I think that article gave them way too much credit. The player behavior team, as far as I can tell, does little besides slow stroke one another over their cognitive science degrees and talk in broad strokes about optimistic plans to shape player behavior. I'll believe it when I see it. The Tribunal doesn't work. People laugh openly about being reported or report you back. I don't care how much they claim to have reduced toxic player behavior, it is still far above a threshold that I find acceptable. I normally mute my teammates and disable cross team chat unless I'm in a premade. It's just not worth it.
I agree, they keep touting 2% but it feels like more. They're doing very little. When more than half my games involve trolling than they are idiots. They need to open their scope of bad behavior beyond just calling people bitches, faggots, cunts and using capital letters.
I've been clowning on people with Annie lately. I have always avoided characters that have counting mechanisms built into their kits. Kennen w/ his autos, annie the spells, ahri and her spells. They are really not that tough to do once you get the hang of it. Obviously Annie is the easiest because you have the fewest "off-ticks" when you don't get the special spell, but I've been encouraged. I'm only a mediocre player in mid because I don't look to roam enough and haven't mastered the intricacies of the builds, but I've just been decimating people. 15 and 20 kill games. Unfortunately, I also die a lot. More than any other character that I've played, Annie has the potential to win 2 and 3 v 1's even without being fed. You fags seen my bear, Tibbers? I've been having a lot of arguments about statistics with my friends who insist that they are not at their correct elo. I think it is indisputable that over a large enough sample size, the trolls get placed on both teams. I do think, however, that the time of day you play may have a significant effect on the quality of players you face. Whenever I am playing normals early in the morning before class or work, I trash people. I think those might be adults who are playing a game before beginning work or getting their kids up or whatnot. Much more competitive games from 8-12pm CST, and especially 2-3am CST. I'm amazed that people are interested in all the crap they produce about this game. I love pwning noobs online and will do so in virtually any genre of videogame, but I don't understand the fanatical readership of the Journal of Justice and that garbage. I've never read anything on the different factions and know virtually none of the background behind the characters. I didn't even bother participating in the Fjord event. In fact, I thought it was really lame. You mean to tell me that if I win 10 games with one of these tiny icons next to my name, I get to keep that tiny icon next to my name for good? How many Riot employees worked on that? Oh well. Still a great f2p game. I did drop another 20 bucks on it, though, so my lifetime contributions have eclipsed 50 bucks, I think. Not bad for three years of entertainment.
I'm pretty sure I'm abandoning my main and all the money I've dumped into it. Im getting a smurf to 30 and seeing if I can't get a bit better MMR. New name will be TheBoltonBoy.
I had a long post trolling Penetration a bit, but then my comp froze. The short version is that the story makes it a weebit more interesting in a world where all this shit happens. Some people aren't bitter, gamer nerds who just want the next trophy. Oh and let's not forget this game was initially aimed at kids, hence all the cartoony aesthetics. Also, they're fleshing out the world, creating all those lore etc, for IP building. As i think it was mentioned in a post when some grumpy asshole asked the same question of "Who cares about lore?" Also, time is a HUGE factor in this game. Playing ranked before noon on Saturday/Sunday is a terrible idea. The baddies will crush your soul. People are either hungover, adults that never play or still asleep. Also everytime I play late at night, like past midnight, I'm dealing with potheads that claim they are high and feed. Except for this one rumble that went AFK for 30 seconds after playing bad, smoked a joint and FUCKING OWNED. I feel ashamed at how much money I've spent on this game. Ashamed. But given the fact I've dumped tons of money into Eve-Online and a 1.5 years in WoW, it could be worse. Fuck my life. Then again I think what I would have spent that money on otherwise. Women? Booze? Food? At least I can still sell this account eventually.
This whole disconnect thing is beyond annoying. 3 out of 5 games tonight I had a DC for the whole thing. Do I lose all my points I gained from 7 wins...yes sir I do! I'm beginning to tire of playing this game and getting nowhere because of the ridiculous amount of bullshit just to advance one rank.
