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Let's talk: Fair - Boards vs Reality

IP Masquerena·2/25/2020, 11:21:24 AM·1 votes·8,130 views

So, I was bored and went through the Duel Links forum on Steam, and saw something dumb, even more so considering it was a recurring theme the past few days, and as bored as I was, I had a brilliant ide, let's see how many people will get offended on the LoL Boards if I try to talk about this.

And I know, I know, you guys are as sad as me that you can't downvote the thread, but oh well, let's see what happens.

So, what I read were a good bunch of threads with the same thing "nerf X deck, it's unfair", when asked why is it unfair, the reply was simple "I don't have fun against it".

We already know that fun is relative, and if fun dictates fairness, it basically shows that fairness is also relative.

But, there are two types of "fair", there's objective fairness and subjective fairness.

  • Objective fairness is obvious, it is by the rules. If the rules allow it, it's fair.
  • Subjective fairness is based on feels, it has nothing to do with the rules. It can be objectively fair, but subjectively unfair.

I always used this example as best description: "In this random city, there's a city race, rules are simple, anyone can join. Around 500 people join, your every day joe, but Usain Bolt is in the area, he decides to join as well. As expected, he wins no contest".

Was that race fair? Yes, it was fair, anyone can join, so Usain is allowed to join as well. Did the race feel fair? Depends on who you ask. Ask the ones in charge, it was fair, as Usain, it was fair, ask a random dude from the ones who participated, it wasn't fair. Why? Because he has no chance to win against Usain, it's Usain friggin Bolt, your random average joe can't win against him.

And this brings us to the biggest part of this thread: "Losing isn't fun"

Just like in Yu-Gi-Oh, people who want to win will play the most "unfair" things, because what's fair doesn't win. The more chances you give to your opponent, the less chances to win you have, so when you want to win, you have to play things that give your opponent the least chances to win, because the less chances your opponent has, the more chances you have. It's just that simple, it's logical.

But here comes entitlement, it's ok when you do it, but it's not ok when it's done to you. People now cry that "it's only stomp or get stomped", but who are the people who cry that? It's the people who play "fair" champions, they are "fair", they don't have impact, so it's either the opponents are bad and can't keep up, or they are good enough to keep up and stomp you. People cry they have no agency, but they play stuff that gives away that agency. You play a slow jungler in the meta, you give away your agency, you're not allowed to cry because it's your choice.

And we have one more thing, agency is also correlated to skill. We see people like JaySea who even easily won with Tryndamere support in low elo. When you out skill your opponents, even if you champion is "fair", your opponent can't abuse your weaknesses and you win it.

Which brings us to the last issue: if you want to win, if you want chances, if you want fun, EARN IT. Let go of your ego of thinking "I'm better than everyone" and accept where you are, if you want to play your own champions with which you have fun, champions that are "fair", you need to heavily boost your own skill in terms of micro, macro, risk success, etc, you need to outskill everyone in your games and take control yourself, because if everyone is close to equal in skill, your champion can't keep up. But if you don't want to do it, play what's strong, play what's "unfair".

In Duel Links I play Fortune Ladies, a "fair" deck, yet I don't have problems against stuff like Dark Magicians, Element Sabers w/ Injokers or most of the meta decks, why? Because I know my deck inside out, I know how the opponents deck functions and what their weakness is, and I outskill those players. Again, it's back to skill, I can choose to play Grass Shiranui or Dark Magician, the "unfair" decks, but I have no reason to, I'm good enough to win consistently with a "fair" deck, even reaching a 22 win streak in the last KC Cup.

Same goes in LoL, especially in lower elos, which are exactly the players who cry. You have 3 options:

  1. Get good
  2. Play what's meta
  3. Quit

But, the low elo mentality doesn't allow option 1 for the vast majority of players, because they already think they are good enough, but if they, why aren't they winning? I know the feel to blame the team, to blame anyone but you, I was there. When playing Dota, there was this moment 4 years ago, I calibrated at 700 MMR, which would be modern day equivalent of Bronze 3, I dropped to 100 MMR (Iron 4) and kept blaming my team, was on the forum blaming how I can't win because of my team mates, etc. Met some chill people once, and they had me play with them, that was in 4.5k MMR, which the 4.5k MMR at the time would be the current quivalent of D1/Masters (at the time, the highest MMR was 6k), and I was happy, that's where I thought I belong, I spent months in 1-200 MMR blaming my team and now I had the chance to prove myself, and I got owned, and saying I was going 0-20 in every game would be an understatement. And I had nothing to do, all the people I played with were 4-5k MMR, I couldn't blame them for being bad as I did with my team mates, only thing I had to do was accept I suck. So I did, I read guides, practiced my stuff, combos, mechanics, watched actual 5-6K players play the characters I played and got good. After a couple months, I went from 100 MMR to 3000 MMR in 1 month, while playing like 3-4 games a day during the week and 6-7 in the weekends. So I know that so many of the people who cry "my team is bad" are blowing too much hot air. Yes, some teams can lose you the game, I've had it, we all had it, but that evens out when you look at the bad things your opponents do, but that's the thing, stop looking at your team mates, look for mistakes at your opponents.

