Grand Old Thread: League of Legends!

[john!]

btw at what point would 10% auto attack reduction be more useful than like.. a chain vest for example

well if you assume that all physical damage comes from auto attacks, then the point at which 45 armor = 10% damage reduction is:

.9*[1-x/(x+100)] = 1-(x+45)/(x+145)

x = 305 armor

so it's basically never worth it unless you're rammus or malphite lol

 

[adumbrodeus]

I really doubt any intelligent, experienced, competitive game designer would ever agree with you on this point. The mechanics are there for 'fun.' That's how every mechanic that doesn't focus on player skill comes about.

For example, the design team felt League needed a draw for new players to play it in early, early beta. RNG and arbitary comeback mechanics appeal to casuals. Then when they get people hooked and it becomes popular, they begin appealing to the esport community by phasing out the anti-competitive, lazy bull**** they introduced earlier in favor of promoting consistent play instead. It's definitely possible to make comebacks more plausible, and snowballing less prominent without rewarding failure, and have a fun, interesting game at the same time. That's the challenge.

No dangr, that is incorrect.

TBH, I admit that a lot of this analysis is lifted directly from sirlin who had a massive influence on the way I think about games and gaming in general.

From a competative standpoint slippery slopes are bad, because they decrease the game's ability to select for the better player over the course of a game because if a person who makes 50 mistakes of about equal calibur versus a person who makes two mistakes of an equal calibur, who should win? In games with a significant slippery slope, it's not a matter of who makes the most mistakes, it's a matter of when. Which means if those 2 mistakes are made early game, the person who made them is probably gonna lose even if they played a consistently much stronger game at every other point. (this of course doesn't account for odd clumping, which is why sets exist and double elimination tournaments).

Of course this isn't true of games where a slippery slope is not an issue since there is no less access to power, you nearly need to make up for your mistake. In this case, the the only major concern to consistently select for the better player is enough tests for odd clumping of mistakes to rarely be an issue.


As an example, one of the best mechanics to ease comeback to deal with superior resources due to the slippery slope effect is parrying in SF3. Yes, it is accessible to the player in the lead, but being at low enough health means that your block isn't available to you because chip damage will kill you. Parrying means that you can always win as long as you're not in a combo and if you predict your opponent well enough, this encourages consistent superiority over early advantages. Even then, the slippery slope in fighting games in general is relatively low, games with too powerful defensive games exempted.



League is a game where an enemy getting a material lead early significantly decreases your ability to obtain material, furthering their lead, so an earlier mistake is far more important then a later one of the same degree. It is a game with a very significant slippery slope, an issue that should be addressed.



So comeback mechanics appeal to competitive design and casual design for different reasons. For competitive design it's important if and only if the game has a slippery slope, to increase the game's accuracy in selecting superior players.


Making random events core to gameplay isn't even on the same planet as far as balance decisions. From a competitive standpoint there is no reason to include a RNG and you comparing the too is a bit silly.

edit:

Which is why you make items cost more gold. If one or two kills does not get you an item, then the weight of the mistakes is much lower. Consequently the lane comes down more to who is better at their champ / the MU rather than who simply has more items. If Shyvana scores an early kill and comes back to lane with you at dorans + pots and her with a wriggles, you're more or less already done in that lane. Increasing the cost of items and putting a gold loss on death would increase snowballing for consistent strong lane play, and reduce it for morons that simply pick characters that scale better and killtrade all day.

You don't see a Weaver getting Radiance from two kills.

Hmmm, actually you might have something there. Not having an item advantage until you are able to consistently dominate the lane might substantially improve the issue with snowballing, of course there are other implications (like decreasing the value of champs who are inherently worse in lane but bring more to teamfights). Heh.

Honestly though I think that adding losing gold to this would make the game too passive.

 

[jpak]

buffing the strongest role in the game...

 

[Shaya]

Perhaps that's the direction they like to see.
It forces aggression.

