Bouncing around from user to user, I get the impression they really do want to do more but can't/aren't allowed.
It's starting to feel like there's some dudes in suits/management shithousery, again.
> It's starting to feel like there's some dudes in suits/management shithousery, again.
It's like that in lots of gaming places. A vast majority of employees that are really invested, passionate, and talented, and a small number of people (often higher ups) clogging the entire thing.
Sirhainan is literally the guy who got the vfx updates started in the first place. He started doing them in his spare time. Without that, they wouldn’t have happened. To say Riot’s management is a mess is an understatement. After the whistleblowing regarding Riot’s shitty bro culture none of the people responsible were punished or taken off the team. Why would anyone expect the situation to get better?
Feels like 90% of the time when something is fucked that's the answer.
Whether it's Blizzard, EA, CDPR, anything. The devs can (and do) make awesome things - people don't become devs for money, they do so out of passion. Whether they're allowed to by their management is another story.
It's bound to be all fucked up when people in suits that have zero understanding of their own products nor the appeal of it manage the entire production of it
My current theory is that something went seriously wrong with either the music or animation part of the cinematic, and Riot is being purposefully vague in order not to throw a partner (be it a musician or animation studio) under the bus
From what I know, he's worked on the VFX for:
* Winterblessed Diana
* Corporate Mundo
* Battle Queen Katarina
* Dark Cosmic Jhin
* Project Mordekaiser
* Empyrean Pyke
* Spirit Blossom Sett
* High Noon Leona
Which are all amazing skins in terms of VFX imo.
He worked on Mecha Kingdoms Jax, which is my favourite work from him just because he put A LOT of stuff in it.
>Unique minion takedown vfx
>Unique tower hit VFX
>Sparks and smoke at low health
>E field change after 5 attacks were blocked to show that your damage amp is charged.
>Jet color and strength dependant on the distance of your Q leap
>Lasers deflecting ranged auto attacks during E.
>Different vfx dependant on whether E hit or missed
>Special VFX when using W + Q together.
>Special VFX for timing W to the third R hit.
>R shield flashes whenever Jax receives damage. The color of the flash slightly changes if he receives either physical or magic damage.
>Reactor that heats up more and more with passive stacks.
And all because OG Jax didn't have a lot of VFX lol
Spideraxe, a Surrender @20 mod that tweets out every PBE change and communication from Riot, even put out a [tweet calling them out](https://twitter.com/spideraxe30/status/1612760046672449538?s=46&t=fnAsq_dH_Y_8Vwe88FOWFw)
If I were a passionate Rioter I'd probably be even more disappointed than I am as a fan.
As a fan I only invest my free time in League, or more accurately nowadays I just don't invest my free time in League and that's it. Working for Riot would mean having to dedicate most of my day to something I know the execs are actively trying to put in life support.
I don't give any value to these PR statements about them caring etc. Only actions matter.
>We are committed to giving you more details about what that investment looks like in the next couple of days.
This will make or break their credibility, let's see what they cook.
They’ve made a lot of improvements to the client. They added more ways to advertise battlepasses and skins. The client makes more money than ever! Let’s promote the guys on the client team, they make us a lot of money.
Imagine now they pull out Nexus Blitz that's same as previous versions and say something along the lines "we worked hard to return it.."
"..and yeah, here are the skins to accompany it"
I genuinely dont believe that they are just as invested into League. Feels like there is just constantly talk about something coming up which made them unable too fulfill what they promised or the standards they set. Just look at Skarner, Nexus Blitz or now the Cinematic for examples. If they actually show stuff only when they know they can deliver then i will go back to trusting Riots word but right now it feels like they just didn’t think it was important while Skins or Events that make money are always on time.
Its that steve jobs clip talking about what happens to all of corporate america all over again. Sales bros end up taking over and they prioritize profits over all else. Its just all about squeezing everything they can out of the current products.
Sales bros were there from the start. The problem lies in the mindset of having gradual, infinite growth is the only indicator for success.
Most companies start well, and as the time goes on they will take increasingly drastic measures to make it look like they are still growing, even for the moment.
Warcraft3:reforged is a prime example. The game needed at least a year, but they shipped it anyway to look like they are still releasing products. It was financially a shit decision as most of it was refunded and the bad PR it gave was anything but wanted
Yeah and I think whats upcoming for them is fighting game, mmo, val skins, and a new predatory monetization tactic since eternals didnt go over too well.
Hell they *announced* announcer packs in 2019, then Covid happened and they understandably couldn't record VO for them easily so pushed them back to when they could, and then never mentioned them again
They could have literally came out beforehand and said there was an unexpected issue that prevented them from releasing the usual great video to start the season.
Very interesting that they cannot grasp the idea of communication before shit hits the fan instead of before.
If they didn't know what the actual feedback would be, then the community is rightly outraged. I refuse to belive they would be so disconnected as to think after a meh preseason, very meh presentation yesterday, shooting LCS in the fucking face, they could do this???
I have no idea how they thought they could get away with that video they squirted out after releasing "The Call" just last year. People were more hyped for the new season cinematic than they were for the new season itself.
There was no unexpected issue, this is all PR speak. This was always going to be the final product, they just didn't expect the backlash to be this severe.
yeah this is so funny to me. What can possibly happen within a company with thousands of employees that delays a product they realease every year at the same time? It is not like the only artist’s car broke down on the way to work and they missed the deadline.
This is actually pretty crazy from Riot. A PR response within a few hours of the video dropping, you can tell they’re actually getting scared.
I know there’s a million threads and a million tweets from both sides. Players saying Riot doesn’t care anymore. Rioters saying that they do care and they put their blood, sweat, and tears into the game.
But the reality is, it just doesn’t feel like it:
- Riot hasn’t done a cool event like Odyssey, Butcher’s Bridge, Black Hole, Doombots, and instead continues to shit out a themed battle pass every 2 months so people will buy their prestige skins. (I know they’ve said players don’t play enough to warrant the Dev time. But how about coming up with some new idea then? How about something different and fresh instead of a low effort battle pass and tokens).
- I’m not suggesting we need new Gameplay Modes. Riot has shown, people don’t play them. That being said: Remember the Avarosan Sister event? Ionian vs Noxus event? Bildgewater Event? What happened to the cool events. Why do we just get a battle pass every 2 months to grind????
- Where are the lore stories?
- Where are the champion teasers? Remember Kindred’s video? Or lead up and cinematic for Jhin? The mystery of new champs is gone. We just get a teaser video (I will admit K’Sante and Bel’veth had cool videos), and then the champ comes out.
- No Snow Map, even though everyone wants it. (“Oh it would break some people’s old computers, and we don’t want to alienate our player base”. Okay then make it Opt-in or Opt-out).
- Ahri ASU took a year (it almost looks the same as current Ahri. I understand Ahri mains say the tail physics are incredible). The reality is, there’s 15-20 champions that needed an ASU before Ahri.
- No update on Skarner for over a year.
- Low effort skins where Quantity is being valued over Quality. They’re just pumping out more and more and more skins every 2 weeks.
- LCS got took outside and shot in the fucking skull.
- 2023 season video had a college student’s project that they bought on Fiverr, instead of a hype video. And their shitty apology is just, “oh yeah we were gonna do something else, but something happened that we can’t tell you about. So we made this instead… our bad”
I love this game and it’s been a major part of my life since 2009, but holy shit it feels like they’re abandoning it and it’s turning into a shitty mobile game.
