The Numbers Game
I hate the numbers game.
What is it? The numbers game is when you try to use math and mimicry over individual skill and scenarios, even experience, to decide your actions. League of Legends is pretty much the only game I can think of where almost every action you make in-game is recorded. The amount of information and record keeping is ridiculous; it's amazing that no Big Brother tinfoil hat conspiracies haven't popped up (or maybe they have and Riot's keeping a lid on it!). All this information is recorded and compiled into charts and data, ranging from pick rates, ban rates, win rates, item picks, and so on.
And I hate it.
Why do I hate it? Because in the end, there's no assassin meta or tank meta. There's a numbers game at play. Charts and information are supposed to show trends and patterns, but people misinterpret these trends as religious dogma, which is in the end what gives rise to the meta. The king meta of all of course is LCS or any other big name tournament. The patterns don't give a complete picture of the character or meta; it's all that information compressed and abridged into a chart. Just because Jinx has a win rate of over 50% doesn't mean that you will be good with her or win 50% of the time. Picking the same champions as Faker will make you as good as him in the same way that wearing Hanes underwear and Nikes will make you as good at basketball as Michael Jordan. And people play into this mentality willingly, even forcing others to do the same.
This ties into my thread on defeatism. Playing the numbers game is in itself a self-defeating venture because it removes the factor of the self. Jinx may have a win rate of over 50%, but there's still the other 40-odd percentage of games where she loses. Somewhere in that blend of statistics is a person who can go 15/0 and have their team still lose because of a myriad of factors, or a bumbler who barely scrapes by with 2/8 and their team ekes out a victory regardless. That doesn't even consider the win rate of the individual, which could be anywhere between zero and one hundred percent. My win rate with Mordekaiser is probably around the high 70s or 80s. Does that mean I'm good with him? Hell no! I just started practicing with him a few days ago, and most of those victories could hardly be attributed to my skill (other than knowing how to not get killed and by extension not allowing the enemy to snowball).
So what game do I play? I play the game of League. I pick champions based on how I like them or if I find that I am good with them. I pay attention to what the strengths and weaknesses of the individual champion are and how they interact and synergize with others. A Veigar is going to be about stunning and heavy bursts, you can guarantee that he'll do that. Veigars are not going to build attack speed or damage. Yasuo will exploit any knock up or displacement that enemies are struck with to follow up with his ult. Blitz will try to grab. Players can build whatever they want, bring whatever rune page or masteries they want with them, but they are restricted to the limitations of that champion determined by the game's rules, and it's important to understand that range of ability more than the common trends of over several tens of millions of other players. Otherwise, you're not just not seeing the trees through the forest. You're not seeing the trees because most of the planet is an ocean.
