LoL is the only game I've ever played where simply playing the game and enjoying myself made other players so white hot enraged for reasons I could never understand it felt like trolling. Having fun felt like breaking the rules.
On topic, the community can be pretty bad, but honestly it's actually worse the lower level you are. People who have been playing the game long enough to get to 30 and drop some real money on skins or whatever, post-Tribunal are pretty well behaved in general. There's still assholes but there's assholes in 24/7 instant respawn 2fort servers at about the same rate.
It's terrible for new players, but I don't know that Riot can do anything about it while it's a F2P game since you're basically mixing people who have been banned (jerks) with people who are brand new to the game (who are sometimes also jerks, or at least jerks if other jerks start yelling at them)
But guess what? Got 5 friends? Congratulations, you now never, ever have to worry about following the meta if you don't want to. You never, ever have to get raged at. Okay just kidding your friends will all rage at you.
I honestly don't understand the Teemo hate. I know it exists out there, but I don't get it.
But I DO feed off the hatred. This is Teemo's real power.
-edit-
Besides, Teemo is fun
Teemo tends to do one of two things.
One, he can really punish an enemy laner for mistakes and very quickly make it unsafe to even stick around in lane and last hit. He also has poison and getting poisoned all the time sucks. In this case he turns into an ungankable, unstoppable tower-pushing force. His team doesn't get to see how strong he is because he usually doesn't want to teamfight, he wants to push turrets from the safety of his mushroom farm, but the enemy team knows because he's ruined their top laner's day and they can't gank him and keep losing turrets.
Two, doesn't do number one due to a bad Teemo or good opposing laner, and doesn't end up adding much to the game usually. It's possible to teamfight with Teemo, but he's just not good at it because it's not how he's designed.
Both of these outcomes leading to a lot of people hating Teemo but nobody liking him except the dude playing him. Plus he's irritatingly adorable and has that adorably irritating laugh to spam.
Well I guess I will never be playing LoL after all. My favorite pick in Dota was always random hero and it will always be. Considering I have won about 3/4 of my games clearly I must be doing something right.
I do wonder how many people play(ed) Dota(not two) though. Couldn't find anything relevant to it in a quick google search but could have just used the wrong terms since 2 keeps coming up.
There is a big difference, chrnno; League has an actual matchmaking system with a pretty accurate skill system. If you were just against random people, sure, you could probably dick around a lot if you were good, but in League, it presents less favorable outcomes.
The problem with game's like these is that people assume you have training to play them. Most people don't want to learn every mechanics and best positioning to snipe someone but rather have fun. Even though they have three separate queues blind pick, draft pick and ranked to separate this type of mentality new people are forced to deal with who want to win non-stop. I find it odd that people would rather play normals to win non-stop as opposed to win in ranks and not raged in there.
If History has taught us anything, its that people hate change to a meta that can change.
Besides, some top teams are now complain that its better to run dual bruiser's bot then with a support adc.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
The problem is people never learned how to manage their competitive behavior - to make it something one can turn on and off. So people pick up games and are forever competitive, and don't understand the other side of that coin.
A quick LoL vs. Starcraft II comparison
==================================
- Both are excellent, deep, fascinating strategy games. Both declare themselves to be 'eSports', whatever that is. I just play games, man.
- LoL costs nothing!
- Starcraft costs money.
- If you're a jerk in Starcraft, and you get banned, you're GONE. Bye bye jerk!
- If you're a jerk in LoL and get banned there's nothing stopping you from just making another account. And if you're like most jerks, you will come right back. Because who is the game to ban you?! It has no power over you. You'll probably come back even nastier than you were before.
In LoL, jerks stay in the system forever. The nice players are the ones who leave. And we go to Starcraft. (Well, some nice people probably get jobs or accomplish amazing things. But the rest of us go play Starcraft.)
I actually think LoL is a more interesting game than Starcraft. If the communities were the same, I'd switch back to LoL immediately and never look back. But the majority of the people in LoL are horrible, and always will be. Because the jerks stay there. Forever.
The Starcraft community is full of really friendly people, and so I hang out there instead. Your teammates laugh and joke with you, not at you. You can try daring and innovative strategies (it's encouraged! People actually like it!) You get friendly, good-natured advice -- even from your enemies! -- about how to play better. It's a whole different world.
I've only had one time in Starcraft when I was being bullied. I was screwing around, massing Dark Templar in a 3vAI game, and one of my teammates took offense to that. Dunno what the guy's problem was, but he started attacking me. But my other teammate, without me even ASKING, destroyed the jerk's base and all his units on my behalf. The two of us came back from it and we beat the 3 computers together, while the jerk watched from his lone remaining vespene gas extractor. Felt good man. Felt real good.