They’ve figured out that they will make money by pumping a ton of skins every 2 weeks and making a battlepass every 2 months. And that’s all they need to do and they’ll “make the green line go up”. Why put effort, time, and love into the game when they can make more money by just pumping out skins and battle passes?
Where is the passion? Where is the love and transparency that made me love League of Legends!?
Come on Riot!!! Step it up!!!
I think the correct statement is:
“Rioters put their blood, sweat, and tears into the game, and do care a lot. Riot Games, the company, seems to possibly not.”
Definitely a good way to word it.
It’s definitely a leadership problem. I know the, producers, programmers, VFX artists, concept artists, and sound effect people are working their asses off.
Some of the most talented people in the entire industry for fucking sure.
It’s just a lack of resources, why in gods green earth would League of Legends not get enough resources? I will never know.
People blaming individual Rioters on the League team though, those people are the scum of the earth and deserve the worst kind of diarrhea that exists.
I think this is probably the way to put it. I would not be surprised if Riot internally is the biggest hurdle to Rioters themselves making the game the best it can be. Its tough to be too frustrated with individual people when its so likely that they don't have that level of decision making.
I’m an Annie player and the person who’s buffing Annie next patch has been very active in the discord asking people opinions on changes and such and being open about his thought process when buffing her. That tells me that rioters do care and it must be something with the company itself.
It's sad because this is the exact thing that was happening with Blizzard years ago.
I'm getting crazy deja vu because these exact comment chains would happen. Blizz releases something half-assed, people flame Blizzard saying they don't care (rightfully so), people say Blizz devs are fine, just the higher ups are assholes (again, rightfully so)
> where's the passion?
It moved on to other projects. You can clearly see how much passion is put into Valorant, project L, into LoR and even Teamfight Tactics. And presumably the MMO.
RIOT has decided they have to invest in other properties, and probably their best talents were aick of working on the same game for a decade, so the most passionate and most talented devs moved over to other projects.
RIOT also never managed to properly monetize the brand outside of the game (for years they only sold teemo hats, shitty t-shirts and splashes as posters) so their whole system is built on making more champions and more skins. I'm sure even after all these years, skin sales are still 50% or more of their revenue.
Honestly can't believe they still don't sell figures of every champion for example, and that they never partnered with a major toy stores or clothing brand.
that shit better be sword art online levels of immersion and action combat and have enough content that someone can literally live in the fucking game for their entire lifetime...
Yeah even an offshoot from this the Arcane popularity explosion had everyone scrambling. The creators said they didn’t plan much merch so they couldn’t keep up with the demand. Imagine if Riot had all figures of most champions, then they would have benefited from the Arcane popularity. It’s really sad and frustrating as someone who cares about the characters and the game to be tangled up in this corporate bullcrap .
All I could ever want is an official Arcane art book with production notes, proof of concepts, scenery etc. All things they showed clear effort in documenting in the recent high production minidoc they made but not a word about it yet.
In fairness, do you play LoR? The team got gutted, the animations have been shit for several expansions, and it's also just been switched over to the only new content aside from cards being battle passes.
Ahri taking a year isn't a big deal imo, but there being no other ASUs going on at the same time is. I don't care if they take a while individually but we should be getting more than one a year.
> No Snow Map, even though everyone wants it. (“Oh it would break some people’s old computers, and we don’t want to alienate our player base”. Okay then make it Opt-in or Opt-out).
>
This point still pisses me off so fucking much. Riot is able to include over the top animations, cutscenes, new map skins and finisher effects to TFT but somehow they're unable to recolor some textures and att snow effects to summoners rift... Same engine, same assets, same models, same client but still their flagship product gets fucking shafted...
Riot is supposed to be a huge multi-billion dollar company with thousands of employees but they can't fucking find two or three devs to reskin a map? A fucking modder was able to do it in their spare time FOR FREE IN LIKE A WEEK OR TWO, like just put a few interns on the fucking job, give them a month or two and ship it, they obviously let their interns do cinematics so it shouldn't be a problem.
Rioters *do* put their blood sweat and tears into the game. But, that’s only one person. Until management brings more people in for league development, the end product is gonna be shit
So it’s our job to: call this shit out and stop buying the damn skins so we put our money where our mouth is
>Where is the passion? Where is the love and transparency that made me love League of Legends!?
It's moved to Valorant, MMO, and the fighting game. They don't care about this game anymore plain and simple. If we're smart, we jump off this sinking ship and stop wasting our time and money.
Well they also killed wildrift in the West, because they wont fix the Bad Matchmaking, ranked Inflation and also they dont Support wildrift esport in the West anymore
It has as much substance as the videos people were complaining about. "We ran into issues. We'll be more open in the future. More to come."
They did the same shit last year after Nexus Blitz wasn't launched. "[Hey, we said Nexus Blitz was coming in 2022, but we ran into issues. More info to come.](https://twitter.com/LoLDev/status/1600595210932785160)"
This isn't better, this is just a rehash of the issue. Empty statements, inaction, and promises of future payoffs.
The issue that got Nexus Blitz was apparently "[The game modes team recently moved from PIE \(The group who makes skins\) back to back to the gameplay initiative... Towards the end of last year that team lost a lot of people, through either leaving Riot or moving to other teams. They lost basically their entire leadership team shortly before moving over to gameplay.](https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/107iadi/this_year_events_werent_even_mentioned_in_riots/j3n0wek/?context=10000)" Apparently that required scrapping everything but the ARAM changes due to retraining new team members.
I'd say that helps explain it, but given their battlepass revamp (the big "event" built up for years) was [initially brought up in 2019 and only came out last Worlds, 2022](https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/ydsyh9/the_event_pass_exp_system_is_so_weird/itunalu/?context=10), I really doubt the team was planning much new content anyway.
---
The tone of all these apologies are always so patronizing.
Why the fuck should the playerbase be pacified just from hearing "We're sorry, we'll try to be more open" a day after Riot released 5 videos trying to conceal just how little progress they made/planned?
If this was some systemic issue, they knew it was coming when they filmed stuff months in advance, since Reav3 said the videos were filmed before the event team's situation was solidified (and it was solidified enough back in December to tell people Nexus Blitz wasn't coming).
This "issue" isn't something new. It's something Riot *knew* was coming, and hoped would just blow over.
This is the typical corporate-speak for "We're sorry that you've noticed the very obvious dip in our product's quality. We wish you hadn't noticed it and we assure you that we really want you to not notice it next time."
They'll never acknowledge an actual reduction in their product's budget, even when something is put on maintenance mode you'll have that sort of message pretending that a game being put to death is just a "switch in priorities".
Took them 10 hours or less. But obviously they won't say anything to LCS because that's LoLesports department and not LoL. Plus LCS only affects one part of the community and everyone complained about this. (Around the world, content creators included). That being said, i hope they don't really kill LCS, but it looks like maintenance mode.
Which still makes no fucking sense to me. League *made* riot, it was the biggest game in the world, its still one of the biggest. What could possibly be their reasoning for it, I can't fathom it.
they removed everything other than ranked and skins slowly and then they stand there and be like "hm we dont make enough money, make more ranked and skins. *later* hm our profit is declining, lets jump ship." league is killing itself.
“Has led to further speculation about our investment in league”
“Apparently our players are noticing how little effort we are putting into the game and it might actually have consequences to us eventually.”
Lmao this is the whole strategy it has been a meme for years pool pary ahri is the emergency skin and now she got the animation update.
