As a new player in late season 10, that first year of playing league was so stressful. Everything from learning the game fundamentals, to having to deal with the season 11 item reworks right after learning the season 10 item system. I literally lost nearly every single ranked game I played in season 10 and barely got out of bronze in season 11. I almost broke my desk a few times slamming my fist in frustration for losing game after game. It wasn't until I got coaching, watched tons of League educational videos, studied high ELO players, and learned how to review my games that I stopped being stressed about the game and tilting. I just played the best I could and enjoyed the game win or lose and my rank skyrocketed from silver to low masters in 2 years. One of my friends who started at the same time is still has never gotten out of bronze 2 after 4 years because he never took the time and effort to improve like I did. He still cannot play ranked without flaming everyone because he is unable to cope with getting blamed for his poor jungling skills. Players like this rarely ever want coaching because it means they'd have to acknowledge that they don't know what they are doing after playing for years. All constructive criticism is met with "Well I'm just a casual player, I don't actually care about winning," despite going into a rage ever time something goes wrong. There's this underlying belief that "I couldn't possibly still be a bronze player. I've played League for years, and all my friends are in diamond and masters without me. It must be the ranked system is biased against me and wants me to lose." Then they go and complain on Reddit and make up conspiracy theories about losers queue to justify their lack of growth. From someone who just put in the time and work, and saw success. It's easy to see how little effort most people actually put into climbing but still expect the same growth. People in diamond+ are taking the game much more seriously than they were 10-15 years ago so it takes a lot more work than it used to to stay competitive at those ranks.
I've been playing on and off for 11 years and every time I come back the game feels exponentially harder. Not just because I have to re-train muscle memory, but because people are so good at learning and improving that players have just gotten that much better
Exactly! Your post was long but worth the read. I especially feel the part about your friend in low elo coping and making up conspiracy theories on Reddit. To climb, you must improve. And to improve, you must first accept your level of play for what it is.
bullshit , as new player my first rank was gold , next season it was diamond some people are gifted others are not , for example I suck at fps games I would be Iron in Valorant
@@BaronBunny-p3x And there are people who have gotten challenger their first ranked season. Exceptions don't define a rule, and gaming background makes a big difference between how good players are when playing a new game.
I think a big problem in all of this is, that for the competetive players, the "just for fun" players negatively impact their games, but the other way around this is not the case. I think that is why the casual players don't have a problem with this.
Yeah, and I could easily argue that playing only for the sake of winning without having any care for the fun is a way more negative thing for the game as a whole.
No, that is not the case. What you don't seem to understand is, that competetive players are also playing for fun in some ways. Nobody would play, if it wasn't fun. Competetive players get their joy and fun by improving, by winning, by making a great play and so on. However, if you get a bunch of casual players in your team who don't really care and just happily feed kills left, right and center, that makes the game unplayabke for comowtetive players. Sorry to say it, but casual players are sucking the fun out of this game. It is not meant to be played casually - at least solo queue isn't. If you just want to chill and relax after work and have a little fun donking around in league, then please play normals, flex or any of the fun modes.
@@F4ir8or My god. I initially thought you were making a good point, but in the end if the day, you're just a delusional elitist like a lot of League players. Sadge.
@@F4ir8or Exactly this, agreed 100%. The word "fun" is always so complicated. I'm the type of player that gets immense satisfaction from improving and seeing that improvement in my games very clearly because I always "try hard". I don't really get frustrated by "for fun" players because (thankfully) I naturally just focus on my own performance. But too many of my friends will only have fun if we win and not have fun at all if we get rolled and it just comes from an entirely different perspective on the activity. League as a "skill" or league as "entertainment". Also: in regard to the point that you "can't" play the game casually. I agree and disagree. On the one hand the proof is out there: clearly some people play casually and enjoy it. But I just think deep down they're not actually having the most fun playing that way. It's like: okay, yes your meme build might be really fun when it works, but what about the times it leads you to lose the lane hard so your build never comes online? Was that a "fun" game? Maybe they'll put on a youtube vid in the background and spam ff to keep the dopamine hitting, I don't know...
If you're playing to win you're welcome on my team. If you want to try random shit you're welcome in aram, normals and rotating game modes. It's not gatekeeping to ask people to at least queue up with the intention to try and win in ranked.
Yep, you dont have to tryhard 100% of your ranked games thats obviously not sustainable, ranked is to learn and get better, but you CANNOT be first timing champions in ranked, or random off meta builds / champions you have never played. As long as your always trying to win and you know what your doing then you can go the off meta stuff or play a champ your not super great at, but if your just coming into the game mad and going something u have never played, not trying, and just wasting everyones time and flaming then gtfo. Come in intermediate level at whatever your trying to play (be baseline competent atleast), and actually try to win. And then its all good.
I really don't understand the people that queue up for a ~30 min game and give up at 1 minute because of a small set back. I prefer the for fun players over those that give up like that
@@SinnerBeforeGod U will understand once u start to get better. One mistake ruins the entire game 99% of the time. IF we had voice chat and could actually comm to make up for that mistake, then you would be right. But we dont. So one mistake happens, then the rest of the team continues to throw over and over without trying to stabilize and the game just ends. Just like that. People dont want to wast 30 minutes of their time on a game already lost and that they wont be able to play because they are now behind. Playing weakside and being behind almost always means u just lose because u have to rely on your team.
39:45 It’s difficult because you have to assume you’re the maximally important person in the experience to consider that others aren’t allowed to play the game in your presence if they don’t meet your definition of effort.
League of Legends Code of Conduct: DON'T: Queue up if you’re not serious about trying to win. Even if you don't agree with the statement that ranked should only be for serious players, you agreed to it by ticking the box.
Define "serious about trying to win." If a Soraka top one trick is in your lobby, and they've played Soraka top all split long, are they trying to win? They've hit a steady rank/mmr with Soraka top, and that rank/mmr is the same as someone else on their flavor of the patch meta picks, can it be said that this Soraka top one trick is trying to win or not? How much is actually enforceable. If the team wants a engage tank support, but that support doesn't play engage tanks, is it better for them to pick a champion they're not comfortable on for the team, or are they allowed to pick a champion that they're familiar with? Who gets to decide, and what are the punishments?
@@TheGerrok .... When you make guidelines or rules, you don't start with exception cases. I can't even think of a single player I've ever come across that mains Soraka top. Even if there was a player like this, I would argue they are trolling, because they aren't even close to playing top lane optimally. They aren't really playing their role at that point. That would be like me maining Bard as a jungler, it's legitimatly ruining the competitive integrity of the game... the champ wasn't designed to be played there and it automatically puts your own team at a disadvantage lol. If the ranked system didn't have explicitly defined roles, maybe I would have a different perspective, but the current state does.
@@Agdem_ imo if you're maining bard jungle and you're in whatever rank that got you then nobody has any business to whine and complain unless they desire to ruin the game themselves for some reason
@@Agdem_this is legit untrue, support top was a thing and while offmeta now is still durable and makes sense,they mostly just need to understand how to optimally play their champ in a offmeta way
Ranking systems work because W/L is a simple stat. All that matters is each players mmr and the outcome of the game. Adding in personal performance requires things like vision score, kills, cs, ect. to be accounted for in the mmr calculation. If you think the system is bad now, imagine if riot had to add 100 levers to a 2 lever system.
1:31:14 Avarice. Dude. You are super young. Don't overthink it. You have your whole life ahead of you. I wouldn't worry about making everything perfect. Take a look at a player named "Davemon." He is easily the best Pyke mid in NA, possibly one of the best Pyke players in the world. He tried to go pro in smash bros when he was younger and now is able to travel to different regions while playing League. You don't need to be a pro player. Sometimes all you need is to be passionate enough in a particular hobby and you can leverage that skill with an audience of fans who want to see you succeed. Many times I've been chilling to his stream and some kid leaves a comment along the lines of, "Dave, I want to watch your stream, but I have an assignment due tomorrow. What should I do?" Every time he responds with something like, "Dude, do your homework. It's more important to get that done. I'll still be here. Focus on your classes. I want you to turn off stream right now and get that finished, deal?" Listen to the bald (he's not bald, but it's a meme) streamer.
Nidalee is just the perfect jungler IF you play her well. You see Canyon/Tarzan/Peanut in a pro game, you MUST ban her automatically. In solo queue as well, if you go through the hell of learning her, get really good at jungling in general and have good game knowledge and the mechanics, she is insane there too. That said I can understand why Curtis and some MLA members dislike having Nida on their team, because boy can she solo lose games as well when you pilot her poorly. (Proud to say I've experienced this from both positions, mostly being the Nidalee of course lol).
re: S ranks preventing losses, I have a funny memory of a normal game, Jax vs Gangplank top. after a couple minutes of csing where we didn't trade at all we declared truce and spent the rest of the match seeing who could farm the hardest. I ended with a score of 0/0/1 and 300+ cs, S rank. GP had similar numbers and also got an S. almost total noninteraction with the enemy team=perfection according to Riot. granted this was many years ago so I'm sure the system has been tweaked, but just imagine the havoc wrought on ranked if that sort of thing was incentivized.
1:09:47 100% yessir, I remember when I first started playing azir everyone told me not to. Mostly, it was people saying he's too difficult, but the one higher elo friend i had said not to for another reason instead. I'll never forget what he said. "Maining champs like Azir is like having a house of cards. It can stay stable for a while or for seemingly no reason it might come crashing down." It's just an aspect of these champs that you have to accept if you want to play them.
Azir is a really misunderstood champion and he is horribly balanced because of it. He isn't even really that elite-skewed, the champ is just garbage. He has a negative win rate that peaks 49% in Masters. The lack of stability has more to do with item synergy than anything else. AP items simply work better for mages, where Azir is a hybrid champ that relies on AA procs from his soldiers. Nashors being the only good item on the champ is a major problem, especially when you have to opt into a full AP build with no other stats. At that point what is stopping champs like Syndra from one-shotting you with two button presses? Riot doesn't know how to balance their champions or design an item system that actually works, therefore most hybrid champs just straight-up suck (and by hybrid I mean a champ that doesn't really fit into a specific class, not necessarily damage ratios).
I mean, ranked obviously shouldnt be for trolls. XD We are playing ranked because we want to win a game, we don't want someone 1st trying their champs or having bad drafts because my toplaner picked something useless like smolder top. If he wins fine, but most likely his pick would make it problematic for our draft.
IDK I think its way more nuanced than that. Did he pick Smolder top at the beginning of draft? That means all the picks following that didnt mesh well trolled his draft, no? Also, there's people that choose meta picks late in draft that don't work with the team comp either, wouldn't that also fall into your category of trolling? I'd rather a team full of off-meta picks that are all trying to win than the guy who picks the strongest meta champ only to give up 5 minutes into the game
I reached masters using only smolder top not long ago with 60% winrate in spite of people like you that give up instantly because they think its useless.
Overwatch 1 had stat contribution contribute to rank/LP gain, and I feel like everyone was complaining about, particularly about Genji players who just poke with Shurikens all game, letting the enemy team stack their ults through healing, among other degenerate play styles that give you high stat contribution, but means you're objectively contributing to winning the game, maybe even contribution to the enemy team through their ult gain.
In League the idea of the ranked ladder is completely different to what it used to be in past competitive games. In the past, we knew that the ladder was lower quality (people did treat it seriously too, but that was way more top-end focused and there was still the thought that it was lower in quality even there) and sometimes a bit of a joke - we flocked into inhouses and treated ranked as strictly practice because of it. I think this weird disconnect is there because there's no place in the client/game to form groups, let alone coordinate inhouses, so everyone feels like ranked is the only place to play and thus, it's treated as 'serious' but it's always going to be low in quality by virtue of being an open ladder. Throw League being a team game with a lot of things outside of your control that can be frustrating and unfair and Riot sacrificing the top end in too many ways to appease and appeal to the low end (and thus creating a more casual culture that conflicts with what the game is (competitive) creating even more frustration), it's bound to be a complete shitfest through and through.
