League Of Legends

Yeah, agreed. I would like the ability to talk to my teammates but only with the ability to mute retards.

haha MegaZero was giving his analysis of the Vulcan-TSM match and the nerd bashing in twitch chat is off the charts

Zulst_sl said:

That was a pretty informative talk. Pretty interesting how just by changing the color of a game tip you can influence player behavior to such a degree. Amazing that they're actually reducing the amount of people calling each other faggots during a game with just a few systems in place. Curious if Valve has the same kind of investment in trying to keep the social aspects of gameplay as positive as possible.

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Appreciate the comments about the GDC talk. Valve has a strong team of researchers as well--I used to work with them.

Maybe I've played moba games for too long, but people being massive cockwallets is just par for the course. If you've got a thin skin/put any stock at all in peoples bullshit then you're not gonna have much fun playing this shit. After a while you just reach kind of a point of zen or something where none of it matters anymore and you just focus on doing better in your current or next ten games than you did in your last ten etc.

Granted, I'm probably terrible at the game, so I don't have much riding on matches.

Rhux looking really terrible atm.

Commander Vimeseh_sl said:

Largest game for e-sports in the world? Can't take it seriously. Boggles my mind haha.

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I understand the size of it. I also understand that percentage wise, the number of people that play and watch tournaments is smaller then nearly any other game.

I just can't take it serious as a competitive game. I don't know why. I think growing up on games that required a -lot- of mechanical ability probably influences my opinion. The main reason I play is because I can literally turn my brain off while I play, it takes no focus to play well while I watch a show on my second monitor or listen to music. That's what I like best about it at least. It's just mindless fun.

I don't even know what to say about that post. A smaller number percentage wise of people who watch tournaments? Maybe, but they also have a much(much) larger player base than any of the other games. They even hold records for most concurrent stream viewers. Maybe if they didn't also have the largest player base I could see your point being reasonable, but given the massive size difference and the accessibility of the game it just doesn't make too much sense.

MsBehavn_sl said:

I understand the size of it. I also understand that percentage wise, the number of people that play and watch tournaments is smaller then nearly any other game.

I just can't take it serious as a competitive game. I don't know why. I think growing up on games that required a -lot- of mechanical ability probably influences my opinion. The main reason I play is because I can literally turn my brain off while I play, it takes no focus to play well while I watch a show on my second monitor or listen to music. That's what I like best about it at least. It's just mindless fun.

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On one hand, I can understand people saying that the mechanics of the game are less intense then say, a FPS or RTS. Your apm and accuracy isn't quite as important as it is in those games. But, your map awareness, timing, strategy, teamwork etc.. are more important then they are in most of those games. There's a reason there is a big difference between top tier solo queue players and competitive teams/players. There's still a huge skill discrepancy in this game but it mostly comes down to anticipation and strategy. Little things like a blue steal or farming wraiths in between waves in mid give you a small advantage that pros take advantage of, but it's not a significant enough advantage at lower skill levels to make a big difference versus someone being out of position in a team fight.
Really, the game somewhat embodies the 'easy to learn, hard to master' principle. Anything between bronze and platinum is really just how often you play the game for most people.

Best launcher skin NA

That's more of a communication thing. Solo queue is probably closer to the FGC than anything else since it's just knowing the match ups. Some champions for example just don't work nearly as well in solo queue because you don't have the proper communication(voice) to make them work. That's why I would prefer to have voice comms within the game.

LoL is pretty much the only game I play anymore, but it's the only one I don't watch streams of(still prefer sc2/dota2/fgc to watch or just random streams that are featured). A lot of that boils down to 99% of the streams are solo queue. SC2/FGC are 1v1 and fun to watch, Dota 2 just allows you to do stupid crazy things that end up being funny as hell. Entertainment wise I just can't get anything from LoL.

On the other hand, LCS is done really, really well. Looking forward to see how much the S3 championships have improved from the some of the funny/mishaps S2 had originally.

ninja edit: One of the few good things Riot has done though is the behavioral work. They are trying to improve the community, that's a huge task.

Bain_sl said:

Rhux looking really terrible atm.

