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New player, already thinking of quitting...Help? Opinions/Advice?

75900139_DEL·4/6/2016, 7:09:33 PM·6 votes·1,962 views

**EDIT: I'd like to thank everyone who replied here for all the tips and information given. I'd like to thank Blue Collar Bear and Tylobyte in particular; they added me on the client and we chatted for hours. They ran a match with me and told me all sorts of things, many of which you guys ended up telling me after they did...

I appreciate each and every one of you for taking the time out of your days to sit and answer my questions, to give me real advice and help me feel more confident about the game and my learning/playing ability. Gaming is a big part of my life, so while this is "just a game", it does matter, especially with a community like this. The fact you all actually did this and were SO damn kind also quelled my fears 100% about the rumors of cruelty to newbies. Sure, it may happen..but I can handle it knowing how many truly kind people there are in this place. I learned a lot from my mistakes, what mistakes I actually made, and a lot of important things that will really help me improve and understand what's going on. I realize some of my actions were really dumb, and I apologize for it..but I am so grateful for your patience. You were all very straightforward and more than willing to help a new player out..and that says a lot about a game and its community.

Thank you, all. I will try my hardest to learn and improve..hopefully one day I can be as good as you guys.**

Hello, everyone.

First legitimate post. Please don't rip me to shreds. This is gonna be a bit of a long thread, so please forgive me.

I have been into games of many types for many years. I have known about LoL for a long time, but it was one of the games I always avoided; I was aware of how creative and amazing the game was, but I feared the community more than anything; while there are obviously some good, supportive people, there are also millions of players who are insanely elitist and cruel...considering my horrible anxiety and other issues, I just don't deal well with online cruelty, so I tried to avoid this game. You can thank my fiance though - he didn't really like LoL when I mentioned it to him but a month or so ago he and his friends randomly got into it and became obsessed with it (he mains Kindred, which is SUPER fitting for him, character-wise). He kept begging me to install and try the game, and I kept making up bs reasons that I couldn't or wouldn't play. I eventually agreed and installed it, but didn't touch it for a while. One night I got curious - I knew of the game's awesomeness, but I had never watched or played before so I didn't 100% know what to expect. I did the tutorial with Ashe and of course grasped the basics of the game. When it came to doing the second/Battle Training tutorial, I hit a wall; I used Ryze for it, as I enjoy mages and general spellcaster-type characters in RPGs/MMOs/MOBAs, etc....it was a BAD decision..No progress was being made and I was dying constantly. I was horribly frustrated and felt pathetic that I couldn't even beat the damn tutorial, so I surrendered and logged out for the night.

About this past Saturday or Sunday, something compelled me to try again...So I replayed the Ashe tutorial just to brush up on how to play; when I went for the second tutorial, I picked Garen instead - I didn't really like Ashe, and Ryze already failed me...I figured maybe it was the character I was using, and tried to not beat myself up for a screw-up for once (I have serious self-esteem issues and constantly blame myself for things). I ended up being amazing with Garen. I went on to Co-op vs AI Intro and used him for all my matches, winning each one and doing well. Once I had enough IP, I bought Soraka, one of the 5 characters I was very interested in and planned on getting. Using her, I also did really well because I already had experience with these types of matches, and she was more of my type - mage, bit of a healer (Most MMOs I play, I have some type of priest character as I'm good with support, but I also want to rush in and be cool, kicking ass). I was having a ton of fun and getting really good K/D/A stats - a good few kills here and there, practically no deaths, and tons of assists. Once I hit level 6 and could access the free rotation, I jumped onto Nasus, another one of the 5 characters I wanted. Took me a bit to get used to him because he felt a bit slower and harder to manage, but he was still great fun, especially once I grew levels and got faster/stronger moves and was utterly destroying everything. Once I got enough IP, I bought him as well (literally less than 100 IP right now, if I remember correctly xD Wont be buying the other 3 I want for a while now). I ended up getting Garen for "free" through one of those champion shard/essence things you get from chests, so I could always have him as a backup if necessary (I don't like him much, to be honest, but he works). I was having a grand time, really. Any teammates I ended up with were either straightforward and didn't say much, or they were SUPER patient, kind, and understanding and were more than willing to guide me through things. I am thankful for them, as they helped quell my fears of the community a little bit; I know not everyone is bad, as that goes for any fandom or game, but LoL is infamous for cruelty, so..yeah. If any of those chill people read this - thank you. I appreciate your respectfulness so much <3