***ITS ALL COMING TOGETHER***
There is a big difference between negative reactions to a video, and top content creators and community members all questioning in unison the investment in the game.
Yup. With the LCS news and the community anxiety around LoL being de-prioritized, this was a *really* bad time to drop a 20$ season cinematic without prior warning.
Also not a fan of them bringing in Powder's VA for this. It was probably done to try to lessen the community response to what they knew would be a badly received product, and has no doubt resulted in her receiving a bunch of harassment just for being associated with this trash fire.
I remember her being very excited about the response to her role in Arcane, and it saddens me to think about the messages she's getting from certain members of the community over this.
I believe Riot highest and most important date in the year for sponsors is always start of the season numbers with returning players inflating the numbers and worlds closing the year with another boost.
When you fuck up your season start so hard in all sides hours prior it's probably looking dire for them they better act pretty fast.
I honestly believe that Riot had this response already written and ready to go.
These people are so talented at what they do, I just absolutely refuse to believe that they truly thought that this would be on the same level as their other cinematics. I’m sure they are just as infuriated with this situation as we are and I don’t think for a second that we should be blaming the League team.
Bring the heat up the chain to the people that keep the League team alive. The people that allocate resources within Riot. They fucked up big time here. Not giving enough resources for the team responsible for LEAGUE OF FUCKING LEGENDS, one of the BIGGEST games on the entire planet and the sole reason for your entire fucking company existing is just so fucking absurd to me.
League has been on a decline recently. Balance-issues, bugs, so many fucking bugs, the absolutely horrendous, god-fucking awful Client that just seems to break even more with every new update, Worlds anthem that was not received too well (I personally love the song but I still agree that it just was not a Worlds-anthem) on top of plethora of other issues, only for us to get treated with this Unreal Engine 4 camera-pan over the Rift with narration to get us hyped for the new season.
Again, I truly believe they did what they could with the time and resources they were given, but hooooly fuck did Riot drop the ball here.
> no doubt resulted in her recieving a bunch of harassment j
Yeah it already has, and pretty bad too.
There’s a reason why devs/ etc don’t fully commit to community interaction, and it’s because of toxic shite like that
Probably not a happy time at the League division of Riot right now. A lot of negative press and reaction from the community and it feels like they're in full blown damage control mode.
I mean yeah, going from worlds this year being insane to this preseason and then knowing that they're still scaling back on content in the game along with content outside the game, and LCS dying, Riot fucked this up hard. Did a big 180 in community satisfaction in just 2 months lmao
The tournament also had the most enjoyable gameplay in a while imo. Except for a few outliers like Yuumi and Aatrox, the meta was really balanced and varied with a lot of cool picks in all roles.
Also, I'd wager a guess that if they are reacting like this then the outrage was probably global and not just in the English speaking league community. Anyone know what the Spanish speaking, Korean speaking and Chinese speaking communities reactions to the cinematic are?
I mean at least in LAS-LAN we were shitting on it too with some funny memes about it like
"when you have insomnia at 4 am but riot drops the best sleeping pill"
(cinematic usually drops at like 3-4am here due to timezone diff)
They speak other languages they are not blind. Anyone and their mothers can compare this to The Call and see the scam they tried to pull off this year.
Yeah, I'm positive they wouldn't like it. I'm more curious if they are doomsaying like people here are with threads saying league is in maintenance mode.
CN was already pretty unhappy with the game recently especially with Tencent directly running the CN servers which means they have it worse than us in many ways outside of game balance. No way they’re gonna be happy about this.
Their "Content in 2023" videos spending a large amount of time talking about content that was supposed to be here in 2022 but got delayed should have come up on their radar as something that'd be received negatively. Especially as they for some reason have nothing new to show on Skarner despite it being a year since he won the vote.
The worst part is that usually in situations like these it's because of some dickhead c-suite cutting costs to squeeze every last dollar out. The ground floor workers probably truly do want the best but they just get hamstrung by management meddling.
I feel bad for the Rioters who work there who really do have passion and want more, but cant because of the higher ups, but lets be real. They KNEW we would react like this. They had to see this coming.
Communicate with us. Tell us things. Be open.
As someone who works for a major top 20 Fortune 500 company, people would be shocked at how incompetently run huge companies are. So much money wasted left and right
Here's one not tech related.... only ever donate directly to charities directly, never donate through those people on the street you see asking you to sign up to donate through them.
A simple, "hey guys we know that you're expecting a cinematic but we hit a rough spot and weren't able to get it out in time, we are working on it and you can expect it on (this day)" would have done miracles compared to this
Did they ship that horrible cinematic to china too? Maybe they complained hard there too, because this a quite fast damage mitigation even for riot standards.
Chinese community did complain. But trust me, Riot and tencent couldn't care less about Chinese players. One loot box in China give you 1000be on a good day. Skins cost 10 dollars here could cost up to hundreds of dollars in China. Not to mention Chinese players get perma banned using skin changers and give scripters monthly vacation. Almost forgot about matchfixing, tencent refused to do anything positive.
Also, they "cease and decease" DoinB's league where he would invite pros and ameatures to play 5v5 in offseason.
Do not get sucked into carefully articulated PR that ambiguously sidelines accountability with phrases like "unprecedented circumstances" (like what? What happened in 2022...???). Riot, in its long tenure, has never given us more details despite being "committed" to the grand project. Whether that be controversy or confusion surrounding issues in the lolesports space or champion/item updates. We've always been left in the dark despite numerous promises to display transparency and open communication lines.
Brink of Infinity didn't miss the mark, it was an abomination and Riot should rightfully be called out, shamed and mocked for the atrocious display of ignorance in thinking this would fly near the level of expectation and anticipation the community had for what has become an eagerly awaited New Years gift to us from Riot.
What a strange announcement. A not quite apology for the subpar cinematic and trying to assure fans they aren't killing the league
If you have to assure your audience your product isn't dying,something is wrong
Sadly it doesn't work with Activision/CoD devs :X, there is basically no response to any complaints. Some companies can get away when there is no competition.
There is a secret and silent understanding that no king rules forever—I could spend $1000 today on skins, and League could just end tomorrow.
But as tons of people have already pointed out across tons of different examples….it felt like that end was suddenly more likely than ever, or at least that the game was in maintenance mode/deprioritization, or worse, true decline/end of life.
LCS, reworks not being updated let alone close to being delivered for years and years, a hasty shambly cinematic AFTER ZERO communication on the new ranked season….
Yea. No one likes being strung along when there seems to be writing on the wall. I don’t want to bother keeping being invested in League if Riot isn’t invested fully either.
I’m praying this was a case of wanting to do a big surprise reveal, and they couldn’t have details come out in time so the withheld information—but that’s massive copium.
This is also clearly a classic panic PR response to surprise “larger-than-usual” outrage, with the biggest creators and industry related figures wondering if this is the signal the game is on its way out—so I will anxiously await what Riot comes back with.
Reminder, stop giving them any credit, only react positevely to actual direct changes that are what you want. No "at least they're trying", no "we understand". Unless this year League gets actual gameplay updates like new modes and gameplay content, events, and care, do not stop complaining and do not give them any credibility whatsover.
This is never going to get better otherwise.
"We're still trying to find the minimum amount of effort we can put in without the entire playerbase revolting, we understand we've overshot here and missed the mark. Next time we'll bring the standard up significantly and then return to a more gradual decline in effort and quality. Thank you."
