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Welcome to this patch's General Discussion thread for the League of Legends subforum. This thread is for discussion around League of Legends. Free feel to talk about anything LoL related here that does not already have its own thread.
Non-League of Legends discussion should go in the LiquidLegends Lounge.
Certain topics are blacklisted from LoL General Discussion and they include:- "Elo hell"
- The Tribunal
- Bans, either from TL.net or LoL
Additionally, the TL LoL Ten Commandments are available for you to reference if you have any questions about this subforum.
Use the LoL Strategy subforum if you have game or champion specific questions. Lastly, confine QQing and bragging to their respective threads.
Patch 8.12: Live on June. 13, 2018
+ Show Spoiler [Previous GD Threads & Patch Notes] +
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You know what everyone needs? 2 or more forms of CC, a dash maybe 2, some kind of pull... extra MS oh and rez and ah fuck it more damage - Rito
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surprised to see lucian untouched, i dont think ive seen him lose a single soloq game. but ez gets nerfed hm
irelia untouched too
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Reworked Aatrox when he's not in ult form looks so bleh.
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I guess riot really didn't like karma/lulu banner mid.
Shields nerfed, itemisation nerfed and banner removed all in the same patch :p
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Yeah, this is a textbook example of Riot enforcing the meta, they completely ended the shield support meta. Can't complain though, I'm happy there's going to be less Janna around.
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I don't mind it but nerfing the items and the champions in the same patch is classic riot
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I mind. There is a need for these Ori/Lulu/Karma (bleh Karma is stupid but still) midlaners, particularly for pro play. They, particularly when paired with aggressive ADCs are needed to keep certain very boring playstlyes in check where AOE is very strong and range/mobility are overly important for damage dealers.
I'd argue that most good metas have at least 1 of them as a top 3 midlaner, and 2 in the top 8.
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I don't mind in so far they've felt dominant for long enough that change could be good, but I would have done one or the other to start
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When was the Ori/Lulu/Karma midlane the meta?
I will admit I think the Yi mid/jungle with a support does intrigue me because I've always loved the idea of hardcarries coming back.
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Emotes now show up on screen even if the user is far away from you.
I wonder if I can block that.
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I will admit I think the Yi mid/jungle with a support does intrigue me because I've always loved the idea of hardcarries coming back.
Idk, it feels very cheesy and skewed too greatly in the favor of the team that runs it. Basically if Yi gets just a bit fed, he wins the game. At the same time, if Yi just gets to farm for 15-20 minutes, he will end up in the same position. It's like Juggermaw except it comes online faster and arguably scales harder. There needs to be another weakness to the strategy except 'Get Yi behind/ Win the early game super hard'.
Only good thing is that in pro play, it's a lot harder to get through the draft phase, or you can counter draft it.
I wonder if I can block that.
Patch notes mention it can be turned off.
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The shields wasn't super bad by themselves, it was the crazy stacking that was bad to me. If anything shields should have diminishing effectiveness when stacked, kind of like how stacking AS gives diminishing returns.
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I’m a little sad to lose banner. From the jungle, banner was a good way to build around the problem of laners who would randomly wander off after successful ganks rather than taking objectives. With banner you could gank, push wave , banner minnion, and that would probably get a tower even if the laner decides the best follow up to a gank is to go look closely at the raptor camp but not attack it. Edit: I understand it was an issue in the larger sense and I’m not saying it was actually good for the game, just that it made life in the jungle a little bit less frustrating
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On June 13 2018 16:15 DarkCore wrote: There needs to be another weakness to the strategy except 'Get Yi behind/ Win the early game super hard'. . That is generally the strategy against hard carries.
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On June 14 2018 00:12 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 13 2018 16:15 DarkCore wrote: There needs to be another weakness to the strategy except 'Get Yi behind/ Win the early game super hard'. . That is generally the strategy against hard carries.
True, I was thinking the same when I wrote the sentence, but the difference between Yi and other hard carries is that they often have clear weaknesses in either laning or team fighting. The whole point of Taric Yi is that you can't really stop him from farming, and that they hard carry team fights because no one in the game can last more than 5 seconds vs a lategame Yi. And that said lategame starts at the 15 minute mark if you just let him sit and farm. Teams have to be extremely proactive against him, and that involves risky play, because Yi already roflstomps at lv 6 if he gets to AA for a few seconds.
Basically, Yi comes online too early imo. The strategy isn't invincible, it can be beaten, but it feels super oppressive to play against, like the worst days of Juggermaw.
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Yi/Taric Nunu/Karthus Kayle/someone else This is a glorious age of the balance team being lost in the woods imo. They completely broke the game. There's 20+ or more champs that used to be from meta to barely viable on the brink of being completely ueless, with only a handful of champs being able to replace them. OR is there even more viabilty now?
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I think the change that made a massive impact that is barely talked about is baron. You can now easily take it at 20 mins with 3 guys. And with 5 you can start it anytime you are ahead and want a team fight. Because baron barely hurts you, just turn the fight. Or if they don't come get baron and turn your lead into a massive one.
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Yea I strongly prefer the patch with the high damage they way over reacted
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On June 14 2018 01:18 DarkCore wrote:Show nested quote +On June 14 2018 00:12 cLutZ wrote:On June 13 2018 16:15 DarkCore wrote: There needs to be another weakness to the strategy except 'Get Yi behind/ Win the early game super hard'. . That is generally the strategy against hard carries. True, I was thinking the same when I wrote the sentence, but the difference between Yi and other hard carries is that they often have clear weaknesses in either laning or team fighting. The whole point of Taric Yi is that you can't really stop him from farming, and that they hard carry team fights because no one in the game can last more than 5 seconds vs a lategame Yi. And that said lategame starts at the 15 minute mark if you just let him sit and farm. Teams have to be extremely proactive against him, and that involves risky play, because Yi already roflstomps at lv 6 if he gets to AA for a few seconds. Basically, Yi comes online too early imo. The strategy isn't invincible, it can be beaten, but it feels super oppressive to play against, like the worst days of Juggermaw. Eh. In the BBQ game, for instance, he came online early because there one team hard committed to Nunu-Karthus who only have slows, which Yi hardcounters. Then they just took a 2v2 in River and got rolled. If you have Sej-Syndra instead you can control Yi. They did in one fight where Gragas was in position and basically solo-contolled him.
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I almost wrote about the BBQ game, but decided against it because it doesn't back my point, it was lost because yeah, Karthus Nunu isn't very good against Yi Taric. Karthus was actually a lv and 10-20 cs up on Yi up until those first kills, but it was very apparent that Karthus comes online much later than Yi, and that Nunu is a glorified support item that also wards. Lategame, Yi would have suicided into Karthus, and gotten blown up by a 1.5k ult plus Lucian. But it never came to that, because Yi snowballed off one fight, and the whole enemy team was squishy asf so he just instagibbed everyone.
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I wonder if these changes taking place are less about Riot not knowing what to balance, and more like them trying to turn League into that other MOBA on the market (where our TL counterpart is much more successful than LoL TL).
I'll admit, the odds are more likely that this is just Riot not knowing how to balance stuff and they're equally as lost as the rest of us with all this fiesta going on, but let me play devil's advocate here for a moment. The other MOBA has been steadily growing in popularity the past few years due to a variety of reasons, but the following three things are why it's been so successful:
1. Simplifying the math behind the scenes (removal of generic stat increases past level 18) 2. Widening the pool of viable characters to play as in all rolls/positions (compared to LoL who had ~30 champions who were always viable and the rest were trash) 3. Improving flexibility of characters to fit different rolls based on items built, farm allocation, and level growth priority
League's been slowly doing these things the past year or so, and these past couple patches are when we are starting to realize that it's no longer TOP - Jungle - Mid - ADC - Support, but a change over to farm allocation priority, from Position 5 (usually the support) to Position 1 (the person who gets the most gold on the map because they give their team the best chance to win the game).
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On June 14 2018 06:45 Kinie wrote: I wonder if these changes taking place are less about Riot not knowing what to balance, and more like them trying to turn League into that other MOBA on the market (where our TL counterpart is much more successful than LoL TL).
I'll admit, the odds are more likely that this is just Riot not knowing how to balance stuff and they're equally as lost as the rest of us with all this fiesta going on, but let me play devil's advocate here for a moment. The other MOBA has been steadily growing in popularity the past few years due to a variety of reasons, but the following three things are why it's been so successful:
1. Simplifying the math behind the scenes (removal of generic stat increases past level 18) 2. Widening the pool of viable characters to play as in all rolls/positions (compared to LoL who had ~30 champions who were always viable and the rest were trash) 3. Improving flexibility of characters to fit different rolls based on items built, farm allocation, and level growth priority
League's been slowly doing these things the past year or so, and these past couple patches are when we are starting to realize that it's no longer TOP - Jungle - Mid - ADC - Support, but a change over to farm allocation priority, from Position 5 (usually the support) to Position 1 (the person who gets the most gold on the map because they give their team the best chance to win the game). Maybe, but it would be a total 180 from their usual hate of different power curves.
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On June 14 2018 06:45 Kinie wrote: I wonder if these changes taking place are less about Riot not knowing what to balance, and more like them trying to turn League into that other MOBA on the market (where our TL counterpart is much more successful than LoL TL).
I'll admit, the odds are more likely that this is just Riot not knowing how to balance stuff and they're equally as lost as the rest of us with all this fiesta going on, but let me play devil's advocate here for a moment. The other MOBA has been steadily growing in popularity the past few years due to a variety of reasons, but the following three things are why it's been so successful:
1. Simplifying the math behind the scenes (removal of generic stat increases past level 18) 2. Widening the pool of viable characters to play as in all rolls/positions (compared to LoL who had ~30 champions who were always viable and the rest were trash) 3. Improving flexibility of characters to fit different rolls based on items built, farm allocation, and level growth priority
League's been slowly doing these things the past year or so, and these past couple patches are when we are starting to realize that it's no longer TOP - Jungle - Mid - ADC - Support, but a change over to farm allocation priority, from Position 5 (usually the support) to Position 1 (the person who gets the most gold on the map because they give their team the best chance to win the game). To be fair, if Korea cared as much about that other Moba, they'd be dominating that one too.
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On June 14 2018 07:38 Gahlo wrote:
To be fair, if Korea cared as much about that other Moba, they'd be dominating that one too.
I think the reason why Korea doesn't care as much about the other MOBA is because of the DPC, and the overall torrent of international competitions compared to League. It's a lot cheaper to only have to worry about flying a team + support staff around once or twice a year compared to once or twice a month.
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More likely just lucky timing by Riot, game came out while sc2 was not as popular and blizz was still blocking be from being broadcast.
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Yeah, LoL is big in KR because it filled the void after SC, SCII didn't manage to do it and everyone was looking for a new game.
Don't think Riot is trying to copy other Moba, at least not directly. Their longevity plan has always revolved around the game constantly evolving, for better or worse, keeping it fresh and addictive so people don't leave. But we're in S8 now, and there are certain parts of the game that have been around for so long, they've basically become fundamental to the game. There is a limit to how many metas you can create without touching these things, and we've basically gone through all of them. Assassin, tank, shields, hypercarries, BC, TF etc.
So Riot decided they would go for a big change, which is the complete rework of ADC. Idk if their intention was to remove the role from viability or try to increase diversity, who knows. You can also argue they have no clue how to balance the game, but I really think it's because their priority is keeping the player base hooked, and that isn't tied to balance funnily enough.
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On June 15 2018 02:01 DarkCore wrote: Yeah, LoL is big in KR because it filled the void after SC, SCII didn't manage to do it and everyone was looking for a new game.
Don't think Riot is trying to copy other Moba, at least not directly. Their longevity plan has always revolved around the game constantly evolving, for better or worse, keeping it fresh and addictive so people don't leave. But we're in S8 now, and there are certain parts of the game that have been around for so long, they've basically become fundamental to the game. There is a limit to how many metas you can create without touching these things, and we've basically gone through all of them. Assassin, tank, shields, hypercarries, BC, TF etc.
So Riot decided they would go for a big change, which is the complete rework of ADC. Idk if their intention was to remove the role from viability or try to increase diversity, who knows. You can also argue they have no clue how to balance the game, but I really think it's because their priority is keeping the player base hooked, and that isn't tied to balance funnily enough.