Since I reached level 7, I was gaining very little XP and IP from matches now. I wanted to move up in the game and since I felt confident in my abilities, I decided to go to the Co-op vs AI Beginner level instead.... Biggest mistake ever. I assumed that stepping up would provide more difficulty..but not the amount of difficulty I was faced with. I tried multiple matches in Beginner with both Soraka and Nasus and failed HORRIBLY in all of them. My amazing stats went from the numbers they were down to 0/10/0..it was pathetic and I felt insanely ashamed and humiliated, since everyone else in the matches were holding up fine. I couldn't stay in any lane for more than a minute or so because the AI was too strong..couldn't make any real kills, couldn't last against their attacks, and I didn't contribute at all for my teams..It was just plain embarrassing. I did everything I could, I really tried to be a good player, a good contributor, and just have fun..but I felt nothing but frustration and shame. I'm actually surprised no one screamed at me or called me any names. I love video games of all kinds and know they are just games, but I take it "seriously" in the idea of..I want to have fun. I want the game to be good and light-hearted..but in a game like this, you can't risk being that bad...unless you're willing to deal with the possible rage and hate from experienced players that you hear so many horror stories about.

Now here's my dilemma: This is the #1 game in the world, so huge and so competitive that it is its own e-sport. That's a HUGE deal. People in this game take the higher-level matches more seriously, and ranked matches are practically professional-only. I WANT to be good. I WANT to enjoy the game. I don't want it so easy that I get bored, but I don't want it as difficult as it is because then I just feel worthless and don't enjoy myself at all. I don't want to be a burden on my teams and ruin THEIR fun just because I suck, you know? They shouldn't have to suffer. It truly baffles me how anyone even gets that good. I can't imagine how insanely skilled the professional teams are, the ranked matches and anything else....If I can't even play Co-op vs AI - a freaking computer, not even real players - at BEGINNER level...how can I play this game AT ALL? Part of me wants to just go back to Intro and stay there because I'm great at it...but it'll eventually get repetitive..I wont make enough XP and IP to really progress and get the other characters I want and it'll kinda fall short....So the other part of me is looking at the larger picture of the game, and the community and realizing that maybe I should just quit while I can...I don't know.

I literally played the game about 2-3 days and I already want to give up. What should I do? What do you guys think? Is it too early to judge? Maybe I was having a bad night? Am I just a whiny little college student "noob who should go uninstall"? Am I as embarrassing as I feel I am? Should I continue because I absolutely adore the game not only for the game itself, but as an art student, for pretty much every aspect of its characters, lore, etc, and just enjoy what it has to offer, even though I'm insanely bad? I'm stuck, really. All help is appreciated..I know I said to please not rip me to shreds, but if I really am annoying or anything, there's nothing I can do to stop you from saying so xD I tried my best to explain my story without making it sound like a pity party. I hate those, and attention-seekers, so I try to word my stuff carefully....Sorry for so much rambling..I'm running on only 3 and a half hours of sleep.

Either way..thanks.

72 Comments

benotronic4/6/2016, 7:27:00 PM4 votes

so Nixenoko it takes a bit to get started and ya know didn't want to tell anyone this I went 0/20/0 for 3 WEEKS STRAIGHT in INTRO no less cuz I didn't get the game u said you like nasus. he is really fun but the thing is with him you don't really help your team a lot with him because you need stacks. on the other hand there is soraka a person who ALWAYS is with their team that's 2 very different play styles find a champ that fits your play style like someone who picks off the dmg of their team (zed,talon) someone who tanks everything (mundo volibear) or people who are tank that do a lot of dmg as well (garen darius) then there is long ranged champs the dmg of the team (miss fourtune twitch) so ya that sort of STUFFS

