From Korea to China: Player Importing

I recently read an article in LoL Reddit addressing how Faker is single-handedly carrying not the whole Korean region - the LCK. As I read through it, I was feeling pretty sad about the current situation which Chinese organizations importing all the top-tier Korean players to their league with money power. It is indeed a good thing for the players who were underrated as well as in terms of salary in Korea, but it is, in wide point of view, still a loss of the competitive scene in Korean region. Here is the article that I captured- hope you get a general idea of how the changes are being made nowadays. And imagine what would happen if Faker manages to leave LCK. How would the competitive scene of League of Legends in Asia change? How hard could that wind blow, and somewhat affect other regions?

Click on the image, right click the following, click 'Open image in new tab', and click on the image in new tab for a better resolution.

"Gaming can make a better world"

Gaming used to be considered as a medium of time-wasting, expressing laziness, and a meaningless task.

You know what? If you do think so, I would say you're more like a lame old politicians who doesn't even try to live the real progressive world, than the rest of the people on the earth.

Gaming is not a meaningless task which you run away from your life, but a work that spend time experience bunch of interesting things.

Check out how many people in the world spend how much of their time experiencing epic things throughout playing games, and further learn what humanity would be like when there is not even a similar thing to the 'gaming'.

New LoL gamemode that I designed

The idea is from the dream that I had like a week ago. I tried to sort out and arrange those to design an actual LoL gamemode, and I also revised those idea a day after the designing.

So here it is:

- The map's like the one in the Maze Runner. There's a huge maze and the Jungle creeps are here and there.

- Players are summoned in a random place as a Jungler, so they level up by killing the Jungle creeps, have a skirmish when they meet other players, and the results proceed to a ranking. Players who earned the most points at the end of the game are rewarded better.

- There are also some time that a 'Random Box' with potions, armors, weapons, and so on, falling from the sky randomly.

- The location of the box fallen is visible, so champions gather up and fight around it.

- There could be some fun finding a treasure chest while players are Jungling.

- Certain time limit exist. When some amount of time like, a minute before the end of the game is left, the first place player become publicly visible so that other players can turn the game around by killing him.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And here's some questionings to my idea and revisions.

- Since Riot does love the 'teamplay',



this might not be considered as a legit idea of their gamemode. But the construction of the mode itself shouldn't take much effort. The queue timers will be a lot faster too.

- Champions that are strong in 1:1 or skirmishes would be considered OP in this gamemode.
I personally think that it'll be Talon and Nidalee.

- If the 'Random Boxes' fell down, it'll be a better strategy to hide in a nearby bush and wait for the others to come.

- The way of making the first place player to be publicly visible, would be better to notify the location with a constant (like 5 seconds delay) ping, rather than just giving a vision of them.

- ★ New picks/bans methods also must be designed. Since this is an individual sports, the last pick is absolutely disadvantageous than the first pick. If it's like a normal game, the dodges will be insanely frequent. If repetitive champions are allowed, then there will be too much similar champions throughout the game.

- Some health regeneration method should be provided, since there won't be a recall. Some place like 'Sanctum of Stamina' (this also provides a possibility of inducing a fight around it), or an ability for every champions that 'restores the health to full if not interrupted by an enemy ability in 10 seconds after casting', similar to the recalling option, could be a solution.

- That ability is also essential for champions who are vulnerable to the Jungle creeps.

- Not only gaining the point after Kills, but also rewarding some golds for an item, to make them slightly stronger.

- Similar to the Shurima mode before, reinforcing the first place player for the compensation of giving a vision of him would also be an idea.

- While writing down, I realized that 'the Random Box' has too much problem. Too much elements related to luck, such as the random items coming out or the falling down location. There must be a way that provides a balanced itemization method.

- To help Jungling and to induce early skirmishes, every champions should be around lvl. 3~5 (not sure about this) at the beginning of the game.

- The starting location could be totally random (so there could be a skirmish happening at the beginning of the game when the two or more spawns at similar location), or just start at a chosen location. The former one depends on the luck more.

If you're a 'Pro-gamer'...

TSM Lustboy's Twit, on April Fools (his name isn't Eugene Park).

I was pretty disappointed by Lustboy's Twit, so I'm going to write few sentences down.

"Just had another bad dream about being a league pro in Korea. The dream was horrible. Hope we win today so It won't even happen."
"Yeah I mean, they were so mean to me and It was definitely worst period of my life. I'm so glad that I'm a part of NA so far."

If that 'they' is Korean fans, this will be a sentence that will cause my personal disappointment.

There are several opinions about this, but here's what I think.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 There are so many problems in the fan-community of League (especially Korea), so a current pro-gamer trashtalking about his (previous) fans is an understandable thing?