I'm on the Reddit poster's side. I dislike people with lackadaisical attitudes about things, not even just league. Maybe it is my "world view" but I think it's an objective fact that giving your all in everything you do is a GOOD thing. Part of the summoner's code is "always do your best." Queuing up for a RANKED game drunk or high, eating your dinner during the game, first timing a champ in ranked, etc is undeniably NOT doing one's best. Obviously as said in the video this will even out in the longer term but it's still an annoying thing to deal with. I don't think the reddit poster expects Riot to do anything about it or anything, he's just calling people out for playing like that and upset that people think he's toxic for having the belief that one should take ranked seriously and always try their best. Of course people are free to play this videogame however they want but we are also free to judge them and it's hard not to be annoyed when someone is obviously not taking a ranked game seriously.
“Don’t hate the player, hate the game”. Forget about what everyone else is doing, it’s a waste of time unless done in a good mindset. And even then, the value isn’t regularly high. Most your interest should be directed towards those closer to where you wanna be than you presently are, and the few beside you headed in the same direction. Count your blessings if you’re able to take your time. Ranked isnt going anywhere.
Something about Tank based junglers is most of them have trouble in the 1v1 or 2v2 and in solo q that means relying on your team for objective control. I think about watching Bo playing for KC in spring where he would start grubs on seju and get jumped on by enemy jungler and get killed without having much counter play without teammates around. This would be more prevalent in Solo que where players are often worrying about farm, kills and turret plates.
Nathan was actually pretty close with his pronunciation of "Gerhard". The first syllable rhymes with "care" and the second is very similar to the English word "hard", but shorter, and we almost ignore the 'r'.
I've been casuallying(20 games a year) playing league on and off for like 10 years. This last split is the first time I tried ranked and finished Bronze 4. The reason behind me ranking now is that if I quickplay there is a real chance I have a bot on my team or on the enemy team. Hard to report cuz some people are actually new and just bad and I'm not confident in the difference. I'm in a place where wanting to play casually means I have to rank to get into lobbies with humans to have a challenging but honest game, in reality I comp-stomp a game a day and then watch pros.
Here's the thing for years players who are above the average player once a season progress and your skills regress fundamentally the game has not changed at all in the slightest until patch 14.21 coming up. Iron and bronze players get smacked playing normals and arams and have a sense of ego and pride that you have to strip and then you get called toxic and then the line of league punishment falls on you because you have to play with the player that has a 20% in ranked and 15% in other game modes. I left the game in 2019 once I saw the game outside of the core fundamentals have changed and adaptation was instead of a hobby a chore. No offense but if you cannot think of why people want to actually try-hard and get to a competent level of playing the dopamine game that is league of legends you are either getting boosted by someone or have lost touch with what the literal average either returning player or new player experience is. Normals count towards MMR patch 14.15 now requires you to play a mandatory 10 Non-SR games the way normal's work nowadays is if you are not getting boosted or playing with a friend your normal games are your ranked games the placebo is that you can win those games. I was at one point Iron 4 0 Lp as a returning player literally had 20 games where I handheld players and told them simple basic mechanics and basic combo's only to find them not playing ranked not trying to learn the game and just play Arams and Normals or X-Rotating gamemode. I know I am dogshit but entitlement my friend you personally do not know the struggle of coaching in game with a person while you have other players degrading you. I played in the "America's" server and I am just over that game I am playing single-player games at least if I make a mistake I cannot blame no one else but me. I respect your opinion, once you go from playing a whole year to know Ranked resets every 3-4 months 1) I do not have the time to do that 2) Why put my mental health at risk because other players have mental malfunctions 3) "just get good scrub" being thrown in my face literally every game. I respectfully do not think its a way of looking at the game its being unaware of what pride and ego does to a person also. If you look at the tutorial is the same tutorial from the inception of the game you as the player need to find out what your goals are before trying to play a MOBA. Thank you for coming to my TED talk :)
Given how hard it would be to detect 'for funning' in ranked amongst the 'having a bad game', 'mental booming', or 'trying out new tech live and it isn't working out' it seems a problem not worth the effort of trying to solve. The crux of the issue seems to be people's time (which is our most(?) valuable resource). 3 games is effectively 2.5-3 hours for me, which is basically my entire evening after the kids go to bed, so you better believe league is a major opportunity cost for me. The sense that 'casual' people are deliberately or selfishly wasting the 'try hard's' time is understandable, never going to be specifically enforcable. Establishing a culture that respects other people's time generally and has the emergeant property of people treating ranked appropriately seems the only way to go, but that is bigger than league of legends. Never going to be perfect. I have friends that manifestly don't give a fig about other people's time, but my sense is that enough people do that the state of the game is ok. I endure a lot more griefing than I'd like, but interpret most of it as simply the result of human chaos in an unforgiving game. copecopecope.
I’m not very serious about most games but when I play rank it is generally to HAVE a rank rather than being perma unranked it’s just a thing to do a part of the game I spend my time/money on
Quick rewards for individual correct steps is very good for learning. The more delay there is from action to outcome, the worse the learning. So someone playing well and losing 3 games will have less learning responsivity. So there is certainly an argument to reward someone for playing well but still losing. But the problems with this idea are obvious, playing for kda instead of winning plays and so on.
I have a response to Crazyn1nja's response on why people publicly show disdain towards League: This sort of behavior happens in the Genshin Impact community too, where people who no longer play the game (or sometimes still playing) will be vocal about why they no longer play the game and neither should you. However, as opposed to League of Legends Genshin is a casual and simple game with no stakes, far from the stressful and suffocating environment that League has. While I think the difficulty of the game is a factor, I think the bigger factor is that it's just become popular for the public to demonize some games. People just seem to get that hit of dopamine taking smack about League and Genshin because hey that's what everybody is doing so I will do it too.
i mean you’re close. league has had such a larlge playerbase and such high churn that it’s more likely that any given person you’re talking to has played and ditched league, and probably for similar reasons. it’s a crowd pleaser bc it’s a common experience to have bounced off the game.
I mean.. I kinda agree while disagreeing.. Genshin is still imo a stressful and suffocating game in the sense that there's so much content, so much randomness in the way you're upgrading your characters.. you're forced to play every day if you don't wanna miss a hell lot of ressources.. I think coming back to Genshin after 1 year of break is WAAAY more awful that getting back to League after the same period of time.
You can really find the people who haven’t played sports before when they say “it’s just a game”. If you said that to your teammates on a team, they would rightly hate you for not giving your best effort to win. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well
People that say "it's just a game" are NOT people that are not trying to win. That's because people are insulting this guy, because they think that he was not good enough, so it's just a way of getting people back down to reality.
the answer to this is obviously yes.... the amount of people I play bronze games with that say, "who cares if it's my first time playing this champ, it's iron," is disconcerting. literally que ARAM, or non-ranked, if you just want to fuck around. It literally makes no sense on any level for any reason to que ranked if you aren't trying to climb.
i disagree 1:06:15, unless you were just referring to the context of the perceived expectation. teammates admitting their mistake is one of the most refreshing things. it doesn't really do anything but it mentally clears someone's suspicion of why a play went wrong and removed lingering distrust. and I think when you apologize, you're also doing it for yourself. if you ignore accepting responsibility for a mistake, it's like you're refusing to acknowledge that it's something you need to improve on it for the future if the league community just said "my bad" and "all good" more often, the game would be amazing though it does happen where teammates just say "yeah it is your fault"
On the topic of “Serious” play. I’m a diamond top lane player. I recently made an account to play ADC it is currently in ~plat 1 MMR. I will queue up and try to win and perform well most games. That being said as I’m learning the role I have occasional bad games and sometimes try champions I do not have a ton of experience on. Maybe it’s not extremely respectful to pick new champions in ranked,but when players who have 500-1000 games at the same rank and are 600-800 LP below me decide to write a masters thesis on how the game state is entirely my fault while blatantly making mistakes in their own gameplay it grinds my gears. Im completely willing to type a “myb” , “can win” and plenty of other things, but when these are just met with personal attacks I’m WAY more likely to respond with toxic behavior than I would be on my main, because genuinely I do not care about my Smurf adc account as much as my main account.
It’s completely fine that you feel that way. I was trying to further elucidate the point that people will always have different levels of care and intensity about any particular issue/thing/game/conflict ect. I play to win. I’m just pointing out a phenomena I’ve personally experienced: that when the stakes are not as high for me my tolerance for others poor behavior goes down and my willingness to barrel through intolerable bullshit is much lower. I try to win and it is not a bought account I hand leveled it playing ARAMs and normal games with my friends. If learning a new role makes me an ass so be it.
@@Mike-McG it’s not about that, it’s about you picking champs you don’t know how to play and then being mad at your teammates for typing at you because you have more LP ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ROLE on your main. That’s narcissistic. If you first time an adc in platinum one, get stomped, and their adc takes over the game then why should your team be okay with that? Should they flame you? No. But you can see why they would be mad
As long as you dont first time a champion its fine. If you know what the champion does and how to play it for the most part, then great. Being "good at it" is a completely different thing that comes with time. As long as your trying to win, it doesnt matter. Playing 100 draft games is not going to change anything. End of the day you need to play ranked to get better. Its more about not trolling for no reason. Picking stuff like lee sin adc taric support for the first time ever in ranked for example. That stuff is unacceptable.
I know this is a bit old now but on the casual ranked players i feel like its partially the reward of trying to get better and partially the amount of players that just dont try at all in normals or do absolutly crazy stuff that makes no sense
Absolutely mindblowing take from entitled high elo players who play the game or coach 10 hours a day. Most people dont have 10 hours to spend on this game. Its not entitled to expect people to do their best to win. You might have the hours to overcome all the variance, but most people do not. If i invest 45 minutes of my day into a game and one person decides to first time Aatrox top as a support leona OTP you are legit wasting everyones time. Time MOST people do not have. I know what the response will be "well then just dont play LoL!" I love the game when its played properly. I just happen to think it should be played with some goal in mind. If i was on a basketball team, and I was a really really good 3 point shooter playing on a team, and my team kept passing me the ball at 3 point range, but I just took the ball and tried to dunk despite being 170 cm tall. You best believe my team is asking me what the actual fuck im doing.
The problem becomes who gets to define serious? To Faker, serious means a 30 minute warmup, clean eating, & $500/mo in supplements. This is a stupid convo to honestly even have because the entire convo is predicated on ego.
Long shot, but I have a question. Am I wrong as a mid laner for not following my lane opponent to plays in the river when my wave is crashing into my turret and/or I don't have mana to effectively fight? Almost every game my lane opponent roams with priority and makes a play and my jungle starts spam pinging me. Should I be trying to follow more?
Now it makes sense why jungle is the least understood role. The biggest stage with the most eyes is completely unrelated to actual jungle gameplay. People watch pro play and assume that's what a jungler should aspire to be, but that gameplay is gonna get you hardstuck pulling your hair out in about 2 weeks. And of course pro junglers sack 3 camps just to cover their ADC so they can base 1 wave later, in soloqueue that's just letting go of the steeringwheel and hoping you don't crash
ive stopped taking ranked serious because at this point, its doesnt feel like it matters. ive grinded and grinded just to end up at a lower rank than i was a month prior more times than i can remember. I find myself watching "im quitting league" videos more often these days.
I actually don't care as much about *serious* players as much as I really wish I didn't have to deal with lvl 30-100 accounts. Most of the time that I have a really horrible game experience it's due to someone on an alt account that does not care about the game or if their account stays unbanned. I feel like ranked should be like clash and should require a phone number or some kind of account verification.
I would pay $20 one time for "prime" matchmaking like in CS2 just to keep the smurfs out. People won't have 5 accounts if they have to pay $20 every time. It would also cutback on boosting.
I don't have any problem with people playing ranked casually in like silver. It's just a bunch of kids and casuals anyway at that rank. It's when people randomly troll pick in high MMR lobbies that's annoying. In a masters plus game, no body wants some kid going 0-10 first timing a champion after waiting for 10-20min for the queue. It's just a waste of time for everyone involved. Especially when that game would have been completely normal if they had just picked a champion they could actually play in the first place. It's no different than getting a boosted player in a game.
No. Its the same for everyone in every rank. Just because you see silvers as casuals and trolls doesn't make it the truth. Someone who's much better then you very likely sees what you're doing as trolling as well. And that if you'd take the game more seriously you'd understand the concepts they do. Being less informed, or less skilled doesn't mean you're a kid or a casual.
