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[dragonlife]

All right, thanks for the help, guys. I guess I forgot about the space bar.

 

[kiunchbb]

All right, thanks for the help, guys. I guess I forgot about the space bar.

No problem, with a few more tips from us, you will feed like we do.

 

[Nome]

I'd actually suggest you keep your character near the center of the screen, even if you're not locking your camera. In LoL, most abilities don't originate from offscreen, and incoming champions can also be seen as long as you keep an eye on the minimap. There's very little reason to keep your champion in the corner of the screen, and that can actually increase the chance you're ganked successfully. This is something very specific to LoL--it won't work in HoN or DotA because of the increased range and mobility of heroes.

 

[Blizzard]

I tried another game (lost as usual, after 66 minutes), but we defended a really long time and even took out one inhibitor with a team push. After that I backdoor'd it two or three times with gangplank.

I tried to play gangplank inspired by bindww, but I wasn't good enough to win it for us:

I went bloodthirster as my last item because super minions were doing so much damage to me. It seemed like I could kill them OK after that, with like 800-1200 crits. Does that seem like a decent build?

 

[Kozak]

There is no reason your team should have lost..

I dunno how the hell you guys lost and I probably don't want to know how...

 

[Blizzard]

There is no reason your team should have lost..

I dunno how the hell you guys lost and I probably don't want to know how...

We were terrible? (Pantheon was probably the weakest link and we were pushed all the way back)

 

[IsayFever]

What the hell. That Mkraim ashe we had encountered earlier in the night in another game. We stomped him!

 

[Kozak]

We were terrible? (Pantheon was probably the weakest link and we were pushed all the way back)

They were terrible. They had less gold too.

You guys should have won.

 

[Teknopathetic]

"They were terrible. They had less gold too.

You guys should have won."


Gold means nothing by itself. Look at Miss Fortune's fucking items.

 

[Uchip]

"They were terrible. They had less gold too.

You guys should have won."


Gold means nothing by itself. Look at Miss Fortune's fucking items.

especially when the wrong people get the gold yea

 

[JWong]

For me, a hard stun is a ranged targeted stun that will rarely miss once cast unless it's disjointed or blocked using a spell shield. The only hard disables that can be acquired at level 1 are Fiddle' Terrify, Panth's Aegis, Sion's Cryptic Gaze, and Taric's Dazzle.

And I'm not sure why you'd think it's "completely unbalanced". Frustrating for people on the receiving end, yes, but "completely"? The fact that heroes like Lion and Rhasta have stuck around with their 5 seconds of disable for so long without nerfs should be proof enough that no one really feels it's imbalanced.

Unless you think that Dota, in its current incarnation, is completely unbalanced. I guess you'd know better than the millions of current Dota players.

Ranged targeted stuns aren't the only way to early kill. And DotA has tons of imbalance that a 5 second CC is really not big a deal. Put a 5 second stun for a single character in LoL and that would be imbalance because every other character is playing fair.

Both TF and Panth's ult have been changed from global to a wide range a la Nocturne. This is what I meant, sorry for the confusion.

And that's why teleport is king and should remain special instead of giving every hero the chance for a scroll. It's too powerful.

Why bring it up right after taking about Shen/TF/Panth if you think they aren't comparable?

Because those heroes teleport are ultis and on massive cooldowns?

Keyword "reasonable".

And it's reasonable to that towers do a lot of damage to keep players safe, not to be ignored by a tower diver who can easily kill the player and escape a death.

Not sure how I can easily convey a year of watching Riot patches and looking at discussion on the boards and playing the game and watching others play the game. It's a series of observations built over time, not a single article I can link you or whatever.

So it's easily a speculation. I have no doubt Riot collects data from all ranked, or all matches to use for their balancing.

Flash is pretty integral to early aggression any match, ranked or unranked right now. Many heroes are made viable because of the existence of Flash. The reason Riot hasn't changed Flash yet is because there's no easy way to do so without a ton of consequences, resulting in more work. Also, Flash has been nerfed again and again since its beta incarnation, and yet there is a sizable portion of the population complaining about it.

Made viable? I'd like you to give me an example of a hero that's completely useless without Flash.

The only reason people complain about it is because they fail to force the cooldown early on. They blow all their offensive attacks on a hero that escapes with Flash then blame it on Flash being OP. Flash can be countered and controlled.

