MOBAFire, we need to talk

[quote=FalseoGod]^ About 2 clicks, it's more than known in online marketing that the more barriers you place between a product and the buyer, the less the buyer is willing to go through the process. [quote]3) if there would be some way of dealing with huge skill differentials (i.e. so it doesn't become a "what high-elo player can carry noobs the hardest") and with differences in attitude towards the game (I'm very competitive).[/quote] It just doesn't work unless you put up strict rules. Example: there's way too many people who have no issue right now to go 20-0 in lane vs a bronze 5 player as a plat+ player. Their reasoning is "this is balanced anyway". If, as a jungler, I camped their lane to fuck them up, they'd complain that they're getting camped and fume. But they give 0,00 shits about how the bronze player feels about being used as fodder. Luckily, most bronzes we got on EUW were actually nice people and they'd still do their best and apologize to the team or compliment our plays, showing that they got a more positive stance towards inhouses than the plat-ish regular shitting on them. However, if you put a rule saying "if you're over X divisions of a player, you can't have over a 3 kill diferential in lane" and they lose, they'll be pissed because "game was balanced and I couldn't carry because I wasn't allowed to get kills". Once again, they're giving 0,00 shits about the other player and completely disregarding that they could farm freely and should have 2-3x the opposing laner's cs anyway. Worse, if they get ganked they'll be even more pissed because not only are they being "set back", but now THEY are being "used as fodder". On the other hand, if you can force 2 lower elos vs each other in lane (which could already be shitting on how they feel about being forced into X lane, but generally we ask them what they prefer), there's the chance that the jungler is higher elo and still feels like going for free fodder. Stop them from going to that lane and they'll be upset if the opposing jungler manages more kills due to impact in remaining 2 lanes. Finally, the competitive players paired with lowest elo players will eventually also be upset that they had to be paired with a bronze player. This is specially true if only 1 team got a bronze player. These players don't see the lower elo as someone who is there to learn and share the fun; they see him as a liability if they're paired with them, or as fodder if against him. They'd rather wait 10 more mins in lobby or not have a game than invite these players. And mind you, we're not talking about BBG or nasty toxic players: we're talking about players who have a positive attitude and are actually really nice to you. Finally, like I said in the EUW thing, I have my own share of friends who have told me "sorry inhouses seemed like fun but I just refuse to play if X player is here because they either take my role or I'm against them and they just wanna shit on me". There's a reason I've been calling it "Mobafire Ranked Practice".[/quote]

[quote=Out Of Pancakes][quote=Vynertje] [...] the chance of "randomly stumbling across a guide and having a look", which constituted of about 75% of my votes back then.[/quote] This.[/quote]

[quote=Jpikachu1999]I used to love Mobafire inhouses. I remember when they first came out (I was a lot worse back then) and it was a great way to improve my gameplay while having fun. The last inhouse I went to consisted of mostly high ranked players (I'm fine with that), but the hyper-competitiveness got way out of hand. I'm a highly competitive player, but the attitude went from "high rated players in the game who would give advice during/after the game while everyone had fun" to "how hard can we stomp them and prove how good we are". Despite that, I've tried to be online for inhouses every week, and as far as I know, NA hasn't had a single inhouse for the entire month of February. I'm starting to give up on them. The attempt at balancing has become so arcane and difficult that it is ridiculous. There were quite a few times where the attempts at balancing took [i]more than twice the time it took to play the actual game[/i]. When it takes an hour to an hour and a half to balance, something is wrong. It used to be just eyeballing the various ranks and wins, then starting the game. League already takes a lot of time out of the day to play - spending more than 50% of that time figuring out balancing is not really worth it.[/quote]

