Teaching people how to actually play your game only increases the barrier of entry over the trial by fire training of live games.
What more do people even need when we already have custom games, bots, and the almighty dynamic training from live games for figuring out how to play? The formation of bad habits as long as you eventually manage to win games is a fairy tale, probably.
If Riot made proper training / learning tools available and people actually used them then matchmaking will stop doing its job of providing as even a match as possible and stuff my games full of players that trained hyperbolic-time-chamber style while the players that treat others negatively over it aren't going to be punished anymore.
The mere availability of an easy, effective, but probably less entertaining way to improve detracts from my gaming experience as it impacts my feeling of being relatively competitive instead of actually competitive. I'll feel forced to use them in order to play instead of doing exactly what I currently am doing while playing against people doing exactly the same thing.
Because I don't like, find interesting, or ever intend on using training tools then I think their development is a bad idea.
Nothing personal against you, I'm just using your post to try and wrap my head around why there even is a stance against training tools. I suppose I could understand the feeling of having less fun in a game because there are players that put in a ton of practice time in training tools in order to improve and hating them to the point where I don't even want to play the game anymore; I've been guilty of it in the past regarding the fighting game genre.
On the other hand I completely embraced practicing build orders and macro in Starcraft in order to climb the ladder. The difference, I believe, is that the training tools in fighters for learning how to play the game are absolute garbage while the tools in Starcraft are much more accessible.
I get you: I like the game the way it's right now. I've never played more, and enjoyed as diverse a cast of champions and fairly nontoxic opponents at my level as in the previous patch. I think Riot has struck a good balance. They shake things up just enough to interest and engage, so call me a boring conservative ;p
Oh, and @PrjctD_Captain: Sejuani is a fun jungler to fat around and be a controlling force with. Pick up Nautilus if you want to see a truly cc-heavy guy, tho! Still so fun, even if he does perhaps better in other roles right now
These are the stories of Dwarf Fortress. Legends have been forged there, and meticulousy gathered in one mighty hub: http://dfstories.com/start-here/
Volibear is super fun for fatting around the jungle and stacking hp makes his bite do massive damage plus his passive is super good!
Speaking of Voli JG, right now I'm trying to build him with AS reds, Scaling HP yellows, MR/Scaling BR blues and Armor Quints with 21/9 masteries. I've seen a variation of this on several probuilds, and it seems to make sense. AS to stack W, scaling HP for high damage bites esp with cinderhulk, Armor quints for tankiness and so on. Seem viable?
Hiryu02 on
Sev: Your gameplay is the most heavily yomi based around. Usually you look for characters that allow you to force guessing situations for big dmg. Even if the guess is mathematically nowhere near in your favor lol. You're happiest when you have either a 50/50, 33/33/33 or even a 75/25 situation to go crazy with. And you will take big risks to force those situations to come up.
I've read the idea that Fiora's ult should keep shifting vitals to the enemy's side facing fiora if they're running away
meaning that if you don't want Fiora to instantly destroy you, you have to stand and fight her
I kind of like that idea
Also her passive needs to be less terrible early game, I don't think I like the % health true damage, it's worthless against squishies and only good against tanks once you get a few hundred attack damage, flat true damage that goes up with AD like Yi would be better imo
cho really only works when there are other people on the team to help him land his casts and/or the enemy team is bad
he just has the dumbest kit
look you cast QE and now fat around like an idiot hoping someone low enough comes into melee
his laning is also one of the most boring fucking things to play against
jungle cho is more AS oriented and you max e first so you actually get to fat around auto attacking people while they go oh god why is cho doing so much damage with his autos
Hots have a training option, one lane with minions towers a hero you can hit on etc all a normal lane would have.
Now what does this let you do? Lets see I used it to be able to pull of nukers combos befor the first skillshot would hit And hey guess what, you can do that in league too, but if your combo has flash it's faster to restart the bot game over and over until you got it.
With a sandbox you can start up league, do 10 min dry training on combos/spaceing/spamming laugh/ and so on.
Would this hurt Q times? Hell no, think of how big the player base is, even at 04.00 in the morning on week days I don't have a normal or ranked Q that's over 01.30 min.
No new mod riot added has ever made an impact on normal Qs, urf? nope still 30 sec Qs.
And it won't ruin the matchmaker, a gold player will play versus golds and a bronze player will play against bronze, it will just maybe take a tiny bit more training to hit high rankes, and is that really negative?
If you play ONLY for fun and don't care about win/lose then maybe, but I doubt the people who only play normals for fun will bother to use time in a sandbox while they could play with friends for fun.
Take it like this, you as a fun only player get matched vs a ranked only dimond 3 player today. Will you lose to him? I would say yeah sure I'm not straight up gonna beat him. And a sandbox wouldn't change that.
The only thing a sandbox will do is let people who wanna get better get better. It won't change anything.
LilleDjevel on
Grass Grows,
Birds Fly,
'til there's Fire in the Sky...
I've read the idea that Fiora's ult should keep shifting vitals to the enemy's side facing fiora if they're running away
meaning that if you don't want Fiora to instantly destroy you, you have to stand and fight her
I kind of like that idea
Also her passive needs to be less terrible early game, I don't think I like the % health true damage, it's worthless against squishies and only good against tanks once you get a few hundred attack damage, flat true damage that goes up with AD like Yi would be better imo
It probably was designed with the high HP massive executing damage juggernaughts that are going to be running around. Parry a Darius or Garen ult and chunk down their HP pools, etc.