Illiad4/6/2016, 7:18:02 PM3 votes

Ryze has a kit you need to understand to use well, dont let it get you down there are easier Mages to play, like Annie! Ai are set to be aggressive but they arent serious so people would never give you a hard time :) The main goal is understanding the pattern of the match, against players they will act on mistakes so play a safe position, dont attack a champion in minions because they will attack you back and early game that can be alot of damage. You just need to get a feel for the flow of the game, it starts out slow and the lvl climb to 30 is a chore, but by then you'll have found a champion you really like and a pattern you can comfortably work around, a general good role to start is Support, not because its easy, but because you can watch how the other players are behaving, and act on that, giving you an understanding of how others act in situations, while you yourself can protect them and get the idea of how things happen, if you need help add me in game- Tetsu Juan - Dont feel bad about the early games, you'll understand it much more over time and you'll have alot more fun!

axel vazquez4/6/2016, 7:12:59 PM3 votes

Sorry, but I skimmed this thread a lot. Take it from a guy who's been playing League since late 2012. The game itself isn't a hard concept to get, but getting used to the game and devising strategies gets a bit tough. Once you play the game long enough and come to understand how everything works and take in resources from video/previous games you'll eventually get "good" at the game.

Randomonium4/7/2016, 1:49:13 AM3 votes

Let me start off by saying we have ALL been where you are. What you are describing is literally the same stuff I went through. And once you master the beginner bots you'll go onto the intermediate bots and get your ass kicked again. And then once you master the intermediate bots you'll play blind pick against real people and get your ass kicked again. This game, like most things, is really freaking hard and that's part of the reason it is so successful.

The best analogy I can use is school. I bet when you were a kid when you first started doing math even simple arithmetic was really challenging. Now you can do it in your head almost subconsciously. The same is true for league. It literally takes hundreds or thousands of games to get good at this game. People have been playing this game for 6 years and even the best players in the world still haven't mastered it.

Do not be hard on yourself. You can't compare yourself to people playing for years any more than you could compare a middle schooler to a college student. All that matters is that every day you improve. If you learn something new every day then you are already doing better than most people who just blame other people for their own mistakes. If you're really serious about improving I'd keep a journal on what you learn each day, what you felt like you did well, and what you want to work on the next day.

The important thing is to never stop learning. Welcome to the most competitive video game in the world, get ready for a bumpy ride.

DREADN0UGHT4/6/2016, 8:45:14 PM3 votes

Just keep playing. You don't play this game to please other players. Its like any other game, just play to get better, and to have fun.

If beginner bots are hard for you, I suggest you keep player vs them until you can defeat them. Because intermediate bots are harder, and intermediate bots are laughing stock to Bronze 5 players.

Just take it step by step, and mute the toxic people, don't bother with them they are not worth it.

Linna Excel4/6/2016, 10:35:00 PM2 votes

Don't quit. This game is fun, but has a big learning curve. Almost Eve-online levels (you can google eve's learning curve).

My best advice is practice and try reading up on things and watching youtube videos.

Lycanoon4/6/2016, 11:56:05 PM2 votes

This game has it's up's and downs. Best to avoid communicating with salty players...as they'll just burn you down. Stick to what you're good with and play well at. I for one prefer Atk Dmg Crit assassin builds, and I receive a LOT of flak for it...so, yea. But as a support-type player, you can carry the game well with soraka, so don't let people get to you. Never get discouraged, and never give up :-)

Weathered4/7/2016, 12:20:19 AM2 votes

Find a group of friends who play. Best advice I can give you other than keeping at it. This game takes a while to get used to and feel fun, and feels horrible when you start. Trust me though, if you get into it after a while and like it, its the best game you will ever play.

corruck4/7/2016, 12:52:22 AM2 votes

So, hopefully, you've already gotten the help you've needed (since I'm not seeing this till after the entire world apparently) but I did want to add a little something because I love League. I, too, was completely fed up with the toxic players, the chronic caps lockers, and just the various people who love to hate on others. But the majority of the community isn't like that, especially if you play with friends, and it's interesting to note that most of these people usually get stuck in bronze; it's a game about teamwork and they don't ever want to function as one.

All that aside it's just a game. If you're having fun then keep playing on whatever difficulty with whatever champ you want. If you're not then uninstall and go play something that you find fun, because that's the point even if the league of bronzies tends to forget that.