I'm talking using information gleaned from high ELO games/players/discussion. So no, no I won't.

That's funny. I just listened to a podcast where CLG and Curse players talk about how overly offensive LoL in contrast to what you're saying. I think it's quite clear that you shouldn't be speaking on their behalf.

Two things:

1) How does having masteries/runes teach you to play a given hero after another different hero?

2) I started out on Silencer in Dota, and I learned slowly by playing and reading guides. So if someone picks a hero and never learns how to play them, maybe they should look up a guide. The same is true of LoL. Jungling is a good example of this. It's very prominent in the current metagame, some would even say necessary, yet most aspiring junglers rely on other players to teach them the paths, the builds, and the strategies.

1) When a player switches characters, they know that the build they need is different. If they played and AD and switch to a tank, Riot has clearly labeled the mastery tree to show that the tank doesn't specialize in the offensive tree. They look up the hero, research the hero, and learn how to play it.

2) The assumption that players will automatically read guides on the heroes they play is false. Designers know that, and they design such things as masteries and runes to lead players into reading guides. Gamers don't do more than they have to.

From these statements I get the impression that you don't feel people should be moving to gank prior to 5 minutes. If they do gank prior to 5 minutes, it's usually a mistake because of brush.

Pretty much. A far cry from your DotA tower diving with little risk.
Leveling is extremely important that people shouldn't move out of their lanes unless they know they can gank/harass mid usually because of a strong pusher or they start with 2 mid.

Denying is a form of resource control. Resource control = PvP. Also, keep in mind you need two parties present in order for denying to have any effect. Whereas you only need one side present to get all the benefits of farming. The article I linked to earlier mentions this. Let me requote it just in case you missed it.

LoL's method of denying is simply to have more interaction between champions in the form of harass and forcing them to lose farming KBs and quite possible experience if the harass is strong enough to push them out of XP range or to cause them to recall.

A much more fun and interesting way of denying that works and happens a lot. It's not resource control, it's simply controlling the enemy. That is real PVP.

Full Article.
Here Marc clearly states that farming and other "PvE" elements were designed to give players a little break between fighting other players. Again, just to make sure you understand this, denying doesn't do anything when no one is around to get denied. But farming is still useful even if no one is in your lane. Just in case you might misinterpret this somehow:

Denying:
Player 1: I'm making other people weaker!
Player 2: I'm being weakened, oh noes!

Farming:
Player 1: I'm getting stronger!

It's strange you take a quote out of context when he's speaking on how to compete with single player experience like SC2. It's the equivalent of a bot game. Not sure why you're taking that and mixing it in with your argument that deny is PVP.

If you are going to quote Riot, use this: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/learn/dota_and_lol

It’s true, even though League of Legends is based on DotA we’ve intentionally decided to remove denying from the game. We know this is a huge change for some people, but we have some really good reasons for removing it!

It enlarges the early game imbalance between ranged and melee Champions, and we think it is more fun for all Champions to be at least somewhat competitive at all phases of the game.
It leads to passive play, and slows down the game. We feel that high-activity; high-action faster games are more fun. By not having denying, there’s a stronger incentive to push. Additionally, it prevents strong lane control which is ultimately about passive play. Team fights more than anything else are what make this genre fun, and faster games mean more team fights.
It is weird. Killing your own guys?

Doesn't happen as often, as others have stated. Riot is looking for ways to make the level 1-5 game more dynamic and interesting to watch. Guinsoo's proposed jungle changes are part of this.

Guinsoo's jungle changes are about giving junglers more choice. Nothing about making players leave their lanes to set up a tower diving gank. Speaking of jungle, jungle ganking and defending happens all the time when there's a jungler. There's so much risk and reward for being able to contain the jungler if you're worried about people not leaving their lanes. If they let the jungler do what they want, then it's their choice.

Ahaha, it's really ironic you, of all people, should say this. Considering you think your personal experience is the be all and end all of balance debates maybe you should rethink your stance?

Game design is my experience.

Reading comprehension, please.

Could you do me a favor? When you reply to my post, take a minute or two afterward to read it over and correct any mistakes/clear up any muddy sentences. I like to debate, but it's only when the other side is putting in a fair amount of effort into their posts, rather than skimming over everything and then writing the first thing that comes to mind.

For example first you said:

Which would imply that you're skeptical that Riot balances solely based on high level matches while...

