League of Legends: My Opinion

[Vertigo X]

I can tell a lot of you never climbed very high with the attitude you guys have towards your teammates. It is entirely possible to solo carry. Solo carry does not mean you go 40/0 every game. Solo carry does not mean you do so much damage that you can just 1v5 the enemy team. Solo carry means applying pressure the entire game, putting your team at an inherent advantage, punishing the other team's mistakes, shotcalling to the best of your abilities, establishing/denying as much vision as possible, and capitalizing on that vision advantage. If you complain about your teammates and say "oh this game is toxic" "my team is full of mongrels" etc. then you aren't focusing on yourself and what you can do to win.

The people in this thread blaming your team: show me a game where you played flawlessly and your team cost you the game and I will legitimately give you $1000. If you can honestly say you play perfect but you just can't climb because of teammates you're delusional.

[Marrilaife]

If you complain about your teammates and say "oh this game is toxic" "my team is full of mongrels" etc. then you aren't focusing on yourself and what you can do to win.

What I care more about is not whether I win or lose but whether the atmosphere in the game is sportsmanlike and welcoming, or full of hostile people. In a perfectly match made game you should have 50% chance to win 50% chance to lose, in a 5 man team you should have about 20% impact on the outcome the remaining 80% is in the hands of team mates. What annoys me is not "unskilled" people but people who rage, blame, flame, troll or quit because the game isn't going smoothly up their alley (it shouldn't, it's pvp game). It's a problem in majority of online games, and it's worse in pvp games because pve games can have low failure rate while pvp games need to be balanced so losses happen all the time and things like 60% win rate is already considered super high.

Damn, even when I played a bot game in LOL to test out a champion I've never tried before I've got flame from a team mate for poor play despite these games have 95%+ success rate and 1-2 people can easily finish them no matter what.

It came to the point I was going to play ARAM or something like that for fun and insta hiding chat (mute all) so I don't have to deal with the bullshit.

[Vertigo X]

It came to the point I was going to play ARAM or something like that for fun and insta hiding chat (mute all) so I don't have to deal with the bullshit.

Honestly this is all you have to do. Personally I give everyone a chance and the instant someone starts being a debbie downer you mute them. Problem solved. You aren't going to find a single multiplayer game without toxic people. This is not exclusive to league of legends.

Also your win rate statistics and impact on the game are completely made up and your own personal opinion. Not factual.

[Marrilaife]

If a champion has 55%-60% win rate people scream for nerfs, how is that made up? Or the fact if you have high win rate you must be playing below your intended elo because for every match your team won some other team lost?

If you have great impact on the outcome of the game it means you're playing with and against people who are not doing anything to help or hinder you, which means again you're probably playing below your elo because if other players were similarly skilled they would react in a similar manner how you'd react - you see some team mate doing good job? You help them. You see an opponent running rampant? You try to hinder him, if not even just go kill him then hinder him in some other way or take objectives on the other side of the map and so forth. "Solo carrying" without help of team mates (even if it's not going 40/0 but doing the whole ward game or objective game yourself) means both your team mates and opponents play way below your level. Which means either matchmaking fail (like on off hours when there isn't enough people of similar skill) or situation when people are below their elo (smurfing, start of the season and so forth).

[Vertigo X]

If a champion has 55%-60% win rate people scream for nerfs, how is that made up? Or the fact if you have high win rate you must be playing below your intended elo because for every match your team won some other team lost?

If you have great impact on the outcome of the game it means you're playing with and against people who are not doing anything to help or hinder you, which means again you're probably playing below your elo because if other players were similarly skilled they would react in a similar manner how you'd react - you see some team mate doing good job? You help them. You see an opponent running rampant? You try to hinder him, if not even just go kill him then hinder him in some other way or take objectives on the other side of the map and so forth. "Solo carrying" without help of team mates (even if it's not going 40/0 but doing the whole ward game or objective game yourself) means both your team mates and opponents play way below your level. Which means either matchmaking fail (like on off hours when there isn't enough people of similar skill) or situation when people are below their elo (smurfing, start of the season and so forth).

To answer your first question its because 50% is healthy. The goal from a balance perspective is always 50/50. If a champion inherently wins more or less then its not balanced. You're confusing balance with skill here.

