MOBAFire, we need to talk

[quote=Joxuu]I don't know what's up with NA inhouses. The time I joined was fun and they seemed popular enough (actually had people in queue waiting to join games) but they haven't been active since. I've tried to ask people the last few weekends whether they're being played or not and the usual answer is "I'm not sure, probably not". Currently EU has trouble building up the inhouses but we usually get at least 1 game before everyone kinda goes on to do something else "more fun". In my opinion the biggest problem is the mentality. Everything is fun and games until we get into a game where everything seems to blow up, even if there is nothing too bad going on. I talked about this in my other post already but if people join inhouses with the attitude that "this is going to be cancer", "I'm against this guy again...", "this guy is playing this champion, great we lost", they probably will be just that and others will pick up the same atmosphere and eventually enough people agree that last game was not fun and the same mentality is expected from the second game: "why join for more games, they will be as toxic as this one". I don't know about the balancing. I've always been more or less satisfied with balancing of the games. Can't remember a game where I would have been unhappy with balancing. I wouldn't even complain about balancing if I didn't contribute to it in the other hand but I've been happy with it so I haven't had a reason to complain. I don't know about the NA inhouse system but the balancing takes long because everyone wants to have as balanced game as possible. In my opinion just common sense is enough for balancing which means the games shouldn't be damonds vs silver or 4 support mains vs all-around team. Common thing also is to take microphone usage into consideration so nobody would have to be alone in a teamspeak channel (we've had games where everyone just stayed in the same channel and it was fun imo). @Meiyjhe Sorry if I misunderstood some parts. I was quite tired when I wrote that.[/quote]

[quote=RottedApples]Don't get me wrong or anything, I have no problems with balancing, i never do. I usually joke with the zed quote but then levask told me he'd kick me if i did it again because apparently someone already does it in eu :^) (i'm sure levask wasn't being that serious) so i've only been doing it when i know i can't get kicked by levask. I don't feel i know any better when it comes to balance so i just kinda let the refs worry about it and when they say "does this seem fine?" i just don't say anything. The whole google docs system that they had going just annoys the shit out of me because it takes so god damn long and you can probably achieve the same or a similar level of balance by just eyeballing it (or doing the fatelblade's psiguard approved™ method which is pretty simple math) and going with whatever. [url=https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11pYrSBGmERUhOFvJJEKxUI9Ym5Pw5jcc5VYsf3TPH1w/edit#gid=1609511925]This is what i'm talking about when i mean "that google docs bullshit" btw[/url] Somewhere there is another google doc with other weird shit that they follow that i also don't understand or care about because again, it takes way too long and doesn't really matter.[/quote]

[quote=Jpikachu1999][quote=Joxuu] I don't know about the balancing. I've always been more or less satisfied with balancing of the games. Can't remember a game where I would have been unhappy with balancing. I wouldn't even complain about balancing if I didn't contribute to it in the other hand but I've been happy with it so I haven't had a reason to complain. I don't know about the NA inhouse system but the balancing takes long because everyone wants to have as balanced game as possible. In my opinion just common sense is enough for balancing which means the games shouldn't be damonds vs silver or 4 support mains vs all-around team. Common thing also is to take microphone usage into consideration so nobody would have to be alone in a teamspeak channel (we've had games where everyone just stayed in the same channel and it was fun imo).[/quote] When inhouses first started, balancing took all of 5 minutes (if that) and we never really had problems with people using Ventrilo or Skype. Now, it takes forever and a day to balance and people don't seem to understand how to use whatever voice communication system we decide on at the time. I'm seriously considering signing up to be a referee in the hopes that I can get people together. I understand if other referees are burnt out/don't want to do anything because of lack of signups, but even if I can get 6 people together to do a Twisted Treeline match or we get a group together for some fun group queues, that would be fine. Only thing is, I don't exactly have the most free schedule. Guess I'll figure something out. I miss playing with Mobafire peeps.[/quote]

