isn’t interesting".

Again, this does not apply to the jungle. The decisions that are currently made in this space are not binary and cover a huge range of possibilities depending on the circumstances that happen in every game. Learning the rival habits, adapt to the composition, intuit where to find the enemy jungler and know down to the millimeter the limits of your champion and those around are essential factors to make the right decision and change the path in the jungle to get the most out of every situation.

As you are well aware, to process all this information and act consequently in seconds it is required an expertise that almost no one has. That ability is what differentiates players like Choi "DanDy" In-kyu from William "Meteos" Hartman, whom has been lost in the jungle as well as other participants in the World Championship. If even the best players on the planet don't have a safe and correct answer to solve all the obstacles posed by the jungle, how can the rest have it?

The problem, Riot Games, is you're trying to fix something that is not broken. For the first time in a while the jungle seems to have reached a healthy state in their routes. This change, as it has been reflected in the messages of players, coaches and professional analysts, is received as incredibly forced and unnecessary.

You adduce that "the map lacks sources of tactical depth (elements that encourage a diversity of ways to address specific situations)" to justify the introduction of plants. Let me remind you that there is a purple and intimidating being in the area of Baron Nashor called Rift Herald, whose buff has only been claimed a laughable number of times in the games played so far in the World Championship. It may be crazy, but before revolutionizing other instances, you should check the status of this source of tactical depth.

And as if that wasn't enough, you go back to the mistake of adding randomness to Summoner's Rift. Chance is a natural enemy of any sport, it reduces the weight of the skill of the players in the final outcome of the game. Your goal, as you have said many times, is to make League of Legends a sport that lasts for generations. It seems illogical, therefore, to implement measures that go against one of the foundations of the competition.

Kuo-Yen "Xypherous" Lo, in one of his comments in the thread on plants, argues that "the problem in LoL at the moment is that there are so many external factors under the player's control so they exercise that to make fight contexts as unimportant as possible". This, according to the designer of your company, makes players prefer to use memory rather than adapting to unforeseen situations.

This argument drives me crazy. This time it is not an exercise of paternalism, as opposed to the simplification of Muramana or Alistar, but you're making choices that limit the impact of the player's decisions to lend some of those powers to random elements.

According to Xypherous, plants have given satisfactory results in internal testing. As he well recognizes, in these evaluations are involved important constraints: many of the testers are your employees and, those who are not, are influenced by the bias of positivity.

To be honest, the results of the tests matter little to me: the elemental dragons have also received good reviews and, despite this, are a source of randomness that should not be present in League of Legends; the dynamic queue was supported internally and in the end had to be reversed by the constant and logical community complaints.

I not rule out that, perhaps, plants will make League of Legends a funnier game and / or popular among casual gamers. I am sure that the most skilled players will continue standing on a higher step, no matter how many changes are made that subtract weight to their skill. I'll bet that even if the impact of these changes is significant and makes me lose interest in your game, I will keep paying attention to it.

I only ask, Riot Games, to not treat me like an idiot. Someone unable to manage multiple active skills. An idiot incapable to hit Alistar's combo. Don't aggravate my idiocy notch when, once I have minimally mastered the jungle, a random plant spoils a correct decision and execution. An idiot who, as much as you say otherwise, realizes that you are indeed casualizing League of Legends.

You have every right to simplify your game and make it more accessible. Something that, on the other hand, you could achieve by alternative ways such as an improved tutorial. I only ask you to, instead of selling me pretty words and disenchanting me with contradictory facts, manifest your intentions directly.

Best regards,

Fernando Cardenete

 

Original article: Por favor, Riot Games, no me trates como un idiota

Translation by: Juan Casanova