And I'm not sure what the rest of your rambling is supposed to be accomplishing. Of course you will never have 100% win rate. In the end you will balance out at 50/50 until you improve gameplay. Unless you are the best player in the world and play flawlessly you have no real room to complain about the system because there is always room to improve. If you have a problem with the 50/50 system then I don't really understand why you're even playing multiplayer games. This is how pvp is. Someone has to lose. Someone is always better.

You just seem to be complaining for the sake of complaining.. just like OP.

[Deleted]

Can I ask what rank you are?

In the current season, I just qualified after the placement matches and reached gold league just for the Victorious skin reward.
In season 4/5, can't remember which was it exactly, when Gnar was released, I almost hit diamond league. I tried to look for archived ladders around the net, but I could only find ones for challenger tier players.

The following season implemented the new Summoner's Rift, including the new dragon buff team objective system. Herald was introduced slightly after that, but game completely moved towards a 100% team based gameplay. That's the very point of my dicussion: you can't really achieve anything relevant on your own in my opinion anymore after that. You're just thrown in the frey, and the list of casualties out of your control have too much significant weight over your ranking determination.

One should only go better the more they play, it's not like you can drastically drop in division all of a sudden. It's like when you learn to drive a bike, to swim or to draw. One season you are Diamond and the next season you can't move out of Gold? How is that possible? I can see that sometimes you just get stuck and you have to review your play style to adapt to the higher tier gameplay required in order to advance, but you can't just be punished so much.

Last 2 seasons, if I am correct, Riot Games forced a hard reset on players' starting ranks after placement matches.

My theory is that aforesaid company wants you to be stuck as much as possible in one division, while illuding via suggestive medias ('Legends Never Die', 'Warriors' songs and much more intriguing community aimed content) that eventually you will reach important goals.

And since we are at it, I want to point out how the Leagues & Divisions ladder system is deranged in League of Legends:

This CANNOT be skill-based, in my opinion.
A skill-based ranking ladder progression system is a raw one, just like the old ELO system:

The old ELO Ranking System just distributed points to players according to performance, regardless of literal WALLS between divisions and tiers, where you get bounced back and forth after mostly casualties (i.e. team mates disconnection, AFK players [which I want to remark that can also influence positively on our match outcome if it's on the enemy team, but that still remains unfair], as you can see from this example graph:

This is a much more rewarding and balanced system to dispense ranked points, regardless of the game.
Notable games that comes to my mind right now are Battlerite and Overwatch.

[Marrilaife]

In the end you will balance out at 50/50 until you improve gameplay. Unless you are the best player in the world and play flawlessly you have no real room to complain about the system because there is always room to improve. If you have a problem with the 50/50 system then I don't really understand why you're even playing multiplayer games. This is how pvp is. Someone has to lose. Someone is always better.

You just seem to be complaining for the sake of complaining.. just like OP.

Reading comprehension on the low side I see... I'm not complaining about win rates, I think exactly 50/50 system is the goal of pvp games and the only thing I find wrong is the OP suggests a single player should have some tremendous impact on the outcome of a team-based pvp game, which is just unrealistic and not balanced. Also I dislike playing with people who can't take a loss and start flaming / afking even though losing in a pvp game is something you need to be prepared for.

Not even sure what you tried to prove, first you claim you can solo carry, and when I'm saying that unless you're below your intended elo you should have 50/50 win rate you claim it's made up and not facts, and then you turn 180 degrees and say it is intended to have 50/50 win rate and I'm the one whining?

You don't solo carry games. It's a team effort. Also complaining the game is toxic has nothing to do with players' skill or your winrate. There are tons of toxic skilled players, even as high as professional players who got banned from LCS and whatnot for being toxic / harassment. You don't seem to distinguish the difference.

[Vertigo X]

Reading comprehension on the low side I see... I'm not complaining about win rates, I think exactly 50/50 system is the goal of pvp games and the only thing I find wrong is the OP suggests a single player should have some tremendous impact on the outcome of a team-based pvp game, which is just unrealistic and not balanced. Also I dislike playing with people who can't take a loss and start flaming / afking even though losing in a pvp game is something you need to be prepared for.

I think the confusion here comes from rambling. OP wants a tremendous amount of solo "carryability". I'm saying that you can already solo carry. You won't win every game but you will win more than you lose.

Not even sure what you tried to prove, first you claim you can solo carry, and when I'm saying that unless you're below your intended elo you should have 50/50 win rate you claim it's made up and not facts, and then you turn 180 degrees and say it is intended to have 50/50 win rate and I'm the one whining?