@charlybessette9818 Not at all. Again, just because someone learns slower, is newer, etc etc doesn't mean they're trolling. They just aren't as skilled as you are.
@@canadabiss I don't consider "being bad" trolling. I mean like actual intentional trolls. It's way easier to buy or make a new account to troll people in silver than masters. There are also more likely to be people who just play random champions for fun in ranked like it's a normals game. Iron-gold are the ranks casual players get before they start taking the game more seriously. There's nothing wrong with that and it's likely that's what Riot intended those ranks for. It's expected that there will be some people in those ranks who take the game seriously but just find it difficult to climb. I started out as a casual silver player myself for years until I started getting coaching, watching more educational content, and reviewing my games so I could climb to diamond+ ranks. Most players can only get so far by just playing the game as there're a lot of unintuitive mechanics that need to be learned from others.
Imagine calling someone "entilted" for requesting from other people minimum lvl of decency in competetive setting. Holy shit! You want play casual? You play normal. You want to sweat? You play rank. That's why there are 2 separate types of queue (and aram). So the people with at least average IQ and minimum lvl decency will choose appropriately to their goals and liking. It's simple as that. There is not much more to it. But currently people, community made this very straight forward line, absolutly blur. Now you "need" play normals like you would play ranks because otherwise you are getting completly stomped 0/15, no mercy type of shit, where in ranks you got people that are playing for fun doing whatever nonsense and playing the worst shit possible. And the argument that if they are playing for fun then they have to be better than you if they still pull it off to be at same lvl like you... TRUEEEEEE! Especially with past 2 splits of absolut elo inflation the entire rank ladder! With the game quality so dogshit that game were decided in first 5 mins of the game because (only if you are lucky) one of the lanes is already 0/2 (or 0/4 on bot) before first jungle clear, spampinging for help or spamming on chat to FF. PlAyInG GaMe FoR fUn. And I'm talking about Emerald only. And sure, maybe I'm not good enough, I never said I'm pro player or anything but it's pretty disrespectul if I'm trying my best to climb and some moron queue up rank just to have fun and to make my efforts in this 30-40 mins game completly pointless and wasted. And this example about work... holy fuck! Yeah, but no. At work you are not tied to anyone if you want to "climb". If someone works on the same possition for 12 years, then it's enough for him. He doesn't drag you down by any means. In League... yeah, nobody can drag you down in a team game, RIGHT? Also, something worth a note, if someone is working somewhere for 12 years doing "bare minimum" it means he's doing what he needs to do, when he needs to do it and how he needs to do it without making other co-workers work harder because of him and his incompetence. People that play ranks for fun are like those who are comming to work and doing everything in their power to dodge as much of their responsibilities as they can without being noticed. I worked with people like that and I can tell you for a fact, there is nothing more infuriating than those morons because nobody ask them to rip their veins out for this workplace (maybe except employer) but to have minimum lvl of decency to not cause others to work harder, because shit needs to be done one way or another. If anything this type of players are "entilted".
I hate that "playing random shit" gets put into the casual playing ranked argument, sometimes the "weird" pick & builds work just as well as the meta staples, and even when they don't ranked is the only way to seriously find out, like you can feel you're doing fine in normal because the plays are more cheesy there
I'm assuming "random shit" as in champions or builds they don't even know how to play. Stuff they haven't even tried one time before. If you've practiced your off meta build, go for it, dude.
@@andrewkelley9405 It's not always as obvious, like yuumi top doesn't sound much better but at some point in time it was legit viable Other examples are top smite sona and janna that without hindsight would look as troll as pure river shen when in reality were so degenerate they needed to be nerfed, just like duo jungle funnel
I interpret "playing random shit" to mean playing champs they don't normally play as opposed to playing off-meta. Champ mastery is so important to consistent performances. You get someone in your game whose MMR is based on their 90% Akali games and then they pick their 20% winrate Yasuo which they've played 5/200 games.
@@ultimatemacchia yeah but you know it, I know it, when you see ADC Nunu lock in yuumi with their duo, they are up to some noob stomper or get stomped BS. Yes there are picks that can work, but almost exclusively it’s someone who’s angry and trying random shit
It's just as that comment say. If I play casual, my rank reflex my level playing casually. You're at my casual level. That's just how it is. (minus trolling OC, Casual doesn't mean literally trolling). I play in rank mode because rank give me miles better match making. Play normal and met literally troll or stomped by far higher rank player isn't fun It's like can I say you need to play 3 games a day, small champ pool, review your mistake, etc. Without that you ruins my game It's just, sure. But even if you ruins my game I have no right to tell you how you play
The problem with casual players in ranked is that norms aren't competitive enough for those players that want more balanced game but still want to have fun so they bring their for fun random play into ranked. League can either drop their 15 casual modes and just have solo duo be the basic mode everyone plays in. Or they can tighten up mmr match making in norms.
basically this. I'm at a point where I don't care much about climbing but normals are shit quality ff15 almost everytime so I just end up queing rank for "real" games
@@bravepotatoe7513 Yeah, FF15 is really happening too much in normals, they don't care if we scale better.. they just wanna go next to try to shine in the next game..
Tbh, I disagree with a lot of these points. Riot should make effort to improve game quality, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to staple some minimal mastery requirement to stop random first timing in ranked. Clearly not everyone can maximally try hard all the time, but at the same time, eventually the behavior is literally griefing. Players that have extremely high variance, frankly decrease game quality and Riot could do things to clamp the amount of variance these players introduce. The most egregious example of high variance players would be Smurfs who bot to artificially depress their rank. I also strongly disagree with the argument that it all comes out in the wash eventually. It’s technically true, but I think the reality for most people in your programs is that they’re busy professionals. I have infinite other options for how I spend my time, at some point some percentage of non games will make the game just flatly a waste of my time, irrespective of whether it comes out in the wash eventually. Now obviously it hasn’t crossed that line yet as I’m still here, but it’s definitely close.
While I agree with your sentiment this will never happen because its too bad for business (selling skins). If skins were only purchased by mains the game probably wouldn't be sustainable - and/or some champs would just never get skins. Placing a barrier on playing whatever champ in ranked might drastically hurt sales. *New Sett skin released- a player considers buying it but then realizes they'd have to play 10 normal games to be able to unlock Sett in ranked. They pass on buying the skin.* And how many games would you require before you can take a champ to ranked? Phreak is balancing champs around people having 300 games Mastery. Someone playing their 11th game on a champ is a MASSIVE liability in ranked unless its a super easy champ. Are you going to require 20 games? 50 games? Anything less and you aren't really accomplishing much. Then there's people like me with 10 accounts. I have the mastery for the champs I'm playing but it won't show on every account. I make an account and only spam Mordekaiser on it. Then I pick Singed and someone says "look at this guy ruining my game first timing Singed" when Singed is my most played champ with thousands of games.
I’d argue that as the game’s population ages, as a whole they’re going to have less patience for this sort of thing and that eventually the number of folks quitting will negatively impact skin sales. TBH, I don’t know what the right number is. I think 20 is not unreasonable. I know phreak balances around 300. I fully acknowledge that isn’t a practical threshold for rank unlock. That being said, the man himself has repeatedly said the most predictive factors for being able to predict game outcomes are champion difficulty and mastery. The corollary of this is that playing difficult champions with little enough mastery is literally griefing. That’s not even my opinion, that’s just the logical consequence of the info Riot has given us. Of course, people need a place to learn and normal games aren’t a perfect environment for learning beyond a certain point exactly because they’re non competitive. I’m fine with someone playing nidalee in my game if they’ve got 20 games on it. It’s definitely gonna be a drag on the team, but at least they have some commitment and it’s not literal first timing. Regarding the multiple account thing, I actually think that’s a benefit. Imo, it’s better for the game if playing on multiple accounts has a higher barrier to entry. Smurfing and boosting is fairly common and increasing the cost of business for those things doesn’t bother me. Ditto the folks who rage and run it down on alts to vent. Admittedly, there are valid use cases for alts, I have different accounts for different roles, but I don’t mind unlocking the champions more than once for that use case.
@@huathebard What your saying just isnt realistically feasible. People have real lives outside of league. And like you said, people have infinite ways to spend their time. Why would they spend it playing 20 boring draft games just to play a champion in ranked? Even 3 or 5 would be too much. I get its annoying, but honestly. Just as many people with 30 mastery on their champions hard int games regularly. Its not just people who have never played the champs before. Its more common for them sure, but ive had so many people with 20 30 even 50 mastery be complete trash at their champ. Its more of the games issue and how hard it snowballs. And how much you as a single player lack agency to carry the game.
@@huathebard I think your response is quite reasonable. However, I question your assumption that the aging population aren't the one's for funning champs in ranked. This is the exact demographic who have jobs and kids and take League less seriously. Its the same one's who think they know how to play every champ because they've played them here or there over the years.
^^ This is exactly where I'm at. I've been sim-racing because it's just a more efficient use of my time and skills that doesn't rely on 9 other people to take it seriously. There's also just too much fluff in League. We have almost 200 champions (the number is still increasing), the item system and my position gets changed every year (jungle), and it's honestly more of a learning stack than my professional job of being a Web Developer. Not to mention, they decided that keeping people addicted is important. Tencent wants to keep you trapped in the game and not have a real life, so they require you to play ranked year-round now because your rank gets reset 4 times a year (3-splits plus the season turn) without giving us any downtime because they completely removed preseason. It's just a bit ridiculous. The people that are in high elo genuinely no life the game to be good at it. I'm over putting that much effort into a game that has become this poor in quality. The game isn't optimized for modern PCs and hasn't been overhauled except for the map like 7 years ago. If they actually prioritized the competitive scene and worked on quality-of-life fixes over pumping out skins, tft content, and game modes that will only see the light of day for a week at a time -- maybe I would stay. But it's clear where the intentions are for League and it's not in a direction that benefits eSports, it's the same exact shit that destroyed franchises like CoD. And who takes CoD seriously as a competitive game these days? That's the path League is on.
Most people don’t want to improve at the game. They just want to have fun thus preferring to play random shit fucking up their mmr in the process and then they complain about their team feeding all the time. They will blame the game for pairing them with feeders providing them an easy excuse for why they are hardstuck. From time to time they will focus and drop the craziness (e.g. playing multiple roles and playstyles) finding minimal success because of their mmr and they will go rant about how Riot is an indie company or whatever. But deep inside I believe they much prefer playing against worse opponents with whom they can play idk fiddlesticks ghost/ignite toplane and win rather than playing against higher mmr players, having to focus and risk losing. I strongly believe that’s the majority of the player base.
I dont like aurora beeing able to build so tanky. The kit would have been fine as an assasin but as this sort of squirmisher ap bruiserish type the mobility paired with the insane potential of the ult is another questionable design. I predict that once people mastered her she will become very dominant in high elo and pro play.
I liked the way you approached the "serious players only" topic. Since you struggled to come up with more reasons why people might play ranked casually, here are my thoughts: 1. Riot wants people to play ranked. At the start of every split, Riot shoves a big popup notification in players faces when they log in for the first time. That notification tells literally every single player to go and play ranked. It even has a queue up button right there! So why wouldn't you do that? I haven't played ranked yet this split, so I can still see that message in my ranked tab, and guess what. Nowhere does it tell you to take ranked seriously. Nowhere does it tell you to play to win. The word "win" doesn't appear anywhere. What does appear in that message however is ... 2. Ranked rewards. I find it kind of funny that your view of League is so diffrent from mine - and likely the majority of players - that this didn't even cross your mind. Every ranked game, win or lose, gives you split points. Every game brings you closer to some kind of reward. Loot, emotes, icons and of course the victorious skin. All you need to do is play ranked. About 120 games at 50% winrate, which is quite possibly on the high end of SR games a casual player will play across a split. So what will it be? 120 rankeds that give you a shiny new skin and some other stuff, or 120 normals that give you nothing? Not a hard choice to be honest. And make no mistake, the whole split point reward system and the ability to earn the victorious skin even if you are at the bottom of the ladder - through sheer quantity of games - is a recent addition to League of Legend. Riot made that change deliberately. They know what they are doing. They want casual players to play ranked, otherwise they would not have added those incentives. Otherwise there would be a warning when you queue for ranked that tells you to treat it seriously. There would be a formalized solo queue contract. There is not. And if that bothers you, take solace in the fact that the system works. If you are truly better, or are even just constanly improving, you will rise above the rest. Eventually. In a way, casuals are to ranked what Margit is to Elden Ring. The first challange. The gatekeepers of the higher ranks telling us to git gud or put our foolish ambitions to rest. And we are all here because we want to git gud, are we not? So saddle up my fellow tarnished, we queue at dawn (or dusk, whenever you have time).
