At 5am tomorrow morning the last two groups at Worlds will get started. Both of these groups include teams from Europe and North America which I suspect means I'll enjoy watching the games more. Not because the games will be higher quality or anything but because I'll recognize the names more often in these games. Both from watching a lot of the regular season games and because of the fantasy LCS game that ran. I'll be cheering for LMQ in no small part because I had XiaoWeiXiao and Vasilli on my team and grew to root for them in the regular season. They're being predicted to come last in their group but maybe the underdog will come home!
I've finished both seasons of Heroes and my wrist still hurts so I'll be happy to have new things to watch. Huzzah!
Showing posts with label League of Legends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label League of Legends. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
League of Legends: Ascension
There was a big patch today (or maybe yesterday) for League of Legends that brought with it an entirely new game mode. It's not clear to me if this is a temporary game mode or if it's here to stay. Ascension is that game mode, and it's a twist on the Dominion map instead of the standard map.
Dominion is a map mode where you're basically playing 'king of the hill' to control 5 towers around the map. Towers spawn minions and earn points and there's a point threshold for winning. Ascension throws that out the window by taking out the towers and the minions. The 5 points are still on the map but they don't really do anything. There's no need to fight over them. They exist solely as ways to enter the fight after you die. Each team has 3 points they can teleport to (using the trinket slot) with the top one being shared between the teams. The game is still played to a certain threshold of points but points are earned in 3 new ways on this map.
You get 1 point for killing an enemy champion.
You get 3 points for channeling on a node for long enough to 'capture' it. Capturing makes it disappear and it comes back in about a minute to get captured again. There are 3 spots where nodes can spawn and they're situated such that each team spawns near one of the nodes and the third is between the two teams.
You get 5 points for killing 'the ascended'. The game starts with a gigantic neutral Xerath in the middle of the map. He's like a Baron except he uses ludicrous versions of Xerath's spells. Whoever gets the killing blow on Xerath scores the 5 points and becomes 'the ascended'. This gives a buff that makes you awesome but halves your healing and reveals you to the enemy team. If they kill you then they score 5 points and Xerath respawns shortly thereafter. As part of the buff you score 2 points if you kill an enemy champion instead of 1 point while you're ascended.
With no minions to 'get in the way' this game is mostly about running around and killing people. Xerath seems to be a trap in that he does a ton of damage and you give up control of the map if you try for him. And he's easy to steal in that no one has smite! But he seems fun so people keep trying them and it keeps being a bad idea. I've played quite a few games and focusing on being at the nodes when they respawn to score up the 3 quick points feels like the key to the game. Having the ability to kite when you're outnumbered seems strong too, because then you can work to deny the opponent points (from killing you) while your teammates hopefully accomplish something somewhere else like capture a node or kill some champions or something.
I've tried a couple times now to have 'Xerath control' by playing one of the champions with a big neutral monsters nuke, like Nunu or Cho'Gath. It didn't really work. In fact, while the abilities work on Xerath (and it's the only way to heal if you're Nunu) it only seemed to knock him to 1, not kill him, so you needed to do more damage right afterwards in order to actually get him. Having that small burst of power (that requires you to be in melee range) didn't seem worth the downside of not getting to use one of your abilities.
There's also a challenge icon available only to people who manage to win a game, while earning the Xerath buff, without the enemy team ever getting the Xerath buff. Seems tricky since so many people are only too happy to coinflip for Xerath. But eventually I'll get it, right? Right!
Dominion is a map mode where you're basically playing 'king of the hill' to control 5 towers around the map. Towers spawn minions and earn points and there's a point threshold for winning. Ascension throws that out the window by taking out the towers and the minions. The 5 points are still on the map but they don't really do anything. There's no need to fight over them. They exist solely as ways to enter the fight after you die. Each team has 3 points they can teleport to (using the trinket slot) with the top one being shared between the teams. The game is still played to a certain threshold of points but points are earned in 3 new ways on this map.
You get 1 point for killing an enemy champion.
You get 3 points for channeling on a node for long enough to 'capture' it. Capturing makes it disappear and it comes back in about a minute to get captured again. There are 3 spots where nodes can spawn and they're situated such that each team spawns near one of the nodes and the third is between the two teams.
You get 5 points for killing 'the ascended'. The game starts with a gigantic neutral Xerath in the middle of the map. He's like a Baron except he uses ludicrous versions of Xerath's spells. Whoever gets the killing blow on Xerath scores the 5 points and becomes 'the ascended'. This gives a buff that makes you awesome but halves your healing and reveals you to the enemy team. If they kill you then they score 5 points and Xerath respawns shortly thereafter. As part of the buff you score 2 points if you kill an enemy champion instead of 1 point while you're ascended.
With no minions to 'get in the way' this game is mostly about running around and killing people. Xerath seems to be a trap in that he does a ton of damage and you give up control of the map if you try for him. And he's easy to steal in that no one has smite! But he seems fun so people keep trying them and it keeps being a bad idea. I've played quite a few games and focusing on being at the nodes when they respawn to score up the 3 quick points feels like the key to the game. Having the ability to kite when you're outnumbered seems strong too, because then you can work to deny the opponent points (from killing you) while your teammates hopefully accomplish something somewhere else like capture a node or kill some champions or something.
I've tried a couple times now to have 'Xerath control' by playing one of the champions with a big neutral monsters nuke, like Nunu or Cho'Gath. It didn't really work. In fact, while the abilities work on Xerath (and it's the only way to heal if you're Nunu) it only seemed to knock him to 1, not kill him, so you needed to do more damage right afterwards in order to actually get him. Having that small burst of power (that requires you to be in melee range) didn't seem worth the downside of not getting to use one of your abilities.
There's also a challenge icon available only to people who manage to win a game, while earning the Xerath buff, without the enemy team ever getting the Xerath buff. Seems tricky since so many people are only too happy to coinflip for Xerath. But eventually I'll get it, right? Right!
Thursday, July 17, 2014
League of Legends: Doom Bots of DOOOOOOOOOM!
The newest short term game mode has come out in League of Legends, and it's running with the twist that it's a coop vs AI game mode instead of a normal player vs player game mode. This means you're on a team of 5 humans playing against a team of 5 bots. This is a normal game mode which is great for people learning the game, or for people who are not very good at this type of game, or for people who are good and want to pick up a free win or try a new champion. The twist with the Doom Bots game mode is the bots are not your regular ordinary bad at the game bots. They do still make bad decisions, but all of their abilities have been buffed to be ludicrous.
I played a game with Robb and some online acquaintances to try the mode out and it was pretty great to see the bots use an ability that we know and understand and have it do something stupid on top of what it should do. The first game I played featured an enemy champion who normally puts out a little area of effect around him that does percentage max health damage. In this game mode every enemy unit on the map near him also used this spell! So the enemy minions all had a brutally powerful damage debuff. I faced off against an enemy champion that throws out a spell that roots anyone it hits... Only this time if it hit someone it rooted them and then launched out a ring of projectiles that would themselves also root anyone they hit! So the bot would be stupid and throw it out at the minions, but then the entire area would be covered in things that root you. It was crazy, and it was pretty fun.
We beat the bots pretty handily despite their abilities being buffed. That's ok, Doom Bots is ready for that. Beating them once unlocked a harder mode where every enemy champion also picked up a random powerful ability from another champion in the game. Maybe they get a second life when they die. Maybe they summon whirlwinds around them to constantly knock people up. Maybe they cause a ghost of Garen to spawn in a nearby bush and spin on anyone who comes near. And then each time they died they'd respawn with a different ability! So you never really knew what was going to be coming at you.
We beat them too, but Riot was ready once more. You beat Doom Bots 1? You beat Doom Bots 2? Fine. Face off against Doom Bots 5! Now the bots get super charged abilities, and they get 2 random powerful abilities, and they take a page from the Civ V AI and cheat to earn tons of extra gold. It was insane! (And then we won, because we were 5 humans using voice chat who are pretty good at the game and they're still bots.)
This game mode is certainly crazy, but it's very fun. Definitely worth trying out if you play the game.
I played a game with Robb and some online acquaintances to try the mode out and it was pretty great to see the bots use an ability that we know and understand and have it do something stupid on top of what it should do. The first game I played featured an enemy champion who normally puts out a little area of effect around him that does percentage max health damage. In this game mode every enemy unit on the map near him also used this spell! So the enemy minions all had a brutally powerful damage debuff. I faced off against an enemy champion that throws out a spell that roots anyone it hits... Only this time if it hit someone it rooted them and then launched out a ring of projectiles that would themselves also root anyone they hit! So the bot would be stupid and throw it out at the minions, but then the entire area would be covered in things that root you. It was crazy, and it was pretty fun.
We beat the bots pretty handily despite their abilities being buffed. That's ok, Doom Bots is ready for that. Beating them once unlocked a harder mode where every enemy champion also picked up a random powerful ability from another champion in the game. Maybe they get a second life when they die. Maybe they summon whirlwinds around them to constantly knock people up. Maybe they cause a ghost of Garen to spawn in a nearby bush and spin on anyone who comes near. And then each time they died they'd respawn with a different ability! So you never really knew what was going to be coming at you.
We beat them too, but Riot was ready once more. You beat Doom Bots 1? You beat Doom Bots 2? Fine. Face off against Doom Bots 5! Now the bots get super charged abilities, and they get 2 random powerful abilities, and they take a page from the Civ V AI and cheat to earn tons of extra gold. It was insane! (And then we won, because we were 5 humans using voice chat who are pretty good at the game and they're still bots.)
This game mode is certainly crazy, but it's very fun. Definitely worth trying out if you play the game.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
League of Legends: Skin Usage Anecdotes
Tobold remains in my blog reader feed so I end up reading his posts. Often this is a pretty reasonable thing to do because he does talk about games and I find games interesting to read about. Sometimes there's a suggestion for a game I might want to play. Or avoid. Note that it isn't always that I want to play games he recommends, sometimes I want to play games he rants against. But it is useful to have any data points when making a decision, right?
One topic he sometimes comes back to is cash shops in games that are ostensibly free to play. I do as well, because it's actually a pretty important topic I think. Cash shops work for the game companies in some cases so they're pretty much going to be a staple for years to come. I've played plenty of games that have cash shops and sometimes I even buy things from them. I bought energy rechargers in Galaxy Legion, and stash tabs in Path of Exile. I've picked up some extra songs in Final Fantasy Theatrhythm. One could even argue that all the stupid DLC stuff I have for Civ V is a cash shop purchase even though the way you buy it is totally outside the game. Heck, I have board game expansions and I used to spend a silly amount of money on Magic cards and those are a lot like a cash shop in a game. I even did some Magic Online drafts recently!
