See, among many of the issues that LoL has, mechanical or otherwise, in the realm of the social dilemmas that plague LoL (toxic community the best example), the playerbase makes excuses for a lot of the problems, and that's a major issue in itself. There's plenty of examples of that in this thread alone!
The_Onesin said:
I would say that Ignite + Flash is not the only used summoner spells. I mean every games have certain build orders. Like in Starcraft all the races have different build orders in playing the game. Summoner spells are very similar in the concept. What you choose as summoner spells determine how you will play the game as well.
This is a good example of LoL apologist behavior covering for a bad mechanic. Summoner Spells aren't at all similar to
Starcraft build orders, because all sides start with the same thing in SC, SC2, WC2, WC3, so on and so on. Maintaining your build on a schedule (make 3 Queens by x minutes, expand by y minutes) isn't GIVEN to you, you make it happen. Builds are a strategy, a skill, and a practice all in one. You don't "make" Flash happen, in LoL. The game gives it to you, and one other Summoner Spell, which you unlock via account leveling. Having 2 spells that are always there regardless of your ability creates the opposite effect of any build order, because they counteract the strategic element that games like LoL were born from. You don't get those spells by leveling your Champion and choosing to skip one level of another spell in exchange for Ignite. In HoN, a player who picks Scout with any brain cells will pick a level of his Wards before his other abilities, which will delay his own ability at the beginning of the game, but provide a vital scouting service for his entire team. The game didn't "give" the player that, he made a strategic choice, and his own skill- leveling despite being weaker early on, getting farm despite being a predictable melee hero that truesight will almost completely counter -will get him his skills. It's all a player's choice, because it follows the model that player skill determines ultimate success. Summoner Skills don't follow that model. They can't be compared to things that actually do.
aenemic said:
PlanHex said:
I've got some 50+ champs out of the 115 or whatever unlocked after 1½ years of playing semi-regularly and never spending money on the game. All except one is from the <3151 IP range. There's still a ton of runes I'd like to have too.
This shit is pretty absurd.
So? No one's saying you need to unlock all champions. I have friends who are Platinum and Diamond who never spent a cent on the game and don't have nearly all of the champions unlocked.
This is another great example. I know LoL isn't an ARTS game, but it was based on one. The idea that you can just withhold the total Champion Pool from any player, an absolutely vital resource for a player's overall strategy, is just absurd. Supporting the concept is just ignorance. "No one's saying you need all of the Champions" you say? What ridiculousness. Of course, the game gets by through promoting a model where player ability is muted next to other resources, thereby creating a strong Cash Store economy for Riot, but "getting by" does not make it a fantastic game. That's a sign of a problem, and not only does Riot choose to ignore the problem, but players apologize on behalf of the game's problems, because..... well I don't know why. The apologist mindset eludes me. Just like Summoner Spells, the game not allowing you to have all Champions available inhibits the overall strategy for players to have. Their curious answer is to not restrict Champion choice across teams (if one side picks Draven, the other side can pick Draven to "counter" him), but that doesn't really answer the vacancy of overall strategy, either. Picking Earthshaker in answer to Magnus is a strategic choice, because you can't just pick another Magnus. Picking Chipper in answer to picking Deadwood is a strategic choice, because you can't just pick another Deadwood. If half of the Hero Pool was just not available in HoN or DotA2 (and for beginners, a large chunk IS unavailable in HoN, but it unlocks automatically the more you play, and NOT through "buying" them) then those choices would just be withheld from you, and that inhibit strategy, which begs the question "Then what's the point of the game?" The encapsulated 30-60minute average game where you start with a low level character and grind them to higher level and work with a team to overcome another team and finish the game is central to the entire design of the game. You get from game start to win or lose by the culmination of your own abilities. You don't "unlock" some kind of advantage at the start of the game; skill is central to everything.
Don't make excuses for a flaw in the game you love. Own it and address it. We don't ignore the flaws in the engine that FONV runs off of, even if we love the game. We don't ignore the infestation of game-breaking glitches in FO2 just because we love FO2. I don't excuse the NIGHTMARE of imbalance issues that plagued DotA2 during the dark days of 6.77, even though I loved the game. Own the problems, don't pretend they don't exist. They don't get better by just ignoring them. We didn't get killap's work by pretending FO2 worked perfectly, and 6.78 didn't address the balance problems because fans just pretended DotA2 was perfectly balanced. Making excuses on behalf of the game you love will only perpetuate the state it's in, and that means maintaining a bad design as long as you don't accept that it's bad.
As a totally unrelated aside, a few days ago while watching one professional match of DotA2, the game was paused for such an extended period that the casters started looking up DotA2 jokes. They found a few gems like "Yo mama so fat, Tiny can't Toss her", but one of the best was: "A DotA player and a LoL player walk into a bar. The DotA player says, 'LoL sucks!' The LoL player could not deny." XD
