[ Updated ] Red Post Collection: Yegg on Challenger issues and Twitch "high on priority list" for VU, and MORE!

[ Update ] Pwyff commented on S4 ranked reset, added to top of post.

Tonight's red post collection is short & sweet! It features Yegg commenting on some of the continuing concerns about Challenger tier, IronStylus briefly mentioning Twitch is high on the VU priority list, WizardCrab sharing why Rioters don't pop into every serious forum thread, and more!

Continue reading for more information!

On Ranked Reset for S4

Here's Pwyff's response to questions on when the ranked reset will happen for S4:

"Going to get this messaging out early, as we'll have more official words next week. The plan is to actually NOT do a soft reset on ranked play during preseason, especially with the huge changes we have planned on the way. 

We'll be doing that soft reset at the start of the 2014 season when everyone's all trained up from the preseason. MORE INFO TO COME NEXT WEEK (er, this week?). 

And for anyone that asks, "Why play ranked during preseason?" - your standings you get to during the preseason will have an influence on where you initially seed during the 2014 season. We wanted to create a competitive environment for players to stew in during the preseason, but we really didn't want you dictating an entire season's worth of ranked placement during a tumultuous time (BLACK CLEAVAAAAR)."

On Challenger Concerns

With the end of S3 right around the corner, there has been a lot of concern regarding the Challenger immunity issues we saw discussed a while back.

Here's what Yegg had to say on reddit about the continued concern:

"I've been reading all of the different threads on this topic and I have a few comments:

• Regarding the theory that a top team can be knocked out by a team with much lower MMR: This is impossible. In order to qualify for a series, a team has to have a higher MMR than the Xth team from the bottom, where X is the number of teams currently in a series. Immune teams are excluded from this calculation. So if there were 25 immune teams, and 5 teams already in a series, a team wanting to qualify for a new series would need to have a higher MMR than the 20th place team in Challenger (because that team is now at risk to get kicked out). For the #1 team in Challenger to get kicked out, the team that qualified for the series to kick them out would have to have the highest MMR on the server. If a team is kicked out of Challenger, it can only be because another team outperformed them and had a higher MMR. The same holds true for solo queue.

• Regarding 3v3: For better or worse, there wasn't a lot of reason to strive for Challenger during the season, and now a bunch of top players have suddenly turned their attention to this queue. I'm not surprised that there's a lot of turnover amongst teams that haven't seen nearly this level of competition during the season. The exact same thing would be happening even on a straight MMR leaderboard.

• Regarding immunity: During the regular season, the weeklong immunity makes a lot of sense. During the end of season Challenger rush, however, I can see how it feels heavy-handed or even unfair. It would be similarly unfair to the current Challenger competitors to change the rules in the final days of this season, but I'll be discussing with Socrates what changes we may want to make here for the future.

• Regarding win trading: If you have definitive proof of win trading, or even a strong theory that you'd like us to investigate, please send it in for us to review. I don't have a public facing email address, so send it in to lyte [at] riotgames.com and he can forward it to me and the other appropriate parties (thanks Lyte!). We won't hesitate to strip Challenger rewards from players or teams that engaged in clear win trading behavior.

With all that out of the way - whether or not the system feels fair is just as important to me as whether or not the system is fair. My two major takeaways at the moment are that it's unclear how players are qualifying for and/or being kicked out of Challenger, and that the weeklong immunity feels gameable in the final days of the season. There have been a lot of great ideas posted already, and I'll be discussing them with Socrates over the coming months as his team figures out how Challenger tier will work for the 2014 season."

Twitch high on VU priority list

When asked if Twitch is up for a visual update, IronStylus commented:

"Fact: he is high on the priority list."

Rioter Communication

When asked if there was some sort of rule that doesn't allow rioters to post in serious threads and only post in fun or jokey threads, WizardCrab replied:

"We can post where and when we want, but the majority of threads just happen to be ones that we wouldn't want to post in. Threads complaining about people, league system/MMR, balance changes, or predicated on false information in general are really difficult to post in. And those cover a lot of the types of threads. I'm not even saying those threads are bad or shouldn't be created, just that it's hard for Rioters to find a place to contribute in those conversations."

He continued:

"You might see a number of threads complaining about how a certain thing is an issue. The reason why we might not post and say "yes, it sucks, we know it and we're going to improve it" is because then we're asked how and when we'll improve it, why it hasn't already been improved, and we we suck so much for making it that way in the first place. In addition, you have to remember that there are thousands of players posting on our forums, and tens of millions of players playing the game. Determining pain points for the majority of players require more than just "I saw a forum post or posts complaining about it." 

In order to solve a pain point for you guys, it takes a lot of research, which takes time. We hear a million different suggestions here and they too are argued about back and forth. Plus, the forums like to take our words and twist them. A red post saying "we expect x..." or "we're looking into y..." or "we hope z..." are treated as gospel that they will necessarily occur in precisely that manner. Because of that, it's difficult to even address issues until we have a specific fix planned for an immediate patch.

I guarantee you that we read all of these threads and take the criticism into account. Just because we may not post doesn't me we don't read them."

Follow Up on NA Latency Issues

Here's Riot Triggs with an update on the NA latency issues that started on friday.

"Summoners, 

First of all I want to apologize for the lack of information over the last 12 hours. Just know that we have been working hard behind the scenes trying to get this resolved. We need your help though. Verizon Fios is asking us to please pass along specific customer account numbers to them for further investigation, however we do not have access to your account numbers, phone numbers etc. So we're asking you to please call Verizon Fios internet support at 1-800-837-4966 and file a ticket with their tech support department. Please insist that they file a ticket even if they believe that this is a Riot issue.

The players who we want to file tickets are players who experiencing the latency during games and customers who have Verizon Fios (other isps are not needed at this time). Also, please check your traceroutes for jumps in latency similar to what chager described here" 

 [ snipped the example tracerts ]

"We then need you to please post your ticket numbers back to this thread and we will forward them all over to Verizon fios at once per their request. This would be instrumental in helping us resolve this ASAP. 

TL;DR We need Verizon Fios customers to contact their internet tech support department @1-800-837-4966 and file tickets and post them here for us to relay to Verizon Fios. 

Thank you,
Riot Triggs."

See this post for more infomation, including additional example tracerts