But in LoL, if one of your teammates points the finger at you, your whole team will gang up on you. Every losing team needs a scapegoat. The only surefire way to make sure it's not you, is to be the one who points the finger first. In LoL, the only winning move... is to be a complete dickwad.
While it is fair to say that you don't want to ever be trapped with a psychotic asshole for half an hour, people really overstate the negativity of the LoL playerbase because people remember the toxic games much more vividly than the okay ones, and you get the worst of it when you start out because you get thrown in with all the banned people making new accounts. I rarely encounter problems, but I also don't play ranked. People talk about Tribunal, but only about a few percent of the playerbase ever goes to Tribunal at all. Also, the Tribunal exists because Riot feels the consensus of players is more accurate than one single person (and presumably it's less expensive than hiring people to review hundreds of thousands of reports).
Last hitting (and the multitude of strategies and nuances that surround it) are somewhat archaic, but it would make for very boring laning if there wasn't something to contest. Smite is just generally a clusterfuck, so they can get away with it, but I don't see how LoL or Dota would work if they copied its system.
Well I guess I will never be playing LoL after all. My favorite pick in Dota was always random hero and it will always be. Considering I have won about 3/4 of my games clearly I must be doing something right.
That's because of the structure of the games. It's much easier in Dota to hypercarry, so it doesn't matter as much what you pick, while in LoL there are only a handful of characters who become the destroyer of worlds after ricing for 45 minutes.
Naroom, that's a really nice story, but I don't think it's at all accurate to the experience of either game. Starcraft is not purely a community of saints, and League is not entirely bad people who rage constantly. One of your facts is blatently untrue as well; there is punishment for getting permabanned on an account (you kind of lose the account with all of its progress), and Riot's statistics have shown that most people are not repeat offenders after the first temporary ban.
Again, though, I have to say that in my experience, I don't encounter that many bad people in League. It's pretty astonishingly rare from my perspective. Admittedly, today I did meet some people who were apparently being hostile to their teammate... but everybody on our side was supportive of the person who was getting screwed over and in general, things were civil (in allchat anyway, I dunno what their teamchat was like). In fact, the situation was basically the role identity problem from the comic today from the perspective of everybody else; two people picked characters almost exclusively played in certain roles, told their team they were playing them in roles they don't fit, were politely asked not to, and proceeded to do so anyway, screwing over their entire team for the sake of their own fun. I can't say for certain whether or not they actually had enough fun to justify it, but they certainly made three people on their team unhappy and the entirety of our team (politely) tell them that was kind of a dick move.
The problem with game's like these is that people assume you have training to play them. Most people don't want to learn every mechanics and best positioning to snipe someone but rather have fun. Even though they have three separate queues blind pick, draft pick and ranked to separate this type of mentality new people are forced to deal with who want to win non-stop. I find it odd that people would rather play normals to win non-stop as opposed to win in ranks and not raged in there.
If History has taught us anything, its that people hate change to a meta that can change.
Besides, some top teams are now complain that its better to run dual bruiser's bot then with a support adc.
Isn't that just Doublelift? I read that post, and while he may be the most mechanically skilled ad carry in NA, that was just random QQ, he's probably frustrated that his team sucks.
Naroom, that's a really nice story, but I don't think it's at all accurate to the experience of either game. Starcraft is not purely a community of saints, and League is not entirely bad people who rage constantly. One of your facts is blatently untrue as well; there is punishment for getting permabanned on an account (you kind of lose the account with all of its progress), and Riot's statistics have shown that most people are not repeat offenders after the first temporary ban.
What he meant was that Riot has no way to stop a hypothetical jackass 13 year old from playing LoL, while they're going to have no money for Starcraft. While it does seem intuitive that people behave better if there's an entry fee, I've seen numerous accounts of long time players with hundreds of dollars of skins being permabanned, so that may not necessarily be true.
Riot's statistics have shown that most people are not repeat offenders after the first temporary ban.
That statistic is EXACTLY what you would see if the banned people just got additional accounts. Riot has no way to track people, they can only track accounts.
That statistic is EXACTLY what you would see if the banned people just got additional accounts. Riot has no way to track people, they can only track accounts.
That does not appear to be the common experience. (See, for example, a few Penny arcade strips on the topic...) What's your secret?