One of Tobold's key ranting points is that people won't buy random junk at a rate that will keep a game afloat. He says games need to sell power in their stores to convince people to pay cash. And then because he thinks game companies should stay in business and he likes the free to play model he pretty easily arrives at the conclusion that 'pay2win' is a good thing for games. I disagree that people will only pay reasonable cash for power and therefore feel I can take the stance that 'pay2win' is a terrible thing and try my best to avoid playing games which have that trait. Which is why I get so frustrated when he tries to paint League of Legends as a 'pay2win' game despite not actually playing the game to know anything about it.
At any rate, Riot doesn't post a breakdown of incoming money so there's no real way to know what people are spending money on. Because of the IP system and the way the game gates your access to champions the argument could be made that spending money to get more champions is increasing your power and therefore you can easily pay to win in LoL. I think this is false because you earn enough IP to buy a good enough selection of runes and champions just by playing the game. (I also think restricting access to champions forces you to get practice on a few champions at a time which actually makes you better off, not worse off.) I see the ability to buy champions with cash as a way to trade money for time, not money for power, and I do think that's a fine way to run a cash shop. But I don't think Riot is making a lot of bank off of it either. I bought one champion for money (because his name was Ziggs and I wanted to reward Riot for naming a champion after me) but most of the money I put into the game was on skins. My assertion has always been that this is how most people operate, especially people who play the game enough to feel like they can justify spending a bunch of money. But I haven't had any way to prove that. I could talk anecdotally about the people I know, and how almost all of them have bought skins if they spend money at all, but that's not evidence.
What I decided to do was start tracking the other people in my games. The people I randomly get matched up with and against in games. These are people I know nothing about. These are people who are a random sampling of people who actively play the game. These are probably the people paying the money to keep Riot's servers running. These are also all people who are already level 30, and for many of the games are people in the high gold/low platinum match maker bracket. So you aren't going to be finding people who could be buying xp boosts at this point (not that I would know if they had). I can't work out a breakdown of what people are paying money for. What I can do is show that people are, in fact, willing to spend money on skins. That is, if my opponents are actually running with skins. If most of the games have no one with a skin other than myself it would point more to the fact that people don't spend money on skins!
There are a few issues based around the fact the game has so many champions and you buy skins on a per champion basis. So even if someone spent a lot of money on skins if they just happened to be playing a game where they weren't using a skin it doesn't mean they don't have any skins. It just means they don't have a skin for that specific champion. With skins ranging from $3 to $13 each and 119 champions in the game that would actually be a lot of money to have a skin for every champion. I've spent a reasonable amount (triple digits for sure, but I don't know how much exactly) and I've only got skins for 21 champions. If I chose randomly from all 119 in the game I'd only have a 17% chance of using a skin. In reality there are a bunch of champions I'd never pick because I don't own them or don't like them but even then I suspect my skin usage is actually lower than 17%. My most played champion now doesn't have a skin I like, so even if I'd spent thousands of dollars I wouldn't use a skin! I also haven't spend any money on skins since I lost my job so any new champions that come out are base model only for me. But I'm a little odd, and probably the random people I get paired against are a little more normal with their skin usage? I don't know.
At any rate, I've kept track of 63 games since I decided to start paying attention. I don't count my own champion, or any of my friends. I'm looking at just the random people. I excluded most of the 'One for All' mode games once I realized they were probably screwing my numbers after getting into a game where someone was able to buy a temporary skin for all their teammates! But the first couple did sneak in because I had no way to exclude them retroactively. My only notes are number of people with a skin, and number of people without a skin. Most of the games are either 5v5 solo queue ranked games or 3v3 team games. Of note, I only played 2 games where none of the other players had a skin at all. 61 of 63 games featured at least one player who had paid money for just a skin. 7 of the 63 games actually had every single other player with a skin. 11% of the time every other person in the game had paid money for a skin. Overall there were 418 random people in my games and 222 of them had a skin. 53% of the other players were using a skin.
That's a really big number. I went into this wanting to exclude myself and my friends because I was worried we wouldn't be representative and had spent too much money on skins. But it turns out we're not representative the other way! We don't spend nearly as much money on skins as a random person!
I can't say if all these random people also spent money on xp/ip boosts or not. I can't say if they bought lots of extra champions or not. (And if they are buying and using tons of champions they're spending extra money on skins in order to keep the odds of using one up!) But I can say that random people are ALL OVER spending money on things to look pretty without providing any tangible benefit of any kind. Especially since people can spend money on some skins and still play skinless champions running into 53% of people actively using a skin has to mean more than 53% of people have bought skins. (Unless everyone who buys any skins buys all the skins I guess, but that really ramps up Riot's bottom line if 53% of people are buying all the skins!)
I think it's pretty clear that people are willing to buy vanity items like skins, and are willing to buy a lot of them, and are willing to pay a lot for them. I don't think a cash shop needs to turn to selling power in order to make money. And I definitely think League of Legends is a pretty darn good example of how a game can sell pretty pictures at a profit.
One topic he sometimes comes back to is cash shops in games that are ostensibly free to play. I do as well, because it's actually a pretty important topic I think. Cash shops work for the game companies in some cases so they're pretty much going to be a staple for years to come. I've played plenty of games that have cash shops and sometimes I even buy things from them. I bought energy rechargers in Galaxy Legion, and stash tabs in Path of Exile. I've picked up some extra songs in Final Fantasy Theatrhythm. One could even argue that all the stupid DLC stuff I have for Civ V is a cash shop purchase even though the way you buy it is totally outside the game. Heck, I have board game expansions and I used to spend a silly amount of money on Magic cards and those are a lot like a cash shop in a game. I even did some Magic Online drafts recently!
One of Tobold's key ranting points is that people won't buy random junk at a rate that will keep a game afloat. He says games need to sell power in their stores to convince people to pay cash. And then because he thinks game companies should stay in business and he likes the free to play model he pretty easily arrives at the conclusion that 'pay2win' is a good thing for games. I disagree that people will only pay reasonable cash for power and therefore feel I can take the stance that 'pay2win' is a terrible thing and try my best to avoid playing games which have that trait. Which is why I get so frustrated when he tries to paint League of Legends as a 'pay2win' game despite not actually playing the game to know anything about it.
At any rate, Riot doesn't post a breakdown of incoming money so there's no real way to know what people are spending money on. Because of the IP system and the way the game gates your access to champions the argument could be made that spending money to get more champions is increasing your power and therefore you can easily pay to win in LoL. I think this is false because you earn enough IP to buy a good enough selection of runes and champions just by playing the game. (I also think restricting access to champions forces you to get practice on a few champions at a time which actually makes you better off, not worse off.) I see the ability to buy champions with cash as a way to trade money for time, not money for power, and I do think that's a fine way to run a cash shop. But I don't think Riot is making a lot of bank off of it either. I bought one champion for money (because his name was Ziggs and I wanted to reward Riot for naming a champion after me) but most of the money I put into the game was on skins. My assertion has always been that this is how most people operate, especially people who play the game enough to feel like they can justify spending a bunch of money. But I haven't had any way to prove that. I could talk anecdotally about the people I know, and how almost all of them have bought skins if they spend money at all, but that's not evidence.
What I decided to do was start tracking the other people in my games. The people I randomly get matched up with and against in games. These are people I know nothing about. These are people who are a random sampling of people who actively play the game. These are probably the people paying the money to keep Riot's servers running. These are also all people who are already level 30, and for many of the games are people in the high gold/low platinum match maker bracket. So you aren't going to be finding people who could be buying xp boosts at this point (not that I would know if they had). I can't work out a breakdown of what people are paying money for. What I can do is show that people are, in fact, willing to spend money on skins. That is, if my opponents are actually running with skins. If most of the games have no one with a skin other than myself it would point more to the fact that people don't spend money on skins!
There are a few issues based around the fact the game has so many champions and you buy skins on a per champion basis. So even if someone spent a lot of money on skins if they just happened to be playing a game where they weren't using a skin it doesn't mean they don't have any skins. It just means they don't have a skin for that specific champion. With skins ranging from $3 to $13 each and 119 champions in the game that would actually be a lot of money to have a skin for every champion. I've spent a reasonable amount (triple digits for sure, but I don't know how much exactly) and I've only got skins for 21 champions. If I chose randomly from all 119 in the game I'd only have a 17% chance of using a skin. In reality there are a bunch of champions I'd never pick because I don't own them or don't like them but even then I suspect my skin usage is actually lower than 17%. My most played champion now doesn't have a skin I like, so even if I'd spent thousands of dollars I wouldn't use a skin! I also haven't spend any money on skins since I lost my job so any new champions that come out are base model only for me. But I'm a little odd, and probably the random people I get paired against are a little more normal with their skin usage? I don't know.
At any rate, I've kept track of 63 games since I decided to start paying attention. I don't count my own champion, or any of my friends. I'm looking at just the random people. I excluded most of the 'One for All' mode games once I realized they were probably screwing my numbers after getting into a game where someone was able to buy a temporary skin for all their teammates! But the first couple did sneak in because I had no way to exclude them retroactively. My only notes are number of people with a skin, and number of people without a skin. Most of the games are either 5v5 solo queue ranked games or 3v3 team games. Of note, I only played 2 games where none of the other players had a skin at all. 61 of 63 games featured at least one player who had paid money for just a skin. 7 of the 63 games actually had every single other player with a skin. 11% of the time every other person in the game had paid money for a skin. Overall there were 418 random people in my games and 222 of them had a skin. 53% of the other players were using a skin.
That's a really big number. I went into this wanting to exclude myself and my friends because I was worried we wouldn't be representative and had spent too much money on skins. But it turns out we're not representative the other way! We don't spend nearly as much money on skins as a random person!
I can't say if all these random people also spent money on xp/ip boosts or not. I can't say if they bought lots of extra champions or not. (And if they are buying and using tons of champions they're spending extra money on skins in order to keep the odds of using one up!) But I can say that random people are ALL OVER spending money on things to look pretty without providing any tangible benefit of any kind. Especially since people can spend money on some skins and still play skinless champions running into 53% of people actively using a skin has to mean more than 53% of people have bought skins. (Unless everyone who buys any skins buys all the skins I guess, but that really ramps up Riot's bottom line if 53% of people are buying all the skins!)
I think it's pretty clear that people are willing to buy vanity items like skins, and are willing to buy a lot of them, and are willing to pay a lot for them. I don't think a cash shop needs to turn to selling power in order to make money. And I definitely think League of Legends is a pretty darn good example of how a game can sell pretty pictures at a profit.
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
League of Legends: Game Recaps
A new feature made its way into the League of Legends client recently that I haven't seen announced anywhere. (Though, to be fair, I didn't look anywhere except the patch notes.) It's a pair of buttons on the game end screen which both take you to a webpage with information about the game you just played.
The game I just played, as Kayle, for example...