You can't just "passively farm" while one team controls 4 buffs + most of the map.

 

[jpak]

naut is strong

 

[DMG]

Do you/anyone jungle with him? What mastery/rune setup do you go? I feel like it's literally impossible to jungle him anywhere near effective without a ton of AS and offensive tree + good leashes behind him. Tried 21 defense, arpen magic pen MVS life steal (haven't tried spell vamp, don't think it works with his shield DoT but if it does worth a shot) AD etc. He can be scary level 2 gank with red, but idk.

 

[Sinz]

naut is hella strong.

Also, I'm hella biased in this gold loss on death thing. I'm from Dota. Played Dota. Played HoN. I play Dota2 and League. I really like the gold loss on death. You actually have to make more decisions and play a bit more smart. And it heavily favors strong push and gank teams. (AKA MUCH MORE FUN TO WATCH)

 

[jpak]

wolves blue path
regrowth + pot
philo hog boots then whatever like aegis/frozen heart/mallet even
go 21 defense, then the 9 where you want
attack speed marks, armor seals, mr glyphs, quints you can do hp or ms or something else

 

[DMG]

Ok, sounds close to what I'm doing already then. I think I'll forgo offensive tree, but still run AS Quints. Feel like early on you HAVE to AoE DoT **** everything with shield or you will just eat the biggest **** in the jungle. Idk I need to look at some numbers and see whether I can get certain double hits before the shield is about to die in certain camps early on with different runes. Like with his shield up, his Auto attacks hit things in a 1-2 combo. First attack will swing one way, then next attack will go the other. If his shield gets eaten up after the first attack lands, he will still swing back on the next hit and you get basically an extra DoT proc after the shield is already worn off (however, you cannot move around after the first hit and try to reposition the second hit. You have to be standing still and I think still AAing the same target as well. So depending on your armor AS damage etc you can try and fit into that time an extra DoT hit which can be huge early on in the jungle before you have levels. (Also cool that using shield resets attack animation, but makes sense because the attack animation with shield up is different than the normal animation)

AS is definitely needed though because even if he can live through the jungle by speccing super tanky, he will not clear it fast enough otherwise.

 

[jpak]

his 1-4 is weak then after HE IS KING!

 

[DMG]

his 1-4 is weak then after HE IS KING!

Oh hell yeah, his first jungle clear is a nightmare. I don't think I could bear trying to do it without decent AS anywhere backing him up because he's SO damn reliant on getting damage out with shield DoT and it blows that it goes away when the shield dips cause that **** will go away super quick early levels.

 

[Vyke]

I never really have any trouble with Nautilus unless I get a really awful leash. I pretty much follow jpak's recommended build. I don't see why people would think Nautilus was subpar, he's a cc machine with amazing scaling the longer the game goes.

 

[Espy Rose]

Eh, he doesn't seem like a big deal to me. I'm guessing every Naut I've played against sucks.

 

[Shaya]

Naut is extremely gay.

 

[Espy Rose]

I still hate Udyr, Shaco, Lee Sin and Skarner infinitely more.

 

[DanGR]

long post

Where in that article does sirlin talk about comebacks actually helping competitive gameplay? It doesn't say anything about it.

It's all about comeback mechanics "[making] games closer", and "[making] matches closer and more exciting." None of what he says has anything to do with increasing the chance the better player will win. He only proves my point that the mechanics are for making the game more fun to watch. In fact, the whole thing is advocating we lessen the skill gap between two players/teams to make a game more interesting instead of fixing the very fixable initial problem itself. The whole concept is anti-competitive at its roots.

Large slippery slopes obviously aren't very good for competitive play in that it makes games boring to watch- more fun games to watch will garner more fans, more people will play it, etc. This isn't something anybody is contesting. However, it has nothing to do with your chances of winning a particular match.