...implies that you're skeptical that they don't take lower level games into account when making balance decisions.

I've left other responses unanswered because I can't understand them or I don't see any reason in continuing along the same lines.

First, they are completely far from struggling to make profit. They made so much money on one game that they're aggressively expanding their market. There's really no justification to "feel" like they're a struggling, start up company.

Secondly, in both cases, I did not exclude either low or high level matches when being considered for balancing. In both statements, Riot using all match data to balance can be true. Not making any assumption that they are, but it makes more sense than excluding data as this is a game to be played by all people.

Oh, and I didn't really see what you said about my pre-30 minute game.

 

[Archie]

First, they are completely far from struggling to make profit. They made so much money on one game that they're aggressively expanding their market. There's really no justification to "feel" like they're a struggling, start up company.

He is talking about the fact that Riot has the backing of one of the largest online companies in the world and still is unable to implement basic features like a pause button.

 

[Ark]

Maybe it's easier on lower levels. With level 20-30 people on the NA GAF chatroom, it seems like about 4-5 out of 6 games are losses for us lately, with 3-5 GAF people per game.

Again, the problem may literally be me, and I lose all games for my team, but I almost find that hard to believe.

We often get matched up with a bunch of level >20 players and those games just ended up being more intense, but still ending with a win

Try and get everyone on mumble, there is nothing better than voice chat in these sort of games, typing just wastes far too much time. Even if you don't have a mic, just being able to listen to people calling stuff out is invaluable during a match.

I don't know if you already do this, but I only started doing it recently; adapting your build to what your opponents are doing. I.e. in one game yesterday, the enemy had a fairly well fed Le Blanc (my fault for feeding..) so we stacked magic resist, and she became neigh on useless.

Finally; find a champion you thoroughly enjoy & play the best with. If you can learn how to be pro with one champion, you can be pro with all champions

 

[Card Boy]

He is talking about the fact that Riot has the backing of one of the largest online companies in the world and still is unable to implement basic features like a pause button.

+1

Still blows my mind. 2 years later, bought out for 400million (on top of the millions they have made from skins and heroes) and Riot still have their heads up their arses just releasing 6300IP champs and not releasing basic features. Who am I to argue though? I will just go to the competition.

 

[Blackface]

+1

Still blows my mind. 2 years later, bought out for 400million (on top of the millions they have made from skins and heroes) and Riot still have their heads up their arses just releasing 6300IP champs and not releasing basic features. Who am I to argue though? I will just go to the competition.

First off, Riot wasn't "bought out" for 400 million. 350 million was invested into the company. Which is a significantly different thing.

I always find it funny when people think the teams that make champions and art are the same teams that implement pause buttons and replays. They aren't. They are also not the same as the team that decides the prices of the champions, or anything financially related to Riot.

Do I think the game needs these features, of course. However Riot has come out describing the challenges with implementing them. Specifically because they plan to update the engine and client. So they need to create something that works with both the game we play now, and the game we will be playing in the future. Otherwise, in a few years, the people playing League of Legends will be stuck with an out-dated, non-upgradable pile of shit.

You also have to look at it from Riots perspective. They never knew this game was going to take off in the world of E-sports. Only recently has it blown up beyond anyone's expectations. So saying "2 years", is pushing it. They were not planning this game to become what is has for two years. They were a small irrelevant company, whose game got nothing but slammed in beta when being compared to HON.

Flash forward to today, and they are huge. Starcraft big? Fuck no, but a hell of a lot bigger then HON. They are growing every day, and have a ton of E-sports related things planned in the future both themselves, and in partnership with Intel and MLG.

So although they may be slow on the features, they are NOT slow on growing this game, fixing the game, and investing MILLIONS into the competitive scene. They have done more then both Blizzard, and S2 (shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence as Riot really), to promote and work through problems in E-sports this year.

This year we will have or have had.

- Patches every two weeks
- A new champion every two weeks
- An entire new game mode
- An entire replay system
- Better pricing structure for old champions (community asked for this)
- 5 million invested into S2
- More high-end tournaments then any other E-sport related game except Starcraft, often casted and attended by Riot employees themselves.

Riot deserves some shit for taking so long with the features obviously. However half the shit they get are by people who don't understand the technical challenges involved in implementing these things. I am down to go to the competition, but the competition probably won't be out for another half a year and is a game I played for 5. We will see where LOL is by that point. Hopefully a lot further a long then it is now.

