I've been using Mpen reds/Armor Yellows/APperlevel Blues/MSquints.
I feel weak early game (in top lane) but I feel like it sets me up decently for late laning/mid game but I'm not totally sold on this set up. Going to try shuffling around different Quints, maybe change the blues to flat AP
I don't think Azubu Blaze's play can translate to solo-queue, like, at all. Maybe people will buy more team items?
Yeah, if the strategy is "aggressive team based roaming" then it's not really going to shake things up at anything but organized play even if it does catch on at higher levels. I wasn't actually aware that "buy efficient items and aura items" was considered a new thing, either, but I admittedly do not watch high level play nearly enough to figure out if their item decisions could be more gold efficient and/or if they're making good use of aura items for efficiency. Buy more WotAs and Zekes and Solari's and Shurelyas and Aegises, I guess.
I'm curious what constitutes a meta shift in your eyes.
A major (significantly changing what roles and lanes are in play; 2-1-2 would be a shift, running an AD caster mid and a tanky AP top probably wouldn't) and sustained (actually showing up consistently, not just at one tournament; the current shift doesn't qualify here) change in the way people play the game. If "roaming everywhere" sticks, then it will be a meta shift, but at the moment I'm not sure "roaming everywhere" is an accurate description to that and I am doubtful that it will stick.
Once again: I am responding to the video that was posted. The video that was released before this possible meta shift and stated that League allowed all players to experiment at all levels. Since the meta is definitely not shifted for anybody but international level players, has not done so for anybody in months, and seems incredibly unlikely to shift for anybody that isn't an international level player (and possibly but not definitely for them), the concept of "you can experiment" is still wrong because the meta is set in stone for most everybody, especially if you solo queue.
EDIT: To be clear, if the meta has shifted significantly at the top level of play, but it's the exact same for everybody else, especially solo queue, then yeah, the meta has shifted... but the video's inaccuracy about LoL allowing significant experimentation in role and playstyle would still stand for everybody who wasn't at the top level. If you solo/duo queue ranked, you're going to be chained to the current meta, and you'll probably be chained to whatever the meta is (if it shifts for solo queue non international level players) for all time unless you're in a five man.
I think if your complaint is that you're going to be chained to the meta in solo queue I don't know that that's a reasonable complaint. I mean yeah, if its you and 4 random people the most common play style is going to be what you get. That's probably a good thing actually.
Chess is interesting because such optimal strategy has not been found [it is not a perfectly balanced game, white has a ~5% advantage] and so, for the same reasons that people can play different games of League of Legends, people can play different games of chess. The optimal moves are opaque enough and the way that play progresses diverges enough that searching for the solution is more or less impossible, and remembering the solution even if you found it might not feasible for a human. Unlike checkers for instance, where a computer exists that cannot be beaten.
Might I suggest you check out Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine. Awesome documentary on (computer) chess.
Chess is perfectly balanced to start, as is LoL. However, once minions spawn, the game does seem to become unbalanced as one side eventually gains an advantage and pushes for a win. I haven't run tests, but I think blue team gets the advantage?
Anyways, in both chess and LoL, the only thing that imbalances the game is taking a risk to hopefully set yourself up for better positioning later.
Playing a game of aggression will only result in making too many sacrifices and losing. Obviously, you can only turtle so long, but the idea is to withhold your position long enough until you can make a favorable trade, or the enemy baits with poor results for them.
Chess is not perfectly balanced at the start. White moves first, this gives white roughly a 5% win advantage. If it were an option, you would re-up white every time.
That being said, the concept of "balance" doesn't even make a lot of sense in a game like Chess. In fact it doesn't make a lot of sense in any game unless it means "is there an option that is clearly better than all the other options". If the answer is yes, then the game is not balanced[see Chess, play white]. If the answer is no then it is "balanced".
But this concept doesn't mesh with how we understand games. We understand games more as a function of how they are played and the results than of a question of "is there a dominant pure strategy" [though answering this in the affirmative makes solving a game much easier].
The other reason this doesn't make sense is that there are often dominant strategies in "balanced" games. Mechanically perfect play in League dominates mechanically imperfect play. In MTG playing a deck that has potential plays on every turn dominates a similar deck that does not. Always, so long as we abstract enough, we will find that there is almost always some form of dominant strategy. [because there is almost always some form of dominated strategy, how to win: "don't play a dominated pure strategy"]
We can see this in the idea that people have to "study" Chess in order to get good at it as compared to a game like league and that this is somehow because Chess is "more balanced" and League is "Perfectly imbalanced". But Chess, taught heuristically, is actually very easy to pick up and iterate on. If you're serious about learning chess, you should only start studying actual games after you're pretty decent about understanding the form and structure of a game. The reasons that we have potentially more "study" in Chess is that Chess has been played for hundreds of years and League has been played for 2.
Because we almost always have some form of dominant pure strategy in a game, the trick to making a "balanced" game is not to try and make a game without a dominant pure strategy, but to try to make playing that dominant strategy interesting. In League we can think of this dominant strategy in terms of the duo bot+jungle meta; its probably not going anywhere for a while.