There's some really interesting stuff on here. It gives you the normal info like items owned at the end of the game, and the gold totals at the end of the game. But then it goes further and lists barons, dragons, and turret kills. It shows the bans!
IT SHOWS THE NUMBER OF WARDS PLACED!!!
AND THE NUMBER OF WARDS PURCHASED!
(I bought 0. I am terrible. The game as a whole bought 6 pink wards total. We're all terrible.)
Wow, it breaks down the jungle monsters killed by which side of the map they were on. The other team managed to kill a total of 4 monsters in our jungle. I actually placed wards a couple times to try to catch Singed at my golems, but he never went for them despite farming between the turrets.
It also has some graphs showing gold over time, and when various objectives were taken. So I can see that at the 14 minute mark the enemy team made a comeback. Their mid roamed bottom and killed both of my bottom laners and then their ADC killed our jungler and the dragon. We went from being up 4k to being up less than 1k in 2 minutes. It's a shame it doesn't also give a chat log, because I can remember at the time my team was raging at our mid for not indicating that Kat was missing from mid. Things really swung back in our favour at the 22 minute mark, when we aced the enemy team without losing anyone and got dragon.
You can also do a graph comparing individual champion gold totals. So I can see for example that in that 14-16 minute span their mid made 1.4k gold and my mid made 600 gold just obliviously farming away in lane. The graph makes it look like Gangplank was dominating Katerina in lane, but then he lost focus and let her get away to kill people in another lane without accomplishing anything in return.
Or if I look at my lane matchup, I see that I did a bad job. I fell behind in gold for pretty much the whole game. Part of that was two successful ganks from their jungler to zero from mine. (A couple failed ganks as well, and one 2v2 fight that we lost because my jungler wandered off right before the fight started and it ended up being a series of 1v2 fights. Oh well!
On the plus side, that ace for nothing at the 22 minute mark happened because I decided to protect Vayne instead of trying to do damage and managed to intervention her right when Kat jumped on her and then we were able to burst her out. If I'd wandered off to join the big fight happening nearby then Kat kills Vayne in 2 seconds, gets all her resets, and might well be able to wreck our faces.
I definitely feel like I was a weak link on my team, but I wasn't weak enough to cause us to lose. Hurray!
The game I just played, as Kayle, for example...
There's some really interesting stuff on here. It gives you the normal info like items owned at the end of the game, and the gold totals at the end of the game. But then it goes further and lists barons, dragons, and turret kills. It shows the bans!
IT SHOWS THE NUMBER OF WARDS PLACED!!!
AND THE NUMBER OF WARDS PURCHASED!
(I bought 0. I am terrible. The game as a whole bought 6 pink wards total. We're all terrible.)
Wow, it breaks down the jungle monsters killed by which side of the map they were on. The other team managed to kill a total of 4 monsters in our jungle. I actually placed wards a couple times to try to catch Singed at my golems, but he never went for them despite farming between the turrets.
It also has some graphs showing gold over time, and when various objectives were taken. So I can see that at the 14 minute mark the enemy team made a comeback. Their mid roamed bottom and killed both of my bottom laners and then their ADC killed our jungler and the dragon. We went from being up 4k to being up less than 1k in 2 minutes. It's a shame it doesn't also give a chat log, because I can remember at the time my team was raging at our mid for not indicating that Kat was missing from mid. Things really swung back in our favour at the 22 minute mark, when we aced the enemy team without losing anyone and got dragon.
You can also do a graph comparing individual champion gold totals. So I can see for example that in that 14-16 minute span their mid made 1.4k gold and my mid made 600 gold just obliviously farming away in lane. The graph makes it look like Gangplank was dominating Katerina in lane, but then he lost focus and let her get away to kill people in another lane without accomplishing anything in return.
Or if I look at my lane matchup, I see that I did a bad job. I fell behind in gold for pretty much the whole game. Part of that was two successful ganks from their jungler to zero from mine. (A couple failed ganks as well, and one 2v2 fight that we lost because my jungler wandered off right before the fight started and it ended up being a series of 1v2 fights. Oh well!
On the plus side, that ace for nothing at the 22 minute mark happened because I decided to protect Vayne instead of trying to do damage and managed to intervention her right when Kat jumped on her and then we were able to burst her out. If I'd wandered off to join the big fight happening nearby then Kat kills Vayne in 2 seconds, gets all her resets, and might well be able to wreck our faces.
I definitely feel like I was a weak link on my team, but I wasn't weak enough to cause us to lose. Hurray!
Tuesday, June 03, 2014
League of Legends: One for All: Mirror Mode
Riot has their latest 'temporary wacky map' option up and running. It's the One for All mode back for another spin (One for All being the mode where all 5 members of your team played the same champion) with two twists this time around. The first is that the enemy team also plays the same champion as your team so you have 10 copies of a given champion running around. The second twist is the game takes place on the ARAM map instead of the normal 5v5 map.
I like the first twist. One of the problems with the original One for All mode was when one team picked something fun and one team picked something good. Most teams simply couldn't compete against a team of healers and the games ended up being complete stompings. You did get to ban some champions out and Riot also disabled champions that were particularly problematic and you did often get fun matches. Changing it so both teams play the same champion fixes that issue. Which isn't to say all matches are fun (Nidalee is pretty stupid) but you never have one team not have the tools to have a chance since both teams have identical toolsets. (As long as all 10 people play the whole game... I've had too many games with a leaver.)
I strongly dislike the second twist. One of the things I really liked about the original One for All mode was how different teams would handle jungling. Do you jungle at all? Do you throw someone into a 1v2 lane? How about supporting? On the ARAM map all those decisions are thrown right out the window. There are still ways to play better, of course. Knowing how to time your deaths so your team doesn't lose turret pressure and knowing to wait for respawns before charging in 3v5 over and over and over again are real things. They just aren't things I find terribly interesting. Mostly I find them frustrating.
There are certainly some neat interactions going on. Vayne silver bolts stack up with each other so people take a lot of damage in a real hurry if they get focused. Playing with 10 Zacs meant there were a silly number of blobs in play. It's definitely silly and fun but I'm pretty glad this mode will be rotating out soon.
One thing that really annoys me is the mode is buggy with regards to skins. If you end up playing a champion you own but didn't nominate (each player has a 10% chance of getting to pick the played champion) it defaults you back to no skin even if you own a skin for that champion. I don't change my champion skins ever, but I do own a few. It normally defaults to using your last used skin which is just fine by me. I've played all my champions with the skin on them and never need to look at the skin selection window again. Except for now, where two of my favourite skins (Mega Man Ezreal and DDR Sona) have been turned off by this bug. So now when I play those champions I won't have a skin until I remember to manually change it before a game with them. And I probably won't notice until the game has started at which point it will again be too late. So annoying!
I like the first twist. One of the problems with the original One for All mode was when one team picked something fun and one team picked something good. Most teams simply couldn't compete against a team of healers and the games ended up being complete stompings. You did get to ban some champions out and Riot also disabled champions that were particularly problematic and you did often get fun matches. Changing it so both teams play the same champion fixes that issue. Which isn't to say all matches are fun (Nidalee is pretty stupid) but you never have one team not have the tools to have a chance since both teams have identical toolsets. (As long as all 10 people play the whole game... I've had too many games with a leaver.)
I strongly dislike the second twist. One of the things I really liked about the original One for All mode was how different teams would handle jungling. Do you jungle at all? Do you throw someone into a 1v2 lane? How about supporting? On the ARAM map all those decisions are thrown right out the window. There are still ways to play better, of course. Knowing how to time your deaths so your team doesn't lose turret pressure and knowing to wait for respawns before charging in 3v5 over and over and over again are real things. They just aren't things I find terribly interesting. Mostly I find them frustrating.
There are certainly some neat interactions going on. Vayne silver bolts stack up with each other so people take a lot of damage in a real hurry if they get focused. Playing with 10 Zacs meant there were a silly number of blobs in play. It's definitely silly and fun but I'm pretty glad this mode will be rotating out soon.
One thing that really annoys me is the mode is buggy with regards to skins. If you end up playing a champion you own but didn't nominate (each player has a 10% chance of getting to pick the played champion) it defaults you back to no skin even if you own a skin for that champion. I don't change my champion skins ever, but I do own a few. It normally defaults to using your last used skin which is just fine by me. I've played all my champions with the skin on them and never need to look at the skin selection window again. Except for now, where two of my favourite skins (Mega Man Ezreal and DDR Sona) have been turned off by this bug. So now when I play those champions I won't have a skin until I remember to manually change it before a game with them. And I probably won't notice until the game has started at which point it will again be too late. So annoying!
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Fantasy League of Legends
I found out by a couple friends linking the website that Riot is in the process of rolling out a fantasy League of Legends system to supplement their professional circuit. It sounds an awful lot like fantasy football in that you get a bunch of people together and then draft players off of the pro rosters. Your team then earns points based on the performances of the players you drafted. Robb thinks it's silly because the way you earn points in the fantasy scoring system doesn't line up perfectly with the way you win the actual games. (Supports earning more points for kills than assists really seemed to be a sticking point.)
The NFL really blew up in popularity when they heavily embraced the concept of fantasy football. Why? It got the 'casual' viewer interested in the outcomes and details of all kinds of games where before they would only care about how their one favourite team was doing. I ended up drafting Aaron Rodgers the year he took over for Brett Favre and he put up some great stats for me. I wanted to tune in to the games and see how the Packers were doing because I wanted to know how 'my' football player was doing. It can get even deeper though... Sometimes you'll draft two star quarterbacks but you only get to score points for one of them. You need to choose in advance which one... This causes people to not just watch the games as they're happening but to look up information on upcoming games before they happen. Is Rodgers playing against a really good defense this week? Maybe I should be playing Matthew Stafford this week? They are playing the Raiders and they're terrible...
Adding in fantasy LoL is a way to get people caring about the games not just while they're on (if Lino tells me a game is on I'll generally turn it on and watch it) but to care about them before they happen. If I get heavily into fantasy LoL I'll end up spending time managing my roster and trying to figure out who's going to have a good game... Darien is known for sometimes having terrible games where he just lets himself get killed over and over again so maybe I want to grab one of the top laners for the teams he's playing against this week? It will also get me to care about some of the matches that are obvious blowouts if I have one of the players on my team.
Robb is right in that if we were just drafting to win LoL games then I'd care a lot more about objective control and ward placements and not even a little bit about how many kills my support was getting. But when it comes to having an interesting fantasy game I think you really need an easy to understand system with numbers you can follow on the fly. I know that a kill is worth 2 points and that if Genja manages to pull off another pentakill I get 10 bonus points! So even if Gambit is losing I still have something to care about while I'm watching. Just like how I'd actually want the Packers to start losing badly because that would encourage Rodgers to throw for more yards and more touchdowns! Woo!
