Heh, fair enough on Descent, I just remember a lot of time spent playing it over modem (and cursing noisy phone lines). Wasn't aware that LAN was the first class citizen there :)
But league, I was more referring to the standpoint of everyone else on the team, not the one guy with high ping. The one guy is living in a world that's offset a quarter to a half of a second behind everyone else - he can't play better than his ping. 350ms is enough time to blink, dodge a skillshot, and so on. In casual games or lower tier ranked that might not matter or even be noticeable, but get up into Diamond/Challenger? Painful.
What if one's enjoyment of the game is based on their performance and competition (i.e. the people who play in the higher levels of ranked?), rather than vague "happiness"?
I've played enough of the game to know that being stuck in a losing game (yes yes, it's just a game, not the point) sucks. It's awful and inescapable (since quitting hurts your team and penalizes you), and a lot of the time, it happens because of factors completely out of your control, whether that be internet connections, that one guy who just disconnected leaving you down a guy, or that one guy who uses phrases ending in "...or I feed". You enter this system to compete with others, and you're denied the one thing you came there to do (and knowing how long matches can take, perhaps the only time you had to do).
Competition as a system necessarily involves unhappiness on the part of one party.. I know few people who enjoy losing.
You can't seriously believe that..
At the risk of sounding overly snarky, you just said that riot's goal is to maximize happiness. That means removing things used by children to cry about, even if the adults have a legitimate reason for their inclusion. That is the very definition of optimizing to the lowest common denominator.
It is there, it does work..
And yet the new player experience is still awful. I can say this, because as far as League's system is concerned, I am a new player. There's a reason some high 90s percentage of my games are with friends, rather than matchmaking games that actually raise my standings- dealing with the community sucks. People who leave, people who feed, people who just act like jerks.
If there is improvement, it's completely invisible to me. Perhaps the higher ranks have been cleaned up, but the bottom of the pyramid is still godawful.
Comments
Heh, fair enough on Descent, I just remember a lot of time spent playing it over modem (and cursing noisy phone lines). Wasn't aware that LAN was the first class citizen there :)
But league, I was more referring to the standpoint of everyone else on the team, not the one guy with high ping. The one guy is living in a world that's offset a quarter to a half of a second behind everyone else - he can't play better than his ping. 350ms is enough time to blink, dodge a skillshot, and so on. In casual games or lower tier ranked that might not matter or even be noticeable, but get up into Diamond/Challenger? Painful.
What if one's enjoyment of the game is based on their performance and competition (i.e. the people who play in the higher levels of ranked?), rather than vague "happiness"?
I've played enough of the game to know that being stuck in a losing game (yes yes, it's just a game, not the point) sucks. It's awful and inescapable (since quitting hurts your team and penalizes you), and a lot of the time, it happens because of factors completely out of your control, whether that be internet connections, that one guy who just disconnected leaving you down a guy, or that one guy who uses phrases ending in "...or I feed". You enter this system to compete with others, and you're denied the one thing you came there to do (and knowing how long matches can take, perhaps the only time you had to do).
Competition as a system necessarily involves unhappiness on the part of one party.. I know few people who enjoy losing.
At the risk of sounding overly snarky, you just said that riot's goal is to maximize happiness. That means removing things used by children to cry about, even if the adults have a legitimate reason for their inclusion. That is the very definition of optimizing to the lowest common denominator.
And yet the new player experience is still awful. I can say this, because as far as League's system is concerned, I am a new player. There's a reason some high 90s percentage of my games are with friends, rather than matchmaking games that actually raise my standings- dealing with the community sucks. People who leave, people who feed, people who just act like jerks.
If there is improvement, it's completely invisible to me. Perhaps the higher ranks have been cleaned up, but the bottom of the pyramid is still godawful.