On July 05 2013 00:04 SimulatedAnneal wrote: I love when people talk about a higher skill cap as if it's a normatively good thing. You could increase the skill cap of LoL in completely asinine manners like making auto attacking a three-step mechanically intensive process but doing so would not improve the game. What's important is fun and to that end a higher skill cap is frequently detrimental. A perfect game of League has never been played, there are no realizable gains to be had purely from raising the skill cap.
Everytime people reference skill cap to compare games, I think of this:
I've played some pretty ridiculous strategy games before with a huge amount of complexity/skill ceiling/cap (DAE Dominions 3?...anyone?), but that doesn't make my game superior. Superior in it's insane difficulty (partially brought about by poor UI, which will apparently improve in Dominions 4 [soooooon]), yes, but it does not a superior game make, and I readily admit this. If anything, people playing Dwarf Fortress should lord over us in the game difficulty hierarchy (fk that interface, I can't understand it : psyduck : ).
Hey, after a quite long break i'd like to come back to the game (iirc last patch I played actively was around Varus/Hecarim), what are the safe/common picks for each position now?
Or what is a recent hero can I buy that is a relatively safe pick to focus on to learn the game again? Not really focused on a specific role.
Eh, the amount of multi tasking from BW (and the watered down amount in SC2) was definitely higher, but having to basically play with five or six minds and two hands was pretty stressful. I like to think I was good at both games, but I had trouble playing seriously for long sessions because of the amount of pressure from having to check the minimap, manage production cycles, scout and micro.
SC2 wasn't really fun for me anymore either, I mean there's only 3 different matchups for me to play, and each one only like a few strategies b/c meta. Most of the time, I'd just bait and outsmart or straight out macrostomp kids who thought they were hot shit for being Masters with my #broodwarmechanics.
But I won't lie, a lot of the best plays I made in either game were actually accidental or off pure reflexes.
8 LCS games on July 4th? Riotplz... Anyways, the LCS games from MLG Anaheim were pretty epic. Not all of them clean (or OGN level) but you can't argue that many of them were fun to watch. For TeamLiquid~
probably against the rules but minor request for +1s. It's been getting hard to hit the front page with our stuff as of late and these write-ups take us a good amount of effort. tyvm.
On July 04 2013 21:10 Osmoses wrote: Guys, just because nobody ever HITS the skillceiling don't mean it doesn't exist. Player vs Player is also irrelevant, the skillceiling doesn't change just because you're playing a worse opponent; it's just that you are much closer to it than your opponent, and therefore having an easier time.
In LoL in particular mechanics take a backseat to decision making and game flow. Don't mean it's easier, those are just different skills, though I would argue it is alot easier to make a game mechanically challenging as opposed to deep in terms of understanding. That said, its interesting to me that a person who is not very good at LoL might think it's easy because they cannot see the nuances. People coming over from Starcraft who may have sharp mechanics but do not understand the nuances cannot fathom why they are still in silver and must turn to the "elo hell" scapegoat.
skillshots directly depend on the actions of your opponent therefore skill ceiling is non existent in the same way it is in poker. (e.g reads when it comes to enemy movemetn when you have incomplete information and must take risks based off a prediction or play safe and lose opportunity)
I don't think you need to play a game perfectly to hit the skill ceiling, ie hit every skillshot etc. As far as LoL and poker goes (ignoring the limited mechanical requirements) I'd say making the correct decisions based on all the information available to you is the skill ceiling. Even if you miss the skillshot it could still be that you shot it in the best direction (based on statistics/observed opponent movement patterns/potential multi-hit/zoning purposes) , just like playing the odds in poker.
I noticed there's significantly less Renekton and Nasus in the LCS (notably NA), despite Renekton being pretty good both 1v1 and 1v2. Does it come from him (and shutting him down) being more figured out now, or is he less desirable? Of course there's stuff like Jayce and Kennen and Ryze with much stronger scaling the ability to poke or hard engage, etc. Also Nasus, went from the "farm Q/wither carries" to "use E to push/defend towers early on, wither divers to make early kills harder, take drake at level 6". Now popular junglers are stuff like Elise, Zac... initiators, which, again, Nasus doesn'to do very well. What could be other reasons?
TBH there are quite a few aspects of LoL that are harder than DotA. I don't actually think on a broad scale level you can say the game is just easier, because it varies across different aspects of the game.
For example, the mental math of estimating someone's damage (and by extension, estimating the winner of any given engagement, whether a gank will succeed, whether you can take an objective in a given amount of time and get out, etc.) is an order of magnitude harder in LoL than in DotA. There are more damage stats and more mitigation stats (whereas in DotA magical damage is by and large flat and magic resist is provided in fixed amounts). As a mental task this is probably one of the most fundamental ones in the game (even some high level DotA players consider this THE fundamental skill up to a mid-high level), and on a basic level it is "harder" in LoL than in DotA.
On July 04 2013 21:10 Osmoses wrote: Guys, just because nobody ever HITS the skillceiling don't mean it doesn't exist. Player vs Player is also irrelevant, the skillceiling doesn't change just because you're playing a worse opponent; it's just that you are much closer to it than your opponent, and therefore having an easier time.