Yeah I support your opinion, if they wanted the game balanced they would've had it already, they could hire a group of challenger/pro players and they would have done it in a spam of several patches probably. Riot just wants to constantly change things like as we know even a new ranked is coming soon
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On June 15 2018 03:45 M2 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2018 02:01 DarkCore wrote: Yeah, LoL is big in KR because it filled the void after SC, SCII didn't manage to do it and everyone was looking for a new game.
Don't think Riot is trying to copy other Moba, at least not directly. Their longevity plan has always revolved around the game constantly evolving, for better or worse, keeping it fresh and addictive so people don't leave. But we're in S8 now, and there are certain parts of the game that have been around for so long, they've basically become fundamental to the game. There is a limit to how many metas you can create without touching these things, and we've basically gone through all of them. Assassin, tank, shields, hypercarries, BC, TF etc.
So Riot decided they would go for a big change, which is the complete rework of ADC. Idk if their intention was to remove the role from viability or try to increase diversity, who knows. You can also argue they have no clue how to balance the game, but I really think it's because their priority is keeping the player base hooked, and that isn't tied to balance funnily enough. Yeah I support your opinion, if they wanted the game balanced they would've had it already, they could hire a group of challenger/pro players and they would have done it in a spam of several patches probably. Riot just wants to constantly change things like as we know even a new ranked is coming soon What does balanced mean? Full roster viable? They couldn't do that at a drop of a hat. Strategic viability? Also difficult to achieve.
You have to define what you mean by balanced before you begin to say how easy it is to balance. Even among those "pro/challenger" players you may find their own definitions of balanced are different. So what do you do then? Whose vision do you try strive for? If you look at it from the strictest sense of the word league is always balanced and never balanced at the same time. You always have a fair chance of winning regardless of what Riot do before the game starts but your decisions and the decisions of your teammates can make the actual game imbalanced. So Riot never has to do anything to achieve balance at the end of the day.
Really what people mean by balance is "this isn't the experience I want". That's fine but pretending that it's simple is silly
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^ Agree with above, balancing a game like LoL is basically impossible, because it's not a game of numbers, there are simply too many things to consider. And that is why Riot likes to focus on meta balancing, rotating through different parts of the game with nerfs/buffs/reworks. When the game stagnates, they bring in something new. They enforce the meta on different time scales, from small like Rumble buffs, mid term like Rageblade, to large such as the ADC support duo we have seen for years.
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i was actually gonna write a massive rant post on a blog about how valve failed to make dota the dominant moba despite having the better esport title. unfortunately i couldnt organise my thoughts well enough without making the post too massive so i dropped it. the point though, is that its clear riot isnt making a genuine effort to make lol the "best" competitve moba title. their success in the esports scene is due to luck (or great timing). their success within the casual playerbase is to their credit but should not be mistaken as a sign that they know what theyre doing in the competitive scene. they dont, or more likely, they dont care. i dont believe its possible to balance a moba to the point where it requires zero input by the developer like scbw. however as far as balancing a moba goes, icefrog has done it so much better throughout the entire history of dota (for as long as icefrog was the developer).
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On June 14 2018 08:04 Slusher wrote: More likely just lucky timing by Riot, game came out while sc2 was not as popular and blizz was still blocking be from being broadcast.
Not luck, LoL is just a really good game with enormous casual appeal. And casual appeal is one of the most important things if you want to have succesfull e-sport title. People like to watch games that they play themselves - that is the thing Blizzard never understood with SC2. Blizzard, instead of balancing SC2 around majority of players, focused on group of several Korean pros, and the results are clearly visible - LoL is one of the biggest e-sport brands, meanwhile major tournaments of SC2 can't even garner a fraction of LoL streamers viewership.
I tried DotA and hated it, despite the fact that I stopped playing SC2 and was searching for new game to focus. On the contrary LoL caught my attention instantly - there is something magical in this game that makes you want to play it and play it even after all those years.
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I agree with Embir, but I would still say that Riot still got lucky with how league went, they obviously tried to differentiate from dota and make a game friendly to casuals (which dota, bw and sc2 don't have, they are competitively oriented games , thats why they have better balance and more competitive games), however, I doubt Riot had even a close idea how successful this approach will become and that I call luck.
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On June 15 2018 18:07 Embir wrote:Show nested quote +On June 14 2018 08:04 Slusher wrote: More likely just lucky timing by Riot, game came out while sc2 was not as popular and blizz was still blocking be from being broadcast. Not luck, LoL is just a really good game with enormous casual appeal. And casual appeal is one of the most important things if you want to have succesfull e-sport title. People like to watch games that they play themselves - that is the thing Blizzard never understood with SC2. Blizzard, instead of balancing SC2 around majority of players, focused on group of several Korean pros, and the results are clearly visible - LoL is one of the biggest e-sport brands, meanwhile major tournaments of SC2 can't even garner a fraction of LoL streamers viewership. I tried DotA and hated it, despite the fact that I stopped playing SC2 and was searching for new game to focus. On the contrary LoL caught my attention instantly - there is something magical in this game that makes you want to play it and play it even after all those years. the reason sc2 failed is because korea was still salty about the way brood war ended. they dumpstered a great game to make something that started off broken and hard to follow, since no one even played sc2 when the pros made the initial switch. as for dota, you hating it is in no way an indication that lol is a "really good game". it has enormous casual appeal sure, but contrary to what you believe, that casual approach is the very reason balance is never stable in the competitive scene. i have not even a shadow of a doubt that had valve entered the korean market before riot, league would have met the same fate as hon.
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Not sure how relevant or objective is this, but let me tell you my story, how I got into league. I was around 20 when BW started to become an online gaming prodigy and I was fascinated with this new thing, until then I was playing with friends on 256/256 maps, 3-4 hour games with mass battlecruisers and carriers with many full limit battles - recharge and repeat. I immediately moved to the "competitive" way of playing the game and played as hardcore as my limits were allowing me, I was already 20+ and maybe not talented enough, however, I reached a level where I could snitch a game or two from mr. X or didi8 (the old gamers should know these names) from time to time. However, none of my bw friends (10+ people) liked and/or joined me in that journey and they were people who continued to spend a lot of their time playing games. Many years later, 12 or more, I felt that I am getting too rusty for BW, my apm dropped from 170 to 100, the game became too demanding for me. So I looked for other games and started to test league and dota and I felt in love with dota, it had similar competitive feel like bw, but not as mechanically demanding plus I could've played with my friends again. So, we played dota for several months, but my friends started to move to league one by one, until I was the only one staying in dota and when I asked them why would you prefer league, the game is too childish, you dont get punished enough when you make a mistake there, your cs cannot be denied, you don't lose gold when you die, you can spam too many abilities without getting fucked if you make a mistake etc. and all of my friends answered me: yeah, thats why we prefer to play league, they literally wanted to play a game, somehow in a competitive mode, while watching tv, listening to music and not be punished too much for that (of course they are punished in league too, but they dont feel it, its not that visible for them). So, I said fuck it, I want to play with friends now and went into league. It did not really happen because they all are still silver after 5 years while I climbed to diamond (playing with 25-30% of the dedication I had in bw), but I am with league now.
The reason I wrote this story is because I think that this is what made league so successful. 10 out of 11 people are attracted to this game, it gives them the competitive feeling in playing a game, without putting competitive efforts in it. 10 out of 11 people dont want to put the effort but all 11 want the competitive feel when they play, something like that, just my 2 cents.
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On June 15 2018 18:58 evilfatsh1t wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2018 18:07 Embir wrote:On June 14 2018 08:04 Slusher wrote: More likely just lucky timing by Riot, game came out while sc2 was not as popular and blizz was still blocking be from being broadcast. Not luck, LoL is just a really good game with enormous casual appeal. And casual appeal is one of the most important things if you want to have succesfull e-sport title. People like to watch games that they play themselves - that is the thing Blizzard never understood with SC2. Blizzard, instead of balancing SC2 around majority of players, focused on group of several Korean pros, and the results are clearly visible - LoL is one of the biggest e-sport brands, meanwhile major tournaments of SC2 can't even garner a fraction of LoL streamers viewership. I tried DotA and hated it, despite the fact that I stopped playing SC2 and was searching for new game to focus. On the contrary LoL caught my attention instantly - there is something magical in this game that makes you want to play it and play it even after all those years. the reason sc2 failed is because korea was still salty about the way brood war ended. they dumpstered a great game to make something that started off broken and hard to follow, since no one even played sc2 when the pros made the initial switch. as for dota, you hating it is in no way an indication that lol is a "really good game". it has enormous casual appeal sure, but contrary to what you believe, that casual approach is the very reason balance is never stable in the competitive scene. i have not even a shadow of a doubt that had valve entered the korean market before riot, league would have met the same fate as hon.
If SC2 had casual appeal no one would care if Koreans liked it or not. Game would be worldwide popular. As it stands SC2 exploded in popularity at the begining (you can say today's Twitch is a child of SC2) and then quickly faded - game was too hard, some stupid interface solutions were kept to artificially maintain skill requirement (why can't I have resoures indicators right above the minimap?) and game was constantly balanced only around the highest level of play, with completely disregard for casual player. Effect is clearly visible - detoriorating pool of casual players means detoriorating pool of viewers.
DotA as "brand" was already before LoL which was shameless clone of original DotA - and yet, despite this fact, LoL held it's first place spot. And the reason is casual appeal and elusive magic of this game. Discussion about which one of those games is better makes no sense because there is no definition of "really good game". And clearly for a lot of e-sport viewers LoL is a really good game. Streams numbers don't lie.
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For me, LoL is also a vastly superior spectating game over Dota. Visually it's more engaging, the map is smaller, the skills are more straightforward and at the heart of it, LoL is more a fighting game than a strategic one, where I feel Dota is the opposite? Granted I haven't seen much Dota so I could be wrong here.. It's also why I still prefer to view SC:BW over SCII, the graphics and how the game is played out are so much more appealing. Oversaturation, and/or cartoonization of graphics does loads for viewer experience. I loathe viewing competitive fps, even when I was an avid QIIIA player, because it feels so boring and messy. I like some overview and brood war and LoL bring that (almost) perfect experience for me.
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clearly you dont understand the point of this discussion. there is a difference between wanting your game to appeal to casuals, and wanting your game to be taken seriously as a sport. there is a distinction between the two and although riot would claim credit for both, they only succeeded with the former and they lucked out on the latter. if blizzard only wanted sc2 to perform in sales then we could say that they completely failed. however it is pretty obvious blizzard wanted sc2 to be more than just a cash cow, they wanted it to be the successor to the father of the korean progaming scene. this should be the metric by which we judge whether blizzard failed with sc2 or not; by looking at what their intention for the game would have been. blizzard wanted a serious rpg esport title and they developed the game towards that direction, and they failed because the korean audience preferred brood war and the trend for games shifted from rpg to mobas.
lols success in the competitive scene comes from the korean market. do you think koreans know that lol had a predecessor? do you think koreans even know dota exists? the answer is only very few. koreans didnt choose lol because it was better than dota, they chose lol because it was the first game available of the 2. if we assume that dota was a major title in korea alongside lol, do you really think lol would survive? whether casuals care or not, these games are only able to maintain their positions in e-sports as behemoths if they are viable in the competitive scene and generate revenue for interested parties. if you compare the state of both scenes, assuming korean infrastructure could support both, dota would definitely be the more interesting game for any team sponsor or player. dota fulfils its role as an esport title far better than lol does, therefore the game can be seen as more stable and attractive from the perspective of sponsors and pros. riot would have lost that competition against valve unless they changed their entire design and balance philosophy to match valve's and develop the game with a more competitive focus.
On June 15 2018 19:44 Uldridge wrote: For me, LoL is also a vastly superior spectating game over Dota. Visually it's more engaging, the map is smaller, the skills are more straightforward and at the heart of it, LoL is more a fighting game than a strategic one, where I feel Dota is the opposite? Granted I haven't seen much Dota so I could be wrong here.. It's also why I still prefer to view SC:BW over SCII, the graphics and how the game is played out are so much more appealing. Oversaturation, and/or cartoonization of graphics does loads for viewer experience. I loathe viewing competitive fps, even when I was an avid QIIIA player, because it feels so boring and messy. I like some overview and brood war and LoL bring that (almost) perfect experience for me. i think comparing spectator experiences is overrated. the truth is, people prefer to spectate whatever game they play or have more interest in. naturally a league player will say that league is better to watch, whilst dota players will argue that dota is better. i personally play (or played. havent played dota a long time) both games, and dota is by far more interesting to watch because the quality of the games at pro level is better. by quality i dont mean faker outplay-esque hype moments, i mean the strategic depth that is on display. when you reach a point where you understand the balance of the games and you can appreciate what the pros are doing, visual aesthetics dont mean anything for me.
