I ****ing lol'd. Reaver Drop. Look up the main proponent of it sometime, kkthnx?

Also, there is a difference between upfront complexity and skill complexity. Starcraft difficulty/ learning curve starts out really smooth/ soft, but then has a point where you need to learn a ton to get any better. The thing is though, that point is NOT at the start of learning to play the game, unlike many other games.

League is a lot like that. Fighting games, for comparison, have a MASSIVE immediate skill cliff. To give you an idea of how massive, for anyone who has played Blaz Blue, notice how long the tutorial is? That's to make you an acceptable player. If you can't do all of that, and very, very well, then you're probably just going to be riding the ice carz.

I agree with 99% of what you say in this thread overall, but in this particular comment, I think we see the reasons why some people ave reservations about your anti-patterns. Even I wince a little bit here.

The implication of the above is that there's an ideal game formula that will make the most people release the most endorphins and thus give you the most $$$. The answer to the search for this formula is probably something like Farmville. So if the only goal is to create a satisfying experience (that is, to trigger a specific emotional response), then every game company should just make Farmville clones forever. Things like Heavy Rain, Demon's Souls, roguelikes in which you die and your character is deleted- none of these things have a place, they're just inferior design. Sure, some people love them, but some people isn't most people.

Now, let me come out and say that I'm sure that isn't what you meant.

Let me give you a specific example- I'm thinking of games like Fallout and most MMOs in which, tacitly, a theme in the game is 'exploration'. In modern games like this, when you get a quest, your map just tells you exactly where you have to go to complete it. Usually this happens even if the 'flavor text' of the quest is something like "Find the mysterious hidden mystery that nobody else has ever found before".
Now, according to modern game design, keeping people from wandering around scratching their heads looking for things probably keeps the most people happy the most often. Hey look- even my grandmother who has never played a video game can find the mysterious hidden secret treasure vault, and with enough dramatic music and loot drops, she'll even feel like she accomplished something challenging.

So, why do I feel like the opportunity to explore and discover has been denied to me, and completely let down in situations like this? Am I just failing to understand how awesome video games are now, and how ****ty they were back when I had to try?

If you could clarify where things like challenge, creativity, and sense of accomplishment comes into play in your ideas on design, I might clear some things up.

Well for once I think i don't agree with you on that one. Unlike FPS, the games I remember the most in lol are the very close games or the ones with a come back, not really the ones where I went 20/1 or something. And I'm telling you that with more than a thousand games played (that freaks me out oO) so it's not like I've no clue about this game. By the way you don't need snowballs items to achieve such scores.

I understand that it shouldn't be that easy to come back if your team is losing 0:10 in the kills score at the 10min mark but even without snowball items lol would still be snowbally enough IMO. I don't think those items are very problematic at high elo because people tend to play safer and have a better focus against the guys with lots of stacks but high elo represents only a very small portion of all the lol players. When someone can almost 1v5 your team and win a fight with poor or no team play just because one guy in your team died 24/7 it's maybe fun for the fed guy but it isn't fun at all for at least a whole team, especially the potentially 4 guys who tried everything to make the feeder play safer. This also gives more reasons to the others players to be angry about the feeder and thus promote bad talking which isn't something we/you want.

Honestly this game could be wayyy better if we had more close games. I remember you saying that you liked snowballs items because someone going 10/1 will less likely quit the game if afterward he gets stomped 10 times in a row but this argument is kind of flawed since some of those 10 stomps were probably partly due to snowballs items. Your matchmaking isn't that bad honestly (haters gonna hate) and even if snowball items aren't the #1 culprit for one sided games (leavers/griefers, making people giving up are probably a more contributing factor), they surely still play a role.

And I can list more unwanted side effects promoted by snowballs items :
- passive gameplay by taking little risk to no risk
- complains/insults because of "kill stealing"
- balance issues. For instance mejai is way more powerful on vlad than it's on annie or veigar. For two simple reasons, first vlad's pool is one of the best escape ability in the game, secondly because vlad's ultimate is a long range, very large AOE, allowing him to get loads of assists.

lol I just remembered that Zileas used to play starcraft and was very good at it.

See here: wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Zileas

Also it says that he worked for Blizzard so those saying that if he was such an amazing designer he should be working for Blizzard... he already has...

All I got out of it was "Taokaka says 'Scratchy Scratchy!'" and is cute.


And, that was all I needed to know.


<3

I must admit, i'm glad i've been playing since beta because i've gotten to play through all the new champs (and buy them all just so i know how they work). If i was getting into this game today with 50+ champs, i'd be daunted and likely only stick with the meta-game champs for awhile.

Knowing who can do what, when, and at what time is so important to good game play and countering.

Same with the items. i'm glad there aren't more items than there are, it increases the BoK exponentially by crossing item value vs/for skill type/effect.

Now.. what are you saying is true, considering I get this post: "Players will more likely "play right" the champion with a very clean knowing how to use the current champion abilities in a single combo".

However.. From Elementz, and myself I don't think this is really what I, and maybe other players would like to see in design. If you make a champ like Swain, if he use all of his abilities, he will be effective. If Anivia just uses her Forstbite, it deals major damage, that is sufficient to be any effective in the team fight, or in any other situation. But Anivia herself can do much more than damage. Now seeing the patters, Swain is probably, from what I do agree more effective in terms of learning how he can a help to the team. Anivia, skills are not only for damage, and therefore, she needs time to learn. This is not however the matter of learning or not, but the overall team usability, just like Elementz or I do think of what champions should be...


Here is my point, why combo champions, with one or two methods of the "optimal" usage, while you can have champions that can do not have an "optimal" method of usage, which players can explore on their own? It is, in my opinion, a lot more interesting to test out how many different things you can do with this champion, rather than just spam one skill, or one combo. This is also how the games is still fluid, not alike having just the best nukers, tanks, dps, that deals the most damage, but a set a abilities with their advantages, and disadvantages, which players are aware of.

Game designers have been forced to adapt because of the growing online communities that develop around games like WoW. When WoW was first made, quests could give you a ambiguous instructions on how to complete them. Whats changed since then is now there are hundreds of web sites that tell you exactly where the super secret item is, and for players to be good they only have to go to a site to super simplify the previously ambiguous quest. So new players that don't know that the right way to do a quest was to go online and find out how, are at a huge disadvantage.
I agree that having the epic quest to find the unknown was awesome and fun, but it is simply impossible now. Unless games get designed in such a way that each player will have a completely unique experience that will never be able to be replicated for someone else this is not going to change. The closest game that comes to mind that I've played is Diablo 2, where the maps are at least somewhat random.

For the love of god, stop referencing Starcraft. It also doesn't have 100+ champions with 4(+) abilities each. You fail so hard comparing much less diverce in terms of units(and abilities) RTS game to a MOBA.
Next time you may compare DOTA to chess/shogi ?

Can someone explain to me how EXHAUST is not antifun?
Regarding to:
-Fun Fails to Exceed Anti-Fun

All hail to exhaust-stacking