In LoL in particular mechanics take a backseat to decision making and game flow. Don't mean it's easier, those are just different skills, though I would argue it is alot easier to make a game mechanically challenging as opposed to deep in terms of understanding. That said, its interesting to me that a person who is not very good at LoL might think it's easy because they cannot see the nuances. People coming over from Starcraft who may have sharp mechanics but do not understand the nuances cannot fathom why they are still in silver and must turn to the "elo hell" scapegoat.
We've had this discussion about mechanics vs. "mechanics" before wei2coolman, and I don't think we need to again.
Suffice to say "mechanics" in the sense that DL is good at them is much more of what I just mentioned in terms of judging fights and how to engage them, rather than any sort of mechanical skill in the BW/SC2 sense. Most of what he does is not because his hands are fast, he can multitask (well thats not even relevant) or well-trained muscle memory. It's all "knowing" things, which is more game sense than mechanics to begin with. People just call it mechanics because it governs how small-scale fights play out and people think that's all mechanics when it's not.
On July 04 2013 21:10 Osmoses wrote: Guys, just because nobody ever HITS the skillceiling don't mean it doesn't exist. Player vs Player is also irrelevant, the skillceiling doesn't change just because you're playing a worse opponent; it's just that you are much closer to it than your opponent, and therefore having an easier time.
In LoL in particular mechanics take a backseat to decision making and game flow. Don't mean it's easier, those are just different skills, though I would argue it is alot easier to make a game mechanically challenging as opposed to deep in terms of understanding. That said, its interesting to me that a person who is not very good at LoL might think it's easy because they cannot see the nuances. People coming over from Starcraft who may have sharp mechanics but do not understand the nuances cannot fathom why they are still in silver and must turn to the "elo hell" scapegoat.
And yet DL still exists.
He's just once piece of CLG, someone smarter than him can aim him.
On July 05 2013 02:25 TheYango wrote: We've had this discussion about mechanics vs. "mechanics" before wei2coolman, and I don't think we need to again.
Suffice to say "mechanics" in the sense that DL is good at them is much more of what I just mentioned in terms of judging fights and how to engage them, rather than any sort of mechanical skill in the BW/SC2 sense.
and honestly people who always say that "decision making" is his weakness are just nitpicky. On top of his superb mechanics, his level of decision making is the same as the majority of LCS players. Because of his image it's just more apparent and people ride on it for days if he derps once in a while like everyone else.
On July 05 2013 02:25 TheYango wrote: We've had this discussion about mechanics vs. "mechanics" before wei2coolman, and I don't think we need to again.
Suffice to say "mechanics" in the sense that DL is good at them is much more of what I just mentioned in terms of judging fights and how to engage them, rather than any sort of mechanical skill in the BW/SC2 sense.
and honestly people who always say that "decision making" is his weakness are just nitpicky. On top of his superb mechanics, his level of decision making is the same as the majority of LCS players. Because of his image it's just more apparent and people ride on it for days if he derps once in a while like everyone else.
I don't know about that. ... Did you watch that tsm game? He walked straight into 4 players.
I mean "decision making" is a really broad and uninformative term to use.
At the very least you can split decision making into "small scale" decision making (e.g. laning, how do I win this fight, can I survive this gank, do I have enough damage to solo-kill this guy, etc.) vs. "big picture" decision making (All 5 enemies are missing, what are they thinking? Where are they? What is our game plan this game with these 2 teamcomps? What timings are the most important, which champ do we have to play around? Which objectives do we need to control?).
It seems reasonable to say DL is best at the former and less good at the latter.
On July 05 2013 02:25 TheYango wrote: We've had this discussion about mechanics vs. "mechanics" before wei2coolman, and I don't think we need to again.
Suffice to say "mechanics" in the sense that DL is good at them is much more of what I just mentioned in terms of judging fights and how to engage them, rather than any sort of mechanical skill in the BW/SC2 sense.
and honestly people who always say that "decision making" is his weakness are just nitpicky. On top of his superb mechanics, his level of decision making is the same as the majority of LCS players. Because of his image it's just more apparent and people ride on it for days if he derps once in a while like everyone else.
I don't know about that. ... Did you watch that tsm game? He walked straight into 4 players.
i give him the benefit of the doubt that it was all planned to get those additional 4 seconds for Nien and Link to backdoor the inhibs LOL
yeah one of those "derps once in a while" + his itemization, horrible game from him after laning phase.
On July 05 2013 02:25 TheYango wrote: We've had this discussion about mechanics vs. "mechanics" before wei2coolman, and I don't think we need to again.
Suffice to say "mechanics" in the sense that DL is good at them is much more of what I just mentioned in terms of judging fights and how to engage them, rather than any sort of mechanical skill in the BW/SC2 sense.
and honestly people who always say that "decision making" is his weakness are just nitpicky. On top of his superb mechanics, his level of decision making is the same as the majority of LCS players. Because of his image it's just more apparent and people ride on it for days if he derps once in a while like everyone else.
I don't know about that. ... Did you watch that tsm game? He walked straight into 4 players.
And that bought nien or link enough time to get the inhibitors. On my first watch I thought it was dumb too, but I rewatched it, and it was actually really well done, tsm was running straight back to base, and if all liftlift did was walk around and try to harass from range, they would've ignored him, but since he walked into them as Tanky urgot, they couldn't just ignore him, and it took a while to kill him.