You're mixing up balance with skill again in what I said. A champion as a whole across thousands of games should be 50/50.
Players will eventually be 50/50 until they improve. If you are 50/50 now... get better. No one will ever remain 100% win rate but remaining 50/50 or even less is the fault of the singular player and no one else.

You don't solo carry games. It's a team effort. Also complaining the game is toxic has nothing to do with players' skill or your winrate. There are tons of toxic skilled players, even as high as professional players who got banned from LCS and whatnot for being toxic / harassment. You don't seem to distinguish the difference.

You can solo carry games. You seem to think carrying means winning 100%. I don't need to win 100% to climb. I only need to win more than I lose. If I crush my laner this game is now a 5v4. If I get my towers I just created a gold advantage for my team. If I draw another player to my lane and double kill I just created a 4v3 for my team. I go and kill rift herald and drop it in an empty lane for another free tower. More gold for my team. That is carrying. You (and OP) don't understand carrying. Make games easier for your team and you are carrying. You don't have to be an unstoppable snowballing monster to do that. In the current iteration of this game that it is very much possible.

Also OP ... No. Riot didn't force a hard reset. Its entirely possible to place plat 1 (given you actually win your promos against other plat elo players) and from there you only have maybe a week or two before you're back in diamond. Also the over-sized pictures are kinda unnecessary. All of us here play the game and understand the system.

[Krastyn]

In the current season, I just qualified after the placement matches and reached gold league just for the Victorious skin reward. In season 4/5, can't remember which was it exactly, when Gnar was released, I almost hit diamond league.

The following season implemented the new Summoner's Rift, including the new dragon buff team objective system. Herald was introduced slightly after that, but game completely moved towards a 100% team based gameplay. That's the very point of my dicussion: you can't really achieve anything relevant on your own in my opinion anymore after that. You're just thrown in the frey, and the list of casualties out of your control have too much significant weight over your ranking determination.

I've been playing since around season 2/3, and have bounced around anywhere from Silver, to a peak of Plat 1 promotions to diamond. This includes both before and after the changes you mentioned. I also only queue as a solo. I'm also a support main, which can make it both hard and easy to "carry" games. A support can do a lot, but still needs the damage dealers to actually do damage. The major changes they made that you mention were to emphasize the fact this is a team game. They are trying to encourage things like having a top laner that takes teleport instead of ignite because while you personally may not do as well in top lane without it, if you play right your team will be better. Dragon wasn't really important before. It was just some gold. Having an infernal pop up as the first drake now changes how the team has to play early versus a cloud.

One should only go better the more they play, it's not like you can drastically drop in division all of a sudden. It's like when you learn to drive a bike, to swim or to draw. One season you are Diamond and the next season you can't move out of Gold? How is that possible? I can see that sometimes you just get stuck and you have to review your play style to adapt to the higher tier gameplay required in order to advance, but you can't just be punished so much.

Bolded for emphasis. You can't really compare playing LoL to learning to swim, bike, or draw, as those are all static events. LoL is a constantly changing game, and as such players need to constantly change their game play. You need to be on top of all the changes to advance. Last season was heavy on tanks, and heavy on lethality before the nerfs. This season for supports was all about champs that have synergy with Censor. Now that it has been nerfed the meta will likely shift towards whatever the new hotness is. It's not just about getting better at what you do, it's about doing that AND adjusting to the changes around you.

[Elbob]

The entire argument by the op makes 0 sense. Somehow teamplay = commercialized?

The game has always been about team play. You go on about how dragon gives team buffs now like its SO different then TEAM gold. Herald was put in the game to help give winning top lanes some reward because pre min 20 only botlane was reasonably in range to go secure a secondary objective. Playing well with your team, whether that be setting up correct vision, choosing the right strategy/target selection in fights is often the deciding factor in games. It's not just a giant meat grinder where the 2 teams slam into each other where gold and individual play is irrelevant. Heck even properly split pushing works better when your team is in sync(we have all had that guy complain when he dies at a t2 tower top to 3-4 people, and the rest of the team can't secure anything, because the other waves weren't even to river yet.

Solo players certainly can carry games. How else do you explain high tier players constantly making it back into masters/challenger on fresh accounts? You can't do premades in Solo/duoQ. They are making the difference and forcing out a ton of wins. Bronze to Chall/Dia/Master streams are quite popular among top players on twitch.

