This must be a really bad jungler that didn't clear his first blue buff until six minutes into the game
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League of Legends |OT7| She Ezreal To Me, Dammit!
- Thread starter PhillipCostigan
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This must be a really bad jungler that didn't clear his first blue buff until six minutes into the game
Stone Ocean
Member
We got invaded
yea i mean i'm not gonna tell em how to run their game cos i don't know shit about doto but when translated to terms i can understand it sounds pretty silly to me
i may be missing something but i'm not convinced :>
lol
i didn't mean to say ppl below gold are idiots btw
ppl above gold are idiots too
if anything i love being able to know when it's time for my delicious mana juice <3
SteveWinwood
Member
its happening
Orochinagis
Member
grass fetish confirmed?
Yeah, but being able to maintain that information in your mind, while giving everything else your full attention, is an actual skill. It's akin to an SC2 player memorizing his Queen Egg timers and checking on them at the right time. The difference between a good Zerg player and a bad Zerg player is how well they can keep track of timers to maximize Larvae while still doing everything else they need to do.
This is, ultimately, a matter of preference. Icefraud says, "I'd like for DOTA2 to have this amount of complexity when it comes to information" and then Riot says "Well I don't like that, I'll give players more information here, but not in other places so they still have to pay attention." Coming from a League background, of course you'll feel like DOTA2 is keeping things from you on purpose, but for me, Riot is just handing out things I've learned to work for, from my DotA/HoN experience.
Another example that comes to mind is the EX gauge in Gundam EXVS. It's like a Super/Hyper meter in other games. Unlike traditional fighters, which are played on one screen, EXVS is usually played through four screens, and there's information on your opponents' screens you don't have access to.
Part of the game is being able to judge how much EX the other Gundams have throughout the course of normal gameplay, and proper EX management and EX prediction, while not integral to being good at EXVS, is still a valuable skill. Would it break the game to show every players' EX bar on every player's screen? No, but a little skill would be lost.
Charge characters in traditional fightmans also have hidden mechanics like this, hidden even from the player who controls them! A basic part of playing like, Rog or Guile, I'm assuming, comes from being able to measure when your Charge is full. And then there's stuff like Charge buffering, and it's up to both players to know how the Charge meter works and to estimate it. Can Capcom put a visible Charge bar on the screen? Sure! And it would make fightmans more friendly for new players, and people would bitch, and the game would become a little less complex and a little more accessible.
Is this the direction Capcom wants to take Street Fighter iV?
No.
And the answer is simple as that. It's not the direction Icefraud wants to take DOTA2.
PhillipCostigan
Member
maybe there was one on PBE before he was released?
He never had one on live servers
In fact if you search for "Darius ult kill indicator" you will see a tonne of threads/posts suggesting he should get one.
But yeah. he doesn't nor has he ever had an indicator.
too bad champions look pretty bad without shaders
Then I must be going crazy.
EDIT: Honestly, these complaints work the other way too, and League has some, to me, fundamental flaws in its information distribution.
1) Tethering on summoned units. This is just dumb. When I play Shaco on Dominion, I can see tons of plays that I should be making, but can't or have to expend extreme effort making because the AI is god damned stupid and Riot decided micro had no place in their game, so no one is allowed to micro.
2) Being able to see opposing Champions' skills in game. Why can't I do this?
3) Seeing the cooldowns on my Summoner skills in pick screen. ?????????????????
4) Being able to test out new Champions. In DOTA2, playing a hero, either in Bot games or in real games is a fundamental part of learning how to play with and against that hero. In order to do that in League, I have to install the PBE client, which is a lot of hoops just to see how a given Champion works via first hand experience. Now, I know exactly why this is done. If players were allowed to preview champions before they were bought, it would eat into Champion sales because they wouldn't make nearly as many impulse purchases with IP or RP, reducing profits overall.
And there it is.