I don't know if the LCS will get a big boost from a fantasy LoL system (especially one that broke after Lino invited me to a draft and hasn't been fixed all night) but I'm really intrigued. Riot is even in a position where they could be giving out interesting prizes to ramp up the excitement. Temporary ward skins that can only be used if you were the top scorer in a fantasy league the previous week? Or minor IP awards?
I think it sounds fun regardless, so I'm going to give it a spin. Probably it will serve to remind me when games are on each week which means I'll spend more time watching the LCS. I guess Riot wins this round.
The NFL really blew up in popularity when they heavily embraced the concept of fantasy football. Why? It got the 'casual' viewer interested in the outcomes and details of all kinds of games where before they would only care about how their one favourite team was doing. I ended up drafting Aaron Rodgers the year he took over for Brett Favre and he put up some great stats for me. I wanted to tune in to the games and see how the Packers were doing because I wanted to know how 'my' football player was doing. It can get even deeper though... Sometimes you'll draft two star quarterbacks but you only get to score points for one of them. You need to choose in advance which one... This causes people to not just watch the games as they're happening but to look up information on upcoming games before they happen. Is Rodgers playing against a really good defense this week? Maybe I should be playing Matthew Stafford this week? They are playing the Raiders and they're terrible...
Adding in fantasy LoL is a way to get people caring about the games not just while they're on (if Lino tells me a game is on I'll generally turn it on and watch it) but to care about them before they happen. If I get heavily into fantasy LoL I'll end up spending time managing my roster and trying to figure out who's going to have a good game... Darien is known for sometimes having terrible games where he just lets himself get killed over and over again so maybe I want to grab one of the top laners for the teams he's playing against this week? It will also get me to care about some of the matches that are obvious blowouts if I have one of the players on my team.
Robb is right in that if we were just drafting to win LoL games then I'd care a lot more about objective control and ward placements and not even a little bit about how many kills my support was getting. But when it comes to having an interesting fantasy game I think you really need an easy to understand system with numbers you can follow on the fly. I know that a kill is worth 2 points and that if Genja manages to pull off another pentakill I get 10 bonus points! So even if Gambit is losing I still have something to care about while I'm watching. Just like how I'd actually want the Packers to start losing badly because that would encourage Rodgers to throw for more yards and more touchdowns! Woo!
I don't know if the LCS will get a big boost from a fantasy LoL system (especially one that broke after Lino invited me to a draft and hasn't been fixed all night) but I'm really intrigued. Riot is even in a position where they could be giving out interesting prizes to ramp up the excitement. Temporary ward skins that can only be used if you were the top scorer in a fantasy league the previous week? Or minor IP awards?
I think it sounds fun regardless, so I'm going to give it a spin. Probably it will serve to remind me when games are on each week which means I'll spend more time watching the LCS. I guess Riot wins this round.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
League of Legends: 3s Musings
Yesterday Lino linked me to a Twitch stream from a team of 3 dudes who were in the middle of a 24 hour streaming marathon where they were just playing 3v3 League of Legends. Their goal was to hit challenger without losing and all three of them had been challenger last season so they're clearly pretty good at the game in general. I watched for a while in the hopes of picking up some tips on how the really good players play on the 3v3 map.
The first thing I learned is the super highly rated players have queue times of around 30 minutes before they can get a game. Normally you get a game in under a minute so this indicates there really isn't a big pool of highly rated 3v3 teams playing at the hour I was watching.
The second thing I learned is the matchmaker really gives up on making a good match and eventually just takes whatever it can find. These guys who were challenger last season were getting paired up against people who were silver last season. For those who may not be aware there are 6 tiers in League of Legends with silver being the 2nd from the bottom and challenger being the very best. League of Legends is very much a skill based game, not a luck based game...
The next thing I learned is that watching challengers demolish silvers is only marginally less frustrating than being the low ranked team getting stomped (which happens to us with unfortunate regularity). Having a 25 minute gap between games meant I gave up on watching after a couple hours because the games weren't interesting and there was nothing really to learn from watching them either. Apparently having better mechanics and better champion selection and better strategy and better tactics means you win.
One nice thing was there was a lot of downtime and they were answering questions from the Twitch chat. They were on hour 13 of their marathon and I imagine they were getting the same questions over and over so they were rather curt with a lot of their responses which got on my nerves but there was one good answer that I remember. Someone asked how to stop yourself from dying to ganks if you push your lane up and the response was that you need to push both lanes at the same time and then invade their jungle. They didn't elaborate or anything, unfortunately, but the idea certainly seemed to be you want to have your whole team capable of pushing early and then fight in their jungle for a while. It certainly stops you from being ganked if you're jumping on their ganker!
The last thing that was useful is they have a list of 'god tier' champions for the map. Now that's just a list that 3 guys made, but they seem to be 3 guys with a decent feel on the map. It had 23 champions on it, which seems like a lot for a 'god tier', but they didn't seem to put a ton of effort into their FAQ thing. 23 champions that are really good and then everyone else who isn't. My most played champion isn't in that 23 which makes me sad, but I can understand why. I feel like a lot of the champions they list are the ones that actually have a chance of blowing me up when I'm playing Ezreal and I can see how they'd be really good at pushing early and winning the 'invade their jungle' plan.
Evelyn, Yasuo, Lee Sin, Thresh, Syndra, Lulu, Leblanc, Kha'Zix, Wukong, Soraka, Darius, Udyr, Ryze, Leona, Pantheon, Jax, Renekton, Annie, Karma, Trundle, Lissandra, Cassiopeia.
Renekton is my most played 5v5 champion by far so maybe I should start playing him in 3s and see how that works out? I sure get to push the lane hard early! And the game probably ends quick enough while Renekton is still awesome, right? Right!
The first thing I learned is the super highly rated players have queue times of around 30 minutes before they can get a game. Normally you get a game in under a minute so this indicates there really isn't a big pool of highly rated 3v3 teams playing at the hour I was watching.
The second thing I learned is the matchmaker really gives up on making a good match and eventually just takes whatever it can find. These guys who were challenger last season were getting paired up against people who were silver last season. For those who may not be aware there are 6 tiers in League of Legends with silver being the 2nd from the bottom and challenger being the very best. League of Legends is very much a skill based game, not a luck based game...
The next thing I learned is that watching challengers demolish silvers is only marginally less frustrating than being the low ranked team getting stomped (which happens to us with unfortunate regularity). Having a 25 minute gap between games meant I gave up on watching after a couple hours because the games weren't interesting and there was nothing really to learn from watching them either. Apparently having better mechanics and better champion selection and better strategy and better tactics means you win.
One nice thing was there was a lot of downtime and they were answering questions from the Twitch chat. They were on hour 13 of their marathon and I imagine they were getting the same questions over and over so they were rather curt with a lot of their responses which got on my nerves but there was one good answer that I remember. Someone asked how to stop yourself from dying to ganks if you push your lane up and the response was that you need to push both lanes at the same time and then invade their jungle. They didn't elaborate or anything, unfortunately, but the idea certainly seemed to be you want to have your whole team capable of pushing early and then fight in their jungle for a while. It certainly stops you from being ganked if you're jumping on their ganker!
The last thing that was useful is they have a list of 'god tier' champions for the map. Now that's just a list that 3 guys made, but they seem to be 3 guys with a decent feel on the map. It had 23 champions on it, which seems like a lot for a 'god tier', but they didn't seem to put a ton of effort into their FAQ thing. 23 champions that are really good and then everyone else who isn't. My most played champion isn't in that 23 which makes me sad, but I can understand why. I feel like a lot of the champions they list are the ones that actually have a chance of blowing me up when I'm playing Ezreal and I can see how they'd be really good at pushing early and winning the 'invade their jungle' plan.
Evelyn, Yasuo, Lee Sin, Thresh, Syndra, Lulu, Leblanc, Kha'Zix, Wukong, Soraka, Darius, Udyr, Ryze, Leona, Pantheon, Jax, Renekton, Annie, Karma, Trundle, Lissandra, Cassiopeia.
Renekton is my most played 5v5 champion by far so maybe I should start playing him in 3s and see how that works out? I sure get to push the lane hard early! And the game probably ends quick enough while Renekton is still awesome, right? Right!
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
League of Legends: Last Whisper
I've been watching the midseason playoffs for the LCS the last couple days and one of the commentators today made an offhand comment insulting one of the players in the game. Genja has a habit of building unorthodox items and people love to rag on him about it. In this case it wasn't even that he'd built anything weird in this game, as it looked pretty standard to me. No, he just wanted to insult Genja for some reason. At any rate, he was bringing up a game in the past where Genja declined to build the item last whisper and he said that not bringing the percentage armour penetration from that item was going to give the opponent three, four, or even five times as much effective health. That seemed like a patently absurd claim, but I wanted to check it out. Especially since I sometimes get yelled at in ranked games when I don't build an early last whisper. I get told I don't do any damage with just bloodthirster, infinity edge, and phantom dancer against a team without a lot of armour. I don't like getting yelled at. Why must people yell?
Anyway, there's actually a lot of variables at play when working out just how good last whisper is going to be. Some champions like Corki, Ezreal, and Varus do a reasonable amount of magic damage which will reduce the power of armour penetration. Some enemy teams won't build much armour. Maybe you've got teammates who have armour shreds themselves to help you out? I'm going to try to simplify all of that and just assume all of your damage is physical and your team isn't going to help you at all. I will vary the enemy armour, especially because I want to see just how much armour it takes that building a non last whisper item will quintuple their effective health.
There's also the question of where it fits in your build order, or what you'd have to replace it. I'm going to assert you'll be building berserker greaves and bloodthirster first and will be adding in phantom dancer and infinity edge after that. Looking at a straight auto attacker like Caitlyn (who actually has 2 magic damage abilities, but they're not really used for damage) where are we standing? I'll assume she's using max rank peacemaker on cooldown and otherwise not doing damage with anything but auto attacks and that she's level 15 for the AD and attack speed gains per level. AD quints and armor pen reds will be the damage related runes, and pretty much all of the damage masteries are in play.
I built a spreadsheet to compare the different item options and it was actually pretty interesting. At an enemy armour value of 100 if you're only allowed one more item the most efficient item is last whisper. But if you're allowed two more items you actually want infinity edge and phantom dancer. The way those two items compound with each other pushes them over the top of last whisper with only one of them. But in both cases it was all pretty close. We're talking a difference of 5% or 7% in terms of damage done, which is small enough that I don't think anyone should be yelling about one choice over the other, especially since the 'right' choice varies depending on how long the game gets to go.
How about if the enemy has more armour? 200, say? Well, then last whisper is the big winner. It's 33% better as a single item and 7% better when combined with the phantom dancer.