Play less ranked. Just play normals. Most of us aren't Korean nerds who can spend all day gaming and getting to the point where you can make money off it. I'm betting that no one I know ever will be. You can just get high enough to get a few digital trinkets from Riot and that's it. Its insane the number of people who actually can think they can go Pro. You're really playing for your E-Peen, and that's it. Say no to the Carrot and the Stick, because you're getting all stick and no Carrot. Since you're newer, I'd focus on just playing with a bunch of different champions, trying stuff out and just getting wins to gather runes and everything else. I've been reading on the forums, more than ever, Riot is noticing how many champions are not in optimal positions with their power levels. I'm not talking reworks, but just noticing the fucked up effect of them tossing in a champion every 2 weeks for 6 months. Now they're trying to sort everything out, and only the really good players and really basic champions are letting people move up the ranks the way they think they should. They're going back and fixing champions that haven't been out a full year yet, like Rengar. Then Champs that have been out awhile, but realized a little late that barely anyone plays them like Viktor and Xerath. They're even looking to work up Shyvana. Now they're going to have a big jungle change in the middle of the season. It just seems like they don't even have the game balanced yet. Toss in that with the tards, then its a shitstorm unless you qualified high and can avoid the baddies.
In response to all of the stuff about the lore. I'm just going to leave this here: <a class="postlink" href="http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=56" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/for ... y.php?f=56</a> Fucking nerds man. Not sure if I agree with this. It's true that you're playing for your e-peen, but I guess we just approach things from a fundamentally different perspective. You play the game to relax and bullshit, drink beer while playing, etc.. I would never play high or drunk because my performance suffers so much. I gain enjoyment from mastering the systems and sub-systems in the game and manipulating the variables against other skilled players. With that in mind, I have the most fun in games where I either narrowly edge out the opposing player or team or else they narrowly edge me out. I hate steamroll games and games where 1 person gets caught and the 4 get crushed by 5 late game. They don't turn on a conscious strategic mistake, but rather just a moment of lapsed concentration by 1 of 5 people. It's a fundamental problem in the game because it's so hard to cover for another person's error. Sometimes in basketball someone bungles a defensive assignment, but the offending player's team can introduce counterplay to that botched assignment. LoL doesn't have offer analogous strategy because of death timers, the size of the map, cooldowns, and the fact that the game's end is determined by a single event rather than measured by performance over a particular period. So playing ranked games has both enhanced and lessened my enjoyment of normal games. It enhanced my enjoyment because I outplay people more often and thereby stretch the limits of my characters and do really cool things that people call "making plays" or turning the outcome of the game. It's also more fun because I don't lose anymore and have no idea why, or even worse, think the wrong things contributed to my loss. If I lose a lane or a game, I like to be able to point to where I fucked up so I can improve or so I can blame whoever needs blaming, whether it was me or someone else. It has lessened my enjoyment, though, because the quality of the players is lower and so sometimes the games devolve into roaming gank squads. A proficient support would ward and this strategy would fail, but he doesn't and no one else will, so the strategy wins. It's frustrating to see suboptimal strategies win because people don't recognize or implement minimal-cost counterplays. Normal MMR is supposed to account for this and put me in normal games with other people that play at the same level, but I don't think it works properly. That, or my stint in ranked raised my "true MMR" high enough that it's taking time for my normal MMR to catch up. tl; dr - playing ranked is great because it gives you a fuller appreciation for and insight into the game's rules. It's bad because it can make suboptimal play even more frustrating. Also, to your second point. Some of those champs are OP or UP in normal play, but most of them are only OP or UP in competitive play. People leave so much untapped potential on the table in elos below 1800 or so that the top end power curve of most of these characters is irrelevant. People never get there or get there at a point that the strength is counterbalanced because the game is 50 minutes long and everyone has full builds.