To the first, Lyte (a rioter) has posted about this a bit in the Tribunal threads when they pop up. He didn't specifically state that they look for people who keep reregging from the same IP, but I'd be surprised if they didn't. The reason they don't IP ban anymore is because it kept screwing over people with dynamic IPs and people on college campuses and stuff who use wifi or whatever.
The big one they said is they catch people using friends lists - if the person has the same friends list as a guy who was banned, they can pretty much assume it's the same guy.
To the second, basically hit 30 and win like 200+ games. Normal game matchmaking factors in raw win count as well as hidden ELO, and someone with 200+ wins is unlikely to be toxic very often. I don't play ranked, however, because while people usually don't do anything bannable they complain a lot more and give up easier.
Riot's statistics have shown that most people are not repeat offenders after the first temporary ban.
That statistic is EXACTLY what you would see if the banned people just got additional accounts. Riot has no way to track people, they can only track accounts.
Again, though, I have to say that in my experience, I don't encounter that many bad people in League.
That does not appear to be the common experience. (See, for example, a few Penny arcade strips on the topic...) What's your secret?
Really? If people were making alternate accounts to circumvent bans, the statistic you are likely to see is that tribunal-temp bans or warnings result in the same account continuing to play without further incident? I don't think that makes sense. Even if your post was assuming that "no repeat bans" means they're simply not playing, that's no evidence they're circumventing the bans and staying in the community as a toxic influence.
Anyway, my secrets are threefold, semi-long post incoming:
First: you go into the game recognizing that other people are there to have fun as well. This one realization, a weird thought process resembling empathy, is enough to get rid of most of the reasons people would latch on to you for raging. You don't do things without adequately communicating to your team, you act polite, you don't instalock, etc. The minor sacrifice it takes to not try stupid shit in games where you aren't with a group of friends, and to not be the guy who argues with another player about a role, is more than enough to at the very least start everybody out in a pretty happy mood. Let people do what they want, don't do things that are at best high-risk strategies you really need to hash out in advance instead of playing conventionally, grab wards, and all around being a team player from picks onward makes everybody on your team happier even if they aren't necessarily team players.
Second: you have to communicate properly. Here is an example: "Ashe, don't autoattack creeps" is bad. It sounds like an order (which it is, and which aren't bad things if you're communicating well), it doesn't explain why she shouldn't do that, and it sounds like you're condemning her. "Ashe, you're doing well on creeps, but if you attack for only the last hit, we stay safer" is better! It doesn't guarantee the person will listen by any means, but it's much less confrontational and it explains you're reasoning. The front ended compliment, in any team game situation, really helps prevent suggestions/orders from turning into pointless bitchfests. "Sure, you'll do tons of damage if you buy Trinity Force, but you have a ton of Aspd and they're stacking health, so I'd go BotRK" is a lot better than saying "Trinity Force is bad now, get a BotRK." "You're doing well farming, but we could take a tower and open up space" is a lot better than "We need you with us." Etc, etc.
To follow up on that, you need to only give suggestions once (nagging doesn't help), and you only ever respond to somebody ignoring your suggestion if it's something that they can change later in the game to not repeat the mistake. If you suggest an item and they build a different one, let it go without comment. If you tell them that you saw five of them on the map, so back off, and they charge forward and die alone, maybe say something along the lines of "you're strong/doing well/we need you for fights, but you can't survive getting jumped, so play cautiously/watch the map." All of these things seem really minor and arbitrary, but it basically just boils down to communicating the way that most people want to be communicated with by strangers; praise, understanding of their thought process, without nagging, without being ordered around, and occasionally with a bit of reasoning for suggestions. And if teammates start to be shitheads, you don't argue with them at all, not even with the typical suggestion type thing; if you ignore their complaint it might be a one-off thing (and if you did make a mistake, even if it's phrased rudely, listening might not hurt), but if you respond with justifications it'll definitely become an argument.
Third: You've got to be kind of good at the game. I don't know if there's an upper limit to skill before shitheads start to creep back in, but I do know there is definitely a point, somewhere in the broad zone between being in about the top 40% to top 20% or so, where before that the lower you go the more likely you are to encounter shitheads (with, possibly, a zone at really low skill where there are few toxic people because, quite frankly, at that point learning the enter key exists and allows them to chat would be a shocking boost in skill because that puts them halfway to learning that they can cast spells). Yes, this sounds bad, like I'm sitting in some kind of "elite" club where it's the land of milk and honey because I got to be good at the game, but really it's just beating the Dunning Kruger effect; you have to get past the point where bad people think they know it all, and reach the point where they start to get good enough to realize that they, and other people can make mistakes.