But we have interesting choices within that dominant strategy, because not everyone knows the same champions and not everyone plays every champion with the same ability. This means that the same champions cannot be picked/banned every game. Just as while there are only 3-5 competitive decks in each iteration of MTG not everyone ends up playing the same red/green aggro or the same delver, because its hard to tell which turn 2 play is better, or which removal should be main board instead of side. Just as not every game in Chess is the same, because not everyone knows all the openings.
I think if your complaint is that you're going to be chained to the meta in solo queue I don't know that that's a reasonable complaint. I mean yeah, if its you and 4 random people the most common play style is going to be what you get. That's probably a good thing actually.
Do you just want to keep arguing or something? I never said anything about whether or not it's a bad thing or not that the meta is incredibly stable. Again, my point was that in the Extra Credits video, it is inaccurate to say you can experiment in League because in any kind of serious game, you are going to play The Meta that has been around for almost a year and shows no signs of changing for anybody but the top players in organized games.
I didn't ever say anything about whether or not I care if you're chained to the meta, or pass any judgment on League of Legends at all. All I was saying, and all I have been saying, is that the Extra Credits video is wrong, and the most interestingly wrong thing was holding up League as an example of great ability to experiment at all levels when the meta is incredibly stable and almost hostile to attempts to change it (excepting at the highest level).
Honestly, (new point here), League almost fits into the "Only new players and pros get to try new shit" concept they were deriding; new players can do whatever and their "meta" is inherently stupid because of the lack of runes and masteries, and pros can experiment at international tournaments, but any player in a ranked game below tournament level players is pretty much gonna be doing the same thing and trying to do it better.
I mean you claimed the meta is stagnant right after the meta got destroyed by a new strategy.
Also you seem to be setting up this claim that a meta isn't a meta unless it can't be countered or something?
Well, if we want to be technical
1) The meta was not destroyed, because the meta was not played. You can't force a low economy game on a team that plays so they can't be forced into a low economy game.
2) Anecdata is not evidence. If i win on a roll of 1-4 and you win on a 5 or 6, rolling a 5 or 6 does not imply that you chose the better strategy.
From the article
However, Azubu has recognised just how valuable support items are. During the group stages, whenever someone recalled to heal or buy, Azubu`Lustboy would often and proceed to farm the minions there.
I had a hard time getting to this point. Because a lot of the things that he has been saying have been happening in my 1350 soloqueue games for ages.
But this is where I stopped.
Everyone does that. No one leaves farm for free. The next paragraphs are this amazing rant about how amazing it is that their support got farm. But the only reason supports typically don't get farm is because they would rather have the gold on other people. Wow, if you can get two combo's off instead of one you're twice as effective! Yea, but that isn't why you're not getting farm, you're not getting farm because its better to get one combo off and have your ADC cut a swath through their team than get two combo's off and their ADC cut a swath through your team.
Anyone capable of listening to Korean will have been rather surprised listening in to the voice communications of Azubu, especially if they were used to that of TSM or CLG. The Koreans time everything. From Summoner Spells, to wards, to the cooldown on spells they time it all.
Yea, this just in. TSM and CLG don't time summoner spells, wards, or ult CD's...
Before M5: Not much counterjungling. Then they swept a tournament with their aggressive plays in the opponents jungle. Now we see counterjungling as a pretty important part of play. Meta change.
Now we see Azubu Blaze come in, and stomp all over every other team with their unique style of play, which is distinct from all that has come before. This is not from when roaming was big, which was basically like having an extra jungler, this is that they get an early advantage in a lane, then bring in their whole team to crush that first tower, and give the whole team the advantage. Repeat for the other lanes. Translates into gold for everyone, and increased map control for them, so they can continue to increase their gold advantage with objectives. It also serves to counter the Eurolane by simply breaking the laning phase and making it a global game instead. They beat the meta by not playing the meta
If they continue to be successful, and it is adopted more widely (I know Dignitas already does it a lot), then it is indeed a strong meta shift. I don't see how people might think otherwise. After M5's big performance people said that it wasn't going to last and it was easy to counter. Turns out the easiest counter is to use the same strategy yourself.
I don't consider counterjungling a big meta shift considering it's always been part of theory play ever since people realized Nunu can eat the enemy big wraith and then go to his blue. It's a minor one, but as I said before, the only real shifts in the meta at all have been how the jungle plays because of changes to the spawns. As long as I've been jungling (which has been since Udyr was released, basically) going into the enemy jungle to steal buffs has been a part of my play; I honestly didn't know that kind of thing was significantly rare. EDIT: I guess counterjungling could have been like early aggression, or kills in lane, or a bunch of other things "that don't happen" at high level play, though.