Great post, Hiryu. I have a lot of windows that are too short for a game but would be perfect to work on something in a sandbox, but as we all know creating custom games is replete with wasted time. I don't buy the "oh everyone will get so much better" argument, as those people would just go up in MMR anyway. With a playerbase this size they aren't going to run out of players at any given MMR.
As someone (else) who recently hit 30 and has three friends still not 30, running into people with nutso mechanics is not the issue. The biggest thing (which nearly made us abandon the game) is getting randomly stomped because grouping with each other throws matchmaking out the window. With <400 games ever I frequently face people with 800-1500 wins. Telling me to play more games to improve is silly goose talk because much of the playerbase literally has a 2-4 year head start. I can't spam thousands of games, sorry Riot, I'm lucky to get in 5-6 a week. If I could work in a sandbox with my 15-30 minutes here and there (which I have many more opportunities for than 75 minutes for a SR game), I'd be better able to improve as a player, and the times I can play a match would be better spent.
The matchmaking puts people of equivalent skill against each other. If they have 1500 wins and are playing against fresh thirties? Well they are either terrible at learning this game over a period of years or else they duo'ed with someone who isn't even 30 yet. That's how the matchmaking works. They could have 3k losses to their 1500 wins. They aren't Doublelift in disguise.
If you put in a dedicated training mode it will destroy any hope of a balanced matchmaker. Period. They can't quantify how the training time might raise or lower your skill. So you jump into normals much higher than you should be starting out, punch around a bunch of new people, and make the starting environment for new folks even worse due to skill disparities. Or they try to account for it, you didn't really improve much, and your MMR is artifically inflated and you get kicked around a bunch.
Have you guys considered the negative impact training modes have on Fighting Games?
Great post, Hiryu. I have a lot of windows that are too short for a game but would be perfect to work on something in a sandbox, but as we all know creating custom games is replete with wasted time. I don't buy the "oh everyone will get so much better" argument, as those people would just go up in MMR anyway. With a playerbase this size they aren't going to run out of players at any given MMR.
As someone (else) who recently hit 30 and has three friends still not 30, running into people with nutso mechanics is not the issue. The biggest thing (which nearly made us abandon the game) is getting randomly stomped because grouping with each other throws matchmaking out the window. With <400 games ever I frequently face people with 800-1500 wins. Telling me to play more games to improve is silly goose talk because much of the playerbase literally has a 2-4 year head start. I can't spam thousands of games, sorry Riot, I'm lucky to get in 5-6 a week. If I could work in a sandbox with my 15-30 minutes here and there (which I have many more opportunities for than 75 minutes for a SR game), I'd be better able to improve as a player, and the times I can play a match would be better spent.
Have you guys considered the negative impact training modes have on Fighting Games?
Are you fucking serious?
Also, what does matchmaking have to do with training mode? You are not training in matchmade games. That's one of the major points.
Hiryu02 on
Sev: Your gameplay is the most heavily yomi based around. Usually you look for characters that allow you to force guessing situations for big dmg. Even if the guess is mathematically nowhere near in your favor lol. You're happiest when you have either a 50/50, 33/33/33 or even a 75/25 situation to go crazy with. And you will take big risks to force those situations to come up.
Have you guys considered the negative impact training modes have on Fighting Games?
What negative impact do you think they've had? If you're suggesting they've increased the barrier to entry, I'd suggest Skullgirls as a counterpoint - it's frequently used as a good entry to fighting games precisely because its training and practice modes are so comprehensive and help explain a lot of basic mechanics that other games just expect you to figure out by yourself.
comparing the league of legends ranked ladder to chess
if you are absurdly good at chess because you are somehow a natural grandmaster-level talent, able to see dozens of moves ahead and choose the most successful move in a matter of seconds
or if you got there by playing hundreds of thousands of games, meticulously analyzing your results and developing those strategies through hard work dedication
or if you are a chess computer, calculating those same moves through brute force and the clever work of programmers, combined with decades of advancements in processor technology
you'd still come out to the same ELO as you played ranked games against worthy competition
Have you guys considered the negative impact training modes have on Fighting Games?
What negative impact do you think they've had? If you're suggesting they've increased the barrier to entry, I'd suggest Skullgirls as a counterpoint - it's frequently used as a good entry to fighting games precisely because its training and practice modes are so comprehensive and help explain a lot of basic mechanics that other games just expect you to figure out by yourself.
Fighting games have incredibly complex maneuvers that you need to practice repetitively in order to be able to pull off. Training modes have a purpose there. In fact they are necessary. I don't feel that's a good thing though. It leads to gameplay involving aforementioned maneuvers, juggling, and basically reducing the interactivity of the game as long as one person doesn't screw up their combo.
Great post, Hiryu. I have a lot of windows that are too short for a game but would be perfect to work on something in a sandbox, but as we all know creating custom games is replete with wasted time. I don't buy the "oh everyone will get so much better" argument, as those people would just go up in MMR anyway. With a playerbase this size they aren't going to run out of players at any given MMR.
As someone (else) who recently hit 30 and has three friends still not 30, running into people with nutso mechanics is not the issue. The biggest thing (which nearly made us abandon the game) is getting randomly stomped because grouping with each other throws matchmaking out the window. With <400 games ever I frequently face people with 800-1500 wins. Telling me to play more games to improve is silly goose talk because much of the playerbase literally has a 2-4 year head start. I can't spam thousands of games, sorry Riot, I'm lucky to get in 5-6 a week. If I could work in a sandbox with my 15-30 minutes here and there (which I have many more opportunities for than 75 minutes for a SR game), I'd be better able to improve as a player, and the times I can play a match would be better spent.