What about less armour? The two people you're most likely to be fighting in the mid game are the people in your own lane and neither of them are too likely to build any armour. They might have, say, 60 armour? In that case last whisper is the worst single item and should be kept out of the duo items. Starting phantom dancer is 16% better and adding on infinity edge is 19% better.
So it seems pretty clear to me. If you'll be hitting someone without any armour items you don't want last whisper early. If they have a fed tank who built a ton of armour and will be in your face you need last whisper as soon as possible. If neither is really the case then it doesn't much matter. It's probably 'right' to build it first, but it depends on how much fighting you'll do at the one extra item mark compared to the two extra item mark. Oh, and while it's the most gold efficient item against the 200 armour people it's actually still the worst actual damage item. It just gets to win because of how comparatively cheap it is.
Now what about the ludicrous statement that skipping last whisper will make the enemy take FIVE TIMES as long to kill? How much armour do I need to give the enemy to make BT+LW+IE+Doran's Blade do five times as much DPS as BT+IE+PD? (The gold difference is 500, so I'll add in an item worth about that much to even things up.)
There is no such number. Even with 10^300 armour I can only make the last whisper set do 16% more damage. Maybe doran's blade is that abysmally bad? Or maybe I should be using PD instead of IE? It was the better set at 200 armour, though it has an even bigger gap of gold. I guess I can balance out that 1500 gold with an extra BF sword? That's pretty fair. So comparing BT+LW+PD+BF against BT+IE+PD I end up with the first set doing 4% more damage at 200 armour, and at ludicrous numbers of armour it still only ends up at 24% more damage.
Maybe the commentators are thinking Genja took the 2300 gold he could have spent on a last whisper and instead spent it on hookers and blow? Maybe if we just give out a free last whisper we can reach five times damage done? So let's compare BT+LW+IE+PD with just BT+IE+PD. In this case the first option does 52% more damage at 200 armour and 81% more damage at 80 million armour.
So getting a free last whisper is pretty good! But it doesn't cause you to do double damage. It certainly doesn't cause you to do quintuple damage.
Anyway, there's actually a lot of variables at play when working out just how good last whisper is going to be. Some champions like Corki, Ezreal, and Varus do a reasonable amount of magic damage which will reduce the power of armour penetration. Some enemy teams won't build much armour. Maybe you've got teammates who have armour shreds themselves to help you out? I'm going to try to simplify all of that and just assume all of your damage is physical and your team isn't going to help you at all. I will vary the enemy armour, especially because I want to see just how much armour it takes that building a non last whisper item will quintuple their effective health.
There's also the question of where it fits in your build order, or what you'd have to replace it. I'm going to assert you'll be building berserker greaves and bloodthirster first and will be adding in phantom dancer and infinity edge after that. Looking at a straight auto attacker like Caitlyn (who actually has 2 magic damage abilities, but they're not really used for damage) where are we standing? I'll assume she's using max rank peacemaker on cooldown and otherwise not doing damage with anything but auto attacks and that she's level 15 for the AD and attack speed gains per level. AD quints and armor pen reds will be the damage related runes, and pretty much all of the damage masteries are in play.
I built a spreadsheet to compare the different item options and it was actually pretty interesting. At an enemy armour value of 100 if you're only allowed one more item the most efficient item is last whisper. But if you're allowed two more items you actually want infinity edge and phantom dancer. The way those two items compound with each other pushes them over the top of last whisper with only one of them. But in both cases it was all pretty close. We're talking a difference of 5% or 7% in terms of damage done, which is small enough that I don't think anyone should be yelling about one choice over the other, especially since the 'right' choice varies depending on how long the game gets to go.
How about if the enemy has more armour? 200, say? Well, then last whisper is the big winner. It's 33% better as a single item and 7% better when combined with the phantom dancer.
What about less armour? The two people you're most likely to be fighting in the mid game are the people in your own lane and neither of them are too likely to build any armour. They might have, say, 60 armour? In that case last whisper is the worst single item and should be kept out of the duo items. Starting phantom dancer is 16% better and adding on infinity edge is 19% better.
So it seems pretty clear to me. If you'll be hitting someone without any armour items you don't want last whisper early. If they have a fed tank who built a ton of armour and will be in your face you need last whisper as soon as possible. If neither is really the case then it doesn't much matter. It's probably 'right' to build it first, but it depends on how much fighting you'll do at the one extra item mark compared to the two extra item mark. Oh, and while it's the most gold efficient item against the 200 armour people it's actually still the worst actual damage item. It just gets to win because of how comparatively cheap it is.
Now what about the ludicrous statement that skipping last whisper will make the enemy take FIVE TIMES as long to kill? How much armour do I need to give the enemy to make BT+LW+IE+Doran's Blade do five times as much DPS as BT+IE+PD? (The gold difference is 500, so I'll add in an item worth about that much to even things up.)
There is no such number. Even with 10^300 armour I can only make the last whisper set do 16% more damage. Maybe doran's blade is that abysmally bad? Or maybe I should be using PD instead of IE? It was the better set at 200 armour, though it has an even bigger gap of gold. I guess I can balance out that 1500 gold with an extra BF sword? That's pretty fair. So comparing BT+LW+PD+BF against BT+IE+PD I end up with the first set doing 4% more damage at 200 armour, and at ludicrous numbers of armour it still only ends up at 24% more damage.
Maybe the commentators are thinking Genja took the 2300 gold he could have spent on a last whisper and instead spent it on hookers and blow? Maybe if we just give out a free last whisper we can reach five times damage done? So let's compare BT+LW+IE+PD with just BT+IE+PD. In this case the first option does 52% more damage at 200 armour and 81% more damage at 80 million armour.
So getting a free last whisper is pretty good! But it doesn't cause you to do double damage. It certainly doesn't cause you to do quintuple damage.
Monday, April 14, 2014
Give Them What They Want?
League of Legends came out with a joke game mode for April Fool's this year. URF mode, where everyone had infinite mana and stupidly short ability cooldowns. It was meant to be a silly thing, up for a week. It was rather popular and they extended it for another week on top of that. It went away earlier today and people are not happy. Reading comments on any big internet post is probably a bad idea in general... Reading the comments on the removal announcement was not a terribly productive use of my time.
My first instinct is that removing it is a fine idea. Riot has an established policy of bringing out new game modes for short periods of time and then rotating them out. All for one where everyone on a team played the same champion, or hexakill where you played 6 on 6 instead of 5 on 5. The justifications for that policy make a fair amount of sense. Only putting these wacky game modes out for a short period of time puts the focus on them when they're up, increasing the number of people playing at once and reducing launch times for individual people waiting to play. Having 20 or 30 different game modes would risk fragmenting the user base to the point where the least popular ones might not launch. Rotating game modes out also gives the development team a chance to 'fix' any problems with it before they relaunch it. And limiting the number of modes available at any given time limits complexity when it comes to how other changes to the game engine might impact them. It's bad enough that they need to finesse the numbers for 120 champions on 3 maps as it is. Running 30 different maps with different durations for Singed's ult on each of them would be a bit of a nightmare.
On the other hand there seem to be a lot of people who want to play a game. This game exists. But these people can't play the game because the game owners just turned it off. The idea that games I want to play can just disappear on the whims of other people is one that makes me sad. I play lots of games that aren't necessarily popular (and that are often quite old) and that couldn't happen if the companies behind them could just make them disappear in order to further their other business interests. Why let me play Final Fantasy IV when they could try to make me pay them a bunch of money and play Final Fantasy XIII-2 instead?
Though in that case I own Final Fantasy IV in cartridge form, having paid for it already, and there's nothing Square needs to do in order for me to play it now. Here no one is paying Riot for a specific game mode and it is costing them bandwidth both real and developmental...
Maybe it's just a problem with online games in general. I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting old and crotchety. Back in my day I could play any game that I had in my hands!
Regardless, Riot gets to do what it thinks is best. Apparently that is to remove URF mode for the time being. So I went and played 4 ranked games today instead of URF mode, and I had fun. Woo!
My first instinct is that removing it is a fine idea. Riot has an established policy of bringing out new game modes for short periods of time and then rotating them out. All for one where everyone on a team played the same champion, or hexakill where you played 6 on 6 instead of 5 on 5. The justifications for that policy make a fair amount of sense. Only putting these wacky game modes out for a short period of time puts the focus on them when they're up, increasing the number of people playing at once and reducing launch times for individual people waiting to play. Having 20 or 30 different game modes would risk fragmenting the user base to the point where the least popular ones might not launch. Rotating game modes out also gives the development team a chance to 'fix' any problems with it before they relaunch it. And limiting the number of modes available at any given time limits complexity when it comes to how other changes to the game engine might impact them. It's bad enough that they need to finesse the numbers for 120 champions on 3 maps as it is. Running 30 different maps with different durations for Singed's ult on each of them would be a bit of a nightmare.
On the other hand there seem to be a lot of people who want to play a game. This game exists. But these people can't play the game because the game owners just turned it off. The idea that games I want to play can just disappear on the whims of other people is one that makes me sad. I play lots of games that aren't necessarily popular (and that are often quite old) and that couldn't happen if the companies behind them could just make them disappear in order to further their other business interests. Why let me play Final Fantasy IV when they could try to make me pay them a bunch of money and play Final Fantasy XIII-2 instead?
Though in that case I own Final Fantasy IV in cartridge form, having paid for it already, and there's nothing Square needs to do in order for me to play it now. Here no one is paying Riot for a specific game mode and it is costing them bandwidth both real and developmental...
Maybe it's just a problem with online games in general. I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting old and crotchety. Back in my day I could play any game that I had in my hands!
Regardless, Riot gets to do what it thinks is best. Apparently that is to remove URF mode for the time being. So I went and played 4 ranked games today instead of URF mode, and I had fun. Woo!
Tuesday, April 01, 2014
League of Legends: Ultra Rapid Fire
April 1st seems to bring with it two styles of 'pranks' on the internet. The first is where someone comes up with some sort of ludicrous or plausible lie and just throws it out there. I don't understand this at all. Some of it can be a little amusing I guess, but mostly it just feels pretty stupid. The other kind is where a website/game/whatever puts a ton of work into implementing something really absurd and cool for a day. Google has been pretty awesome with this sort of thing and this year they 'hid' 150+ Pokemon on Google Maps or something like that. This sort of thing seems fun for the users and like it was probably fun for the implementers too. I do understand this!
League of Legends has been coming out with new game modes to try on a short term basis and they timed their most recent one to coincide with April 1st. The 'back story' is that they're changing the big pro league to use just this mode starting next season which falls into the first camp which I don't like, but then they actually went out and implemented the game mode and put it live for a week which I do like. And getting two of the top pro teams to play a 'serious' game on the map as a way to introduce the mode was pretty amusing and they went far enough over the top that it's pretty clearly not true.