 1. In Season 3 Worlds, Samsung White's Dade had experienced this kind of problem. He was critiqued and even insulted by his fans because of the result that he made in Worlds. I'm not saying that a pro being insulted is acceptable. The shoutcasters at the moment even officially asked the fans to restrain some excessive criticism. Though they didn't stop despite of that...

 However, Dade tried to accept those criticisms or insults and not even did a single reaction. He surmounted the negative actions of the fans only with his efforts and skill. At last he is now being praised by being the best Mid-laner in the world, and his status get much higher due to his wisdom.

 Lustboy must've reacted like that after suffering from those excessive things, but withstanding those things, in some ways, is a destiny of a professional gamers.


 2. "The problem is that e-Sports fans are young, and the subject is related to the Internet, which is making people sure that they're shown as anonymous. Also it is hard for the pros to have a mature sportmanship becuase the cycle of pro life is way shorter than other sports."

 It is pretty possible for the problem to have such side. But I saw an enormous amount of criticisms and insults being threw to other professional sports (soccer, baseball, basketball, and etc) players.

 There was one soccer player who was flamed by his fans like he's in hell. Sun-Hong Hwang, was the player who was insulted through PC communication or newspaper, at 1994, when the Internet wasn't even being used in Korea. He was even called 'the most insulted person in the history of 5000 years of Korea.' He grinded his teeth for the 98's World Cup to redeem his reputation, but he got injured right before that.

 Despite of all that, he finally demonstrated his skill in 2002 World Cup with a fancy first goal in the first preliminary game and continued his fame to his manager career. He is now called 'the regent Hwangsun' (this is the term that is related to Korean history), and being loved by his fans.


 3. So the ultimate factor of the problem is Korean people's national character, or the fan culture?

 There are countries that assassinated the player who missed the penalty in the World Cup. There are some players in other countries who commit suicide due to an extremity of the pressure that his fans make. It is somehow natural that most of the fans are having a quick alternation of joy and sorrow, and this is not only a problem of Korea.

 There is a slight difference with the degree, but fans of NA and EU do the same thing. I think it is a right of the fans in the first place, that 'criticize' professional players. (But profanities and an excessive blames should be sublated.)


 4. What is the best reaction of those pros?

 In the first place, I don't think that fans having an emotion or criticizing their players are not the wrong thing. Fans are originally like that. If one's analyzing a sports with a mature insight, he's an analysist. Most of the fans have their own emotion to their interest and don't make a judgement with a rational eyesight, so they support certain player or a team and have an emotional, economical, and timely expenses even though it is not that of a benefit to them.

 I sometimes think that fans (including me) are close to 'idiots,' but it is a discourtesy when telling an idiot an idiot in idiot's face.

 Professional sports exist as fans exist. So those remarks of Lustboy could've been better to not be spoken. But those apologies such as CJ Shy's was quite a bit. He should've not apologized in the first place, because his team (not even himself) simply just missed the chance to get to the second place.

CJ Entus Shy's apologies on missing a chance to get his team to the 2nd place of LCK Winter.
Like, what the hell is this for? You weren't even bad!

 If, Lustboy Twitted that with a mindset of something like 'IDGAF to Korean fans from now because I'll be continuing my career in NA,' then that itself will be another sad thing. There must've been fans who supported him when he played in CJ Blaze and even now when he's playing in TSM. (I personally am a huge TSM fan, even though I'm a natural born Korean.)

 Actions like CloudTemplar took, asking fans to refrain an excessive actions against pros after his retirement, is indeed acceptable. But most of Korean fans might not take Lustboy's action like that.

 It would be important for the fans to improve and self-clear their community to help e-Sports pro-gamers who are mostly young, to not be mentally tired. Also pro-gamers should not have an interest with those extremities, and prove themselves with their own efforts.

Lamentation of Shoutcasters

LCK shoutcaster in the middle, Jun Yong-Jun, casting Starcraft: Broodwar League.

Thinking about Starcraft,
there used to be a specific build tree and advantages and disadvantages between 3 sides and Pro-gamers participated to make a subject of conversation by fighting each other with new builds and strategies.

When you look at League of Legends,
there once existed a 'poke' composition (people were like, damn that's too stronk), but all of a sudden, Pro-gamers brought 'bruiser' composition and destroyed 'poke' composition.

Then when 'assassination' composition became popular,
they brought Kayle, Zilean, Lulu, or all those protective Champions to destroy 'assassination' composition, so the scene was like whatever comes out, another one responded and dominates.

DoA and Montecristo, shoutcasting LCK.