SIRLIN's lazy *** would add comeback bounties to League to balance it out. Again, a GOOD competitive game designer would eliminate the slippery slopes and increase the chance the better player wins by promoting actual skill and consistent play. You can have this without arbitary comeback mechanics and have a fun, skillful game. There's no reason you should sacrifice a potentially wider skill gap between teams/players in order to accomplish it.

And just to help prove my ongoing point about how bad of a designer Morello is, bounties aren't even fun to watch! No one particularly enjoys watching people get bounties in competitive matches.

 

[Vyke]

Y'all should get a job in this field, or shaddap.

STICK TO DOCTORING DAN, GEEZ.

 

[Espy Rose]

Almost won a game with Dunkmaster Yi.
One of these days...

 

[Strong Badam]

we almost had it....

 

[adumbrodeus]

Where in that article does sirlin talk about comebacks actually helping competitive gameplay? It doesn't say anything about it.

It's all about comeback mechanics "[making] games closer", and "[making] matches closer and more exciting." None of what he says has anything to do with increasing the chance the better player will win. He only proves my point that the mechanics are for making the game more fun to watch. In fact, the whole thing is advocating we lessen the skill gap between two players/teams to make a game more interesting instead of fixing the very fixable initial problem itself. The whole concept is anti-competitive at its roots.

Large slippery slopes obviously aren't very good for competitive play in that it makes games boring to watch- more fun games to watch will garner more fans, more people will play it, etc. This isn't something anybody is contesting. However, it has nothing to do with your chances of winning a particular match.

SIRLIN's lazy *** would add comeback bounties to League to balance it out. Again, a GOOD competitive game designer would eliminate the slippery slopes and increase the chance the better player wins by promoting actual skill and consistent play. You can have this without arbitary comeback mechanics and have a fun, skillful game. There's no reason you should sacrifice a potentially wider skill gap between teams/players in order to accomplish it.

And just to help prove my ongoing point about how bad of a designer Morello is, bounties aren't even fun to watch! No one particularly enjoys watching people get bounties in competitive matches.

Comeback mechanics are one way that you eliminate or lesson a slippery slope. It is literally impossible for league to not have a slippery slope because the nature of the game is that resources will increase access to resources, it is part of what defines a MOBA. I am not partially defending league's choice of comeback mechanics, but I am saying they are pretty ineffectual at dealing with the snowball gameplay.

Do you really think we should eliminate entire genres, just because it is in their nature to snowball? Or should we include mechanics to counterbalance this instead.


Dangr, frankly you're not even bothering to respond to my point in regards to selection accuracy. I know you are familiar enough with Brawl to know that it's the exact reason why we do double eliminate tournaments and sets of 3 and 5. Frankly I would argue that selection accuracy for superior skill is the most important aspect of a competitive game.


Now, granted, comeback mechanics are bad if they create the reverse situation (that mistakes in the later stages of the game are far more valuable then early mistakes), and the fact that there exists cases of this is what has created a negative reputation for them. But from the design standpoint including a comeback mechanic to smooth out the curve is no different then simply making the game not snowball, the only difference is some games cannot be prevented from snowballing.

Y'all should get a job in this field, or shaddap.

STICK TO DOCTORING DAN, GEEZ.

Nah brah. Game design theory is an interesting hobby, but doing it for a living? Not my thing.

 

[Player-3]

guyz i made da video fr lege of heroe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTjX-U7Cyns&feature=youtube_gdata

 

[Shaya]

So I've been playing a bit of Shaco in ranked 3s....

I'm surprised at how easy it is to cheese players with 1500 elo.

 

[Player-3]

shaya you seem to be implying 1500 elo players are good

i mean, i'm 1600 and i'm *** at this game

 

[Shaya]

1500 elo in 3s is like top 200.

 

[Vyke]

Nah brah. Game design theory is an interesting hobby, but doing it for a living? Not my thing.

