Why do our teammates suck? Part QQ, part honest question, interested in YOUR opinion

Pr0Meister·2/12/2016, 11:21:42 AM·1 votes·1,261 views

First off, I'd like to point out that I don't claim I belong to higher elo or that my teammates are the only thing keeping me down or whatever. With some work this season I may just reach Gold, but this needs lotsa work on my part I guess. Consider the summoner's name ironic, for all intents and purposes.

Thus, as the nooblord all of you will brand me as, I gotta ask, why do our teammates sucks so much and so often. I am not talking about mechanical skill. This one fully depends on which champion you are playing, how much you've played with, whether you are lagging or not etc etc. But why do seemingly 80% of the player-base suck at decision making?

I admit, mechanically-wise, I've got ways to go. Vel'Koz and Wukong are the only champs I can trully say I am trully good with, eveyrthing else is, let's say average. But even with a champ I suck I rarely make such grandstanding mistakes as most people in my games seem to do.

Dragon isn't warded in advance, they start it with enemies around or go in to steal (?!) it AFTER the game has announced its fallen. Baron throws are a dime a dozen, no one waiting to see enemies on the bot side or bogged down in their base by supers. Toplaners rush into fights, trying to avenge themselves on an opponent who is already 2 items ahead, never waiting for the jungler's help. ADCs farm mid-ganks, supps try to force fights when their combo is bad at a certain level. Midlaners back into base instead of pushing or following the roamer. Junglers farm their camps when 2nd tier towers are falling or when we are trying to get one of theirs.

And no one seems to play for objectives. It's like everyone is looking for that one play for their YouTube montage when most of the time just sticking to boring old farming and warding to catch someone off guard is the easiest way to winning. People win teamfights, and 3 low-hp players prefer to go heal and play it safe (?!) during an ace instead of pushing. Tanks or hard-cc supps are scared to engage poke comps, letting them whittle their team down and "starting" the fight too late. Poke comps fight in jungle, all disorganized instead of sieging straight through a lane.

And the chasing! It's like 90% of the players have a hunter instinct overriding all their higher reasoning. And, of course, teammates join one after the other instead of pushing the other side of the map or something.

I've been playing this game on and off since mid-season 2, never bothered with ranked except this season. Due to long periods of ditching the game, my mechanics aren't all that cracked up and I don't claim to be that good. But come on! Every game I see people making mistakes that defy common sense. Mistakes that make me question how those people even make it to school/work without bumping into lampposts. I am honestly wondering WHY are people bad at an aspect of the game that is much easier to get and more intuitive than mechanics, cause it requires common sense and not MAD SKILLZ.

For the TL:DR guys: Why do players seem to have no KNOWLEDGE of this game? Everyone seems to be looking for DEH PLAYZ instead of staying safe and getting towers.

13 Comments

Void Nargacuga2/12/2016, 11:27:11 AM2 votes

I believe two major mentalities might be part of it and they are:

  • Dunning-Kruger effect AKA: "I SHOULD BE PLAT BUT MY BRONZE TEAM MATES ALWAYS HOLD ME BACK!"
  • Negativity Bias AKA: "Why are all Shaco jerks?!" Just using him as a quick example. Not all are mean players.
Scramrail2/12/2016, 11:51:11 AM2 votes

It really is pretty interesting honestly. Ive encountered gold/plat players that seemingly have bronze level strategy and tactics, but apparently got carried to their ranks by their mechanics or something. You can ping your lane opponent MIA a dozen times, and ping your bot lane WARNING another dozen times, but chances are they'll still just stand around in their lane until the enemy mid shows up and they killed, and invariably try to blame you for not following the roam (even though you were low on mana/hp/back at base).

Something that's really started to irritate me is ganking bot lane from mid/top. Every time the other team roams bot by running through river or TPing, my teammates get slaughtered, and yet whenever I try to do the same the other team immediately sees it and responds.

I wish we hand answers for these questions, but we don't. You just have to take it upon yourself to force objectives, sometimes to the detriment (death) of your teammate(s).

1st Movement2/12/2016, 12:06:56 PM2 votes

I still refused to believe I'm playing with plats

A zed 1-5 buys a ghost blades and starts building bf sword ... He lost to an akali and doesn't buy mr ..

Catastrop2/12/2016, 12:22:00 PM2 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2PNgIVlT4I Sky's definitely got a point here.

Totalwanabe2/12/2016, 12:41:26 PM1 votes

mmr is to blame for that situation, you started your rank career after playing x hours normal until you hopefully grasped the basic got into placement match has a solo player that was the biggest mistake you could have done you will be matched with full greenhorns who have no clue what they are doing making your mmr worst and it will worsen over the time while your skill and toxicity will increase.

Lovely Pants2/12/2016, 1:23:44 PM1 votes

So, a couple of things:

-Almost everyone in this game is bad at one thing or another, if not everything when it comes to strategy. We don't notice when out teammates make good decisions most of the time, because it's difficult to assess anything that does not directly impede us. The poorest decisions are more obvious and most everyone is bad enough at this game to have colossal screw-ups at least once a game.

-Knowing better does not always mean playing better. When the chips are down, I notice myself making a lot of the same mistakes under pressure. We all have our bad habits which will take control in a moment of weakness. Maybe 1 out of 10 of every match I've had in ranked this season, and probably more often, there will be a situation where teammates get killed for overextending and they'll say something to the effect of, "we shouldn't have stayed so long," with the acknowledgement of their own poor decision making.

I also know there are people completely oblivious to their own mistakes, but this is a high pressure game at times and good habits on the fly take a lot of effort to be consistent with. Also, I think the simple difficulty of communicating intent with perfect clarity between teammates in this game means we end up having to second-guess our knowledge frequently to try to follow along in other's decisions.

Sometimes I see people flaming each other after a poorly executed play, which ends up being the case of both players making bad decisions out of an intent to help the other in what they thought they wanted to do. True poetic tragedy.