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On March 15 2013 02:01 obesechicken13 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 01:56 Requizen wrote:On March 15 2013 01:35 Juicyfruit wrote:
Removing all forms of RNG was a bad decision altogether, at least for high level competitive play. This sounds contradictory but really, risk management should be an important skill, and for spectator sports it's an important aspect of making the outcome of an encounter actually tense. If everything worked 100% reliably, then you could predict the outcome of an encounter before it even happens the actual plays just become going through motions. Eh, I disagree. Just because there's no RNG doesn't mean skill doesn't come into play. Keeping an eye on counters/stacks like Jax timing his ult passive to make sure he gets procs when he wants, or Annie watching her stun timer for example. These things are reliable, but also has a large impact on the outcome of skirmishes. Skillshots, active auras like Locket or Reverie, and utility spells such as Thresh Lantern all work reliably, but utilizing them (and landing them when aiming is necessary) is a level of skill, as is the counterplay of dodging skills and baiting cooldowns to retreat from them. Coordinating timings as a team, especially at pro level, also falls into this category. Things can have wildly uncertain and surprising outcomes without leaving it up to a coin toss or dice roll. Pro games are generally damn boring because everyone knows whether they can win their fights. You always know what's going to happen.
I would argue (perhaps erroneously) that this isn't because of the design, but rather how these games are playing out. From what I've seen of LCS (admittedly not much), there haven't been too many really close games. The ones that fit your description (you know how fights play out and so do the players), is because one team is so far ahead that you can gauge power levels off of that lead. Closer games happen, and it's really hard for players to say "we're stronger now", unless they know CD timers and the like.
Also, for viewers, it's easier to "know what's going to happen" because you have full view. You can see the 3 man gank coming, you can see Ult and Summoner timers, you know who has the most gold and who just got a power item on their last back. This makes it less surprising when Shen ults someone in a brush, or Twitch stealths up somewhere unexpected, because you see it coming a mile off, unlike the players.
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There are definitely a lot of fights that you can't foresee the winner of. The players often have nearly the same information, perhaps even more, as the spectator when going into a fight and even the player best players in the world can only tell if a fight is won or lost after it starts.
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Hi there Blitz. Will you pull flash-less Ashe or Zhonya Karthus?
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On March 15 2013 02:11 Requizen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 02:01 obesechicken13 wrote:On March 15 2013 01:56 Requizen wrote:On March 15 2013 01:35 Juicyfruit wrote:
Removing all forms of RNG was a bad decision altogether, at least for high level competitive play. This sounds contradictory but really, risk management should be an important skill, and for spectator sports it's an important aspect of making the outcome of an encounter actually tense. If everything worked 100% reliably, then you could predict the outcome of an encounter before it even happens the actual plays just become going through motions. Eh, I disagree. Just because there's no RNG doesn't mean skill doesn't come into play. Keeping an eye on counters/stacks like Jax timing his ult passive to make sure he gets procs when he wants, or Annie watching her stun timer for example. These things are reliable, but also has a large impact on the outcome of skirmishes. Skillshots, active auras like Locket or Reverie, and utility spells such as Thresh Lantern all work reliably, but utilizing them (and landing them when aiming is necessary) is a level of skill, as is the counterplay of dodging skills and baiting cooldowns to retreat from them. Coordinating timings as a team, especially at pro level, also falls into this category. Things can have wildly uncertain and surprising outcomes without leaving it up to a coin toss or dice roll. Pro games are generally damn boring because everyone knows whether they can win their fights. You always know what's going to happen. I would argue (perhaps erroneously) that this isn't because of the design, but rather how these games are playing out. From what I've seen of LCS (admittedly not much), there haven't been too many really close games. The ones that fit your description (you know how fights play out and so do the players), is because one team is so far ahead that you can gauge power levels off of that lead. Closer games happen, and it's really hard for players to say "we're stronger now", unless they know CD timers and the like. Also, for viewers, it's easier to "know what's going to happen" because you have full view. You can see the 3 man gank coming, you can see Ult and Summoner timers, you know who has the most gold and who just got a power item on their last back. This makes it less surprising when Shen ults someone in a brush, or Twitch stealths up somewhere unexpected, because you see it coming a mile off, unlike the players.