Have you guys considered the negative impact training modes have on Fighting Games?
Are you fucking serious?
Also, what does matchmaking have to do with training mode? You are not training in matchmade games. That's one of the major points.
Yes, I am.
A potential training mode would not assist you in learning some of the reflexive skills you'd need. Being able to evaluate a teamfight and know exactly what ability you need to flash out of or away from? No bot can help you with that.
It's a 5v5 game. The skills you need to learn are present in every game. Teamwork, communication, cooperation, Map awareness, positioning, learning how to deal with sub par teammates, learning to deal with godlike teammates. Multitasking is key as well.
Other big team game genres don't have training modes and they do fine. Would you expect a training mode for all your FPS needs? Why are they unnecessary there, but necessary here?
also that training mode will make matchmaking impossible because it'll turn people into mechanical gods or something but in a way that's not quantifiable in terms of games won ("If you put in a dedicated training mode it will destroy any hope of a balanced matchmaker. Period.")
Big team games do have training and sandbox modes though. You usually load maps with server cheats set so they provide you whatever weapons you need, unlimited health and ammo, etc., or load one of the many custom maps set up for practicing specific drills. You practice your mechanics so they are second nature and leave all the actual in game thinking devoted entirely to the larger decisions like group dynamics, keeping track of who should be where on the map, etc.
For example training in CS involves weapon accuracy and fire control, gunning down plenty of bots and resetting levels to minimize wasted time. TF2 is stuff like rocket jumping, reflecting rockets, using reflected rockets to perform your own rocket jumps, etc. Battlefield you load maps just so you can practice operating vehicles. That's not something you should attempt to learn in live matches. There are custom maps for all sorts of drills to practice.
That's all the point. You learn how to deal with players by interacting with players. What players are doing elsewhere, map presence, etc. that higher level stuff is what you should really be thinking about during a game. You polish up your moment to moment game mechanics like last hitting, landing skills, and what you feel is lacking on your own time and that way you don't get distracted from the bigger picture.
You definitely can have a training mode that can teach you the reflexes you need. You can create challenges based on real world gaming moments. Stuff like contesting an objective, following up initiation, peeling for a character, cleaning up a fight as an assassin, doing as much champion damage as possible as an ADC during a teamfight, etc. Little events that you can restart to a specific state and practice so you don't even have to think about them when they actually occur in a live match.
Talith on
+3
Orphanerivers of redthat run to seaRegistered Userregular
that's dumb tho because there are already ways to practice in league and you don't see Riot taking away bot and custom matches
how would a mode that, if anything, speeds up how fast people get proficient at league sap more people out of queue than the current existing practice modes already do
If the current practice modes are sufficient, why do you want a sandbox mode? If they're not, presumably a sandbox mode is going to take away more people for it than those who already play customs and bot games.
where in my post did i state that the current practice modes were in my opinion sufficient
all i said was that there are already extant practice modes and people who want to practice their skills use them
and i still don't know why you are repeating the argument that a sandbox mode is going to take more people out of queue without giving any actual justification for it
Have you guys considered the negative impact training modes have on Fighting Games?
What negative impact do you think they've had? If you're suggesting they've increased the barrier to entry, I'd suggest Skullgirls as a counterpoint - it's frequently used as a good entry to fighting games precisely because its training and practice modes are so comprehensive and help explain a lot of basic mechanics that other games just expect you to figure out by yourself.
Fighting games have incredibly complex maneuvers that you need to practice repetitively in order to be able to pull off. Training modes have a purpose there. In fact they are necessary. I don't feel that's a good thing though. It leads to gameplay involving aforementioned maneuvers, juggling, and basically reducing the interactivity of the game as long as one person doesn't screw up their combo.
I think you have the causation backwards here. The prevalence of training modes didn't lead to the fighting genre becoming increasingly complex. The fighting game genre becoming increasingly complex led to training modes becoming standard.
None of the original versions of Street Fighter 2 had a training mode, for instance, yet still contained some fairly complicated mechanics.
Have you guys considered the negative impact training modes have on Fighting Games?
What negative impact do you think they've had? If you're suggesting they've increased the barrier to entry, I'd suggest Skullgirls as a counterpoint - it's frequently used as a good entry to fighting games precisely because its training and practice modes are so comprehensive and help explain a lot of basic mechanics that other games just expect you to figure out by yourself.
Fighting games have incredibly complex maneuvers that you need to practice repetitively in order to be able to pull off. Training modes have a purpose there. In fact they are necessary. I don't feel that's a good thing though. It leads to gameplay involving aforementioned maneuvers, juggling, and basically reducing the interactivity of the game as long as one person doesn't screw up their combo.
Great post, Hiryu. I have a lot of windows that are too short for a game but would be perfect to work on something in a sandbox, but as we all know creating custom games is replete with wasted time. I don't buy the "oh everyone will get so much better" argument, as those people would just go up in MMR anyway. With a playerbase this size they aren't going to run out of players at any given MMR.