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How long does it take to reach that point for Dota? I really tried to like SCII, I watched the first hybrid proleague and some initial tournaments. I was bored out of my mind. League, even though I didn't play it and wasn't even that interested in (kind of like with SC) just grabbed my eye immediately. I wouldn't downplay viewer experience just like that. There's something to be said about the aesthetic enjoyment of something that you can't put your finger on. It doesn't need to be strategic depth or big plays, it needs to be nice to look at. Or perhaps that's my individual approach to how I spectate a game. It's a blend of understanding, but also the superficial notion of how pleasing it is to my eye. Personally, Dota and SCII are fundametally ugly games to look at. The color scheme they use has very little pop and it makes it feel like everything blends together (too little contrasts or saturation or w/e it's called?). If Dota had the same color schemes like LoL I'd might like it more. So yeah maybe it is all (or mostly) a consequence of the economic aspects of it, but who knows to what extent each factor impacts the popularity of one game over the other.
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On June 15 2018 18:07 Embir wrote:Show nested quote +On June 14 2018 08:04 Slusher wrote: More likely just lucky timing by Riot, game came out while sc2 was not as popular and blizz was still blocking be from being broadcast. Not luck, LoL is just a really good game with enormous casual appeal. And casual appeal is one of the most important things if you want to have succesfull e-sport title. People like to watch games that they play themselves - that is the thing Blizzard never understood with SC2. Blizzard, instead of balancing SC2 around majority of players, focused on group of several Korean pros, and the results are clearly visible - LoL is one of the biggest e-sport brands, meanwhile major tournaments of SC2 can't even garner a fraction of LoL streamers viewership. I tried DotA and hated it, despite the fact that I stopped playing SC2 and was searching for new game to focus. On the contrary LoL caught my attention instantly - there is something magical in this game that makes you want to play it and play it even after all those years. league feels responsive and good to both play & control a character in a way other mobas don't.
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On June 15 2018 18:07 Embir wrote: Not luck, LoL is just a really good game with enormous casual appeal. And casual appeal is one of the most important things if you want to have succesfull e-sport title. People like to watch games that they play themselves - that is the thing Blizzard never understood with SC2. Blizzard, instead of balancing SC2 around majority of players, focused on group of several Korean pros, and the results are clearly visible - LoL is one of the biggest e-sport brands, meanwhile major tournaments of SC2 can't even garner a fraction of LoL streamers viewership.
This is so true. When SC2 Wings of Liberty came out I played that game a lot, and once the initial tiny maps left the map pool and it got to larger maps the game was really fun. But every change blizzard made to it made it less fun, especially the big changes like heart of the swarm and the Protoss expansion. Blizzard was designing what the highlight reel film clips looked like rather than designing what gameplay experience felt like. Battles were one of the more fun parts of the game, but blizzard kept adding “highlight reel” units that’s would blow up a whole army in under a second like widow mines and those Protoss things. Those were simply not fun to play against, they made most games end in anti climax instead of epic battles.
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Casual appeal is the #1 way to drive an esport to success in the West. This isn't BW in Korea where kids would grind for hours on end so they could get into Courage, or whatever. This is reflected in how even at the top of the ladder in NA or EU the gameplay is less advanced. In esports, people are far more likely to watch games they play as opposed to traditional sports where I've never played a game of organized (American)football in my life but watch my NFL team play.
It's why League has remained on top of MOBAs despite all other games it's had to compete with and why Fortnite has taken the crown from PUBG as the premier Battle Royal.
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On June 15 2018 21:22 Gahlo wrote: Casual appeal is the #1 way to drive an esport to success in the West. This isn't BW in Korea where kids would grind for hours on end so they could get into Courage, or whatever. This is reflected in how even at the top of the ladder in NA or EU the gameplay is less advanced. In esports, people are far more likely to watch games they play as opposed to traditional sports where I've never played a game of organized (American)football in my life but watch my NFL team play.
It's why League has remained on top of MOBAs despite all other games it's had to compete with and why Fortnite has taken the crown from PUBG as the premier Battle Royal. i think the main reason fortnite succeeded is because they actually fixed and improved the game over time where bluehole got complacent
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On June 15 2018 19:57 evilfatsh1t wrote: clearly you dont understand the point of this discussion. there is a difference between wanting your game to appeal to casuals, and wanting your game to be taken seriously as a sport. there is a distinction between the two and although riot would claim credit for both, they only succeeded with the former and they lucked out on the latter. If people watch a competitive game it is being taken serious as a sport and here we are with League having some of if not the most viewed tournaments. Not even to mention how popular it is in Korea the country where eSports is being taken the most serious.
On June 15 2018 19:57 evilfatsh1t wrote: lols success in the competitive scene comes from the korean market. do you think koreans know that lol had a predecessor? do you think koreans even know dota exists? the answer is only very few. koreans didnt choose lol because it was better than dota, they chose lol because it was the first game available of the 2. Yes. The koreans didn't know of a game based on the engine from a company that had made the most succesful game in their country and it's not like they had Warcraft 3 tournaments either. Totally. Come on.
Dota didn't appeal to the koreans for what ever reason we can only speculate about until someone makes a scientific study.
On June 15 2018 19:57 evilfatsh1t wrote: if we assume that dota was a major title in korea alongside lol, do you really think lol would survive? whether casuals care or not, these games are only able to maintain their positions in e-sports as behemoths if they are viable in the competitive scene and generate revenue for interested parties. if you compare the state of both scenes, assuming korean infrastructure could support both, dota would definitely be the more interesting game for any team sponsor or player. dota fulfils its role as an esport title far better than lol does, therefore the game can be seen as more stable and attractive from the perspective of sponsors and pros. riot would have lost that competition against valve unless they changed their entire design and balance philosophy to match valve's and develop the game with a more competitive focus. You are so biased it's not even fun, "dota is better because I think it is".
The only sensible metric for how "good" a game is would be it's succes and clearly League have had a better run than Dota. How good you and I think game X is would be our personal opinion and while we could make our arguements all day numbers doesn't lie.
This whole discussion is one probably the most silly one I've seen on the forum for ages.
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On June 15 2018 19:57 evilfatsh1t wrote: i think comparing spectator experiences is overrated. the truth is, people prefer to spectate whatever game they play or have more interest in. naturally a league player will say that league is better to watch, whilst dota players will argue that dota is better. i personally play (or played. havent played dota a long time) both games, and dota is by far more interesting to watch because the quality of the games at pro level is better. by quality i dont mean faker outplay-esque hype moments, i mean the strategic depth that is on display. when you reach a point where you understand the balance of the games and you can appreciate what the pros are doing, visual aesthetics dont mean anything for me.
I actually think ability to watch and casual appeal are connected in this respect. Dota 2 and SCII are both very visually dense in a way that makes what a player is doing often hard to perceive. The higher difficulty is IMO secondary. WOW war released with pretty insane difficulty for even mid-level raiding shit, and it wasn't until significantly through its first expansion and basically the 2 year mark that average joes could clear most of the 5 man dungeons.
Dota's problem was timing + visuals. If it came out first, and looked like WOW the same "League newbs" would have been praising the merits of denies, "fun" supports like Bounty, and calling LOL stupid with lame supports ("lol they basically play KOTL and Earthshaker every game how lame!").
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On June 15 2018 21:28 Frolossus wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2018 21:22 Gahlo wrote: Casual appeal is the #1 way to drive an esport to success in the West. This isn't BW in Korea where kids would grind for hours on end so they could get into Courage, or whatever. This is reflected in how even at the top of the ladder in NA or EU the gameplay is less advanced. In esports, people are far more likely to watch games they play as opposed to traditional sports where I've never played a game of organized (American)football in my life but watch my NFL team play.
It's why League has remained on top of MOBAs despite all other games it's had to compete with and why Fortnite has taken the crown from PUBG as the premier Battle Royal. i think the main reason fortnite succeeded is because they actually fixed and improved the game over time where bluehole got complacent They also started with a proper game engine and netcode already in place, so a lot of the fps and lag problems which are still an issue in pubg today they sidestepped entirely.
That + being f2p + being a little more kid friendly combined with the fact 10-15 year olds can spend a fuckton of their time playing games/watching streams made the game explode through twitch/youtube/word of mouth.
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On June 16 2018 00:37 killerdog wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2018 21:28 Frolossus wrote:On June 15 2018 21:22 Gahlo wrote: Casual appeal is the #1 way to drive an esport to success in the West. This isn't BW in Korea where kids would grind for hours on end so they could get into Courage, or whatever. This is reflected in how even at the top of the ladder in NA or EU the gameplay is less advanced. In esports, people are far more likely to watch games they play as opposed to traditional sports where I've never played a game of organized (American)football in my life but watch my NFL team play.
It's why League has remained on top of MOBAs despite all other games it's had to compete with and why Fortnite has taken the crown from PUBG as the premier Battle Royal. i think the main reason fortnite succeeded is because they actually fixed and improved the game over time where bluehole got complacent They also started with a proper game engine and netcode already in place, so a lot of the fps and lag problems which are still an issue in pubg today they sidestepped entirely. That + being f2p + being a little more kid friendly combined with the fact 10-15 year olds can spend a fuckton of their time playing games/watching streams made the game explode through twitch/youtube/word of mouth. They both use Unreal4.
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This conversation reminds me of the time I asked Madlife what he thought about league being called a casual game by western gamers and he straight up ignored the question lol
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On June 16 2018 00:28 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2018 19:57 evilfatsh1t wrote: i think comparing spectator experiences is overrated. the truth is, people prefer to spectate whatever game they play or have more interest in. naturally a league player will say that league is better to watch, whilst dota players will argue that dota is better. i personally play (or played. havent played dota a long time) both games, and dota is by far more interesting to watch because the quality of the games at pro level is better. by quality i dont mean faker outplay-esque hype moments, i mean the strategic depth that is on display. when you reach a point where you understand the balance of the games and you can appreciate what the pros are doing, visual aesthetics dont mean anything for me. I actually think ability to watch and casual appeal are connected in this respect. Dota 2 and SCII are both very visually dense in a way that makes what a player is doing often hard to perceive. The higher difficulty is IMO secondary. WOW war released with pretty insane difficulty for even mid-level raiding shit, and it wasn't until significantly through its first expansion and basically the 2 year mark that average joes could clear most of the 5 man dungeons. Dota's problem was timing + visuals. If it came out first, and looked like WOW the same "League newbs" would have been praising the merits of denies, "fun" supports like Bounty, and calling LOL stupid with lame supports ("lol they basically play KOTL and Earthshaker every game how lame!").
Ability to watch is primary. After having a working, fun game to begin with, the spectator experience is paramount to whether or not a game can succeed as an ESport.
First, the viewer has to be able to follow the action. Traditional sports have a ball to follow, and a singular objective to score (a net, goal line, home plate). It's why FPS games like CS:GO and Overwatch will never really grow any bigger than they already are. The games are a giant clusterfuck of action that the viewer can't properly follow. It's also why LoL took off while SC2 stagnated. Again, LoL has objectives that can be focused on, while SC2 is a clusterfuck of action until both players 1a at the end of the game.
Secondly, the viewer has to be able to tell what is what, and who is who. Again, CS:GO and Overwatch fail miserably with the casual viewer. All the character portraits look very similar and with the camera flashing around all the action, the viewer can't easily relate to what is happening on screen. In SC2 the colour-scheme makes everything bland and dull (compared to the bright and colourful visuals of BW), making it hard to follow everything that's happening. DOTA has the same problem, I'm a pretty hardcore gamer and I can't easily tell the difference between the actual player-controlled units, and the minions that act as fodder for them to progress through the game... That is a HUGE problem.
The spectator experience is why my wife became a fan of LoL, even though she's never played the game before in her life (that, and a crush on Darius). And she's not the only one. I don't know the actual statistics, but I would wager that a pretty large percentage of the viewerbase for League are people that have either never played the game, or only played a few times. But it's bright visuals, and objective-based gameplay, combined with a professional production-value (Remember in the SC2 days when nerds insisted that announcers didn't need to wear suits and could use words like "Rape" during the broadcast?) make it easy for them to follow along.