The difference between counterjungling, the roamer strategy, and this strategy is the difference in safety and effective gold output. Simply put: Counterjungling aggresively has a significant gold benefit because everything you take (if properly timed) gives your jungler slightly faster gold than he'd normally get and takes gold from the enemy jungler. If counterjungling fails and the jungler isn't putting himself in a stupid position... he's wasted very little time and effort. Especially if you're counterjungling certain junglers who tend to get low during their routes and/or what buff your jungler really wants is not the same as what buff the enemy jungler really wants, it's not particularly unsafe, even aggresively.
Roaming and the new strategy, however, have a huge gold and EXP loss up front for a possible gain later. If you stop an aggressive counterjungling attempt, the counterjungler, until he's caught, has probably still done some damage and isn't going to be set back significantly unless he lost his own buffs in the process. If you stop either roaming or this strategy, your team is down a fuckton of gold and EXP. That is why aggresive counterjungling (which I still didn't know wasn't a thing that happened all the time) is and was likely to stay, while roaming and this strategy have a shot but are much higher risk. One example of a "meta shift" that people said wouldn't stay (I never heard anybody say counterjungling wouldn't stay, but I'll take your word for it) doesn't mean a completely different one will stay, especially when the risk is not at all similar between teh two strategies.
Your argument really makes no sense to me. You claim counter jungling wasn't a meta shift because you did it at some point prior to that. Which is entirely irrelevant. And then you point out perfectly valid issues with Blaze's new strat, which is fine, but it has zero bearing on whether its a new meta or not.
I feel like I've been missing out playing Diana jungle, I need to get her mid. Hecarim has been failing me jungle anyway, I guess those 15/2 games were a fluke!
PBE just updated
eeSanGI slice like a goddamn hammer.Registered Userregular
Blaze isn't really changing the meta but instead introducing an established Korean meta to the US. Also their aggressive tower shoving isn't really a defining part of the Korean meta but a 'trick' coordinated play that happened to work really well. Kind of like sc2 cheese.
Slice like a god damn hammer. LoL: Rafflesia / BNet: Talonflame#11979
Chess is interesting because such optimal strategy has not been found [it is not a perfectly balanced game, white has a ~5% advantage] and so, for the same reasons that people can play different games of League of Legends, people can play different games of chess. The optimal moves are opaque enough and the way that play progresses diverges enough that searching for the solution is more or less impossible, and remembering the solution even if you found it might not feasible for a human. Unlike checkers for instance, where a computer exists that cannot be beaten.
Might I suggest you check out Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine. Awesome documentary on (computer) chess.
Chess is perfectly balanced to start, as is LoL. However, once minions spawn, the game does seem to become unbalanced as one side eventually gains an advantage and pushes for a win. I haven't run tests, but I think blue team gets the advantage?
Anyways, in both chess and LoL, the only thing that imbalances the game is taking a risk to hopefully set yourself up for better positioning later.
Playing a game of aggression will only result in making too many sacrifices and losing. Obviously, you can only turtle so long, but the idea is to withhold your position long enough until you can make a favorable trade, or the enemy baits with poor results for them.
Chess is not perfectly balanced at the start. White moves first, this gives white roughly a 5% win advantage. If it were an option, you would re-up white every time.
That being said, the concept of "balance" doesn't even make a lot of sense in a game like Chess. In fact it doesn't make a lot of sense in any game unless it means "is there an option that is clearly better than all the other options". If the answer is yes, then the game is not balanced[see Chess, play white]. If the answer is no then it is "balanced".
But this concept doesn't mesh with how we understand games. We understand games more as a function of how they are played and the results than of a question of "is there a dominant pure strategy" [though answering this in the affirmative makes solving a game much easier].
The other reason this doesn't make sense is that there are often dominant strategies in "balanced" games. Mechanically perfect play in League dominates mechanically imperfect play. In MTG playing a deck that has potential plays on every turn dominates a similar deck that does not. Always, so long as we abstract enough, we will find that there is almost always some form of dominant strategy. [because there is almost always some form of dominated strategy, how to win: "don't play a dominated pure strategy"]
We can see this in the idea that people have to "study" Chess in order to get good at it as compared to a game like league and that this is somehow because Chess is "more balanced" and League is "Perfectly imbalanced". But Chess, taught heuristically, is actually very easy to pick up and iterate on. If you're serious about learning chess, you should only start studying actual games after you're pretty decent about understanding the form and structure of a game. The reasons that we have potentially more "study" in Chess is that Chess has been played for hundreds of years and League has been played for 2.
Because we almost always have some form of dominant pure strategy in a game, the trick to making a "balanced" game is not to try and make a game without a dominant pure strategy, but to try to make playing that dominant strategy interesting. In League we can think of this dominant strategy in terms of the duo bot+jungle meta; its probably not going anywhere for a while.
But we have interesting choices within that dominant strategy, because not everyone knows the same champions and not everyone plays every champion with the same ability. This means that the same champions cannot be picked/banned every game. Just as while there are only 3-5 competitive decks in each iteration of MTG not everyone ends up playing the same red/green aggro or the same delver, because its hard to tell which turn 2 play is better, or which removal should be main board instead of side. Just as not every game in Chess is the same, because not everyone knows all the openings.