The current ranking system does promote skill and teamplay. Teams that play better, both together and on an individual level, are more likely to win. The better players will continue to climb(on average) and the weaker players will fall off and stagnate with their appropriate skill level. You claim you were winning 9/10 games (i call bs) ended up somewhere in plat. Unless you played a very low amount of games over the season or decayed due to inactivity its not possible to have a 90% winrate and be stuck in high plat. In reference to your points about division maneuverability, its a pretty well known meme that people in Gold/Plat/Diamond V are usually not much better then some one 1-3 divisions lower. It takes an incredible number of losses to get kicked out of your league unlike your division.(you need like 10+ losses at 0 lp diamond 5 to get kicked back to plat 1). So its not some crazy notion that some player that lucked into a good winstreak from plat 3 to diamond 5 will have not crush people in gold 1. He should win on average but not every game and a 15-20 game sample size is not enough to make any conclusions.

[Vertigo X]

stuff and things

Thank you. I felt like I was the crazy one here for a bit.

[Marrilaife]

Solo players certainly can carry games. How else do you explain high tier players constantly making it back into masters/challenger on fresh accounts? You can't do premades in Solo/duoQ. They are making the difference and forcing out a ton of wins. Bronze to Chall/Dia/Master streams are quite popular among top players on twitch.

Obviously when playing among less skilled players you can shine, if you throw a challenger player among bronze he will outplay the opponents easily and turn the tables of the game with enough nudge that even his clueless team mates will get led to win. If the skill disparity isn't so obvious though (like throwing a plat player among golds) it will be harder for him to "solo carry" or even impossible, but he can still positively contribute to the team effort and hope for the best. Sometimes just a little can be what tips the scales between win and loss. But ofc you don't climb in a day. It takes long time and that's why ranked season lasts nearly a year (with some weeks of downtime, could be around 2 months each year, maybe 1).

[jackofwind]

Heaven forbid you try a game like Hearthstone if you think that climbing the ladder means having anywhere close to a 100% winrate.

To hit Legend we can grind for hundreds of games at ~60% winrate from R3 down, deck flipping to match the currently-played meta from moment to moment. After that you do the same thing to grind Legend ranks down as low as you can.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I started this thread to gather opinions about other people's mentality towards the matter.
I am not expecting everybody to think the same way as I do. I actually am interested in knowing what the others think about it, who agrees, who doesn't, who thinks in a completely different way.

But who's been answering so far, except for @Shadowpunkz (regardless for partially agreeing with me), are a bunch of butthurt and salty kids who don't want their game to be staked and just insult or assault my thread.

I do feel if I’m doing really well in the game my impact matters. If I’m jungling and I play well my actions lead to my team being ahead in there lanes and there jungliner being behind. If I’m mid and I push my tower down and then roam and help other lanes that are behind my impact matters. Even if I’m a support and I heal some one or stun and Enemy and turn a fight around it was my playing well that mattered. The game is the same as it has alway been in that reguard one person playing very well can have a huge impact on the game and in many cases single handily win it.

[Elbob]

Obviously when playing among less skilled players you can shine, if you throw a challenger player among bronze he will outplay the opponents easily and turn the tables of the game with enough nudge that even his clueless team mates will get led to win. If the skill disparity isn't so obvious though (like throwing a plat player among golds) it will be harder for him to "solo carry" or even impossible, but he can still positively contribute to the team effort and hope for the best. Sometimes just a little can be what tips the scales between win and loss. But ofc you don't climb in a day. It takes long time and that's why ranked season lasts nearly a year (with some weeks of downtime, could be around 2 months each year, maybe 1).

League is a team game at the end of the day. Both individual and team decisions should(and do) matter when it comes to the outcome of the game. You can "solo carry" a game without making 1v5 plays. Solo carrying refers to a person who is constantly making good decisions and those results cause the game to be a win for him and his team(even if these decisions are occuring in teamfights). That said, you can't always win the game on the back of just 1 player's good plays and I don't think this is a bad thing... is that your stance?

Please feel free to correct me but it seems like your stance is that on "balanced" teams its too hard to solo carry. I'd argue that if you are constantly outplaying your opponent with better choices(the requirement for solo carrying) is the game actually balanced? Cause it sounds like you just want to stomp people who are worse than you. Or maybe its a bit more subtle and you are are annoyed that you get a lead off good choices in lane but are finding it too difficult to transfer your individual lead into an overall game win (the 2nd is more likely). I understand this frustration, I think most players can relate to "win lane but lose game" results. But transferring lane leads(individual) into team wins is a skill that doesn't come easy especially in lower elo's. This is not a fault of the game, its a player skill. Better team play should trump the individual in ANY team game.

