Is character balance the real matchmaking problem?
I had this thought the other day when I got into a game with a Shaco player. That’s not really a story in and of itself – Shaco is appearing in almost every game since Zileas labeled him OP. The story is more in the way this Shaco decided to play.
Like most Shaco players, ours ran off to golem first thing to set himself up for the rest of the game. He was packing Smite, so I figured he’d spend a little time in the jungle and then, as most Shaco (and most jungle) players tend to do, hit up the lane that was pushed furthest for some early game killing. That wasn’t the case. Despite my pleading (and explanations that our lanes were suffering/being pushed and really needed to be ganked), Shaco continued jungling and only offered a phrase that completely blew my mind: “The fucking point of jungle Shaco is not to gank.”
I…was…floored. I understand that the primary advantage of a jungler is the exp. bonus for a teammate, but the secondary – and only secondary by a tiny margin – advantage is the element of surprise and opportunity to gank in any lane, thereby increasing the experience given to the ganked lane as well. My first reaction was, wow, I should not be paired with a player who so fundamentally misunderstands the game. I realized, though, that this could just as easily be a result of Shaco’s imbalance as it is the player’s ignorance.
I don’t know what your hero spread looks like, but mine is pretty wide. I play a lot of different champions, despite the bursts of new champions around patch time. I don’t think that’s the case for a lot of players, though, and I definitely don’t think that’t the case for the Shaco player in question.
This guy clearly misunderstood Shaco on a level that only someone fairly new to Shaco would. If he had been playing, say, Ashe – one of the strongest characters in the game – he could easily storm his way to a bunch of wins. That doesn’t make him good at the game, though. That makes him good at playing Ashe. The problem is that when he tries to transition to a toon like Shaco, most of his skills are lost. There isn’t the same kiting, the stun, the range advantage, the necessity to stay and farm. The game is almost entirely different, but the average player might not have that understanding about that game.
When I first started playing LoL I really liked that you could slowly build up and unlock champions. I’m starting to realize, though, that the champion unlocks coupled with the rune system means that most players will choose just a small number of champions to master and then fill out their rune pages accordingly. I actually played with a guy the other day that didn’t know Nidalee’s cat form skills don’t cost mana.
I would blame this on the character selection system, but I don’t think it would really be a problem if the characters were more balanced. Players would be less likely to change to a perceived OP toon and more likely to choose toons that they truly enjoy rather than the flavor of the month champions. Granted, not every toon can be balanced with every other toon, but when toons like Ashe and Ezreal stand as high above the pack as they have, it keeps players from being as widely familiar with the game as they could be, if only because the potentially or probably successful champion list is shorter than it could be.
I hear ya. The way incentives and efficiency principles align for Riot’s business model, people will continue to do just that. I think it’s an amazing model and is perhaps a unique (as in singular) solution to continued growth.
That said, I agree: Different characters means an entirely different game. I think that’s also why people pick one character and stick with it – with a game this competitive and complex, it’s hard to know the limits of a character until you’ve played it a while. Knowing all the characters, imo, is an end-game thing to do; it’s weirdly like learning alts in WoW after playing through for content.
I’ve also had the opposite happen: people who don’t learn any characters or purchase any runes, and have a blank (or near blank) rune page but dozens of characters unlocked.
Since a person’s “effective” ELO changes from character to character varying on experience, I’m skeptical about how effective matchmaking tolerates experimentation. If it adjusted for a person playing a different character, and then pitted one team against another, that’d be one thing; the way it is now, I think if people try different characters, it’s best to do it in practice games.
ps. The rudeness of players in this game constantly floors me.
A few things with very little cohesion:
Wow, I thought you were light years ahead of me elo-wise but I’ve never run into a Shaco that stupid. Hell, I love to jungle wit Amumu and once I pick up my bandage toss (at 3), I’ll look to see if there are any ganks available or lanes that need help. Once I hit 6 I always look to gank and push.
Second: I have a couple of primary champs but I love experimenting and lately I’ve been trying Tristana/Annie/Garen and believe it or not I am a terrible terrible carry.
I play tank/support well but I don’t play cautiously enough (I need to juke/kite more … I think) as a carry and I end up dying (sometimes it snowballs). I’m trying to play them more in order to learn but every time I play Amumu/Morgana/Nasus I push my elo back up and feel sorry for my next team. The real problem however is that I’ll get into a game, grab trist and realize we have no tanks so I’ll switch to Cho/Amumu and boom I’ve no ability to learn to play other champs.
Runes: I love that my magic pen,mp5/lvl, CDR and flat HP work great on Morgana but they just don’t transition well to certain champs. I’ve finally got a full set of ArmPen reds for phys but I still need a ton of other stuff for tanks and yet more for carries.
In short you almost need a base elo + map elo adjustment + Char Experience adjustment (first 10 games) and I have no idea how to tweak runes into it since that just seems like something people would abuse.
.94b: New path today and
-I love that they nerfed Janna again.
-The Jax nerf seems almost like overkill.
-The smite change makes me sad (a bonus of jungling is that smite can easily drop one of Heimers towers from range if I need to and Heimer is in 9/10 games right now). But I assume it’s focused on the Jitb/Golem strat???
-I wonder how much they tested teh energy runes with Shen.
-Anivia buff is totally unnecessary.
-Heimer grenade CD change will make heimer even scarier. The QQing about the turrets dmg to towers doesn’t nerf him nearly enough for that.
-Kayle… I understand the duration change but not the longer cooldown.
Finally
“Changed all aura-granting items so that clones will not grant a double bonus to the aura holder. Clones with aura items otherwise interact the same with other champions.”
Sorry to all you Shaco mains…
Great analogy with the WoW alts – I totally agree.
Janna didn’t get nerfed here, man. She got a small early game buff (shorter cd on Gale for the first 4 ranks). EDIT: I can’t read. I have this reversed. She did get nerfed.
I’m glad for the Ezreal/Ashe nerfs. I don’t really care about the Jax thing much as I don’t play too much TT these days. Shaco needed nerfed but he’ll still be crazy strong. Just no more solo Baron so early (he can still do it, no doubt).
I’m shocked they gave heimer’s nade a buff. It was already a pain in the ass to watch him shred towers with nade. The turret nerf definitely doesn’t account for this change.
Yeah, Kayle’s pretty bad again. That ult just needs to be remade.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I dont know if some of the champs really need to be nerf or is just the players that need to learn the basics. I’ve been writing a guide of basics aspects of LOL and I looking forward to finish it.
Felathar, I’d love to read your guide. In fact I’d love to be able to show something like that to some friends that tried LoL and quit right away because they sucked initially (learning when to retreat/initiate is a crucial skill).
nice to ear that Zebano. I’ll be finishing it after my exams and maybe you can correct my grammar mistakes XD I’ll have the draft in a couple of weeks if everything goes well.
Yeah, I’ve found that getting new people into the game is a pain. The learning curve is not forgiving – and neither are teammates. All the smurfs running around don’t help things either.
Well… I have to disagree with you on not being able to practice. every new draft that comes out I play a couple of practice matches with the heroes and then get back to normal games.
Just wish I had enough to unlock twitch. He’s the first hero that I’ve ever had such a good streak with. And not just because he’s pretty easy to play, but because I’ve seen other people play him, and I consistently do much better than them.