As someone (else) who recently hit 30 and has three friends still not 30, running into people with nutso mechanics is not the issue. The biggest thing (which nearly made us abandon the game) is getting randomly stomped because grouping with each other throws matchmaking out the window. With <400 games ever I frequently face people with 800-1500 wins. Telling me to play more games to improve is silly goose talk because much of the playerbase literally has a 2-4 year head start. I can't spam thousands of games, sorry Riot, I'm lucky to get in 5-6 a week. If I could work in a sandbox with my 15-30 minutes here and there (which I have many more opportunities for than 75 minutes for a SR game), I'd be better able to improve as a player, and the times I can play a match would be better spent.
Have you guys considered the negative impact training modes have on Fighting Games?
Are you fucking serious?
Also, what does matchmaking have to do with training mode? You are not training in matchmade games. That's one of the major points.
Yes, I am.
A potential training mode would not assist you in learning some of the reflexive skills you'd need. Being able to evaluate a teamfight and know exactly what ability you need to flash out of or away from? No bot can help you with that.
It's a 5v5 game. The skills you need to learn are present in every game. Teamwork, communication, cooperation, Map awareness, positioning, learning how to deal with sub par teammates, learning to deal with godlike teammates. Multitasking is key as well.
Other big team game genres don't have training modes and they do fine. Would you expect a training mode for all your FPS needs? Why are they unnecessary there, but necessary here?
Do you even understand what "negative impact" means? Who says training is just playing with bots all day long? Have you heard about the negative impact on vaccinating kids?
Your arguments about training mode being "bad" for fighting games are bullshit. You sound like some guy saying a fighting game is bad because combos are long and reduce "interactivity". Do you argue vs throws also in fighting games? Your reasoning is laughable. If an FG is bad, it's bad because of design choices and engine elements, not because of a training mode. Fucking ridiculous.
Sev: Your gameplay is the most heavily yomi based around. Usually you look for characters that allow you to force guessing situations for big dmg. Even if the guess is mathematically nowhere near in your favor lol. You're happiest when you have either a 50/50, 33/33/33 or even a 75/25 situation to go crazy with. And you will take big risks to force those situations to come up.
Big team games do have training and sandbox modes though. You usually load maps with server cheats set so they provide you whatever weapons you need, unlimited health and ammo, etc., or load one of the many custom maps set up for practicing specific drills. You practice your mechanics so they are second nature and leave all the actual in game thinking devoted entirely to the larger decisions like group dynamics, keeping track of who should be where on the map, etc.
For example training in CS involves weapon accuracy and fire control, gunning down plenty of bots and resetting levels to minimize wasted time. TF2 is stuff like rocket jumping, reflecting rockets, using reflected rockets to perform your own rocket jumps, etc. Battlefield you load maps just so you can practice operating vehicles. That's not something you should attempt to learn in live matches. There are custom maps for all sorts of drills to practice.
That's all the point. You learn how to deal with players by interacting with players. What players are doing elsewhere, map presence, etc. that higher level stuff is what you should really be thinking about during a game. You polish up your moment to moment game mechanics like last hitting, landing skills, and what you feel is lacking on your own time and that way you don't get distracted from the bigger picture.
You definitely can have a training mode that can teach you the reflexes you need. You can create challenges based on real world gaming moments. Stuff like contesting an objective, following up initiation, peeling for a character, cleaning up a fight as an assassin, doing as much champion damage as possible as an ADC during a teamfight, etc. Little events that you can restart to a specific state and practice so you don't even have to think about them when they actually occur in a live match.
Back when played Esl Mw2 we did this type of stuff A LOT (1 steam acc with all the needed cheats hosted the server and rest played) just to get all the hiding spots and angles of maps to be perfect at all times.
We used a week to find every single angle that would let you snipe true buildings to hit planted bombs in search and destroy on like 2 maps.
But really people who wanna get better and use a sanbox will use it and get better, just like today. The sandbox will just make it easier.
Grass Grows,
Birds Fly,
'til there's Fire in the Sky...
You definitely can have a training mode that can teach you the reflexes you need. You can create challenges based on real world gaming moments. Stuff like contesting an objective, following up initiation, peeling for a character, cleaning up a fight as an assassin, doing as much champion damage as possible as an ADC during a teamfight, etc. Little events that you can restart to a specific state and practice so you don't even have to think about them when they actually occur in a live match.
Look at their current bots. How much of a gap is there between this point you dream of and their current tech? And given their tech limitations, how long do you think it would take them to get this to work? The bots alone are a huge challenge for them to get done well simply because of the abstract thinking necessary to play this game.
Have you guys considered the negative impact training modes have on Fighting Games?
What negative impact do you think they've had? If you're suggesting they've increased the barrier to entry, I'd suggest Skullgirls as a counterpoint - it's frequently used as a good entry to fighting games precisely because its training and practice modes are so comprehensive and help explain a lot of basic mechanics that other games just expect you to figure out by yourself.
Fighting games have incredibly complex maneuvers that you need to practice repetitively in order to be able to pull off. Training modes have a purpose there. In fact they are necessary. I don't feel that's a good thing though. It leads to gameplay involving aforementioned maneuvers, juggling, and basically reducing the interactivity of the game as long as one person doesn't screw up their combo.
I think you have the causation backwards here. The prevalence of training modes didn't lead to the fighting genre becoming increasingly complex. The fighting game genre becoming increasingly complex led to training modes becoming standard.
None of the original versions of Street Fighter 2 had a training mode, for instance, yet still contained some fairly complicated mechanics.