 

[Ark]

New champions every 2 weeks? Really?

I can't be the only one who sees a fundamental problem with this.

 

[shintoki]

New champions every 2 weeks? Really?

I can't be the only one who sees a fundamental problem with this.

Every single person who cares about the competitive nature of the game sees the problem. No different than all the heroes not being available and its only getting more difficult as time goes by, without being forced to spend 10$ every two weeks, on top of the 75 already out.

 

[Archie]

First off, Riot wasn't "bought out" for 400 million. 350 million was invested into the company. Which is a significantly different thing.

I always find it funny when people think the teams that make champions and art are the same teams that implement pause buttons and replays. They aren't. They are also not the same as the team that decides the prices of the champions, or anything financially related to Riot.

Do I think the game needs these features, of course. However Riot has come out describing the challenges with implementing them. Specifically because they plan to update the engine and client. So they need to create something that works with both the game we play now, and the game we will be playing in the future. Otherwise, in a few years, the people playing League of Legends will be stuck with an out-dated, non-upgradable pile of shit.

You also have to look at it from Riots perspective. They never knew this game was going to take off in the world of E-sports. Only recently has it blown up beyond anyone's expectations. So saying "2 years", is pushing it. They were not planning this game to become what is has for two years. They were a small irrelevant company, whose game got nothing but slammed in beta when being compared to HON.

Flash forward to today, and they are huge. Starcraft big? Fuck no, but a hell of a lot bigger then HON. They are growing every day, and have a ton of E-sports related things planned in the future both themselves, and in partnership with Intel and MLG.

So although they may be slow on the features, they are NOT slow on growing this game, fixing the game, and investing MILLIONS into the competitive scene. They have done more then both Blizzard, and S2 (shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence as Riot really), to promote and work through problems in E-sports this year.

This year we will have or have had.

- Patches every two weeks
- A new champion every two weeks
- An entire new game mode
- An entire replay system
- Better pricing structure for old champions (community asked for this)
- 5 million invested into S2
- More high-end tournaments then any other E-sport related game except Starcraft, often casted and attended by Riot employees themselves.

Riot deserves some shit for taking so long with the features obviously. However half the shit they get are by people who don't understand the technical challenges involved in implementing these things. I am down to go to the competition, but the competition probably won't be out for another half a year and is a game I played for 5. We will see where LOL is by that point. Hopefully a lot further a long then it is now.

Why don't they use some of that $5 million (which was a reactionary move to The International) into investing in some features that literally every other competitive title has? Not having replays at this point in time, and having a group of fans be able to do it, is embarrassing.

 

[Ikuu]

This year we will have or have had.

- Patches every two weeks
- A new champion every two weeks
- An entire new game mode
- An entire replay system
- Better pricing structure for old champions (community asked for this)
- 5 million invested into S2
- More high-end tournaments then any other E-sport related game except Starcraft, often casted and attended by Riot employees themselves.

Patches are expected and something would be up if they weren't. New champions all the time is Riot making even more money. lol I'll believe the replay system when it gets added, not that it should be something to celebrate as it's been a basic feature for how many years now?

I'll take LoL as a more serious eSport as more compeitions are not run by Riot, from what I've heard people aren't all that happy about the casters Riot has been using.

It feels like they're only doing stuff now that Dota2 is coming, stuff that should have been done a long time ago.

 

[Boken]

Bloop.

 

[markot]

Patches are expected and something would be up if they weren't. New champions all the time is Riot making even more money. lol I'll believe the replay system when it gets added, not that it should be something to celebrate as it's been a basic feature for how many years now?

I'll take LoL as a more serious eSport as more compeitions are not run by Riot, from what I've heard people aren't all that happy about the casters Riot has been using.

It feels like they're only doing stuff now that Dota2 is coming, stuff that should have been done a long time ago.

Yeah >.< Dota 2 seems to have lite a fire under their asses.

 

[SouthernDragon]

I remember new champions coming out frequently for DotA. I suspect they are just trying to match DotA's character roster.

 

[Blackface]

Patches are expected and something would be up if they weren't. New champions all the time is Riot making even more money. lol I'll believe the replay system when it gets added, not that it should be something to celebrate as it's been a basic feature for how many years now?

I'll take LoL as a more serious eSport as more compeitions are not run by Riot, from what I've heard people aren't all that happy about the casters Riot has been using.