The mode involves knocking 80% off of the cooldown of every ability and making everything cost no mana. There are some other buffs as well like earning more money, moving faster, and getting more attack speed/crit from items. But the basic idea is everyone just stands around spamming buttons and making crazy things happen. I played a game and it was pretty fun. I think it would probably get old pretty fast but as a one week thing it's pretty great.
April Fool's Day is a pretty silly idea, but if people keep doing it like this I'm just fine with it. But you'll forgive me if I wait until April 2nd to listen to your baby announcements.
League of Legends has been coming out with new game modes to try on a short term basis and they timed their most recent one to coincide with April 1st. The 'back story' is that they're changing the big pro league to use just this mode starting next season which falls into the first camp which I don't like, but then they actually went out and implemented the game mode and put it live for a week which I do like. And getting two of the top pro teams to play a 'serious' game on the map as a way to introduce the mode was pretty amusing and they went far enough over the top that it's pretty clearly not true.
The mode involves knocking 80% off of the cooldown of every ability and making everything cost no mana. There are some other buffs as well like earning more money, moving faster, and getting more attack speed/crit from items. But the basic idea is everyone just stands around spamming buttons and making crazy things happen. I played a game and it was pretty fun. I think it would probably get old pretty fast but as a one week thing it's pretty great.
April Fool's Day is a pretty silly idea, but if people keep doing it like this I'm just fine with it. But you'll forgive me if I wait until April 2nd to listen to your baby announcements.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
League of Legends: Lane Freezing Revisited
A couple years ago I posted about the concept of freezing a lane in League of Legends. Adding that tool to my repertoire went a long way, I think, to my getting better at the game. Not just the ability to do it with Yorick but working out the how and the why and then practicing enough to be able to implement it as almost second nature with a variety of champions. But lately I've been watching the pro streams and often if someone gets into a frozen lane situation the commentators will talk about how bad it is. What's up with that?
Well, you need to look at what happens when a lane is properly frozen the way I described in the old post. Your opponent is completely locked out of an ability to participate in the lane and you're completely locked out of the the ability to do anything else. You also need to consider that freezing a lane up beside your turret requires killing fewer minions in the very short term. This means that unless the enemy has already been run off they will by necessity have earned more experience and could well have gained an extra level compared to you.
Two years ago, when I was playing in bronze and silver, none of those things mattered. Keeping my opponent from coming to my lane pretty much meant they didn't get to play at all. The jungle back then was much stronger so they probably couldn't have made a good return on time in there and even if they could it would probably just make their jungler angry. Being locked into this location was actually fantastic because it was guaranteed experience and gold and wandering around would probably just be a waste of my time just like it would be for my lane opponent. And no one was really good enough to plan out when they'd be leveling in order to actually take advantage of getting a level seconds before the other person.
In the pro scene? All of those things matter a lot. Scaring your opponent out of lane is just going to have him go somewhere else and do something relevant. Invade the enemy jungle with their jungler, or gank another lane, or push a turret, or kill dragon. Confusing people and making them waste time works against worse players but a pro isn't going to get thrown for a loop. Especially a pro on a premade team! Sticking yourself in one known spot is just going to let the other team make movements to punish it. By taking dragon or pushing a lane. By invading your nearby jungle. Or quite possibly just by tower diving you and killing you. And that minor level advantage? They'll just happen to have their jungler nearby to immediately punish you.
It's funny... Really bad players blindly push their lane by autoattacking. The first evolution to getting better is to stop pushing and focus on last hitting and farming. But then getting better again from there involves shifting back into a heavy pushing style. Of course you need to be able to push while still personally killing all the minions and while tracking likely jungler locations to make sure it's safe to do... Intelligent aggression is the name of the game, I guess!
I am not at the point where I can deal with these things myself. It's become pretty apparently recently as I've been playing a bunch of 3v3 matches with Robb and Lino. Some games I push my lane forward and then am stuck with the same problems I was forcing on other people. If I run up near the minions frozen at their turret I am vulnerable to getting ganked and killed. If I don't then I have nothing to do and get yelled at if I try to jungle. Other games I let the lane push up to me and then can get presented with the choice of giving up on experience by leaving the lane or letting my lane opponent wreck havoc on the other lane or our jungler or on the enemy altar.
It feels weird to get punished both ways, but the games where either happens tend to be the games against significantly better players. There's a website where you can look up the ranked tier of the people in your live game and the bad situations come up when we're playing people way better than we are. It's more than a little stupid that the matchmaker puts us against a team of 3 people who were diamond last season when we were gold, gold, platinum.
That said, there's got to be something I could be doing better. Maybe I need to play a really slippery champion so I can fight up near their turret when pushed up and expect to just run away if they react? Or someone who can wave clear really fast at low levels so I can reasonably expect to clear a big wave at my turret and still help contest an altar? Or just someone really good at low levels so I can push the lane and invade their jungler safely? Maybe I should just throw Robb under the bus and try to freeze the lane and let the enemy invade our jungle entirely? I don't know, but maybe thinking about it will lead to a solution!
Well, you need to look at what happens when a lane is properly frozen the way I described in the old post. Your opponent is completely locked out of an ability to participate in the lane and you're completely locked out of the the ability to do anything else. You also need to consider that freezing a lane up beside your turret requires killing fewer minions in the very short term. This means that unless the enemy has already been run off they will by necessity have earned more experience and could well have gained an extra level compared to you.
Two years ago, when I was playing in bronze and silver, none of those things mattered. Keeping my opponent from coming to my lane pretty much meant they didn't get to play at all. The jungle back then was much stronger so they probably couldn't have made a good return on time in there and even if they could it would probably just make their jungler angry. Being locked into this location was actually fantastic because it was guaranteed experience and gold and wandering around would probably just be a waste of my time just like it would be for my lane opponent. And no one was really good enough to plan out when they'd be leveling in order to actually take advantage of getting a level seconds before the other person.
In the pro scene? All of those things matter a lot. Scaring your opponent out of lane is just going to have him go somewhere else and do something relevant. Invade the enemy jungle with their jungler, or gank another lane, or push a turret, or kill dragon. Confusing people and making them waste time works against worse players but a pro isn't going to get thrown for a loop. Especially a pro on a premade team! Sticking yourself in one known spot is just going to let the other team make movements to punish it. By taking dragon or pushing a lane. By invading your nearby jungle. Or quite possibly just by tower diving you and killing you. And that minor level advantage? They'll just happen to have their jungler nearby to immediately punish you.
It's funny... Really bad players blindly push their lane by autoattacking. The first evolution to getting better is to stop pushing and focus on last hitting and farming. But then getting better again from there involves shifting back into a heavy pushing style. Of course you need to be able to push while still personally killing all the minions and while tracking likely jungler locations to make sure it's safe to do... Intelligent aggression is the name of the game, I guess!
I am not at the point where I can deal with these things myself. It's become pretty apparently recently as I've been playing a bunch of 3v3 matches with Robb and Lino. Some games I push my lane forward and then am stuck with the same problems I was forcing on other people. If I run up near the minions frozen at their turret I am vulnerable to getting ganked and killed. If I don't then I have nothing to do and get yelled at if I try to jungle. Other games I let the lane push up to me and then can get presented with the choice of giving up on experience by leaving the lane or letting my lane opponent wreck havoc on the other lane or our jungler or on the enemy altar.
It feels weird to get punished both ways, but the games where either happens tend to be the games against significantly better players. There's a website where you can look up the ranked tier of the people in your live game and the bad situations come up when we're playing people way better than we are. It's more than a little stupid that the matchmaker puts us against a team of 3 people who were diamond last season when we were gold, gold, platinum.
That said, there's got to be something I could be doing better. Maybe I need to play a really slippery champion so I can fight up near their turret when pushed up and expect to just run away if they react? Or someone who can wave clear really fast at low levels so I can reasonably expect to clear a big wave at my turret and still help contest an altar? Or just someone really good at low levels so I can push the lane and invade their jungler safely? Maybe I should just throw Robb under the bus and try to freeze the lane and let the enemy invade our jungle entirely? I don't know, but maybe thinking about it will lead to a solution!
Friday, December 06, 2013
LCS Qualifiers
Starting yesterday and running through this weekend there have been a couple of near-pro level League of Legends tournaments running. One for Europe and one for North America. Six teams in each one which qualified through various other tournaments and are currently playing a round robin format. Top 3 teams advance to the next round which will take place in a couple weeks. Those will feature the 3 qualifier teams facing off against the bottom 3 teams from last season's big league in a single best of 5 match. Winner gets to be a pro team!
I've been watching the games the last couple days and while the casting has been a little suspect the games have been interesting. I haven't actually played any real games with the new big patch so it's been nice to see some high level games using the new items and such. Supports building death fire grasps and zhonya's hourglasses is a nice change of pace!
I believe a list of upcoming games can be found on Leaguepedia which Lino told me about today. I think it's been worth tuning in for the games.
I've been watching the games the last couple days and while the casting has been a little suspect the games have been interesting. I haven't actually played any real games with the new big patch so it's been nice to see some high level games using the new items and such. Supports building death fire grasps and zhonya's hourglasses is a nice change of pace!
I believe a list of upcoming games can be found on Leaguepedia which Lino told me about today. I think it's been worth tuning in for the games.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
League of Legends: Preseason 4
Today marked the release of League of Legends patch 3.14 which marks the start of the preseason for season 4. The patch brought in a bunch of big changes to vision, supports, globals and jungling which all look to be pretty interesting and have me looking to stop playing Path of Exile 18/7 and switch back to at least some League of Legends.
First up they've changed the jungle so there are more monsters to kill and so the rewards scale based on your level and time to make it easier to catch back up if you're a jungler who fell behind. The claim is this will also allow for carry style junglers to exist again but that's what they said before season 3 and I feel like jungling was entirely about early gank pressure and not at all about farming. I doubt they'll succeed this time either but I hope they do. I think it would be good for the game if early lane pressure and late game farming were both reasonable options, but I worry that the line there is too fine and one or the other will just end up being significantly better and the 'only' way to play.
Global gold and experience from early game objectives (including local gold from player kills) has been reduced with the goal of curbing early game snowballing. I liked being able to help out the team by pushing my tower down early and I'm a little sad that it's going away but it seems like it could make pro games more interesting to watch if every game doesn't just have Caitlyn 2v1ing a lane to push down a tower.
Vision is getting changed by switching the burden of map vision onto the entire team. They're doing this by limiting the number of wards on the map to 3 per player so if you want more than that you need to get other people involved in warding. They're also giving all players a 7th inventory slot just for a vision trinket and making those free at the start of the game so everyone will have the ability to place a ward, or sweep for a ward, or scout ahead. Vision does win games so I like that they're 'forcing' everyone to get involved by making it free to start into. Maybe more people will see how good it is and buy extra wards?