Shroom Junkie4/7/2016, 1:16:35 AM2 votes

The game takes awhile to get good at, especially with the sucky tutorials. Watch a few League tutorials and high-rank matches and maybe you'll figure some things out. Don't watch LCS for that though, its so hard to understand anything in it its just like "WHAT IS GOING ONNNN HOLY CRAP?!?!?? ?? !?? !> 83huti UAIUwitg3u gYGFUEugt" explodes

I sucked too for the first while. You get used to it and it takes more than three days, heck, more than 3 months, but as a tip: don't get stressed, if you start to lose just have fun with it. Its not that big of a deal and Ranked has even worse players. You play games for fun, right? So have fun.

In my opinion for fun I love to play Teemo, hence why he's my main. I sucked at him but it was hilarious being a little munchkin shooting people with darts and making them rage when I killed them from half-way across the map with exploding mushrooms.

Otherwise, for easy-to-learn fun guys, I suggest keeping on Garen, he's hilarious to play when you learn his build and you're just an invincible spinning top screaming "DEMACIA" and calling upon the magic of whatever he's doing.

Also, Master Yi. Newbies at the game have an easy time playing him and a hard time playing against him making him perfect for starting and trying to get better. He becomes many players main because of that aspect, as he's very good in higher tier play as well.

There's Heimerdinger who puts down turrets to fight for him while you spam his emotes that stop what they're saying mid-sentence to repeat and is the most annoying and tilting thing besides maybe Lux or Teemo's laughs, and if you get good at landing his stun and rockets he's good and fun to play as well.

Mundo who, like Garen, is just a tanky guy that charges in without a care in the world, spamming cleavers(he throws cleavers, yes, its very strange), yelling "MUNDO" and generally being a derp.

Kha'zix can be a good newbie assassin too. Low MMR(match-making rating, its what bases who you play with and against on) players generally don't stay together so his passive, which lets his Q ability deal extra damage to someone outside of a certain range of an ally, is very good. His Q is point-and-click so its easy enough to use and deals a lot of damage. His W heals, and his E dashes so he's safe too. His ultimate makes him go invisible for a second, and you can keep having fun trying different things with his evolution. When you rank up his ultimate ability, he gets to "evolve" an ability, making it do new things like his Q does extra damage, his W throws three spikes, his E jumps farther, and his ultimate can be used more and makes him go invisible for 2 seconds per activation instead of one.

And after a bit of experience, Nidalee can be good. You have to land her spear which is a skillshot so it takes some getting used to, but in low elo people don't generally try to dodge skillshots so they get hit a lot even with bad aim. And after you land her spear, its easy to jump on enemy in her cat form and claw their face off.

Though if you really want an opinion... LEAVE WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!

Lycanoon4/7/2016, 1:40:52 AM2 votes

Feel free to add me also :-) I'm "smurfing" right now with a buddy, but I'll add you once I hop back on ^_^

Magneto814/7/2016, 1:55:49 AM2 votes

This reminds me of when I thought the enemy champions had a special ability to make the turret target me, and then I learned that whenever I hit them in any way the turret changed to me automatically.

And then there were all those beserker's greaves I would buy for super attack and movement speed - and then I learned about 'unique passives' that made it so the movement speed I was paying for wouldn't combine which is why my champs weren't flying around the map at super speed lol.

And then I learned how to CS, combine items to get good ones instead of selling them and buying them all at once, kiting, that an ADC goes bot lane etc.

And just a correction sort of - when I hit level 20 and got runes they made a massive difference for me.

And yeah - a lot of the early level PVP games the players don't even have a jungler - they just have two people play top lane.

Good luck, I think you'll do great. Just learn from others and ignore the flamers - many people want to blame you when they are the ones not doing well. They might have a valid point sometimes, but don't take the negativity - just the useful stuff ;)

I am super impressed with the posts here - you found some really great community members to help out!

And trust me, sometimes I am the worst player on a team and I bring them down and it is hard to come back when you are behind (plus all the gold the other team gets when they kill you) so learn to play safe and then learning how to make the awesome plays will come.