But, right now,

Riot Games decided to nerf Champions that were played in competitive scenes (which is the 'core' of those compositions)

 'Poke' comp is gone,
 'Assassination' comp is gone,
 and 'Bruiser' comp is gone.

We now have a comp that consist of 'non-characteristic' but 'just fairly-good and playable' Champions. And this is why Shoutcasters' commentaries are so boring.

It is better for them to say: This comp has this characteristics and that comp has that characteristics, so they should interact such ways and etc,'

but what they do now is like

 'Well the Lane Phase is going smooth.'

 'They have % stacks of Dragon.'

 'They got baron.'

 'They did a good teamfight.' - (With a commentary of those 10 individual's movement)

 'Global gold gap right now is %.'

Done. Nothing else to say.

All because Riot destroyed those 'Characteristics' of Champions.

In conclusion,

players made a general trend(meta) and made them to always change and also participated balancing the game by themselves, but Riot right now is destroying characteristic of the game and those compositions, in the name of 'Balance Patch.'

Easy to learn and hard to master?

1. Easy to learn Hard to master

This is one of the most frequent quote that game developers use when introducing their game. It literally means that the game has a low entry barrier so it's easy to start, but hard to master.

 - Pokemon

One good example could be Pokemon. Pokemon series is one of the most globally-played game with no age restrictions and the level of difficulty of 'regular storyline' is pretty low and easy to clear.

So apparently Pokemon looks like a pretty casual game, but it's actually a hard-core game.

There is an IV (Individual Values) and an EV (Evaluation Values) for each Pokemons.

EV and IV

To say simple, there is a difference in stats of two different lvl. 100 Pikachus when they lvl'd up by slaining only Rattata or only Pidgey. So EV is an experience point for a specific stat from every different Pokemons.

A difference between two lvl. 1 Pikachus an IV, because they are different since born. This is the reason why people mate Pokemons like breeding a racehorse only for the better IV.

IV and EV are barely explained inside of the game and are not visible through a Status report, which means that they are a hidden element. So you have no problem to watch an ending of the game if you don't know about it. But when it goes to a PvP match they become a really important factor of winning, so it is a crucial element to master the game. For Pokemon, you can master it by studying the hidden elements and doing a crazy repetitive action.

 -EZ2DJ

Not even EZ2DJ, but most Rhythm Games are faithful to 'Easy to learn Hard to master.' First, Rhythm games are really simple. You press the button along the falling mark with a right timing and a music. But there aren't hundreds of buttons exist. It can easily covered by a single hand and really easy to just start with. So it is based on 'Easy to learn.' But a full-combo clear or all-perfect clear of some crazy song can't be done by everyone. You need a memorization of those notes, dynamic visual acuvity and good reaction timing/velocity. This is a part of 'Hard to master,' but that part is more like real hard. You need an insane amount of practices and it isn't even simply achievable with the practice. A genius is needed.

2. LoL- low entry barrier?

So let's get into my real topic.

League of Legends is often be considered as a game with a low entry barrier, but looking at the game in a large view, it isn't really low, because there are too much Champions. There are currently 123 Champions in LoL and 5 abilities including Passive for every single each, so it means that you have to study more than 600 abilities, which is definitely not an easy task. But Pokemon has a number beyond that, but they are pretty intuitive because you won't have problem playing a PvP if you just know about the Types and Properties.

The perspective could be different by saying that it is 'learning' or 'mastering', but how I differentiate them is to say "Is there a problem playing when you don't know about it?"

While playing League, it is a big problem if you don't know about the opponent Champion's abilities. A gameplay of dying again and again to a Champion that you have no knowledge about can't be considered normal. You should at least know that the ability contains Slow effect, before knowing that the Slow duration is x sec and it decreases x% of Movement Speed. So learning those hundreds of abilities are not an assignment to be a League Pro, but to become a regular player.

And this is the reason why there are Bronze players, because learning the most basic thing is a burden. Not saying that Bronze players are bad, but saying that the huddle of their first assignment is too high.

There also are so much Items, Buffs, Spells, and etc, and the knowledge of their basic properties are in the category of 'learn.' So there are too much things to learn about to play this game.

As the game goes forward and Seasons change, an unbearable amount of things for beginners were being added, such as Trinkets, Jungle, Smite Buffs, Machete Upgrades, and so on. I felt stuck when I teach the 'Newbie' players who just started playing League yesterday.

A lucky punch of a novice in competitive fight games does not exist in League. You can't win only with the knowledge of how to move the Champion and how to use the abilities. You have to destroy Nexus to win, and the numerous amount of things in that process should be learned.

To conclude, League of Legends is a game that have a relatively lower barrier than some games like DOTA, but with the criteria of other games, it definitely isn't, and it is getting higher as the Season goes.