Supports got drastically changed as a result of the vision change. It used to be that the support spent their gold on vision, period. Now they can't do that so much. So they changed all the supports to scale their CC up with ability power while reducing their damage from ability power with the goal of giving supports something useful to do with their new gold without just making them killing machines. They're also changing the way passive gold items work to switch up the way supports play. You can get one which encourages being near minions getting killed by some else, or one which encourages team fighting, or one which lets you last hit for your friend and they get the gold. I like this one in particular because it opens the ADC doing some harassing in lane without worrying about missing a minion because the support can go pick it off for them.
They've also announced a bunch of new features to be coming eventually. New map modes to shake things up for fun like a map where everyone has to play the same champion! They're also adding in a World of Warcraft 'dungeon finder' equivalent where you get to declare your champion and role in advance and get matched up with a team that fits your desires.
Initially my gut feeling was that this queue would take a long time to launch as people wait for supports to show up like tanks in an MMO but I'm not sure that's actually going to be the case. I frequently was in games when I was pushing to get platinum (I succeeded!) where someone aggressively wanted to play support and I suspect the new changes might make that even more true. I end up focusing too much on the situation at hand to like support very much (I have bad map awareness and like offloading that task to someone else) but I like that other people like to do it.
I can't wait for the pro season to actually start up again because I miss watching LCS games while I eat!
First up they've changed the jungle so there are more monsters to kill and so the rewards scale based on your level and time to make it easier to catch back up if you're a jungler who fell behind. The claim is this will also allow for carry style junglers to exist again but that's what they said before season 3 and I feel like jungling was entirely about early gank pressure and not at all about farming. I doubt they'll succeed this time either but I hope they do. I think it would be good for the game if early lane pressure and late game farming were both reasonable options, but I worry that the line there is too fine and one or the other will just end up being significantly better and the 'only' way to play.
Global gold and experience from early game objectives (including local gold from player kills) has been reduced with the goal of curbing early game snowballing. I liked being able to help out the team by pushing my tower down early and I'm a little sad that it's going away but it seems like it could make pro games more interesting to watch if every game doesn't just have Caitlyn 2v1ing a lane to push down a tower.
Vision is getting changed by switching the burden of map vision onto the entire team. They're doing this by limiting the number of wards on the map to 3 per player so if you want more than that you need to get other people involved in warding. They're also giving all players a 7th inventory slot just for a vision trinket and making those free at the start of the game so everyone will have the ability to place a ward, or sweep for a ward, or scout ahead. Vision does win games so I like that they're 'forcing' everyone to get involved by making it free to start into. Maybe more people will see how good it is and buy extra wards?
Supports got drastically changed as a result of the vision change. It used to be that the support spent their gold on vision, period. Now they can't do that so much. So they changed all the supports to scale their CC up with ability power while reducing their damage from ability power with the goal of giving supports something useful to do with their new gold without just making them killing machines. They're also changing the way passive gold items work to switch up the way supports play. You can get one which encourages being near minions getting killed by some else, or one which encourages team fighting, or one which lets you last hit for your friend and they get the gold. I like this one in particular because it opens the ADC doing some harassing in lane without worrying about missing a minion because the support can go pick it off for them.
They've also announced a bunch of new features to be coming eventually. New map modes to shake things up for fun like a map where everyone has to play the same champion! They're also adding in a World of Warcraft 'dungeon finder' equivalent where you get to declare your champion and role in advance and get matched up with a team that fits your desires.
Initially my gut feeling was that this queue would take a long time to launch as people wait for supports to show up like tanks in an MMO but I'm not sure that's actually going to be the case. I frequently was in games when I was pushing to get platinum (I succeeded!) where someone aggressively wanted to play support and I suspect the new changes might make that even more true. I end up focusing too much on the situation at hand to like support very much (I have bad map awareness and like offloading that task to someone else) but I like that other people like to do it.
I can't wait for the pro season to actually start up again because I miss watching LCS games while I eat!
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
League of Legends: Get Jinxed
Riot has been experimenting with different ways to introduce new champions for a while now, and the most recent champion came out a couple weeks ago with a pretty sweet music video:
They went out and got the lead singer from Djerv, a Norwegian heavy metal/rock band, to do the vocals. I think it's pretty great!
I finally got around to trying the champion out today (I built up enough IP to buy her at the 'no longer brand new' reduced price) and she feels good. I rarely got to play against her in games because she seems to get banned a lot. This tends to happen with new champions since people who don't know how to deal with them would rather just ban them than lose to them even if they aren't necessarily too good. Often they are too good because the test server isn't the best place to find a competitive balance, but sometimes it's just unfamiliarity.
I have a feeling she may be too good, and it's mostly because of her passive that basically does nothing for the vast majority of the game. What it does is gives her a massive speed boost for a short period of time after killing a turret or champion. So it feels like she should be able to hang back safely in the big team fights and then hunt down all of the wounded enemies trying to run away at low health. She just needs to get one of them and she should be able to get them all. It helps that her ult has unlimited range so there's even a chance she can pick one off at quite a distance and then use the speed boost to close on the others.
She doesn't have an escape which is rough for an ADC, but she does have a pretty good slow and a root wall. Her other ability drains mana on each attack to make her autoattacks do AoE damage. I've only played the one game against bots so far to get a feel for it, but I never had mana to use that ability and her low cooldown high damage slow nuke. It makes me wonder if maybe she should build mana of some kind... Like a Manamune! I remember wanting to build that on Ashe back in the day to fuel her mana draining autoattack and eventually discarded it because it was a terrible plan. But Manamune has been buffed since then, and AoE damage with extra range is better than a slow anyway... Maybe it's worth a shot!
They went out and got the lead singer from Djerv, a Norwegian heavy metal/rock band, to do the vocals. I think it's pretty great!
I finally got around to trying the champion out today (I built up enough IP to buy her at the 'no longer brand new' reduced price) and she feels good. I rarely got to play against her in games because she seems to get banned a lot. This tends to happen with new champions since people who don't know how to deal with them would rather just ban them than lose to them even if they aren't necessarily too good. Often they are too good because the test server isn't the best place to find a competitive balance, but sometimes it's just unfamiliarity.
I have a feeling she may be too good, and it's mostly because of her passive that basically does nothing for the vast majority of the game. What it does is gives her a massive speed boost for a short period of time after killing a turret or champion. So it feels like she should be able to hang back safely in the big team fights and then hunt down all of the wounded enemies trying to run away at low health. She just needs to get one of them and she should be able to get them all. It helps that her ult has unlimited range so there's even a chance she can pick one off at quite a distance and then use the speed boost to close on the others.
She doesn't have an escape which is rough for an ADC, but she does have a pretty good slow and a root wall. Her other ability drains mana on each attack to make her autoattacks do AoE damage. I've only played the one game against bots so far to get a feel for it, but I never had mana to use that ability and her low cooldown high damage slow nuke. It makes me wonder if maybe she should build mana of some kind... Like a Manamune! I remember wanting to build that on Ashe back in the day to fuel her mana draining autoattack and eventually discarded it because it was a terrible plan. But Manamune has been buffed since then, and AoE damage with extra range is better than a slow anyway... Maybe it's worth a shot!
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
League of Legends: Season 3 Ending
The end date for League of Legends' season 3 is October 31st. So there's about 2 weeks left to level up in order to earn the end of season rewards. Silver is worth a ward skin. Gold is worth an Elise skin (and the Elise champion if you don't have her already). On top of that, each tier is worth a different coloured banner for the loading screen.
Looking at things I'm currently gold I in solo queue, silver IV in 3s, and bronze I in 5s. I feel like we were in silver in 5s also, but since we haven't played a game with any of our teams since before WBC they've all gotten degraded down. I don't know that I really care about the 3s or 5s banners. I'd like to have them as high as possible, of course, but I'd want that to happen because I was actively playing them. That hasn't been the case, so having them be low isn't that big a deal.
The solo queue one, on the other hand, I might well be able to get going. For the last couple months I've been bouncing around in the 20-60 LP range, but in the last few days I've been playing a lot more and went on a bit of a winning streak where I've been able to play a lot of Renekton. I got up to 94 LP and won for +3. I've been here before, back in silver I, and was sad. At that time it was still possible to get 0 points for a win and I got up to 99 and got the 0 point win and got really bitter. This time I lost at 97 and went back down to 94. Won and back up to 97. Won again and got to 100! Woo! Promotion series time!
I've played one game in the series and it featured the guy picking 4th who spammed the team chat with "ONLY TOP", "BAN RENEKTON", "TOP OR FEED" until we gave in and said he could have what he wanted. He then proceeded to yell at each person on the team for every mistake made for the entire game. (Who knew that someone making all caps demands in champion select would end up so toxic?) We still almost won, but I know I played worse because of all the yelling and it was probably the difference in this particular game. Getting yelled at for doing no damage on a mid game Tristana is a little silly, I think, since she's not very good mid game. I was blowing people up late, but I didn't cleanse in the last fight that we lost because I wasn't thinking straight and it may well have been all the difference. I was so flustered I had to walk away and watch TV for a while instead of keeping on trying.
Will I win 3 of 4? Will I get promoted out of gold in the next two weeks? Stay tuned to find out...
Looking at things I'm currently gold I in solo queue, silver IV in 3s, and bronze I in 5s. I feel like we were in silver in 5s also, but since we haven't played a game with any of our teams since before WBC they've all gotten degraded down. I don't know that I really care about the 3s or 5s banners. I'd like to have them as high as possible, of course, but I'd want that to happen because I was actively playing them. That hasn't been the case, so having them be low isn't that big a deal.
The solo queue one, on the other hand, I might well be able to get going. For the last couple months I've been bouncing around in the 20-60 LP range, but in the last few days I've been playing a lot more and went on a bit of a winning streak where I've been able to play a lot of Renekton. I got up to 94 LP and won for +3. I've been here before, back in silver I, and was sad. At that time it was still possible to get 0 points for a win and I got up to 99 and got the 0 point win and got really bitter. This time I lost at 97 and went back down to 94. Won and back up to 97. Won again and got to 100! Woo! Promotion series time!
I've played one game in the series and it featured the guy picking 4th who spammed the team chat with "ONLY TOP", "BAN RENEKTON", "TOP OR FEED" until we gave in and said he could have what he wanted. He then proceeded to yell at each person on the team for every mistake made for the entire game. (Who knew that someone making all caps demands in champion select would end up so toxic?) We still almost won, but I know I played worse because of all the yelling and it was probably the difference in this particular game. Getting yelled at for doing no damage on a mid game Tristana is a little silly, I think, since she's not very good mid game. I was blowing people up late, but I didn't cleanse in the last fight that we lost because I wasn't thinking straight and it may well have been all the difference. I was so flustered I had to walk away and watch TV for a while instead of keeping on trying.
