REDPOST: Riot's stance on 3rd Party Mods (and...

[quote=drakon136][center][color=#ffffff][size=7]Riot's stance on 3rd Party Mods (and Curse Voice)[/size] [size=6]GENERAL DISCUSSION POST[/color][/size] [size=5][url=http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=4491087]BY RIOT SARGONAS[/url][/size][/center] [columns] [indent] [nextcol] [h2]Hey everyone,[/h2] We wanted to give you an update on our stance on third-party mods, since it’s been an ongoing subject of discussion and debate in recent weeks. (If you just want a TL,DR then hit the bottom). [h2]Here’s how we look at things:[/h2] [h3]1. Our top priority is to preserve the consistency of the in-game player experience.[/h3] League’s a competitive game, and it’s critical that players have a level playing field. We’ve definitely heard your passion on this point and we agree. It’s also important that the game experience you get when you download League of Legends is the complete experience - you shouldn’t have to go digging for other apps and addons just to stay competitive. Finally, it’s important that the games you play are stable and secure. If any third party can potentially affect the stability of the core League experience, we’ll always act in the best interest of all players. [h3]2. We strive to make League of Legends the most sportsmanlike competitive game.[/h3] Programs or applications that warp your first interactions with other players have a direct impact on the sportsmanship of the game, and everyone deserves a fair first handshake. [h3]3. We want the community to be empowered to contribute to the League of Legends experience (as long as it doesn’t clash with the above!).[/h3] There are a bunch of awesome resources out there for the League community: websites that have champion guides, stats, videos, fan art, wikis, mobile apps – you name it. We like that, and we think these resources are responsible for tons of growth and nurturing in the League community. [h2]Riot’s Policy on Third-Party Apps[/h2] With the above points in mind, we’ve recognized that our existing policy on third-party apps needs an adjustment. Currently we’re just too ambiguous in some areas (what constitutes an “unauthorized” app?), and too restrictive in others. So here’s our clarification - we’re still working on properly wording it for a potential TOU update, but we wanted to share it with you as soon as we had a clear direction: No software should interfere with the League of Legends player experience between when you press “Play” and the end of game screen. This policy allows for all the cool stuff we mentioned before, like websites and apps that don’t interfere with or grab data from the player’s actual game client. This also allows us to explicitly disallow anything that directly integrates in between the in-game experience and after-game stats. We think this is a hell of a lot closer to an ideal policy, but we don’t think it’s completely locked down. We are taking a hard stance that nothing should interfere between pre-game and post-game, but we’re always open to improving the player experience. [h2]The Riot Games API[/h2] Part of of this plan will be continuing to focus on developing the Riot Games API, which is our official channel for the developer community to gain access to League of Legends data in a secure and reliable way. This is just part of our ongoing effort to respond to players' and developers' requests for data and to arm the community with more ways to contribute in a stable and healthy way. To date, we’ve given out several hundred API keys to developers who are working on awesome stuff. If you’re a dev and want to contribute, visit http://developer.riotgames.com/ to sign up and learn more. [h2]So, what does this mean for Curse Voice?[/h2] [h3]Two elements of Curse Voice aren’t allowed under this new policy:[/h3] 1. Automated timers: while our design team is still exploring whether we’d want to add any kind of built-in timers to League of Legends, we agree with many of you that having it accessible only through a third-party app is a clear competitive advantage between those who download it and those who do not, and isn’t acceptable. 2. Automated voice calls: We have no problem with players hopping on Curse Voice (or any other voice chat client) to coordinate with their friends in-game, but when the application begins directly connecting you with dozens of other people in unfiltered (and untrackable) voice chats, it can make for a huge negative player experience in a space where we can’t help. --- [h2]A summary[/h2] Ultimately we recognize that our initial third party application policies were unclear, so we’re clarifying them in line with a few core philosophies: 1.) The League of Legends in-game experience should be consistent and fair. 2.) We strive to make League of Legends the most sportsmanlike competitive game. 3.) We want the community to be empowered to contribute to the League of Legends experience. This has allowed us to formulate a more comprehensive policy for third party applications: No software should interfere with the League of Legends player experience between when you press “Play” and the end of game screen. We always want to improve League of Legends in the best ways possible, so this will be an ongoing project, but we think that as long as we adhere to our core philosophies, we can uphold this policy. [rule] [nextcol] [indent] [/columns] Saw this on GD (it's about 6 hours old at time of posting this so you guys probably saw it already though), figured it merited some discussion and was also important (but not important enough to post in news I guess) and added a bit of code to make it more readable.[/quote]