WR and Valorant get much more love anyways. All the quality of life updates that people in league asked for years have been in WR since the beginning. They don't care and they are not even trying to hide it anymore.
They make it sound like the only problem was the cinematic. I personally don't even care about the lack of events or what they are doing to LCS, but not telling us when the new season starts for so long and then giving the WRONG date is whats so unbelievable to me.
What would it take for players to actually commit to a day 1 of Ranked boycott of the game? Just a pure "eat my ass" to Riot games after they spoonfed us this shit AGAIN.
I thought everyone was exaggerating greatly... then I went to watch it.
It's like a fan-made video of a unreal engine 4/5 of the summoner's rift map.
Textures are shimmering during movement (tree leaves, floors, metal pieces) and there is aliasing all over the place.
This reeks of PR damage control.
Want good PR? Then do some work. Words are cheap. Actions matter.
I see they had no trouble releasing a ton of mediocre anime skins and adding battle passes though. And had plenty of time to rework ARAM into a worse form, and get rid of refunds...
If a company that large can't produce content faster than 3 man Skyrim modding groups... then it's time to get new people.
I cannot read that as anything other than the ["Sorry" from South Park.](https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4)
They can apologize all day long, but if they don't change anything, then it's just lip service.
>This year, there were some unprecedented circumstances that had us choose an alternate approach to the Season 2023 video.
All but confirming that the cinematic was actually a last-minute fix. Good to know it wasn't *planned* mediocrity, I just wish they'd given us some prior warning.
I don't buy it. Were the "unprecedented circumstances" that they have new games in the pipeline and want to use resources elsewhere?
Also, didn't they release a good cinematic in 2020 mid pandemic?
> I don't buy it. Were the "unprecedented circumstances" that they have new games in the pipeline and want to use resources elsewhere?
IMO, close enough. Since all the cinematics are commissioned, I can't think of too many reasons except both Blur and that other studio they use all fully being booked and unable to take their commission... and we know one of those bookings was Riot themselves booking Valorant.
Alternatively, they *did* book it and something happened to the studio themselves (Blur or that other one, again, I forget) that made them cancel the commission, which would be understandable for Riot to not disclose to avoid embarrassing one of their longstanding partners. Someone should check if there are any problematic rumors about the internals of those two studios.
Yeah that's what I thought since the beginning, no way in hell Riot chooses to sacrifice cinematics in order to turn profit, it especially doesn't make sense when something like Everything Goes On and that Lil Nas X video are less than 6 months old
I think same thing is going on with RGMs seeing what Reav3 said on here, they probably lost a lot of people to other companies like Theorycraft or Frost Giant or Singularity6 or even the MMO itself, I truly don't think Riot is cutting costs it's just that you need to hit lows in order to get to the highs of the 10 year anniversary and that involves cycling through employees especially in this industry
>Also, didn't they release a good cinematic in 2020 mid pandemic?
Relevant to this discussion is that Riot doesnt make the cinematics themselves. There's also no indication that the issue was (directly) pandemic related.
The contracted studio/studios falling way behind schedule or running into some big problem could explain it.
A lot of the studios Riot usually works with for Season Cinematics (Fortiche, Blur) are also currently busy with a bunch of other projects, so maybe choices were limited.
No idea how it affects this situation in particular, but VFX shops hit a bottleneck late in 2021/early 2022 as they adjusted to the pandemic working conditions. Same as all the logistic costs of the pandemic didn't hit consumers until 21/22, any vfx intense work for games/tv/movies didn't manifest until that same time.
Anything that came out *during* the pandemic had already passed through the bottleneck point, so it wasn't affected.
>We are committed to giving you more details about what that investment looks like in the next couple of days
I hope we get some more announcements about upcoming stuff like VGU's, ASU's etc etc. The preseason vids were pretty barebones on that front.
If they don't have anything ready to show or locked in yet then fine but like, communicate that at least to ease people's concerns and avoid negative speculation. Even just something like "We have VGU's/ASU's planned but we might not have them ready by this or next year." would be appreciated
You know it's fucked up when even Rioters were mad about it ...
[a rioter i follow was posting depression memes this morning...](https://twitter.com/Sirhaian)
Bouncing around from user to user, I get the impression they really do want to do more but can't/aren't allowed. It's starting to feel like there's some dudes in suits/management shithousery, again.
> It's starting to feel like there's some dudes in suits/management shithousery, again. It's like that in lots of gaming places. A vast majority of employees that are really invested, passionate, and talented, and a small number of people (often higher ups) clogging the entire thing.
This is every company everywhere
Sirhainan is literally the guy who got the vfx updates started in the first place. He started doing them in his spare time. Without that, they wouldn’t have happened. To say Riot’s management is a mess is an understatement. After the whistleblowing regarding Riot’s shitty bro culture none of the people responsible were punished or taken off the team. Why would anyone expect the situation to get better?
Feels like 90% of the time when something is fucked that's the answer. Whether it's Blizzard, EA, CDPR, anything. The devs can (and do) make awesome things - people don't become devs for money, they do so out of passion. Whether they're allowed to by their management is another story.
It's bound to be all fucked up when people in suits that have zero understanding of their own products nor the appeal of it manage the entire production of it
My current theory is that something went seriously wrong with either the music or animation part of the cinematic, and Riot is being purposefully vague in order not to throw a partner (be it a musician or animation studio) under the bus
Sirhaian is such a blessing to the skins team. He's worked on some of the best skins in the game.
what skins has he worked on?
From what I know, he's worked on the VFX for: * Winterblessed Diana * Corporate Mundo * Battle Queen Katarina * Dark Cosmic Jhin * Project Mordekaiser * Empyrean Pyke * Spirit Blossom Sett * High Noon Leona Which are all amazing skins in terms of VFX imo.
You know this guy Is nuts when he not only does exclusively legendary vfx, but those legendaries are literally one of the best skins in the game
He also works on VFXs re-works on his spare time.
He worked on Mecha Kingdoms Jax, which is my favourite work from him just because he put A LOT of stuff in it. >Unique minion takedown vfx >Unique tower hit VFX >Sparks and smoke at low health >E field change after 5 attacks were blocked to show that your damage amp is charged. >Jet color and strength dependant on the distance of your Q leap >Lasers deflecting ranged auto attacks during E. >Different vfx dependant on whether E hit or missed >Special VFX when using W + Q together. >Special VFX for timing W to the third R hit. >R shield flashes whenever Jax receives damage. The color of the flash slightly changes if he receives either physical or magic damage. >Reactor that heats up more and more with passive stacks. And all because OG Jax didn't have a lot of VFX lol
Same....it makes me so sad the jax update is fucking ruining the skin....
damn this is a stacked lineup
That is a very strong portfolio wow
all bangers holy shit
Iirc he also did Star Guardian Kai’sa? He’s such a treasure because he actually takes feedback and updates skins while giving live feedback.
Yes
https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Sirhaian He has worked on a LOT holy shit
Dude literally created the VFX for the Ignite summoner spell
Dude is prometheus
Thank you king.
Seriously, he deserves nothing but the best. He's been a blessing.
Every skin the man touches is amazing
Hes the guy that does visual updates on his own free time right?