I think Fortnite is taking off for a similar reason. Although it is still pretty difficult to follow the action at the beginning of a round, the bright visuals and the end-game make it easy for spectators to follow along with what is happening. And watching really good players build as they move around is really, really cool.
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You are so wrong it hurts
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On June 16 2018 01:27 Slusher wrote: This conversation reminds me of the time I asked Madlife what he thought about league being called a casual game by western gamers and he straight up ignored the question lol what do we consider hardcore these days besides melee and EVE online?
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On the subject of, "visual readability" LoL does it better than Dota, and that's because of three main things: larger/brighter color palette used, few lingering particle effects from abilities, and fewer customization options for characters.
If you look at the color palette used in Dota, a lot of the map tones are a muted, more realistic hue. There's also a dedicated day/night cycle to play with vision radius for players, which is a thing that LoL simply doesn't do. By in large, if you look at fights that take place in Dota during the day things tend to be a bit more visually appealing and easier to track. Where-as at night your eyes are drawn to the effect of the spells being cast, letting a person lose track of the heroes on screen.
Second, by in large most of the particle effects in LoL only stay on the screen for a few seconds before fading, with minor exceptions (Aurelion Sol's stars being the biggest one). Compare that to Dota, where heroes can throw out a huge particle effect to administer a large debuff on the enemy team for a long time. In addition, even "short" spells like Lina's Q tend to last longer on-screen than Annie's W (probably the closest comparison I can make based on what those spells do).
Third, while LoL has a ton of skins for their champions, the portraits displayed for them in-game don't change unless it's a unique skin (usually the Ultimate or Legendary skins). And the champions models in-game stay the same relative size and shape as their base version. Compare that to Dota, where not only can you mix and match skins based on the equipment that hero uses, but the portraits themselves are rather small for the in-client spectator mode. And then they have the same thing with LoL where certain skins will change the portraits (their Arcana skins). I can't tell you the number of times I've looked at a Dota stream, saw the portraits and had to do a double-take to make sure one team was running a hero that was "out-of-meta," only for it to be a meta hero with the Arcana skin.
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On June 16 2018 00:00 Jek wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2018 19:57 evilfatsh1t wrote: clearly you dont understand the point of this discussion. there is a difference between wanting your game to appeal to casuals, and wanting your game to be taken seriously as a sport. there is a distinction between the two and although riot would claim credit for both, they only succeeded with the former and they lucked out on the latter. If people watch a competitive game it is being taken serious as a sport and here we are with League having some of if not the most viewed tournaments. Not even to mention how popular it is in Korea the country where eSports is being taken the most serious. Show nested quote +On June 15 2018 19:57 evilfatsh1t wrote: lols success in the competitive scene comes from the korean market. do you think koreans know that lol had a predecessor? do you think koreans even know dota exists? the answer is only very few. koreans didnt choose lol because it was better than dota, they chose lol because it was the first game available of the 2. Yes. The koreans didn't know of a game based on the engine from a company that had made the most succesful game in their country and it's not like they had Warcraft 3 tournaments either. Totally. Come on. Dota didn't appeal to the koreans for what ever reason we can only speculate about until someone makes a scientific study. Show nested quote +On June 15 2018 19:57 evilfatsh1t wrote: if we assume that dota was a major title in korea alongside lol, do you really think lol would survive? whether casuals care or not, these games are only able to maintain their positions in e-sports as behemoths if they are viable in the competitive scene and generate revenue for interested parties. if you compare the state of both scenes, assuming korean infrastructure could support both, dota would definitely be the more interesting game for any team sponsor or player. dota fulfils its role as an esport title far better than lol does, therefore the game can be seen as more stable and attractive from the perspective of sponsors and pros. riot would have lost that competition against valve unless they changed their entire design and balance philosophy to match valve's and develop the game with a more competitive focus. You are so biased it's not even fun, "dota is better because I think it is". The only sensible metric for how "good" a game is would be it's succes and clearly League have had a better run than Dota. How good you and I think game X is would be our personal opinion and while we could make our arguements all day numbers doesn't lie. This whole discussion is one probably the most silly one I've seen on the forum for ages. viewership is a bad way to determine whether the game is actually well designed at a competitive level. the viewership numbers for league are inflated because of its massive playerbase that, statistically speaking, arent skilled enough to even make a determination on whether the game has design flaws or not.
im korean, ive lived in korea, have plenty of korean friends that play league and literally only 1 person i know had heard of dota. you think just because warcraft was big famous wc3 custom maps are suddenly common knowledge? koreans had their own moba equivalent from the wc3 custom map days, called chaos. they had little to no exposure to dota at all prior to league all the way up until the international started making headlines due to its ridiculous prize pools. even valve and nexons pathetic attempt to market the game in korea went mostly unnoticed. please dont attempt to dismiss what i say when youre clearly oblivious to what actually goes on in korea.
as for your argument that im biased, yes, i am. but my bias has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that league is a shit esport title and theyve only managed to succeed until now because they luckily monopolised the korean market in the moba genre. a good game only makes up for half of the requirements for a stable competitive scene. id concede that my bias would lead me to say dota has better game design in general (not referring to visual design), but tbh i dont even need to argue this point at all. completely ignoring the actual gameplay of both games, riots design and balance philosophy is the exact opposite of what investors would want in any game they choose to endorse. investors want to put their money in a place that they know will be stable and can survive long enough for them to see a return on investment. could you put money on riot to not one day destroy the game with some stupid patch that wasnt thought out properly? even the most popular league streamers openly bash riot and league for their incompetence in maintaining the game at a balanced state for players who actually care about high level play. then theres the cherry on top where riot has made it common knowledge that they are not interested in keeping their game stale, they want to change things up regularly. they even have a set number of patches that they must get through every season. when the developer of the game youre trying to endorse actively tries to bring volatility into the scene youre not going to be confident about your investment. what amateur would be confident about making a career jump to pro when you dont even know if riot decides to dumpster the game because an employee didnt like the way things were?
lucky for riot, korean investors (sponsors, teams, players, broadcast channels etc), dont have any other options in the moba category. riot literally has no other competition because valve completely fucked up in trying to get dota into that market. if dota had a foothold in korea, then the above points about riots irresponsibility as an esport developer becomes a major factor in deciding whether to choose lol or dota as a game to sponsor. valves method of balancing and patching the game would prove to be far more attractive and this would either kill lol or force riot to change their ways. also before anyone brings up another country as a rebuttle for this, the only country that would come close to korea in esports investments is china. you cant compare korea (a country whos investors dont have the sufficient funds to sponsor both) to china (where investors are literally swimming in money)
tldr; riot entered the korean market before valve and hit the jackpot. now they can do whatever the fk they want and not have to worry about losing to competition because they have the exclusive backing of an entire nation that also happens to be the biggest country in esports. their success isnt due to their game being superior in any way, its because riots business team was better than valves.
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On June 15 2018 20:29 Uldridge wrote: How long does it take to reach that point for Dota? I really tried to like SCII, I watched the first hybrid proleague and some initial tournaments. I was bored out of my mind. League, even though I didn't play it and wasn't even that interested in (kind of like with SC) just grabbed my eye immediately. I wouldn't downplay viewer experience just like that. There's something to be said about the aesthetic enjoyment of something that you can't put your finger on. It doesn't need to be strategic depth or big plays, it needs to be nice to look at. Or perhaps that's my individual approach to how I spectate a game. It's a blend of understanding, but also the superficial notion of how pleasing it is to my eye. Personally, Dota and SCII are fundametally ugly games to look at. The color scheme they use has very little pop and it makes it feel like everything blends together (too little contrasts or saturation or w/e it's called?). If Dota had the same color schemes like LoL I'd might like it more. So yeah maybe it is all (or mostly) a consequence of the economic aspects of it, but who knows to what extent each factor impacts the popularity of one game over the other. i played dota for 9 years before i quit at pro level. switched to lol to try something new and am on my 3rd year now. so its no surprise that im interested more in gameplay depth rather than visual appeal. ill accept that this is up to personal preference though lol is particularly popular with female gamers, so there is definitely visual appeal in lol that cannot be denied even by dota players. but i dont know how people can look at a vacuum/black hole/meteor+deafening blast wombo combo and say lols skills look better. wat
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On June 16 2018 00:40 Gahlo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2018 00:37 killerdog wrote:On June 15 2018 21:28 Frolossus wrote:On June 15 2018 21:22 Gahlo wrote: Casual appeal is the #1 way to drive an esport to success in the West. This isn't BW in Korea where kids would grind for hours on end so they could get into Courage, or whatever. This is reflected in how even at the top of the ladder in NA or EU the gameplay is less advanced. In esports, people are far more likely to watch games they play as opposed to traditional sports where I've never played a game of organized (American)football in my life but watch my NFL team play.
It's why League has remained on top of MOBAs despite all other games it's had to compete with and why Fortnite has taken the crown from PUBG as the premier Battle Royal. i think the main reason fortnite succeeded is because they actually fixed and improved the game over time where bluehole got complacent They also started with a proper game engine and netcode already in place, so a lot of the fps and lag problems which are still an issue in pubg today they sidestepped entirely. That + being f2p + being a little more kid friendly combined with the fact 10-15 year olds can spend a fuckton of their time playing games/watching streams made the game explode through twitch/youtube/word of mouth. They both use Unreal4. There's more to a game than the underlying engine though. I could make snake which runs at 1fps on an i7/titan using unreal 4 if i wanted to. The codebase fortnite built ontop of the of the underlying engine was vastly superior and more stable than what bluehole bodged together for pubg.
It helps when the guys developing the game are the same people who developed the engine itself,
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Since other people shared their story, I'd also like to highlight why I picked up LoL and stuck with it. I started playing games on a Mac, which severely limited what I could play to begin with. I played a load of AoE III, up until my multiplayer broke. Around that time, SC II was announced, and reading the description as a kid, it seemed the perfect replacement for my needs, namely competing online. So I bought the game when it came out, and played it for a while. However, little me was always intimidated by the immense pressure of 1vs1, where every single mistake was punished incredibly hard, and getting to Diamond (after Masters was implemented) was so damn difficult, not to mention you'd get cheesed every 5th game at least, and it made my blood boil to no end. I ended up playing 3vs3 and 4vs4 all the way into Masters instead, spamming marines every single game.
Eventually I got my first Windows laptop, and became aware of a game called LoL by randomly browsing the games section on Twitch. I watched Froggen play and had no fucking clue what was going on. But the game looked entertaining, not least because it looked like it would fill my need for a mechanically intensive game. And once I made it out the hell hole that was sub lv 30 and got to ranked, I discovered that ignoring every other factor, I was enjoying the game simply because it was less competitive and demanded a lower margin of 'perfection'. I eventually settled for ADC, aka brain dead mechanics role, and have stuck with it since. Everytime I tried to play SC II again, I realized that the player base is just too hardcore, even making it into Platinum by the end of WoL was a slog, because the people who stuck around had all become veterans.
Point is, the lower competitiveness aspect of LoL is what makes it fun. If you want a hardcore game, go play Dota, or take a risk with trying out SC II again. But for 90% of all MOBA/RTS games, LoL is the right mix of tryhard to fun factor, and that's why you don't see the player base moving onto other games. Riot didn't just get lucky by being there first after BW, they're still around because they know how to cater to the larger audience, and other games either don't understand that, or purposely don't pursue this direction.
The codebase fortnite built ontop of the of the underlying engine was vastly superior and more stable than what bluehole bodged together for pubg.
Fortnite is developed by the company who makes the engine itself, ofc they have much better understanding of the code, in fact Epic Games have been adding features to meet to their own needs. That doesn't excuse the poor performance of PUBG, but they had quite an ambitious concept and just failed. Which they could do because everyone bought the game when it was still Early Access, so they'd already made their money.
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That's what i said in my last post :p
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I like dota 2, sc2, bw and league. Don't really get the hate for either of them, they all do some stuff well and others poorly. Think BW is prob the only one that stands out. Do miss days of Quake being the FPS game too far more fun than CS :D.
I do mostly play league though, find it's just the better easier solo game out of them all. RTS is too hard man.
edit: Freak how could I forget TF2. That game may be most fun I've had being semi-competitive.
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SC2 could have easily been THE game if blizzard didn't do everything in their power to stop it.
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Yeah. I think people are really underestimating the shear number of bad balance and development choices Blizzard made and how obnoxious and rude they were to their community and fans. Blizzard tried really hard to not be liked.
