[NA IHs] Running at Dusk - Page 139

On November 12 2013 03:49 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
i feel like a lot of people either have their own groups of 5 or at least a group of 2-4 that they queue together with somewhat regularly

just expand that to a full group of 5 and play other groups of 5s

make a channel where you go and ask if anyone ha 5 on and want to play, or just add people from other groups :<

all of this is just based on if someone actually wants to get better playing as a team, which, as i already said, is actually the biggest hurdle, and not one that can be really addressed by anyone else

On November 12 2013 03:31 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:


you dont help people who don't want to help themselves -_-

read the OP of this thread, it didnt turn out this way, but the original intent of this in house set up is for lowbies to get shitstomped by diamonds and improve that way, wee're not here to coddle and hold hands >_>

also im sure there are more than enough people who actually have a healthy spectrum of skill levels to play against each other

On November 12 2013 05:40 DURRHURRDERP wrote:
After playing or observing a lot of these inhouse games here's my input on a few things:

Team balancing
While a lot of effort has been put in over the course of these games to balance teams, probably 90%+ of the games played were extremely one sided stomps. Balancing teams is incredibly hard when there are players of such varying skill level, let alone taking into account the variance between an individual player's rating and their actual skill (IE: Roffles when he was in gold).

There have been a number of games where it's one person carrying each team. I almost feel like lower skilled players are learning less in these situations because they so rarely occur in solo queue (except during elo boosting season), and even when they occur it's so hard to feel like you have an impact on the game as well as thinking about what you could do better when it's simply a matter of a 20-0 Riven/Aatrox (cough aura)/etc on your team or against you.

Critique/Butthurtness/etc
If you look at the OP of this thread, this is the first thing mentioned under ground rules:

"Fun is not the utmost concern of these inhouses. While it would be great if everyone participating enjoys the camaraderie of other TL users, the primary goal here is still to learn how to become a better player in a group setting."

Like Csheep said, it does seem like people have forgotten the original point of these games. Luckily, outside of a few isolated incidents, I would say the vast majority of players are more or less receptive to criticism. Though I do want to mention that the people who are more receptive to criticism end up improving far faster/moving up higher. Though I might get some flack for being rather blunt in my criticism, people tend to overlook the fact that it is meant for their own good.

1v1s/2v2s/Lane Practice
This is directed towards those in silver/bronze mostly (and specifically when laning vs a higher rated player), though honestly I believe that anyone can benefit a lot from simply practicing lane matchups. There have been a few inhouse games where players have played so badly in lane and botched their lane matchup so hard that it ended up having an extremely negative effect on their team's chances to win. This ends up forcing people to play an extremely one-sided / handicapped game where there isn't much to be learned. Instead of having this happen, a lot of grief could have been saved if there were some emphasis on practicing lane matchups out in 1v1 or 2v2 situations.

Lowbie Jungling
If you're in bronze/silver/(and even) gold and playing jungle in these inhouses, god help you if you don't know what you're doing/how to play your champ correctly. You are going to have a hard time doing anything (given that you'll be playing versus higher level players in these inhouses), and as a consequence, your team is going to have a hard time winning (especially if the enemy team's jungler knows what they are doing). Unlike laning, so much of jungling comes from knowledge of the game and timing, and it is extremely difficult to teach these things.

Communication
For a lot of people it is overwhelming playing in a team/arranged 5s scenario when they're so used to playing solo queue simply because of the amount of communication on TS/voice. I'm kinda on the fence for this, I don't think the extra communication through TS is necessary during a game because you will not have that advantage almost 100% of the time in solo queue (and hopefully players will be playing solo queue when not playing inhouses). However, having voice chat to talk about the games before/after is great and very useful (assuming people actually ask/answer questions).

Things that can be improved on (no particular order):
- Have purposely imbalanced (lower rated players on one team vs higher rated players) games sometimes. Games already end up being one sided and the advice given is minimal in this situation (hard for the good players to give advice if they're in different lanes/roles). With purposely imbalanced teams, everyone on the lowbie team is able to receive advice from their counterpart.

- Time between games. A lot of the time the games are remade extremely fast, though hard to say whether this is because there isn't much to say advice wise or there isn't anyone to receive it (players leaving immediately after games) or there are simply too many people who want to play.

- More lane practice. Explained above.

- People remembering the point of these games and taking critique better.

- Rotating people in/out when there are too many players. Some people end up playing more inhouses than solo queue (you know who you are). The whole point of these games are to get better, but it is hard to know how much better you're getting if you completely substitute inhouse games for solo queue. The people that have improved a lot through inhouses have all stopped playing them as much after a certain point (pandabeardude, nimbus1, etc).

- More stable teams? Having a mini league setup with coaches sounds good. Also allows further possibilities (TLIH fantasy league, etc).

That's all I can think of right now, will reply if I think of anything else.

On November 12 2013 05:52 jcarlsoniv wrote:
I think that's the most serious post I've ever seen durr make

On November 12 2013 05:52 jcarlsoniv wrote:
I think that's the most serious post I've ever seen durr make

On November 12 2013 05:52 jcarlsoniv wrote:
I think that's the most serious post I've ever seen durr make

On November 12 2013 06:01 Roffles wrote:

Didn't know he had it in him.

Also, I think there's definitely enough interest across the board to at least try some sort of stabilized teamplay. As Soniv said, once the stakes are raised, people tend to play better. Take a look at what happened when Mathies came around. People tried their hardest to win, not lose. It'll also help lower the amount of troll games (sry friends), and promote greater improvement and better coordination. Plus with some better players to guide and coach, it'd be great for them too.

On November 12 2013 06:00 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
I agree with mostly everything in Durr's post, with the exception of the communication thing.

Is the ultimate goal of these in houses supposed to be just help people improve at solo queue...? I feel like that's a silly goal to have considering how you can replicate that by, well, just playing solo queue.

On November 12 2013 06:04 jcarlsoniv wrote:


Solo queue is the best way to measure self improvement for the masses. It's the most accessible and widely used mode for anything remotely competitive. It's easy to see that you've improved when you're G5, do a ton of IHs, then end up getting to P3.

And just spamming solo queue doesn't really work unless you are actively looking at every aspect of your game every time. Having 9 other people to look at your play (plus spectators) and give you critique is far better.