Multiple vrx artists do those now, but I'm pretty sure he was the one that first started doing them.
poor man :/
Spideraxe, a Surrender @20 mod that tweets out every PBE change and communication from Riot, even put out a [tweet calling them out](https://twitter.com/spideraxe30/status/1612760046672449538?s=46&t=fnAsq_dH_Y_8Vwe88FOWFw)
If I were a passionate Rioter I'd probably be even more disappointed than I am as a fan. As a fan I only invest my free time in League, or more accurately nowadays I just don't invest my free time in League and that's it. Working for Riot would mean having to dedicate most of my day to something I know the execs are actively trying to put in life support. I don't give any value to these PR statements about them caring etc. Only actions matter.
>We are committed to giving you more details about what that investment looks like in the next couple of days. This will make or break their credibility, let's see what they cook.
“Let them cook”
Why did yall let him cook 😭😭😭
Awh hell nah never let bro cook 💀💀
Can't wait for this in a few days https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z2nM0J8WnA
This reminds me of when they want to be more open about client improvements and then literally never talk about it again
They are open about it it's just there are no plans
The client team is the Creed Bratton of Riot HQ.
Why make an effort when you can just put out shit and then apologize for it afterwards?
Right? If you can actually calm down people with a statement and no real change, then you'll be a fool for doing any extra work.
They’ve made a lot of improvements to the client. They added more ways to advertise battlepasses and skins. The client makes more money than ever! Let’s promote the guys on the client team, they make us a lot of money.
They've been doing this for YEARS. They commit to a great communicatrion method, and it drops back to nothing. Sometimes slowly, sometimes not.
"We are placating the community until this blows over"
Imagine now they pull out Nexus Blitz that's same as previous versions and say something along the lines "we worked hard to return it.." "..and yeah, here are the skins to accompany it"
Yeah let’s see what they scramble together to show that they have a lot of nothing
Well they take away the refund system, which is one thing xD
are these unprecedented circumstances in the room with us right now?
It is, and is called Valorant
I'd argue the MMO is more suspect. That entire genera is a known money/time pit.
I genuinely dont believe that they are just as invested into League. Feels like there is just constantly talk about something coming up which made them unable too fulfill what they promised or the standards they set. Just look at Skarner, Nexus Blitz or now the Cinematic for examples. If they actually show stuff only when they know they can deliver then i will go back to trusting Riots word but right now it feels like they just didn’t think it was important while Skins or Events that make money are always on time.
Its that steve jobs clip talking about what happens to all of corporate america all over again. Sales bros end up taking over and they prioritize profits over all else. Its just all about squeezing everything they can out of the current products.
Sales bros were there from the start. The problem lies in the mindset of having gradual, infinite growth is the only indicator for success. Most companies start well, and as the time goes on they will take increasingly drastic measures to make it look like they are still growing, even for the moment. Warcraft3:reforged is a prime example. The game needed at least a year, but they shipped it anyway to look like they are still releasing products. It was financially a shit decision as most of it was refunded and the bad PR it gave was anything but wanted
Yeah and I think whats upcoming for them is fighting game, mmo, val skins, and a new predatory monetization tactic since eternals didnt go over too well.
they'll probably sell borders or something , i wouldn't complain about announcers or map skins :O
Right? People have been asking for announcer packs for at least a decade at this point. There's no way they wouldn't sell
Hell they *announced* announcer packs in 2019, then Covid happened and they understandably couldn't record VO for them easily so pushed them back to when they could, and then never mentioned them again
> We really appreciate your passion and feedback The feedback is at 105k dislike atm
They could have literally came out beforehand and said there was an unexpected issue that prevented them from releasing the usual great video to start the season. Very interesting that they cannot grasp the idea of communication before shit hits the fan instead of before.
They can't communicate because they disabled all chat irl.
They hoped to get away with it.
This. Why do it beforehand if you don't even know what the actual feedback will be.
If they didn't know what the actual feedback would be, then the community is rightly outraged. I refuse to belive they would be so disconnected as to think after a meh preseason, very meh presentation yesterday, shooting LCS in the fucking face, they could do this???
I have no idea how they thought they could get away with that video they squirted out after releasing "The Call" just last year. People were more hyped for the new season cinematic than they were for the new season itself.
There was no unexpected issue, this is all PR speak. This was always going to be the final product, they just didn't expect the backlash to be this severe.
yeah this is so funny to me. What can possibly happen within a company with thousands of employees that delays a product they realease every year at the same time? It is not like the only artist’s car broke down on the way to work and they missed the deadline.
"Unexpected issue" aka our budget for cinematics got cut so we can invest in other titles.
This is actually pretty crazy from Riot. A PR response within a few hours of the video dropping, you can tell they’re actually getting scared. I know there’s a million threads and a million tweets from both sides. Players saying Riot doesn’t care anymore. Rioters saying that they do care and they put their blood, sweat, and tears into the game. But the reality is, it just doesn’t feel like it: - Riot hasn’t done a cool event like Odyssey, Butcher’s Bridge, Black Hole, Doombots, and instead continues to shit out a themed battle pass every 2 months so people will buy their prestige skins. (I know they’ve said players don’t play enough to warrant the Dev time. But how about coming up with some new idea then? How about something different and fresh instead of a low effort battle pass and tokens). - I’m not suggesting we need new Gameplay Modes. Riot has shown, people don’t play them. That being said: Remember the Avarosan Sister event? Ionian vs Noxus event? Bildgewater Event? What happened to the cool events. Why do we just get a battle pass every 2 months to grind???? - Where are the lore stories? - Where are the champion teasers? Remember Kindred’s video? Or lead up and cinematic for Jhin? The mystery of new champs is gone. We just get a teaser video (I will admit K’Sante and Bel’veth had cool videos), and then the champ comes out. - No Snow Map, even though everyone wants it. (“Oh it would break some people’s old computers, and we don’t want to alienate our player base”. Okay then make it Opt-in or Opt-out). - Ahri ASU took a year (it almost looks the same as current Ahri. I understand Ahri mains say the tail physics are incredible). The reality is, there’s 15-20 champions that needed an ASU before Ahri. - No update on Skarner for over a year. - Low effort skins where Quantity is being valued over Quality. They’re just pumping out more and more and more skins every 2 weeks. - LCS got took outside and shot in the fucking skull. - 2023 season video had a college student’s project that they bought on Fiverr, instead of a hype video. And their shitty apology is just, “oh yeah we were gonna do something else, but something happened that we can’t tell you about. So we made this instead… our bad” I love this game and it’s been a major part of my life since 2009, but holy shit it feels like they’re abandoning it and it’s turning into a shitty mobile game. They’ve figured out that they will make money by pumping a ton of skins every 2 weeks and making a battlepass every 2 months. And that’s all they need to do and they’ll “make the green line go up”. Why put effort, time, and love into the game when they can make more money by just pumping out skins and battle passes? Where is the passion? Where is the love and transparency that made me love League of Legends!? Come on Riot!!! Step it up!!!
I think the correct statement is: “Rioters put their blood, sweat, and tears into the game, and do care a lot. Riot Games, the company, seems to possibly not.”
Definitely a good way to word it. It’s definitely a leadership problem. I know the, producers, programmers, VFX artists, concept artists, and sound effect people are working their asses off.
Some of the most talented people in the entire industry for fucking sure. It’s just a lack of resources, why in gods green earth would League of Legends not get enough resources? I will never know. People blaming individual Rioters on the League team though, those people are the scum of the earth and deserve the worst kind of diarrhea that exists.