Whatever you say about DOTA2, you can't say that Ice balances or designs the game according to shareholders' demands. Frankly, the fact that so few of League players seem to have a problem with this, but go on endlessly about DOTA2's "inconvenience" when the two fanbases butt heads, automatically puts me on the side of the DOTA2. I'm sure, at some point, all of you said to yourselves:
"Well, that's just how it is. I like this game enough to forgive a bit of money grubbing on Rito's part."
But you can't seem to extend that courtesy to DOTA2's "inconveniences" when I'm sure most DOTA 2 players have, at some point, said something along the lines: "I don't like this denying thing too much, but I like the game enough to stick with it. Maybe I'll come around to it someday."
SteveWinwood
Member
honestly it looks better without that huge black outline
also i didnt know this guy was so far
Stone Ocean
Member
Icefrog sounds like a well-liked fella
more viktor love for acthius
apparently laser will get a walk and shoot thing when you aim outside of the range as a qol change and he won't be on pbe until next mont hat least
well that ahri's for sure missing rim lighting shaders and such. she looks really crap :/
anyways i guess it works for doto, but i feel like you're tracking enough stuff in these games for this to be necessary
also imo overall the whole clicking other ppl and replacing your ui is a pretty clunky way of going about things and it was really fucking annoying.
apparently laser will get a walk and shoot thing when you aim outside of the range as a qol change and he won't be on pbe until next mont hat least
well that ahri's for sure missing rim lighting shaders and such. she looks really crap :/
fighting game parallels are a fast way of losing me and starcraft stuff don't help either lol
anyways i guess it works for doto, but i feel like you're tracking enough stuff in these games for this to be necessary
also imo overall the whole clicking other ppl and replacing your ui is a pretty clunky way of going about things and it was really fucking annoying.
you mean the one that you can turn off? that screenshot looks quite bad though
edit: i was referring to the one before, not the one in the latest post
A lot of games are built on clunky systems. Some of the best games today have a shitload of clunk. Take Magic for example. Anyone who went from Hearthstone -> Magic would probably immediately find Lands and the Stack overwhelming. And really, they are, but both mechanics have contributed a lot to the design and depth of the game over the years. Some mechanics were too clunky and removed/changed, like mana burn, legend rule, damage on the stack, etc. Others were kept. It's a balancing act. But the point is that something isn't bad just because it's clunky.
Stone Ocean
Member
Being clunky does not however make it good or skillfull. It just makes it clunky.
We can already see the enemy's resource bar, being able to know how much an enemy can do with it should be the player's responsibility. Showing opposing champion's skills in game would give out too much information because the skills scale. Knowing how much damage a skill can do to you, how much mana it costs, what the cooldown currently is, what it exactly does, etc, are all things that directly affect gameplay on a basic level and shouldn't be given out for free.
The other complaints you have a point - like I said before, League is far from perfect when it comes to access to information -, but this one is just no.
We can already see the enemy's resource bar, being able to know how much an enemy can do with it should be the player's responsibility. Showing opposing champion's skills in game would give out too much information because the skills scale. Knowing how much damage a skill can do to you, how much mana it costs, what the cooldown currently is, what it exactly does, etc, are all things that directly affect gameplay on a basic level and shouldn't be given out for free.
i'm really impressed how many moba players seem to be attracted to same kind of games: wow, hearthstone, diablo, magic, fighting games, all that crap
i couldn't be caught dead playing any of those
That's not what I meant. I just want to see what the skills do, instead of having to alt tab out to Leaguepedia to look up Shuma Gorath's skill set. In DOTA2, if you have an enemy champion selected, and their "UI" replaces yours, you can mouse over all the skills and see how the numbers change according to level (yet another basic thing League is missing), but you can't see whether its on or off cooldown or if they even leveled it.
Stone Ocean
Member
So you just want the tooltips without damage, resource costs and cooldown numbers?
That makes sense I guess. Riot does try to show what a skill does by it's visuals tho, even if they don't deliver it as often as they would want.
Stone Ocean
Member
But that was exactly what I said. Knowing that sort of info is a massive part of laning.
If you know Vel Koz's ult is on a X CD and you can clearly see how much CDR he has, you'll know for exactly how long his ult will be on CD when he uses it. Same for mana costs, you can see his mana bar, if you have instant access to how much his skills cost you can be 100% sure he'll be oom to cast something.
