More Riot PR Fails

[chemical_art]

If there were no replacements to the player, they could have simply punished the team that was cheating by giving them a loss, not fining them money.  It makes more sense that the team that cheats should lose, but the reason it took so long to resolve this fiasco is because Riot flat-out LIED about it and DENIED it for so long that fining a team was the only option in the end.

http://i.imgur.com/dZ592.jpg

But one player, and not the team, committed the offense that had never happened before in this scale. No one was prepared to deal with it. Riot was somehow expecting a team to not blatantly cheat with so many witnesses, yet they did. No matter what, that is fault. Period. The player chose to cheat.

The fine is a middle ground. They can continue to proceed, but if they somehow don't advance further they face a very limitted amount of money, but if they proceed to win they could maybe (or maybe not) do so. It is a very painful punishment, and manages to both punish the player and not destroy the standings of the game.

IT IS Riot's fault, that's what you still seem to be missing.  You compared it to using steroids in the Olympics, but nobody gives you steroids to use, you would have to find them yourself.  What Riot did would be the equivalent to giving every player a steroid pill, then telling them not to use it.

Who's more to blame here, Riot, or the player?  The player wants to win, it means everything to him.  Riot is an idiot for giving him the steroid.  Riot has more blame here, period.

You put the pill in arms reach within the games in front of the crowds. Everyone is watching you. Are you saying these champions of mental and physical abilities lack the self control to not cheat when it is obvious they are caught? And if they CHOOSE to cheat that they are not mostly to blame.

This isn't a glance. It's not a matter of you fighting to keep your eyes on screen instead of the cheating device beyond. It is a completely voluntary and willful cheating of turning your head completely.

AI agree:  Hence, Riot is looking for a scapegoat instead of taking full responsibility.  You just admitted it.

But it is not their full responsibility. The players choose to cheat. That is fact.

Yes, the took the safe route of making a scapegoat of a single team instead of themselves, like any self-respecting company would have done instead.

Any self respecting company would stand by their officials when players disobey their refs in order to cheat. Tell me any sports league that doesn't stand by their refs.

No, they sent the message:  We're incompetent and we made a mistake but we'll never take responsibility for it, instead we'll blame a single team for taking advantage of our massive mistake, instead of punishing everybody who did.

I guess you think that in sports for example an illegal hit that causes paralysis should be punished equally as an illegal move that causes no damage.  Or stealing a candy bar is the same as stealing a car, for they both stole. For degree means nothing to you, everyone gets hit the same.

Also, according to your logic, we shouldn't punish EVERYBODY who breaks the speed limit.  I mean the speed limit is just a number right?  Who cares.  No, we should only punish someone when they break the speed limit, and crash into an SUV instantly killing a mother and a child.  Great logic there - people should only be punished when their illegal actions have a negative effect on another person (or in this case, team).

If someone is cruising over 5 mph and another is crusing 20 mph, you don't send both to jail. You give one a warning, and another jail. If you think punishment is so arbitrary that everyone gets punished the same without any consideration of degree then more power to you.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

It's been more than a week. I'm an outsider and have barely played LoL and over the past couple of years I'd hear something about Riot that wasn't exactly good for them. They have a history and not all of it is great.

[Mánagarmr]

It's been more than a week. I'm an outsider and have barely played LoL and over the past couple of years I'd hear something about Riot that wasn't exactly good for them. They have a history and not all of it is great.

This. It's hardly just this weeks issues. Though I'm not going to call them "evil", because that's reserved for ActiBlizzard, but they've certainly done nothing to earn my respect. Quite the contrary.

[Aklyon]

Didn't Riot coin that overly-broad term MOBA as well?

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Didn't Riot coin that overly-broad term MOBA as well?

Yeah, if it wasn't them, it was someone in the LoL community. They wanted the term to get away from DOTA-clone, which I can hardly blame them considering that is their stiffest competition ATM.

[Wingflier]

I am interested to see how DotA fares against League once it's released. They're both free to play, but DotA has the advantage of all the content being unlocked right from the start.

Even though they're technically from the same genre, they're two very different games with two very different design philosophies. I'm excited to see which one wins.

[Volatar]

I am interested to see how DotA fares against League once it's released. They're both free to play, but DotA has the advantage of all the content being unlocked right from the start.

Even though they're technically from the same genre, they're two very different games with two very different design philosophies. I'm excited to see which one wins.

Ditto to all of that. It is undoubtedly going to be interesting.

Personally, having played both, I am rooting for LoL. I prefer the gameplay.

[Wingflier]

Well the easier game is going to have more mass appeal for obvious reasons, but I'll be excited to see if DotA can triumph in spite of that.

I think my faith in the gaming community would go up quite a bit if DotA 2 became the more popular game.

[Mánagarmr]

I think my faith in the gaming community would go up quite a bit if DotA 2 became the more popular game.

I wouldn't count on that. Look at Tribes: Ascend. It's arguably the "DotA" of shooters, and it's community isn't exactly huge.

[Wingflier]

Yeah, we'll have to see.

I used to be proud to be part of the gaming community as a group of (mostly) intellectuals and people who used games for an enjoyable activity and a mental challenge.

Now it seems to have turned into a cesspool of trolls and casual players who just want to escape from their pathetic lives, and who will continue to support a company even after they've gotten away with murder (EA and Blizzard are good examples).  I think DotA is a step back in the right direction in terms of defying what the metagenre of gaming has become; we'll just see how many people stick with it.

[keith.lamothe]

I used to be proud to be part of the gaming community as a group of (mostly) intellectuals and people who used games for an enjoyable activity and a mental challenge.

Now it seems to have turned into a cesspool of trolls and casual players

I remember the MoO3 forums in the year or so before release of that game, and then for a bit after.  They weren't casual players, they were very hardcore, they were almost all fairly intellectual, and looking for a mentally-challenging game.  And it was still a stinking snakepit-cesspool.  Often it was fairly intelligent conversation (except where the rage really took over, which was semi-often) but it was simply toxic.

So I don't think it's easy-gameplay or that kind of thing that brings about the problem.  The more casually-oriented games just pull in a bigger crowd, usually, so it can reach a critical mass faster and/or more thoroughly.

[Mánagarmr]

Now it seems to have turned into a cesspool of trolls

Console gamers?

[keith.lamothe]

Now it seems to have turned into a cesspool of trolls

Console gamers?

Console Troll, PC Troll, Cave Troll, Marsh Troll, does it matter?

[Wingflier]

I think it does.  Console games these days are a joke in my opinion.  It's not that they couldn't be interesting and challenging, people would rather just play Call of Duty number 9001 and Halo 56 than Dark Souls or Okami.  I would say that a lot of the negative saturation of the PC market comes directly from console ports.  I miss the days of Super Nintendo when most games kicked your ass

I remember the MoO3 forums in the year or so before release of that game, and then for a bit after.  They weren't casual players, they were very hardcore, they were almost all fairly intellectual, and looking for a mentally-challenging game.  And it was still a stinking snakepit-cesspool.  Often it was fairly intelligent conversation (except where the rage really took over, which was semi-often) but it was simply toxic.

I don't understand what you're trying to say.  You say that most the time, it was intelligent conversation over a fairly intellectual, mentally-challenging game.

Aside from the semi-ragefits, what about it was toxic?

[Histidine]

Now it seems to have turned into a cesspool of trolls and casual players who just want to escape from their pathetic lives[...]

You must know a lot about the lives of "casual" players to be able to so readily label them as "pathetic".

What exactly makes a game(r) casual, anyway? What are the defining traits, particularly the ones that make the label such a mortal insult?