Hmm, I think that's taking my argument 1 step too far. I don't think RNG means the game is skillless, just that having RNG helped raise the skill ceiling rather than diminish it and the game isn't more "competitive" after getting rid of them all. Of course as you move into larger scale fights the permutations of different scenarios become so great that even top players can't process the information fast enough to make optimal plays all the time, but in terms of smaller scale fights it's unnecessarily predictable.
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if crits are deciding the game then it can only be the highest level of competitive since on every other level people make too many mistakes for a random crit to matter.
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On March 15 2013 02:30 zulu_nation8 wrote:
if crits are deciding the game then it can only be the highest level of competitive since on every other level people make too many mistakes for a random crit to matter.
Even back when I was just another 1700-scrub one crit could mean a won lane if the person who crit was quick to abuse it.
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On March 15 2013 02:27 Juicyfruit wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 02:11 Requizen wrote:On March 15 2013 02:01 obesechicken13 wrote:On March 15 2013 01:56 Requizen wrote:On March 15 2013 01:35 Juicyfruit wrote:
Removing all forms of RNG was a bad decision altogether, at least for high level competitive play. This sounds contradictory but really, risk management should be an important skill, and for spectator sports it's an important aspect of making the outcome of an encounter actually tense. If everything worked 100% reliably, then you could predict the outcome of an encounter before it even happens the actual plays just become going through motions. Eh, I disagree. Just because there's no RNG doesn't mean skill doesn't come into play. Keeping an eye on counters/stacks like Jax timing his ult passive to make sure he gets procs when he wants, or Annie watching her stun timer for example. These things are reliable, but also has a large impact on the outcome of skirmishes. Skillshots, active auras like Locket or Reverie, and utility spells such as Thresh Lantern all work reliably, but utilizing them (and landing them when aiming is necessary) is a level of skill, as is the counterplay of dodging skills and baiting cooldowns to retreat from them. Coordinating timings as a team, especially at pro level, also falls into this category. Things can have wildly uncertain and surprising outcomes without leaving it up to a coin toss or dice roll. Pro games are generally damn boring because everyone knows whether they can win their fights. You always know what's going to happen. I would argue (perhaps erroneously) that this isn't because of the design, but rather how these games are playing out. From what I've seen of LCS (admittedly not much), there haven't been too many really close games. The ones that fit your description (you know how fights play out and so do the players), is because one team is so far ahead that you can gauge power levels off of that lead. Closer games happen, and it's really hard for players to say "we're stronger now", unless they know CD timers and the like. Also, for viewers, it's easier to "know what's going to happen" because you have full view. You can see the 3 man gank coming, you can see Ult and Summoner timers, you know who has the most gold and who just got a power item on their last back. This makes it less surprising when Shen ults someone in a brush, or Twitch stealths up somewhere unexpected, because you see it coming a mile off, unlike the players. Hmm, I think that's taking my argument 1 step too far. I don't think RNG means the game is skillless, just that having RNG helped raise the skill ceiling rather than diminish it and the game isn't more "competitive" after getting rid of them all. Of course as you move into larger scale fights the permutations of different scenarios become so great that even top players can't process the information fast enough to make optimal plays all the time, but in terms of smaller scale fights it's unnecessarily predictable.
True, but again, I don't think that's a bad thing. Knowing what fights are and aren't winnable is the mark of a good player, and being able to force fights or disengage from them is an extension of that skill.
I mean, I don't think a bit of RNG is terrible. Crit is fine, dodge was ok in some situations, etc. Just having a champion more or less rely on it is bad design (Jax dodge, GP crit, etc).