WoL had a lot going for it and it would not have been that hard for blizzard to have had a run away success with it if they had only been just a little bit less arrogant and listened to their customers more.
As a disclaimer I may be biased since I did put a decent amount of time into playing WoL getting my toss and Zerg to diamond and my Terran to high plat (though to be fair I kinda cheated on Terran since I never learned macro for that race and just used timing attacks)
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It’s not really about balance as much as how they tried to get ogn to cave to them and failed
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It was a lot of poor decisions. When WoL was first released they refused to use other comp maps and instead forced really shit maps on both ladder as well as their competitions. Then there was that whole fighting with Kespa and OGN.
Blizzard management is just very headstrong and not particularly smart. You see the exact same type of mistakes in basically all their titles. Hearthstone and Overwatch learnt basically nothing from SC2.
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On June 16 2018 06:45 Numy wrote: I like dota 2, sc2, bw and league. Don't really get the hate for either of them, they all do some stuff well and others poorly. Think BW is prob the only one that stands out. Do miss days of Quake being the FPS game too far more fun than CS :D.
I do mostly play league though, find it's just the better easier solo game out of them all. RTS is too hard man.
edit: Freak how could I forget TF2. That game may be most fun I've had being semi-competitive. Man. Why did you have to bring Quake up. Still miss it and still get even more bummed out when I log into one of the OG servers and get clapped to oblivion and back. It's impressive just how much you can deteriorate over time. lol
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On June 16 2018 07:21 Slusher wrote: It’s not really about balance as much as how they tried to get ogn to cave to them and failed Honestly that part really doesn't matter much. All they had to do was create a proper custom map finder and help the decent ones get traction.
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On June 16 2018 07:32 Numy wrote: It was a lot of poor decisions. When WoL was first released they refused to use other comp maps and instead forced really shit maps on both ladder as well as their competitions. Then there was that whole fighting with Kespa and OGN.
Blizzard management is just very headstrong and not particularly smart. You see the exact same type of mistakes in basically all their titles. Hearthstone and Overwatch learnt basically nothing from SC2.
I mean, D3 was easily their greatest failure. D2 is still a game that holds up and you can play through over and over even in 2018. In making D3 they tried combining the random drops of D2 with the gearchecks of WOW and the constant gear treadmill of WOW and it never could get past that initial really bad opening gambit. SC2, I would argue, had a very low chance of consistent success once there were real developers in the MOBA space, because I don't think a pure RTS (maybe if they had made it more like WC3 with heroes, etc) can compete with MOBAs for the casual player.
Which, in some ways makes HOTS the greatest failure, because if they pushed out HOTS before LOL, and just made it a boring standard MOBA at launch, they also have a good chance to dominate the space.
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I think both D3 and HOTS suffered from the same lack of management. D3 took them something like 10 years to make and it was still a horribly unfinished game when they released it because they remade it a bunch of times then rushed to get something out.
HOTS they just took forever to get on the MOBA train then they couldn't figure out what game they wanted to make so they redid it a bunch of time. When they finally released the game it has terrible design decisions such as locking hero talents behind player level.
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On June 16 2018 07:16 General_Winter wrote: Yeah. I think people are really underestimating the shear number of bad balance and development choices Blizzard made and how obnoxious and rude they were to their community and fans. Blizzard tried really hard to not be liked.
WoL had a lot going for it and it would not have been that hard for blizzard to have had a run away success with it if they had only been just a little bit less arrogant and listened to their customers more.
As a disclaimer I may be biased since I did put a decent amount of time into playing WoL getting my toss and Zerg to diamond and my Terran to high plat (though to be fair I kinda cheated on Terran since I never learned macro for that race and just used timing attacks) i remember rather well. blizzard is mainly the reason i stopped playing a couple months into release. in hindsight i should've stopped in beta but i was still hopeful
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What were the horrible balance decisions Blizzard made in WoL? I recall them being dicks with KESPA totally screwing them but I don't remember weird balance problems. I was masters Zerg and Protoss on NA and i played until the summer of 2011.
I started playing league in August 2011 and I have quit here and there. I was burnt out on SC2 was the main reason I switched and league was just a game I had heard about so I tried it out. Had never played a MOBA before
I actually recently picked up LotV and its really fun to me again. There is a lot going on so it will never be a casual game but I hope it stays as a competitive one. It is fun to watch for me.
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SC2 would've never popped off. It's single player focused and there is very little teamwork in multiplayer. The gameplay loop is also way more repetitive than a moba's one. Diablo and hots also fell into this trap of being boring games. Csgo is super easy to follow and major viewership is still growing. Crowds also skew older than other esports, so I'm pretty sure it's the most mainstream.
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At least we can all look forward to blizzcon 2023 when they announce their new world of overwatchcraft battle royale game
On June 16 2018 09:14 Fildun wrote: SC2 would've never popped off. It's single player focused and there is very little teamwork in multiplayer. The gameplay loop is also way more repetitive than a moba's one.
That's why the complete failure of a custom game system hurt so bad. There was so much potential for new casual timewasters with the new editor.
Even if esports took off in korea the west probably wouldn't really have gone much different.
But if it had launched with the free arcade it has now, and a proper system for people to actually publish and find maps, it could have completely blown up among casual audiences.
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On June 16 2018 09:11 Bladeorade wrote: What were the horrible balance decisions Blizzard made in WoL? I recall them being dicks with KESPA totally screwing them but I don't remember weird balance problems. I was masters Zerg and Protoss on NA and i played until the summer of 2011.
I started playing league in August 2011 and I have quit here and there. I was burnt out on SC2 was the main reason I switched and league was just a game I had heard about so I tried it out. Had never played a MOBA before
I actually recently picked up LotV and its really fun to me again. There is a lot going on so it will never be a casual game but I hope it stays as a competitive one. It is fun to watch for me. There were a couple of bad patches for wol The infamous “queen patch” was probably the worst. But it was also blizzards cockiness and David Kim balencing what he wanted rather then what the game needed. I stopped playing shortly after the release of the first expansion which pretty much where the player base and viewer base left in the millions for mobas.
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Those "balance decisions" in sc2 weren't horrible if one cares only about the balance. I think Kim did a pretty good job at keeping the match-ups balanced and the main problem with Blizzard's approach was they were too tolerant of frustrating/uninteractive/gimmicky/stale elements of the game as long as given match-up was close to 50%. The burnout we all experienced was just invevitable in that environment and had nothing to do with the game's balance.
My experience with sc2 was that after I my "passion" got burned out I never came back to playing the game for more than one hour a day on average. With League, it's different - I can get bored with the game and not play it for a month, but eventually I always come back to playing multiple games a day.
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Thing is, there were times in SCII, especially while I was playing, where the 50% winrate simply didn't apply to any part of the ladder except pro play. Like looking up the top of the KR or EU ladder, and it was dominated by Zerg or Protoss depending on the patch, and some random Terran sitting at rank 1 with a 75% WR, saw that multiple times in my WoL days. Only in OGN did Terran actually bring in results.
Protoss had a high winrate consistently below Diamond in WoL, pretty much because they were so much easier to play for low level players. It was build a doom stack and roll over the Zerg who didn't understand his 200 supply army sucks, or the Terran who thought he could build pure mech and replenish his losses fast enough after battles. And it was because game mechanics were balanced around the top of the ladder, little attention was given to everyone else. Likewise, Blizzard didn't care at all about the team modes, which I could understand because 1vs1 is where the real skill is, until quite late in WoL when they started adding more maps into the pool.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
Oh cmon, queen patch was glorious. Didn't you like the emergence of like 15 new zergs who just started winning tournaments somehow?
Idk, I never thought balance was too bad except during the beta, but I'm a zerg main, so I'm not sure if my opinions count. The main issue is just that the game is not all that fun imo. And it's difficult to form a group of friends using only battle.net 0.2
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Yea. IDK, people just don't like macroing all that much. All the popular custom games eliminated most of the things like gathering Gas/Minerals, Warp Discipline, Creep Spreading, mule calldowns, etc. But because of how deathballs worked there was not all that much skill expression available in microing so blizzard couldn't just take that out.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
One thing that I feel was MASSIVELY overdue was the mineral patch reduction and 12 starting workers. Honestly ifg they've done that from the start the game would have been SOOOO MUCH better. I'm surprised it took them literally years to come up with that.
The problem wasn't deathball, the problem was deathball off of 3 bases, which any race including mech terran could do. And maps since beta almost always allowed for easy 3rd base. You can imagine how that leads to stale gameplay.
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problem with sc2 was 1) the increased worker efficiency without increasing supply limit means everyone was basically limited to 3 bases before they can comfortably max, meaning the game was less of an economical battle 2) lack of strong defensive units and AoE meant deathballing was super strong. There was so much bullshit defense in sc:bw that meant that the game was more of a war of attrition and losing armies wasn't the biggest deal because you were constantly rebuilding plus you had defenses up.
zerg: Plague, dark swarm, lurkers terran: Tanks, mines protoss: reavers, HT, dark archons (vs air)
these things made the game possible to have power spikes where one side had map control and was looking to increase an advantage while the other side was trying to reach some timing of his own like 2/1 mech or hive+ultras or protoss carriers or 200/200
that said i didnt play that much of the later expansions of sc2 but I found it seems to be a lot more about timing your deathball to be able to deal with their deathball zzzz
also wasnt very interesting to watch
I mean league sint too interesting to watch either but its fun to play at least
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I honestly enjoyed watching SCII, there's a sort of charm to the fast paced, tight build orders coupled with skirmishes that often rely on pure mechanical ability. But that only becomes a positive when you are invested in the game, and know what is happening, because otherwise you just watch a bunch of units pop out of buildings and eventually run towards the enemy base.
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Yeah I found Wings of Liberty really fun to watch, much better than current league.
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On June 17 2018 04:08 DarkCore wrote: I honestly enjoyed watching SCII, there's a sort of charm to the fast paced, tight build orders coupled with skirmishes that often rely on pure mechanical ability. But that only becomes a positive when you are invested in the game, and know what is happening, because otherwise you just watch a bunch of units pop out of buildings and eventually run towards the enemy base. Still more clear than MOBAs lol. Gaming in general isn't very friendly for non-players to watch like regular sports.
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On June 18 2018 05:41 nafta wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2018 04:08 DarkCore wrote: I honestly enjoyed watching SCII, there's a sort of charm to the fast paced, tight build orders coupled with skirmishes that often rely on pure mechanical ability. But that only becomes a positive when you are invested in the game, and know what is happening, because otherwise you just watch a bunch of units pop out of buildings and eventually run towards the enemy base. Still more clear than MOBAs lol. Gaming in general isn't very friendly for non-players to watch like regular sports. i'd argue american football is a fucking terrible spectator sport
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On June 18 2018 05:51 Frolossus wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2018 05:41 nafta wrote:On June 17 2018 04:08 DarkCore wrote: I honestly enjoyed watching SCII, there's a sort of charm to the fast paced, tight build orders coupled with skirmishes that often rely on pure mechanical ability. But that only becomes a positive when you are invested in the game, and know what is happening, because otherwise you just watch a bunch of units pop out of buildings and eventually run towards the enemy base. Still more clear than MOBAs lol. Gaming in general isn't very friendly for non-players to watch like regular sports. i'd argue american football is a fucking terrible spectator sport Agreed, only because the camera angles do a poor job of showing a play developing.
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On June 18 2018 05:41 nafta wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2018 04:08 DarkCore wrote: I honestly enjoyed watching SCII, there's a sort of charm to the fast paced, tight build orders coupled with skirmishes that often rely on pure mechanical ability. But that only becomes a positive when you are invested in the game, and know what is happening, because otherwise you just watch a bunch of units pop out of buildings and eventually run towards the enemy base. Still more clear than MOBAs lol. Gaming in general isn't very friendly for non-players to watch like regular sports. csgo is pretty simple.
It's generally pretty clear why hype moments are hype, it's clear when someone does something good or bad because the other guy is dead, and the difficulty in clicking on something small quickly is a simple enough concept that you don't have to have the commentators constantly trying to justify the difficulty of whats going on. (Looking at starcraft there.)
Plus the stop start nature of counterstrike gives it a really nice flow.
Only real downside is you don't really get the same degree special off meta strategies or unique games which you get from original build orders in starcraft, or niche/unique team comps in league, so if you aren't invested in one of the teams or #storylines, it can get a bit samey to watch after a while.