If the game literally makes you sign an agreement that says you’ll respect your teammates and try to win when you first make an account, I think it’s reasonable to assume that ranked is the serious game mode where people are actively trying to win
At the end of the day is just a game, play what you want and the way you want. If your style doesnt work, eventually you will go down in the ladder and games will be more casual. Just dont take this as a job
You say it's not possible or worth thinking about but we could easily change the system to be role specific at the very least, a diamond 4 midlaner randomly deciding to swap to master yi jungle and losing 10 games in a row should not be possible and is borderline griefing. You talk so much about how important champion mastery is and to me this seems like a natural conclusion to consider.
I really to get more involved with MLA Ive been paying for like 4 months but it just seemed a little overwhelming at first theres a bunch of stuff when you first join. Does anyone know can i just use the MLA program to get 1on1 coaching VOD reviews. I want to climb at least gold but have been struggling in bronze. And now i placed I2 in promos 😢 made it to b3 so far.
I'm super busy with my job these days so I can't play many games during the week anymore. I still casually play high diamond/low masters games on the weekends for fun. I can't enjoy normals because it feels too easy.
Hey there’s a mistake you guys made. Normal games have their own hidden MMR so if you play normals enough you should be matched to similarly skilled players Also some of us just feel like seeing what rank we can achieve without tryharding. For me ranked and normals are essentially the same so I’d rather see a rank, even if I’m not tryharding to climb
Ranked should be an only personal way to raise the ladder, DuoQ with someone with half a brain can make any noob climb easily to at least Gold if they play some no-brain comps botlane or jungle/top or jungle/support
Of course ranked is for serious players only. Even norms should be taken seriously. Norms is where you can practice champs and experiment but you still should take the game seriously. League isnt a game that is fun to just mess around in. There are other games for that.
I think ranked shouldn't always be just about winning and climbing, but learning. So many people get hard stuck in a rank because they stop trying to improve and instead just spam games and hope they get carried to a higher ranked. Most of the time, people play their best champs, so it's the best way to learn the matchups against people for own rank before having to play against better and better opponents. It's why boosted players drop so quickly. If they can't lane into opponents 4-6 ranks above then, then they lose. Someone who gets there by slowly learning and improving will have that solid basis to stay competitive. We shouldn't let the impatience and jealousy of other people's ranks distract us from what we can learn in every match win or lose. Wanting to improve helps people climb, but wanting to climb doesn't help people improve.
Not gonna lie i think everyone has locked in a new champ in ranked but that shouldn't be the case and ranked should be ultra competitive so you should be using your best champs (2-4)
Yes and players should be reported by all your teammates when they ruin champ select, ignore a quality ping, or a jungle and support taking cs from someone who out scales them.
My old argument for playing ranked "casually" is that the normal game experience is so lame. Oh you're losing by 5 deaths at 17 yet no objectives have been taken, ff. Oh someone died in level 1 invade, remake. I enjoy killing nexus by using my auto attacks on it instead of watching someone give up.
Yeah, or you solo queue into normals only to face some sweaty 5 stack dominating the game. When I don't want to play ranked on my main, I just play on a Smurf and practice different lanes and champs. It's so much more fun than trying to solo queue normals, or even worse a quick play game.
Just wanted to point out this is a League of Legends specific issue. No other comp games play like this if you want to play norms to learn. They simply shouldn't let you FF a game with only 2-3 votes.
Ranked doesn't even have an equivalent to real sports. Like there is no League where anyone can play and eventually go pro. Pretty sure just Chess has this outside of video games.
.... Yes it does?? League progression in normal sports looks like this -- youth --> varsity (HS) --> collegiate --> professional (which could be split into amateur --> semi pro --> pro). It's obviously more age-based because there are more physical requirements compared to video games which are more based on strategy and hand-eye coordination only. League of Legends has a similar progression of Bronze --> Challenger, then challenger players get picked up and put into semi-professional (development) teams --> LCS/Pro. If you are good enough, you can 100% just played ranked and eventually go pro.
The Reddit person probably had a teammate go negative on their team, then chalked it up to "This person doesn't care/this person doesn't want to win." I agree with the overall opinion, but I feel like he is coming at this in bad faith.
I think you are missing the point of aurora. Your whole discussion about her mid lane makes no sense whatsoever. She is a top laner and no melee can walk up to her pre-3 especially at level 1. Curtis got to focused on mid lane after going through on the stats page she got picked 4 times top and 1 mid. I would edit out the discussion at the beginning because it is off base and not relevant to any aspect of the game.
So many people in low rank don't give a crap. These dirt players clog up rank to not take the competition seriously because it's just a game. Yes, it's just a game but you're suppose to play rank to WIN, not bs with a nonsense mentality like "it's bronze" using that as an excuse to play like dirt. Using "its silver" as an excuse to refuse to use the ping system to give your teammates map information for everyones benifit because you think its annoying to spam it.
Hey Guys i loved the Episode, im rank 11 Skarner in NA (Watersrad#Na1) you guys say that Skarner seems weak in the mid game, but that tends to be where I find the most success is by punishing enemy, positioning, and using my E/Ult for Peel rather than an Engage. Watching worlds you see Skarner get caught out a few times by trying to engage with his E. I think it's a good engage tool in the 1v1,2v2,3v3 But it's two punishing to miss where it's better to not use unless engaged on first. I would love to hear more about how you guys view in the solo Que love the videos please keep it up!
I've never seen someone contradict themselves so confidently... sure effort is relative to the individual, but there will be plenty of players in your ranked queues that aren't trying lol. I've had bot laners AFK in fountain after inting twice in lane, they must be trying just as hard as me, right? Those top laners that are still trading with the 6-0, enemy Darius after getting grand-canyon gapped, are they trying?
Also regarding the casual players in ranked. If someone is for funning it (not smurfing) and not purposely running it down, who am I to tell them they cant play? It's up to me to get better at the game, my team on average is irrelevante
Ranked can be for everyone, but not if everyone shares the same LP gain/loss. If I lose because someone locks in first time Karthus jg and goes 0/24/5, that's fine as long as they're not eligible to be in my games going forward. That player needs an additional -20 LP. IMO, this would fix 90% of the frustration with solo Q overnight.
The thing is if you see everyone not serious and you being punished for being serious you don't have a healthy environment to learn. You should go back to this topic but answer: how to improve regardless your surroundings.
What about someone who has a busy life and can't dedicate time to improvement? They play at a Plat level and are ok playing at a Plat level. The fun in playing League is the competition. They just want to be matched with other players of the same skill level who are also trying their hardest and picking the champs they know.
I'm on a losing streak. I'm in Iron. I was climbing as support and super proud of myself. But support mains really have to be patient we climb slower than everyone else, it's just a fact of life. This tri-split system really hurts us the most. For example I had a game where I got an S- on Lulu we tried our hardest. But the teams early game synergy was trash and our teemo top ended up going 0/5/0 and leaving. But then I played a game with lux that day and my ADC was an iron support main and didn't like my play style so she just gave up and was pretty much just afk typing on the keyboard complaining and barely playing. I went 10/10/5 and she went 3/6/5 or something with like 70 cs less than their carry. We ended up playing around her rather than with her and won that game. It was pretty clutch. I still lost about 50 LP and am in iron 5 again. But I'm playing later than I'd like to and there's less serious people on at that time. Either way I know I can always climb back up. It's kind of pathetic that I'm just hoping to get to bronze but like the statistics stay, a good support has less impact on winning than other roles but a good support has a massive impact on not losing. That's the definition of the role imo. You can always expand on what supports do but "Good supports help the team not to lose." is probably the most simple definition you can give. It's the same for any MOBA too. in Dota there's a lot more interactions with the map and team and items but your dob is still "Keep your team from not losing as much as you can." This is just my wisdom of the game. I could probably take the game much more seriously and climb easier but right now life is busy so I play when I can. And that's the best I can do.
Personally, people who queue for ranked after not playing league for 4 months are just inconsiderate trash to me. If they first time a champion in ranked or even worse, lock in something hard like first time Lee Sin while autofilled jungle? If they play 70 unique champions a split? They are just selfish people who don't care about the enjoyment of others. "What's the matter? It's a video game, am I not supposed to be playing for fun?" Sure, man. That's fine. Just make sure you don't limitlessly ruin other people's fun for the sake of your own. Play normals for fun or a single player game for fun. Don't walk onto a basketball court and then start throwing the basketball outside of the court "for fun" and then complain when people are upset after you ruin the fun for everyone else on your team. Nobody wants you here. Nobody on the team likes you. They're just not speaking up because Riot will punish them for it. On top of it all, these casual players are often more toxic than others and will just int even harder if you confront them, so it's better to stay quiet and try to carry them. Reporting them after doesn't do anything. We just have to tolerate them because this is the culture Riot cultivated. It's sickening, but it's the reality we have to deal with.
(Rank 11 Skarner Otp Watersrad#NA1) with the slower clear Speed Skarner it is tough for counter jungling, but the E makes a great escape to a lot of people. Don't realize it goes as far as Zac E which means you can go from Baron pit to Krugs or Red Buff. If I see the enemies on the opposite side of the jungle i will take obj in baron pit and use my E to take Krugs and steal enemy jungle much faster and safer than others would. I hope this helps because he can dominate in punishing enemys not taking camps off timers
As a new player in late season 10, that first year of playing league was so stressful. Everything from learning the game fundamentals, to having to deal with the season 11 item reworks right after learning the season 10 item system. I literally lost nearly every single ranked game I played in season 10 and barely got out of bronze in season 11. I almost broke my desk a few times slamming my fist in frustration for losing game after game. It wasn't until I got coaching, watched tons of League educational videos, studied high ELO players, and learned how to review my games that I stopped being stressed about the game and tilting. I just played the best I could and enjoyed the game win or lose and my rank skyrocketed from silver to low masters in 2 years.
One of my friends who started at the same time is still has never gotten out of bronze 2 after 4 years because he never took the time and effort to improve like I did. He still cannot play ranked without flaming everyone because he is unable to cope with getting blamed for his poor jungling skills. Players like this rarely ever want coaching because it means they'd have to acknowledge that they don't know what they are doing after playing for years. All constructive criticism is met with "Well I'm just a casual player, I don't actually care about winning," despite going into a rage ever time something goes wrong. There's this underlying belief that "I couldn't possibly still be a bronze player. I've played League for years, and all my friends are in diamond and masters without me. It must be the ranked system is biased against me and wants me to lose." Then they go and complain on Reddit and make up conspiracy theories about losers queue to justify their lack of growth.
From someone who just put in the time and work, and saw success. It's easy to see how little effort most people actually put into climbing but still expect the same growth. People in diamond+ are taking the game much more seriously than they were 10-15 years ago so it takes a lot more work than it used to to stay competitive at those ranks.
I've been playing on and off for 11 years and every time I come back the game feels exponentially harder. Not just because I have to re-train muscle memory, but because people are so good at learning and improving that players have just gotten that much better
Exactly! Your post was long but worth the read. I especially feel the part about your friend in low elo coping and making up conspiracy theories on Reddit. To climb, you must improve. And to improve, you must first accept your level of play for what it is.
bullshit , as new player my first rank was gold , next season it was diamond
some people are gifted others are not , for example I suck at fps games I would be Iron in Valorant
@@BaronBunny-p3x And there are people who have gotten challenger their first ranked season. Exceptions don't define a rule, and gaming background makes a big difference between how good players are when playing a new game.
If you get frustrated to the point of breaking things, better spend money on therapist, not on league coach...