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Agree. Worse if anything. :\

Man Curse shit the bed the last few weeks

Whelp, curse has been looking pretty poor recently. The addition of Rhux didn't help at all, he played like trash. Although it's gotta be pretty rough, you're first game as a starter and it's in the playoffs, pretty stressful imo. TSM going to win it all 3-1, if not 3-0. Can't stop em!

So Curse going from the top and now looking like Curse of the old....sad sad.

I hope GGU beats TSM. Tired of the same played out faces at the top of the NA scene for the last two years. Can't do crap on the world stage but aren't challenged by anyone at home so no impetus for improvement. Maybe having a new team win this split will do something to stimulate the "Top four" NA teams.

edit: As far as curse goes. Saint gets banned out or has his aggressive jungles picked before him, Voyboy lost every champ he dominated the early part of the season with to nerfs and he doesn't play tanks well, Nyjacky is constantly even but doesn't really win his lane ever, and well their bot is even worse now with Rhux in there. I don't think anyone should be surprised by their fall of recent weeks.

Why would they replace their support in the play offs... obviously something was going right. That's just absolutely stupid.

LoL pros need better contracts. :/

MsBehavn_sl said:

That's more of a communication thing.

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While I get your point, it's only when I see a top level pro stream or talk in an interview about their favorite champs that I realize how big a difference there is between being 'good' with a champ and really mastering them. Best example I ever saw, was Froggen was asked about Anivia's attack animation being so slow/unresponsive and that Riot was thinking about fixing it. He said that would be horrible, as the delay allows him to attack an enemy while laning and get out of minion attack range before it hits and avoiding their aggro/attack damage. That small advantage would allow him to harass them into range for a Q/E combo to kill them, which is one of the many reasons he's so feared on Anivia, just his total mastery of all the quirks relating to that champ. He's taken one of her worst disadvantages, her horrible attack animation, and turned it into an advantage when he plays that champ.

Another example, but not quite as good, was when I was watching Voyboy's stream and saw how he'd play Katarina top. I had thought of myself as a decent kat player before, but didn't even realize the mistakes I was making until I saw him playing her and building her tanky in mid game. He explained that her living longer in a teamfight increased the chance you end up getting a reset, which does so much more damage then one extra damage item would have done without a reset, and it made so much sense I almost face palmed myself for not seeing it before. Building a melee character as a total glass cannon is rarely a good idea, and while you want enough damage to get kills, getting a randuins/warmogs as a 2nd/3rd item ends up adding more damage over the course of a teamfight then something like a deathcap or void staff (at that point in the game). An early sorc boots and haunting guise, then a tanky item when you get out of laning, basically.

Point is, yes, teamwork and communication is important. But, until everyone on your team has 'mastered' their role, you have room to improve individually. Then, it's about knowing your teammates tendencies without having to say anything. Anyone who thinks they don't have room to improve is lying to themselves. Even top tier challenger players think they have room to improve.

Well communication in these games isn't as important at high levels because map awareness is so good and you understand what each champion can do that you can preemptively prepare as the moment gets closer to happening.

Commander Vimeseh_sl said:

I hope GGU beats TSM. Tired of the same played out faces at the top of the NA scene for the last two years. Can't do crap on the world stage but aren't challenged by anyone at home so no impetus for improvement. Maybe having a new team win this split will do something to stimulate the "Top four" NA teams.

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GGU isn't a new team, they are Dynamic from last year. Arguably in the top 4 for season 2 (remember Curse did pretty shit last year).

MsBehavn_sl said:

Why would they replace their support in the play offs... obviously something was going right. That's just absolutely stupid.

LoL pros need better contracts. :/

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They went 1-4 the last week of LCS, and it was due to other teams figuring out their weakness. They had been compensating for their bottom lane by forcing 2v1s for them, and having StVicious come tower dive at lvl 3 to practically ensure a kill for that lane to give them an edge. Other teams finally caught on that this was how they won everything, so they'd force 2v2 matchups and Curse started losing. The weakest part of their bottom lane was Elementz, he was very lazy about researching, practicing or preparing for matches. He made no attempts to improve and it finally caught up to them, so they had to let him go.

They'd be doing just as bad in the playoffs even if Elementz was still on the team, is the point. The teams in the playoffs have the skill and talent to take advantage of Curse's weakness. Considering none of Curse's matches the last week were against a top 3 team, and they still went 1-4, shows how much that weakness truly was.