[quote=IPodPulse]Hey everyone, I'm pretty sure most of you remember me and may have noticed that I haven't been active recently, my last comment literally asking how I can receive my RP from inhouses. So I decided that I would make a comment and explain the reasons as to why I haven't been active lately and offer some of my own experience as a member. I want to start off with my experience. I joined this website 2 years ago, I never joined an online forum before and wanted to see what it was like. Being a fan of league of legends and wanting to make a guide myself I thought this place would be a nice place to start. It was, it really was. There were so many interesting people, there were the artists, the scouts, the guide writers, and so many others. It was such an amazing experience because I was really bad at the game and thought that what I did was good, and people told me it wasn't, and I loved that. Criticism was the best, it helped me improve my guide writing and game play and I am so grateful for that, everyone would flat out tell me what I did wrong, and as someone who wanted to learn I was excited. That's when I started hanging around the site more, I got into GIMP and Amanda helped me so much with that, I joined inhouses and made so many new friends that honestly have really helped me discover who I was as a person and most importantly I had a place that almost felt like a second home. I was excited to come home from school and see what people on Mobafire had to say and what everyone was talking about. It was discussion and I loved that. But it died down. This is where real life starts to interfere, it's where responsibilities take over and there wasn't much I could do. I had an art shop I couldn't even keep up with because of life, and I felt awful for it, I started talking less with people on the site and finding it hard to keep up conversation. I feel like I've changed to a point where nothing is the same like it was before. I honestly don't know how to feel about that. The topics on Mobafire are so different now too. You don't see anymore guide discussion, you don't really see much artwork be requested, everything got so dull. Every once in a while something heated would happen but it ends up blowing over in a day. Nothing feels right, and I don't know if thats just me maturing or if everything else is getting boring. I really love this site, everyone here has helped shape who I am today, and I really appreciate that, but I'm not sure what's happening to me and my love for this site because right now, I'm not sure if it is as strong as it used to be.[/quote]