I think a big problem in all of this is, that for the competetive players, the "just for fun" players negatively impact their games, but the other way around this is not the case. I think that is why the casual players don't have a problem with this.
Yeah, and I could easily argue that playing only for the sake of winning without having any care for the fun is a way more negative thing for the game as a whole.
No, that is not the case. What you don't seem to understand is, that competetive players are also playing for fun in some ways. Nobody would play, if it wasn't fun. Competetive players get their joy and fun by improving, by winning, by making a great play and so on. However, if you get a bunch of casual players in your team who don't really care and just happily feed kills left, right and center, that makes the game unplayabke for comowtetive players. Sorry to say it, but casual players are sucking the fun out of this game. It is not meant to be played casually - at least solo queue isn't. If you just want to chill and relax after work and have a little fun donking around in league, then please play normals, flex or any of the fun modes.
@@F4ir8or My god.
I initially thought you were making a good point, but in the end if the day, you're just a delusional elitist like a lot of League players.
Sadge.
@@F4ir8or That's really sad. In the end of the day, you're just the classic delusional elitist in League, like most ranked players.
@@F4ir8or Exactly this, agreed 100%. The word "fun" is always so complicated. I'm the type of player that gets immense satisfaction from improving and seeing that improvement in my games very clearly because I always "try hard". I don't really get frustrated by "for fun" players because (thankfully) I naturally just focus on my own performance. But too many of my friends will only have fun if we win and not have fun at all if we get rolled and it just comes from an entirely different perspective on the activity. League as a "skill" or league as "entertainment".
Also: in regard to the point that you "can't" play the game casually. I agree and disagree. On the one hand the proof is out there: clearly some people play casually and enjoy it. But I just think deep down they're not actually having the most fun playing that way. It's like: okay, yes your meme build might be really fun when it works, but what about the times it leads you to lose the lane hard so your build never comes online? Was that a "fun" game? Maybe they'll put on a youtube vid in the background and spam ff to keep the dopamine hitting, I don't know...
If you're playing to win you're welcome on my team. If you want to try random shit you're welcome in aram, normals and rotating game modes. It's not gatekeeping to ask people to at least queue up with the intention to try and win in ranked.
agreed.
No, it is gatekeeping. Gatekeeping is good.
Yep, you dont have to tryhard 100% of your ranked games thats obviously not sustainable, ranked is to learn and get better, but you CANNOT be first timing champions in ranked, or random off meta builds / champions you have never played. As long as your always trying to win and you know what your doing then you can go the off meta stuff or play a champ your not super great at, but if your just coming into the game mad and going something u have never played, not trying, and just wasting everyones time and flaming then gtfo. Come in intermediate level at whatever your trying to play (be baseline competent atleast), and actually try to win. And then its all good.
I really don't understand the people that queue up for a ~30 min game and give up at 1 minute because of a small set back. I prefer the for fun players over those that give up like that
@@SinnerBeforeGod U will understand once u start to get better. One mistake ruins the entire game 99% of the time. IF we had voice chat and could actually comm to make up for that mistake, then you would be right. But we dont. So one mistake happens, then the rest of the team continues to throw over and over without trying to stabilize and the game just ends. Just like that. People dont want to wast 30 minutes of their time on a game already lost and that they wont be able to play because they are now behind. Playing weakside and being behind almost always means u just lose because u have to rely on your team.
39:45 It’s difficult because you have to assume you’re the maximally important person in the experience to consider that others aren’t allowed to play the game in your presence if they don’t meet your definition of effort.
League of Legends Code of Conduct: DON'T: Queue up if you’re not serious about trying to win.
Even if you don't agree with the statement that ranked should only be for serious players, you agreed to it by ticking the box.
Define "serious about trying to win." If a Soraka top one trick is in your lobby, and they've played Soraka top all split long, are they trying to win? They've hit a steady rank/mmr with Soraka top, and that rank/mmr is the same as someone else on their flavor of the patch meta picks, can it be said that this Soraka top one trick is trying to win or not?
How much is actually enforceable. If the team wants a engage tank support, but that support doesn't play engage tanks, is it better for them to pick a champion they're not comfortable on for the team, or are they allowed to pick a champion that they're familiar with? Who gets to decide, and what are the punishments?
@@TheGerrok .... When you make guidelines or rules, you don't start with exception cases. I can't even think of a single player I've ever come across that mains Soraka top. Even if there was a player like this, I would argue they are trolling, because they aren't even close to playing top lane optimally. They aren't really playing their role at that point. That would be like me maining Bard as a jungler, it's legitimatly ruining the competitive integrity of the game... the champ wasn't designed to be played there and it automatically puts your own team at a disadvantage lol. If the ranked system didn't have explicitly defined roles, maybe I would have a different perspective, but the current state does.
@@Agdem_ imo if you're maining bard jungle and you're in whatever rank that got you then nobody has any business to whine and complain unless they desire to ruin the game themselves for some reason
You are half right, because the code of conduct do not say anything about "ranked" they talk about any and all games (norms and gamemodes too)
@@Agdem_this is legit untrue, support top was a thing and while offmeta now is still durable and makes sense,they mostly just need to understand how to optimally play their champ in a offmeta way
Ranking systems work because W/L is a simple stat.
All that matters is each players mmr and the outcome of the game.
Adding in personal performance requires things like vision score, kills, cs, ect. to be accounted for in the mmr calculation.
If you think the system is bad now, imagine if riot had to add 100 levers to a 2 lever system.
It could be done with modern AI tools, the question is how different would it really be from the current system
1:31:14 Avarice. Dude. You are super young. Don't overthink it. You have your whole life ahead of you. I wouldn't worry about making everything perfect.
Take a look at a player named "Davemon." He is easily the best Pyke mid in NA, possibly one of the best Pyke players in the world. He tried to go pro in smash bros when he was younger and now is able to travel to different regions while playing League. You don't need to be a pro player. Sometimes all you need is to be passionate enough in a particular hobby and you can leverage that skill with an audience of fans who want to see you succeed.
Many times I've been chilling to his stream and some kid leaves a comment along the lines of, "Dave, I want to watch your stream, but I have an assignment due tomorrow. What should I do?" Every time he responds with something like, "Dude, do your homework. It's more important to get that done. I'll still be here. Focus on your classes. I want you to turn off stream right now and get that finished, deal?"
Listen to the bald (he's not bald, but it's a meme) streamer.
Nidalee is just the perfect jungler IF you play her well. You see Canyon/Tarzan/Peanut in a pro game, you MUST ban her automatically. In solo queue as well, if you go through the hell of learning her, get really good at jungling in general and have good game knowledge and the mechanics, she is insane there too.
That said I can understand why Curtis and some MLA members dislike having Nida on their team, because boy can she solo lose games as well when you pilot her poorly. (Proud to say I've experienced this from both positions, mostly being the Nidalee of course lol).
i pray that you guys never stop posting 🙏
re: S ranks preventing losses, I have a funny memory of a normal game, Jax vs Gangplank top. after a couple minutes of csing where we didn't trade at all we declared truce and spent the rest of the match seeing who could farm the hardest. I ended with a score of 0/0/1 and 300+ cs, S rank. GP had similar numbers and also got an S. almost total noninteraction with the enemy team=perfection according to Riot. granted this was many years ago so I'm sure the system has been tweaked, but just imagine the havoc wrought on ranked if that sort of thing was incentivized.
1:09:47 100% yessir, I remember when I first started playing azir everyone told me not to. Mostly, it was people saying he's too difficult, but the one higher elo friend i had said not to for another reason instead. I'll never forget what he said. "Maining champs like Azir is like having a house of cards. It can stay stable for a while or for seemingly no reason it might come crashing down." It's just an aspect of these champs that you have to accept if you want to play them.
Azir is a really misunderstood champion and he is horribly balanced because of it. He isn't even really that elite-skewed, the champ is just garbage. He has a negative win rate that peaks 49% in Masters. The lack of stability has more to do with item synergy than anything else. AP items simply work better for mages, where Azir is a hybrid champ that relies on AA procs from his soldiers. Nashors being the only good item on the champ is a major problem, especially when you have to opt into a full AP build with no other stats. At that point what is stopping champs like Syndra from one-shotting you with two button presses? Riot doesn't know how to balance their champions or design an item system that actually works, therefore most hybrid champs just straight-up suck (and by hybrid I mean a champ that doesn't really fit into a specific class, not necessarily damage ratios).
I mean, ranked obviously shouldnt be for trolls. XD We are playing ranked because we want to win a game, we don't want someone 1st trying their champs or having bad drafts because my toplaner picked something useless like smolder top. If he wins fine, but most likely his pick would make it problematic for our draft.
IDK I think its way more nuanced than that. Did he pick Smolder top at the beginning of draft? That means all the picks following that didnt mesh well trolled his draft, no? Also, there's people that choose meta picks late in draft that don't work with the team comp either, wouldn't that also fall into your category of trolling?
I'd rather a team full of off-meta picks that are all trying to win than the guy who picks the strongest meta champ only to give up 5 minutes into the game
Smolder top is literally meta wdym xD look at pro
@@Typhoonflame yes, look at my soloq teammate inting with it for being a wannabe pro... Also the fact he is going that, we have no frontline now.
@@Typhoonflame Noone plays smolder top at worlds and he has like 43%winrate in soloq. Facts.
I reached masters using only smolder top not long ago with 60% winrate in spite of people like you that give up instantly because they think its useless.
Overwatch 1 had stat contribution contribute to rank/LP gain, and I feel like everyone was complaining about, particularly about Genji players who just poke with Shurikens all game, letting the enemy team stack their ults through healing, among other degenerate play styles that give you high stat contribution, but means you're objectively contributing to winning the game, maybe even contribution to the enemy team through their ult gain.
In League the idea of the ranked ladder is completely different to what it used to be in past competitive games. In the past, we knew that the ladder was lower quality (people did treat it seriously too, but that was way more top-end focused and there was still the thought that it was lower in quality even there) and sometimes a bit of a joke - we flocked into inhouses and treated ranked as strictly practice because of it. I think this weird disconnect is there because there's no place in the client/game to form groups, let alone coordinate inhouses, so everyone feels like ranked is the only place to play and thus, it's treated as 'serious' but it's always going to be low in quality by virtue of being an open ladder. Throw League being a team game with a lot of things outside of your control that can be frustrating and unfair and Riot sacrificing the top end in too many ways to appease and appeal to the low end (and thus creating a more casual culture that conflicts with what the game is (competitive) creating even more frustration), it's bound to be a complete shitfest through and through.
I comletely agree.
I'm on the Reddit poster's side. I dislike people with lackadaisical attitudes about things, not even just league. Maybe it is my "world view" but I think it's an objective fact that giving your all in everything you do is a GOOD thing. Part of the summoner's code is "always do your best." Queuing up for a RANKED game drunk or high, eating your dinner during the game, first timing a champ in ranked, etc is undeniably NOT doing one's best. Obviously as said in the video this will even out in the longer term but it's still an annoying thing to deal with.
I don't think the reddit poster expects Riot to do anything about it or anything, he's just calling people out for playing like that and upset that people think he's toxic for having the belief that one should take ranked seriously and always try their best. Of course people are free to play this videogame however they want but we are also free to judge them and it's hard not to be annoyed when someone is obviously not taking a ranked game seriously.
I love when they get philosophical! I don't even play that much league, but this is my favorite philosophy podcast
“Don’t hate the player, hate the game”. Forget about what everyone else is doing, it’s a waste of time unless done in a good mindset. And even then, the value isn’t regularly high. Most your interest should be directed towards those closer to where you wanna be than you presently are, and the few beside you headed in the same direction. Count your blessings if you’re able to take your time. Ranked isnt going anywhere.
Something about Tank based junglers is most of them have trouble in the 1v1 or 2v2 and in solo q that means relying on your team for objective control. I think about watching Bo playing for KC in spring where he would start grubs on seju and get jumped on by enemy jungler and get killed without having much counter play without teammates around. This would be more prevalent in Solo que where players are often worrying about farm, kills and turret plates.
Nathan was actually pretty close with his pronunciation of "Gerhard". The first syllable rhymes with "care" and the second is very similar to the English word "hard", but shorter, and we almost ignore the 'r'.