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I feel like this ground was already tread by SSB:M ages ago with the items in competitive play discussion. A tiny bit of randomness is tolerable but whenever a game has hard randomness like crit (as opposed to skilled randomness like passing a ball) it merely gives worse players the opportunity to gamble and win in situations where they would have otherwise lost. Dealing with some randomness technically raises the skill ceiling but it's also innately anti-competitive and dilutes your ability to say who's the better player based on who just won.
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On March 15 2013 02:25 Alaric wrote:
Hi there Blitz. Will you pull flash-less Ashe or Zhonya Karthus?
Karthus is really fed so we should pull him and focus him!
Right? Right?
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United States47024 Posts
On March 15 2013 02:38 phyvo wrote:
Dealing with some randomness technically raises the skill ceiling but it's also innately anti-competitive and dilutes your ability to say who's the better player based on who just won.
The flip side of this is that the dichotomy between "who won" and "who played better" adds a level of skill and game understanding to the game--where being able to make that distinction is important to one's growth as a player.
The oft-used mantra in other games involving randomness and incomplete information (e.g. Poker, M:tG) is "a good player will make the right play even if he lost doing it the last 9 times out of 10".
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On March 15 2013 02:39 sylverfyre wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 02:25 Alaric wrote:
Hi there Blitz. Will you pull flash-less Ashe or Zhonya Karthus? Karthus is really fed so we should pull him and focus him! Right? Right?
Makes sense to me. Lets do this.
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i think the majority of fights are decided by who has the better initiation, so generally you see one team either get a good one or whiff one and then the fight is decided at that point.
there are still a number of fights that don't have that and those are usually the more difficult games. there's also a lot of skirmishes that hinge on whether you can kill before reinforcements arrive.
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On March 15 2013 02:58 BlackPaladin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 02:39 sylverfyre wrote:On March 15 2013 02:25 Alaric wrote:
Hi there Blitz. Will you pull flash-less Ashe or Zhonya Karthus? Karthus is really fed so we should pull him and focus him! Right? Right? Makes sense to me. Lets do this.
An enemy has been slain. Enemy Pentakill!
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That's an interesting perspective but my main concern with diluting who's the better player is that in the end a tournament is supposed to find the best competitor, or at least generate a story where the favorite to win has really really good odds against the dark horse. In physical sports (where there's a lot of performance randomness) we already do multiple matches in sets and pit two teams against each other for 1.5 hours regularly (since when do single LoL games last that long?). In highly statistical baseball we can have games that last 5-6 hours. All for the sake of using the law of large numbers to make the result less random so that the competition has integrity.
I don't know how they do things in MTG or poker but I'll be surprised if you tell me that they do best of ones or whatever the equivalent of that is for card games.
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On March 15 2013 03:08 phyvo wrote:
That's an interesting perspective but my main concern with diluting who's the better player is that in the end a tournament is supposed to find the best competitor, or at least generate a story where the favorite to win has really really good odds against the dark horse. In physical sports (where there's a lot of performance randomness) we already do multiple matches in sets and pit two teams against each other for 1.5 hours regularly (since when do single LoL games last that long?). In highly statistical baseball we can have games that last 5-6 hours. All for the sake of using the law of large numbers to make the result less random so that the competition has integrity.
I don't know how they do things in MTG or poker but I'll be surprised if you tell me that they do best of ones or whatever the equivalent of that is for card games.
I do agree that tournaments shouldn't do a best of 1. It's bad practice for anything of a competitive nature.
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On March 15 2013 03:01 kainzero wrote:
i think the majority of fights are decided by who has the better initiation, so generally you see one team either get a good one or whiff one and then the fight is decided at that point.
there are still a number of fights that don't have that and those are usually the more difficult games. there's also a lot of skirmishes that hinge on whether you can kill before reinforcements arrive.
majority of fights is decided by who has more gold + xp, when that's even, then it's just up to skill, better initiation is a factor but not as often the deciding one as most would think.