This is way too much information to have on display.
If you know Vel Koz's ult is on a X CD and you can clearly see how much CDR he has, you'll know for exactly how long his ult will be on CD when he uses it. Same for mana costs, you can see his mana bar, if you have instant access to how much his skills cost you can be 100% sure he'll be oom to cast something.
This is way too much information to have on display.
Because it is never worded in a healthy manner. On either side.
Edit: Also, I can't wait for HotS to enter this moba debate.
It really isn't, at least, it's not a problem in DOTA2, and skills there carry a lot more impact.
It is far simpler in DOTA2 to judge what your opponents are capable of because:
1) No scaling
2) Predictable damage tiers i.e. 75/150/225/300
3) Being able to read up on them in game
4) Long cooldowns so any skill gets used maybe once or twice in a fight at most, and you only really need to calculate the initial engagement
Even with all this, the only time people really employ cooldown counting is against really powerful game-changing abilities like Black Hole, not some... 7 second skillshot. I totally get where you're coming from, tbh, but having experienced the other side of the coin first hand, I think you're objecting to imaginary problems.
It is far simpler in DOTA2 to judge what your opponents are capable of because:
1) No scaling
2) Predictable damage tiers i.e. 75/150/225/300
3) Being able to read up on them in game
4) Long cooldowns so any skill gets used maybe once or twice in a fight at most, and you only really need to calculate the initial engagement
Even with all this, the only time people really employ cooldown counting is against really powerful game-changing abilities like Black Hole, not some... 7 second skillshot. I totally get where you're coming from, tbh, but having experienced the other side of the coin first hand, I think you're objecting to imaginary problems.
Stone Ocean
Member
SteveWinwood
Member
SteveWinwood
Member
its so fucking bad
PhillipCostigan
Member
I take issue with a lot of your points here. In regards to your gripes with the game, I agree with all of them. Those are definitely areas that could be improved. Number 2 is debatable, but I can certainly see where you're coming from.
Now, the other stuff.
This is crazy. If Riot balanced according to their shareholders' demands they're doing a pretty fucking poor job of it. Champions wouldn't be nerfed before or the same patch as a new skin releases if that were the case.
If anything, analysts from other companies have criticised Riot for being too generous with their community. Have you read this article on Polygon? I know it's Polygon and Ben Kuchera, but it's actually a good article!
In terms of business models, a lot of Dota 2 players fail to realise something: Valve is not the benevolent and generous bunch of folks you think. They don't give away Heroes out of the kindness of their heart.
At the end of the day, they don't need to sell heroes. Getting you onto and invested in the Steam platform is enough for them. They also have a multitude of other games they sell and their platform is a digital distribution platform. They make so much god damn money, that all they want from Dota 2 from a fundamental level is to get your ass on Steam and having the absolute lowest barrier to entry in that regard is free heroes in Dota 2.
Riot's situation on the other hand is different. They have one game. One source from which to make money. It's not that I like Champions being gated by "the grind" or money, I just understand why it's the case. And it works for them.
People need to understand the vast differences between the two companies and why their business models differ like that. I'm not saying you don't understand that, but there are times when it needs to be laid out like that.
As for Dota 2's inconveniences, I will of course extend courtesy to its inconveniences. There are aspects of Dota 2 I really like and if I had more time to play 2 MOBAs, I would play a lot more of it. I also don't have a set of friends in my time zone who play the game. I don't think that should stop people from being able to point out gripes with the game. It sure as hell doesn't stop Dota fans from doing it. And we all know which community is more vocal of their issues with the other game.
I feel like this applies to both sides, really. The first side is "the correct way" and the others aren't.
$10 recolors as far as the eye can see!
Gameplay wise its okay. They just have a lot of things with unlocks, costs, and so on that are :lol But, hey, alpha.