I must respectfully disagree. White moves first, which means black can react. In a game of avoidance, black will always win because white will have to make an unwilling sacrifice first.
Again, in your second paragraph, your definition of "balance" is disproved by the early game of chess where no pieces are traded or sacrificed. "Is there an option that is clearly better than all the other options" only occurs in chess when you arrive at the mid-game where you have your defense set up, and are starting to look for pieces to corner.
Every game has a "dominant pure strategy." Skill and experience answer that.
You can't really compare LoL and chess to MtG. Well, at least not to chess. In chess, you know where all the pieces are at all times. With MtG (and LoL to an extent), it's the classic example of Schrödinger's cat. Before drawing a card from your deck, it is simultaneously the card you 'need' and not the card you don't. Only when you see it do you know which it is. It applies to LoL to an extent, because you may have seen the enemy enter a bush, simultaneously existing and not existing in that bush until you check it, whether it be a face-check, ward, or CV. In this way, a 'balanced' game metaphorically has nothing up its sleeve.
With chess, there is no addition of other pieces to the board (unless you're getting into non-traditional 8x8 chess). And I see the duo bot lane changing very soon. We've already seen duo bot shift to top and mid.
With any supposed 'dominant' strategy, might I refer you to a distant past classic from Disney called Sword in the Stone where it culminated in a battle of bigger and badder things against Madam Mim until Merlin becomes a microbial disease that puts her down. Granted, the best LoL character isn't going to be pwned by the worst LoL character just yet, but there is a cycle of champs that will not allow one to become the end-all champion.
I must respectfully disagree. White moves first, which means black can react. In a game of avoidance, black will always win because white will have to make an unwilling sacrifice first.
Again, in your second paragraph, your definition of "balance" is disproved by the early game of chess where no pieces are traded or sacrificed. "Is there an option that is clearly better than all the other options" only occurs in chess when you arrive at the mid-game where you have your defense set up, and are starting to look for pieces to corner.
Every game has a "dominant pure strategy." Skill and experience answer that.
As a matter of fact, you're wrong. Empirically and theoretically white has a first mover advantage which is greater than any first mover disadvantage or second mover advantage.
Not all games have dominant pure strategies. Many have dominated pure strategies, but a dominant strategy is different beast.
You can't really compare LoL and chess to MtG. Well, at least not to chess. In chess, you know where all the pieces are at all times. With MtG (and LoL to an extent), it's the classic example of Schrödinger's cat. Before drawing a card from your deck, it is simultaneously the card you 'need' and not the card you don't.
Stochasticity and imperfect information simply make the analysis and solution to games more difficult. They do not really change the underlying mechanics or methods of the solution. MTG is probably closer to Chess than league in that it is a sequential move game with the opposing players strategy space partially obscured. We get to the second part in Chess because we do not have the time to analyze all options available and neither does our opponent, such they are effectively playing a hand of possible moves that we don't know what it contains.
The move from sequential to a continuous game does make things different, but again, not in terms of the fundamental aspects which are shared by all games that we're talking about.
Your argument really makes no sense to me. You claim counter jungling wasn't a meta shift because you did it at some point prior to that. Which is entirely irrelevant. And then you point out perfectly valid issues with Blaze's new strat, which is fine, but it has zero bearing on whether its a new meta or not.
You're not really reading my posts well. I've said counter jungling is a minor meta shift, but not one I've noticed because at my level it's always been done. Hearing "the pros are counterjungling aggressively" means there's been a shift (Riot's constant tinkering with the jungle means it'd be weird if the game didn't shift around), but since it's been a part of theory play and games I've been in forever in some form, I have a hard time calling it a major shift like it's something huge. Having junglers actually fight in the jungle and over the jungle more often isn't a major meta shift, to me, because it's still basically junglers playing the exact same role: securing buffs and global map objectives for their team and taking kills/lanes at opportune times.
As for the perfectly valid issues: Those are reasons why this shift is less likely to stay around permanently than counterjungling. I've already said that if some kind of primarily roaming tower grabbing team strategy was consistently played, it would be a big meta shift (at top level play; again, all of my posts besides the most recent one have been almost entirely about the fact that in a game where the majority of the player is locked into a very stable meta, it's wrong to say that it's a good example of allowing player experimentation), but the fact is it's had a good showing once but that doesn't mean it's a meta shift, and I find it less likely to stay than counterjungling for the same reason roaming didn't work out very well.
At this point I think you need to step back and evaluate what you're arguing with, because it seems like you're dead set on proving me wrong about things I don't care about/agree with you on. For the record, again: If this new aggressive roaming meta stays at high level play, it's a meta shift. However, I have reasons to believe it might not stay, and it's very obviously not a strategy that can work for uncoordinated pub teams so the solo queue meta is very unlikely to change. Counterjungling is a minor shift to the meta, but it's been theorycrafted about forever and I've seen it in enough games before the shift to believe it has not significantly affected how non-pro games jungle any more than any other change has. The Extra Credits video mentioning League as an example of allowing player experimentation and strategization is very wrong because League is, in fact, one of those games where only low level and high level play significantly shift how things are done while everybody else is pretty much locked into the same thing because of effectiveness and community pressure.