[quote=Joxuu]This is basically what happens when you are in a community you care about for a long time. I think many who have been here for a longer time can relate to the fact that Mobafire was "more interesting" or "funnier" few years ago. It's a circle where old users move on and new users come in. You had these older members active and they were posting stuff you could relate or react to. Later on people feel like they have seen everything and their old friend are quitting so Mobafire becomes boring for them. It's always harder to find "replacements" to the old friends to experience "the golden years" again. (this is kind of nasty statement to say "replacements for older friends" but I don't know how to put it in words other way). Most of the people who joined before all the changes would rather go back to the state Mobafire was few years ago because that's the more familiar one and those were the times when everyone they knew were more active. New members join, league evolves and changes are often made accordingly as years go and you kinda just have to adapt. I can recognize this based on my 7 year experience in other community before I joined Mobafire. Now I'm the angry old guy in a corner complaining about the changes and how 2010 was the "golden year" when everyone I knew were active and posting on forums but now I don't recognize many of the current users and I've stopped visiting there. It's an old community and the game the community is based on has lost it's popularity in great amounts and I think league of legends will hit that spot sooner or later in the future years. People will find league to not be fun and move on. I can understand the admins being less active and front page being changed too. Mobafire has grown to be a large community (+1 million registered users). Admins will always have more to do and take care of as the community grows larger so they will have less time to interact with the community. As the interaction decreases between admins and community, admins will start to feel more as just admins and not the basic grass level community (this also sounds kinda mean towards admins but I don't know how to put this in better words either but you get the idea). This of course causes displease in community and a extreme example is from the other community I was in where a update post was just released and a post straight up flaming the admins is more liked than the actual update post. In my opinion Mobafire has decent interaction with community (could be better if I'm 100% honest here) but there's always community managers communicating with the community more which is nice. Changing front page and Mobafire Prime are understandable to me. Websites and companies are built to be profitable and so is Mobafire. From a business point of view, it's lot better to have ad running in front page than having a blog post tracker that isn't that popular. It would be different if it was really useful/used/wanted back to the day it was there but it wasn't that big of a deal. It was neat but it wasn't popular. Mobafire needs to pay different bills, fees and paychecks for employees and it's quite costly I'd imagine so income is needed. I won't go into MFN Prime as there's the thread in front page alread and I don't really have a opinion on it or it's benefits. It's voluntary and doesn't effect the normal user's experience or have any world changing functions. More income usually means more fancy stuff too like the inhouse RP giveaway. Problem with inhouses is only fixed with a fix in attitude and everyone's own actions. I was about to say it's everyone's own job to try to make them enjoyable but everyone has a different opinion on what is enjoyable in inhouses. This also goes back to the fact that many older players have quit so they're automatically less anjoyable. It's always fun to do well and win games while going head on against other opponent with everything both got but there are many factors like one being higher elo or one playing a champion they're comfortable with. I can also say that it's also not fun to play a farm game to not ruin opposing players experience. This is a matter of trying to have fun but also trying to not destroy other player's experience. As a jungler it's easy to gank 0/10 lane to win but to make games more balanced and fun for everyone, trying to help 0/10 lane is better for the overall experience. I think it's ok to try and win lane but in an ideal world everyone would take others into consideration and rethink if 0/6 guy is worth tower diving if he/she is trying to get back into the game by farming under turret. Going into a inhouse game with the a bad mentality that the games will be toxic and unfun will most likely make them be so and result in a tilt which leads to bad plays. It's probably not a good idea to be overextending in tilt mode 0/10 at enemy turret when you're losing because the enemy team is automatically forced to react and kill you again. It's not reasonable to expect the enemy team to sacrifice everything so one could be untilted with bad plays. I don't blame the referess for the current mentality of inhouses because it's really hard to balance teams because there's so many changing factors and I mean everyone can always contribute to the balancing progress which is why referees usually ask "is this ok?". Rather than balancing being a problem, I think the current inhouse mentality is wrong. I don't care if I win or lose an inhouse game. I try my best to have fun and try to take others in consideration so they will most likely also have fun. I can't say I'm never tilted if I go 0/10 and there was especially one inhouse week where I tilted my tits off when I joined with bad mentality after real life problems but other than the weak week I try to not show tilt so I won't ruin anyone elses experience and just try to get the best I can from that game and go to a new one with better mindset. I can say that I still find inhouses fun, some weeks a litle bit more than others but generally I like inhouses and that's why I try to join them when I can. But the problem is joining inhouses with a bad mentality and "infecting" it to others. Try to not take inhouses too seriously but enough serious that you won't be trolling in them just because "they're just inhouses". Sorry for lengthy post. I don't usually like posting stuff like this but I done did it now.[/quote]

[quote=utopus][quote=joxuu] This is basically what happens when you are in a community you care about for a long time. I think many who have been here for a longer time can relate to the fact that Mobafire was "more interesting" or "funnier" few years ago. It's a circle where old users move on and new users come in. You had these older members active and they were posting stuff you could relate or react to. Later on people feel like they have seen everything and their old friend are quitting so Mobafire becomes boring for them. [/quote] I think that joxuu's hit it on the nail here. In all communities, people will leave for various reasons. It is just heart breaking for the vets that have been here for a long time, since they were basically the first people. Even so, there are constantly new people coming in and engaging in the community, and the only reason that we can say that 'more vets are leaving than are joining', is simply because it's now really fucking hard to get +rep compared to earlier times, where people were less stingy with giving out +rep[/quote]

[quote=The_Nameless_Bard]+rep didn't used to be restricted and now it is, that doesn't help.[/quote]

[quote=Jpikachu1999][quote=Joxuu]*snip*[/quote] Great points. I guess I've just been getting some of that nostalgia syndrome. I mostly feel bad for the referees. They have the hardest job of trying to cater to everyone; I think it burns most of them out. I would offer to help or even referee myself, but I currently don't have the time or reliable schedule to do that. I think the hardest part about trying to move forward is that there don't seem to be as many really active members around. Even though there might be a ton more users, people mostly keep to themselves. It was the same back in the day, but it felt like a larger percentage were more active. At least, on NA, anyway. Part of that is people being busy with real life stuff, etc. I get that. Anyway, my semi-mindless ranting is done. I was around for quite a while then took a 1 and a half year break. A lot has changed, and I'm sort of sad to see a lot of familiar faces gone, but it's even better to see new ones join. I still think Mobafire is an awesome community, in more ways than one.[/quote]

[quote=XeresAce]Guys, really now? Nobody was complaining about the community alone. The main problem Bee's post addresses is the fact that mobafire is treating the community like a source of revenue and that there is hardly any communication going on before things get implemented. Nobody was complaining that old members are leaving because they want to move on, he was sad that members were leaving because mobafire has become more of a business than a fun community to be in. And also, I think there is absolutely no excuse for admins to be saying "oh but as the site expands we're getting more busy". Your main customers, the people who've been here for years, the ones who share mobafire with their friends and do their best to keep the community part active (because, let's be honest, who comes to mobafire for the guides? I know I haven't checked out a guide on here since 2 years ago because things like probuilds.net give you a much better idea past a certain threshold anyway) are being left in the dust and it's NOT okay. If it's okay for the community to just fall, then at least a confirmation would be nice so people who care should stop trying to gain answers in vain. Speaking of which, I'm surprised an Admin hasn't replied yet. :<[/quote]

[quote=Lugignaf]My guess is that they're mulling something over.[/quote]

[quote=XeresAce][quote=Lugignaf]My guess is that they're mulling something over.[/quote] Well, that's all fine and dandy, but do days of planning actually allow the community to receive a response that won't be detached and "business" like? I surely hope so, but at this rate I feel like we'll get something more official than desirable.[/quote]