I've been casuallying(20 games a year) playing league on and off for like 10 years. This last split is the first time I tried ranked and finished Bronze 4. The reason behind me ranking now is that if I quickplay there is a real chance I have a bot on my team or on the enemy team. Hard to report cuz some people are actually new and just bad and I'm not confident in the difference. I'm in a place where wanting to play casually means I have to rank to get into lobbies with humans to have a challenging but honest game, in reality I comp-stomp a game a day and then watch pros.
(not to be mean or anything) You're playing REALLY casually I guess ? Like, how often ?
Here's the thing for years players who are above the average player once a season progress and your skills regress fundamentally the game has not changed at all in the slightest until patch 14.21 coming up. Iron and bronze players get smacked playing normals and arams and have a sense of ego and pride that you have to strip and then you get called toxic and then the line of league punishment falls on you because you have to play with the player that has a 20% in ranked and 15% in other game modes. I left the game in 2019 once I saw the game outside of the core fundamentals have changed and adaptation was instead of a hobby a chore. No offense but if you cannot think of why people want to actually try-hard and get to a competent level of playing the dopamine game that is league of legends you are either getting boosted by someone or have lost touch with what the literal average either returning player or new player experience is. Normals count towards MMR patch 14.15 now requires you to play a mandatory 10 Non-SR games the way normal's work nowadays is if you are not getting boosted or playing with a friend your normal games are your ranked games the placebo is that you can win those games. I was at one point Iron 4 0 Lp as a returning player literally had 20 games where I handheld players and told them simple basic mechanics and basic combo's only to find them not playing ranked not trying to learn the game and just play Arams and Normals or X-Rotating gamemode. I know I am dogshit but entitlement my friend you personally do not know the struggle of coaching in game with a person while you have other players degrading you. I played in the "America's" server and I am just over that game I am playing single-player games at least if I make a mistake I cannot blame no one else but me. I respect your opinion, once you go from playing a whole year to know Ranked resets every 3-4 months 1) I do not have the time to do that 2) Why put my mental health at risk because other players have mental malfunctions 3) "just get good scrub" being thrown in my face literally every game. I respectfully do not think its a way of looking at the game its being unaware of what pride and ego does to a person also. If you look at the tutorial is the same tutorial from the inception of the game you as the player need to find out what your goals are before trying to play a MOBA. Thank you for coming to my TED talk :)
Given how hard it would be to detect 'for funning' in ranked amongst the 'having a bad game', 'mental booming', or 'trying out new tech live and it isn't working out' it seems a problem not worth the effort of trying to solve.
The crux of the issue seems to be people's time (which is our most(?) valuable resource). 3 games is effectively 2.5-3 hours for me, which is basically my entire evening after the kids go to bed, so you better believe league is a major opportunity cost for me. The sense that 'casual' people are deliberately or selfishly wasting the 'try hard's' time is understandable, never going to be specifically enforcable. Establishing a culture that respects other people's time generally and has the emergeant property of people treating ranked appropriately seems the only way to go, but that is bigger than league of legends.
Never going to be perfect. I have friends that manifestly don't give a fig about other people's time, but my sense is that enough people do that the state of the game is ok. I endure a lot more griefing than I'd like, but interpret most of it as simply the result of human chaos in an unforgiving game. copecopecope.
I like your view on that.
I’m not very serious about most games but when I play rank it is generally to HAVE a rank rather than being perma unranked it’s just a thing to do a part of the game I spend my time/money on
59:50 I absolutely understand this, and I'm kinda in this situation haha :)
Quick rewards for individual correct steps is very good for learning. The more delay there is from action to outcome, the worse the learning. So someone playing well and losing 3 games will have less learning responsivity. So there is certainly an argument to reward someone for playing well but still losing. But the problems with this idea are obvious, playing for kda instead of winning plays and so on.
I have a response to Crazyn1nja's response on why people publicly show disdain towards League:
This sort of behavior happens in the Genshin Impact community too, where people who no longer play the game (or sometimes still playing) will be vocal about why they no longer play the game and neither should you. However, as opposed to League of Legends Genshin is a casual and simple game with no stakes, far from the stressful and suffocating environment that League has. While I think the difficulty of the game is a factor, I think the bigger factor is that it's just become popular for the public to demonize some games. People just seem to get that hit of dopamine taking smack about League and Genshin because hey that's what everybody is doing so I will do it too.
i mean you’re close. league has had such a larlge playerbase and such high churn that it’s more likely that any given person you’re talking to has played and ditched league, and probably for similar reasons. it’s a crowd pleaser bc it’s a common experience to have bounced off the game.
I mean.. I kinda agree while disagreeing.. Genshin is still imo a stressful and suffocating game in the sense that there's so much content, so much randomness in the way you're upgrading your characters.. you're forced to play every day if you don't wanna miss a hell lot of ressources.. I think coming back to Genshin after 1 year of break is WAAAY more awful that getting back to League after the same period of time.
You can really find the people who haven’t played sports before when they say “it’s just a game”. If you said that to your teammates on a team, they would rightly hate you for not giving your best effort to win. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well
People that say "it's just a game" are NOT people that are not trying to win.
That's because people are insulting this guy, because they think that he was not good enough, so it's just a way of getting people back down to reality.
Good job guys,this episode was awesome.
this is probably the best thing about league
I pretty much only play aram but I still love yalls podcast. I want to try ranked eventually but I only have time for like 1-2 games a day
Shout out to lil' Timmy
"TIMMY!"
the answer to this is obviously yes.... the amount of people I play bronze games with that say, "who cares if it's my first time playing this champ, it's iron," is disconcerting. literally que ARAM, or non-ranked, if you just want to fuck around. It literally makes no sense on any level for any reason to que ranked if you aren't trying to climb.
those stats are only for the play in stage (in the main event the most ban is aurora)
i disagree 1:06:15, unless you were just referring to the context of the perceived expectation.
teammates admitting their mistake is one of the most refreshing things.
it doesn't really do anything but it mentally clears someone's suspicion of why a play went wrong and removed lingering distrust.
and I think when you apologize, you're also doing it for yourself.
if you ignore accepting responsibility for a mistake, it's like you're refusing to acknowledge that it's something you need to improve on it for the future
if the league community just said "my bad" and "all good" more often, the game would be amazing
though it does happen where teammates just say "yeah it is your fault"
Yeah for sure !
I agree with you.. even though I mostly play with the /mute all
I don't know, the Nathan podcast sounds pretty good.
YES. I also think there should be a requirement to not be able to first time champions there and even adjustments to autofill
You're absolutely not realising how it is absolutely unrealistic.
On the topic of “Serious” play. I’m a diamond top lane player.
I recently made an account to play ADC it is currently in ~plat 1 MMR. I will queue up and try to win and perform well most games. That being said as I’m learning the role I have occasional bad games and sometimes try champions I do not have a ton of experience on.
Maybe it’s not extremely respectful to pick new champions in ranked,but when players who have 500-1000 games at the same rank and are 600-800 LP below me decide to write a masters thesis on how the game state is entirely my fault while blatantly making mistakes in their own gameplay it grinds my gears.
Im completely willing to type a “myb” , “can win” and plenty of other things, but when these are just met with personal attacks I’m WAY more likely to respond with toxic behavior than I would be on my main, because genuinely I do not care about my Smurf adc account as much as my main account.
YTA
It’s completely fine that you feel that way. I was trying to further elucidate the point that people will always have different levels of care and intensity about any particular issue/thing/game/conflict ect.
I play to win. I’m just pointing out a phenomena I’ve personally experienced: that when the stakes are not as high for me my tolerance for others poor behavior goes down and my willingness to barrel through intolerable bullshit is much lower.
I try to win and it is not a bought account I hand leveled it playing ARAMs and normal games with my friends. If learning a new role makes me an ass so be it.
@@Mike-McG it’s not about that, it’s about you picking champs you don’t know how to play and then being mad at your teammates for typing at you because you have more LP ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ROLE on your main. That’s narcissistic. If you first time an adc in platinum one, get stomped, and their adc takes over the game then why should your team be okay with that? Should they flame you? No. But you can see why they would be mad
@@kaleidoscope942😂
As long as you dont first time a champion its fine. If you know what the champion does and how to play it for the most part, then great. Being "good at it" is a completely different thing that comes with time. As long as your trying to win, it doesnt matter. Playing 100 draft games is not going to change anything. End of the day you need to play ranked to get better. Its more about not trolling for no reason. Picking stuff like lee sin adc taric support for the first time ever in ranked for example. That stuff is unacceptable.
I know this is a bit old now but on the casual ranked players i feel like its partially the reward of trying to get better and partially the amount of players that just dont try at all in normals or do absolutly crazy stuff that makes no sense
you guys should check Devin Nash ( former CEO of CLG). he recent talked about the esports business, might be a fun watch
Absolutely mindblowing take from entitled high elo players who play the game or coach 10 hours a day. Most people dont have 10 hours to spend on this game. Its not entitled to expect people to do their best to win. You might have the hours to overcome all the variance, but most people do not. If i invest 45 minutes of my day into a game and one person decides to first time Aatrox top as a support leona OTP you are legit wasting everyones time. Time MOST people do not have. I know what the response will be "well then just dont play LoL!" I love the game when its played properly. I just happen to think it should be played with some goal in mind. If i was on a basketball team, and I was a really really good 3 point shooter playing on a team, and my team kept passing me the ball at 3 point range, but I just took the ball and tried to dunk despite being 170 cm tall. You best believe my team is asking me what the actual fuck im doing.
"Serious" sounds like yet another loaded term lol
The problem becomes who gets to define serious? To Faker, serious means a 30 minute warmup, clean eating, & $500/mo in supplements. This is a stupid convo to honestly even have because the entire convo is predicated on ego.
no, it means they want to win, not run it down and leave the game in 10 minutes.
@@andrewkelley9405 That's a hell vast minority.
So true xd
Long shot, but I have a question. Am I wrong as a mid laner for not following my lane opponent to plays in the river when my wave is crashing into my turret and/or I don't have mana to effectively fight? Almost every game my lane opponent roams with priority and makes a play and my jungle starts spam pinging me. Should I be trying to follow more?
I think there was a video from Curtis on not over-compensating (can't remember the exact name), from my memories it touches on your problem as well
I don't think you need to be a SERIOUS player, but you do need to take it seriously when you queue up.
YES.
(i still have to watch the 2 hours video, just replying to the title)
Now it makes sense why jungle is the least understood role. The biggest stage with the most eyes is completely unrelated to actual jungle gameplay.
People watch pro play and assume that's what a jungler should aspire to be, but that gameplay is gonna get you hardstuck pulling your hair out in about 2 weeks.
And of course pro junglers sack 3 camps just to cover their ADC so they can base 1 wave later, in soloqueue that's just letting go of the steeringwheel and hoping you don't crash
ive stopped taking ranked serious because at this point, its doesnt feel like it matters. ive grinded and grinded just to end up at a lower rank than i was a month prior more times than i can remember. I find myself watching "im quitting league" videos more often these days.
I actually don't care as much about *serious* players as much as I really wish I didn't have to deal with lvl 30-100 accounts. Most of the time that I have a really horrible game experience it's due to someone on an alt account that does not care about the game or if their account stays unbanned. I feel like ranked should be like clash and should require a phone number or some kind of account verification.
I would pay $20 one time for "prime" matchmaking like in CS2 just to keep the smurfs out. People won't have 5 accounts if they have to pay $20 every time. It would also cutback on boosting.
I don't have any problem with people playing ranked casually in like silver. It's just a bunch of kids and casuals anyway at that rank. It's when people randomly troll pick in high MMR lobbies that's annoying. In a masters plus game, no body wants some kid going 0-10 first timing a champion after waiting for 10-20min for the queue. It's just a waste of time for everyone involved. Especially when that game would have been completely normal if they had just picked a champion they could actually play in the first place. It's no different than getting a boosted player in a game.
No. Its the same for everyone in every rank. Just because you see silvers as casuals and trolls doesn't make it the truth. Someone who's much better then you very likely sees what you're doing as trolling as well. And that if you'd take the game more seriously you'd understand the concepts they do. Being less informed, or less skilled doesn't mean you're a kid or a casual.
