Riot and Enlightment

Riot calmed, for the most part, the bitter snarky and often mean trash talk that happened in League of Legends by turning it over to the player base and allowing them to pass "ban" judgment on reported players. It was a brilliant stroke of genius that both empowered the players and removed Riot from the mess. It harkens back to the original 'let the player base rule the player base' call made in LambdaMOO back in the 80s when Pavel Curtis and company decided to step out of the middle of the disputes and institute a player driven 'government.'

Now Riot has done it again. Since the snark left the game, the remaining smack talk usually arises in the PUGs (pick up groups) that form to play a Coop-AI game. Everyone wants to play the same lane. It's not unusual to have to guys carry an argument about who gets to midlane into the game and both stand in the middle lane leaving a top or bottom lane solo. It's a chicken run. I'm not gonna bail; you gotta bail to the other lane first bro. Typically women yield. We're just stupid that way. We make the move that helps the PUG team even though it means giving up on an argument we thought we had already won in the pre-game.

So this showed up on my log in today. "Play the champ you want, where you want, every game." Fucking brilliant. They will build the composition around you. In some ways it's like a WoW random dungeon. You sign up to be tank or healer or dps and the system cobbles together a team. It's not that any one lane is the best. It's that the champ you like to play is best or at least better in one lane than another. This seems like it should work. I'll let you know.

But my main point is that Riot is very very very good at solving the  player base's problems. This means they hear them. They understand them. They know it's worth it trying to figure out a way to solve the issue rather than leave it to poison the experience. I'm very impressed. It's so... enlightened.