The most common Gameplay misconceptions
I've been reading boards a long time and I want to tackle a few things about the game that are and aren't actual problems, and how or why they pose as problems (or why they don't and it's really just a disgruntled circlejerk of frustrated players).
"I'm in elo hell." - False You're not in elo hell. Elo hell implies that you just can't get out because bad teams keep you there. I will admit that there are "bad elos" in which the game quality does drop but these are very small, concentrated zones and on top of that most of the ones Gameplay users will go through (Silver 3, Gold 5, and Plat 5) aren't even particularly difficult to carry out of. Most of the issues with these areas is that the player isn't as good as they claim they are and will get trapped by a combination of their own ego, confirmation bias, and inability to macro well to close out games. Also, you're probably not hardstuck. Hardstuck in an elo system means at least somewhere between 40-100 games between 1-2 divisions (elo systems require a lot of games to determine your "true rank" which changes frequently when you're playing a game like League). I've spent hundreds of games bouncing between D4 to D2. That's what hardstuck looks like, and I really don't have anyone to blame for that besides myself.
"A bad player can solo lose you the game but a good player cannot carry." -Semi-true I've been the deficit on my team plenty of times. I've been the solo carry more times. The issue is that most people don't have a strong sense of macro play. Micro play gets you the leads but macro play turns your lane presence into actual objectives. The big thing is though you're more likely to get discouraged and throw the game (unintentionally, usually) or give up looking for small leads if your bad player is feeding than if you've got a 3-0 player on your team because people naturally pick up on negativity and get sour more easily than find things to be cheerful about. And most of the time you don't realize this because it's a mental thing and those are much harder to figure out than things like strong laning mechanics.
tl;dr, this just means that a bad player has a stronger mental presence in games than a good player, and because the already weak macroplay of low elo gets degenerated further, games feel much more hopeless. However, in terms of raw gameplay a 3-0 character is much more scary, because at least the 0-3 guy can keep on par with cs but the 3-0 guy will have a potential 900 gold lead, not even counting the towers or dragons he's taken off that lead. He'll also have a level advantage and you'll probably need to send 2+ to deal with him.
"Towers die too quickly." - True, and Riot is taking (albeit small) steps to work on that, such as making red buff not burn them for extra damage on the PBE.
"The game is super snowbally and everything ends too quickly" - False The game is actually in a better spot right now than it's been in for a while. Actually, I looked up two of the players that have complained about this recently and looked at their games. They have a few games in the 20-25 minute mark but a lot of them are really within a 25-35 minute zone, and that's where the game should be. This is roughly a good metric for games where snowball champions can snowball the game and win and a lot of mid-late game champions can shine and do their thing. There are quite a few 40 minute games on one of the accounts too, with 3 of his last 10 games being within the 35-40 minute mark (sorry I can't link the accounts. Name and shame is a pain).
"AD carries scale into the game too quickly" - I'll give ya this one Their items are so cheap they hit their powerspikes well before a lot of champions, inflating their DPS way too quickly. The big issue imo is the amount of lifesteal they're getting is too much because it's enabling them to go for super cheap builds that max raw DPS. Also, the Shiv changes were a really good starting point.
"Junglers have too much impact" - True They are super impactful against every objective, but with red buff going to lose its damage against towers, I think the worst of it will go away soon since they'll be unable to cheese towers early on. Of course, they still clear camps way too quickly and that leads to some down time in which they can chain gank and make one lane miserable but that will likely be dealt with during midseason.
If there are any other claims, beliefs, or misconceptions you want to tackle, just leave them below. Hope this helps clear some things up.