If it feels unfun, look in what elo you, if you're too low to matter, which 90% of the players are, then simply get good. The "I stomped my lane but still lost because team fed" mentality is toxic, you got a lead, transition it, make it help your team as well.

And that's all for today from your lovely me, if you want to know more, state your intentions in the comments bellow.

78 Comments

Jng Account2/25/2020, 11:37:22 AM15 votes

It doesnt matter if I play meta champs or not, when there is forced 50% wr holding me from climbing. /s

Bulshlaka2/25/2020, 11:57:42 AM11 votes

there are simply unwinnable games but just as much there are unlose-able games

when you disregard all the games that you do not influence you are left with around 20% of the games that you can your success at winning those 20% determines how fast you climb

in 100 games if you win all those 20% that you matter in you'd be at 60% win rate and at 60% win rate you will be climbing very comfortably

people like to complain about the 80% but they don't realize that they are no where near good enough to influence a fraction of those 80%

Toxic Teeto2/25/2020, 3:35:05 PM10 votes

Let me get this straight... There's a dude here that compares playing Akali to the things that jewish people suffered....??????

Also:

The "I stomped my lane but still lost because team fed" mentality is toxic, you got a lead, transition it, make it help your team as well.

...

"Just carry 4Head. If you are not able to carry 0-20 bot lane, you are toxic"

People please, THINK BEFORE you type on the internet. [zombie-brand-mindblown]

I illustrate2/25/2020, 4:41:57 PM8 votes

As someone who’s experienced both sides of the “my team is shit” coin, I can actually say that I don’t really agree with this. Yes while it is your responsibility to learn to play around even the most over-powered stuff if you wish to climb, you also can’t just claim that the rules are justified... because they are the rules(?). That guy who compared it to the Holocaust was actually very right. Just because it’s law doesn’t mean it’s right. What you’re doing is assuming that riot makes all the right decisions whether people know it or not. When you try to “prove” an opinion, majority rules, and the majority would not agree with your point. And yea I understand it but at the same time you’re suggesting that some games being lost from champ select is completely fine. Idk. There are just too many faults in your argument, and just know that having a cohesive argument doesn’t make it right. The writing on the pages matters just as much as the fancy book cover.

PekiCodex2/25/2020, 5:37:18 PM5 votes

"Objective fairness" as you described cannot exist. This is because "Objective unfairness" cannot exist assuming the game's rules are being followed. For example: Someone bans Garen. You are not allowed to pick this champion when that happens, no matter what. You are literally incapable of being unfair.

Thus, in this case, "Fairness" may only be deemed as a subjective matter, whose opinion differs from subject to subject.

That doesn't mean unfairness cannot be certain. Cheating is definitive unfairness. If you would compare a fair player with a cheater, the cheater would have definitive advantage over the fair player, hence it is quite literally unfair.

Now that we have fairness out of the way, let's determine why comparing Duel Links to League is a terrible example:

Duel Links allows you to build your deck however you want, but when it comes to the game itself, all rules are hard-coded for the game. You are incapable of breaking the game's rules without cheating. All card effects will do exactly what they are supposed to do, all rules regrading the different phases of the game must be followed, and so on.

League on the other hand has soft-coded rules. You must follow these rules, but there is no system in place to prevent a player from breaking them. For example, you are not allowed to intentionally sabotage your own team, or you're not allowed to say naughty words in chat, but it's not like there is anything preventing you from doing so. This is not to say it will go unpunished, since the other players can report you. In case you didn't realize it, the system here is very subjective-based, as you are unlikely to be banned if no one reported you.

Edit: Also I forgot to mention Duel Links is You vs some other dude where only your decisions matter, while in League it's You and 4 strangers with a common goal try to beat 5 other strangers with a common goal, the goal being a shiny crystal on a pedestal worth 50 gold.

BigFBear2/25/2020, 6:47:47 PM5 votes

What a hot garbage and waste of time this thread is. I stopped reading after half the post. Maybe go to a therapist and tell him your boring stuff. He gets paid to listen.