Emozgus4/7/2016, 9:53:18 PM2 votes

When I first started playing, I dove almost immediately into the PvP games. I didn't know much about the game, or it's community when I started, but luckily I had two friends who were Silver at the time teaching me. I actually recall telling them I felt last-hitting for gold was cheating, since I didn't do any of the work to get the minions low. So I was always auto-ing minions so that I could earn the gold (luckily I broke this habit later).

I don't normally tell people this, but I figured given your original post, you might understand and appreciate the information. I too have intense anxiety issues, and making mistakes makes me feel worthless and humiliated as well. There was a game when I was starting out, it was something like my 3rd Corki game, and it wasn't going well. There was this Warwick on my team that raged so hard I didn't play for weeks afterwards. Due to people like that I always get anxious about queuing up for a game, and actually RARELY play alone. In the past year I've played maybe 5 games on my own. Most of my games are played with friends. But this actually highlights a few important things about playing this game with anxiety. The first is that your friends don't care if you mess up, everyone is trying to have fun (and since they're friends, they'll help in game, or offer suggestions to learn from, etc), which makes games with them much less stressful, since you know how they'll behave before you even start the game. The second is that those 5ish games I played on my own were FINE, and I have to remind myself of that whenever I try to queue up on my own. Even if people raged at me then, I don't have to deal with them again. Thirdly, going back to the playing with friends (didn't really plan the order of this, I'm just typing what comes to mind. Sorry about that), If you're in a game with friends and someone is being toxic, having the INSTANT support system is nice. If you're like me, it doesn't matter if you did the most perfect thing possible, if someone comments that it was terrible, then you will feel that it was indeed terrible, and feel like crap about it. However if I'm playing with a friend when this happens, at the very least we talk about what just happened to figure out if what happened was good or bad (we like learning). But what happens more often is friendly support. Simply having that tether out of that self-doubting part of my mind is enough to be able to have fun and relax while I play.

Still, the more you play, you will start encountering some rude people. There's a few things I do after a stress-filled game, that seems to be pretty common. For a lack a better word, you need a palate-cleanser. For my friends and I, this usually means doing an ARAM or two, since we don't need to take those too seriously. Sometimes, we'll even just do a quick bots game and try to mix it up and try weird things like: see how fast we can win, see if we can Thresh Jungle, can I win with straight-AP Jax, stuff like that. The point is to do something FUN. Since you're currently going against beginner bots, if you get too stressed play an intro bot game. You won't get much IP/Exp, but it will allow you to de-stress. Sometimes I'll even play a different game entirely for a bit, or watch a video. Again, de-stressing before playing another game is important. Actually, just having methods of relaxing in general is important. I'm going on year 10 of dealing with depression, anxiety, and bits of PTSD thrown in too, so I've learned what works for me. You need to figure out what works for you.

TL;DR: If you can play with friends, I highly recommend it, it makes the game much less stressful. If you can't, it's actually not a big deal, but it might take a bit to convince yourself of that. Learn how to deal with stress so that even if you have that rude person in game, you're able to not let it effect you for too long.

I realize in my rush to write this (and not planning too much of what I was going to say), I might not have made much sense. Apologies if that is the case. Most people discussed a lot of game-related things, so I thought you might want to hear from someone in a similar anxiety situation. I'll check this in a few hours if you have any questions on what I wrote or something. Hope that helped.

WhiperSnapers4/6/2016, 8:39:04 PM2 votes

The new player experience makes the game very unapealing, but if you survive it chances are you will become addicted to the game. Hopefully this helps:

  1. get a couple of champions that you feel comfortable playing
  2. get familiar with a role or two (top, jg, mid, adc, or sup)
  3. dont worry about runes until you can get the teir 3 runes, and even then they arent that impactful so its not really a must have
  4. Masteries arent really important until you are level 18 and can pick a "keystone"
  5. Objectives (turrets, inhibitors, dragon, baron, etc.) are what win games, not kills
  6. try to learn about each champion and item (this one is very difficult, but in my opinion the most rewarding). If you know a champion's abilities and how/when they are used, it becomes a lot easier to play against them. As for the items, it is usefull to know which champions buy what. It's a bit embarrasing but when I first started playing I died a lot, so I thought that I should get tanky on every champion, even ashe.
trash sion4/6/2016, 8:55:13 PM2 votes

I had the same problem when I was new. Intro was super easy, but Beginner was impossible and Intermediate wasn't even an option. However, I actually found PvP to be easier than Beginner bots, because many people are having the same experience I was.