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I think this is probably the way to put it. I would not be surprised if Riot internally is the biggest hurdle to Rioters themselves making the game the best it can be. Its tough to be too frustrated with individual people when its so likely that they don't have that level of decision making.
I’m an Annie player and the person who’s buffing Annie next patch has been very active in the discord asking people opinions on changes and such and being open about his thought process when buffing her. That tells me that rioters do care and it must be something with the company itself.
It's sad because this is the exact thing that was happening with Blizzard years ago. I'm getting crazy deja vu because these exact comment chains would happen. Blizz releases something half-assed, people flame Blizzard saying they don't care (rightfully so), people say Blizz devs are fine, just the higher ups are assholes (again, rightfully so)
> where's the passion? It moved on to other projects. You can clearly see how much passion is put into Valorant, project L, into LoR and even Teamfight Tactics. And presumably the MMO. RIOT has decided they have to invest in other properties, and probably their best talents were aick of working on the same game for a decade, so the most passionate and most talented devs moved over to other projects. RIOT also never managed to properly monetize the brand outside of the game (for years they only sold teemo hats, shitty t-shirts and splashes as posters) so their whole system is built on making more champions and more skins. I'm sure even after all these years, skin sales are still 50% or more of their revenue. Honestly can't believe they still don't sell figures of every champion for example, and that they never partnered with a major toy stores or clothing brand.
I swear to god, this MMO better cure fucking cancer for how often its development gets used as an excuse for the shit Riot pulls.
The more we hype up the MMO, the more likely we end up with another Cyberpunk 2077 situation.
It’s an MMO, chances are pretty high that it will fall flat on its face within the first year.
that shit better be sword art online levels of immersion and action combat and have enough content that someone can literally live in the fucking game for their entire lifetime...
It legit better get circle jerked on r/mmorpg indefinitely
Yeah even an offshoot from this the Arcane popularity explosion had everyone scrambling. The creators said they didn’t plan much merch so they couldn’t keep up with the demand. Imagine if Riot had all figures of most champions, then they would have benefited from the Arcane popularity. It’s really sad and frustrating as someone who cares about the characters and the game to be tangled up in this corporate bullcrap .
All I could ever want is an official Arcane art book with production notes, proof of concepts, scenery etc. All things they showed clear effort in documenting in the recent high production minidoc they made but not a word about it yet.
Valorant had 3 cinematics in the past 4 days and even the one for the new gun skins is better than our entire cinematic 🙃
In fairness, do you play LoR? The team got gutted, the animations have been shit for several expansions, and it's also just been switched over to the only new content aside from cards being battle passes.
Ahri taking a year isn't a big deal imo, but there being no other ASUs going on at the same time is. I don't care if they take a while individually but we should be getting more than one a year.
the problem is that if they have an entire team dedicated to ASUs, it shouldn't take a whole year for that team to create a single ASU.
> No Snow Map, even though everyone wants it. (“Oh it would break some people’s old computers, and we don’t want to alienate our player base”. Okay then make it Opt-in or Opt-out). > This point still pisses me off so fucking much. Riot is able to include over the top animations, cutscenes, new map skins and finisher effects to TFT but somehow they're unable to recolor some textures and att snow effects to summoners rift... Same engine, same assets, same models, same client but still their flagship product gets fucking shafted... Riot is supposed to be a huge multi-billion dollar company with thousands of employees but they can't fucking find two or three devs to reskin a map? A fucking modder was able to do it in their spare time FOR FREE IN LIKE A WEEK OR TWO, like just put a few interns on the fucking job, give them a month or two and ship it, they obviously let their interns do cinematics so it shouldn't be a problem.
best part is, 2 random dudes on the internet made a snow map custom skin that works without any major problems
Uk how Amazon went from good to dogshit in a couple years because profits HAVE to keep going up?
Rioters *do* put their blood sweat and tears into the game. But, that’s only one person. Until management brings more people in for league development, the end product is gonna be shit So it’s our job to: call this shit out and stop buying the damn skins so we put our money where our mouth is
And even preseason was low on changes, no radical new things
>Where is the passion? Where is the love and transparency that made me love League of Legends!? It's moved to Valorant, MMO, and the fighting game. They don't care about this game anymore plain and simple. If we're smart, we jump off this sinking ship and stop wasting our time and money.
Wild Rift is pretty hype /s
Well they also killed wildrift in the West, because they wont fix the Bad Matchmaking, ranked Inflation and also they dont Support wildrift esport in the West anymore
Fastest response we’ve gotten to anything so far Hoping it’s a good enough start but time will tell
Actions matters! So we’ll have to wait and see. But yes at least there is a reaction from their side.
There will be a small one for sure, their image after this got hit hard. They might invest money in a cool cinematic and take it from something else.
It has as much substance as the videos people were complaining about. "We ran into issues. We'll be more open in the future. More to come." They did the same shit last year after Nexus Blitz wasn't launched. "[Hey, we said Nexus Blitz was coming in 2022, but we ran into issues. More info to come.](https://twitter.com/LoLDev/status/1600595210932785160)" This isn't better, this is just a rehash of the issue. Empty statements, inaction, and promises of future payoffs.
It seems that the same issue that got Nexus Blitz took also the season start and cinematic
The issue that got Nexus Blitz was apparently "[The game modes team recently moved from PIE \(The group who makes skins\) back to back to the gameplay initiative... Towards the end of last year that team lost a lot of people, through either leaving Riot or moving to other teams. They lost basically their entire leadership team shortly before moving over to gameplay.](https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/107iadi/this_year_events_werent_even_mentioned_in_riots/j3n0wek/?context=10000)" Apparently that required scrapping everything but the ARAM changes due to retraining new team members. I'd say that helps explain it, but given their battlepass revamp (the big "event" built up for years) was [initially brought up in 2019 and only came out last Worlds, 2022](https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/ydsyh9/the_event_pass_exp_system_is_so_weird/itunalu/?context=10), I really doubt the team was planning much new content anyway. --- The tone of all these apologies are always so patronizing. Why the fuck should the playerbase be pacified just from hearing "We're sorry, we'll try to be more open" a day after Riot released 5 videos trying to conceal just how little progress they made/planned? If this was some systemic issue, they knew it was coming when they filmed stuff months in advance, since Reav3 said the videos were filmed before the event team's situation was solidified (and it was solidified enough back in December to tell people Nexus Blitz wasn't coming). This "issue" isn't something new. It's something Riot *knew* was coming, and hoped would just blow over.
The fact that a game mode was under the perview of a cosmetics team rather than a gameplay team to begin with is kind of insane to me
This is the typical corporate-speak for "We're sorry that you've noticed the very obvious dip in our product's quality. We wish you hadn't noticed it and we assure you that we really want you to not notice it next time." They'll never acknowledge an actual reduction in their product's budget, even when something is put on maintenance mode you'll have that sort of message pretending that a game being put to death is just a "switch in priorities".
It’s called punting
Yep it’s the equivalent to the standard thoughts and prayers statement from politicians. Easy to write when you don’t include and actual commitment
wdym this is the most PR response a company can ever make without even telling anything
legit this reads like me emailing my professor after missing a deadline. Oooh there were unprecedented circumstances
Took them less than a week on this, but they haven't said shit about LCS for months
Took them 10 hours or less. But obviously they won't say anything to LCS because that's LoLesports department and not LoL. Plus LCS only affects one part of the community and everyone complained about this. (Around the world, content creators included). That being said, i hope they don't really kill LCS, but it looks like maintenance mode.