So that's basically it. Communicate politely, play the game emphatically, and be skilled enough that you aren't playing with a volatile combination of unskilled people who think they know it all and other unskilled people who think they know it all clashing or blaming others.
Milski on
I ate an engineer
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I'm not sure if you're joking, truly hate vgchartz that much, or are just using an excuse to stick with your notion of League's popularity, but vgchartz has no information on League of Legends and no information on the Warcraft concurrent subscription, so it's safe to say that those parts of the chart are probably still coming from sources you like, again, assuming you aren't dismissing the LoL statistics because they're from Riot itself.
We have a thing regarding vgchartz, in that they make shit up regularly. I see their stamp among other sites on your magnanimous infochart among the other sources, and because it doesn't say what piece of info belongs to who, something in your chart is a fucking lie with 95% certainty. At any rate, I don't care which game is better or bigger than another, but please ask yourself this.
Do you really think that "70 million accounts registered" means "70 million individual humanbeings"?
That infochart is disgusting by the way, especially with the "who plays" section. Who cares? The prestige that image assigns to the game is hysterical and also sad.
Also just a random humorous point (this isn't something I'm arguing to or against or with you on), the UK apparently doesn't like LoL on Facebook.
You're being really hostile about a chart I only even posted as a source for Riot's userbase. You asked for a source showing that League had close to triple the players World of Warcraft did. I gave you the primary source Riot has released for data. Yes, it is in an infographic with some other irrelevant things, that makes a bunch of comparisons that you didn't ask about, but it did link to exactly what you asked for. So my question is if you are satisfied that, as of October, by a chart Riot put out with, if nothing else, the data from VGChartz being 100% certain to not be related in any way to the LoL userbase (if you want to check for yourself, you can see that VGChartz has absolutely no data on League of Legends), League had more than triple the active monthly users that WoW had peak monthly users.
And if you don't care about which game is bigger, why post asking for a source in the first place?
EDIT: Also, calling it my chart is a bit needlessly hostile. It's a source, not something I made. It's the only format Riot has released data in, and I'm almost certain that if you truly are this concerned with the sources for what I've said, the same comments would have been made if I hyperlinked an article that just rehashed one of the points on the chart with the chart as the main image.
Milski on
I ate an engineer
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I have a curiosity about the business end of video games (sales data, user rates, etc). But the "70 million" number seems wrong to me. Even the 12 million active user count seems ridiculous. I'm calling that into question. Something is being used to inflate the data.
You didn't answer my question by the way about the 70 million number. I'm gonna ask you if you the same thing about the 12 million number too - is it accounts, or people?
The problem with game's like these is that people assume you have training to play them. Most people don't want to learn every mechanics and best positioning to snipe someone but rather have fun. Even though they have three separate queues blind pick, draft pick and ranked to separate this type of mentality new people are forced to deal with who want to win non-stop. I find it odd that people would rather play normals to win non-stop as opposed to win in ranks and not raged in there.
If History has taught us anything, its that people hate change to a meta that can change.
Besides, some top teams are now complain that its better to run dual bruiser's bot then with a support adc.
Isn't that just Doublelift? I read that post, and while he may be the most mechanically skilled ad carry in NA, that was just random QQ, he's probably frustrated that his team sucks.
He did posted it. But I've been seeing people starting to run that comp in ranked Queue now. I've seen people pull it off, but it can be countered if you have adc that can kite with a support (or other) that doesn't stack on him/her.
That infochart is disgusting by the way, especially with the "who plays" section. Who cares? The prestige that image assigns to the game is hysterical and also sad.
Well, what kind of image do you think would be more suitable for LoL then? I don't personally think that their trying to sell their game as prestigious rather than they simply be playful with a smattering of professional pride.
"You want numbers? We'll give you numbers yeah baaaby! Thanks again to all our fans still in college that are supporting our game in this tough economy."
That's my read into the infographic. And if I sound silly suggesting that people like numbers, MOBA players really like numbers and statistics. That's not something I will go into since I personally think the worshipping of numbers is stupid.
I have a curiosity about the business end of video games (sales data, user rates, etc). But the "70 million" number seems wrong to me. Even the 12 million active user count seems ridiculous. I'm calling that into question. Something is being used to inflate the data.
You didn't answer my question by the way about the 70 million number. I'm gonna ask you if you the same thing about the 12 million number too - is it accounts, or people?
I believe that going by the language used in infographic along with a little bit of the registration process, "70 Million Summoner Names Registered" means that 70 million unique account names have been taken by the system. A Summoner is the persistent avatar of the player in LoL. As such, that 70 million number means 70 million unique account names, not necessarily unique players.