@@canadabiss silvers are either casual/trolls or don't want to learn the game
@charlybessette9818 Not at all. Again, just because someone learns slower, is newer, etc etc doesn't mean they're trolling. They just aren't as skilled as you are.
@@canadabiss I don't consider "being bad" trolling. I mean like actual intentional trolls. It's way easier to buy or make a new account to troll people in silver than masters. There are also more likely to be people who just play random champions for fun in ranked like it's a normals game.
Iron-gold are the ranks casual players get before they start taking the game more seriously. There's nothing wrong with that and it's likely that's what Riot intended those ranks for. It's expected that there will be some people in those ranks who take the game seriously but just find it difficult to climb.
I started out as a casual silver player myself for years until I started getting coaching, watching more educational content, and reviewing my games so I could climb to diamond+ ranks. Most players can only get so far by just playing the game as there're a lot of unintuitive mechanics that need to be learned from others.
@@charlybessette9818 or like your new to the game
Imagine calling someone "entilted" for requesting from other people minimum lvl of decency in competetive setting. Holy shit! You want play casual? You play normal. You want to sweat? You play rank. That's why there are 2 separate types of queue (and aram). So the people with at least average IQ and minimum lvl decency will choose appropriately to their goals and liking. It's simple as that. There is not much more to it.
But currently people, community made this very straight forward line, absolutly blur. Now you "need" play normals like you would play ranks because otherwise you are getting completly stomped 0/15, no mercy type of shit, where in ranks you got people that are playing for fun doing whatever nonsense and playing the worst shit possible. And the argument that if they are playing for fun then they have to be better than you if they still pull it off to be at same lvl like you... TRUEEEEEE! Especially with past 2 splits of absolut elo inflation the entire rank ladder! With the game quality so dogshit that game were decided in first 5 mins of the game because (only if you are lucky) one of the lanes is already 0/2 (or 0/4 on bot) before first jungle clear, spampinging for help or spamming on chat to FF. PlAyInG GaMe FoR fUn. And I'm talking about Emerald only. And sure, maybe I'm not good enough, I never said I'm pro player or anything but it's pretty disrespectul if I'm trying my best to climb and some moron queue up rank just to have fun and to make my efforts in this 30-40 mins game completly pointless and wasted.
And this example about work... holy fuck! Yeah, but no. At work you are not tied to anyone if you want to "climb". If someone works on the same possition for 12 years, then it's enough for him. He doesn't drag you down by any means. In League... yeah, nobody can drag you down in a team game, RIGHT? Also, something worth a note, if someone is working somewhere for 12 years doing "bare minimum" it means he's doing what he needs to do, when he needs to do it and how he needs to do it without making other co-workers work harder because of him and his incompetence. People that play ranks for fun are like those who are comming to work and doing everything in their power to dodge as much of their responsibilities as they can without being noticed. I worked with people like that and I can tell you for a fact, there is nothing more infuriating than those morons because nobody ask them to rip their veins out for this workplace (maybe except employer) but to have minimum lvl of decency to not cause others to work harder, because shit needs to be done one way or another.
If anything this type of players are "entilted".
Not every off meta pick is a troll, and there are people of every rank and elo that make off meta stuff work.
Why ranked : Because you are chasing the thrill of the competetiveness
I hate that "playing random shit" gets put into the casual playing ranked argument, sometimes the "weird" pick & builds work just as well as the meta staples, and even when they don't ranked is the only way to seriously find out, like you can feel you're doing fine in normal because the plays are more cheesy there
I'm assuming "random shit" as in champions or builds they don't even know how to play. Stuff they haven't even tried one time before. If you've practiced your off meta build, go for it, dude.
there's weird stuff that works, and then there's stuff like jg yuumi.
@@andrewkelley9405 It's not always as obvious, like yuumi top doesn't sound much better but at some point in time it was legit viable
Other examples are top smite sona and janna that without hindsight would look as troll as pure river shen when in reality were so degenerate they needed to be nerfed, just like duo jungle funnel
I interpret "playing random shit" to mean playing champs they don't normally play as opposed to playing off-meta. Champ mastery is so important to consistent performances. You get someone in your game whose MMR is based on their 90% Akali games and then they pick their 20% winrate Yasuo which they've played 5/200 games.
@@ultimatemacchia yeah but you know it, I know it, when you see ADC Nunu lock in yuumi with their duo, they are up to some noob stomper or get stomped BS.
Yes there are picks that can work, but almost exclusively it’s someone who’s angry and trying random shit
It's just as that comment say. If I play casual, my rank reflex my level playing casually. You're at my casual level. That's just how it is. (minus trolling OC, Casual doesn't mean literally trolling). I play in rank mode because rank give me miles better match making. Play normal and met literally troll or stomped by far higher rank player isn't fun
It's like can I say you need to play 3 games a day, small champ pool, review your mistake, etc. Without that you ruins my game
It's just, sure. But even if you ruins my game I have no right to tell you how you play
True !
The problem with casual players in ranked is that norms aren't competitive enough for those players that want more balanced game but still want to have fun so they bring their for fun random play into ranked.
League can either drop their 15 casual modes and just have solo duo be the basic mode everyone plays in. Or they can tighten up mmr match making in norms.
basically this. I'm at a point where I don't care much about climbing but normals are shit quality ff15 almost everytime so I just end up queing rank for "real" games
@@bravepotatoe7513 Yeah, FF15 is really happening too much in normals, they don't care if we scale better.. they just wanna go next to try to shine in the next game..
Tbh, I disagree with a lot of these points. Riot should make effort to improve game quality, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to staple some minimal mastery requirement to stop random first timing in ranked. Clearly not everyone can maximally try hard all the time, but at the same time, eventually the behavior is literally griefing. Players that have extremely high variance, frankly decrease game quality and Riot could do things to clamp the amount of variance these players introduce. The most egregious example of high variance players would be Smurfs who bot to artificially depress their rank.
I also strongly disagree with the argument that it all comes out in the wash eventually. It’s technically true, but I think the reality for most people in your programs is that they’re busy professionals. I have infinite other options for how I spend my time, at some point some percentage of non games will make the game just flatly a waste of my time, irrespective of whether it comes out in the wash eventually. Now obviously it hasn’t crossed that line yet as I’m still here, but it’s definitely close.
While I agree with your sentiment this will never happen because its too bad for business (selling skins). If skins were only purchased by mains the game probably wouldn't be sustainable - and/or some champs would just never get skins. Placing a barrier on playing whatever champ in ranked might drastically hurt sales. *New Sett skin released- a player considers buying it but then realizes they'd have to play 10 normal games to be able to unlock Sett in ranked. They pass on buying the skin.*
And how many games would you require before you can take a champ to ranked? Phreak is balancing champs around people having 300 games Mastery. Someone playing their 11th game on a champ is a MASSIVE liability in ranked unless its a super easy champ. Are you going to require 20 games? 50 games? Anything less and you aren't really accomplishing much. Then there's people like me with 10 accounts. I have the mastery for the champs I'm playing but it won't show on every account. I make an account and only spam Mordekaiser on it. Then I pick Singed and someone says "look at this guy ruining my game first timing Singed" when Singed is my most played champ with thousands of games.
I’d argue that as the game’s population ages, as a whole they’re going to have less patience for this sort of thing and that eventually the number of folks quitting will negatively impact skin sales.
TBH, I don’t know what the right number is. I think 20 is not unreasonable. I know phreak balances around 300. I fully acknowledge that isn’t a practical threshold for rank unlock. That being said, the man himself has repeatedly said the most predictive factors for being able to predict game outcomes are champion difficulty and mastery. The corollary of this is that playing difficult champions with little enough mastery is literally griefing. That’s not even my opinion, that’s just the logical consequence of the info Riot has given us.
Of course, people need a place to learn and normal games aren’t a perfect environment for learning beyond a certain point exactly because they’re non competitive. I’m fine with someone playing nidalee in my game if they’ve got 20 games on it. It’s definitely gonna be a drag on the team, but at least they have some commitment and it’s not literal first timing.
Regarding the multiple account thing, I actually think that’s a benefit. Imo, it’s better for the game if playing on multiple accounts has a higher barrier to entry. Smurfing and boosting is fairly common and increasing the cost of business for those things doesn’t bother me. Ditto the folks who rage and run it down on alts to vent. Admittedly, there are valid use cases for alts, I have different accounts for different roles, but I don’t mind unlocking the champions more than once for that use case.
@@huathebard What your saying just isnt realistically feasible. People have real lives outside of league. And like you said, people have infinite ways to spend their time. Why would they spend it playing 20 boring draft games just to play a champion in ranked? Even 3 or 5 would be too much.
I get its annoying, but honestly. Just as many people with 30 mastery on their champions hard int games regularly. Its not just people who have never played the champs before. Its more common for them sure, but ive had so many people with 20 30 even 50 mastery be complete trash at their champ. Its more of the games issue and how hard it snowballs. And how much you as a single player lack agency to carry the game.
@@huathebard I think your response is quite reasonable. However, I question your assumption that the aging population aren't the one's for funning champs in ranked. This is the exact demographic who have jobs and kids and take League less seriously. Its the same one's who think they know how to play every champ because they've played them here or there over the years.
^^ This is exactly where I'm at. I've been sim-racing because it's just a more efficient use of my time and skills that doesn't rely on 9 other people to take it seriously. There's also just too much fluff in League. We have almost 200 champions (the number is still increasing), the item system and my position gets changed every year (jungle), and it's honestly more of a learning stack than my professional job of being a Web Developer.
Not to mention, they decided that keeping people addicted is important. Tencent wants to keep you trapped in the game and not have a real life, so they require you to play ranked year-round now because your rank gets reset 4 times a year (3-splits plus the season turn) without giving us any downtime because they completely removed preseason. It's just a bit ridiculous. The people that are in high elo genuinely no life the game to be good at it. I'm over putting that much effort into a game that has become this poor in quality.
The game isn't optimized for modern PCs and hasn't been overhauled except for the map like 7 years ago. If they actually prioritized the competitive scene and worked on quality-of-life fixes over pumping out skins, tft content, and game modes that will only see the light of day for a week at a time -- maybe I would stay. But it's clear where the intentions are for League and it's not in a direction that benefits eSports, it's the same exact shit that destroyed franchises like CoD. And who takes CoD seriously as a competitive game these days? That's the path League is on.
@11:50 i hardcore disagree with leblanc, she is the absolute opposite of a plug and play champion :D but every other champ is accurate yes!
Most people don’t want to improve at the game. They just want to have fun thus preferring to play random shit fucking up their mmr in the process and then they complain about their team feeding all the time. They will blame the game for pairing them with feeders providing them an easy excuse for why they are hardstuck.
From time to time they will focus and drop the craziness (e.g. playing multiple roles and playstyles) finding minimal success because of their mmr and they will go rant about how Riot is an indie company or whatever. But deep inside I believe they much prefer playing against worse opponents with whom they can play idk fiddlesticks ghost/ignite toplane and win rather than playing against higher mmr players, having to focus and risk losing.
I strongly believe that’s the majority of the player base.
I dont like aurora beeing able to build so tanky. The kit would have been fine as an assasin but as this sort of squirmisher ap bruiserish type the mobility paired with the insane potential of the ult is another questionable design. I predict that once people mastered her she will become very dominant in high elo and pro play.
I liked the way you approached the "serious players only" topic. Since you struggled to come up with more reasons why people might play ranked casually, here are my thoughts:
1. Riot wants people to play ranked.
At the start of every split, Riot shoves a big popup notification in players faces when they log in for the first time. That notification tells literally every single player to go and play ranked. It even has a queue up button right there! So why wouldn't you do that? I haven't played ranked yet this split, so I can still see that message in my ranked tab, and guess what. Nowhere does it tell you to take ranked seriously. Nowhere does it tell you to play to win. The word "win" doesn't appear anywhere. What does appear in that message however is ...