[quote=Meiyjhe]First of all I want to thank you Wayne for the response and the fact that I already see actions taken to improve the future of MOBAFire. I was afraid that the points presented would not be addressed and I am glad that you and the rest of the staff took the effort to already work on some of the most important parts of my concerns. As you probably expected I also have some things I want to adress that you said in your previous post. [quote=Wayne3100]First off, I should note I'm a little confused about your comments in regards to admin attention: Who exactly are you talking about here, and what can we do to fix that? In my eyes, going from 1 Community Manager (Mowen) to 2 (PsiGuard and I) should result in the exact opposite of what you're describing, even if it's sad to see Mowen have less time to post on the forums now.[/quote]The thing is though that you and Psiguard were already an active part of the community before you became community managers. You were already involved in the community as moderators, which are mostly also part of the staff, except that you guys didn't get paid back then. Even then I feel that the involvement of you and psiguard is decreasing, but that might just be my thoughts clouding my judgement. What you can do to fix it is something that you already decided to do, communicate more in developments that the MOBAFire staff is planning and performing. Would be nice to see Mowey involved in the MOBAFire community again or see that Matt still exists, but the fact that work is divided over multiple websites makes it harder for your team to stay personally involved, I am sure. Would be nice to see more admin involvement in the community, but if you just tell us what is going on in the development, that is already a huge improvement. [quote=Wayne3100][h2]2. MFN: Prime and its current features[/h2] Before I respond to any of the quotes regarding Prime and its features, I want to point out that I fully understand why the introduction of a system like this may seem scary - in fact, my initial response to Mowen when I was told about this was basically "Mowen, we need to talk", because I felt it was necessary to point out that this shouldn't negatively influence the experience of free users. Luckily, it quickly became clear to me that [url=http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/forum/news/introducing-mfn-prime-amp-commendation-system-38746#comment-1070847]the devs agreed with me on that[/url]. With that said, you also raise a few concerns, so let's go by those one by one: [b]Commendations allow users to gift a month of Prime to creators of fantastic content. There's upvotes for good content, and then commendations for exceptional content. [/b] It's completely up to the user to decide what kind of content warrants a commendation since it's their cash to spend. If you don't want to buy commendations, that's totally up to you. It's just there as an option to support the MOBAFire and show your appreciation for the best content the site has to offer. We're going to keep an eye on this feature and see how it affects user experience. We're not completely opposed to changing it, but we'd also like to see how it's used before we take any action on it. Falseo and Vapora made a couple of good points about this (a few comments above me) and we'll be sure to keep those in mind. This would indeed be a very big problem if commendations were designed to boost guide ratings, but they're not. The best way to find success as an author on MOBAFire is, and always will be, to write a great guide. Commendations aren't a fast-track to success for guide authors, they're just a way for users to say thank-you and reward content creators with Prime while supporting the site at the same time. This quote is relevant to both section 2 and 3, but I just want to mention that I'll get back to scouting in a bit, not here.[/quote]The point you make about votes being for good content and commendations for exceptional content is exactly what makes me concerned about the existence of commendations. They might, in the eye of the default user, seem to be more relevant than the actual voting system in itself. As commendated guide (authors) get a very "exceptional" look. Commendations would be fine if nothing would change for the guide other than the author getting free prime, but that is not the case. Alternatively it would also be fine if multiple people can give commendations by default, which is also not the case. Either commendations should be free for everyone (or a selected group of people, like scouts) and work as a way to pick out exceptional guides, or it is a system that is behind a paywall that does not let one guide stand out above the other. Now it is a system that is trying to be both which is just contradictionary. You cannot make the ability of exceptionalising guides behind a pay wall and still say that getting commendations has no negative influence on the default user. About scout point; The fact that the scout point system would already work as a fine system to replace the commendation system (if your main goal is to pick out exceptional guides) is why I brought it up. I didn't have any intention to put too much attention on the scout system as it was and still is a dead system. Which actually makes it pretty great to hear that there is more development going on to make the scout system more relevant again. [quote=Wayne3100][h2]3. MOBAFire's "Core Issues"[/h2] Before talking a little bit about what (else?) you guys consider to be "core issues", let's address a few things which have been brought up several times by now: The feedback in regards to these topics was [i]not[/i] ignored, but we decided against it. Given the confusion in this thread it seems like we haven't been clear about the reason why, so I'll do my best to clarify that now. The landing page of MOBAFire is primarily geared towards people visiting the site for the first time. Before the changes to the front page, MOBAFire [url=http://web.archive.org/web/20130208103655/http://mobafire.com/]looked pretty cluttered[/url] with a lot of content that people just didn't need to see. I realize that the easy access and exposure for New Guides and Blogs are something that several regulars miss from those days, but it doesn't fit with the purpose of the front page. Instead, that real estate is given to stuff like the free week champions, featured guides, news and the activity feed - stuff that's important for users to see. For blogs specifically, we realise that they offer a great platform for a lot of you guys to share random, [i]often personal[/i] stories which don't really have a place in the forums, but that doesn't necessarily make it good content to display to every user of the site. On top of that, from my days moderating the site when the blogs were still there I can tell