The 12 million number is for "Daily Active Players" which I believe means that of all those 70 million accounts, around 12 million of those accounts sign on at least once per day. Whether or not they play at least one game is not clear I'm afraid. Does "active" mean just that they just log on or that they also play a game? I dunno. Again, those 12 million accounts may or may not be unique players.
That's my guess based on how the infographic is phrased.
I don't think very many other games had to invent a community court system to punish overly abusive players. This is pretty unique to LoL you have to admit.
Riot didn't have to either.
They chose to.
And dear God I wish other companies followed their example.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
That infochart is disgusting by the way, especially with the "who plays" section. Who cares? The prestige that image assigns to the game is hysterical and also sad.
Well, what kind of image do you think would be more suitable for LoL then? I don't personally think that their trying to sell their game as prestigious rather than they simply be playful with a smattering of professional pride.
"You want numbers? We'll give you numbers yeah baaaby! Thanks again to all our fans still in college that are supporting our game in this tough economy."
That's my read into the infographic. And if I sound silly suggesting that people like numbers, MOBA players really like numbers and statistics. That's not something I will go into since I personally think the worshipping of numbers is stupid.
I have a curiosity about the business end of video games (sales data, user rates, etc). But the "70 million" number seems wrong to me. Even the 12 million active user count seems ridiculous. I'm calling that into question. Something is being used to inflate the data.
You didn't answer my question by the way about the 70 million number. I'm gonna ask you if you the same thing about the 12 million number too - is it accounts, or people?
I believe that going by the language used in infographic along with a little bit of the registration process, "70 Million Summoner Names Registered" means that 70 million unique account names have been taken by the system. A Summoner is the persistent avatar of the player in LoL. As such, that 70 million number means 70 million unique account names, not necessarily unique players.
The 12 million number is for "Daily Active Players" which I believe means that of all those 70 million accounts, around 12 million of those accounts sign on at least once per day. Whether or not they play at least one game is not clear I'm afraid. Does "active" mean just that they just log on or that they also play a game? I dunno. Again, those 12 million accounts may or may not be unique players.
That's my guess based on how the infographic is phrased.
Yeah, this is all I'm getting at really. It's good PR to use specific phrasing as to avoid lying but makes things sound better than they are. Every company is guilty of it eventually and I have no doubt some of that is going on here. Not a big ol' huge deal but it's a little odd when someone isn't entertaining the idea that maybe things are exaggerated.
And yeah I guess infographics are just meant to be silly like that. I've seen some that are actual interesting data, like Valve did some for Half-Life 2 episodes that tracked where players would die most often, areas where time was most / least spent, etc. Actual data pertaining to player habits and things you can draw design info from. But the infograph above is like... goddamn, have fun with the circlejerk.
By the way @milski when I was commenting on the infograph before I was commenting on it separate from talking with you directly. I know it's not yours.
I recently started playing LoL again, and the main issue I run into is as soon as the lobby opens, someone has claimed ADC, or mid, or top. I don't enjoy jungling, and I'm really not very good at it, but if no one is willing to switch their previously claimed role, then I'm forced into it or double laning top which apparently is the biggest crime in the game. Of course, if I try to jungle and do poorly it's also my fault even though I've made it known that I'm terrible at it. That's when the onslaught of abuse starts, and I find out how worthless I am and that I should uninstall, kill myself, etc etc etc. Doesn't happen every game, but it happens enough that I decided to go back to Smite. I get that its a competitive game, and honestly some stranger telling me to off myself doesn't really hurt my feelings, but it certainly makes the game less enjoyable.
The problem with LoL and DotA is that you get stuck with 4 other people and 1 person can ruin the game for the other 4 very easily. Surrender isn't available until what, 20 minutes into the game? And you need all but one person to agree to surrender for it to happen so if you are unfortunate enough to get stuck with 1 troll and 1 person who doesn't know how to play or 2 people who don't know how to play, you can easily waste an hour. If you give up, you can be punished. If you quit, you will be punished. If you stick it out, you'll get frustrated.
Unlike many FPSes or other strategy games, one's enjoyment of the game is highly based on who one gets stuck with.
The problem with LoL and DotA is that you get stuck with 4 other people and 1 person can ruin the game for the other 4 very easily. Surrender isn't available until what, 20 minutes into the game? And you need all but one person to agree to surrender for it to happen so if you are unfortunate enough to get stuck with 1 troll and 1 person who doesn't know how to play or 2 people who don't know how to play, you can easily waste an hour. If you give up, you can be punished. If you quit, you will be punished. If you stick it out, you'll get frustrated.