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The only thing that I didn't pick up relatively quickly from just watching professional CS:GO was the ins and outs of the economy.
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tbh its really difficult to pick up team strategies and map movement in cs go. the spectator actually has to know the map to understand what the team is doing and why they throw nades in certain positions etc. the mechanics are easy to follow but id argue the strategy is difficult as fuck. probably harder than mobas for pure spectators.
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Interesting discussion.
I haven't followed pro LoL for a while, but I catch a game on youtube every now and then. Did so a few days ago and of course was greeted with the craziness that is the current state of the game. Farm priority and multiple 4+ TPs looked much like DotA, so I wasn't surprised to see a debate about the pros/cons of the two games here.
Although they're just anecdotes, I do think that there is value in hearing what drew or pushed someone to/from the game. LoL was my first MOBA (played WC3 melee exclusively, never got heavily into DotA). I played it a ton and watching the esports side of it was initially a window into improving my own game. In time the storylines, characters, teams became the primary way I followed the game (as I'm sure it did for most of us). The game itself became just the canvas the players painted on.
I followed LoL closely for years, but I struggled to go back once I (properly) discovered DotA. There wasn't one thing that did it, but one of the biggest reasons* I could pinpoint was how the size and value of the map, hyper focused design of the heroes, the way kill gold is distributed (much lower rewards for heroes with low value items) and the power level (or structure) of the items combined to change the way farm was allocated and produced vastly more variety in hero picks and team comps. It was impossible not to see LoL's enforced meta as incredibly stale and their constant balance tweaks nothing but smoke and mirrors. Enforced change in the place of a game deep enough to allow the players freedom to shift it on their own.
Last week was the first time I've ever seen some of the things I like most about DotA. I don't know where Riot will take the game from here, but if they've learned something about what makes DotA so good then they'll definitely have my attention. I'm not a fanboy, I freely acknowledge that there are some things about LoL that are far better designed then in DotA and a combination of what both games do right would be extremely interesting. I hope they keep iterating on this and resist the urge reinforce the old order.
*FTR other main components were the huge amount of vision and small map size in LoL producing extremely low action games and the open circuit in the pro scene.
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"enforced change in the place of a game deep enough to allow the players freedom to shift it on their own." you are much better with words than i am. basically why i think riot fails at their job of game developing in 1 simple sentence.
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On June 16 2018 15:18 IamPryda wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2018 09:11 Bladeorade wrote: What were the horrible balance decisions Blizzard made in WoL? I recall them being dicks with KESPA totally screwing them but I don't remember weird balance problems. I was masters Zerg and Protoss on NA and i played until the summer of 2011.
I started playing league in August 2011 and I have quit here and there. I was burnt out on SC2 was the main reason I switched and league was just a game I had heard about so I tried it out. Had never played a MOBA before
I actually recently picked up LotV and its really fun to me again. There is a lot going on so it will never be a casual game but I hope it stays as a competitive one. It is fun to watch for me. There were a couple of bad patches for wol The infamous “queen patch” was probably the worst. But it was also blizzards cockiness and David Kim balencing what he wanted rather then what the game needed. I stopped playing shortly after the release of the first expansion which pretty much where the player base and viewer base left in the millions for mobas. What was the queen patch? Maybe I stopped playing before then
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On June 18 2018 21:51 Bladeorade wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2018 15:18 IamPryda wrote:On June 16 2018 09:11 Bladeorade wrote: What were the horrible balance decisions Blizzard made in WoL? I recall them being dicks with KESPA totally screwing them but I don't remember weird balance problems. I was masters Zerg and Protoss on NA and i played until the summer of 2011.
I started playing league in August 2011 and I have quit here and there. I was burnt out on SC2 was the main reason I switched and league was just a game I had heard about so I tried it out. Had never played a MOBA before
I actually recently picked up LotV and its really fun to me again. There is a lot going on so it will never be a casual game but I hope it stays as a competitive one. It is fun to watch for me. There were a couple of bad patches for wol The infamous “queen patch” was probably the worst. But it was also blizzards cockiness and David Kim balencing what he wanted rather then what the game needed. I stopped playing shortly after the release of the first expansion which pretty much where the player base and viewer base left in the millions for mobas. What was the queen patch? Maybe I stopped playing before then Queens got 5 range instead of 3. That practically meant hellion openers weren't even half as effective. If I recall correctly.
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Yeah. Queen patch was a big deal. Prior to that patch the game had been pretty consistently imbalanced in favor of Terran with Zerg only winning when vastly better than their Terran opponents. GSLs immediately prior to that patch would have 20 out of 32 players as Terran. It was pretty egregious. Patch made a big difference in that match up, allowing zergs to do better than even against similarly skilled Terrans. It never got to a point where Zerg was over represented like Terran was previously, but a lot of players came out of the woodwork.
Edit: it also changed ZvZ a lot. If I recall, prior to that patch you could play muta ling or roach hydra and after the queen buff you could play ling queen infestor with a late game transition to ultra ling. That lasted until they removed the root from infestors
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
On June 19 2018 01:51 General_Winter wrote: Yeah. Queen patch was a big deal. Prior to that patch the game had been pretty consistently imbalanced in favor of Terran with Zerg only winning when vastly better than their Terran opponents. GSLs immediately prior to that patch would have 20 out of 32 players as Terran. It was pretty egregious. Patch made a big difference in that match up, allowing zergs to do better than even against similarly skilled Terrans. It never got to a point where Zerg was over represented like Terran was previously, but a lot of players came out of the woodwork.
Edit: it also changed ZvZ a lot. If I recall, prior to that patch you could play muta ling or roach hydra and after the queen buff you could play ling queen infestor with a late game transition to ultra ling. That lasted until they removed the root from infestors I think the queen buff made it possible to go for a pretty quick 3 base in ZvZ in a lot of cases. Im not sure whether it made Zerg OP vs Terran or not, I think one could make a case for it but I haven't watched too much sc2 after the arrival of patchzergs.
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I don’t remember if it was a buff or just the community realizing how broken fungal was that killed WOL for me. Once mass infestor became the meta the game got real boring real quick for me.
It’s funny because I played Protoss and I downplayed force field, I got hit by mass fungal like once and quit the game
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On June 19 2018 02:34 Slusher wrote: I don’t remember if it was a buff or just the community realizing how broken fungal was that killed WOL for me. Once mass infestor became the meta the game got real boring real quick for me.
It’s funny because I played Protoss and I downplayed force field, I got hit by mass fungal like once and quit the game
I think mass infestor was a down stream effect of queen buff. It’s been a while so my memory may be off, but pre buff in order to be safe you had to get speed ASAP and usually follow up with the capability to get either banelings or roaches. After the queen buff you could hold almost all normal (ie not all-in) aggression with queens and slow lings. And if they were not very Agro you could take a very fast third and hold that with queens and slow lings. That meant you had a lot more surplus gas earlier in the game and could get lair and infestor den much faster which then let you pump out mass infestor and have time for them to build up energy before major mid game battles. Haveing more queens also let you spread creep much faster for better vision which let you see things coming in time to get infestors where they were needed instead of needing to rely on fast units.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
On June 19 2018 02:34 Slusher wrote: I don’t remember if it was a buff or just the community realizing how broken fungal was that killed WOL for me. Once mass infestor became the meta the game got real boring real quick for me.
It’s funny because I played Protoss and I downplayed force field, I got hit by mass fungal like once and quit the game Thank you for confirming my hypothesis that the main secret that fuels protoss players is hypocrisy.
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On June 19 2018 06:50 Scip wrote:Show nested quote +On June 19 2018 02:34 Slusher wrote: I don’t remember if it was a buff or just the community realizing how broken fungal was that killed WOL for me. Once mass infestor became the meta the game got real boring real quick for me.
It’s funny because I played Protoss and I downplayed force field, I got hit by mass fungal like once and quit the game Thank you for confirming my hypothesis that the main secret that fuels protoss players is hypocrisy. Protoss are fueled by finely aged cheese and 1A steak sauce.
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On June 18 2018 08:59 killerdog wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2018 05:41 nafta wrote:On June 17 2018 04:08 DarkCore wrote: I honestly enjoyed watching SCII, there's a sort of charm to the fast paced, tight build orders coupled with skirmishes that often rely on pure mechanical ability. But that only becomes a positive when you are invested in the game, and know what is happening, because otherwise you just watch a bunch of units pop out of buildings and eventually run towards the enemy base. Still more clear than MOBAs lol. Gaming in general isn't very friendly for non-players to watch like regular sports. csgo is pretty simple. It's generally pretty clear why hype moments are hype, it's clear when someone does something good or bad because the other guy is dead, and the difficulty in clicking on something small quickly is a simple enough concept that you don't have to have the commentators constantly trying to justify the difficulty of whats going on. (Looking at starcraft there.) Plus the stop start nature of counterstrike gives it a really nice flow. Only real downside is you don't really get the same degree special off meta strategies or unique games which you get from original build orders in starcraft, or niche/unique team comps in league, so if you aren't invested in one of the teams or #storylines, it can get a bit samey to watch after a while.
The mechanics are pretty simple, but the game itself is an unwatchable mess to anyone that doesn't play (along with any FPS game, really). Without the ability to properly pan-out to track the movement of the players (and sorry, a radar in the top of my screen doesn't cut it), it's really difficult to follow the action other than a few kills here and there. And it's tough to allow for pan-out when the end result is invisible walls and a glitchy-looking map.
RTS still has a lot of cluster-fuckery with the camera moving all over the place, so MOBA's are probably the easiest to watch as a non-playe. And then there's still tons of information that's pretty meaningless to the casual viewer... My wife doesn't even know what a BF Sword is but she follows competitive League more closely than I do. I'm pretty sure it's because most of the action centers around the objectives, and the team-gold is always on screen and acts as a loose "score" on top of turret and dragon/baron counts, so she's able to keep track of which team is winning.
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Being ahead in gold/dragons doesn't mean you are winning. MOBAs are by far the worst for spectators. How could you possibly even begin to grasp the difference between champions?
I have played this game for 8 years and it can still be difficult to follow teamfights.
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On June 19 2018 09:01 Nemireck wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2018 08:59 killerdog wrote:On June 18 2018 05:41 nafta wrote:On June 17 2018 04:08 DarkCore wrote: I honestly enjoyed watching SCII, there's a sort of charm to the fast paced, tight build orders coupled with skirmishes that often rely on pure mechanical ability. But that only becomes a positive when you are invested in the game, and know what is happening, because otherwise you just watch a bunch of units pop out of buildings and eventually run towards the enemy base. Still more clear than MOBAs lol. Gaming in general isn't very friendly for non-players to watch like regular sports. csgo is pretty simple. It's generally pretty clear why hype moments are hype, it's clear when someone does something good or bad because the other guy is dead, and the difficulty in clicking on something small quickly is a simple enough concept that you don't have to have the commentators constantly trying to justify the difficulty of whats going on. (Looking at starcraft there.) Plus the stop start nature of counterstrike gives it a really nice flow. Only real downside is you don't really get the same degree special off meta strategies or unique games which you get from original build orders in starcraft, or niche/unique team comps in league, so if you aren't invested in one of the teams or #storylines, it can get a bit samey to watch after a while. The mechanics are pretty simple, but the game itself is an unwatchable mess to anyone that doesn't play (along with any FPS game, really). Without the ability to properly pan-out to track the movement of the players (and sorry, a radar in the top of my screen doesn't cut it), it's really difficult to follow the action other than a few kills here and there. And it's tough to allow for pan-out when the end result is invisible walls and a glitchy-looking map. RTS still has a lot of cluster-fuckery with the camera moving all over the place, so MOBA's are probably the easiest to watch as a non-playe. And then there's still tons of information that's pretty meaningless to the casual viewer... My wife doesn't even know what a BF Sword is but she follows competitive League more closely than I do. I'm pretty sure it's because most of the action centers around the objectives, and the team-gold is always on screen and acts as a loose "score" on top of turret and dragon/baron counts, so she's able to keep track of which team is winning. I've never played CS:GO in my life. I never even paid attention to it until TSM signed their 1st GS:GO team and it took me only a short while to work out the general flow of the game. Literally the only thing I had to look up was how the economy worked because the casters assume you know that getting kills with different classes of guns(and a few exceptions) confer different $ amounts.
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Hotfix to Essence reaver, making it worse on the people who can exploit the original passive without buffing it for the old essence users who it's useless on.
basically exactly what I said would happen when it was introduced.