It feels like they're only doing stuff now that Dota2 is coming, stuff that should have been done a long time ago.

People love the casters Riot has been using (Demon and Joe). They only dislike Phreak (b/c he is fucking awful). MLG had the worst casters I have ever heard(not real LOL casters)

The replay system was shown at thew past two tournaments. It has two major bugs that need to get fixed. Regi, Colby and a few others said they will have it in their hands shortly after Dominion comes out. Which is suppose to be in the next few weeks, if not Tuesday.

LOLreplay is a broken pile of shit software. It works, but it's not native, not coded properly, and has so many bugs it's mind blowing. Riot has stated they could have easily released something like that, but want a native replay system, that will work with FUTURE clients. It makes no sense for them to release something that will probably not work by this time next year. It also lacks features, features we know the one Riot is working on has. Throwing money at the issue will also not fix the problem. It's a technical issue with how Adobe Air interacts with the in-game client. Tossing money on the table just buys you more software engineers who will have to be fired once the single issue they were hired to fix, is no longer a problem.

Dominion has been in development since before DOTA2 was announced. It was originally magma chamber, which got scraped, and turned into Dominion. They realized you can't start changing the structure of a "dota" style map, as it impacts the game-play. So instead they took their circular idea and created a new game mode with it.

The reason they release champions every couple weeks is because they need to build a good size roster. It took DOTA over half a decade to build it's roster, and all HON did was literally directly copy 90 percent of it.

"Patches are expected". By who ? DOTA(Icefrog and not his fault), S2, Blizzard none of them patch their games as frequently with as large of changes as Riot does. Blizzard has a reputation of taking FOREVER to patch their games, and FOREVER to release features people want. Regardless of if it's SC or WoW (1.5 years for a PVP system, 2 for something that wasn't completely broken). I truely hope DOTA2 recives as much attention to patching as LOL is, but it's Valve, and they take their sweet fucking time with anything that isn't TF2, pay us, micro-transaction patches.

Most LOL tournaments are not run by Riot. Riot helps out, as any good company should. MLG, ESL, IEM, WCG, WP all run independently of Riot.

Like I said, it needs the features without a doubt and if they aren't in soon, then it's a HUGE fucking problem. However people need to use their heads and think why. I find it hard to believe some of you actuall think Riot is just sitting in their offices, purposely not developing these features, while they laugh at their consumers and roll around in pools of money. If what Treefrog has said is true (as a former employee), it's completely the opposite and they grind to hard working on it, it burned him the fuck out.

 

[Boken]

This thread is becoming ASS.

 

[Blackface]

Every single person who cares about the competitive nature of the game sees the problem. No different than all the heroes not being available and its only getting more difficult as time goes by, without being forced to spend 10$ every two weeks, on top of the 75 already out.

I think there is a massive problem with their pricing structure. I think they need to reduce all prices. They should also offer player choice bundles, gifting, and various other ways to acquire champions without paying. Be it achievements, being a veteran or what not.

 

[Ikuu]

This thread is becoming ASS.

Posts like this certainly help.

I find it hard to believe some of you actuall think Riot is just sitting in their offices, purposely not developing these features, while they laugh at their consumers and roll around in pools of money. If what Treefrog has said is true (as a former employee), it's completely the opposite and they grind to hard working on it, it burned him the fuck out.

It's certainly the impression you get when they take so long to implement basic features. The game has been out for almost 2 years now, how much more time do they want?

 

[jgminto]

So I just downloaded the game and played my first bot round after the tutorial. And wow. This is a pleasant suprise. I was not expecting to enjoy this but it is quite fun. The feeling of pushing the line forward is great. I can't wait to play some online tomorrow and get my arse handed to me.

 

[Boken]

Posts like this certainly help.

It's certainly the impression you get when they take so long to implement basic features. The game has been out for almost 2 years now, how much more time do they want?

Your opinion is like your asshole. Or something like that.

I can either contribute to the inane discussion or I can tell you to stfu. I chose the latter.

Or now I choose the former. Something like that.

You're making the same complaint we've all heard for ages. Yes, I know replays would be nice. Yes, I wouldn't mind the inclusion of replays even though I probably wouldn't use them much beyond proving to people when they were wrong. But please tell me, do you make video games for a living? How the shit do you know what is going on over there. You assume time solves everything. But one possibility is that their engine was never designed to properly generate replay information - hence why LOLreplay goes all spastic sometimes. But you wouldn't have accounted for that have you? Perhaps you should be inventive and complain about developer transparency instead?

