My Biggest Beefs With League of Legends
As I mentioned in a previous post, I have played a bunch of League of Legends to the exclusion of other games that I own. I enjoy the competition – it is basically 5v5 PvP, and I like the diverse set of characters that you can play. Many times, though, it can get real frustrating.
Now I am not saying that I am by any means a good player. My best ranking was Silver V and that lasted about a month, then I fell back into Bronze. But that is part of my frustration with the game. How could I have been 'skilled' enough to attain a Silver ranking and then fall back to Bronze IV? Did I somehow forget how to play? Did the champions all change (possibly as they are always adjusting things)? Or did the following things happen that I consider my biggest beefs with LoL…
1. Disconnects
I don't think I have gone more than a day (or even a couple of matches) without someone on my team disconnecting. It could be only for a couple of minutes, but that is pretty crucial when playing a competitive game – losing a player and being 4v5 for any period of time puts you at a significant disadvantage. I really don't know what they did with the code in season 4, but I seriously do not recall all these disconnects back in season 3. Even more, I have played plenty of games where I have had to scramble just to get into the game because it does not want to connect. Why should I have to open task manager and kill the league client process to restart? Is this the type of behavior Riot wants in their game when the World Championships are happening? I just can't see Team Solomid having to compete 4v5 because WildTurtle disconnected and the Riot server won't let him back on for 10 minutes.
2. AFK players
This is more of an inditement of the player quality in Bronze and Silver than anything. Most of the AFKs I see quit because they are harassed into it by players who think they should be doing better. Why do people insist on being rude and crude in a video game. A lot of the comments I see would get someone beat up if they made them in person – some would get them arrested. I think one of the best pieces of advice (that I have not taken yet) that I've seen is that to get out of ELO hell, you should turn off All Chat. I can see how that would help because so many seem to think it is more important to insult people than to try to win the game.
3. Trolls
There is a subset of players who think the goal of LoL is to piss everyone off. They go into the game with the sole intention of messing up everyone's enjoyment of the game and then purposefully lose. These people deserve no mercy and should be banned by IP for life from the game. Too bad Riot is not serious about their tribunal or these people would not be playing.
4. Bad matching system
This is purely Riot's fault. As I mentioned, I made it up to Silver V and was in promotion series to go to Silver IV and then somehow fell almost directly to Bronze IV. I had been 35 games over the .500 mark and I felt I at least knew a little about what I was doing. Then somehow I lost 20 or so games in a row. Now some of those were disconnects, AFKs, and Trolls, but many were just cases where the other team was so over skilled and over powered, there was no chance for my team to win. How can a matching system be so flawed for that to happen? People don't just forget to play and it can't all be bad luck.
5. Players using champions they don't know
Whenever there is a new champion introduced, I get so frustrated when people insist on playing them in ranked games for the first time. Now, if someone were an expert at LoL, I can understand that they would pick up the new skill set pretty quickly and be able to handle the new champ, but this is Bronze and Silver we are talking about – THERE ARE NO EXPERTS IN SILVER AND BRONZE. And most who are experts in other ranks would not think of learning a new champion for the first time in a ranked game.
Well, those are my biggest issues with the way Riot runs LoL right now. It does not stop me from playing the game, but it causes way more frustration than it should. A video game should not piss the players off.
In any case, I am happy to have broken out of my losing streak and I have made it back to Bronze III. I know I am not that good of a player, but I know I am better than where I am currently placed, so I am working on improving my ranking and someday, I'll be back to Silver.
September Featured Link
This one comes from the LoL World Championships. I was pretty surprised when I saw this – you only have to watch the first minute or so…
Remember these are some of the best teams in the world playing… This definitely makes me feel better – I've never suffered an ace before minions spawned.
#LoL #LeagueOfLegends
Unfortunately that’s the level of play where all the “bad apples” lie in wait. Furthest I made it was also Silver V, but that was at the very end of Season 3 and I haven’t touched ranked at all in season 4. I had planned on playing til I got to Gold, but I started playing MMOs again this year, among a laundry list of other games and didn’t feel like putting in the time. I know I’m too old to be a pro anyway.
I think the tribunal is a good thing, but I think people can make new accounts too easily, and just jump right back in after being banned.
Number 5 is my biggest pet peeve and will make me want to go apeshit on people. If you know a role/champ, stick to that role and subset of champs you are good with. Don’t wait until you’re in ranked games to try them out. My rule of thumb has always been to try out a new champ in bot matches and then move on to normals or hope to get them in ARAM. I don’t see why people can’t follow this idea, but it seems that some people don’t care about getting ahead, even when playing ranked. Then they tell you “it’s just a game, man” when they cause you to lose during your promo series. >:(
I completely agree. It takes time to learn a champion. I can’t tell you how many losses I endured because someone was playing their first game as Gnar or Azir. I can see it working a little with tanks – just build tanky, but really? Just play champs you have at least played against bots.
Back in S2 when I was convinced that I was good enough to get gold I started tracking my matches. There were less than 1 in 5 (18.07% – remember that because the blog post was titled that) matches that were “good”. Trolls, afks, extreme lopsided victories (both sides for all of these).
That was when I stopped playing. I don’t have enough gaming hours in a week to have to sit through 4 bad games to get 1 good one.
Hmm…I’ll have to track things as I play for those things. It early seems like almost every game has something to make it a ‘bad’ one, but I still torture myself. One of these days I will wisen up I think, but not so far. I jsut deal witht the bad for that one good game. Perhaps if I get an actual percentage it will make me wake up.