My original post lacked clarity. Had to sleep a bit. The training modes were borne out of necessity for those games yes, but I don't think this game has the same mechanics that necessitate a training mode, nor do I believe the mechanics in the games that need them are terribly worthwhile in this genre.
where in my post did i state that the current practice modes were in my opinion sufficient
all i said was that there are already extant practice modes and people who want to practice their skills use them
and i still don't know why you are repeating the argument that a sandbox mode is going to take more people out of queue without giving any actual justification for it
Because if people who don't currently use extant "practice modes" want a sandbox mode that's going to shift where they spend their time. If they're content with what we already have, it's not that big a deal (which is why I provided that additional premise in my comment).
I understand even less why you think people can magically be in practice modes and queue at the same time.
Me elsewhere:
Steam, various fora: Ivellius
League of Legends: Doctor Ivellius
Twitch, probably another place or two I forget: LPIvellius
0
Orphanerivers of redthat run to seaRegistered Userregular
people who aren't already invested in practicing to get better would not be using sandbox mode for any sustained period of time
the entire point of people asking for sandbox mode is that people aren't content with the current practice modes
the current practice modes take up more time in a LoL player's day (for sitting in queue) than a sandbox mode would because if you're practicing flash, you're waiting on flash for 5 minutes. if you're practicing combos that involve your ult, you're waiting anywhere 30 seconds to 2 minutes+. Hell, sometimes you are waiting on respawn timers for victims if you are testing builds/combos. If you could reset cooldown/death/jungle/summoner spell timers you could skip a lot of waiting. This would mean people practice more efficiently, which would mean they have more time to spend in queue, not less.
comparing the league of legends ranked ladder to chess
if you are absurdly good at chess because you are somehow a natural grandmaster-level talent, able to see dozens of moves ahead and choose the most successful move in a matter of seconds
or if you got there by playing hundreds of thousands of games, meticulously analyzing your results and developing those strategies through hard work dedication
or if you are a chess computer, calculating those same moves through brute force and the clever work of programmers, combined with decades of advancements in processor technology
you'd still come out to the same ELO as you played ranked games against worthy competition
Its important to note that if you want to play chess very seriously you will
A) "study the book". Which is to say examine and practice openings specifically so that you know their advantages and disadvantages while attempting to get an idea of when to abandon them
Practice chess puzzles in general because they allow you to get to the meat of the middle of the game without the burden of a competent opponent
C) Practice endings for the same reasons.
And you will do A/B/C depending on how good you are in those aspects.
Fighting games have incredibly complex maneuvers that you need to practice repetitively in order to be able to pull off. Training modes have a purpose there. In fact they are necessary. I don't feel that's a good thing though. It leads to gameplay involving aforementioned maneuvers, juggling, and basically reducing the interactivity of the game as long as one person doesn't screw up their combo.
Not really. The biggest aspect of fighting games that training is good for is "footsy", and/or "good positioning". In normal matches you can't really learn good positioning because you don't know ranges and structure and not knowing that you will get clubbed before you figure it out.
Knowing combinations is secondary to this, and is akin to the various mechanical aspects of league like last hitting. There are plenty of "combos" in league which are similarly complicated to fighting games. (E.G. Ryze, Q,move, auto, W, move, auto, Q, move auto, E, move, auto, Q, move auto) and even potentially more complicated because the move and auto commands go to different positions every time. (where as a combo in SF is the same every time once you start it)
Honestly, they should just nick the training mode from HotS. It's pretty great.
People who want to get good will always find ways to practice. In LoL, a part of that is to grind out tons and tons and tons of games with a given champ to really get the hang of it. If they were to implement somewhere I could practice mechanical combos in peace and quiet, that would be nice. Because if I decide I want to learn how to Flash>Q with Vi, I WILL learn that. It's only a matter of time and convenience. Without a practice mode, it might take me a hundred games, spread of a couple of months (I'm bad at learning fiddly mechanics) but eventually I'll get it down. Or I can boot up the convenient training mode, spend 10-15 minutes a day or so for less than a week and get it down. Without having to jeopardize my PvP games by trying to pull off some shit I'm no good at.
Or I can choose to not bother with the training mode, because pulling off Flash>Q combos aren't very important to me and I'll just randomly try at the maneuver in games and eventually get it down that way.
As for the whole thing about the matchmaker not being able to account for training, sorry, but that's some grade A goosery right there. It will. It's precisely what it does. If your improved mechanical skills reflect in more punched nexuses you'll be moved up against more difficult opponents. On the other hand, if they don't you'll stay where you are. Might win lane more often, but without the nexus-punching skills to follow up on that, your mmr will stay roughly the same.
Ping is going to be NY level for bad last milers in Seattle it looks like. ~45 is a lot Well there goes my 12 ping.
edit: I am kind of surprised, there should be a Seattle to Chicago direct link. And I am wondering why then Pac NW pings would even increase since the distance from Seattle to LA is about the same as the distance to chicago.
edit: Wait the servers were in Portland? Good lord why? LA has way way way more throughput and you're right next to them. No fucking wonder NYC was complaining. Portland is tiny and has no direct links anywhere except the coast. East Coasters would go to LA before going to Portland.
45 is lot?!?!?!?!?
Check your lan privilege bro
45 is the highest ping increase expected and nearly as large as the largest ping increase expected. So yea it is indeed a lot. My ping is quadrupling. As I said, not a big deal since its a reasonable ping but it's still a big increase.
45 is a god send man.
a fucking god send.
I would kill to have 45 ping. It is not a lot a promise you. Come play with 120-140 ping and see how it feels.