[Marrilaife]

No, my stance is people should stop expecting to "solo carry" and get upset because they didn't win the game automatically after playing well. People are "but but that challenger player solo carried himself from bronze to challenger on stream". First, it takes a lot of games and not all of them will be wins no matter how hard you try. Second, as long as you're contributing to the overall team success you increase your chance of winning but you don't guarantee it. It shouldn't be an expectation. It all started from the first post where OP woed that his contribution to the win is at best 50%. My opinion is it should be less than that on a team game, you can't expect that big impact of just 1 player.

There are tons of advice around which role / champion you should play to increase your impact on the overall outcome, what you should do (things like shot calling or warding), but this all refers to on average, not always.

Stomping "easy" opponents shouldn't happen in ideal matchmaking, because that means opponents weren't really at your skill level. You might outplay them and capitalize on the advantage, but it shouldn't be easy in the first place, it should be challenging.

If you contribute in a positive manner to the team efforts every single time you should overall have more wins than losses but that doesn't exclude lose streaks, unlucky promo setups and other situations that people easily classify as "elo hell" instead of something that just happens in statistical spread of data. Also contributing in a positive manner is not just good mechanical play or knowledge of the game, it's also about not ruining the morale of the team with the toxic attitude. People often get nasty because they expected to "solo carry" towards "gg easy" win, which didn't happen, they don't want to give any credit to the opponents that maybe they played better or were more organized.

Obviously what kind of player you are, good or bad, has a non-zero impact on the outcome of the game, but it looks to me people expect their personal impact to be way bigger than reasonable and then get annoyed / frustrated it had less impact than they wished. And often take that frustration onto their team mates or onto the forums - that's what this thread looked to me, like a complaint about "why can't I solo carry, it's not fair", well duh, it's not a solo game, there are solo games out there where you can prove your skill without outside influence, if you decide to play a multiplayer game you either need a assemble a full team or if you rely on randoms, don't get mad if they don't play exactly how you envisioned it.

Also this game was always objective based, so no idea why the OP is so annoyed they added extra objectives to the game, seems to me too many people focus on their personal glory (like good k/d/a or farm / cs number) even though they're supposed to be just the tools for the job and not a goal in itself. Even though they added "mastery score" and such to the game to acknowledge "personal glory" separate from whether the match was won or lost.

They're also overhauling a lot of old, simplistic champions into more complicated versions, so it seems to me they want to increase skill ceiling rather than reduce it.

In general I agree with many things they're implementing in the game and the direction they're taking it - except the loot crate-ification. Seems to me Ghostcrawler & buddies saw it worked in Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm and now they're putting random crates into LOL and other crap like the new addition of emotes. But well can't blame a business for trying to make money I guess, since there are people who pay for this rubbish.

I also commend them for attempts to curb the toxic community, they're constantly tweaking their ban / leaver / chat ban penalty systems, however it's just neverending work, most online communities have this problem and especially pvp games. I remember before the automated systems, when tribunal was in action and you could see the chat prints to review - some people literally spent half their game not playing, but typing walls of text of profanity and insults. If they typed so much I wonder if they even had time to cs, teamfight or attempt any objective.

[Deleted]

I do feel if I’m doing really well in the game my impact matters. If I’m jungling and I play well my actions lead to my team being ahead in there lanes and there jungliner being behind. If I’m mid and I push my tower down and then roam and help other lanes that are behind my impact matters. Even if I’m a support and I heal some one or stun and Enemy and turn a fight around it was my playing well that mattered. The game is the same as it has alway been in that reguard one person playing very well can have a huge impact on the game and in many cases single handily win it.

Thank you. At least a smart and civilized intervention <3

[Toxigen]

tl:dr

OP loves wasting time writing things with zero valid points

[Deleted]

tl:dr

OP loves wasting time writing things with zero valid points

So you don't even read what the topic is about and still you come here and waste internet bytes for a 5 sentences comment about it? ay lm4o

[Shanden]

And since we are at it, I want to point out how the Leagues & Divisions ladder system is deranged in League of Legends:

This CANNOT be skill-based, in my opinion.

If the system is not skill-based at all how exactly is it possible for famous challengers (not even pros) to have multiple SoloQ challenger accounts (which all were played live on stream) within one season?