EDIT: Maybe I heard wrong, but did Phreak just pronounce courage as "Co-redge?"
I must respectfully disagree. White moves first, which means black can react. In a game of avoidance, black will always win because white will have to make an unwilling sacrifice first.
Again, in your second paragraph, your definition of "balance" is disproved by the early game of chess where no pieces are traded or sacrificed. "Is there an option that is clearly better than all the other options" only occurs in chess when you arrive at the mid-game where you have your defense set up, and are starting to look for pieces to corner.
Every game has a "dominant pure strategy." Skill and experience answer that.
As a matter of fact, you're wrong. Empirically and theoretically white has a first mover advantage which is greater than any first mover disadvantage or second mover advantage.
Not all games have dominant pure strategies. Many have dominated pure strategies, but a dominant strategy is different beast.
You can't really compare LoL and chess to MtG. Well, at least not to chess. In chess, you know where all the pieces are at all times. With MtG (and LoL to an extent), it's the classic example of Schrödinger's cat. Before drawing a card from your deck, it is simultaneously the card you 'need' and not the card you don't.
Stochasticity and imperfect information simply make the analysis and solution to games more difficult. They do not really change the underlying mechanics or methods of the solution. MTG is probably closer to Chess than league in that it is a sequential move game with the opposing players strategy space partially obscured. We get to the second part in Chess because we do not have the time to analyze all options available and neither does our opponent, such they are effectively playing a hand of possible moves that we don't know what it contains.
The move from sequential to a continuous game does make things different, but again, not in terms of the fundamental aspects which are shared by all games that we're talking about.
Since 1988, chess theorists have challenged previously well-established views about White's advantage. Grandmaster (GM) András Adorján wrote a series of books on the theme that "Black is OK!", arguing that the general perception that White has an advantage is founded more in psychology than reality. GM Mihai Suba and others contend that sometimes White's initiative disappears for no apparent reason as a game progresses. The prevalent style of play for Black today is to seek dynamic, unbalanced positions with active counterplay, rather than merely trying to equalize.
Modern writers also argue that Black has certain countervailing advantages. The consensus that White should try to win can be a psychological burden for the white player, who sometimes loses by trying too hard to win. Moreover, according to game theory, playing second may be advantageous because White has to reveal his hand first. Some openings are thus considered good for Black but less so for White, because White's extra tempo allows Black to adjust in advance to the opponent's plans. Some symmetrical openings (i.e. those where both players make the same moves) can also lead to situations where moving first is a disadvantage, either for psychological or objective reasons.
tl;dr - White has no proven advantage, and any alleged advantages come with just as many disadvantages (that give black an advantage).
I know it's a lot of talk about chess, but I assure you this also ties to LoL. Just because you're the first person to make a move, the first person to get to lane, the first person to attack the enemy champion, etc. does not put you at a distinct advantage.
I mean, have we forgotten the best master-baiter already? I swear, I post this at least once every time we make a new LoL thread, if not for anything else than to impose some amazing use of Chocobo music on everybody. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fOOfJkBnjw
This video only proves my point that black can out-perform white any day. :P
White has no proven advantage, and any alleged advantages come with just as many disadvantages (that give black an advantage).
Chess isn't solved, so by that measure "nothing has any advantages" because until there is a solution things can change wildly. For all we know there is a strategy such that black wins every game or that white wins every game.
But that does not mean that we cannot make reasonable guesses or derive based on what we know about the game. The idea that black isn't at a disadvantage suffers from a misunderstanding about what an advantage is. Advantages can be lost, and it does not matter if you know why it happens or not, what matters is the end result. The literature is essentially saying "well, so what if in modern and historical play black wins 5% fewer games than white does, black still wins games" as if that means that black isn't at a disadvantage.
It doesn't matter, for instance, that some openings are good for black if white has the ability to not play them. The advantage of white is being able to not play openings that are good for black. Black only has good openings if it can force an opening that is bad for white, which it generally cannot do. While it is true that second mover advantages do exist they typically exist where the second mover has more information than the first mover, which is not the case in Chess.
I know it's a lot of talk about chess, but I assure you this also ties to LoL. Just because you're the first person to make a move, the first person to get to lane, the first person to attack the enemy champion, etc. does not put you at a distinct advantage.
No one said that, even though it probably is the case in League. Also that blitz is making the first move, not the other team.
Posts
I've been using Mpen reds/Armor Yellows/APperlevel Blues/MSquints.