Ping is going to be NY level for bad last milers in Seattle it looks like. ~45 is a lot Well there goes my 12 ping.
edit: I am kind of surprised, there should be a Seattle to Chicago direct link. And I am wondering why then Pac NW pings would even increase since the distance from Seattle to LA is about the same as the distance to chicago.
edit: Wait the servers were in Portland? Good lord why? LA has way way way more throughput and you're right next to them. No fucking wonder NYC was complaining. Portland is tiny and has no direct links anywhere except the coast. East Coasters would go to LA before going to Portland.
45 is lot?!?!?!?!?
Check your lan privilege bro
45 is the highest ping increase expected and nearly as large as the largest ping increase expected. So yea it is indeed a lot. My ping is quadrupling. As I said, not a big deal since its a reasonable ping but it's still a big increase.
45 is a god send man.
a fucking god send.
I would kill to have 45 ping. It is not a lot a promise you. Come play with 120-140 ping and see how it feels.
Many people in the North West will be. Which is what I was referring to. I never said i would have a particularly hard time. Indeed. I even said "its not a big deal". Its just a big increase. As I assume a 50 ping decrease for you would be similarly large.
edit: So what will your ping be now Roz. Did you ping the server?
I'm not really all that tuned into the EU scene besides knowing Fnatic is ludicrously strong this split, but my NA playoff predictions are TSM at first, Team Liquid taking the runner up spot, and Gravity getting third place. I just can't help but assume the CLG collapse will happen as usual, and GV is just a really fun team in bo5s.
For Worlds attendance it'd be TSM (won summer) and Team Liquid on Championship points... regional qualifier, I think CLG makes it. Cloud 9 would be in the running for the qualifier, but I see no reason to assume they improve that much in such a short period of time. Gravity's bo5 trickery won't hold up long enough, and Impulse just doesn't convince me.
Ping is going to be NY level for bad last milers in Seattle it looks like. ~45 is a lot Well there goes my 12 ping.
edit: I am kind of surprised, there should be a Seattle to Chicago direct link. And I am wondering why then Pac NW pings would even increase since the distance from Seattle to LA is about the same as the distance to chicago.
edit: Wait the servers were in Portland? Good lord why? LA has way way way more throughput and you're right next to them. No fucking wonder NYC was complaining. Portland is tiny and has no direct links anywhere except the coast. East Coasters would go to LA before going to Portland.
45 is lot?!?!?!?!?
Check your lan privilege bro
45 is the highest ping increase expected and nearly as large as the largest ping increase expected. So yea it is indeed a lot. My ping is quadrupling. As I said, not a big deal since its a reasonable ping but it's still a big increase.
45 is a god send man.
a fucking god send.
I would kill to have 45 ping. It is not a lot a promise you. Come play with 120-140 ping and see how it feels.
Many people in the North West will be. Which is what I was referring to. I never said i would have a particularly hard time. Indeed. I even said "its not a big deal". Its just a big increase. As I assume a 50 ping decrease for you would be similarly large.
edit: So what will your ping be now Roz. Did you ping the server?
I haven't yet. But if I get under a 100 ping so that I don't lose animation frames about once every 30 seconds I weep like a child who just won a trip to disneyland.
If they can get the majority of NA under 70 ping (not including users with awful last-mile issues), that's a totally fair trade for my ping jumping from 20 to 50.
Posts
I get you: I like the game the way it's right now. I've never played more, and enjoyed as diverse a cast of champions and fairly nontoxic opponents at my level as in the previous patch. I think Riot has struck a good balance. They shake things up just enough to interest and engage, so call me a boring conservative ;p
Oh, and @PrjctD_Captain: Sejuani is a fun jungler to fat around and be a controlling force with. Pick up Nautilus if you want to see a truly cc-heavy guy, tho! Still so fun, even if he does perhaps better in other roles right now
Speaking of Voli JG, right now I'm trying to build him with AS reds, Scaling HP yellows, MR/Scaling BR blues and Armor Quints with 21/9 masteries. I've seen a variation of this on several probuilds, and it seems to make sense. AS to stack W, scaling HP for high damage bites esp with cinderhulk, Armor quints for tankiness and so on. Seem viable?
Been a long time coming, but still a shame to see it happen.
meaning that if you don't want Fiora to instantly destroy you, you have to stand and fight her
I kind of like that idea
Also her passive needs to be less terrible early game, I don't think I like the % health true damage, it's worthless against squishies and only good against tanks once you get a few hundred attack damage, flat true damage that goes up with AD like Yi would be better imo
jungle cho is more AS oriented and you max e first so you actually get to fat around auto attacking people while they go oh god why is cho doing so much damage with his autos
Hots have a training option, one lane with minions towers a hero you can hit on etc all a normal lane would have.
Now what does this let you do? Lets see I used it to be able to pull of nukers combos befor the first skillshot would hit And hey guess what, you can do that in league too, but if your combo has flash it's faster to restart the bot game over and over until you got it.
With a sandbox you can start up league, do 10 min dry training on combos/spaceing/spamming laugh/ and so on.
Would this hurt Q times? Hell no, think of how big the player base is, even at 04.00 in the morning on week days I don't have a normal or ranked Q that's over 01.30 min.
No new mod riot added has ever made an impact on normal Qs, urf? nope still 30 sec Qs.
And it won't ruin the matchmaker, a gold player will play versus golds and a bronze player will play against bronze, it will just maybe take a tiny bit more training to hit high rankes, and is that really negative?
If you play ONLY for fun and don't care about win/lose then maybe, but I doubt the people who only play normals for fun will bother to use time in a sandbox while they could play with friends for fun.