Anyway, essentially this is shit because theres an endless discussion about how RioT has failed and a single person trying to defend it. Sure, JWong seems a bit unreasonable at times but some of you have made equally stupid comments based purely on assumptions and expectations.

 

[Ark]

Wow, that was utter crap.

I joined the queue for normal solo 5v5, the game pops and the client blurs out, but I get no pop-up asking me to join a game. So I wait and it takes me in, I choose my champion and we get into the game.

Upon getting into the game I find out that NONE of my keybinds worked, they were all set, but I had to click EVERYTHING.

What a load of bollocks.

 

[MultiCore]

What do you guys feel about Pantheon? Is he worthwhile?
(I'm looking to expand my repertoire a little.)

 

[Boken]

Wow, that was utter crap.

I joined the queue for normal solo 5v5, the game pops and the client blurs out, but I get no pop-up asking me to join a game. So I wait and it takes me in, I choose my champion and we get into the game.

Upon getting into the game I find out that NONE of my keybinds worked, they were all set, but I had to click EVERYTHING.

What a load of bollocks.

That's a strange problem. I think Rayven wants to hear more details from you. Ive had the client blur issue before, but I've always waited it out which kicked me into champ select with no problem afterwards in the game.

 

[Achtius]

that happened once to me too, but clicking also didn't work either, so I just quit and rejoin the game and everything is fine.

 

[FutureZombie]

What do you guys feel about Pantheon? Is he worthwhile?
(I'm looking to expand my repertoire a little.)

I use him. He's a great ganker. He is very squishy so you have to be careful, but when you surprise someone, they aren't getting away because you have a stun and a decent ranged spear toss.

 

[Ark]

That's a strange problem. I think Rayven wants to hear more details from you. Ive had the client blur issue before, but I've always waited it out which kicked me into champ select with no problem afterwards in the game.

Who's Rayven? o_o

that happened once to me too, but clicking also didn't work either, so I just quit and rejoin the game and everything is fine.

I thought about it but I didn't know if it would let me back in if I intentionally quit the match.

 

[MultiCore]

I thought about it but I didn't know if it would let me back in if I intentionally quit the match.

As I'm sure you now know, they do their darndest to ensure you return to a match you leave.

 

[Ark]

As I'm sure you now know, they do their darndest to ensure you return to a match you leave.

I haven't actually left an in-game match or been disconnected yet

 

[SouthernDragon]

So I just downloaded the game and played my first bot round after the tutorial. And wow. This is a pleasant suprise. I was not expecting to enjoy this but it is quite fun. The feeling of pushing the line forward is great. I can't wait to play some online tomorrow and get my arse handed to me.

Glad to see you've joined us! Join the NeoGAF chat channel, we have a lot of new comers for you to play with. In addition, download Mumble. Voice chat in this game is a must. I might offer help to those that want it.

Wow, that was utter crap.
I joined the queue for normal solo 5v5, the game pops and the client blurs out, but I get no pop-up asking me to join a game. So I wait and it takes me in, I choose my champion and we get into the game.
Upon getting into the game I find out that NONE of my keybinds worked, they were all set, but I had to click EVERYTHING.
What a load of bollocks.

I had the same issue once. I quit out and joined back immediately. For some reason my chat box was stuck on "On" and every time I hit enter I'd go to my desktop. Fucking weird.

Who's Rayven? o_o
I thought about it but I didn't know if it would let me back in if I intentionally quit the match.

Rayven is a Riot employee who posts here. He's very friendly, and he works on the UI.

And you can't "quit" out of a match. You're tied to the match until the game is over.

 

[MultiCore]

I haven't actually left an in-game match or been disconnected yet

I had a situation happen where things kind of got messed up right as a match finished, and the stats didn't get reported back. So I kind of got stuck at the "Waiting for Stats" message.

Well, I quit the client several times, and it kept trying to reconnect me to that non-existant game. It turned out that the servers had just taken a dump, and my stats never did get reported. Everything was fine after the servers reset, just missing that game info.

 

[Archie]

I lost 2 AI matches today playing with a friend who is new to the game huahahahahahaha

 

[MultiCore]

I lost 2 AI matches today playing with a friend who is new to the game huahahahahahaha

Ouch, poor guy. Beginner, or intermediate?

