A League of Legends project has no point

As I’ve retreated to League of Legends to have a project – namely an asocial, rational strategy that provides wins without “skillz”, I noticed something that I’d laugh off a few years ago: every single game, win or lose, I’m called a scrub. If we lose, it’s my fault. If we win, I’m carried by awesomes. As I’m rising nicely in rank, this must be factually untrue. Anyone can get lucky in a particular game and get carried, but not dozens of games. If you are rising constantly, you are doing it right.

Don’t think of Master level rising, it’s a new account, so I’m rising in Silver, which isn’t much, but it’s better than those who are not rising in Silver: my average teammates. Nor it’s a complicated strategy, I just place more Wards + Zombie Ward than the rest of my team combined, thanks to warding jungler item + Sightstone. The whole zone is lighten up, the enemy jungler and roamer is always pinged.

My original plan was to mix this with “passive Nunu when the team has new champion users, aggressive Rammus when not” play. But I realized that it won’t work. Not in the sense that I couldn’t climb into the top 10%. Maybe I can even climb into the top 1%. But it won’t matter. I am sure that every single player I encounter during my rise will honestly believe that he carried me. Why? Because they believe that it’s about KDA. Or rather, they want it to be about KDA. I have two proofs for that.

The first is the negative reception of my PUBG guide. I didn’t get into the top 10% or top 1% in PUBG. I got into top 0.01%. I got better results than all the famous streamers. I had top 10 ratios only achieved by hackers and pro players. The answer of the “community”: “lol ur no gud cuz itz boring”. I have no expectation that the infamously primitive LoL community will respond better. So most players won’t follow my strategy, even if they accept that it works (no one in the PUBG forum claimed that my results are not real).

The second is that how could I succeed where the devs and all the pros failed? There is a “strategy” advice that every pro agrees on: “get a team and play as a team”. All the championships are done by teams, there is no solo queue there! Yet, when devs introduced a unified flex queue that allowed pre-made teams to fight against solo randoms – with the expected outcome – the outrage was so big that they had to reintroduce solo queues. These players believed that playing the game the way the pros play it is wrong and they should be shielded from the “unfair” tactics of … forming a team in a team game.

Ergo, let’s imagine that my plan works and I get to the top 1% and enough players are adopting it despite the social stigma of “being low” so this will become dominant strategy. All I’d get is a patch that makes looking up teammates impossible (like they are identified as Summoner 1, 2 on the pre-game screen) and a zombie ward nerf. Because they don’t believe that it’s personal “skillz” that matter, they want it that way and aggressively respond to anyone questioning their mantra. And – as the flex queue abandonment shows – the devs will cave.

Now, I don’t think this behavior is new. Then why did my WoW projects were huge and popular successes? Why I gained at least infamy in EVE? Because my projects were – oddly – social. The WoW guilds were actual guilds where people could join. Sure, not the “social” types who chit-chat all day, but people could join. Even outsiders admitted that it’s working as I had “people who love me” (this wasn’t the case, but that’s how socials translate any group activity). Having 150 “friends” in my guild is a huge success in their eyes. Having a top 0.01% position is “meh video game score for no skillz play”.

There is no point in continuing League of Legends. Also, I don’t really like it. I have to find something else, something that involves building a team or at least a “community” a group that follow some form of play.

.

Talking about teams. One of the complaints of the PUBG players was that I played solo, while the “big guys” play duo and especially squads. I thought that it’s just bullshit, but I started up the game and played one-one game on each mode with intentionally dying as soon as possible to get me rated and then calculate the player sizes from that. Well, color me surprised:
pubgsize

The question is, without a partner to hide in toilets, can I play PUBG duos or squads? I went to find out:
chicken

Not bad for a first game on a new version after 2 months hiatus. Of course it was an 1200 rated game against morons and newbies, but still, I think I stay for a while!

Author: Gevlon

My blog: https://greedygoblinblog.wordpress.com/

12 thoughts on “A League of Legends project has no point”

  1. “All the championships are done by teams, there is no solo queue there! Yet, when devs introduced a unified flex queue that allowed pre-made teams to fight against solo randoms – with the expected outcome – the outrage was so big that they had to reintroduce solo queues. These players believed that playing the game the way the pros play it is wrong and they should be shielded from the “unfair” tactics of … forming a team in a team game.”

    I’m confused. Bear in mind that I don’t play LoL because I think it’s a stupid game, But… did the SOLO players dominate with being allowed to play with teams, or did the teams crush them? I would expect coherent teams to utterly dominate solo players. Is that what happened?