I like that DotA2 being free invades other threads too. Hearthstone suffered from this a lot in the thread. It's ruining F2P as we know it!
yea you have to set one of the options to medium or something. forgot which one.
i like black lines tho
also haly don't go moba politics pls
we already had a shitty moba thread and i don't want any of this
we're not even talking all of doto and you know ppl here are pretty critical of riot already
Stone Ocean
Member
#Ghostcrawler2014
I won't get deep into this, sorry, because I've retread this argument a lot of times and I don't feel like starting up another pissing match.
I don't think Riot is particularly generous, as far as businesses go. At least, this is not how I felt when I played the game. This was before regular champ sales, gradual IP decline, RP deals, etc etc. There was none of that back then. Xin came onto the scene and dominated for 4-5 months before Riot even touched him. Ditto for Vlad, and Irelia. Was their apathy motivated by greed to maximize champion sales, or were they just too incompetent to see their game being warped before their eyes? I don't know. But having come from a DotA background, it rankled not being able to play new Champions as they came out, and that left a bitterness in my mouth that hasn't left after years.
This is the source of most of my dislike for the game (and by extension, its supporters). I've actually spent a lot of money on League, not as much as Pandaman, of course, but at least $100. Mostly for Champions. I didn't even care about saving IP for runes, I just wanted to maximize acquisition of new Champions. My main account had 6000 RP when I logged back in a few months back, but all I could see is that if I wanted to try out all the new shit since I quit, like Yasuo, Velkoz, Gnar, whetever, I'd have to spend all of that then buy more RP.
I fucking hate it. I don't care what Riot's situation is relative to Valve's, honestly, when they're denying me what I feel is my due despite supporting their game for years.
I think all the indicators and timers dumb down the game. You can develop the particles and animations to indicate the range of the move.
Coming right from dota I've seen a lot of changes (for the worse IMO) since I last played league. Jungle times being the main one.
To me thats almost like riot saying that players arent smart enough to learn the timings. Those are just things you learn in dota. It is different in that jungle camps in dota always spawn on the minute mark and not a set time after its been killed. But roshan doesn't and there isn't a timer for that. Its a burden of knowledge situation but if this is a game people are going to be playing for thousands of hours those are things you just learn.
I mean for dota its pull jungle camps at the 52 second mark to stack the camps (after a few stacks you might have to pull a second earlier). Runes spawn every two minutes starting at the 2 minute mark and the jungle creeps spawn 30 seconds after the creeps begin their death march.
It first started to upset me when they added a range indicator for gragas' barrel. I didn't mind aoe ults showing if it was your team or the others but for every skill is just too much (imo). I mean even something like cho'gath's impale gives way more indication than players need. You don't get that sort of luxury with kunkka.
Just my two cents after having played both games for a very long time. (League since closed beta and dota since around 2004)
Coming right from dota I've seen a lot of changes (for the worse IMO) since I last played league. Jungle times being the main one.
To me thats almost like riot saying that players arent smart enough to learn the timings. Those are just things you learn in dota. It is different in that jungle camps in dota always spawn on the minute mark and not a set time after its been killed. But roshan doesn't and there isn't a timer for that. Its a burden of knowledge situation but if this is a game people are going to be playing for thousands of hours those are things you just learn.
I mean for dota its pull jungle camps at the 52 second mark to stack the camps (after a few stacks you might have to pull a second earlier). Runes spawn every two minutes starting at the 2 minute mark and the jungle creeps spawn 30 seconds after the creeps begin their death march.
It first started to upset me when they added a range indicator for gragas' barrel. I didn't mind aoe ults showing if it was your team or the others but for every skill is just too much (imo). I mean even something like cho'gath's impale gives way more indication than players need. You don't get that sort of luxury with kunkka.