 

[Archie]

Intermediate. Both games had a quitter and I was messing around with jungle Fiddle so I really couldn't carry.

 

[Retro_]

You don't have to. The bots can't win it

If you push a tower they'll drop whatever they're doing to come stop you no matter what

 

[ShadyMilkman]

After reading FoH's Jarvan build, I tried using a Wriggle's for the first time. Man, I love the thing on Jarv.

 

[Kozak]

You don't have to. The bots can't win it

If you push a tower they'll drop whatever they're doing to come stop you no matter what

Yup.

People try too hard to play normally against bots but its impossible.

The bots are programmed to come for you. You can hit them once and run as far as your turret.

 

[NameGenerated]

Yes, thanks for that Jarvan build. I tried it out twice and went 7/1/16 and 14/2/10. Could have just been terrible opponents though, but still way better than what I usually do with him.

 

[SouthernDragon]

Yay, I'm glad people like my Jarvan build.

 

[Haly]

And that's why teleport is king and should remain special instead of giving every hero the chance for a scroll. It's too powerful.

It's perfectly fine in Dota. Maybe not for LoL, but Dota is balanced around what you consider "imbalances".

So it's easily a speculation. I have no doubt Riot collects data from all ranked, or all matches to use for their balancing.

As much speculation as what you just asserted.

Made viable? I'd like you to give me an example of a hero that's completely useless without Flash.

I wouldn't say completely useless, but noticably less effective. Alistar, Galio and Rammus come to mind. Although the last two are still kind of jank right now. In before "I just had a game where our Galio/Rammus went 10-2 without Flash"

The only reason people complain about it is because they fail to force the cooldown early on. They blow all their offensive attacks on a hero that escapes with Flash then blame it on Flash being OP. Flash can be countered and controlled.

Flash's counter best counter is currently Flash. It pigeonholes people into the Flash + 1 build. It's kind of silly that every early game gank needs to happen twice, once to force Flash, and one to actually succeed. But then you don't like early game ganking so this is understandable.

That's funny. I just listened to a podcast where CLG and Curse players talk about how overly offensive LoL in contrast to what you're saying. I think it's quite clear that you shouldn't be speaking on their behalf.

Ahahahahaha. Go ask them about Kat mid.

1) When a player switches characters, they know that the build they need is different. If they played and AD and switch to a tank, Riot has clearly labeled the mastery tree to show that the tank doesn't specialize in the offensive tree. They look up the hero, research the hero, and learn how to play it.

There are AD heroes (usually junglers), that use the Defensive and Utility trees. Ditto for tanks. Anyway this seems kind of a roundabout way to get people to look up guides. Just include the guides in the game. Dota had the -herotips command although I never used it much. HoN has small guides built right into the store. LoL would probably do the same if they bothered to upgrade their engine.

2) The assumption that players will automatically read guides on the heroes they play is false. Designers know that, and they design such things as masteries and runes to lead players into reading guides. Gamers don't do more than they have to.

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Main_Page
http://wiki.shoryuken.com/
http://elitistjerks.com/
http://thottbot.com/
http://www.mobafire.com/
http://www.solomid.net/
http://leaguecraft.com/

A good portion of gamers "don't do more than they have to", I'll give you that. But to generalize it to "gamers" is just dishonest. You play both WoW and EVE, so you should know players are always willing to look up things to get even a small advantage. This is especially true of multiplayer games.

Pretty much. A far cry from your DotA tower diving with little risk.
Leveling is extremely important that people shouldn't move out of their lanes unless they know they can gank/harass mid usually because of a strong pusher or they start with 2 mid.

Okay, so I'm glad we established this.

LoL's method of denying is simply to have more interaction between champions in the form of harass and forcing them to lose farming KBs and quite possible experience if the harass is strong enough to push them out of XP range or to cause them to recall.

A much more fun and interesting way of denying that works and happens a lot. It's not resource control, it's simply controlling the enemy. That is real PVP.

I don't want to bust out the "that's just your opinion man" card but there's really nothing else I can say here. Using phrases like "real pvp"? Yeah okay, real great argument there.

It's strange you take a quote out of context when he's speaking on how to compete with single player experience like SC2. It's the equivalent of a bot game. Not sure why you're taking that and mixing it in with your argument that deny is PVP.

