League of Legends General Discussion Thread

[VoiceOfUnreason]

While I never played Civ 5, this game is like it to me. Alot of wasted potential and the developers being the major source its problem. Instead of creating more viable options they just nerf everything so any option works (i.e. there are no good options so pick anything). Just mention Anti-Fun and I'll probably rant.

That hardly seems fair - I've probably played more hours of LoL than C5 by a factor of 20 or more. And there's real strategy to pay attention to.

[Tyrmith]

LoL has a tremendous amount of potential that's being wasted, as the developers continue to nerfbash all of the popular strategies and fail to generate new content in the form of maps, replays, game options, and so on.

What strategies in particular are you thinking of? Balence is a very delicate thing, so I suppose reducing things is the easy way to do it.

As for what you said about solo queue, when I first read it, I wasn't quite sure if I've agreed with you, I've had some fun times there, but right after I had 4 games in a row ruined by people either afking, doing stupid nonsense, or just feeding, so I guess I agree.

[DerWille]

I agree with this 100%, and that's possibly the best short statement about League of Legends that I've ever read. (This is why I prefer flat Armor/Magic Resist runes to the ones that add per level; 20 MR at level 18 means little, while 10 MR at level 1 is enormous.) The rest of the post was really good as well.

Thanks. I think the big similarity between LoL and Civ is that both games are games of snowballing. Each team starts out roughly the same and then attempt to snowball as fast as possible.

I've also been growing more and more frustrated with League of Legends as more time passes. Adding more champs and more skins endlessly does very little to improve the core game. LoL has a tremendous amount of potential that's being wasted, as the developers continue to nerfbash all of the popular strategies and fail to generate new content in the form of maps, replays, game options, and so on. At this point, I'm mostly playing because it is a fun game with a full premade team (TERRIBLE game for solo queue, IMO) and there's nothing else out there right now. The minute Diablo 3 or a better MOBA game appears, I'll be gone.

You in the same position as I was about 4 months ago. I would only play with a friend or a full team. It felt like that every time that I found some cool strategy or found a way to start winning consistently, the developers would nerf it into the ground and I would be back to experimenting again.

I don't think replays, game options, new maps, etc are what is needed for LoL. They need to stop nerfing an asymmetric game into symmetry. They need to stop designing for the lowest common denominator (But we talk to the highest level players). They need to stop trying to prevent the players from experiencing any sort of frustration when playing (That guy is better than me! He shouldn't be! Waaah!).

That hardly seems fair - I've probably played more hours of LoL than C5 by a factor of 20 or more. And there's real strategy to pay attention to.

You're right. It's not a fair comparison. Civilization 5 at least has an idea of how it wants to be played. It was just rushed, a flawed concept, and terribly executed.

Am I being harsh? Yes. I'll explain a bit of my history with LoL.

I played from May 2010 to December 2010. My ranked Elo was never particularly high because I found the entire thing a bit too frustrating. However I did compete in the Newegg Wanfest where I placed in the top 16 of teams. When I was able to check my normal Elo, it was usually somewhere around the 1800 level. I would classify myself as a C-tier or B-tier competitive player. I lost to Guardsman Bob's team in the Newegg tournament.

I would invest about 3 to 4 hours a day into playing LoL and talking to people on Solomid. Despite that, I felt that it was nearly impossible to determine what was currently effective and what was its counter was because the game would be fundamentally transformed in 2 weeks. I'm a bit anal when I go about testing strategies and builds. I don't try something once and call it good. I will try it 10 to 20 times to prove to myself that this is indeed working and not a fluke or caused by something else. Once I figured out how the game was to be played, it would change again.

Those changes were fueled by what I think is LoL's greatest problems: the design staff is designing around a bunch of principals based on what not to do (See Anti-Fun). When I read the reactions to the latest Civ 5 patch notes here on RB, they were the same reactions I had reading the LoL patch notes. Nerfs to the dominant strategy but nothing to compensate. Constant changes that either feed another strategy (Mass AoE, Tanky DPS, Kite/Heal) or change concepts that don't need to be concepts (Why did they nerf mana regen runes?)

What strategies in particular are you thinking of? Balence is a very delicate thing, so I suppose reducing things is the easy way to do it.

Mass AoE (Done twice)
Push Strat
Heal/Kite
Tanky DPS
Having a Ranged Carry
Jungling/Solo Lanes

About there I quit playing.

[Pandajuice]

At this point, I'm mostly playing because it is a fun game with a full premade team (TERRIBLE game for solo queue, IMO) and there's nothing else out there right now. The minute Diablo 3 or a better MOBA game appears, I'll be gone.

This is essentially where I'm at as well. I like the game itself, but the community is downright hideous (far more caustic and disgusting than in any other game I've played) so the game just isn't fun unless you're playing with friends; and even then, you'll get a wanker mouthing off or ruining the game from the enemy team. The worst part is when you get one of these "people" in a game, that's basically 20-30 minutes of your day wasted.