[quote=Mooninites]I'm a fan of Riot's decision. Curse Voice wasn't available to everyone and it gave a distinct advantage to those that did have. I had curse voice but still I didn't like using it.[/quote]

[quote=Janitsu]Yeah. I stopped using it because it dropped my already poor FPS to 20. Also my ping went from 60-80 to 100-120.[/quote]

[quote=utopus]In my experience, I think riot's doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing. If you look at games like warcraft 3 and World of warcraft, those games were good in it of themselves, but the add-ons that you could install for those games really made them shine, and made the games more enjoyable to play, without detracting from the overall experience of the game. I think that if riot locks down on this 3rd party software policy, they will be limiting themselves in terms of creativity. Some 3rd party app very well could make league more fun to play.[/quote]

[quote=Berzerk]I agree with riots decision on this. Not even for curse voice itself mostly because of what it could open up too. It also gave players who used it (Although a pretty minimal advantage) an advantage over people who did not. As a competitive game riot wants to keep the playing feilds as equal as possible. Its worked up to now, no real need to change that imo[/quote]

[quote=OTGBionicArm][quote=utopus] In my experience, I think riot's doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing. If you look at games like warcraft 3 and World of warcraft, those games were good in it of themselves, but the add-ons that you could install for those games really made them shine, and made the games more enjoyable to play, without detracting from the overall experience of the game. I think that if riot locks down on this 3rd party software policy, they will be limiting themselves in terms of creativity. Some 3rd party app very well could make league more fun to play. [/quote] Riot isn't Blizzard and this isn't Warcraft/WoW. We don't need addons. Next thing you know we'll have recount DPS trackers in game so that [[master yi]] can better justify how hard he's carrying the noobs on his team.[/quote]

[quote=GrandmasterD]Riot had to draw a line and that's what makes this decision good. Next thing you know you will get add-ons that will tell you what item is strategically and mathematically the best thing to buy; maybe even relative to their cost. The amount of things a computer can calculate for you within a split-second is huge and not everything is as easily done by a human being. Sure I think timers and ultimate cool downs should just be visible and riot should just implement that. However, deriving spawn timers from buff timers is not something everyone does out there and, while it doesn't require much skill, it not something everyone thinks about so... tl;dr Add-ons have the ability to provide players with information that they wouldn't be able to easily derive on their own; at least not as fast. Crs Voice just has the misfortune of being an example that had to be set by Riot. However, it does show that Riot's HuD is outdated.[/quote]

[quote=Firehusary]RIP Curse Voice. All the streamers will cry now:([/quote]

[quote=Mooninites][quote=utopus] In my experience, I think riot's doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing. If you look at games like warcraft 3 and World of warcraft, those games were good in it of themselves, but the add-ons that you could install for those games really made them shine, and made the games more enjoyable to play, without detracting from the overall experience of the game. I think that if riot locks down on this 3rd party software policy, they will be limiting themselves in terms of creativity. Some 3rd party app very well could make league more fun to play. [/quote] WC3 and WoW are much more complex games than league of legends. There are far more people in a raid or battlegroun than there are in a game of League, there are also far more spells and a lot more going on in the environment. I think that's why addons are allowed but monitored. At least when I played back in WotLK, there were addons that told you when to press spells, where to stand, when a boss was going to do a lot of damage or use a cooldown. It got to the point where addons (3rd party programs) were necessary and did everything for you. I don't understand why you would defend that or want that type of system in League[/quote]

[quote=DillButt64]so how long do we have to not use curse voice? i still have it but i dont want to uninstall it in case things change later[/quote]