Eventually, though, when I went back to see if I could beat Beginner bots, the Intermediate ones were a piece of cake.

This might not be true now with all the smurfs (really good players leveling new accounts) so it could be a good idea to watch some newbie guides on YouTube.

Some of the stuff you need to understand in order to progress is items and stats (difference between magic and physical, what items are good on what champs), when a tower will attack you (items like sunfire cape that deal damage, when a tower will switch targets) as well as damage potentials so you know how much damage you deal compared to how much you take.

Lower level play is much different from high level play because in low level play and bots, everyone just runs at each other for kills, and whoever has the most damage wins. However, it's important to remember that killing a minion gives gold too. In PvP, focusing on minions will get you a ton of gold without even having to kill the enemy, so you can wreck them later. The hard part is that bots won't let you kill minions, because they just chase at anyone nearby and don't care about minions.

This is probably why I had better luck in PvP. Best of luck to you!

Taric the Gay4/6/2016, 9:11:52 PM2 votes

This was indeed a lot to process. I will say that the difficulty ramps up very quick. Intro anyone should beat. Beginner teaches you the basics of the game. Just try not to die and work on last hitting the minions. Once you get that down you will be able to buy items and with items you will have an advantage. You can then exploit that advantage for a bigger advantage then you win.

Your choice in champions may have something to do with your kills. Soraka is a healer not a killer. Garen is a tank, he can kill but he is better at not dying. Ashe and Ryze are killers but are very soft. They are glass cannons. There are also recommended lanes based on a champion's role. Top is for melee, mid for mages, bottom is for marksman. There is also supports who go bottom and junglers who roam the jungle. Don't jungle yet. It is impossible to do as a low leveled player without smite even if you are a pro player.

I recommend browsing youtube videos for instruction on how to play certain roles or champions. Soraka is a support, so Google some Soraka or support "how to play" videos. But also check out top, mid and ADC (ATTACK DAMAGE CARRY) or marksmen in layman terms. Learn how to CS effectively (last hitting minions) and learn how to animation cancel your auto attacks.

If you like mages I recommend picking up Annie, Karma, Morgana or Lux. Heimerdinger is another mage who is a little higher on skill floor so it will take more time to pick him up but his skill ceiling is arguably the lowest in the game. Once you get the basics on him there'should not much complex stuff about him beyond that. You may like one of those champions. The ones you want to avoid playing are Evelynn, Akali, Alistar, Nidalee and Twisted Fate. They are squishy and have complex mechanics that are tough to learn for new players.

http://www.auplod.com/u/ulaopd785ed.png

Taric the Gay4/6/2016, 10:04:19 PM2 votes

Also there are chat rooms you can join through the client. You can access them by clicking the middle button at the bottom right of the client and typing in the name of the room. The two I know of that are nearly always full are: Noob General Discussion

Noob you may get some help. Or they may just complain to you about their recent games. Depends on the time of day. General Discussion is hit or miss. They're a very cliquey group. If they like you they are very open to helping people they like. If they dislike you just more insults and dismissive actions.

http://www.auplod.com/u/ulaopd785ed.png

Angry Monster4/7/2016, 12:12:22 AM1 votes

First i think you have to understand that INTRO bots are literally glorified minions. They are extreamly weak and are only there to represent a more realistic looking game. I am not even sure that you can lose to them. They are programmed to be very forgiving. Your performance here is meaningless for anything else.

This game is hard and very complex. You are going to be bad for a very long time. In a year you may have a grasp of all the enemy champs do and basic strategy.

The sad thing is even when you finally master bot games you only took the first step. Champs like Garen are only played in top lane for deep reasons( an hour conversation could be covered on that). Everything you learned in a bot game is just how to abuse the bots and usually does not work against real people and will have to re- learn everything again, because bots will teach you bad habits.

SO after you play a game spend a few minutes trying to figure out why the game spun out of your control. Correct the early mistakes that you are making. In league 2 early mistakes will make it so your to behind later in the game to be effective.