3. Thing that Riot threw away for the 'casual'

LoL is more like EZ2DJ than Pokemon, because it is important having mechanics (lasthitting perfectly and dodge/hit skillshots) than having knowledge (Skill CD, Mana, Stats, Ranges, and etc). LoL is more likely to lean to the side of EZ2DJ since thy are a real-time game (but you still have to have knowledge), but ultimately, there aren't any 'hidden elements.'

An easy example would be the tip when Leashing Jungle monsters a year ago. Using the weak point of the system, it used to be a tip but became a common sense after being frequently used, so some people flamed beginners for not doing that (and I think that's why Riot decided to fix it). This genre of games have a Co-op mode, but the main content is a PvP mode, so there's a trend that 'elements to master' becoming 'elements to learn,' because you gotta do everything to win.

Champions of LoL having less characteristics are on the same page with this. In DOTA, there's a counter pick that you can never win fight against even you're super fed. But in LoL, you don't really have a counter pick and you can even win against your counter when you're fed.

This means that a synergetic comp or a counter pick becomes 'learn', not 'master.' When someone picked A, if you don't Pick B which is synergetic with A or don't Ban C which is a counter pick of A, you're gonna get flamed! Learning those 600 abilities is already a high entry barrier, but they still have more?

Riot gained the element of casual by getting rid of that kind of thoughts. But from that, the game goes simple and characteristics of Champions are gone. In the end, there are no elements of players but only mechanics that makes the difference.

Just deal with dem Japainian mechonics.

Especially when you look at the Pro scene, 'ones who Mastered the game,' MVPs or Highlights mostly consist of great plays made by great mechanics rather than the plays made by the greatness of understanding and knowledge of the game. There are more "Damn, I can't even try that!" than "What a great idea. I can imitate that." It is more like watching EZ2DJ masters. Just watching them changes nothing out of you.

4. Conclusion

League of Legends is the most successful game in the world, but I'm being careful with saying that it is the greatest game in the world. If the factors of the greatest are 'having the highest market share' and 'making the highest profit,' then hamburger is the greatest food in the world. LoL is a well-made game, but there are still things that should be fixed.

Every good games aren't applying 'Easy to learn Hard to master,' but League is adding 'learning' elements for the existing playerbase, so newcomers are having more assignment that makes them to think that it's hard, but the truth is that the element for the clutch players are mechanics, in all ages.

My dearest game,

I hope you develop slowly and steadily,

that there won't be any mutters and whines while you're at the top of the list.

Top 4 Unexpected Picks in LoL Season 4 World Championship

There are only two players in S4 Worlds who collected a win with a strong impression following: inSec and Looper.

Coincidentally, these two faced in the Finals, so it had became really interesting to see what kind of picks they will show.

4.
 Fiddlesticks- inSec/Star Horn Royal Club

It seemed like they will be eliminated, but inSec brought a turn around with jungle Fiddlesticks.
This pick kind of countered by Twisted Fate and he threw a couple of times. However he changed the mood throughout the game with a high kill-contribution and dominating teamfight at the important point. inSec's Fiddlesticks deleted opponents with surprising damage of his Ult and brought the hope of going to the Finals.

3.
 Pantheon- inSec/Star Horn Royal Club

A hidden card that inSec used in semi-final Game 5. The game that decides whether SHR is going to the Finals or getting eliminated, inSec's Pantheon was overwhelming throughout the whole game. His magical ult that burns the opponent's Flash, winning teamfights, and further bringing a ticket to the Finals changed the drift of the game at all times when they're losing. It's pretty evitable that SHR's support, Zero hard-carried the game, but the situation would've been different if inSec didn't changed the atmosphere.

2.
 Singed- Looper/Samsung Galaxy White

The very person who poisoned all the members of TSM. He practiced the miracle of melting the opponents by just walkin around them. From the point of blue buff steal after the level 1 overfarming, the game was over. It was impressive to see the opponents not even trying to touch him.

1.
 Akali- Looper/Samsung Galaxy White

I was like, what the hell Akali's used in competitives? She was even on a hyper-carry mode like in Soloqueue when it's already surprising to see her in competitive scene.

It was pretty refreshing since Looper played her a bit differently than normal. It was not like the one that dominates after an easy lane phase, but the one that is exactly a teamfight contributing top laner. He had taken part in teamfights at the right moment with Teleport after a safe lane phase, but sometimes took a back-position like typical damage dealers. Even she's a squishy, she dove in first aggressively, taking an aggro, and so on. His usage of aggressive top Champion and Teleport was like a "final round boss".

The most amazing pick of Season 4 World Championship.