Um, Marc mentioned it as one differences from a game like Starcraft.

I'm not trying to say that League of Legends is super accessible, but the moment-to-moment experience actually does allow for rest and different forms of gameplay.

The PvE elements of LoL are designed to give players a break between "real PvP" as you say.

You can have the intense team battles, but then you can go farm a little bit and do some PvE and go back to base and heal at the fountain and do item shopping -- things like that.

In Starcraft, you have to be focused pretty much 100%, there's no breathing room at all.

If you make mistake in Starcraft II, your game is over. Sometimes, you don't even know why you lost, and it's really, really, really hardcore.

Both LoL and Dota have times where you don't need to be so focused on your opponents. For example, when there's an empty lane, you can go in there and farm for a bit before people show up to gank you. It's a pacing mechanism.

My argument is that denying is not one of those things that players can do as a reprieve from fighting other players, because there's no point in denying with other players around. Farming, on the other hand, does not require the other side to be present, and is in fact more effective when they're not. This makes denying a more PvP oriented mechanic than farming.

If you are going to quote Riot, use this: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/learn/dota_and_lol

There some stuff in there I disagree with but it's just going to drag this out so I won't mention it.

Game design is my experience.

I didn't know you were in the industry. May I ask which game you worked on? Also, do you have a book released? You sound like the authority on game design, I was wondering if there's any place where I can read up on your approach to making games. Are you, perhaps, Eric Zimmarman or Richard Garfield?

(In case my sarcasm wasn't clear enough, I'm being hyperbolic on purpose, because saying "Game design is my experience" when asked "Why do you extrapolate your personal experience to the entirety of a game with millions of players" is nothing short of ridiculous.)

First, they are completely far from struggling to make profit. They made so much money on one game that they're aggressively expanding their market. There's really no justification to "feel" like they're a struggling, start up company.

Reading comprehension. I know all of this, if you actually read my posts. I meant to say is that despite their overwhelming financial success, they still behave as though they were startup developer. The lack of features that the playerbase has been clamoring for since beta, is a good example of this. Replays, pause buttons, UI upgrades, etc. Another is how they keep releasing champions before they rebalance old ones, like Shaco, Olaf and Twitch. The recent changes to Kayle arguably made her worse than she was. The only reason I can think of for continuing on as they have is because they care more about making money than making a balanced game. They can't sell replays, nor can they sell an overhauled UI.

Before you say "LOL RIOT IS A BUSINESS", let me tell you that I fully understand Riot is a business. But placing profitability, especially when you're already overwhelmingly successful, over general improvement is always negative from the player's standpoint.

Secondly, in both cases, I did not exclude either low or high level matches when being considered for balancing. In both statements, Riot using all match data to balance can be true. Not making any assumption that they are, but it makes more sense than excluding data as this is a game to be played by all people.

Okay.

Oh, and I didn't really see what you said about my pre-30 minute game.

I was promised Rylai's, yet I don't see a single component of it in your screenshot. Looking at the scoreboard, it looks like you were about 800g away from Rylai's, with a GPM of 314. Assuming you maintained it, it would be 2-3 more minutes before you get it.

Although I have to admit I'm splitting hairs a bit here, they fed you pretty hard, so it's less impressive than it might've been.

 

[Ark]

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Main_Page
http://wiki.shoryuken.com/
http://elitistjerks.com/
http://thottbot.com/
http://www.mobafire.com/
http://www.solomid.net/
http://leaguecraft.com/

A good portion of gamers "don't do more than they have to", I'll give you that. But to generalize it to just "gamers" is just dishonest. You play both WoW and EVE, so you should know players are always willing to look up things to get a small advantage over other players. This is especially true of multiplayer games.

Ahhh Elitist Jerks...Many an hour was spent on that site back when I used to play WoW.

There isn't anything quite like the Team Liquid SC2 community either, love that place.

 

[Loam]

For any Wukong players: how well do you guys do late game? I find Wukong has fantastic harass early on with E+Q, and his ultimate is really good for mid match team fights, but by the time you get to inhibitors his usefulness seems to drop considerably. He doesn't seem to do all that much damage anymore and despite his passive still gets focused down pretty quick.

 

[dragonlife]

So what ever happened with that PC Gamer magazine that had an exclusive Caitlyn skin? I went to their site and didn't see it for either US or EU territories. Unless I'm missing something.