2. Ranked rewards.
I find it kind of funny that your view of League is so diffrent from mine - and likely the majority of players - that this didn't even cross your mind. Every ranked game, win or lose, gives you split points. Every game brings you closer to some kind of reward. Loot, emotes, icons and of course the victorious skin. All you need to do is play ranked. About 120 games at 50% winrate, which is quite possibly on the high end of SR games a casual player will play across a split. So what will it be? 120 rankeds that give you a shiny new skin and some other stuff, or 120 normals that give you nothing? Not a hard choice to be honest.
And make no mistake, the whole split point reward system and the ability to earn the victorious skin even if you are at the bottom of the ladder - through sheer quantity of games - is a recent addition to League of Legend. Riot made that change deliberately. They know what they are doing. They want casual players to play ranked, otherwise they would not have added those incentives. Otherwise there would be a warning when you queue for ranked that tells you to treat it seriously. There would be a formalized solo queue contract. There is not.
And if that bothers you, take solace in the fact that the system works. If you are truly better, or are even just constanly improving, you will rise above the rest. Eventually. In a way, casuals are to ranked what Margit is to Elden Ring. The first challange. The gatekeepers of the higher ranks telling us to git gud or put our foolish ambitions to rest. And we are all here because we want to git gud, are we not? So saddle up my fellow tarnished, we queue at dawn (or dusk, whenever you have time).
No early split coaching talk?
If the game literally makes you sign an agreement that says you’ll respect your teammates and try to win when you first make an account, I think it’s reasonable to assume that ranked is the serious game mode where people are actively trying to win
A cat is not equal of a dog, but it's skeim ❤
At the end of the day is just a game, play what you want and the way you want. If your style doesnt work, eventually you will go down in the ladder and games will be more casual. Just dont take this as a job
You say it's not possible or worth thinking about but we could easily change the system to be role specific at the very least, a diamond 4 midlaner randomly deciding to swap to master yi jungle and losing 10 games in a row should not be possible and is borderline griefing. You talk so much about how important champion mastery is and to me this seems like a natural conclusion to consider.
I really to get more involved with MLA Ive been paying for like 4 months but it just seemed a little overwhelming at first theres a bunch of stuff when you first join. Does anyone know can i just use the MLA program to get 1on1 coaching VOD reviews. I want to climb at least gold but have been struggling in bronze. And now i placed I2 in promos 😢 made it to b3 so far.
Just show up to reviews man
Aurora is a top lane champ.
There probably casual in high mmr aswell i remember seeing Dyrus in diamond and Sneaky stuck in low master all ex pros lol.
I'm super busy with my job these days so I can't play many games during the week anymore. I still casually play high diamond/low masters games on the weekends for fun. I can't enjoy normals because it feels too easy.
I always play random and I play intensely and trying to 🏆. I am not ever serious though, it's a video game
if you don't think it's worth taking seriously then you could just play norms
IMO, Riot should make you have to win 10 games with a champ in set position in order for you to be able to pick them in ranked.
My normal MMR is too high I'm better of playing ranked
Hey there’s a mistake you guys made. Normal games have their own hidden MMR so if you play normals enough you should be matched to similarly skilled players
Also some of us just feel like seeing what rank we can achieve without tryharding. For me ranked and normals are essentially the same so I’d rather see a rank, even if I’m not tryharding to climb
Ranked should be an only personal way to raise the ladder, DuoQ with someone with half a brain can make any noob climb easily to at least Gold if they play some no-brain comps botlane or jungle/top or jungle/support
I practice two hours a day, winning and losing happens. It is what it is.
Of course ranked is for serious players only. Even norms should be taken seriously. Norms is where you can practice champs and experiment but you still should take the game seriously. League isnt a game that is fun to just mess around in. There are other games for that.
I think ranked shouldn't always be just about winning and climbing, but learning. So many people get hard stuck in a rank because they stop trying to improve and instead just spam games and hope they get carried to a higher ranked. Most of the time, people play their best champs, so it's the best way to learn the matchups against people for own rank before having to play against better and better opponents. It's why boosted players drop so quickly. If they can't lane into opponents 4-6 ranks above then, then they lose. Someone who gets there by slowly learning and improving will have that solid basis to stay competitive.
We shouldn't let the impatience and jealousy of other people's ranks distract us from what we can learn in every match win or lose. Wanting to improve helps people climb, but wanting to climb doesn't help people improve.
Not gonna lie i think everyone has locked in a new champ in ranked but that shouldn't be the case and ranked should be ultra competitive so you should be using your best champs (2-4)
@@randysangarr No. Just, nope.
You should not be allowed to pick champ unless you have 20 games played in draft and over 50% winrate
It would kill all smurfing and griefing
Casual matches have terrible match making. I'll be silver matching someone who has hit diamond. Normal games are not fair or fun.
5:27 I will actually have to disagree here. Aurora is definitely more attractive. Just look at those ears.
How come they are ignoring the brand and shyvana that both have 3 picks while talking about how carry junglers cant be played in competitive?
Yes and players should be reported by all your teammates when they ruin champ select, ignore a quality ping, or a jungle and support taking cs from someone who out scales them.
My old argument for playing ranked "casually" is that the normal game experience is so lame. Oh you're losing by 5 deaths at 17 yet no objectives have been taken, ff. Oh someone died in level 1 invade, remake. I enjoy killing nexus by using my auto attacks on it instead of watching someone give up.
Yeah, or you solo queue into normals only to face some sweaty 5 stack dominating the game. When I don't want to play ranked on my main, I just play on a Smurf and practice different lanes and champs. It's so much more fun than trying to solo queue normals, or even worse a quick play game.
Just wanted to point out this is a League of Legends specific issue. No other comp games play like this if you want to play norms to learn. They simply shouldn't let you FF a game with only 2-3 votes.
Ranked doesn't even have an equivalent to real sports. Like there is no League where anyone can play and eventually go pro. Pretty sure just Chess has this outside of video games.
.... Yes it does?? League progression in normal sports looks like this -- youth --> varsity (HS) --> collegiate --> professional (which could be split into amateur --> semi pro --> pro). It's obviously more age-based because there are more physical requirements compared to video games which are more based on strategy and hand-eye coordination only. League of Legends has a similar progression of Bronze --> Challenger, then challenger players get picked up and put into semi-professional (development) teams --> LCS/Pro.
If you are good enough, you can 100% just played ranked and eventually go pro.
Pretty sure Nathan’s correct and it’s pronounced Gair-hardt
The Reddit person probably had a teammate go negative on their team, then chalked it up to "This person doesn't care/this person doesn't want to win." I agree with the overall opinion, but I feel like he is coming at this in bad faith.
I think you are missing the point of aurora. Your whole discussion about her mid lane makes no sense whatsoever. She is a top laner and no melee can walk up to her pre-3 especially at level 1. Curtis got to focused on mid lane after going through on the stats page she got picked 4 times top and 1 mid. I would edit out the discussion at the beginning because it is off base and not relevant to any aspect of the game.
Normal games have mmr. Its just hidden.
So many people in low rank don't give a crap. These dirt players clog up rank to not take the competition seriously because it's just a game. Yes, it's just a game but you're suppose to play rank to WIN, not bs with a nonsense mentality like "it's bronze" using that as an excuse to play like dirt. Using "its silver" as an excuse to refuse to use the ping system to give your teammates map information for everyones benifit because you think its annoying to spam it.
No. but i shouldnt either be matched in masters with a 20 loss in a row 0 20 guy
Should ranked be for serious players only? Yes, next question.
Hey Guys i loved the Episode, im rank 11 Skarner in NA (Watersrad#Na1) you guys say that Skarner seems weak in the mid game, but that tends to be where I find the most success is by punishing enemy, positioning, and using my E/Ult for Peel rather than an Engage. Watching worlds you see Skarner get caught out a few times by trying to engage with his E. I think it's a good engage tool in the 1v1,2v2,3v3 But it's two punishing to miss where it's better to not use unless engaged on first. I would love to hear more about how you guys view in the solo Que love the videos please keep it up!
Tough pill to swallow : people that dont take ranked as serious as you are still trying just as hard to win the game.
I've never seen someone contradict themselves so confidently... sure effort is relative to the individual, but there will be plenty of players in your ranked queues that aren't trying lol. I've had bot laners AFK in fountain after inting twice in lane, they must be trying just as hard as me, right? Those top laners that are still trading with the 6-0, enemy Darius after getting grand-canyon gapped, are they trying?
Tough pill to swallow: the color red is green, and ur mom is my dad.
Also regarding the casual players in ranked. If someone is for funning it (not smurfing) and not purposely running it down, who am I to tell them they cant play?
It's up to me to get better at the game, my team on average is irrelevante
the game is riged, ranked is unplayable
people need to wake up , it forces 50% wr
Ranked can be for everyone, but not if everyone shares the same LP gain/loss. If I lose because someone locks in first time Karthus jg and goes 0/24/5, that's fine as long as they're not eligible to be in my games going forward. That player needs an additional -20 LP. IMO, this would fix 90% of the frustration with solo Q overnight.
Are yalls parents italian?
The thing is if you see everyone not serious and you being punished for being serious you don't have a healthy environment to learn. You should go back to this topic but answer: how to improve regardless your surroundings.
What about someone who has a busy life and can't dedicate time to improvement? They play at a Plat level and are ok playing at a Plat level. The fun in playing League is the competition. They just want to be matched with other players of the same skill level who are also trying their hardest and picking the champs they know.
YES. Did not watch, but you play to win if you don’t want to tryhard go play qp or Aram or botgames idc. Just don’t play ranked
I'm on a losing streak. I'm in Iron. I was climbing as support and super proud of myself. But support mains really have to be patient we climb slower than everyone else, it's just a fact of life. This tri-split system really hurts us the most. For example I had a game where I got an S- on Lulu we tried our hardest. But the teams early game synergy was trash and our teemo top ended up going 0/5/0 and leaving. But then I played a game with lux that day and my ADC was an iron support main and didn't like my play style so she just gave up and was pretty much just afk typing on the keyboard complaining and barely playing. I went 10/10/5 and she went 3/6/5 or something with like 70 cs less than their carry. We ended up playing around her rather than with her and won that game. It was pretty clutch. I still lost about 50 LP and am in iron 5 again. But I'm playing later than I'd like to and there's less serious people on at that time.
Either way I know I can always climb back up. It's kind of pathetic that I'm just hoping to get to bronze but like the statistics stay, a good support has less impact on winning than other roles but a good support has a massive impact on not losing. That's the definition of the role imo. You can always expand on what supports do but "Good supports help the team not to lose." is probably the most simple definition you can give. It's the same for any MOBA too. in Dota there's a lot more interactions with the map and team and items but your dob is still "Keep your team from not losing as much as you can."
This is just my wisdom of the game. I could probably take the game much more seriously and climb easier but right now life is busy so I play when I can. And that's the best I can do.
Personally, people who queue for ranked after not playing league for 4 months are just inconsiderate trash to me. If they first time a champion in ranked or even worse, lock in something hard like first time Lee Sin while autofilled jungle? If they play 70 unique champions a split? They are just selfish people who don't care about the enjoyment of others. "What's the matter? It's a video game, am I not supposed to be playing for fun?" Sure, man. That's fine. Just make sure you don't limitlessly ruin other people's fun for the sake of your own.
Play normals for fun or a single player game for fun. Don't walk onto a basketball court and then start throwing the basketball outside of the court "for fun" and then complain when people are upset after you ruin the fun for everyone else on your team. Nobody wants you here. Nobody on the team likes you. They're just not speaking up because Riot will punish them for it.
On top of it all, these casual players are often more toxic than others and will just int even harder if you confront them, so it's better to stay quiet and try to carry them. Reporting them after doesn't do anything. We just have to tolerate them because this is the culture Riot cultivated. It's sickening, but it's the reality we have to deal with.
(Rank 11 Skarner Otp Watersrad#NA1) with the slower clear Speed Skarner it is tough for counter jungling, but the E makes a great escape to a lot of people. Don't realize it goes as far as Zac E which means you can go from Baron pit to Krugs or Red Buff. If I see the enemies on the opposite side of the jungle i will take obj in baron pit and use my E to take Krugs and steal enemy jungle much faster and safer than others would. I hope this helps because he can dominate in punishing enemys not taking camps off timers