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On June 16 2018 09:14 Fildun wrote: SC2 would've never popped off. My eyes hurt.... the most influential e-sport title was without a doubt Brood War, and here I am reading a 1v1 game would have never popped off.
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What % of games are enjoyable for you guys?
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On June 21 2018 03:23 Uldridge wrote: What % of games are enjoyable for you guys? All of them.
I love the current meta (or lack of).
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I'm playing ARAMs while I wait for the meta to settle or Riot go full "no fun police" mode.
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This is my favorite patch in a long time , for me personally once people learned how to play around the first scuttle up to now is as much fun as I’ve had in a long time
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I'm not playing this patch xD
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84% unless someone on my team has a break down its been great. Though those can be entertaining in their own way
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On June 20 2018 18:18 Volband wrote:My eyes hurt.... the most influential e-sport title was without a doubt Brood War, and here I am reading a 1v1 game would have never popped off. Brood War also never popped off. We also weren't talking about esports. Both my brain and my eyes, in fact my entire body hurts after reading the sentence you've just written.
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On June 20 2018 18:18 Volband wrote:My eyes hurt.... the most influential e-sport title was without a doubt Brood War, and here I am reading a 1v1 game would have never popped off. If you completely ignore the context around BW esports developing in the late 90s and early 2000s and the shift of gaming across the next decade then sure you could be outraged. Instead look at the environment SC2 was coming into. RTS genre was basically dead. The game managed to cause a semi-revival due to BW history and Blizzard name but that doesn't last very long. People quickly find out why the genre has faded from the greater gaming public again after nostalgia wears off. SC2 just could never actually make the impact BW did. It would either be too late or too early and thus compete with BW.
I'm also not sure it's correct to say the most influential esport title is BW without a doubt. I could see arguments for other titles. It's no doubt influential but what exactly does "most" mean? How do you quantify that?
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BW laid down the groundworks for modern esports. People looked at Korea to adopt their style of seriousness about games being played professionally. I mean, gaming houses weren't a thing before. Now they are. Coaching staff wasn't, now it is. Infrastructure, TV rights, commercials, all that stuff was shown to work in Korea, and was taking serious there. So why not transfer that to the West? That's why BW, which was taken under Korea's wing, is the most influential game. Though we should rather say that Korea is the most influential country when it comes to the Esports scene. I know that CS and Quake and other games had a pro scene (and let's not forget how dedicated and organized people can be to MMORPGs; WoW, Everquest, ...), but Korea was more mature than any other country (community?) and treated as a completely serious issue. It took a while before Western teams even took LoL serious (like coaches started being a thing in season 4?)
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On June 21 2018 06:33 Fildun wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2018 18:18 Volband wrote:On June 16 2018 09:14 Fildun wrote: SC2 would've never popped off. My eyes hurt.... the most influential e-sport title was without a doubt Brood War, and here I am reading a 1v1 game would have never popped off. Brood War also never popped off. We also weren't talking about esports. Both my brain and my eyes, in fact my entire body hurts after reading the sentence you've just written. ? wat. the entire korean esports industry was founded by brood war. when a single game creates a multi million dollar industry thats actually recognised by the government, im not sure what more you want for a game to "pop off". volbands eyes hurting reading your nonsense is justified. also you do realise the very sites you are commenting on exist because of brood war
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On June 21 2018 06:55 Uldridge wrote: BW laid down the groundworks for modern esports. People looked at Korea to adopt their style of seriousness about games being played professionally. I mean, gaming houses weren't a thing before. Now they are. Coaching staff wasn't, now it is. Infrastructure, TV rights, commercials, all that stuff was shown to work in Korea, and was taking serious there. So why not transfer that to the West? That's why BW, which was taken under Korea's wing, is the most influential game. Though we should rather say that Korea is the most influential country when it comes to the Esports scene. I know that CS and Quake and other games had a pro scene (and let's not forget how dedicated and organized people can be to MMORPGs; WoW, Everquest, ...), but Korea was more mature than any other country (community?) and treated as a completely serious issue. It took a while before Western teams even took LoL serious (like coaches started being a thing in season 4?)
See I find this all subjective and circumstantial without any real evidence to back it up. Take for instance the idea that the West looked at Korean BW and took their respective esports seriously. Brood War audience outside of Korea was rather small and niche, it wasn't particularly known or popular. You had events like Quakecon and CPL league forming in the mid to late 90s before Brood War even came out. It was clearly gaining traction in the West. I think if anything the biggest thing BW might have done for the West is help form the WCG which really got the movement off the ground around the world.
After that there were repeated attempts to bring traditional TV and other aspects of sporting to esport in the West but it almost always failed horribly. It working in Korea with BW didn't actually translate to anything tangible in the West and actively harmed it. When CGS completely collapsed and teams were going under from the inflated salaries esports was in a very dark place. SC2 and Justin.tv were a huge revival phase, propelling it to where it is today. One could argue without BW there wouldn't have been a SC2 revival phase. It's tough to say. Was it just a perfect storm of timing?
Anyway all I'm really trying to get at is that there are so many factors at work in the global scale that it's hard to really say "X is more influential than Y". They most likely all played some part to play in getting us to this point. I think we tend to overstate Koreans influence just due to being fans of Broodwar.
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I was more talking about how serious Korea was treating Esports and then when LoL came and SCII came (and Dota2), you now have gaming houses and coashing staff. I don't think there was outsourcing from teams before the Korean model. Like I said, Korea didn't blow BW up internationally, but Korea, through the vessel of BW, helped shape the Esport scene today. The infrastructure and how things are handled probably are heavily borrowed from how Korea handled it all in the past. I'm not really saying BW was more influential, I'm saying Korea is the grandfather of Esports in its current form.
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On June 21 2018 03:23 Uldridge wrote: What % of games are enjoyable for you guys?
Most of them. Same as usual. I’m top / jungle so it doesn’t really effect me that much. Ganking bot lane can be a bit more chaotic than usual, but it’s fun. People in my games ban karrhus and Yi so I don’t run into weird funneling strays.
Overall things are mostly the same. When I get top I am an island and complain about not getting any ganks. When I’m jungle I mute top and just camp bot lane.
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Damn, after seeing these answers, maybe I should consider quitting for good.. I want competitive games and when I only get these in about 5% of games, I become vastly frustrated in the other fraction. Or should I become less competitive and care a lot less? The game would honestly be much more enjoyable for me when it's close for the first 20 minutes though. Ok maybe 5% is a bit of a stretch, but it's far below 50% for me, more around the 10-15% region and that's being generous. You guys are having fun it seems. But could the game be even more fun for you? Let's say matchmaking succeeds in giving you competitive games in about 99% of the time, would you enjoy it more than you do now or wouldn't it change that much?
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I think the match making does a fine job, it just takes time for it to react to people trying new shits. And with the herald and baron changes the games end faster. Some times they are quite competitive and then in like 5 mins its over because a couple mistakes can kill you. But I'm still just a loittle above 50% win rate which is about right.
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Ok so let's say an impactful play happens before the 20 minute play. How significant should that be for the team that can capitalize on that play and how probable should it be for the now losing team to come back (aka, make it a close game for as long as they can and possibly still pull it out?) I guess a snowball is what happens most of the time because of an early pre 20 minute play, but turn around still happen (people throw, teams get outscaled, someone does something insanely good, ...), but it still feels bad to just roll over at a certain point. The worst games are the one's where your team (and you by extension) literally rolls over because they're either too afraid to die (passive) or can't damage the enemy team. What is the point of no return in League? What gold lead is still surmountable? Is it within the 10% leading gold amount, or is it bigger? And how soon should that boundary between surmountable and insurmountable be met?
I feel like 20 minute mark is a good benchmark for time because then you can forfeit with 4 instead of unanimously, but too often is there a broken morale or internal strife that makes getting to that 20th minute hell. So my question is this (next to a whole bunch of other questions): how many games are decided before that good (for me it's 20, for others it might be earlier or later, give me your opinions) timepoint where you feel like you've had a good, close game and even if you want to win (and are trying to), winning or losing doesn't really matter, but the experience does instead?
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
I mean we've lost tournament games when we were 11k ahead at 20 minutes. It can happen, it just usually doesn't.
If you can't find something to enjoy in a game even when it's not particularly close then this game isn't made for you. Whether it's trying to go for the most efficient finish or for the flashiest plays when you are far ahead, or carefully looking for opportunities to come back when behind, or just straight up memeing when you don't think you have much of a shot, if you don't find any of these things enjoyable, I'd probably recommend doing things other than videogames to be perfectly honest.
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What level and at what point do you want it to be competitive at?
Do you mean competitive before the first ban is made? I think that this is the case, you would not be able to expect better than 50% for each team?
Or
Do you mean competitive after pick ban before any gameplay? I think this is pretty varied and sometimes people do dumb things, but I feel like it’s generally fairly competitive at this point and you can influence this with your part of pick ban and by trying to get your team to play to its strengths, like forcing early plays or trying to scale.
Or
Do you mean competitive in lane? Like you have an even chance of beating your opponent in lane? That’s hard because someone picks first and someone gets the counter pick. But I think you usually have an even chance to “beat the spread”. Like if teemo “should” end lane up 30 CS against Camille and lane ends with him up 20 CS then I won lane.
Or
do you mean competitive post lane phase in the early mid game? At this point usually some lanes won and some lanes lost. So there is an advantage one way or the other. And there should be an advantage or lanes wouldn’t matter. If team A won 2 lanes and team B won 1 lane and they went even in the jungle team A is at an advantage. Some number of games are blowouts at this point where A won all 3 lanes and the jungle. I think this is a little more common than it used to be, but still less than one in five games.
Or
Do you mean teams should be competitive in late game team fights? Here I don’t think that can be the case. Ultimately one team drafted a better team fight composition and the other team needs to make the game play out some other way.
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The game isn't won through laning phase, there will always be a form of grouping of at least 2 lanes (and/or the jungler), so I'd say at the very least at your 4th point, but I could accept the third point if lanes got smashed so hard that everyone gets their asses handed to them. Maybe I'm just blowing this way out of proportion, I've been thinking about it for a while and I feel like I've gained some perspective from you guys and my own thoughts. So thank you at the very least for that. Guess this could be analogous to a midlife or existential crisis, but then for LoL lol
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Unless you're a super tryhard who can put up with the random nature of yoloQ to reach high elo, this game isn't very rewarding, so just play ranked with a somewhat carefree attitude. Ideal state of mind is to tryhard in-game, and when it doesn't work out well, you get over it right afterwards. But it's not really realistic, nobody can switch modes like that, so you will often just feel exhausted after a bad series of games.
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I don't enjoy playing soloqueue at all, so I usually just don't play it.
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Tbh, I was like that for a long time as well. Then I just decided not to give a crap anymore, and just queued no matter how much I was being flamed. Eventually it just clicked and I got a lot better than I used to be.
These past two seasons, due to having little time to play anyway, I just haven't had the energy to put up with the cancer of soloQ.
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I dont understand why anyone make a bigger fuss over ranked than normals. The only difference between normals and ranked is you have a visual measure of progress in ranked. Ranked isn't really competitive, League is a teamgame and in SoloQ the core of teamgames doesn't exist - experience with each other. Playing 5s you can treat as a competitive format but SoloQ ranked or normals is just practice/pass time.
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On June 22 2018 06:04 Jek wrote: I dont understand why anyone make a bigger fuss over ranked than normals. The only difference between normals and ranked is you have a visual measure of progress in ranked. Ranked isn't really competitive, League is a teamgame and in SoloQ the core of teamgames doesn't exist - experience with each other. Playing 5s you can treat as a competitive format but SoloQ ranked or normals is just practice/pass time. It is the exact opposite for me. I don't really tryhard in soloq but in 5s it always devolves in a fiesta due to talking and everyone memeing.
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On June 22 2018 06:04 Jek wrote: I dont understand why anyone make a bigger fuss over ranked than normals. The only difference between normals and ranked is you have a visual measure of progress in ranked. Ranked isn't really competitive, League is a teamgame and in SoloQ the core of teamgames doesn't exist - experience with each other. Playing 5s you can treat as a competitive format but SoloQ ranked or normals is just practice/pass time. When you suck and are trying to get Gold for the end of season skin, it's not just a visual measure.
I mean, I guess it is because skins are cosmetic, but you know what I mean.