you that most of my days started with me having to remove several blogs for containing commercial or general spam ("Hi, just testing! ^_^"), and while certain measures helped resolve this to some degree (minimum number of characters for it to show on the front page for example) we ultimately decided it'd be better to leave them out entirely. For those of you that would like to browse new guides, we specifically [url=http://i.imgur.com/vECjDCS.png]made a separate option for it in the Builds & Guides drop-down menu[/url]. With all that said, the fact that you guys continuously bring it up has led to us talking about this again, and we [i]are[/i] investigating alternatives that will help regulars find the content they're looking for without compromising the front page. This is obviously a bit of a recent development, so I can't make too many promises just yet, but I'm hoping that we'll be able to resolve this in a way where everyone's happy in the end. As for your comment, Vynertje, yes, the number of new guides being released is lower nowadays than it once was, but that is something which has developed gradually over the course of several months/years (for the record, these numbers are now stable, just not as high as in the early days when more new players were sharing their ideas). The only spikes (upwards) shown when looking at the data for this are related to the start of a new season / guide contest, otherwise the numbers barely vary; as such, I doubt the removal of the new guides tab had much of an effect on this at all. Speaking of which (looking back at Meiyjhe), I also don't see how the removal of it turned the system into something "broken" considering a very low percentage of MOBAFire visitors actually used the new guides tab. I get that - as one of its users - it may [i]feel[/i] that way to you, but I can assure you that the effect of its removal is not as big as you seem to believe.[/quote]This is a very important thing that had to be adressed for a while and for a long time there was no voice heard from the development side that there was actual work done on exposing new guides and giving new reasons to stay active in the community. There has been discussions about this before and the answers were in my honest opinion lackluster. To now know that you actually are working to find solutions is already fantastic. The fact that I now see a post in the veteran thread concerning how some parts of the layout can be improved to support the community further. This is what has been lacking from the development team for a while now, some reminder that there is work done on these important issues because for months now, I felt clueless on what is going on. [quote=Wayne3100]Now, let's shift back to what I originally made this chapter for... Sorry if I'm blunt, but I hardly believe that the quoted lines above are referring only to whether or not the blogs and/or new guides tab are on the front page. So my question is: what exactly are you referring to when mentioning "core issues"?[/quote]I have said it multiple times actually, the fact that the layout has changed in such a way that the amount of possible community interactions has been reduced or barriers were put in place making it harder for the community to interact. So if you wonder what exactly is the core issue, the issue is actually something very broad. The things I mentioned were specific suggestions to improve it that haven't been addressed properly before this thread was made in my honest opinion. [quote=Wayne3100]From my own experience working behind the scenes, any issues which are related to server stability (think of the issues with traffic at the start of S6 or the 500 error messages which we're looking into now) & the ability to save & publish guides are tackled immediately, but beyond that - as tasks become less urgent - it obviously gets a bit more complicated. Now we have to determine just how cool and/or necessary certain prospective features are (from multiple viewpoints, which includes the business side), how much time it would cost to implement them and - not to forget - how these tasks rank not only on MF itself but also in relation to other websites (typically, as activity on certain sites increases due to something like the start of a new season, so does dev activity). It's not an easy task, and it is clear from your feedback that asking you guys about these kind of issues (to determine whether our minds align) is definitely something we should be doing more often. [h2]4. Community feedback / asking for opinions before changes are made[/h2] Which brings me to my last point, which - as said - is that the message is clear and we will be doing our best to communicate with you guys about upcoming features more often. I assume that by now most of you will have read Mowen's post in the other thread, in which she mentioned that the devs' plan was to release MOBAFire Prime as a surprise, providing extra features for those wanted it. And to be fair, that could well have been a [i]positive[/i] surprise if none of you had any issues with the actual features and/or if we had collectively done a better job communicating in the past. But that's not the case, and I don't want to be making any excuses for myself. As someone [i]who knows exactly what it feels like[/i] for something like this to happen (from a community member point of view), I'm sorry we left you guys feeling like you're in the dark. We [i]do[/i] care about your thoughts, ideas and responses to new features like this and I will do my utmost to make sure we do a better job of communicating in the future.[/quote]This with the fact that other things are now being worked on is something that I thought was truly necessary for the website to touch upon and they now are. This makes me very glad and hope that things might turn around for the better again. I still am not satisfied with the commendation system and it is also very relevant to keep the publicity for new guides in mind. They are, in the end, the reason to come to MOBAFire. As a lot of other commenters in this thread have shown there is also a lot of concerns for the inhouses. This is a much harder problem to solve as there always has been issues with inhouses, but I think looking at the amount of response about it, it is also a very relevant thing to relate more to the website. Such as the creation of events for inhouse players. Sadly I am too little involved to have a good judgement of what is and isn't a good idea for inhouses. [quote=Wayne3100]I know that - just like everyone else - we definitely make mistakes and I thank you for voicing your concerns. Hopefully my post at least cleared a few things up. I look forward to reading your response :)[/quote]Your post surely did <3 Hopefully we can also discuss the last few concerns and I think we will all be happy panda's[/quote]