Take it like this, you as a fun only player get matched vs a ranked only dimond 3 player today. Will you lose to him? I would say yeah sure I'm not straight up gonna beat him. And a sandbox wouldn't change that.
The only thing a sandbox will do is let people who wanna get better get better. It won't change anything.
Birds Fly,
'til there's Fire in the Sky...
It probably was designed with the high HP massive executing damage juggernaughts that are going to be running around. Parry a Darius or Garen ult and chunk down their HP pools, etc.
The matchmaking puts people of equivalent skill against each other. If they have 1500 wins and are playing against fresh thirties? Well they are either terrible at learning this game over a period of years or else they duo'ed with someone who isn't even 30 yet. That's how the matchmaking works. They could have 3k losses to their 1500 wins. They aren't Doublelift in disguise.
If you put in a dedicated training mode it will destroy any hope of a balanced matchmaker. Period. They can't quantify how the training time might raise or lower your skill. So you jump into normals much higher than you should be starting out, punch around a bunch of new people, and make the starting environment for new folks even worse due to skill disparities. Or they try to account for it, you didn't really improve much, and your MMR is artifically inflated and you get kicked around a bunch.
Have you guys considered the negative impact training modes have on Fighting Games?
the matchmaker can account for skill, not number of hours spent in practice mode
it makes matches
based on how good you are at punching nexuses
if you spend 300 hours practicing wall flashes and last hitting but have no game sense and can't play with your team
you will be bad at punching nexuses, and the game will correctly matchmake you against other players who are also bad at punching nexuses
Are you fucking serious?
Also, what does matchmaking have to do with training mode? You are not training in matchmade games. That's one of the major points.
What negative impact do you think they've had? If you're suggesting they've increased the barrier to entry, I'd suggest Skullgirls as a counterpoint - it's frequently used as a good entry to fighting games precisely because its training and practice modes are so comprehensive and help explain a lot of basic mechanics that other games just expect you to figure out by yourself.
if you are absurdly good at chess because you are somehow a natural grandmaster-level talent, able to see dozens of moves ahead and choose the most successful move in a matter of seconds
or if you got there by playing hundreds of thousands of games, meticulously analyzing your results and developing those strategies through hard work dedication
or if you are a chess computer, calculating those same moves through brute force and the clever work of programmers, combined with decades of advancements in processor technology
you'd still come out to the same ELO as you played ranked games against worthy competition
Yeah but I don't really like co-op vs. AI games
Don't you mean co-op with AI?
I think you meant to type this
Steam, various fora: Ivellius
League of Legends: Doctor Ivellius
Twitch, probably another place or two I forget: LPIvellius
They are mindless, greedy, have no understanding of items, and are just going to do their own thing.
Really prepares you for solo queue.
Fighting games have incredibly complex maneuvers that you need to practice repetitively in order to be able to pull off. Training modes have a purpose there. In fact they are necessary. I don't feel that's a good thing though. It leads to gameplay involving aforementioned maneuvers, juggling, and basically reducing the interactivity of the game as long as one person doesn't screw up their combo.
Yes, I am.
A potential training mode would not assist you in learning some of the reflexive skills you'd need. Being able to evaluate a teamfight and know exactly what ability you need to flash out of or away from? No bot can help you with that.
It's a 5v5 game. The skills you need to learn are present in every game. Teamwork, communication, cooperation, Map awareness, positioning, learning how to deal with sub par teammates, learning to deal with godlike teammates. Multitasking is key as well.
Other big team game genres don't have training modes and they do fine. Would you expect a training mode for all your FPS needs? Why are they unnecessary there, but necessary here?
training mode can't teach you how to win
also that training mode will make matchmaking impossible because it'll turn people into mechanical gods or something but in a way that's not quantifiable in terms of games won ("If you put in a dedicated training mode it will destroy any hope of a balanced matchmaker. Period.")
which is it
LoL: BunyipAristocrat
For example training in CS involves weapon accuracy and fire control, gunning down plenty of bots and resetting levels to minimize wasted time. TF2 is stuff like rocket jumping, reflecting rockets, using reflected rockets to perform your own rocket jumps, etc. Battlefield you load maps just so you can practice operating vehicles. That's not something you should attempt to learn in live matches. There are custom maps for all sorts of drills to practice.
That's all the point. You learn how to deal with players by interacting with players. What players are doing elsewhere, map presence, etc. that higher level stuff is what you should really be thinking about during a game. You polish up your moment to moment game mechanics like last hitting, landing skills, and what you feel is lacking on your own time and that way you don't get distracted from the bigger picture.
You definitely can have a training mode that can teach you the reflexes you need. You can create challenges based on real world gaming moments. Stuff like contesting an objective, following up initiation, peeling for a character, cleaning up a fight as an assassin, doing as much champion damage as possible as an ADC during a teamfight, etc. Little events that you can restart to a specific state and practice so you don't even have to think about them when they actually occur in a live match.
where in my post did i state that the current practice modes were in my opinion sufficient
all i said was that there are already extant practice modes and people who want to practice their skills use them
and i still don't know why you are repeating the argument that a sandbox mode is going to take more people out of queue without giving any actual justification for it
I think you have the causation backwards here. The prevalence of training modes didn't lead to the fighting genre becoming increasingly complex. The fighting game genre becoming increasingly complex led to training modes becoming standard.
None of the original versions of Street Fighter 2 had a training mode, for instance, yet still contained some fairly complicated mechanics.