I feel weak early game (in top lane) but I feel like it sets me up decently for late laning/mid game but I'm not totally sold on this set up. Going to try shuffling around different Quints, maybe change the blues to flat AP
Yeah, if the strategy is "aggressive team based roaming" then it's not really going to shake things up at anything but organized play even if it does catch on at higher levels. I wasn't actually aware that "buy efficient items and aura items" was considered a new thing, either, but I admittedly do not watch high level play nearly enough to figure out if their item decisions could be more gold efficient and/or if they're making good use of aura items for efficiency. Buy more WotAs and Zekes and Solari's and Shurelyas and Aegises, I guess.
A major (significantly changing what roles and lanes are in play; 2-1-2 would be a shift, running an AD caster mid and a tanky AP top probably wouldn't) and sustained (actually showing up consistently, not just at one tournament; the current shift doesn't qualify here) change in the way people play the game. If "roaming everywhere" sticks, then it will be a meta shift, but at the moment I'm not sure "roaming everywhere" is an accurate description to that and I am doubtful that it will stick.
Once again: I am responding to the video that was posted. The video that was released before this possible meta shift and stated that League allowed all players to experiment at all levels. Since the meta is definitely not shifted for anybody but international level players, has not done so for anybody in months, and seems incredibly unlikely to shift for anybody that isn't an international level player (and possibly but not definitely for them), the concept of "you can experiment" is still wrong because the meta is set in stone for most everybody, especially if you solo queue.
EDIT: To be clear, if the meta has shifted significantly at the top level of play, but it's the exact same for everybody else, especially solo queue, then yeah, the meta has shifted... but the video's inaccuracy about LoL allowing significant experimentation in role and playstyle would still stand for everybody who wasn't at the top level. If you solo/duo queue ranked, you're going to be chained to the current meta, and you'll probably be chained to whatever the meta is (if it shifts for solo queue non international level players) for all time unless you're in a five man.
Thats boring, you're boring everybody Zoidberg
It works!
Chess is not perfectly balanced at the start. White moves first, this gives white roughly a 5% win advantage. If it were an option, you would re-up white every time.
That being said, the concept of "balance" doesn't even make a lot of sense in a game like Chess. In fact it doesn't make a lot of sense in any game unless it means "is there an option that is clearly better than all the other options". If the answer is yes, then the game is not balanced[see Chess, play white]. If the answer is no then it is "balanced".
But this concept doesn't mesh with how we understand games. We understand games more as a function of how they are played and the results than of a question of "is there a dominant pure strategy" [though answering this in the affirmative makes solving a game much easier].
The other reason this doesn't make sense is that there are often dominant strategies in "balanced" games. Mechanically perfect play in League dominates mechanically imperfect play. In MTG playing a deck that has potential plays on every turn dominates a similar deck that does not. Always, so long as we abstract enough, we will find that there is almost always some form of dominant strategy. [because there is almost always some form of dominated strategy, how to win: "don't play a dominated pure strategy"]
We can see this in the idea that people have to "study" Chess in order to get good at it as compared to a game like league and that this is somehow because Chess is "more balanced" and League is "Perfectly imbalanced". But Chess, taught heuristically, is actually very easy to pick up and iterate on. If you're serious about learning chess, you should only start studying actual games after you're pretty decent about understanding the form and structure of a game. The reasons that we have potentially more "study" in Chess is that Chess has been played for hundreds of years and League has been played for 2.
Because we almost always have some form of dominant pure strategy in a game, the trick to making a "balanced" game is not to try and make a game without a dominant pure strategy, but to try to make playing that dominant strategy interesting. In League we can think of this dominant strategy in terms of the duo bot+jungle meta; its probably not going anywhere for a while.
But we have interesting choices within that dominant strategy, because not everyone knows the same champions and not everyone plays every champion with the same ability. This means that the same champions cannot be picked/banned every game. Just as while there are only 3-5 competitive decks in each iteration of MTG not everyone ends up playing the same red/green aggro or the same delver, because its hard to tell which turn 2 play is better, or which removal should be main board instead of side. Just as not every game in Chess is the same, because not everyone knows all the openings.
Do you just want to keep arguing or something? I never said anything about whether or not it's a bad thing or not that the meta is incredibly stable. Again, my point was that in the Extra Credits video, it is inaccurate to say you can experiment in League because in any kind of serious game, you are going to play The Meta that has been around for almost a year and shows no signs of changing for anybody but the top players in organized games.
I didn't ever say anything about whether or not I care if you're chained to the meta, or pass any judgment on League of Legends at all. All I was saying, and all I have been saying, is that the Extra Credits video is wrong, and the most interestingly wrong thing was holding up League as an example of great ability to experiment at all levels when the meta is incredibly stable and almost hostile to attempts to change it (excepting at the highest level).
Honestly, (new point here), League almost fits into the "Only new players and pros get to try new shit" concept they were deriding; new players can do whatever and their "meta" is inherently stupid because of the lack of runes and masteries, and pros can experiment at international tournaments, but any player in a ranked game below tournament level players is pretty much gonna be doing the same thing and trying to do it better.
Well, if we want to be technical
1) The meta was not destroyed, because the meta was not played. You can't force a low economy game on a team that plays so they can't be forced into a low economy game.