[quote=mastrer1000][quote=RottedApples] [url=https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11pYrSBGmERUhOFvJJEKxUI9Ym5Pw5jcc5VYsf3TPH1w/edit#gid=1609511925]This is what i'm talking about when i mean "that google docs bullshit" btw[/url] [/quote] Before this got introduced, there was some drama about the NA inhouses being unbalanced and everyone agreed that there needed to be some sort of system in place iirc. This just seems like masturbating about how complicated you can make a picking process though tbh.[/quote]

[quote=FalseoGod][quote=mastrer1000][quote=RottedApples] [url=https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11pYrSBGmERUhOFvJJEKxUI9Ym5Pw5jcc5VYsf3TPH1w/edit#gid=1609511925]This is what i'm talking about when i mean "that google docs bullshit" btw[/url] [/quote] Before this got introduced, there was some drama about the NA inhouses being unbalanced and everyone agreed that there needed to be some sort of system in place iirc. This just seems like masturbating about how complicated you can make a picking process though tbh.[/quote] NA's problem is the same as EUW's problem when it comes to balancing: player attitude.[/quote]

[quote=utopus][quote=meiyjhe] [b]Commendations would be fine if nothing would change for the guide other than the author getting free prime, but that is not the case. [/b] Alternatively it would also be fine if multiple people can give commendations by default, which is also not the case. Either commendations should be free for everyone (or a selected group of people, like scouts) and work as a way to pick out exceptional guides, or it is a system that is behind a paywall that does not let one guide stand out above the other. Now it is a system that is trying to be both which is just contradictionary [/quote] [img=http://i.imgur.com/G12gQP8.png] This is an image of the top alistar guides at the moment. If I were to look at a guide, I would pick the guide with the high score, and large number of page views over a guide with a low score that's been commended once or twice. What is most realistic is that the highest scoring guide [b] will[/b] be the guide that gets the commendations as well. If you want to look at this with the under-dog mentality, that if I wrote a guide, it'd be difficult for me to really have my guide stand out against a guide with a high score, a large number of views, and lots of commendations, then your argument is circular by nature, because that predicament has existed well before the implementation of commendations, and there's a pretty well-defined way to really make your guide stand out (i.e. review shops, forum activity, etc) Just to briefly respond to the inhouses thing. I don't want to derail the thread, but I just need to clarify this. [url=https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17Z5Wh0sZvkSx9hdBVbcVFytItYJOoSYienPwD7J4YUQ/edit#gid=2118309665][img=http://i.imgur.com/Q5kaqPe.png][/url] This is a marked up screenshot of the most recent redaction of the balancing sheet. The stuff i've highlighted in blue is the stuff that people are supposed to look at (and even if they don't, the refs will tell people which team to be on), and the stuff highlighted in purple are the things that the refs actually change. The sheet really isn't that complicated, and refs like sarah and walid are actually pretty fast at balancing teams. The actual balancing process usually takes less than 5 minutes - most of the time, it's just that people keep on leaving before we finish our work and then we have to backtrack and start over with the replacement person[/quote]

[quote=FalseoGod]^ To add to the long inhouse balancing times, there's also people who afk or aren't paying attention to the balancing suggestions. It takes longer to get the 10 people than to balance.[/quote]

[quote=PsiGuard][quote=Meiyjhe]About scout point; The fact that the scout point system would already work as a fine system to replace the commendation system (if your main goal is to pick out exceptional guides) is why I brought it up.[/quote] Just wanted to touch on this point a bit, since I think there's still some confusion. There is a fundamental difference between Scout points and Commendations, besides the fact that one is free and one isn't. In the beginning, Scout points were designed to enable some "trusted" users to "pick out exceptional guides," as you put it. This is a top-down selection. Essentially, Scouts were supposed to endorse guides in order for them to be more noticed and rise in the rankings, challenging the top-rated stuff that might have been outdated or maybe just wasn't the greatest guide. Commendations do not serve the same purpose. They are not an endorsement by any sort of MOBAFire "official" or something. They are not featured above other guides or given front page space (as Scouted guides used to be). All you should think when you see a commended guide is "Huh, someone liked this guide enough to buy the author a badge and a month of Prime." Maybe that prompts you to check it out, and then you realize it's trash and you downvote it, as Vapora said might be the case. Maybe you take a look and it's a great guide and it earns your upvote. Maybe you just ignore it. Your response is up to you, but all that badge means is a user liked the content enough to spend money to show it. I realize since the Scout system and commendations both seem to "highlight" something, they do share something in common. However, the fundamental differences between [i]who[/i] can highlight content and [i]why[/i] they might choose to do so reflects the difference in purpose between these two systems.[/quote]