Reign of Gaming

Quote from Yuuria »

Quote from Gilgamarsh »

Evil old woman/witch/hag is the best and least covered archetype IMO. People have been saying it for a long time, but it's a great idea. Honestly, releasing a few modestly dressed female champions doesn't do much to combat the accusations of sexism when every female is young and physically attractive, while we have Zilean, Gragas, Urgot, and a bunch of monster champions for the males. 

It probably won't happen due to "cultural" issues in China, but I feel like a full on skeleton warrior could be cool. Karthus, Sion, and Thresh are sort of along these lines but not quite.

 

I don't have the link, but a great article covered this a while ago. Just like you say, there are only ONE monster champion for females (Anivia). Not to mention, that even male champions that aren't ugly or old, are not sexualised in the same way. Think Gangplank. He's a regular pirate of about 50 years old. Miss Fortune, the pirate-ish equivalent among females, is 18 and has a d-cup. This is why the Pool Party Graves/Lee Sin skins made me happy.
Like, I have no problem with sexualising the female champs, as long as the male ones get the same treatment. Go equality! ;D

And on that note, how about a 20-or-so muscular, shirtless-for-no-particular-reason guy with good hair?

(this did so not belong in this thread btw, sorry about that. It's just really interesting. :))

I can't tell if this is satire or not. 

It's like you've never seen Varus. 

I've actually never thought about the benefits of having a wider window. 

I used to just default to the thought that your mechanics should allow you to last hit with any amount of AD. But now that I think about it, having that "wide window" opens up more positioning opportunities that weren't available before and it's not really a discussion of mechanical ability.

With that said though, I think Life Steal quints are where it's at O=) 

Your complaint is about a "choking meta" (seriously though, when has someone ever said "I really like the meta right now!!!" ?) yet you want to play more ranked?

No one takes joy in the meta. The joy comes from winning, and doing everything within your power to win. If you do not have this desire, why do you want to play more ranked? As soon as you step into ranked, your teammate's desire to win only sky-rockets due to the highly competitive nature of ranked. The meta is the go-to tool for min maxing the team and ensuring that everyone is on a similar page. If you don't like the meta, it's because you take joy from something else. If you try to join a ranked team with this attitude, you're very likely to only upset your teammates because it sounds like you're going to be taking pleasure from places that they are not - meaning your goals may be different.

Personally, I don't care about the meta. It doesn't bother me, it doesn't make me happy. I play within the meta and I'm content. But that's because I take great pride in trying to be the best in my peer-group. I love getting better and self-improvement. The meta allows me to do this, so I am apathetic to meta-shifts. Build another IE + PD this game? Whatever, I don't care - as long as I prove that I'm at least better than their ADC. Oh, BotRK is the best item right now? Fine, I'll build that - as long as I build it before the other ADC and prove that I'm better than him.

Please note, I'm not trying to say that you must follow the meta to win. I'm saying it's very likely that you're not taking joy from the right places to play this game competitively, and ranked will only exacerbate your issues with league. 

While I subjectively agree with you in that no one should ever ever think they're the best at anything (This is the best way to stagnate in any skill in any discipline, or even as a human being in general). I'm curious as to who you think is better than Doublelift? The general consensus seems to be that he's the best ADC at least in NA and EU, so I genuinely want to know how you came to the conclusion that there's someone on the proscene who is better. 

Again, I am just curious here. I follow the scene, but I don't watch a lot of games, so I pretty much only know what the general consensus is. 

New things are discovered by innovators  Often-times the ones who have nothing to lose are the ones with the most ability to innovate.

We see this with indy game developers and life in general. An indy game can try to experiment with new mechanics or story hooks that any other AAA titles would see as being "too risky". This is because the indy developer essentially has nowhere to go but up.  

So while we sit here guffawing that everything other than the meta is "gimmicky" those bottom-of-the-barrel teams should be trying to throw every strategy they can think of against the wall to see what sticks. 

If something does stick, is it gimmick? Or is it just a new meta? 

I think the author is correct in his thinking. These new teams can't play the same game that the big-boys have been playing for years and years. Maybe they should play standard against each other, but when they're up against the top 4, the little guys have to go big or go home. 

Atmogs + YG seems like it would be really cool. Especially since you'll get more damage as you build more health - and health is supposed to be OP right now or something like that. 

While I'm sure it has been done before, I'd be interested to see how it compares to compares to similarly priced load-outs. (I'd do the calculations myself, but I'm at work >_<)

Darius comes to mind as a potential.

He likes the sticking power from the MS, and he likes quickly applying his stacks. Unfortunately, he's not wild about the crit :( 

He also might like the bonus AD from BT more... Soooo, that one should probably be mathed out =|

I think you just basically ignored a 1000+ word essay - which included a hard number analysis - in favor of just saying whatever you believe to be true. 

I appreciate the link to TL, but I am well accustomed to how match-making works in SC2. I apologize for questioning your credibility, but in my own defense, you saw fit to use sweeping generalizations and I saw that as highly disingenuous. However, I think we have more in common than not, as neither of us have opted to "Whip out" our respective rankings out of (what I assume to be) courtesy for the other.

Before addressing the meat of your post, it's worth pointing out that this conversation will likely dead-end because we're both relying on individual interpretations of what is and isn't meaningful. 

To illustrate my point of view (And I think you've likely encountered this behavior as well). I have, on more than one occasion, bumped into a player in Solo Queue who will say something along the lines of "I'm 1400 right now, but I just went on a losing streak, so I'm really 1600". To put it into words though, this player has a high of 1600 and a low of 1400 - indicating that a person's level of skill is better represented by a range as originally stated by Emeraldw.

Your chief concern seems to be the loss in granularity when using leagues as a measurement. I can really only agree with you because this is a fact. A single number is being replaced with a range of numbers. I think you can take solace in the fact that Riot is using different division levels internal to each league (e.g. Gold league has X number of different levels of divisions that you must progress through), so you will be able to say "I am Top Division Gold league in LoL" which will have more meaning than "I am at the top of my Gold division in SC2", granted it won't be as granular as saying "I'm 1600". On top of this, there is no bonus pool that monkies around with the ratings

However, there is one point that I don't think I can stress enough. More granular does not always mean better. When you are taking measurements in a scientific experiment, your measurement can only be as granular (precise) as your instrument will allow. In this case, I firmly believe that the current elo system is too precise a skill measurement given the instrument (Solo queue in this case). I think the shift to leagues will give a more accurate representation of skill. 

 

Calling out SC2's league system as "very unpopular" is a generalization that I don't think anyone is really qualified to make. Yes, it had some things that some people found to be kind of frustrating, but to stretch that into saying the whole system was "unpopular" is just hyperbole.

Emeraldw pretty much nailed all the reasons why the league system is preferable, so I won't reiterate his points. But you made some interesting points which I would like to look at 

• "....and that's what you get instead of an actual meaningful measurement of skill..." I am taking this out of context, but once you put it into context, you're basically saying that the league system is NOT a meaningful measurement of skill. This is false. If someone tells you they're in silver league you and I both know what their skill level is. It wasn't an exact measurement of skill, but you can't measure skill exactly. You can be on one day and off the next. The league system is just as good as the elo system for determining someone else's skill.
• "Overall, you didn't really feel like you were competing with the people in your league." Again, this is false. As an ex-SC2 player, I constantly struggled to move up in my division. Compare that to the elo system, do you really feel like you're competing with those around you to move up the ladder? 

I have a feeling you either lied about playing SC2 (I don't think you lied though, why would someone lie about that?) Or you've forgotten what it's like to be on the league system. OR you just need to explain your points more thoroughly to me =o)