Unlike many FPSes or other strategy games, one's enjoyment of the game is highly based on who one gets stuck with.
It's also unpleasant to be stuck with a person who constantly blames his teammates and rages for forty minutes.
I played LoL a few years back, enjoyed it at first but the abuse and rage quitting, sometimes from winning teams just because we were 'not doing it right' finally caused me to quit.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I don't think very many other games had to invent a community court system to punish overly abusive players. This is pretty unique to LoL you have to admit.
To be entirely fair...
...actually, many other games did have to invent a community court system to punish overly abusive players.
And they didn't and those games are writhing cesspits.
Posts
It's terrible for new players, but I don't know that Riot can do anything about it while it's a F2P game since you're basically mixing people who have been banned (jerks) with people who are brand new to the game (who are sometimes also jerks, or at least jerks if other jerks start yelling at them)
But guess what? Got 5 friends? Congratulations, you now never, ever have to worry about following the meta if you don't want to. You never, ever have to get raged at. Okay just kidding your friends will all rage at you.
Teemo tends to do one of two things.
One, he can really punish an enemy laner for mistakes and very quickly make it unsafe to even stick around in lane and last hit. He also has poison and getting poisoned all the time sucks. In this case he turns into an ungankable, unstoppable tower-pushing force. His team doesn't get to see how strong he is because he usually doesn't want to teamfight, he wants to push turrets from the safety of his mushroom farm, but the enemy team knows because he's ruined their top laner's day and they can't gank him and keep losing turrets.
Two, doesn't do number one due to a bad Teemo or good opposing laner, and doesn't end up adding much to the game usually. It's possible to teamfight with Teemo, but he's just not good at it because it's not how he's designed.
Both of these outcomes leading to a lot of people hating Teemo but nobody liking him except the dude playing him. Plus he's irritatingly adorable and has that adorably irritating laugh to spam.
Someone having fun playing a video game? Scandalous.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
I do wonder how many people play(ed) Dota(not two) though. Couldn't find anything relevant to it in a quick google search but could have just used the wrong terms since 2 keeps coming up.
If History has taught us anything, its that people hate change to a meta that can change.
Besides, some top teams are now complain that its better to run dual bruiser's bot then with a support adc.
==================================
- Both are excellent, deep, fascinating strategy games. Both declare themselves to be 'eSports', whatever that is. I just play games, man.
- LoL costs nothing!
- Starcraft costs money.
- If you're a jerk in Starcraft, and you get banned, you're GONE. Bye bye jerk!
- If you're a jerk in LoL and get banned there's nothing stopping you from just making another account. And if you're like most jerks, you will come right back. Because who is the game to ban you?! It has no power over you. You'll probably come back even nastier than you were before.
In LoL, jerks stay in the system forever. The nice players are the ones who leave. And we go to Starcraft. (Well, some nice people probably get jobs or accomplish amazing things. But the rest of us go play Starcraft.)
I actually think LoL is a more interesting game than Starcraft. If the communities were the same, I'd switch back to LoL immediately and never look back. But the majority of the people in LoL are horrible, and always will be. Because the jerks stay there. Forever.
The Starcraft community is full of really friendly people, and so I hang out there instead. Your teammates laugh and joke with you, not at you. You can try daring and innovative strategies (it's encouraged! People actually like it!) You get friendly, good-natured advice -- even from your enemies! -- about how to play better. It's a whole different world.
I've only had one time in Starcraft when I was being bullied. I was screwing around, massing Dark Templar in a 3vAI game, and one of my teammates took offense to that. Dunno what the guy's problem was, but he started attacking me. But my other teammate, without me even ASKING, destroyed the jerk's base and all his units on my behalf. The two of us came back from it and we beat the 3 computers together, while the jerk watched from his lone remaining vespene gas extractor. Felt good man. Felt real good.
But in LoL, if one of your teammates points the finger at you, your whole team will gang up on you. Every losing team needs a scapegoat. The only surefire way to make sure it's not you, is to be the one who points the finger first. In LoL, the only winning move... is to be a complete dickwad.
Last hitting (and the multitude of strategies and nuances that surround it) are somewhat archaic, but it would make for very boring laning if there wasn't something to contest. Smite is just generally a clusterfuck, so they can get away with it, but I don't see how LoL or Dota would work if they copied its system. That's because of the structure of the games. It's much easier in Dota to hypercarry, so it doesn't matter as much what you pick, while in LoL there are only a handful of characters who become the destroyer of worlds after ricing for 45 minutes.