Just my two cents after having played both games for a very long time. (League since closed beta and dota since around 2004)
i don't get how this affects ppl that were already timing these things
it removed an annoying thing to do to all good players. it made things easier for bad players.
bad players will still not know what to do with this newfound information and get stomped by good players
really who gives a shit about timers
you're dumb for spending so much money on a game you don't like dude
Orochinagis
Member
I lost it when someone mentioned street fighter
I liked the game once. I can't take back the money I spent on it after I stopped liking it. And I only stopped liking because I realized that if i wanted to keep liking it I'd have to spend more money. Like an MMO, except I had a better, cheaper, alternative to League to migrate to.
also discussing shit when the image you have in your head is three, four or more years old leads nowhere
i remember when steam was garbage drm that would make uplay look like the amazing digital revolution. i learned to let go of that cos valve got their shit together and actually make steam ok
league is pretty ok now dude
i remember when steam was garbage drm that would make uplay look like the amazing digital revolution. i learned to let go of that cos valve got their shit together and actually make steam ok
league is pretty ok now dude
Stone Ocean
Member
There's zero skill involved in memorizing jungle timers in League, it's preschool math
Knowing how to add isn't burden of knowledge, it's just a hindrance. This isn't Dora the Explorer Counting Arena
Its more than timers. Its giving people answers instead of having to learn them and becoming a better player overall (this all being my own personal opinion of course).
I see it almost as a 'give a man to fish and they eat for a day, teach a man to fish and they eat for a lifetime'
You said it yourself, it helps bad players. By giving them all the answers instead of having them learn from mistakes or by playing instead of just giving them the answers, they either won't or it will take so much longer to become good players.
I see it almost as a 'give a man to fish and they eat for a day, teach a man to fish and they eat for a lifetime'
You said it yourself, it helps bad players. By giving them all the answers instead of having them learn from mistakes or by playing instead of just giving them the answers, they either won't or it will take so much longer to become good players.
PhillipCostigan
Member
So outside of Dota 2 and League, what other competitive free to play games have you played? Like, take Dota 2 out of the equation because the free to play situation there is so different from everything else.
You play a lot of Hearthstone right? In many ways even Hearthstone is far less generous than League of Legends is. It's got a similar business model to LoL in that it uses two forms of currency, one from grinding and one from real money. Except it adds and RNG factor to everything in that you don't know what's in packs.
Coming from Dota 2 League might seem awful to you, but Dota 2 is an outlier. No other company has the absurd amount of cash/portfolio/platform to be able to offer that.
But then you also add in things like hiding game features behind stretch goals for something you have to pay money for and the (now removed) key and chest bullshit Valve was doing and you get a horrible taste in your mouth at the level of devious money-grubbing bullshit that Valve's in-house economists think up.
I find this really interesting considering Haly was arguing the exact opposite in regards to seeing enemies skills.
Personally, I don't mind. Generally speaking, Riot's stance on the game is that they'd rather you react to the situation (indicators, timers) rather than needing to know all the details (AoE size of the skill + what that looks like on screen, timers). I don't really think it removes enough to be that big of a deal. The former not so much but the latter is such a miniscule amount of effort replaced that it's not even a big deal at all.
Honestly, I don't get the "OH NOS JUNGLE TIMERS" uproar that happened. It took practically no effort to do so automating timers saves some keystrokes at best and raises the floor ever so slightly. It's a QoL change that doesn't really give the player too much. Having the timers won't enforce players to make the best of them but it at least highlights the importance of knowing them. It's a push in the right direction for players without overly holding their hand.
Honestly, the entire rationale behind indicators, which is what I assume this is more directed at, is that "300 AoE" is something many people just don't know what it means. Not everyone can really go "oh well that's 2.5 character lengths and a distance I can travel in .8s so it looks like this." Giving the indicator just makes it entirely a question of "can you react to this properly?" which is an easier thing to tackle from balance. Besides that, it helps remove those instances of 298/299 range and getting hit despite the animation not matching it perfectly or it being obscured by terrain or whatever else. Playing things like, say , Divinity where you have field effects that can appear under the ground or under terrain helps highlight the importance of clarity.