And...you call the Roleplayers nerdy. I really didn't know there was an RP forum. I still will never go in there. I only like the Lore as their primary goal of having sound characters that have solid backstories and reasons for why they are the way they are. Other than that I don't care. Jeesh. And for the record, I only play intoxicated 5% of the time. You may not be playing for your e-peen and love the mechanics, the strategy and the thinking, but 90% of the population does think they are going pro and playing for their e-peen. I wasn't talking about you, everything is about you...narcissist. 90% of the currently non-pro people playing are playing for the silver/gold boarders, whatever special icon they're going to toss out and whatever skin they can toss out. And 90% of that 90% just wants to say "STFU, I'm Gold/Plat" etc. Also you're all the way up in gold, I was offering an explanation for us lowly Bronze people, where as you witnessed, unless you monster carry, the air is different down here. Just had a ranked game where our team had 3 legendary skins. Cho, Vlad, and Nocturne. We invaded their red, smiteless, no problem. Except MF accidentally took a small lizard. Nocturne is like "You guys are bad, you guys are so bad! You stole lizard!" He blames Cho "Cho you're so bad, why do you even buy legendary skin?" The kid starts fucking raging. Then we all try to kill Kha'Zix top, he gets past tower with 10 health, but none of us can catch him, Noc tower dives, feeding Kha, and Cho playing top just starts with the "Fucking idiot, you've fucked up the entire game now." Its 0-1, and Kha has red instead of their Lee Sin. This of course leads to Noc not ganking top, and instead of Cho playing safe with a ward, doesn't ward. Rages about Noc not ganking top, and the game starts to spiral. Oh did I mention we have a J4 support? Who is only dropping one ward a time? Yes. Welcome to Bronze. Or as someone else called it "Wood League. This can't even be considered a metal anymore."
I can't even imagine playing this game sober all the time. I'd be way too stressed. Probably why I'm still in wood league in ranked.
I just won two back to back ranked games for the first time in probably 6 weeks if not longer. My points are getting choked due to a magical win streak I had after handing my account over to a much more skilled friend for a bit. Using a new build for Sona and it appears to be working, basically carried by carry to victory.
Then I played a Wood League game yesterday where we had an Alistar support, called support because he was duo with the adc. Did not ward. Even after the roaming Diana came bot 3 times and face raped them. Continued to overextend and played like they never knew a gank could possibly be coming. Alistar bought Sheen and Merc treads before even getting a few wards. PenetrationStation has commented that you have to carry, well I was carrying Mid, Jungle Xin was doing work, Jax was face raping Jayce. But when our bot just fed Diana, Leona and Ezreal, there was only so much shit you can do. We could have won 2-3 times, but Alistar and Graves kept backing, kept pushing and farming when we should have team fought. It still shocks me how people call roles and don't do basic shit.
I'm liking the new stats on the Doran's items. I can actually buy a ward, some potions and a ring when I support. Very cool. The drop in price of boots as well is quite welcome, even though I hardly ever buy boots.
Parker, I'd suggest improving your CS. If you log into 1 custom game and CS against a computer in mid for 10 minutes every time you load up teh game, I bet you add 20 CS to your 10 min total in a week. That is 500 gold. That is a HUGE deal. If you keep doing it you could add even more. Once you get better at it you don't have to practice in customs, you can just practice it normally in games. You're right that sometimes you can't prevent bot from farming, but if you can squeeze and extra 500g by 10-12 mins and 1000-1200 by 20 mins, you will win more games. Don't be satisfied until you're top farm in every game. And especially practice learning when to push the lane and when to let it stand when you back. DON"T miss cannon minions. DO make them miss theirs. I've been crushing on Annie just be aggressive pushing level 1 so I get level 2 first and have a stun charged. Auto, q stun, auto, w stun, auto, auto ignite is a kill on virtually any mid champ but diana, and I can get her if I poke a bit beforehand. Getting that one minion to die before theirs and give you the extra hp, armor, mr, and ap is huge and people fuck it up in silver and gold ALL THE TIME. I never used to look for advantages like that at the very beginning. I was just trying to last hit the first 6 creeps. Also, I think going tanky is across the board better for low elo games. First, it gives you a bigger cushion to accommodate a teammate's missed skillshot or poor positioning. Second, people in low elo games don't pay attention to how the map overall looks and what might happen if they back. So a LOT of cs gets lost against the turrets. So if you have a sustain-based build, like a catalyst or flask + tear, you can oftentimes pick up some extra farm that would otherwise be lost to your team due to a teammate's ineptitude. I build RoA on virtually every mage. Third, your opponents are rarely going to play perfectly in trying to get away, so the difference between a 500 dmg nuke and a 575 dmg nuke is really small. In pro games they know dmg down to 10's and regen ticks and their entire team's summoner timers, so the margin of error is slimmer. You're more likely to be able to cast that 500 dmg nuke a second time and do 1000 damage if you have a few hundred extra hp than if you sold out to nuke for 575. Fourth, people don't build defense in low elos because they are aggro little lemmings and just want moar dmg. So your character with w/ 80% of their damage and 200% of their defense will crush them in small engagements. People forget to buy magic and armor pen in wood games, too, making defense even better.