Do you even understand what "negative impact" means? Who says training is just playing with bots all day long? Have you heard about the negative impact on vaccinating kids?
Your arguments about training mode being "bad" for fighting games are bullshit. You sound like some guy saying a fighting game is bad because combos are long and reduce "interactivity". Do you argue vs throws also in fighting games? Your reasoning is laughable. If an FG is bad, it's bad because of design choices and engine elements, not because of a training mode. Fucking ridiculous.
Back when played Esl Mw2 we did this type of stuff A LOT (1 steam acc with all the needed cheats hosted the server and rest played) just to get all the hiding spots and angles of maps to be perfect at all times.
We used a week to find every single angle that would let you snipe true buildings to hit planted bombs in search and destroy on like 2 maps.
But really people who wanna get better and use a sanbox will use it and get better, just like today. The sandbox will just make it easier.
Birds Fly,
'til there's Fire in the Sky...
Look at their current bots. How much of a gap is there between this point you dream of and their current tech? And given their tech limitations, how long do you think it would take them to get this to work? The bots alone are a huge challenge for them to get done well simply because of the abstract thinking necessary to play this game.
My original post lacked clarity. Had to sleep a bit. The training modes were borne out of necessity for those games yes, but I don't think this game has the same mechanics that necessitate a training mode, nor do I believe the mechanics in the games that need them are terribly worthwhile in this genre.
Because if people who don't currently use extant "practice modes" want a sandbox mode that's going to shift where they spend their time. If they're content with what we already have, it's not that big a deal (which is why I provided that additional premise in my comment).
I understand even less why you think people can magically be in practice modes and queue at the same time.
Steam, various fora: Ivellius
League of Legends: Doctor Ivellius
Twitch, probably another place or two I forget: LPIvellius
the entire point of people asking for sandbox mode is that people aren't content with the current practice modes
the current practice modes take up more time in a LoL player's day (for sitting in queue) than a sandbox mode would because if you're practicing flash, you're waiting on flash for 5 minutes. if you're practicing combos that involve your ult, you're waiting anywhere 30 seconds to 2 minutes+. Hell, sometimes you are waiting on respawn timers for victims if you are testing builds/combos. If you could reset cooldown/death/jungle/summoner spell timers you could skip a lot of waiting. This would mean people practice more efficiently, which would mean they have more time to spend in queue, not less.
are you really doing this
check your silly goose, dude
Its important to note that if you want to play chess very seriously you will
A) "study the book". Which is to say examine and practice openings specifically so that you know their advantages and disadvantages while attempting to get an idea of when to abandon them
C) Practice endings for the same reasons.
And you will do A/B/C depending on how good you are in those aspects.
Not really. The biggest aspect of fighting games that training is good for is "footsy", and/or "good positioning". In normal matches you can't really learn good positioning because you don't know ranges and structure and not knowing that you will get clubbed before you figure it out.
Knowing combinations is secondary to this, and is akin to the various mechanical aspects of league like last hitting. There are plenty of "combos" in league which are similarly complicated to fighting games. (E.G. Ryze, Q,move, auto, W, move, auto, Q, move auto, E, move, auto, Q, move auto) and even potentially more complicated because the move and auto commands go to different positions every time. (where as a combo in SF is the same every time once you start it)
People who want to get good will always find ways to practice. In LoL, a part of that is to grind out tons and tons and tons of games with a given champ to really get the hang of it. If they were to implement somewhere I could practice mechanical combos in peace and quiet, that would be nice. Because if I decide I want to learn how to Flash>Q with Vi, I WILL learn that. It's only a matter of time and convenience. Without a practice mode, it might take me a hundred games, spread of a couple of months (I'm bad at learning fiddly mechanics) but eventually I'll get it down. Or I can boot up the convenient training mode, spend 10-15 minutes a day or so for less than a week and get it down. Without having to jeopardize my PvP games by trying to pull off some shit I'm no good at.
Or I can choose to not bother with the training mode, because pulling off Flash>Q combos aren't very important to me and I'll just randomly try at the maneuver in games and eventually get it down that way.
As for the whole thing about the matchmaker not being able to account for training, sorry, but that's some grade A goosery right there. It will. It's precisely what it does. If your improved mechanical skills reflect in more punched nexuses you'll be moved up against more difficult opponents. On the other hand, if they don't you'll stay where you are. Might win lane more often, but without the nexus-punching skills to follow up on that, your mmr will stay roughly the same.
45 is a god send man.
a fucking god send.
I would kill to have 45 ping. It is not a lot a promise you. Come play with 120-140 ping and see how it feels.
Impulse and UoL are both worth watching though, I'm more excited for these playoffs than I have in a few seasons.
LoL: BunyipAristocrat
Many people in the North West will be. Which is what I was referring to. I never said i would have a particularly hard time. Indeed. I even said "its not a big deal". Its just a big increase. As I assume a 50 ping decrease for you would be similarly large.
edit: So what will your ping be now Roz. Did you ping the server?
For Worlds attendance it'd be TSM (won summer) and Team Liquid on Championship points... regional qualifier, I think CLG makes it. Cloud 9 would be in the running for the qualifier, but I see no reason to assume they improve that much in such a short period of time. Gravity's bo5 trickery won't hold up long enough, and Impulse just doesn't convince me.
I haven't yet. But if I get under a 100 ping so that I don't lose animation frames about once every 30 seconds I weep like a child who just won a trip to disneyland.