Like I said above, these sorts of things raise the floor up but don't really force players to become better. It just shows the information and leaves the use of it to the player. It does remove having to "find" that information but it's not a big loss in many cases.
it's actually quite the opposite
before this bad players didn't have the tools to learn about jungle control altogether
now they have the information aka the tools to connect two and two and learn how to invade, defend, whatever
it's like hiding enemy resistances or whatever. sure you could do the math in your head and easily come up with a rough estimate of how much armor the enemy has but the game hands you that information so you can instead focus on what you do with that information
remembering 5 for buffs, 6 for drag and 7 for baron is not "burden of knowledge". is literally remembering 3 shitty numbers that mean very little to you as far as player growth is concerned
If you find it let me know.
But in that same vein bad players who don't know become good by asking one question about jungle respawns or looking it up for 5 seconds. And when they learn that one piece of information thats another step to becoming a better player.
Its a series of small things that (to me) you learn about the game that doesn't need to be indicated from the developers in the game.
A small thing I like that valve did was put the little markers where the usual ideal ward spots are. These aren't the only places but if you don't really know the game you can place them there and it will still be beneficial to the team.
Maybe it's my old man tendencies of learning games by trial by fire.
Its a series of small things that (to me) you learn about the game that doesn't need to be indicated from the developers in the game.
A small thing I like that valve did was put the little markers where the usual ideal ward spots are. These aren't the only places but if you don't really know the game you can place them there and it will still be beneficial to the team.
Maybe it's my old man tendencies of learning games by trial by fire.
I came from a Magic background so spending money for cards came naturally to me. I actually think Hearthstone is generous within its genre. DotA -> HoN -> League was... less than pleasant. Precedence matters a lot here. Going from spending $40 on a land to $5 on a land to being able to play the game for it (well, Hearthstone removed lands entirely), was a breath of fresh air. Going from free heroes, to pay once, to paying for all of them wasn't such a nice experience.
HoN? I could play HoN forever after handing over $30 bucks. Granted, it was the wrong financial decision for S2 at the time, not to mention their other management issues, but I would've liked that for League. Or even now. Let me buy "Full League" for $50 this minute.
I don't know. I'm kind of an admirer of digital markets. Wrote a few papers on EVE economics in college. I liked the key system, because of the emergent market that revolved around it. Its replacement now, the Steam Marketplace, has its own pros and cons as well, and I like seeing that. The new chest system is also more friendly as well, having drastically reduced the RNG. Valve was exploring explored territory with the key and chest stuff, and they're learning from their mistakes as they go.
Valve is making money hands over fist, sure, but we DOTA2 players, and possibly PC gaming as a whole, is slowly benefiting from it. If I ever decide to "cash in" on all my hats, I'd have made back all the money I spent on DOTA2 and League, combined, with a tidy profit left over. It's not as liquid as actual money, sure, but it's not a sink like Champions are either. So I guess I'm okay with corporate greed, so long as I stand to benefit from it.
Except this doesn't really help you become a better player. That's why it's the kind of information I feel like is okay to freely give out. Knowing that the buff is up in 5 minutes means nothing if you don't actually keep the time in mind and plan for that time.
I grew up playing MUDs and raiding in EQ so I dunno.
so that's what it all comes to~~~
:x
I mind League's business model less because I'm already invested in it, but really it's pretty terrible. The monetization of champions feels really outdated. I'm sure Riot has done the math, but it's hard to imagine they wouldn't move way more skins if players had general access to a larger pool of champions. As it is now introducing new players to the game presents this mountain that's almost impossible to climb. Want any champion from like the last two years? See you in 60+ matches. It's crazy really. Hearthstone is actually way less of a grind, but Blizzard's daily quest system is just gross. It basically requires you to play in certain ways to make progress with your account. In Hearthstone it's a little easier to get around because who cares, but in Heroes of the Storm you're sometimes presented with quests that require you to play a Warcraft hero, or an assassin. Not playing what you want is bad enough to begin with, but couple this with limited free champion pools for players and you're sometimes looking at only one reasonable character choice, and it might not be one you like.
Ghost is Bad
Banned
timers arent going to make bad players any less bad. the crux of shitty players is shitty decision making and timers arent going to make someones thought processes change.
I used to play halo and let me tell you timing shit there was way harder than in lol.
I used to play halo and let me tell you timing shit there was way harder than in lol.
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