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I Know Exactly the Reason why "One bad player can solo lose the game but one player cannot solo win"

ZJD123·4/4/2018, 12:32:09 AM·54 votes·6,091 views

I heard tyler1 on his stream today say "a 5-0 player isnt much stronger than a 0-5 player" and he was referring to tanks and yasuo but I know the real reason why solo carrying (whether its solo lanes or jungle or adc) and individual skill isnt as effective in the game anymore. It is completely because of this abomination known as "catch up xp" which was introduced about a year ago or so.

For those who dont know, catch up xp made it so that the minions themselves now have a "level" which goes up as the game goes on. So a player behind in levels will be killing higher level minions and therefore will catch up in xp really quickly, where as a more skilled player who is ahead in levels will be killing minions which are at his level and therefore he will get way less xp than the guy who was 0-5. Literally punishing players who play good and rewarding that inting yasuo who is 0-10. League of legends was a great game for so many years without this atrocity I have no idea why they added it. Did they think making the game easier would bring in more players? It doesnt matter if you main top, mid, bot, or jungle cause I've seen players of every role complain about this bullshit, its the enemy of individual skill regardless of role. Back in season 4 or 5 if you were getting kills in lane and then rotating well for farm or having good roams you would often be 3-4 lvls up on the enemy. In bot lane the ADC would often be 2-3 levels up on the enemy ADC if he was fed and the support could roam to give the ADC even more solo xp. A good jungler who understood efficiency and pathing and all that would often be 3-4 levels up on the enemy jungler, now all junglers are the same level in game regardless of their skill. Thats probably why so many people hate jungle cause skill hardly matters when every jungler is just automatically caught up to the highest level with catchup xp.

When catchup xp was first added I remember alot of people complained about it but over time people slowly forgot about this abomination. Great way to completely destroy skill expression in the game and make it closer and closer to HOTS every year. This is probably a good time to talk about the 2nd greatest abomination in league of legends : ambient gold increases. I dont know when they added this one but its probably the reason why people reach late game 10 mins earlier than they did in seasons 1-5. Ambient gold increases are absolutely disgusting and another contributing factor to the deletion of individual skill and promotion of everybody reaching late game quickly and engaging in a shitfest 5v5 full of a draft of hyperscaling tops mids and adcs only.

I dont know if there was a business motive behind these changes but clearly it didnt work.

EDIT: I should also add to clarify , that when the system brings a 0-5 player (lets assume cause hes "bad") closer to the level of a 5-0 player, that 0-5 player is still bad so he is still going to play bad and make poor decisions and be a dead weight. Nothing changes in that regard. BUT when the system brings the 5-0 player (lets assume the "good" player) down closer to the center, things do change because that "good" player who would make good plays and good decisions is being oppressed by the catch up xp and ambient gold so that his individual skill cannot be expressed to the degree it would have been in older seasons like 4 and 5.

EDIT#2: To clarify again, I want to make the individual snowball, not the entire fcking team. When entire teams snowball then you get what we have today.

70 Comments

Iręlía4/4/2018, 4:29:34 AM16 votes

There needs to be a focus on individual earnings rather than "you killed/destroyed this, your whole team gets gold"

1 person can get all the objectives alone, BUT the entire team is snowballed with them cause of all the ambient free gold everywhere.

Remove catchup xp and a lot of freely given team gold.

Baron of Bread4/4/2018, 1:49:56 AM12 votes

Have you considered that catch up xp also makes the one bad player less bad for the team since they are more able to stay relevant with the extra experience they are getting? It is also very important for supports, as they would otherwise be more levels behind then they already are. Since they spend more time away from experience sources warding they are typically behind in level; without catch up experience we could return to the time of supports being level 10 or so when everyone else is level 16.

Baron of Bread4/4/2018, 4:38:40 AM9 votes

A response to the edit.

How does the "good" player get to be 5-0? By capitalizing on the "bad" player and getting them to be 0-5, with some exceptions. They should then attempt to capitalize on their lead, but they cannot capitalize on it as much as in previous seasons because they do not have as much of a level advantage as they would have then. This means that the "bad" player who gave up 5 kills has not had as strong a negative impact on the game as they would have in previous seasons because the enemy that they fed has gained less of an advantage than they would have in previous seasons. They can still give up more kills, but following your statements they would not have allowed a singular enemy to become heavily ahead in levels and thus they did not necessarily make an enemy impossible to deal with which they would have in previous seasons when they would have gained an extreme level advantage.