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Some spells like Kayle's, Sona's or Cass' ults can have a widely variable in their impact depending on how well they're used, though, and an AoE know that it's usually in their interest to force a fight in the jungle or a narrow corridor, so there are elements out of gold count and raw mechanical skill that can affect fights. I find them most interesting when the leading team doesn't play them perfectly (as in "a perfect fight leaves you in awe, 4 in a row are going to make the rest of the game boring if they don't manage to win immediatly off that with such a lead"), or when such a situation (opportunity for the AoE team to force a fight in the cross-roads at the back of the blue buff) arises.
On March 15 2013 02:53 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 02:38 phyvo wrote:
Dealing with some randomness technically raises the skill ceiling but it's also innately anti-competitive and dilutes your ability to say who's the better player based on who just won. The flip side of this is that the dichotomy between "who won" and "who played better" adds a level of skill and game understanding to the game--where being able to make that distinction is important to one's growth as a player. The oft-used mantra in other games involving randomness and incomplete information (e.g. Poker, M:tG) is "a good player will make the right play even if he lost doing it the last 9 times out of 10".
Isn't "flip" the term used for the negative aspect? The way you word it seems more like a boon, as far as skill-ceiling is concerned.
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On March 15 2013 03:08 phyvo wrote:
That's an interesting perspective but my main concern with diluting who's the better player is that in the end a tournament is supposed to find the best competitor, or at least generate a story where the favorite to win has really really good odds against the dark horse. In physical sports (where there's a lot of performance randomness) we already do multiple matches in sets and pit two teams against each other for 1.5 hours regularly (since when do single LoL games last that long?). In highly statistical baseball we can have games that last 5-6 hours. All for the sake of using the law of large numbers to make the result less random so that the competition has integrity.
I don't know how they do things in MTG or poker but I'll be surprised if you tell me that they do best of ones or whatever the equivalent of that is for card games.
MTG does best-of-3s for everything. You can even include 15 extra cards that you can swap into your deck for games 2 and 3 so you don't randomly lose to a counter deck.
Poker is random as fuck and all of the poker pros accept this as part of the game. Poker tournaments are long to take advantage of the law of large numbers and that's not even enough. If you have pocket aces and it's the first hand and someone else puts you all-in before the flop, you're a fool if you fold but even if you do the right thing you have about a 1/5 chance of leaving the tournament right there.
Actually it would be interesting if there was a tournament simulator somewhere. Like, you can put teams in, set their matchups (like you can specify team A has a 75% chance to win vs everyone else, team B has a 60% chance to win against C and D, etc.) and then set the tournament format (round-robin groups=>single elim, double elim, Bo3/Bo5, etc) and then run the tournament multiple times and see how often the 'best' team wins
I think someone's written a paper about this, but I'm not sure.
EDIT: i'm bad at probability
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United States47024 Posts
LoL takes advantage of the law of large numbers too though. It's not like a single crit or dodge determines the outcome of a game. In the case where you got crit in a level 1 or 2 engage, that doesn't equate a lost game unless you and your team make a long series of misplays after that fact.
The effect of these things is spread out over the course of the entire game.
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On March 15 2013 03:14 Requizen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 03:08 phyvo wrote:
That's an interesting perspective but my main concern with diluting who's the better player is that in the end a tournament is supposed to find the best competitor, or at least generate a story where the favorite to win has really really good odds against the dark horse. In physical sports (where there's a lot of performance randomness) we already do multiple matches in sets and pit two teams against each other for 1.5 hours regularly (since when do single LoL games last that long?). In highly statistical baseball we can have games that last 5-6 hours. All for the sake of using the law of large numbers to make the result less random so that the competition has integrity.
I don't know how they do things in MTG or poker but I'll be surprised if you tell me that they do best of ones or whatever the equivalent of that is for card games. I do agree that tournaments shouldn't do a best of 1. It's bad practice for anything of a competitive nature.
i dunno, the super bowl and march madness tournaments are really fun to watch
arguably i like march madness more than the nba finals
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EPT