2) Anecdata is not evidence. If i win on a roll of 1-4 and you win on a 5 or 6, rolling a 5 or 6 does not imply that you chose the better strategy.
From the article
I had a hard time getting to this point. Because a lot of the things that he has been saying have been happening in my 1350 soloqueue games for ages.
But this is where I stopped.
Everyone does that. No one leaves farm for free. The next paragraphs are this amazing rant about how amazing it is that their support got farm. But the only reason supports typically don't get farm is because they would rather have the gold on other people. Wow, if you can get two combo's off instead of one you're twice as effective! Yea, but that isn't why you're not getting farm, you're not getting farm because its better to get one combo off and have your ADC cut a swath through their team than get two combo's off and their ADC cut a swath through your team.
Yea, this just in. TSM and CLG don't time summoner spells, wards, or ult CD's...
Before M5: Not much counterjungling. Then they swept a tournament with their aggressive plays in the opponents jungle. Now we see counterjungling as a pretty important part of play. Meta change.
Now we see Azubu Blaze come in, and stomp all over every other team with their unique style of play, which is distinct from all that has come before. This is not from when roaming was big, which was basically like having an extra jungler, this is that they get an early advantage in a lane, then bring in their whole team to crush that first tower, and give the whole team the advantage. Repeat for the other lanes. Translates into gold for everyone, and increased map control for them, so they can continue to increase their gold advantage with objectives. It also serves to counter the Eurolane by simply breaking the laning phase and making it a global game instead. They beat the meta by not playing the meta
If they continue to be successful, and it is adopted more widely (I know Dignitas already does it a lot), then it is indeed a strong meta shift. I don't see how people might think otherwise. After M5's big performance people said that it wasn't going to last and it was easy to counter. Turns out the easiest counter is to use the same strategy yourself.
Diana needs to be nerfed.
The difference between counterjungling, the roamer strategy, and this strategy is the difference in safety and effective gold output. Simply put: Counterjungling aggresively has a significant gold benefit because everything you take (if properly timed) gives your jungler slightly faster gold than he'd normally get and takes gold from the enemy jungler. If counterjungling fails and the jungler isn't putting himself in a stupid position... he's wasted very little time and effort. Especially if you're counterjungling certain junglers who tend to get low during their routes and/or what buff your jungler really wants is not the same as what buff the enemy jungler really wants, it's not particularly unsafe, even aggresively.
Roaming and the new strategy, however, have a huge gold and EXP loss up front for a possible gain later. If you stop an aggressive counterjungling attempt, the counterjungler, until he's caught, has probably still done some damage and isn't going to be set back significantly unless he lost his own buffs in the process. If you stop either roaming or this strategy, your team is down a fuckton of gold and EXP. That is why aggresive counterjungling (which I still didn't know wasn't a thing that happened all the time) is and was likely to stay, while roaming and this strategy have a shot but are much higher risk. One example of a "meta shift" that people said wouldn't stay (I never heard anybody say counterjungling wouldn't stay, but I'll take your word for it) doesn't mean a completely different one will stay, especially when the risk is not at all similar between teh two strategies.
PBE just updated
Slice like a god damn hammer. LoL: Rafflesia / BNet: Talonflame#11979
Their skin themes are generally great with the recent fire and ice skins
But it would feel less spammy and boring if they released them all at once or in bigger chunks.
I must respectfully disagree. White moves first, which means black can react. In a game of avoidance, black will always win because white will have to make an unwilling sacrifice first.
Again, in your second paragraph, your definition of "balance" is disproved by the early game of chess where no pieces are traded or sacrificed. "Is there an option that is clearly better than all the other options" only occurs in chess when you arrive at the mid-game where you have your defense set up, and are starting to look for pieces to corner.
Every game has a "dominant pure strategy." Skill and experience answer that.
You can't really compare LoL and chess to MtG. Well, at least not to chess. In chess, you know where all the pieces are at all times. With MtG (and LoL to an extent), it's the classic example of Schrödinger's cat. Before drawing a card from your deck, it is simultaneously the card you 'need' and not the card you don't. Only when you see it do you know which it is. It applies to LoL to an extent, because you may have seen the enemy enter a bush, simultaneously existing and not existing in that bush until you check it, whether it be a face-check, ward, or CV. In this way, a 'balanced' game metaphorically has nothing up its sleeve.
With chess, there is no addition of other pieces to the board (unless you're getting into non-traditional 8x8 chess). And I see the duo bot lane changing very soon. We've already seen duo bot shift to top and mid.
With any supposed 'dominant' strategy, might I refer you to a distant past classic from Disney called Sword in the Stone where it culminated in a battle of bigger and badder things against Madam Mim until Merlin becomes a microbial disease that puts her down. Granted, the best LoL character isn't going to be pwned by the worst LoL character just yet, but there is a cycle of champs that will not allow one to become the end-all champion.
Yelling at butts will never NOT be funny. Thanks, Psy!
Also, Abby is awesome. Keep up with TLH because it's the tits!