Yes, catch up experience makes you less able to carry. It is important to remember that it also makes it so that guy on the enemy team who got fed is less able to carry and thus your feeder is less of a drag as far as catch up experience is concerned. They can still throw you the game after 20 minutes but at that point even in previous seasons you probably wouldn't be able to carry that dead weight.

I do agree that one person can lose you the game and one person can't win you the game, but I do not believe catch up experience is relevant to that.

Oleandervine4/4/2018, 12:57:09 PM8 votes

The thing about "Can't solo carry when one person does bad" is that it implies that the opponent of the person doing bad is solo carrying the opposing team, which by default counteracts this argument because clearly solo carrying is still a thing.

It's not like one person is doing so bad that the entire enemy team moves to their lane and feeds off of that one player, thus evenly distributing kills - it's always one opponent who is absolutely wrecking your ally, and in turn, wrecking other allies, and in turn solo carrying the game... So how can solo carry not exist when the situation you guys have been building to show that it doesn't exist relies on the enemy team to solo carry in order to support your theory?

Troll for Trump4/5/2018, 3:13:51 AM5 votes

Catchup XP prevents snowballing.

The existence of catchup XP explains how it's harder to snowball individually (as it was intended to do), but it doesn't explain why a feeding lane is so detrimental to a given team; if the feeders are getting bonus catchup XP, shouldn't they be less useless than if they didn't have it?

Automated Riven4/4/2018, 3:26:06 AM4 votes

Minions are actually the level of the average level in the game. So if I am level 10 and there are 8 level 8's and 1 level 6 then the minions are at level 8. But ya the jist is accurate.

ZaneShadow4/4/2018, 3:45:14 PM2 votes

I’m a support, so I love it. While I hate this, I’d be okay with it being tuned down a little. Keyword LITTLE. Don’t hose me so hard for experience that I can hardly play the game.

Meep Man4/4/2018, 3:40:03 AM2 votes

Its actually because one dude dying over and over again gives both their killer gold and all of the assisted champions gold, while one good dude on your team on a kill streak is only getting a single kill worth of gold each time, but I guess that works too.

T I X vuky4/4/2018, 9:26:47 AM2 votes

This is exactly why I hate so much to hear

(The enemy inhib is respawning soon)

This causes sooo much problems if you don't actually know how bad this is it's a sign that you have threw the game

Let me explain when this happens This mostly happens when you take an inhibitor but there is no pressure on any other lane and there's no objectives to take like drake or baron

This gives the opportunity for the enemy team to farm up the super minions which gives so much xp and gold despite how bad they played early how bad their kda kp are they will catch up with xp and gold which makes the 0-5 player viable as much as the 5-0 player no matter how bad they played

And as soon as the enemy inhibitor comes back they will have so much advantages like higher xp more items etc

Jerry SeinfeId4/4/2018, 2:22:58 PM2 votes

I think one of the big problems is bounty gold.

Let's say i play a bad matchup and i happen to die 3 times. Now the enemy laner, let's say it's toplane, has a 3 kill lead. However thanks to playing safer than i did before i scale a bit better and my jungler pays us a visit. so we killed him. I get a bunch of gold because i killed a player with a bounty, my jungler gets assisst gold and the gold for the bounty. Now my mid and bot also get gold because ME AND THE JUNGLER killed someone, why? they didn't do shit for it, they might already be 5/0 or they might have double their enemies CS.

I think the added bounty should only go to those who helped in the shut down. The killer should, in this case, get 60 gold and another 60 should be spread to the people who got an assisst.

this might not be the best way to handle it, there might be better ways if someone sits down and really thinks it out. But as a base idea to expand upon i think it's alot better than the current system. this ain't HotS.

SpiritOfOdysseus4/4/2018, 9:04:36 PM2 votes

So say your teammate DC's in game.. Not a 5-10 second DC, but what I like to call a fatal DC for over 2 minutes.

He isn't bad for DCing, he might not be as priviledged as someone who doesn't DC. Catch up exp allows someone who fatally DC's to actually have a place in the game when they come back, instead of being placed 2-3 levels behind at minimum which is devastating for any solo laner.