General Esdeath 2/25/2020, 8:21:42 PM4 votes

fair and fun are 2 different things. Irelia would be fun to play against if she wasn't able to one shot everyone who's name isn't Rammus. Her kit is fair and skillshot based with clear weaknesses.

DeathBurst2/25/2020, 8:09:29 PM4 votes

I mean, that's just not what "fair" means. Your "subjective fair" isn't "fair", it's just "fun to play against". Just call the thing by its name. Same in your Usain Bolt example: yeah, this race was fair. It was just not fun to participate to it, because you knew the result in advance anyway. Like, the mistake in the reasoning is at the very beginning, accepting the "it isn't fair" complaints as axiomatic truths. They aren't, that's not what this word means.

And while the "unfair" or "OP" complaints from low MMR players are often factually wrong, while they don't use the proper vocabulary to express themselves... They are right to complain about unfun champs (or decks, or whatever). Unfun champs should be (and thankfully, ARE) reworked, because LoL isn't only the competition for the top2% ranks. It's also a game played by a fucking lot of people mostly for fun, and that fun matters.

Kill the fun, you kill the game. Kill the balance (but keep the fun), and you only kill the competition, but the player base would remain. In fact, even bad balance isn't certain to kill the competition either... Look at Soul Calibur 2 or Super Smash Bros.

So yeah, I know you like to sh*t on low MMR players, it makes you feel good. But they are still right to complain.

JimTheSnail2/25/2020, 5:33:25 PM4 votes

[{quoted}](name=IP Masquerena,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=i6vUQ0WP,comment-id=,timestamp=2020-02-25T11:21:24.874+0000)

  • Objective fairness is obvious, it is by the rules. If the rules allow it, it's fair.
  • Subjective fairness is based on feels, it has nothing to do with the rules. It can be objectively fair, but subjectively unfair.

This is actually just strictly false. You can do simple google searches, ask any professors (most logical type would be OLS professor or Phil teacher). The pure idea that "Long as it is allowed it is fair". But the majority of people would agree that if a steroid is not fair it is not allowed. You then should include in your text that it is widely known that balancing plays into fairness. "Meta" can be a champ at 70% WR which means when you play VS that champ even if you are pros like Dardoch. You will lose to it.

On top of that fairness is kind of one of those things where the majority determine if it is fair or not. It just may not be "enforced". It is a very utilitarianism word to just say "it has only 2 hard definitions that are not subject to change and if you oppose this you are wrong".

Put you into thise scenario. You are a firm believer that everything is based off of personal skill in the text you posted. Which is probably not true and this is just a troll post due to you saying "Let's see how many of you get offended". Which in a sense is true because you did offend what the majority believe. Which is generally fact. Interesting post but eh. Wish you knew more about what you where talking about. [zombie-brand-clap]

Karn Bishop2/26/2020, 1:00:57 AM3 votes

I would start by reporting usain bolt for smurfing.

CytheGuy2/25/2020, 3:29:55 PM3 votes

I guess I can agree for the most part with your post. The problem with "metas" in general isn't so much that they exist, but more so that Riot does not explicitly state that their agenda is to make metas. We have come to expect it, we have evidence of its inevitability, but we don't have Riot just outright saying: "We don't want a perfectly balanced game. That just isn't our goal. We want to shift metas frequently to give players new experiences constantly." This is frustrating because then we don't have a clearly-defined set of governing rules (a constitution if you will), we just have the rules that change (the laws if you will).

Another issue is that, even through the meta-picks that I just need to get better against, even through the times when team or the enemy team is just having a bad game, there are times where the enemy is just consistently better than I am. These occasions represent flaws in the "constitution," because even before I got into a match, I was led to believe that I would be playing with people who are on the same skill level as me. We can see the ranks and winrates of other players through online resources, so when I see this, I feel cheated, and that this occasion wasn't my fault, because the rules that I expected to be followed by Riot (the government if you will) just weren't adhered to.

A more general problem that I encounter is that when people say to just "get good" or "get better," is that it's not that easy for someone who isn't naturally inclined towards fast progress. Over time, everyone gets better, but since everyone is getting better at more or less the same pace, no one climbs. I am not exceptionally good at League, so I probably won't get to diamond, or even plat, unless I spend 8 hours per day learning and trying to get better, because I am simply not good at getting good. I don't have that kind of time, so I will just sit where I am now, moving forward with everyone else around me. I personally will usually only complain seriously about the things I pointed out above, but people aren't infallible and will still complain about their own shortcomings without mentioning those shortcomings.