I think I need a new computer for better CSing. Then again, CS doesn't matter when you're playing Wood League and your bot has done absolutely nothing except run into the enemy base and refuses to ward. Also this is what happens with my CSing 90% of the time. I start off CSing great, and I get in a zone where I pay attention to CSing, and really not much else being CSing, poking and surviving. Then my jungler wants to get all gank happy and it throws me off. Or what happens MOST of the time in Wood League, bot starts feeding and fucking up where they don't listen to MIAs in text nor pings form, and are on the enemy tower. While farming, I'm great at poking so my mid backs, then goes bot (sometimes with their jungler.) Since bot never wards or freezes lane, I have to follow my mid to bot so it isn't a massacre. I can punish roam and go after turret, which pushes my lane to enemy turret, or I get countered by their jungler. The games I have the most control over and the best luck in are ones when I'm the support so CSing doesn't become a thing. But in most of these Wood League games (btw, there are guys in my division with 300+ wins in Bronze, still not out) become 4v5 or 3v5. It's disgusting. 20 minute CS isn't going to fix what needs to get fixed. I need to find the optimal time to play and pray to get teammates who listen and want to win. PS, you said, you need to carry so they listen to you. I had two games, where I was carrying, and made calls so we could win the game. I was told to not be bossy in one and told to STFU because they knew what they were doing. Holy fuck. I just want to get out of Bronze, I'm going to get there eventually. I look to have a little 2 steps forward 1 step back thing going on right now. My LP is also choked so I'm winning 8 LP, losing 5 LP, winning 7 LP, losing 8 LP. A pain in the ass. Just need to win a few games so my MMR gets right.
I'll echo Parker's frustrations. I don't think most people who play above bronze realize that in most of my games, by minute 10, there is probably 20 kills between both teams. The whole idea of CS, laning, ganking, it all becomes moot when you have two or three people with 5+ kills before we even get to the surrender point. This is apparently "normal".
Yeah, its like a student complaining about multiplication, then the friend comes out of saying "You need to work on your Trigonometry." We're talking about different problems. Trust me, if I was losing games simply because my lane opponent had a higher CS, I'd be happy. Because it was something I could sit down and practice. Did you read my story about the jungler that refused to play because someone accidentally took a small lizard on an invade? Yeah that shit doesn't happen 2% of the time.
Just when I thought I couldn't hate the community of this game anymore, nights like tonight really hammer home how if I met any of these people in real life I'd punch every one of them in their stupid fucking faces. Game 1 - I bought Aatrox and I'm playing him regardless of what you say and I'm not going to stay in any lane. I'll also go 2/14. Game 2 - Who needs a support? Not this team. Game 3 - I'm going Zilean ADC. Game 4 - Whose the jungler that doesn't gank any lane the entire laning phase? Game 5 - AFK cause his mom said he has to go to bed Game 6 - Didn't even start due to me dodging because third pick auto locks saying "Jungle or feed you fucking pussies", after we already had a jungler.
Game 7 - I call top. Now I'm the jungler in game after we already have one. I die because I don't have smite. I throw the game because I didn't get my way.