League of Legends General Discussion Thread

[VarisNox]

The rewinding and fast-forwarding as well as the ability to jump around the games history makes me hopeful about their development of a working replay system soon ™.

Considering the ONLY thing they would have to do is turn the recorded games into files you can download that the client recognizes (since the client seems capable of playing recorded game data), I would sure hope so. Honestly, if they can't produce a replay system with what they have established, it would be a new level of stupid.

[Deceptus]

Considering the ONLY thing they would have to do is turn the recorded games into files you can download that the client recognizes (since the client seems capable of playing recorded game data), I would sure hope so. Honestly, if they can't produce a replay system with what they have established, it would be a new level of stupid.

I think someone in Riot said once that making an official replay system would force the game data to be somehow procced client-side and not server-side (or something like that) which would cause hacks. Or something.

[Krill]

Support builds are starting to get pretty damned interesting now.

Shurelyia's, Locket, Zekes, Morello's, Aegis...

[kayapo]

Little update. Level 10 now and loving it. Haven`t had the pleasure of finding Cull yet, probably different playing times =).

Been trying my best to play different champions. Tristana is by far the one I do worse with at this point. There is just something about rocket jumping to get initiated that always gets me killed =P

Last few games I decided to start learning support with Soraka and it`s been a great experience. In these early levels she can really change the game just by preventing people from making as many mistakes. I love her silence. Manage to get two opposing champions to flame me on chat already just out of rage for that silence. That has to be good, right? =)

Can`t help but think this game only really reaches true potential with a set group and using teamspeak. Looking forward to that.

[abuzeus]

I think someone in Riot said once that making an official replay system would force the game data to be somehow procced client-side and not server-side (or something like that) which would cause hacks. Or something.

Actually, no. When they introduced the two-slot spectator mode, some rioters commented on how the whole thing is set up: The game data is streamed to another server for the purposes of spectating. This server, in turn, delivers data to the spectators after three minutes. If you assume that the abuse potential of data three minutes old is close to zero, no sensitive data ever leaves Riot's servers.
This solution is also scaling very well, since they separated spectating from the game servers. So, technically, there is only one spectator (the spectating server) in every game. On the other hand, the number of spectators in a game is only limited by the capacity of the spectating server (which might be interesting for the "featured games"). I believe that services such as Half-life TV are set up in a similar way.

I remember some rioter saying that the problem was the number of games. Considering this source, there are around 10 million hours of LoL being played every day, worldwide (I assume this means the NA servers and Europe). Accounting for 10 players in each game, and assuming that each game lasts around 40 minutes on average (35 is probably closer), this yields around 1.5 million games that need to be stored daily. My LoL Recorder files average around a few megabytes, so this is at least 6 Terabytes of replays produced every day, distributed over three servers. Or was, on November 2011. Now it's probably more. That's a lot of data, though nothing a company with Riot's resources cannot handle.

Given that they already produce fully fledged replays (with a seek function!) for the "featured games", they probably have figured out how to solve the storage problem. I predict that, if they really ship this next week, and if it does not have mayor problems, they will probably introduce real replays shortly[tm] after, possibly with a "we store your last X games, or your games of the last X days" policy, likely with a download option. From an engineering point of view, the technology needed for this step is not very difficult and likely already implemented.

I also think that Riot really has stepped up their game as a company. It seems that somewhere around last summer to fall, they have realized they are not a start-up anymore and have begun to behave accordingly. In particular, they have really become better at announcing stuff only once they are absolutely, positively sure it is ready to ship.

[Sullla]

I completely agree with that last point. One of Riot's biggest problems was making all sorts of announcements for projects with no ETA finishing dates whatsoever. This led them into all kind of embarassments, such as heavily advertising features (Magma Chamber, Project Shiny, Stealth Rework, etc.) which were never implemented into the game at all. It was exactly the sort of thing that an amateurish company would do. Riot was simply terrible at managing fan expectations, and delivering on what they promised.

In the last six months, they've been keeping future details much closer to the vest, so that when new stuff appears it comes as a pleasant surprise, rather than "oh it's FINALLY done, sheesh." I also think that replays are finally, belatedly about to appear in the next few months, and can't wait. It will make my life significantly easier, since I've been using the ghetto unofficial replays for almost 18 months (!!!) now.

[Voldymort]

Ashe is not for beginners. She has no innate escape or reposition nor strong steriod. Her full potential is reached upon being able to hit a 50-70 second cooldown skillshot ulti. Admittedly, she plays like any other ranged dps past 30 minutes. This probably doesn't apply to kayapo, but the fact that Ashe's ulti is based off AP is kinda confusing to new players, similar to if someone learned Ryze and tried to play a different mage.

I first started playing this game about 1 year ago specifically last spring. By that time i had been playing DotA for 6 and a half years and it was a nice change. The very first heroes i played with were Ashe and Sivir. I think they were free at the time by some luck. Ashe was and is a combination of DotA's Traxex and Mirana so naturally i was familiar with her at first glance.
I may not have known at the time what Ap represented but nevertheless i liked her based on the fact that i had played her in DotA under a different name.
Same with Sivir whose Ricochet ability....the former one, the one that was continuous... reminded me of Luna from DotA , a hero who had the same ability. so naturally i got to like her too...i remember i used to play both of them continuously discovering a new hero every now and then till i got bored and wanted to discover new champs.

Basically what i want to say is ....Ashe may not be for beginners i agree but theres a difference between people who havent played this genre before and people who are familiar with the mechanics.

[Voldymort]

ps: i relize this reply is a little late with respect to the posts but i just found this forum and i felt like the post its replying to needed an adjustment

[sunrise089]

I'm not completely sure why this is a fail. Sure Vlad's not pulling his weight, but looks like you guys still gave a sound thumping.

Ha! That's great! I wonder if Curse intentionally normal queued in two groups so that they would play each other.

That is awesome! Sunrise: to what extent was the difference in quality between the various players apparent? Did you have a new-found level of respect for pro players afterwards?

Oops, forgot to reply to this

@spellman - The joke is that I'm a baddie and some of those players are top50 ranked, including the current #1 overall in solo queue.

However I was only kidding about matchmaking fail - it can be silly sometimes but it definitely isn't that bad. It was actually a custom game I got randomly invited to because I know Liquid. The goal was to make a video showing the strength of Gangplank, but it ended up showing the strength of Jax when he got completely out of control. Eventually things got heated on skype and Jax was made to sell half his items to dominate less. He still dominated, so he sold all of his items. The build he has in the screenshot is the third item cycle for him

@Terror - I actually have had a constant level of pro respect since last Dreamhack where I watched pros lane and farm for the first time. Nothing is more impressive to me than their ability to keep last hitting despite very aggressive map movement. In this game though it was interesting to see them "turn on" and then back off. In other words the laning phase played normally and it was like supporting a really good ranged AD. But once teamfights started there was lots of "ok, don't run in until we're all ready, and make sure to stand in the pirate's ult".

[kayapo]

Yeah, we do play together quite a lot. Usually with a healthy mix of casuals and more competitive players per team, and we communicate using this TeamSpeak 3 server:
ts51.light-speed.com:4038

I failed to reply to this...

I wouldn`t want to barge in just out of the blue

So is there a good time for noobs to show up (is there even such a time?)