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  2. Ok, hold on… here’s the source of my confusion:
    “the outrage was so big that they had to reintroduce solo queues.”

    What does that mean? They brought BACK solo queues… so solos wouldn’t be slaughtered by teams? Or did they remove sole queuing from team queues? To protect teams from the brutal solos? (Which seems stupid.)

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  3. @Smokeman: LoL is (most cases) 5v5 team capture the enemy base. The teams can be pre-made or just 5 randoms collected by the matchmaker. The premades obviously crush the solos. The solos cried and they introduced a special queue where solos only play against other solos.

    @Maxim: yes

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  4. Ok! Thanks, that’s what I woulds have thought. Now, there is one more layer to that, and the nuance of that was also a source of the confusion. You’re always advocating an ad hoc premade, as opposed to a preselected premade (An actual team that has a play schedule.) Now, I understand the liking of the ad hoc variety in a game like WoW, where you can kick the underperformers and replace them until you have a solid team. But I assume you can’t, in all practicality, do that in LoL.

    Ok! I’m all caught up! Well, I would expect that dynamic would be totally turned around in PUBG, which is ostensibly a single player game. A “Team” just becomes a bigger target as they wander around together a lot. A “professional” team that operated as 4 independent hiders would be hard to beat, but that would violate the concept of “team” for most players. I would expect you’d see a LOT of lamers thinking “Four killers is way better than one!” In addition, you’ll probably see people randomly go jihadi when their “teammates” get killed, as they think they can’t win without their team. Thus exposing the position of other “teams.”

    It will be interesting to see what happens at the higher levels.

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  5. I encountered a heavily eve inspired very fresh browser game. http://aall.space/

    Graphics are not very best, but there are alot of similarities. No matter if you play it or not, i just want to ask the things what eve done wrong in gameplay part, so that this game developer can avoid them. Trading, grouping, owning strutures, losing items and wealth. How to have meaningful impact in the game and how to avoid wealth corruption etc. Important things what to keep and what to avoid. You have alot of experience on that part.

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  6. I cant think of a meaningful project game outside eve and eve sucks so… I mean whats left to prove in wow? the time for swtor was 2-3 years ago theres nothing worth mentioning there now. Neverwinter has gone zynga cash hungry pay to win. Maybe hearts of iron 4 multiplayer? but there I think your preaching to the choir maybe. Be interesting to see what you come up with next.

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  7. Did you check Dota2? I’d be curious to get our perspective on this one, now that you have ruled out LoL.

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  8. @Anon: if the devs of that “game” can’t even afford to write a client, maybe they should not bother with games. There is no such thing as “browser game”.

    @nightgerbil: it seems the new project is PUBG duos – all by myself

    @bg: I don’t think the community would work differently. The game itself can be mechanically less annoying, but the social dynamics will be the same.

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  9. @Gevlon: for not AAA developers nowadays the question is just which premade game engine to use. So choosing between client and browser game is not how much programming it need because in both case you don’t develop any engine, you just use one of them. But you can reach much more people with a mobile game, which can be played from PC, tablet and mobile (regardless of OS).

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  10. @cathfaern: “mobile gaming” means the “gamer” is playing totally non-engaged, in small bits when he has nothing better to do. Also, it means extreme P2W and spam. “Mobile gaming” – and by extension “browser gaming” is a filth I refuse to poke even to to criticize.

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  11. They already making profit and well, i cant you make to critizice that game, i did not even ask for it. Just asking the good parts and bad parts of EVE gameplay and mechanics. So developers can avoid the same pitfalls. You should have very good idea about them.

    Browser is a graphic engine, socalled client. It is probably not the best graphic engine, but it makes it up with compatiblity and availability. No need to download something and works on wide of different machines. Yes, this game focus group is mobile users and yes, it will not be a AAA game ever. Thats not the point here.

    Thing with a good visual is, it can hide bad gameplay mechanics. Orginal Skyrim has many faulty designs in game, some what made game hardly playable, but thanks to stunning story and good visuals, it was and still is a very good game. Having the same mechanics on a idle game, where graphics and story is nonexistant, it will be noticed and used/abused faster. Thats the benefit of low graphic, you cant hide it on a stunning underwater visuals or something like that, if end game is platformer, then it is a plain boring platformer. Game mechanics dont need good graphics, but good graphics can hide bad game mechanics.

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