Game Design Theory seems really easy to just talk about all day. And when I say that I mean neverendingly, because nobody has solid ground to stand on or the ability to put said theory to the test unless... you know... actually hired by a related field. Talk is CHEAP, yo. Especially when it isn't buyin' you anything anyway.

 

[fkacyan]

Conclusion: Increase gold costs of items as well as introducing gold loss on death!

 

[jpak]

janna #1 support

 

[Shaya]

With Sona max out E / W and don't get a level in q until level 13.
No.1 support still.

 

[adumbrodeus]

http://www.own3d.tv/live/55000/Anbesol

This stream made me depressed.


Especially because his entire last game was him raging at a garen and telling people to report him when the garen was obviously merely terrible and greedy.

 

[Wave⁂]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P_ocwVLv55Y

 

[fkacyan]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

 

[DMG]

so basically PBE changes + some other?

 

[MacD]

dang, m5 telling mono they are being unprofessional by saying stfu and calling them *******

and wildturtles rumble ults seem to be kinda bad

 

[DanGR]

Comeback mechanics are one way that you eliminate or lesson a slippery slope. It is literally impossible for league to not have a slippery slope because the nature of the game is that resources will increase access to resources, it is part of what defines a MOBA. I am not partially defending league's choice of comeback mechanics, but I am saying they are pretty ineffectual at dealing with the snowball gameplay.

Do you really think we should eliminate entire genres, just because it is in their nature to snowball? Or should we include mechanics to counterbalance this instead.

I think there's MUCH better ways to reduce snowballing than to create comeback mechanics that lessen the skill gap between players. MOBAs don't have to be very snowbally- only slightly.

As a small example, Riot could buff stall comps, which counter snowball comps.

Dangr, frankly you're not even bothering to respond to my point in regards to selection accuracy. I know you are familiar enough with Brawl to know that it's the exact reason why we do double eliminate tournaments and sets of 3 and 5. Frankly I would argue that selection accuracy for superior skill is the most important aspect of a competitive game.

Now, granted, comeback mechanics are bad if they create the reverse situation (that mistakes in the later stages of the game are far more valuable then early mistakes), and the fact that there exists cases of this is what has created a negative reputation for them. But from the design standpoint including a comeback mechanic to smooth out the curve is no different then simply making the game not snowball, the only difference is some games cannot be prevented from snowballing.

I think you'd get a more accurate representation of who the better, more consistent player is by eliminating as many slippery slopes as you can in a game and nudging them to go longer through balancing, than nudging it through comeback mechanics. Even if I thought there wouldn't be that much of a difference between the two, I'd pick the first over the latter simply because I think the mechanics are rewarding failure, and that's anti-competitive.

That said, obviously, the lesser the skill gap in a game, the closer the matches are going to be- more variance. League has the potential to have an even wider skill gap than it does now if they'd remove bounties (which by nature would make the game more snowbally, but they can FIX that. Comeback mechanics are a crutch for designers that can't fix snowballing in better ways), and with that the better players would win more often.

Hope this addressed all of your post. I dislike segmenting everything because I want to respond to the arguments, not the points.

edit: also, we should bring this to messages/LoL chat past this, I think. Or we can just agree to disagree.

janna #1 support

ORLY?!

 

[fkacyan]

m5 eliminated by randoms.

daaaaaaaaaaayum

 

[Z'zgashi]

janna #1 support

Imo Sona and Soraka are better~

 

[jpak]

imo sona and soraka are better~

noooooooo`~~``

 

[Lovage]

imo

best support: janna
gayest support (only for virgins): soraka
manliest support (also most underrated): leona
underrated: taric + must take ignite
havn't seen since the patch: sona

edit:

sick support: alistar

 

[DarkDragoon]

Support no one expects: Malzahar
Support for 15 minute baron teams: Warwick
-DD

 

[Teh Brettster]

Is it still worth it to play support Leona? I haven't seen her in a while, but I just played her (Leona Panth lane) and it was fun-- did well. 2/0/7, 2 gp5 items and constant wards.