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A team game, but you can carry yourself - a trip down memory lane

Aptest·3/4/2018, 5:46:24 AM·1 votes·169 views

In response to he large nerf thread below, I would like to open this topic for discussion, I apologize that my words are more anecdotal so please correct any errors.

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From time to time I hear the idea that league of legends was once a game you can carry yourself, if you play your lane right, but also it was a team game. I read this mostly coming from top lane players but also from mid lane and jungle more rarely. League has changed away from this point into a more team game, and I want to explore what it meant for league to be in this past state for the game, and for top lane players in particular.

What does it mean that you can carry the game if you play well, from a class power balance perspective? It means that you are playing a character who has noticeable influence over the course of the game. How much influence is noticeable? much more than 20%.

What does it mean that you can carry yourself if you play well, but it is still a team game and the team can win despite of you? It means that several players together have more influence than you, but you alone have more influence than those players, if they do not work together.

put in numbers: If the power balance between the lanes is equal, than the two top laners will have 20% of the total influence over the result of the game (10 players, 10% to each). But this is not enough to be noticeable. A good estimate to what is noticeable is 40% on both top laners: they can still be outdone by a team effort, but they have much more influence than other players.

Why is this fun for the top laner: because win or lose they get to see the game shaped around their efforts. Because obviously it's not enough to simply win the game, you also want to be the star of the show (which is why rengar players play rengar and not janna).

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Validation of this concept: support was lacking in items and was therefore free food for all the other players and much less potent. ADC used to be as strong as it is now, but as burst damage from assassins was more available, and supports dedicated to protecting ADCs weaker, they could not translate their potential power into influence over the game, and jungle used to play second support more or less until rengar and khazix came out.

So what I said above is probably correct to a reasonable degree

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The game changed to a reasonable degree. Support as a role was massively buffed, which also buffed the ADC role, and jungle was given enough gold to play main damage dealers (this not only transferred power away from top lane, but also put champion selection pressure on top lane that is against what most top lane players are interested in playing, which is a good subject for a different post).

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Is it a good state of the game to have some lanes (top and mid) with more influence over the game than others? The major advantage is that people are not playing the game purely for the team aspect, they want to also be the star of the show. It is like in soccer, you don't necessarily want to be the goalie, you want to go play an attacker, and the situation where top and mid are more powerful than the other lanes allows this opportunity.

The worst feeling in the game is to lose because another lane lost. If influence over the game is equal, this happens a lot unless snowballing is heavily stopped by design, which is by itself not necessarily a good thing. If influence is biased towards mid and top, the expectation to lose or win because of top lane mitigates the feeling of lack of control a lot because support, jungle and mid all know they need to help top from the onset.

So we can see that the game being at the state where top and mid are over-powered does have some advantages and draw for players.

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Once an over-powered experience exists, the game needs to provide the over-powered experience to everyone. The problem is, people do not choose to play under powered lanes if they are given a choice.

People have secondary role of support and adc when support and ADC is something they must settle on with their peers and their peers can force the better options to be unavailable (5th pick cant support lol). When you are guaranteed you role, people only pick support if they really like it and while a minority of people do like support even if it is under-powered, most players prefer to play roles with power in them. It is the same thing with jungle people are much more interested in Playing Rengar (ok, I am out of touch a bit) and khazix over playing sejuani and nautilus.

When 5 players much settle among themselves who plays what, having an OP role does not hurt the function of launching games efficiently, because every player is getting the opportunity to be in the start roles and the more agreeable ones just compromise more to the extent that they feel comfortable with.

With role selection however if the roles are not desirable to the same extent, the time it takes a game to be found is much longer. While this is not a problem for the dedicated top laners ("I will wait 15 minutes to get my role") it is a serious problem for the game as a whole and is basically brakes the game because most players are actually not in the state of willing to wait 5 minutes and most importantly new players will think the game is empty.

this was demonstrated well with the team builder experiment.

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your thoughts?

1 Comments

ModCaliCoastReplay3/4/2018, 7:25:21 AM1 votes

It was always designed to be a team-oriented game that heavily discouraged 1v5s. That's why there's a level cap.

Also, few toplaners would tell you right now that top matters more than, say, botlane or jungle. Top lane forums are full of frustration over the way junglers can now gank us at level 2 with full health and double buffs by about 2:30, and/or the way we can have a 4/0 lane and still get blown out by a fed botlane.

I don't think the game is that out of balance even now. Truly good players can snowball in any position, but still not 1v5. That's basically by design. You can get good enough to fight 1v2, 1v3, but the game has and probably will continue to discourage anything more unbalancing. It's meant to be the most team-oriented of the major eSports. I don't feel that's a bad thing. Like many others I miss the old days, and feel the game was simpler and more balanced somehow - but rebalancing it by giving more solo snowbally power seems like the wrong direction to me.