A user on the reddit forum extensively discussed the events in League of Legends. His remarks reached Marc “Tryndamere” Merrill, one of the founders of Riot Games, who immediately offered the critic a job in LoL. According to Merrill, successful teams tend to be complacent. A thoughtful player perspective is valuable and can bring about change.
What was the player’s criticism?? On June 2, the Reddit user Lanaluse published a lengthy post on reddit. Topic: “Events in League of Legends: They have always been quite bad.” Especially the new Star Guardian event is heavily criticized.
In a five-part and multi-page post, the user explained the problems with the events at various stages of Riot Games. He generally found that events had become increasingly boring and worse over the years:
- Events underwent many changes over 12 years – Riot never seemed to be satisfied and kept changing the entire concept
- Over the years, the focus in LoL events shifted. The events moved away from “earning things” and “trying new things”. Now the focus was on having the opportunity to buy things in the cash shop
- Today, the events are boring – ultimately, one has to spend money to enjoy an event; otherwise, 70% of the content is missed.
Compared to competing games like Fortnite, LoL is just as grindy, but players still cannot 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:
How should events be instead? According to the reddit user, events should serve to explore the universe further that they want to sell to players.
In the past, it was about allowing players to dive deeper into the world of LoL – for instance, with special modes that adapt to the event. Instead of always just playing the classic “Summoner’s Rift”, Riot Games could use the events to try out unique modes that will only stay in the game for a limited time.
Exclusive content is okay, but it’s bad to hide it behind a paywall or a 30-day grind, Lanaluse judges.
“Interested in a job? We should talk!”
How was the post received? The post received a lot of support: 8,700 upvotes, countless reddit badges, and 627 comments.
What was special about it: Only 11 hours after the post appeared, Marc Merrill (thumbnail) appeared in the comments, known as Tryndamere, the former president of Riot Games: He founded the company together with Brandon “Ryze” Beck. After his Everquest character, the champion was named “Tryndamere”, and after his wife Ashley, the champion “Ashe”.
The important man from Riot 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 quite shocked that Tryndamere himself contacted him. The two then exchanged direct messages.
“Great fuel for discussion and reflection”
Why did Tryndamere find the post so great? On Twitter, Merrill explains why he was so impressed by the post: The post is “great fuel for internal discussions and reflections.”
If one is successful, one tends to become complacent because it is exhausting to constantly think of new things and because players’ expectations continue to rise. Developers are also human and need rest and recovery.
The post on reddit was well formulated and explains exactly the reasons why the user likes or dislikes something – and that in a thoughtful manner.
Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees when the team focuses on individual areas. The poster showed that he can identify issues and views them broadly and deeply from the player perspective. This sends strong signals to initiate change.
Whether Riot Games and the critical fan can come to an agreement is currently unknown.
But just like the poster, several big names in the MMO field started out. Even Jeffrey Kaplan, who later became the boss of Overwatch and co-developer of World of Warcraft, became famous for playing Everquest obsessively and explaining to developers what they were doing wrong:
WoW: Who created World of Warcraft and what are they doing today?