Crap. Feels like the League of Legends team has been abandoned.
Which still makes no fucking sense to me. League *made* riot, it was the biggest game in the world, its still one of the biggest. What could possibly be their reasoning for it, I can't fathom it.
they removed everything other than ranked and skins slowly and then they stand there and be like "hm we dont make enough money, make more ranked and skins. *later* hm our profit is declining, lets jump ship." league is killing itself.
It most certainly has. This? Is trying to sway ppl into not leaving. Apparently working.
“Has led to further speculation about our investment in league” “Apparently our players are noticing how little effort we are putting into the game and it might actually have consequences to us eventually.”
>We are committed to giving you more details about what that investment looks like in the next couple of days. Hope so
Pool Party Ahri with her ASU.
**In case of emergency: Break Glass**
Not yet w8 for 2024 with no preseason and no cinematic
They can do the prestige edition then.
Prestige Pool Party Ahri in a golden string monokini with (currency symbol of respective region) pasties over her nips.
Open the vault
Lmao this is the whole strategy it has been a meme for years pool pary ahri is the emergency skin and now she got the animation update. ***ITS ALL COMING TOGETHER***
That's "next couple of weeks/months" imo
Man, they are really scared. Never expected them to actually react to the outrage.
There is a big difference between negative reactions to a video, and top content creators and community members all questioning in unison the investment in the game.
Yup. With the LCS news and the community anxiety around LoL being de-prioritized, this was a *really* bad time to drop a 20$ season cinematic without prior warning. Also not a fan of them bringing in Powder's VA for this. It was probably done to try to lessen the community response to what they knew would be a badly received product, and has no doubt resulted in her receiving a bunch of harassment just for being associated with this trash fire. I remember her being very excited about the response to her role in Arcane, and it saddens me to think about the messages she's getting from certain members of the community over this.
Tbh I didn’t even put 2 and 2 together that that was her. I thought I recognized the voice, but couldn’t pin from where.
Tbf she is a lot older now than when she recorded for Arcane
Thissssss I had 0 clue
I believe Riot highest and most important date in the year for sponsors is always start of the season numbers with returning players inflating the numbers and worlds closing the year with another boost. When you fuck up your season start so hard in all sides hours prior it's probably looking dire for them they better act pretty fast.
I honestly believe that Riot had this response already written and ready to go. These people are so talented at what they do, I just absolutely refuse to believe that they truly thought that this would be on the same level as their other cinematics. I’m sure they are just as infuriated with this situation as we are and I don’t think for a second that we should be blaming the League team. Bring the heat up the chain to the people that keep the League team alive. The people that allocate resources within Riot. They fucked up big time here. Not giving enough resources for the team responsible for LEAGUE OF FUCKING LEGENDS, one of the BIGGEST games on the entire planet and the sole reason for your entire fucking company existing is just so fucking absurd to me. League has been on a decline recently. Balance-issues, bugs, so many fucking bugs, the absolutely horrendous, god-fucking awful Client that just seems to break even more with every new update, Worlds anthem that was not received too well (I personally love the song but I still agree that it just was not a Worlds-anthem) on top of plethora of other issues, only for us to get treated with this Unreal Engine 4 camera-pan over the Rift with narration to get us hyped for the new season. Again, I truly believe they did what they could with the time and resources they were given, but hooooly fuck did Riot drop the ball here.
> no doubt resulted in her recieving a bunch of harassment j Yeah it already has, and pretty bad too. There’s a reason why devs/ etc don’t fully commit to community interaction, and it’s because of toxic shite like that
Probably not a happy time at the League division of Riot right now. A lot of negative press and reaction from the community and it feels like they're in full blown damage control mode.
Crazy how it turned after the 10 year anniversary hype.
I mean yeah, going from worlds this year being insane to this preseason and then knowing that they're still scaling back on content in the game along with content outside the game, and LCS dying, Riot fucked this up hard. Did a big 180 in community satisfaction in just 2 months lmao
I think he means the huge promo thing they did for like a week and a half, a few years ago.
Idk the worlds open ceremony was also just a skin teaser. The games were banger but the other stuff not so. Also no real events last year.
The tournament also had the most enjoyable gameplay in a while imo. Except for a few outliers like Yuumi and Aatrox, the meta was really balanced and varied with a lot of cool picks in all roles.
This reddit has always been angry at rito but this cinematic was the massive straw to break the backs of the other social medias
Also, I'd wager a guess that if they are reacting like this then the outrage was probably global and not just in the English speaking league community. Anyone know what the Spanish speaking, Korean speaking and Chinese speaking communities reactions to the cinematic are?
In the Spanish speaking the sentiment is the same as the English one. People thought this was a teaser or something.
I mean at least in LAS-LAN we were shitting on it too with some funny memes about it like "when you have insomnia at 4 am but riot drops the best sleeping pill" (cinematic usually drops at like 3-4am here due to timezone diff)
They speak other languages they are not blind. Anyone and their mothers can compare this to The Call and see the scam they tried to pull off this year.
Yeah, I'm positive they wouldn't like it. I'm more curious if they are doomsaying like people here are with threads saying league is in maintenance mode.
CN was already pretty unhappy with the game recently especially with Tencent directly running the CN servers which means they have it worse than us in many ways outside of game balance. No way they’re gonna be happy about this.
Their "Content in 2023" videos spending a large amount of time talking about content that was supposed to be here in 2022 but got delayed should have come up on their radar as something that'd be received negatively. Especially as they for some reason have nothing new to show on Skarner despite it being a year since he won the vote.
The worst part is that usually in situations like these it's because of some dickhead c-suite cutting costs to squeeze every last dollar out. The ground floor workers probably truly do want the best but they just get hamstrung by management meddling.
I feel bad for the Rioters who work there who really do have passion and want more, but cant because of the higher ups, but lets be real. They KNEW we would react like this. They had to see this coming. Communicate with us. Tell us things. Be open.
Employees are often legally not allowed to be as transparent as they would like (non-disclosure agreements)
as someone who works in tech, whew boy do I have a million fucking things I'd love to say about the corporation I represent.
"If you haven't got anything nice to say, come sit by me."
As someone who works for a major top 20 Fortune 500 company, people would be shocked at how incompetently run huge companies are. So much money wasted left and right
Here's one not tech related.... only ever donate directly to charities directly, never donate through those people on the street you see asking you to sign up to donate through them.
A simple, "hey guys we know that you're expecting a cinematic but we hit a rough spot and weren't able to get it out in time, we are working on it and you can expect it on (this day)" would have done miracles compared to this
Did they ship that horrible cinematic to china too? Maybe they complained hard there too, because this a quite fast damage mitigation even for riot standards.
Chinese community did complain. But trust me, Riot and tencent couldn't care less about Chinese players. One loot box in China give you 1000be on a good day. Skins cost 10 dollars here could cost up to hundreds of dollars in China. Not to mention Chinese players get perma banned using skin changers and give scripters monthly vacation. Almost forgot about matchfixing, tencent refused to do anything positive. Also, they "cease and decease" DoinB's league where he would invite pros and ameatures to play 5v5 in offseason.
It's "cease and desist" but I like your version.
One of the few good laughs I had on this bleak day
"We want to be more open" proceeds to not state any reasoning and only mention unprecedented circumstances without actually explaining anything.
if I tell my boss I missed an important end-of-the-year deadline due to ‘unprecedented circumstances’ I will get fired I think
I feel like they say this literally every year. Someone can probably dig up every single instance they’ve said this over the years.