Will I win 3 of 4? Will I get promoted out of gold in the next two weeks? Stay tuned to find out...
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
League of Legends: Corki
One of my favourite champions due to available skins in League of Legends is Corki. He's a Yordle with an awesome handlebar moustache who flies around in a little plane. I have a skin that turns his plane into a Red Baron biplane which is just awesome. I've always liked playing Corki and he's recently received a bunch of personal and item related buffs. He was probably the top AD carry at Worlds and they kept bringing up on the streams how he uses a different set of boots than most people at his position. Most champions use the boots that make you autoattack faster since most of their damage comes from autoattacking. Ezreal has a build that uses cooldown reduction boots and that was really surprising to me. I have to assume all these pros know what they're doing when they're building the spell penetration boots, but I wanted to test and math it out myself to see what was going on.
I've played a few games recently as Corki, and I looked at the match summary screens afterwards. It seems like my damage done to champions was about 67% magical or so. 10k physical, 22k magical, 1k true... that sort of split. So the spell pen boots would be amplifying 2/3rds of my damage and the autoattack boots might be amplifying 30% if they're lucky. It really feels like they have to be better!
What does the spreadsheet say? The spreadsheet really makes it look like I should be doing a lot more autoattack damage. I think I'm failing really badly at modeling how Corki does damage. The problem is he has a huge range spell so often he'll be hanging in the back of the fight not able to auto attack at all. Also his spells do big area of effect damage so it's possible to hit multiple people at the same time with the spells and not so much with the autoattacks. I even went so far as to put in a full AP build but it couldn't come out better than an auto attack based build with trinity force.
Ok, so my spreadsheet is a disaster here. What about logic? Well, with that much of my real reported damage being magical it really seems like the spell pen boots are important to have. I should likely also run spell pen runes and masteries as well. Well, probably hybrid runes if I ever got around to buying them. But I think the big thing Corki has going for him is his ability to do damage at the start of a fight with his long range spell, but to still do a ton of damage up close in a skirmish or as cleanup. He needs to build a lot of standard AD items in order to make that happen. His passive doing 10% of his AD on each auto attack is pretty strong, but only if you're building normal stuff.
I've played a few games recently as Corki, and I looked at the match summary screens afterwards. It seems like my damage done to champions was about 67% magical or so. 10k physical, 22k magical, 1k true... that sort of split. So the spell pen boots would be amplifying 2/3rds of my damage and the autoattack boots might be amplifying 30% if they're lucky. It really feels like they have to be better!
What does the spreadsheet say? The spreadsheet really makes it look like I should be doing a lot more autoattack damage. I think I'm failing really badly at modeling how Corki does damage. The problem is he has a huge range spell so often he'll be hanging in the back of the fight not able to auto attack at all. Also his spells do big area of effect damage so it's possible to hit multiple people at the same time with the spells and not so much with the autoattacks. I even went so far as to put in a full AP build but it couldn't come out better than an auto attack based build with trinity force.
Ok, so my spreadsheet is a disaster here. What about logic? Well, with that much of my real reported damage being magical it really seems like the spell pen boots are important to have. I should likely also run spell pen runes and masteries as well. Well, probably hybrid runes if I ever got around to buying them. But I think the big thing Corki has going for him is his ability to do damage at the start of a fight with his long range spell, but to still do a ton of damage up close in a skirmish or as cleanup. He needs to build a lot of standard AD items in order to make that happen. His passive doing 10% of his AD on each auto attack is pretty strong, but only if you're building normal stuff.
Friday, September 27, 2013
League of Legends: World's Semifinals Coverage
The first semifinal match from worlds is happening tonight in about 20 minutes or so. Well, coverage starts then, which means the games probably won't start for an hour after that. Regardless, tonight's match is between the two top Korean teams in the tournament, SK Telecom T1 and Naijin Black Sword. I don't care which one wins, but I expect the games will be pretty awesome to watch. Check it out at the main LoL eSports site!
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
League of Legends: Season 3 World Championships
All this week there's a massive League of Legends tournament taking place in California. Or at least the first part of a massive tournament is this week. The whole thing is being spread across 3 weeks. There are 14 teams in the tournament with the top team from every region except Europe getting a bye through this week's games. (Europe lost the all star game so they didn't get a bye. I like how the all star game can have actual consequences!) The remaining 10 teams are broken into two pods of 5 teams and playing a double round robin event all this week with the top 2 from each pod advancing.
The games are being casted live on all the major streaming outlets and links can be found at the main LoL esports site. They're also being pretty diligent about breaking up earlier broadcasts into proper chunks which lets people who may be asleep late at night a chance to watch the games without having to futz too much with finding the right time on a YouTube video. I was a little annoyed at how lax they got in doing this during the regular season so I stopped watching for the most part, but they seem to care more about the final event.
Spectator sports are always more fun when you're cheering for somebody, and I for one am rooting for Gambit Gaming. They used to be known as Moscow Five in previous seasons when I really started watching streams and I liked their style then. It also helps that they're Russian and I've always had a thing for rooting for Russia in sports. I think it's my contrarian nature. I distinctly recall watching some major hockey tournament when I was a kid ('87 Canada Cup probably) and cheering against Gretzky and for the USSR. Anyway, the name also reminded me of the Russian Five line the Red Wings had back in the mid 90s. The mid laner for GG even looks a little like Pavel Datsyuk!
Anyway, I know some people like to watch high level games and they might not be away that the season final event is on right now. I wouldn't have known if Lino hadn't messaged me about them! So, go watch some games!
The games are being casted live on all the major streaming outlets and links can be found at the main LoL esports site. They're also being pretty diligent about breaking up earlier broadcasts into proper chunks which lets people who may be asleep late at night a chance to watch the games without having to futz too much with finding the right time on a YouTube video. I was a little annoyed at how lax they got in doing this during the regular season so I stopped watching for the most part, but they seem to care more about the final event.
Spectator sports are always more fun when you're cheering for somebody, and I for one am rooting for Gambit Gaming. They used to be known as Moscow Five in previous seasons when I really started watching streams and I liked their style then. It also helps that they're Russian and I've always had a thing for rooting for Russia in sports. I think it's my contrarian nature. I distinctly recall watching some major hockey tournament when I was a kid ('87 Canada Cup probably) and cheering against Gretzky and for the USSR. Anyway, the name also reminded me of the Russian Five line the Red Wings had back in the mid 90s. The mid laner for GG even looks a little like Pavel Datsyuk!
Anyway, I know some people like to watch high level games and they might not be away that the season final event is on right now. I wouldn't have known if Lino hadn't messaged me about them! So, go watch some games!
Friday, June 21, 2013
Whoaah! Frakkin' Zeno's Paradox!
Zeno was a Greek philosopher who lived around 2500 years ago who came up with a bunch of paradoxes that seemed to show that movement was actually an illusion and nothing could ever move. One of the paradoxes essentially took the stance that if you tried to move from point A to point B you'd never actually reach point B. The reason is that halfway between A and B will always be a point C that takes some finite amount of time to reach. But once you reach C there's going to be a new halfway point between C and B that will take some finite amount of time to reach. Because you can keep dividing this path in half you're going to have an infinite number of points to cross before you reach C, and they all take some finite amount of time.
Now, I've taken a walk before, and I tend to actually reach my destination. I don't know the actual refutation but it probably has something to do with the fact that in one step I actually reach a pretty large number of points all at the same time so once the halfway point gets close enough to the end point I'll hit them both at the same time.
This works great for walking, but it turns out it doesn't work so well for getting promoted out of the Silver I division in League of Legends. I complained earlier about how games used to be worth 20+ points with more points for a win than a loss. The swing near the top of Silver I is more like 3-5 points either way. This meant that without going on a pretty big winning or losing streak I wouldn't be able to see a real change in my position. People kept saying that doesn't matter and I just need to keep playing and winning, either to improve my hidden matchmaker rating or just to grind out small numbers of points over a long enough period of time to get up to the 100 I need for a promotion series. Ok, fine, whatever. Play some games, go on a streak, sure.
Earlier this week I went on such a streak and, winning 4 points at a time, got my way all the way up to 96 points from the 76ish I had. Got into my next game and won it too. Yes! Promotion series, here I come. Nope. Turns out a win at 96 points was actually only worth 2, not 4, so I only went up to 98. Ok, fine, whatever. One more game, which I lost. I lost 3 in a row, in fact, and tumbled back down to 87 points.
Play some more the next day, win more than I lose, get back up to 96. Win again. A gain of 2 points, to 98. Ok, fine, whatever. I was sorta expecting that. One more win and I should be good, right? Wrong. I won my next game, for +1 point. Whooah, I'm halfway there. 99 points. There's no more spots between me and 100 so the next win is golden, right? Wrong. I won my next game too, for +0 points. Movement, it would seem, actually is an illusion. I will never get to the end point because I can't get from 99 to 100 without passing through a middle point which doesn't exist and can't be reached.
Maybe one more win would be enough? I don't know because my next game was a disaster and I lost 3 points back down to 96. One loss undid three wins worth of points. (Though one of those wins was worth nothing so can you really say it got undone?)
I no longer feel like just play a bunch of games and win more than I lose is good enough. I've won significantly more than I've lost in recent days but will need to maintain a 75% win rate just to tread water. Not even the pros win that much against equal competition. So the idea that I need to win that much to stay still in Silver I is ludicrous. Either I'm significantly better than my competition and deserve to be promoted or I'm in the right spot and my point gains should maintain parity at a 50% win rate. The way things are now is illogical to me, which makes it very frustrating, and makes me want to stop playing.
I understand how rating systems work in general. The old system made sense. If I went on a winning streak I could expect to see my number go up. If I lost a bunch it would go down. I played a bunch near the end of season 2, went on a winning streak, and grinded my number up to the point where I was gold status. The similar winning streak now has me making no progress at all and wanting to break something.
Even worse, there's a website that shows you where the players in your games sit divisionwise. I've been checking out all of my games and pretty consistently now I'll be on a team with people in the gold divisions. You can also tell who has the higher hidden matchmaker rating because you pick champions in rating order. I know my rating is higher than some of these gold people as a result. Probably not by much, but it does show that it isn't unreasonable for me to get promoted. The arbitrary barrier where I simply can't get more than 99 points doesn't make sense to me when other people, with worse ratings, are gold themselves.
And really, even if I didn't deserve to be gold, what does it hurt to make it possible to get promoted anyway? Will the world collapse if I'm Gold V instead of Silver I? It really feels like giving me something to play for has to be worth the risk that an unworthy person gets into Gold V. Especially since some people are already there! If I'm not worthy why are the people with worse ratings than me worthy? The answer is Riot changed the rules after some people got promoted and I'm caught in the backlash because I played Blood Bowl when season 3 started instead of League of Legends. If I can't see that number go up maybe I should just go play more Blood Bowl now...
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