Again, though, I have to say that in my experience, I don't encounter that many bad people in League. It's pretty astonishingly rare from my perspective. Admittedly, today I did meet some people who were apparently being hostile to their teammate... but everybody on our side was supportive of the person who was getting screwed over and in general, things were civil (in allchat anyway, I dunno what their teamchat was like). In fact, the situation was basically the role identity problem from the comic today from the perspective of everybody else; two people picked characters almost exclusively played in certain roles, told their team they were playing them in roles they don't fit, were politely asked not to, and proceeded to do so anyway, screwing over their entire team for the sake of their own fun. I can't say for certain whether or not they actually had enough fun to justify it, but they certainly made three people on their team unhappy and the entirety of our team (politely) tell them that was kind of a dick move.
That statistic is EXACTLY what you would see if the banned people just got additional accounts. Riot has no way to track people, they can only track accounts.
That does not appear to be the common experience. (See, for example, a few Penny arcade strips on the topic...) What's your secret?
To the first, Lyte (a rioter) has posted about this a bit in the Tribunal threads when they pop up. He didn't specifically state that they look for people who keep reregging from the same IP, but I'd be surprised if they didn't. The reason they don't IP ban anymore is because it kept screwing over people with dynamic IPs and people on college campuses and stuff who use wifi or whatever.
The big one they said is they catch people using friends lists - if the person has the same friends list as a guy who was banned, they can pretty much assume it's the same guy.
To the second, basically hit 30 and win like 200+ games. Normal game matchmaking factors in raw win count as well as hidden ELO, and someone with 200+ wins is unlikely to be toxic very often. I don't play ranked, however, because while people usually don't do anything bannable they complain a lot more and give up easier.
Really? If people were making alternate accounts to circumvent bans, the statistic you are likely to see is that tribunal-temp bans or warnings result in the same account continuing to play without further incident? I don't think that makes sense. Even if your post was assuming that "no repeat bans" means they're simply not playing, that's no evidence they're circumventing the bans and staying in the community as a toxic influence.
Anyway, my secrets are threefold, semi-long post incoming:
First: you go into the game recognizing that other people are there to have fun as well. This one realization, a weird thought process resembling empathy, is enough to get rid of most of the reasons people would latch on to you for raging. You don't do things without adequately communicating to your team, you act polite, you don't instalock, etc. The minor sacrifice it takes to not try stupid shit in games where you aren't with a group of friends, and to not be the guy who argues with another player about a role, is more than enough to at the very least start everybody out in a pretty happy mood. Let people do what they want, don't do things that are at best high-risk strategies you really need to hash out in advance instead of playing conventionally, grab wards, and all around being a team player from picks onward makes everybody on your team happier even if they aren't necessarily team players.
Second: you have to communicate properly. Here is an example: "Ashe, don't autoattack creeps" is bad. It sounds like an order (which it is, and which aren't bad things if you're communicating well), it doesn't explain why she shouldn't do that, and it sounds like you're condemning her. "Ashe, you're doing well on creeps, but if you attack for only the last hit, we stay safer" is better! It doesn't guarantee the person will listen by any means, but it's much less confrontational and it explains you're reasoning. The front ended compliment, in any team game situation, really helps prevent suggestions/orders from turning into pointless bitchfests. "Sure, you'll do tons of damage if you buy Trinity Force, but you have a ton of Aspd and they're stacking health, so I'd go BotRK" is a lot better than saying "Trinity Force is bad now, get a BotRK." "You're doing well farming, but we could take a tower and open up space" is a lot better than "We need you with us." Etc, etc.
To follow up on that, you need to only give suggestions once (nagging doesn't help), and you only ever respond to somebody ignoring your suggestion if it's something that they can change later in the game to not repeat the mistake. If you suggest an item and they build a different one, let it go without comment. If you tell them that you saw five of them on the map, so back off, and they charge forward and die alone, maybe say something along the lines of "you're strong/doing well/we need you for fights, but you can't survive getting jumped, so play cautiously/watch the map." All of these things seem really minor and arbitrary, but it basically just boils down to communicating the way that most people want to be communicated with by strangers; praise, understanding of their thought process, without nagging, without being ordered around, and occasionally with a bit of reasoning for suggestions. And if teammates start to be shitheads, you don't argue with them at all, not even with the typical suggestion type thing; if you ignore their complaint it might be a one-off thing (and if you did make a mistake, even if it's phrased rudely, listening might not hurt), but if you respond with justifications it'll definitely become an argument.