Anyway, whenever I play ranked heavily, I just keep a rolling Bo3 in my head. If I ever lose it, I stop for the night. Keeps away from the long night elo death spiral.
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On June 22 2018 06:08 nafta wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2018 06:04 Jek wrote: I dont understand why anyone make a bigger fuss over ranked than normals. The only difference between normals and ranked is you have a visual measure of progress in ranked. Ranked isn't really competitive, League is a teamgame and in SoloQ the core of teamgames doesn't exist - experience with each other. Playing 5s you can treat as a competitive format but SoloQ ranked or normals is just practice/pass time. It is the exact opposite for me. I don't really tryhard in soloq but in 5s it always devolves in a fiesta due to talking and everyone memeing. Our 5s usually devolve into a drunken skype fiesta.
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Just got a 2 week ban because i told a troll to kill themselves
oh well this game has gotten progressively worse since season 2 I'm probably just going to play siege and LotV and sell my account.
Any ideas on where I can sell? Or if anyone wants to buy I have every champion and a ton of skins including original Pax Sivir
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On June 21 2018 06:33 Fildun wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2018 18:18 Volband wrote:On June 16 2018 09:14 Fildun wrote: SC2 would've never popped off. My eyes hurt.... the most influential e-sport title was without a doubt Brood War, and here I am reading a 1v1 game would have never popped off. Brood War also never popped off. We also weren't talking about esports. Both my brain and my eyes, in fact my entire body hurts after reading the sentence you've just written. Brood War never popped off is like saying "I don't think Beatles was that famous". You are either trolling hard, or you are from a younger generation (around age ~14 maybe), who apparently think e-sports started with LoL. Hopefully it's the former, as the latter would actually sadden me to no end.
On June 21 2018 06:45 Numy wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2018 18:18 Volband wrote:On June 16 2018 09:14 Fildun wrote: SC2 would've never popped off. My eyes hurt.... the most influential e-sport title was without a doubt Brood War, and here I am reading a 1v1 game would have never popped off. If you completely ignore the context around BW esports developing in the late 90s and early 2000s and the shift of gaming across the next decade then sure you could be outraged. Instead look at the environment SC2 was coming into. RTS genre was basically dead. The game managed to cause a semi-revival due to BW history and Blizzard name but that doesn't last very long. People quickly find out why the genre has faded from the greater gaming public again after nostalgia wears off. SC2 just could never actually make the impact BW did. It would either be too late or too early and thus compete with BW. I'm also not sure it's correct to say the most influential esport title is BW without a doubt. I could see arguments for other titles. It's no doubt influential but what exactly does "most" mean? How do you quantify that?
I mean, Brood War has to be, without a doubt, the sole catalyst for e-sports becoming what it is today. Brood War single-handedly elevated e-sports from amateur status. Brood War was the bridge between well, we had CS tournaments, there was even a prize money!!! and which stadium should we fill this time around?
It's no coincidence that the West tried so hard to copycat everything the Koreans did with Brood War. Vigorous training schedules, training houses, leagues, etc., basically they "borrowed" everything in hopes that we may produce our very own Boxer, but for various reasons this never really happened. Some might argue it did I guess, it's up for interpretation what a Boxer means.But if not for Brood War, there would not be multi-million dollar leagues around. BW was the industrial revolution of e-sports, yada-yada, you get the idea.
And it shows an absolute lack of understanding from Fildun's part, when he said there is no need for a 1v1 e-sport title. What an absolute bullshit; 1v1 titles are the easiest to build a cult following around. While team sports have a very few top players whom people may follow around, no will watch team games just because an "average" player is in the roster. Ie. you won't watch a C9 game just because Licorice is in the top lane. With Brood War, you may watch even shit or average players, because you can grow to like them, you can root for them individually much more easily. You watch a game because two superstars are facing off, then you may watch the next one, because your favorite player - who might has an 0-20 overall record - is playing.
While I agree that RTS dropped in popularity - and I partially blame EA for that as well for not only ruining Westwood, but managing to fuck up C&C after a very promising third installment -, it's not why SC2 failed eventually. I followed WoL very closely from the beta till the end, even wrote articles in our official-unofficial national SC2 page, so I got to experiences the highs and lows. While LoL could get over the cancer that was Riot Lyte, SC2 never recovered from David Kim. The state of the balance was atrocious, and Blizzard did everything to make SC2 fail. Everyone and their mother knew that it was the maps which made Brood War competitive. I mean, a game that hasn't been patched for nearly 20 years is just not balanced in its core state. And what does Blizzard do? Organize their fucking premier tournament with maps like Steppes of War. Imagine League of Legends with release Diana and Xin, without an option to ban them, and Riot thinking to themselves "hmm, this is fine".
We will never know if SC2 could have succeeded, but David Kim and co. did everything they could so it wouldn't happen. And look at the game now: it's like half moba! I like some of the new units, but some of the passive and active abilities are so hard to follow and so lame. So there's this Void Ray, on which you can activate a beam for a few seconds to have a charged up attack that deals extra damage, but only versus armored, but oh no, here come the Cyclones, which has this lock on ability, that allows them to.... absolute joke, and terrible for spectators. Even if someone microes his heart out, you can barely see it. On the other hand, they were afraid to experiment with the extremes of Brood War. By that I mean BW had some units and spells which were straight out broken. You read the ability description and your first thought is that it should not be in the game. Yet there it was, and it just worked. Just compare Dark Swarm with the green cloud ability of the Viper. Dark Swarm created a huge ass field from a fairly long range, which granted IMMUNITY from every ranged attack (except the splash portion of them), and it persisted for like a minute. Viper's green cloud is a very tiny aoe, which prevents units under it from attacking, for like 6 seconds... I admit, it sounds balanced, but it's also boring as hell.
Watching Brood War is an absolute spectacle, while watching SC2 can be a borefest. There are some great games, don't get me wrong, but when it reaches the deathball stage, it's not enjoayble, it's not good. I rather watch Master Yi pop off and slaughter people, than 2 players circling around with 200/200 armies and a million bucks in the bank. And it's not even nostalgia speaking, because I never watched BW before SC2, this ASL season was prolly the first BW tournament I ever followed through, and it was... amazing. I watched the same shit (mass dragoon, reaver drops) over and over again, and for some reason it was still as exciting as the first time. Will the scarab hit? Can the guy with 3 dragoons beat 4? That shit is intense, like a decisive fight around baron.
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Sorry for the double, but my rant already got too long, and it's a different thing entirely (and actually on topic, lol). I just want it off my chest: fuck this meta. I am quite tired of the smug people who go around reddit and comment "oh no, adc is not your only option bot lane, boo-hoo, what will happen now?? " I like a certain amount of consistency, and right now League has none, and it also came out of nowhere.
Playing against Karthus/Nunu or Yi/Taric is not fun. Reading that I'm just shit and should pressure them early is not fun either.
Seeing how Riot is losing the plot is saddening. They manage to make the dumbest of changes. They remove fun and interesting elements from the game (Ornn's W), then add an absolutely broken, non-interactive Banner of Command to the game.
This season was supposed to be about runes, yet certain keystones are flat out garbage for months now. Meanwhile we got an entire different game during mid-season, while they did not even polish the last one.
I'm supposed to feel shit for rather seeing Caitlyns and Tristanas again, instead the much more interactive Irelias, Brands, but especially Vladimirs.
Thank God Riot reworked Vladimir from a cancerous spellcaster into an even more cancerous spellcaster.
Zoe. I still remember all the smug Rioters and people who were essencially flaming Nidalee players for crying about Nid's rework. I still remember the pages long essays, which talked about how Nidalee's old Q was absolutely toxic to the game and non-interactive. Then they fucking release Zoe who can also sleep you before her very own Nid Q, so at least it guaranteed hits.
I know Janna is hated in the community, but the power shift and shield nerfs were not fun at all. Riot actually managed to make Janna just as more annoying to play against, but now it's also shit to play with her. That takes some talent. At this point I just wish they reworked her.
I know League is still too big to just randomly die out, but the lack of competence during the last few months is just scary. It's like Riot is playing daredevil with how far can they go, and I don't understand why. The game was in a fairly balanced cycle, each season had its highs and lows, each season had its fotm/fots champions, everyone got some time on the stage, then suddenly came this.
I'm not close to quitting, because I'm not enjoying this game for some time to begin with, but even my apathy is being challenged by Riot's incompetence, which is quite amusing.
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Janna egirl being salty about having to use their brain. lol
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Lol. Janna being OP is good for soloQ. It keeps people angry and honest.
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I could see the statement of "BW never popped off" being valid if one's definition is "being popular as an esport worldwide," in which case League is the first to pop off afaik.
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On June 21 2018 03:23 Uldridge wrote: What % of games are enjoyable for you guys? 70-75%
only games i hate are 4/5-man premades
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On June 22 2018 18:22 Gahlo wrote: I could see the statement of "BW never popped off" being valid if one's definition is "being popular as an esport worldwide," in which case League is the first to pop off afaik. are u kidding? sure dota didnt make it in korea, but dota was big in every major country minus korea/japan before lol even came out. the only issue is dotas esports scene in the early days didnt have nearly as much infrastructure or media exposure as esports does now.
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On June 22 2018 21:35 evilfatsh1t wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2018 18:22 Gahlo wrote: I could see the statement of "BW never popped off" being valid if one's definition is "being popular as an esport worldwide," in which case League is the first to pop off afaik. are u kidding? sure dota didnt make it in korea, but dota was big in every major country minus korea/japan before lol even came out. the only issue is dotas esports scene in the early days didnt have nearly as much infrastructure or media exposure as esports does now. I didn't even hear about DotA until League.
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On June 22 2018 22:19 Gahlo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2018 21:35 evilfatsh1t wrote:On June 22 2018 18:22 Gahlo wrote: I could see the statement of "BW never popped off" being valid if one's definition is "being popular as an esport worldwide," in which case League is the first to pop off afaik. are u kidding? sure dota didnt make it in korea, but dota was big in every major country minus korea/japan before lol even came out. the only issue is dotas esports scene in the early days didnt have nearly as much infrastructure or media exposure as esports does now. I didn't even hear about DotA until League. unfortunately "you" are not a representation of "worldwide"
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On June 23 2018 00:51 evilfatsh1t wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2018 22:19 Gahlo wrote:On June 22 2018 21:35 evilfatsh1t wrote:On June 22 2018 18:22 Gahlo wrote: I could see the statement of "BW never popped off" being valid if one's definition is "being popular as an esport worldwide," in which case League is the first to pop off afaik. are u kidding? sure dota didnt make it in korea, but dota was big in every major country minus korea/japan before lol even came out. the only issue is dotas esports scene in the early days didnt have nearly as much infrastructure or media exposure as esports does now. I didn't even hear about DotA until League. unfortunately "you" are not a representation of "worldwide"
I knew dota existed, but it never seemed big enough to pay attention to. I think that dota people might have an exaggerated impression of how big / important dota is.
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would you say dota is a worldwide esport as it is now? you guys realise dota has not grown geographically in like....over 10 years. the only difference is growth in player numbers and prize pools. never ceases to amaze me how many lol players think lol is like the only esport to have mattered outside brood war.
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On June 22 2018 16:17 loSleb wrote: Janna egirl being salty about having to use their brain. lol Murdering people with W spam is indeed stimulating my brain in ways I never even knew it was possible. The perpetuated hatred towards Janna players is quite ridiculous, and your Shyvana flair just adds insult to injury.
But I try it one more time: I don't enjoy that Janna is still toxic to play against, but now it's also less fun to play her, because I like other support picks for the lane murdering role more. And yes, shielding in the right moments gave me more satisfaction, than pressing W on cooldown and just killing people.
On June 22 2018 17:21 cLutZ wrote: Lol. Janna being OP is good for soloQ. It keeps people angry and honest. I thought that's what Yasuo is for.
On June 22 2018 18:22 Gahlo wrote: I could see the statement of "BW never popped off" being valid if one's definition is "being popular as an esport worldwide," in which case League is the first to pop off afaik. But BW popped off in Korea before we even knew that e-sports is capable of popping off. BW was a phenomenom, while LoL """"just"""" followed its footsteps.
You could say that LoL popped off big time on the West too, but the whole reason it could happen was the deliberate infrastructure building in the West in hopes and search for a game that could be the BW of the West. If not for Brood War popping off, then games like SC2 would have never even tried to pioneer the way. Many titles bled out in hopes of being the one, but LoL happened to be it.
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