Red Post Collection: Community beta changes & Live Preview, Gifting bug, Audio team feedback, and more!

Tonight's red post collection features Krylhos with a look at upcoming changes to the Community beta, the audio team discussing ambient Summoner's Rift sounds and interested in what topics about League's audio interest you, and a note on the recent bug with gifting!
Continue reading for more information!

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Community Beta Changes & Live Preview

Here's Krylhos with more info:

"There’s some changes coming to the community beta next week; check out a live preview here: boards.na.leagueoflegends.com. It’s new and shiny, but it’s mirroring the content from the current design. Any discussions or comments you create will populate in both versions. 

Change Log  

Welcome to Boards beta! 

It’s been a while since we introduced the Community Beta. Over the months since the CB debuted, we’ve been posting and commenting, lurking and reading feedback. Today, we’re rolling out what the team has been working on. We’re still in beta, and we’ll continue to respond to feedback and make changes. As a result, the Change Log works just like the Patch Notes, just with 100% less Pwyff. Whenever we make a change to the boards, you’ll find it neatly annotated here with an explanation of why we did it. Let’s saw into the first edition of the Boards Change Log. 

-Boards Team 

General   

So generally speaking, we’ve integrated a new visual style that enhances clarity and addresses a ton of player feedback. We’ve added enhanced moderation tools including action notifications you’ll hear more about below. For those of you who prefer a “flat” or chronological viewing format, we’ve overhauled the way it works on the boards. With additional improvements to discussions and commenting, we’re attempting to solve the problems you identified and build a platform that fits what the community needs. 

-Not Pwyff 

Boards (formerly known as “Communities”)  

It was kind’ve presumptuous for us to call these “communities” as if we were making them. With the new name and style, we took the opportunity to establish the boards as gathering places for content and discussions. 

-Not Pwyff

We’ve changed, added, and removed some boards (listed below) from the Official Boards list. We’ve also updated all of the Guidelines for each board to help clarify general culture and etiquette. 

• “Site Feedback” has been renamed “Boards Feedback”

• “Live Gameplay” has been changed to “Live Gameplay Balance”

• “Summoner’s Rift” has been renamed “Maps & Modes”

• “Riot Official” has been renamed “Announcements”

• “Fan Creations” has been renamed “Community Creations”

• “Pentakill” has been removed, but will return as part of a new board we’re planning in the future  

Moderation 

We heard loud and clear that accurate and fast moderation is really, really important to a ton of you. Equally important is knowing why an action has been taken, and knowing that your reports are reaching real people. We’ve added a number of tools to our moderation toolkit, and poros. 

-Not Pwyff (note: there are no poros)

We’ve focused a majority of our time lately rebuilding our moderation team and approach. Our biggest addition to this version of the boards is Moderation Action Notifications. Now, whenever a moderation action is taken within the Boards you’ll be notified in your boards profile.

• Moderation Action Notifications

• You will receive Notifications for the following actions:

• When discussions or comments are deleted

• When you are suspended from the boards

• Report button added on all comments and discussions

• All reports go into a queue monitored by our moderation team 24/7 

Discussions  

Participating in discussions is literally the main function of the boards, so we’ve concentrated a number of our redesign efforts improving embedded media, attachments, share functionality, and thumbnails. Sprinkle in some additional improvements to creating discussions, and finish with clarity and a more defined visual hierarchy. 

-Not Pwyff 

Before our recent focus on moderation, the actual discussions that would happen on the boards were some of our highest priorities. We needed to expand the supported media types, and make it easier to add attachments. Taking into consideration feedback on the Community Beta, we simplified sharing to Twitter and Facebook. There’s a number of other discussion-related improvements, especially when creating a discussion whether from the homeboard or within a board. 

• Improved Embed media (a few supported examples below)

• YouTube

• Twitch

• SoundCloud

• Vimeo

• Spotify

• Vine

• Instagram

• Share to Twitter and Facebook from individual discussions

• Thumbnail/image support on boards list

• You can now create discussions from the boards home screen

• You can now select the board you want to post to during discussion creation

• Improved clarity and visual hierarchy

• Cleaned up attachments  

Commenting 

Creating discussions is great and all, but being able to comment and join in is also kinda crucial. We’ve removed the reply limit and made it easier to see new comments when you’re in discussion view. For those of you who prefer to view all posts in chronological order (like for role-playing--that’s for you, Kaz) you can now switch to chronological view and the boards will remember your preference. This is only the first step towards the completion of Skynet, so we’re okay with it. 

-Not Pwyff

We got a ton of feedback on how commenting worked on the Community Beta. Some of the biggest changes include the removal of the reply limit, and tweaking the way Rioter comments look for readability. Feedback regarding necessary features often centered on “flat” or “forum” view options, so we’ve added a suite of enhancements like a Quote button and the ability to select Chronological view as your preferred way to browse.  

• Removed reply limit

• Flat View is now ‘Chronological View’ with the following changes:

• Comments listed from oldest to most recent

• Added Quote button

• Replying is now included in this view

• Reporting now available within Chronological view

• When switching to Chronological view, this selection will be remembered as you browse the rest of the Boards

• New comments are now easier to see in Discussion View  

Bug Fixes 

Bugs happen, we exterminate like Blitzcrank when we can. Not much more to add. We’ll update the Bug Fixes section pretty frequently. If you find any bugs or have additional feedback, please head to the feedback section here and create a new discussion.-Not Pwyff

The following bugs have been squashed:  

• Attachment difficulties in IE

• Speed issues on boards listing and when searching

• Hover on player name sticking to the wrong place

• Minor issues within Rioter Comment box

• Chronological view info not updating as fast as Discussion view

• Permalink acting weird in URL strings

• Profiles were getting confused, basically dopplegangers in your profiles"

SR Update Sounds & Your Audio Interests 

When asked if the Summoner's Rift update will get any more ambient sound ( such as rain near red side's blue buff or a different sound when in the river ), Riot Eno replied:

"Hey there!

We definitely have a lot of really fun audio that we want to add with the update to the Rift. I will say though that we want to make sure anything we add isn't distracting from game-play, which will always be numero uno in importance.

We're tinkering away with some cool stuff that we're looking forward to sharing with you guys in the coming months. =)"

Speaking of the audio team, Riot C3sound also asked twitter what sort of audio related topics they would be interesting in knowing about:

"What topics about league audio is everyone interested in? Anything from VO to champ audio, sound effect creation and processing techniques +"

On reddit, he continued:

"Hey all, 

Quick clarification! 

This question is less about what features/new adds are desired and more about what you would like to learn about on how we content concept/design/implement audio for League.
Any feedback welcomed!
-C3"

Be sure to let him know on Twitter ( @RiotC3Sound ) or on reddit. 

Gifting Bug

As of late, mystery gifting has been bugged and not showing users what their gift was! Instead of the name of the gift, an empty blue box is all that pops up.

On the forums, Saberprivateer noted they are working on a fix with a reminder on how to tell what you were gifted in the mean time:

"Hi CaptainOlive, 

Sorry for the problems. This is a bug that has popped up and we're hoping to have it fixed soon. In the meantime, remember you can check purchase history to see what it was. :/"