It seems like it could be exploited for map hacks.

I spectate a friend, talk to him on vent/skype/whatever and tell him where everyone is and where wards are all the time.

EDIT: I saw someone already post this before. I agree that should only be able to see the game from the friend's team point of view to avoid this kind of exploits.

More than I expected honestly. Very nicely done.

Love it great feature thx

can you have it so that we can whisper friends while spectating? There is a delay already so whispering shouldn't be a problem.

It's fun to congratulate your friend on that epic juke while they're still in game

Maybe add something so we know who was spectating or something? I'm starting to get random friend requests after this patch.

General
Things work as I expect, but I think things could be a whole lot more fun/useful if you worked harder on how we can find games outside our friends list to spectate.

Spectator Hud

The spectator client is beautiful. Once the game actually starts my only real want is for a death recap button. I think clicking a dead champs icon should show their death recap. After a fight it would nice to see the same tallies for damage that we see in game. It would be informative, too. Oh I guess I had another want: I wish clicking the little champion icon next to their gear in the middle had the same response as clicking their large icon on the side of the screen. It is just so natural and convenient when you are looking at skill orders and builds and that sort of thing, but a death recap would be the one feature that I really want and seems feasible.

tl;dr Add death recap to spectator client please.

Featured Games (on the landing page)

The process of finding games to spectate is not as great as the actual spectating. Everything before the spectating game launches needs more scrutiny. I am talking about the featured game UI built into launcher. Interface is pretty but inefficient if you are looking for player names you recognize.

Elaboration:
You cannot see names until you click an arrow hover over page see names, click an arrow for new games, move mouse to hover over... Btw not everyone notices the arrows even exist because they turn dark grey when you are hovering over the panel.

To top it off you cannot tell when new featured games are available with new names easily. Wait 5 minutes come back and try again.

You cannot get in at the start of a featured game easily. Wait 5 minutes try again. Hope one is under 10 minutes?

The UI also doesn't provide things that might help us decide if we want to spectate like elo of the participants. Basically I use names now because I recognize pro-names and I am able to use that to filter games in my head, but suppose I didn't know pro-names. How as that person am I to tell the difference between your average featured game and a really cool featured game? Or maybe people arn't like me at all, maybe some guy wants to see a particular champ played and they want to spectate starting feature games with that champ. Maybe they want to see how high elo's play Irelia. Does the interface help that person any more then person that wants to see the best? Not at all. That is what I mean. There is no concept of hey maybe this viewer has a demographic that they can self identify, and we can get this person into a spectating experience that they might find more pleasurable then just a random featured that started 10 minutes ago.


Basically my assessment of everything before the actual spectating launching is that it has good eye-candy, but its not functionally useful.


My advice rethink the featured games experience. Or keep the main page version and give us a more useful interface for finding games we want to see that emphasizes being able to tell at a glance when a new game is available and what might interest us about it.

A bug thread I made concerning spectator mode; http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/....php?t=2079542

Sorry for the wall of text, but been giving this a lot of thought.

I've spectated a couple games already, and all in all, have to say that this is a wonderful systems so far. I just have some minor quips and quibbles about it. I have a couple thoughts on things that would be good additions, imho.

First, it seems that there's no way to message anyone when you're spectating a game, unlike a normal game. This simple bit of chat functionality (possibly togglable) would be a lovely addition, in my opinion.

Second, along the same likes, there's options to spectate your friends, but as of yet, no option to spectate the game that your friends are -watching-. That would be an awesome way, with the above chat function, to promote a tighter-knit community, and would also be really handy for ranked teams to study the same match as their fellow teammates were watching.

Third, I'd love if there was an option to pull up (if need be over the screen and he action) the runes, masteries, etc. for the particular player being watched. I think that would be an invaluable teaching tool.

My last few things have to do with expanding or tweaking the current mode.

I think the directed camera could probably use some tweaking, maybe geared towards centering around large groupings of champions. There have been several times where the camera has been cheerfully following a champ farming, running up a lane, or shopping while I watch the little faces on the mini-map converge in the jungle. Also, if there's any way to keep it from getting distracted when there's an engagement. Several times it will show the start of an engagement, switch to another one, and snap back just in time for the kill.

The playback functionality is solid for what you -can- watch. I'd really like some server-side support, though, for the first few minutes of a match. I'm hoping this is going to be a future change that rolls out, because especially for the featured matches, it would be nice to be able to rewind to the beginning minutes of the game to find out why exactly that Naut is 3/0/5 and that poor WW has died 10 times.

Along similar lines, was watching a match earlier and let the directed do it's thing, but I was wanting to go back and watch several points from particular characters' perspectives. Got up to do a couple things, and when I got back, the game had been won, and my only option was hitting "continue" and logging out of the game, losing the stream. If you could continue to have the ability to rewind, and rewatch, even after the nexus explodes, that would be another really cool bit of functionality. I'd love to watch a match as it unfolds, and then hop back over the shoulder of my favorite character, or someone I noticed did very well.

tl;dr Basically, it's a good system so far, that needs more server-side recording support, and a few new features to support your friends and the community at large.