Player sharply criticizes LoL – 11 hours later the founder of Riot Games offers him a job
A user of the reddit forum has dealt intensively with the events in League of Legends in a long post. His remarks reached Marc “Tryndamere” Merrill, one of the founders of Riot Games. He immediately offered the critic a job in LoL. According to Merrill, successful teams tended to be complacent. A well thought-out player perspective is valuable and can achieve change.
What was the criticism of the player? On June 2nd, Reddit user Lanaluse published a lengthy post on reddit. Theme: “Events in League of Legends: They’ve Always Been Bad.”
In a five-part and multi-page post, the user explained what problems the events have in different phases of Riot Games. He found that events tended to get boring and worse over the years:
- Events went through a lot of changes over 12 years – Riot never seemed satisfied and kept changing the whole concept
- Over the years, the focus of events in LoL has shifted away from “making things” and “trying new things”. Now the focus was on getting the opportunity to buy things in the cash shop
- Today events are boring – after all you have to spend money to enjoy an event, otherwise you miss 70% of the content.
Compared to competing games like Fortnite, LoL is just as grindy as them, but you still can’t unlock everything.
The user judges: Events in League of Legends are now only there to sell more skins.
This is what events in LoL look like today:
What should events be like instead? According to the reddit user, events should be there to further explore the universe you’re trying to sell players.
It used to be about players being able to delve deeper into the world of LoL – for example with special modes that adapt to the event. Instead of always playing the classic Summoner’s Rift, Riot Games could use the events to try out other modes once, including some that will only stay in the game for a limited time.
According to Lanaluse, exclusive content is okay, but it sucks to hide it behind a payment wall or a 30-day grind.
No one wanted to play the least popular champ in LoL history, even if he won every match
“Are you interested in a job? We should talk!”
How did the mail arrive? The post received a lot of encouragement: 8,700 upvotes, countless Reddit badges and 627 comments.
That was special: Just 11 hours after the post appeared, comments surfaced Marc Merill (cover photo), known as Tryndamere, the former president of Riot Games who co-founded the company with Brandon “Ryze” Beck. The hero was named “Tryndamere” after his Everquest character and the heroine “Ashe” after his wife Ashley.
The Riot man was so impressed by the post that he immediately offered the critic a job:
“Incredible post. Are you interested in a job? We should talk.”
The critic Lanaluse was shocked that Tryndamere of all people contacted him. The two then exchanged direct messages.
“Great fodder for discussion and reflection”
Why did Tryndamere love the post? On Twitter, Merrill explains why he was so impressed by the post: The post is “great fodder for internal discussion and reflection.”
When you’re successful, you tend to get complacent because it’s exhausting trying to think of new things and because player expectations keep rising. Developers are people too and need rest and relaxation.
The post on reddit is well worded and explains exactly the reasons why the user likes or dislikes something – and in a thoughtful way.
Sometimes it is easy not to see the forest for the trees when the team focuses on individual areas. The poster showed that he can identify issues and look at them from a player’s perspective, both far and deep. This shows strong signals to initiate changes.
It is not yet known whether Riot Games and the critical fan can agree.
But like the poster, some really big minds have started in the MMO space. Jeffrey Kaplan, later boss of Overwatch and co-developer of World of Warcraft, also became famous because he played Everquest like a man possessed and explained to the developers what they were doing wrong:
WoW: Who invented World of Warcraft and what are they doing today?
Reference-mein-mmo.de