HideSide2/25/2020, 1:05:10 PM2 votes

How do I change that one thing, when I pursuade my team not to ff ať 15th minute even if we are all 0/2 0/3 and midlaner goes afk then single handedly turn 4v5 game into our favor, guide my toplaners because I have 480k on his champ so he can solokill enemy cancer toplaner and then watch how my team who can end the game start trolling And throwing because they think that they have everything under their control when our toxic adc who tried to "backfire" my effort to pursuade team to not ff, write with kda 9/11: "Haha, we wanted to ff and now we are winning." Who also blamed me 19/6 jungler for that loss because I misplayed, misplayed not threw away. With such players you dont have aby other option than to cry in the corner. You can say: "If you didnt misplay back then..." But thats still just what if.

BrokenRayquaza2/25/2020, 3:02:49 PM2 votes

It's also good to mention that besides a select few champs, pretty much everything works right now. Like sure aphelios is a step or five above kalista but she can still beat him sometimes.

Iljos2/25/2020, 12:10:49 PM1 votes

[deleted]

Ayzev2/26/2020, 12:38:13 AM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=IP Masquerena,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=i6vUQ0WP,comment-id=,timestamp=2020-02-25T11:21:24.874+0000)

fun dictates fairness

I'd say the reverse is true - fairness (partially) dictates fun

I always used this example as best description: "In this random city, there's a city race, rules are simple, anyone can join. Around 500 people join, your every day joe, but Usain Bolt is in the area, he decides to join as well. As expected, he wins no contest".

Was that race fair? Yes, it was fair, anyone can join, so Usain is allowed to join as well. Did the race feel fair? Depends on who you ask. Ask the ones in charge, it was fair, as Usain, it was fair, ask a random dude from the ones who participated, it wasn't fair. Why? Because he has no chance to win against Usain, it's Usain friggin Bolt, your random average joe can't win against him.

This example works if the reason for one's loss is a difference in skill/training/experience, but it's different if your deck archetype/champion/etc. is just weaker. Usain runs faster than the average Joe because he's dedicated himself to that, he worked for it harder than the rest of us, not because God buffed him and told us "the race is fair, I swear lmao"

And this brings us to the biggest part of this thread: "Losing isn't fun"

Just like in Yu-Gi-Oh, people who want to win will play the most "unfair" things, because what's fair doesn't win. The more chances you give to your opponent, the less chances to win you have, so when you want to win, you have to play things that give your opponent the least chances to win, because the less chances your opponent has, the more chances you have. It's just that simple, it's logical.

But here comes entitlement, it's ok when you do it, but it's not ok when it's done to you. People now cry that "it's only stomp or get stomped", but who are the people who cry that? It's the people who play "fair" champions, they are "fair", they don't have impact, so it's either the opponents are bad and can't keep up, or they are good enough to keep up and stomp you. People cry they have no agency, but they play stuff that gives away that agency. You play a slow jungler in the meta, you give away your agency, you're not allowed to cry because it's your choice.

People aren't making the choice to give up their agency, they make the choice to play what they like playing. It just so happens that comes with the consequence of them losing agency, which renders what they would otherwise enjoy unenjoyable. They have to play something that they don't enjoy to have agency. So they get this dilemma where no matter what they choose, they're not going to enjoy the game.

And surely you can say something like "well if ya don't like the game don't play it". But this issue doesn't have to exist (at least certainly not to the extent we have it here in League, I imagine it's a more difficult situation in card games). The game has potential, it just isn't living up to it. So instead of quitting, people try to get the game to improve. And without being one of the devs or having personal contact with them, shitposting on forums is the best option they have, as lame as it is. Also, you rarely get people who can properly identify their grievances and articulate their points, most of the time all they know is they're not happy. Hence the simple "I don't have fun" reply you got.

And we have one more thing, agency is also correlated to skill. We see people like JaySea who even easily won with Tryndamere support in low elo. When you out skill your opponents, even if you champion is "fair", your opponent can't abuse your weaknesses and you win it.

Problem here is the "low elo" and "when you outskill your opponents" parts. The game tries to match us with people of similar skill to us, not with complete randoms. If that guy is easily winning, he hasn't climbed to a rank appropriate for his skill yet. Eventually he'll start getting matched against people who will actually use the weaknesses of his pick against him and then he'll get to feel how he's crippling himself.

Same goes in LoL, especially in lower elos, which are exactly the players who cry. You have 3 options:

  1. Get good
  2. Play what's meta
  3. Quit

But, the low elo mentality doesn't allow option 1 for the vast majority of players, because they already think they are good enough

There certainly are some that think they're hot shit and everything is someone/something else's fault. But for most people I don't think it matters how good they are or think they are, they don't care about getting better and climbing. They just play. They're casuals. And to back that up, Riot did state at some point that only like 20% of the playerbase ever touch ranked.