Bobloser35554/5/2018, 7:55:51 AM2 votes

You fool, it's supposed to be that way. LoL used to be snowbally as hell and it was no fun! Now the game has improved a lot and there is always a chance of coming back because of extra shut down gold and minion/monster xp gain.

HarrowR4/5/2018, 8:00:09 PM2 votes

Its funny i could swear that there was dozens of upvoted posts talking about how snowbally the game is and how players shouldn't snowball so hard cause of one kill,and now you get a post talking about how you actually want to snowball even harder by denying your enemy the levels even though if you're 5/0 and he's 0/5 he's already a decent 2k gold or more behind.

I personally think the games are too snowbally even with this mechanic,let alone without this mechanic being behind by 4 levels to someone,every game would end in 15 minutes cause ppl would ff when they die 2 times cause it means auto lose. Also having one individual snowball instead of an entire team is not fun either,lost today to some Kata tryhard main,he was literally killing us 4v1 cause he was 4 levels ahead and had 2-3 items worth of lead.

I'd even say its even worse to have one person carry the entire team,its so much frustrating to die to one single enemy champ,that can solo 1v3 1v4 you,plus he'll probably be the only one having fun,taking all the kills,doing all the damage,while your team and the rest of the enemies team are along for the ride,making it esentially a boring/frustrating game for 9 people and a good game for one

XxJaSo0oMxX4/5/2018, 7:46:21 AM1 votes

First they introduced it to the Jungle, and people complained (I remember Akaadian mentioning it a lot on stream), then Riot, being the geniuses they are, decided to double down on it by introducing it to every fucking lane.

Updiving4/6/2018, 11:25:36 PM1 votes

I think I'm the only player who wants MORE comeback potential. The gold difference matters a lot more than the xp difference. In DoTA I feel like if we're all level 20 but they have a 5k gold advantage I can make a play if I'm patient. In this game I feel like my abilities on MOST champions are too reliant on items. Obviously things like Black Shield and Devour are great regardless and that's why I enjoy playing champions like that.

TeCoolMage4/5/2018, 1:34:05 PM1 votes

Imo bot lane should be exempted from catch-up exp somehow in terms of catch-up-to-team-average and be more like catch-up-to-expected-botlane-average (separation of setback from being behind and set back from the inherent state of bot lane):

All EXP, regardless of whether the experience is shared or not, is added full to a ghost 'level' that is used for calculating average team level and catch-up EXP. Bot laners will have a 'ghost level' approximately equal to their solo lane counterparts

Tho pls add a support item or upgrade that costs (possibly potential with negative gold per second) gold but in exchange allows extra levels (though delays ult power spikes somehow)

Zizzek4/4/2018, 11:44:07 PM1 votes

Honestly, I think this is a red-herring. If a bad player gets killed, thus less XP, catch-up XP lets them back into the game easier thus less of a glaring problem.

One aspect of the game that I have yet to see blamed for this "6v4 and we auto-lose" phenomenon is the amount of CC that has been added to the game over the last few seasons. There are multiple ADCs now with lock-down (not just slow) CC. Before it used to just the be the tanks and the supports, and they'd have one or two. And you'd only have one or two tanks per team. Many tanks have 3 or 4 abilities with CC now, and we're looking more at 2/3 tanks per team. And the solo laners have CC as well.

Why does CC matter? Because map awareness and positioning is what separates good players from bad players (apart from mechanical abilities -- but if you're in the wrong spot, mechanics won't save you). If you're in the wrong spot often, with more CC in the game, you're going to die more often than before.

Ambient gold does play a roll here, because once champs die, objectives fall, which is where the ambient gold comes in. And then eventually whoever is winning on your team gets shutdown due to 5v4 fights, or map rotations because of your one bad player, and even more ambient gold.

Resolve/sustain does also play a roll, because even if you're better than your opponent, there are still times they'll have a winning trade, or get a gank, etc (hence the constant advice of "Die less and you'll climb). But the better player knows to wait and sustain back up, and they won't die. While a bad player will position poorly before they sustain, and die yet again.

YoungFarmer4/4/2018, 3:05:59 PM1 votes

They also made the distance from minions that you receive xp so much longer, and also made passive gold higher so zoning someone out of lane isnt as bad.