Third: You've got to be kind of good at the game. I don't know if there's an upper limit to skill before shitheads start to creep back in, but I do know there is definitely a point, somewhere in the broad zone between being in about the top 40% to top 20% or so, where before that the lower you go the more likely you are to encounter shitheads (with, possibly, a zone at really low skill where there are few toxic people because, quite frankly, at that point learning the enter key exists and allows them to chat would be a shocking boost in skill because that puts them halfway to learning that they can cast spells). Yes, this sounds bad, like I'm sitting in some kind of "elite" club where it's the land of milk and honey because I got to be good at the game, but really it's just beating the Dunning Kruger effect; you have to get past the point where bad people think they know it all, and reach the point where they start to get good enough to realize that they, and other people can make mistakes.
So that's basically it. Communicate politely, play the game emphatically, and be skilled enough that you aren't playing with a volatile combination of unskilled people who think they know it all and other unskilled people who think they know it all clashing or blaming others.
We have a thing regarding vgchartz, in that they make shit up regularly. I see their stamp among other sites on your magnanimous infochart among the other sources, and because it doesn't say what piece of info belongs to who, something in your chart is a fucking lie with 95% certainty. At any rate, I don't care which game is better or bigger than another, but please ask yourself this.
Do you really think that "70 million accounts registered" means "70 million individual humanbeings"?
That infochart is disgusting by the way, especially with the "who plays" section. Who cares? The prestige that image assigns to the game is hysterical and also sad.
Also just a random humorous point (this isn't something I'm arguing to or against or with you on), the UK apparently doesn't like LoL on Facebook.
And if you don't care about which game is bigger, why post asking for a source in the first place?
EDIT: Also, calling it my chart is a bit needlessly hostile. It's a source, not something I made. It's the only format Riot has released data in, and I'm almost certain that if you truly are this concerned with the sources for what I've said, the same comments would have been made if I hyperlinked an article that just rehashed one of the points on the chart with the chart as the main image.
You didn't answer my question by the way about the 70 million number. I'm gonna ask you if you the same thing about the 12 million number too - is it accounts, or people?
He did posted it. But I've been seeing people starting to run that comp in ranked Queue now. I've seen people pull it off, but it can be countered if you have adc that can kite with a support (or other) that doesn't stack on him/her.
Well, what kind of image do you think would be more suitable for LoL then? I don't personally think that their trying to sell their game as prestigious rather than they simply be playful with a smattering of professional pride.
"You want numbers? We'll give you numbers yeah baaaby! Thanks again to all our fans still in college that are supporting our game in this tough economy."
That's my read into the infographic. And if I sound silly suggesting that people like numbers, MOBA players really like numbers and statistics. That's not something I will go into since I personally think the worshipping of numbers is stupid.
I believe that going by the language used in infographic along with a little bit of the registration process, "70 Million Summoner Names Registered" means that 70 million unique account names have been taken by the system. A Summoner is the persistent avatar of the player in LoL. As such, that 70 million number means 70 million unique account names, not necessarily unique players.
The 12 million number is for "Daily Active Players" which I believe means that of all those 70 million accounts, around 12 million of those accounts sign on at least once per day. Whether or not they play at least one game is not clear I'm afraid. Does "active" mean just that they just log on or that they also play a game? I dunno. Again, those 12 million accounts may or may not be unique players.
That's my guess based on how the infographic is phrased.
Riot didn't have to either.
They chose to.
And dear God I wish other companies followed their example.
Yeah, this is all I'm getting at really. It's good PR to use specific phrasing as to avoid lying but makes things sound better than they are. Every company is guilty of it eventually and I have no doubt some of that is going on here. Not a big ol' huge deal but it's a little odd when someone isn't entertaining the idea that maybe things are exaggerated.
And yeah I guess infographics are just meant to be silly like that. I've seen some that are actual interesting data, like Valve did some for Half-Life 2 episodes that tracked where players would die most often, areas where time was most / least spent, etc. Actual data pertaining to player habits and things you can draw design info from. But the infograph above is like... goddamn, have fun with the circlejerk.
By the way @milski when I was commenting on the infograph before I was commenting on it separate from talking with you directly. I know it's not yours.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Unlike many FPSes or other strategy games, one's enjoyment of the game is highly based on who one gets stuck with.
It's also unpleasant to be stuck with a person who constantly blames his teammates and rages for forty minutes.
To be entirely fair...
...actually, many other games did have to invent a community court system to punish overly abusive players.
And they didn't and those games are writhing cesspits.