I love League of Legends, but seriously...screw you, Teemo.
As a matter of fact, you're wrong. Empirically and theoretically white has a first mover advantage which is greater than any first mover disadvantage or second mover advantage.
Not all games have dominant pure strategies. Many have dominated pure strategies, but a dominant strategy is different beast.
Stochasticity and imperfect information simply make the analysis and solution to games more difficult. They do not really change the underlying mechanics or methods of the solution. MTG is probably closer to Chess than league in that it is a sequential move game with the opposing players strategy space partially obscured. We get to the second part in Chess because we do not have the time to analyze all options available and neither does our opponent, such they are effectively playing a hand of possible moves that we don't know what it contains.
The move from sequential to a continuous game does make things different, but again, not in terms of the fundamental aspects which are shared by all games that we're talking about.
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I just don't get it.
You're not really reading my posts well. I've said counter jungling is a minor meta shift, but not one I've noticed because at my level it's always been done. Hearing "the pros are counterjungling aggressively" means there's been a shift (Riot's constant tinkering with the jungle means it'd be weird if the game didn't shift around), but since it's been a part of theory play and games I've been in forever in some form, I have a hard time calling it a major shift like it's something huge. Having junglers actually fight in the jungle and over the jungle more often isn't a major meta shift, to me, because it's still basically junglers playing the exact same role: securing buffs and global map objectives for their team and taking kills/lanes at opportune times.
As for the perfectly valid issues: Those are reasons why this shift is less likely to stay around permanently than counterjungling. I've already said that if some kind of primarily roaming tower grabbing team strategy was consistently played, it would be a big meta shift (at top level play; again, all of my posts besides the most recent one have been almost entirely about the fact that in a game where the majority of the player is locked into a very stable meta, it's wrong to say that it's a good example of allowing player experimentation), but the fact is it's had a good showing once but that doesn't mean it's a meta shift, and I find it less likely to stay than counterjungling for the same reason roaming didn't work out very well.
At this point I think you need to step back and evaluate what you're arguing with, because it seems like you're dead set on proving me wrong about things I don't care about/agree with you on. For the record, again: If this new aggressive roaming meta stays at high level play, it's a meta shift. However, I have reasons to believe it might not stay, and it's very obviously not a strategy that can work for uncoordinated pub teams so the solo queue meta is very unlikely to change. Counterjungling is a minor shift to the meta, but it's been theorycrafted about forever and I've seen it in enough games before the shift to believe it has not significantly affected how non-pro games jungle any more than any other change has. The Extra Credits video mentioning League as an example of allowing player experimentation and strategization is very wrong because League is, in fact, one of those games where only low level and high level play significantly shift how things are done while everybody else is pretty much locked into the same thing because of effectiveness and community pressure.
EDIT: Maybe I heard wrong, but did Phreak just pronounce courage as "Co-redge?"
which isn't any noticeable change really
So I'm going to stream it!
http://www.justin.tv/delphinidaes
Enjoy!
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KzdI_2ij-4Q
Amazing.
I'd feel bad, but after the two completely awful games and the 57 enemy team dodges before that, my heart is a withered mass.
Saying "you're wrong" proves nothing.
Black's advantage in chess (wikipedia) says: tl;dr - White has no proven advantage, and any alleged advantages come with just as many disadvantages (that give black an advantage).
I know it's a lot of talk about chess, but I assure you this also ties to LoL. Just because you're the first person to make a move, the first person to get to lane, the first person to attack the enemy champion, etc. does not put you at a distinct advantage.
I mean, have we forgotten the best master-baiter already? I swear, I post this at least once every time we make a new LoL thread, if not for anything else than to impose some amazing use of Chocobo music on everybody.
This video only proves my point that black can out-perform white any day. :P
Yelling at butts will never NOT be funny. Thanks, Psy!
Also, Abby is awesome. Keep up with TLH because it's the tits!
I love League of Legends, but seriously...screw you, Teemo.
Chess isn't solved, so by that measure "nothing has any advantages" because until there is a solution things can change wildly. For all we know there is a strategy such that black wins every game or that white wins every game.
But that does not mean that we cannot make reasonable guesses or derive based on what we know about the game. The idea that black isn't at a disadvantage suffers from a misunderstanding about what an advantage is. Advantages can be lost, and it does not matter if you know why it happens or not, what matters is the end result. The literature is essentially saying "well, so what if in modern and historical play black wins 5% fewer games than white does, black still wins games" as if that means that black isn't at a disadvantage.
It doesn't matter, for instance, that some openings are good for black if white has the ability to not play them. The advantage of white is being able to not play openings that are good for black. Black only has good openings if it can force an opening that is bad for white, which it generally cannot do. While it is true that second mover advantages do exist they typically exist where the second mover has more information than the first mover, which is not the case in Chess.
No one said that, even though it probably is the case in League. Also that blitz is making the first move, not the other team.
If we ignore chess statistics, perhaps.
Best water mage is Ziggs.