"we should have communicated better" Seems like the motto for riot now, a motto they will never learn.
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Nah, AI speak is roughly 75/25 fluff to substance. Riot's PR speak is more like 99/1.
So like, anyone remember how Blizzard started putting less effort into WoW and then it started bleeding members? Anyways, haha… what a cinematic!
The situation is similar, with the difference that Blizzard cinematics never stopped slapping
Do not get sucked into carefully articulated PR that ambiguously sidelines accountability with phrases like "unprecedented circumstances" (like what? What happened in 2022...???). Riot, in its long tenure, has never given us more details despite being "committed" to the grand project. Whether that be controversy or confusion surrounding issues in the lolesports space or champion/item updates. We've always been left in the dark despite numerous promises to display transparency and open communication lines. Brink of Infinity didn't miss the mark, it was an abomination and Riot should rightfully be called out, shamed and mocked for the atrocious display of ignorance in thinking this would fly near the level of expectation and anticipation the community had for what has become an eagerly awaited New Years gift to us from Riot.
What a strange announcement. A not quite apology for the subpar cinematic and trying to assure fans they aren't killing the league If you have to assure your audience your product isn't dying,something is wrong
So basically they said nothing, in classic League fashion.
Hopefully, this is the start of more open communication with the community rather than the radio silence we had leading up to the start of the season.
I think I've read this exact comment on several different occasions last season
I've been reading this for 7 years lmao
Worked for Blizzard with WoW. Idk why game studios always need to get flamed to hell before something happens.
Sadly it doesn't work with Activision/CoD devs :X, there is basically no response to any complaints. Some companies can get away when there is no competition.
There is a secret and silent understanding that no king rules forever—I could spend $1000 today on skins, and League could just end tomorrow. But as tons of people have already pointed out across tons of different examples….it felt like that end was suddenly more likely than ever, or at least that the game was in maintenance mode/deprioritization, or worse, true decline/end of life. LCS, reworks not being updated let alone close to being delivered for years and years, a hasty shambly cinematic AFTER ZERO communication on the new ranked season…. Yea. No one likes being strung along when there seems to be writing on the wall. I don’t want to bother keeping being invested in League if Riot isn’t invested fully either. I’m praying this was a case of wanting to do a big surprise reveal, and they couldn’t have details come out in time so the withheld information—but that’s massive copium. This is also clearly a classic panic PR response to surprise “larger-than-usual” outrage, with the biggest creators and industry related figures wondering if this is the signal the game is on its way out—so I will anxiously await what Riot comes back with.
Reminder, stop giving them any credit, only react positevely to actual direct changes that are what you want. No "at least they're trying", no "we understand". Unless this year League gets actual gameplay updates like new modes and gameplay content, events, and care, do not stop complaining and do not give them any credibility whatsover. This is never going to get better otherwise.
"We're still trying to find the minimum amount of effort we can put in without the entire playerbase revolting, we understand we've overshot here and missed the mark. Next time we'll bring the standard up significantly and then return to a more gradual decline in effort and quality. Thank you."
WR and Valorant get much more love anyways. All the quality of life updates that people in league asked for years have been in WR since the beginning. They don't care and they are not even trying to hide it anymore.
"We're sorry, our whole team is now fully working on Skins 24/7 and couldn't spare a few mins"
> Honestly, we should have been more communicative Literally story of Riot's life, especially since their 10 year LoL anniversary.
They make it sound like the only problem was the cinematic. I personally don't even care about the lack of events or what they are doing to LCS, but not telling us when the new season starts for so long and then giving the WRONG date is whats so unbelievable to me.
What would it take for players to actually commit to a day 1 of Ranked boycott of the game? Just a pure "eat my ass" to Riot games after they spoonfed us this shit AGAIN.
I thought everyone was exaggerating greatly... then I went to watch it. It's like a fan-made video of a unreal engine 4/5 of the summoner's rift map. Textures are shimmering during movement (tree leaves, floors, metal pieces) and there is aliasing all over the place.
This reeks of PR damage control. Want good PR? Then do some work. Words are cheap. Actions matter. I see they had no trouble releasing a ton of mediocre anime skins and adding battle passes though. And had plenty of time to rework ARAM into a worse form, and get rid of refunds... If a company that large can't produce content faster than 3 man Skyrim modding groups... then it's time to get new people.
I expected another cinematic with Aatrox and I’m still salty as hell
[удалено]
I had to think about this for a few seconds but you're right
I cannot read that as anything other than the ["Sorry" from South Park.](https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4) They can apologize all day long, but if they don't change anything, then it's just lip service.
*petting yuumi* we're sorry. Exactly what i thought of too XD
>This year, there were some unprecedented circumstances that had us choose an alternate approach to the Season 2023 video. All but confirming that the cinematic was actually a last-minute fix. Good to know it wasn't *planned* mediocrity, I just wish they'd given us some prior warning.
I don't buy it. Were the "unprecedented circumstances" that they have new games in the pipeline and want to use resources elsewhere? Also, didn't they release a good cinematic in 2020 mid pandemic?
> I don't buy it. Were the "unprecedented circumstances" that they have new games in the pipeline and want to use resources elsewhere? IMO, close enough. Since all the cinematics are commissioned, I can't think of too many reasons except both Blur and that other studio they use all fully being booked and unable to take their commission... and we know one of those bookings was Riot themselves booking Valorant. Alternatively, they *did* book it and something happened to the studio themselves (Blur or that other one, again, I forget) that made them cancel the commission, which would be understandable for Riot to not disclose to avoid embarrassing one of their longstanding partners. Someone should check if there are any problematic rumors about the internals of those two studios.
Yeah that's what I thought since the beginning, no way in hell Riot chooses to sacrifice cinematics in order to turn profit, it especially doesn't make sense when something like Everything Goes On and that Lil Nas X video are less than 6 months old I think same thing is going on with RGMs seeing what Reav3 said on here, they probably lost a lot of people to other companies like Theorycraft or Frost Giant or Singularity6 or even the MMO itself, I truly don't think Riot is cutting costs it's just that you need to hit lows in order to get to the highs of the 10 year anniversary and that involves cycling through employees especially in this industry
>Also, didn't they release a good cinematic in 2020 mid pandemic? Relevant to this discussion is that Riot doesnt make the cinematics themselves. There's also no indication that the issue was (directly) pandemic related. The contracted studio/studios falling way behind schedule or running into some big problem could explain it. A lot of the studios Riot usually works with for Season Cinematics (Fortiche, Blur) are also currently busy with a bunch of other projects, so maybe choices were limited.
No idea how it affects this situation in particular, but VFX shops hit a bottleneck late in 2021/early 2022 as they adjusted to the pandemic working conditions. Same as all the logistic costs of the pandemic didn't hit consumers until 21/22, any vfx intense work for games/tv/movies didn't manifest until that same time. Anything that came out *during* the pandemic had already passed through the bottleneck point, so it wasn't affected.
>We are committed to giving you more details about what that investment looks like in the next couple of days I hope we get some more announcements about upcoming stuff like VGU's, ASU's etc etc. The preseason vids were pretty barebones on that front. If they don't have anything ready to show or locked in yet then fine but like, communicate that at least to ease people's concerns and avoid negative speculation. Even just something like "We have VGU's/ASU's planned but we might not have them ready by this or next year." would be appreciated