It's nice to see I'm not the only one feeling that, but then again it is frustrating to see a good game wasting its potential because of developers chasing their tails.

[uberfish]

It's the nature of communities in this type of game to suck because it's so easy to blame your teammates for losing.

[Gustaran]

I stumbled over this interesting thread about LoL installing a program called "Pando Media Booster" without asking:

http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/sho...p?t=521081

Uninstalling it seems to solve lag related issues in some cases. In my case the program blocked some ports needed for my local installation of XAMPP before I got rid of it...

[Deceptus]

I agree with this 100%, and that's possibly the best short statement about League of Legends that I've ever read. (This is why I prefer flat Armor/Magic Resist runes to the ones that add per level; 20 MR at level 18 means little, while 10 MR at level 1 is enormous.) The rest of the post was really good as well.

While I don't have the numbers, I'm still always playing those junglers to prevent responsibility from feeding my lane opponents and flat magic resist isn't really something helpful given that nothing in the jungle attacks you with magic. So I don't need flat magic resist, and once the resist starts mattering, I'll be catching up and eventually surpassing the "flat" amount.

Flat Armor is obviously better for the same reason but inverted.

And how about mana regen per level? Well, at least back when those runes weren't nerfed?

[Cull]

Before the nerf, mp5/level caught up to flat mp5 at lvl4-7(I dunno about when, but roughly), which is quite early. The first 5 or so levels, most characters should simply NOT be spamming their spells(those who should are like Nid-heal). Because of this, mp5/lvl was superior to flat mp5.

I dunno about the current mp5/mp5/lvl runes. 99% sure this also applies to health and health per lvl on yellows(seals?).

[v8mark]

This whole Civ5 = LoL thing seems fairly nonsensical to me...

Civ5 is a poor game. It needs a mechanics overhaul, but instead it got a bunch of balance tweaks.

LoL is a good game. It doesn't need a mechanics overhaul, and instead can concern itself with balance tweaks, which have been applied virtually non-stop since the game was released.

Now you can argue about the whys and wherefores of the patches themselves (personally, I liked the Doran's item reworks, as I think it increases choice: Doran's + 1 health pot used to be the One Right Choice) but you can't argue that LoL isn't fundamentally a good game, IMO - after all, we as a community have been playing it for the better part of the last 6 months.

The problem is with LoL that it's not hard to see how to drastically improve the game (new maps, replay feature, more access to stats, greater database of results, etc.), and when someone does this - maybe it'll be DoTA2 or whatever, maybe it'll be after that - people will be off like a shot, including us, I'm guessing.

[sunrise089]

It'd be really nice if they showed us the data distribution of game lengths.

Because everything is played through central servers Riot has access to all kinds of cool data. They should be much more open with it. It costs them basically nothing to let us know what percentage of games have X champ, or the average KDA with Y champ per player level, or what item is purchased the most often after 45mins, or the like, but it would be really interesting and provoke discussion.

EDIT: LoL seems just like an internet startup back around 2000 to me. They have a good core idea and good programmers to implement it. It grows rapidly and people see potential. Then things stop scaling well. The feature that created the popularity means the product is difficult to monetize. Additional capital via outside investors is sought to implement new features, but time horizons for investor return are shortened. New staff are hired rapidly to implement new features to keep up with growth (Riot was advertising for 50+ positions last I checked), but the new people aren't as dedicated or simply can't adapt to the unique circumstances well enough to be net contributors. In the end the core product was never really improved over the original idea, since the creators don't have any core competency in periphery areas, and the new investors are left holding an unprofitable product while the original owners make out like bandits.

Example: originally the company has 1 employee. That employee can spend his week making one new champion, or he can spend one month making a new map. To accelerate things the investors provide funds to hire two new employees. The new folks are less efficient, and it takes them twice as long to make each item, at least until they gain experience with the software (which was a quick and dirty solution based on outside constraints early on, but that never gets updated because while sloppy it does work, and other concerns always take precedence). The original employee is now the manager, so he stops writing code. The new folks can still produce the new map in a month while working together, but with 3x the cost the investors demand revenue now so the new folks make champs. By the time the new guys can work fast enough the investors are impatient and unwilling to allow downtime needed to make the map. Maybe that isn't exactly what happened, but I always wonder when I see Riot employee videos what the people that coded the creeps, or the line-of-sight rules, or the item shop, or the lobby client, or matchmaking, or whatever are doing now. They can't just be making champs, since the game shipped with like 30 champs and the employees that made those could be working on new ones. My theory is that the older skilled programs have moved into managing new people and making youtube videos. Alternate theory: there was no original coding work since they just copied and pasted from DotA