LoL takes #1 E-sport spot in Korea

this. What's the next step supporting up and coming angry birds players? I mean just because a game is popular doesn't make it interesting to play much less to watch. I think lol can be a good complement for players that find Hon/dota too hard but in the the competitive scene there should be only room for one game.

The only LoL steams are those of Teamliquid users. The pro streamers don't need our support.

b0lt United States. March 16 2012 01:32. Posts 600

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On March 16 2012 01:17 archonOOid wrote:

Show nested quote +

this. What's the next step supporting up and coming angry birds players? I mean just because a game is popular doesn't make it interesting to play much less to watch. I think SC2 can be a good complement for players that find BW too hard but in the the competitive scene there should be only room for one game.

jpak United States. March 16 2012 01:35. Posts 3638

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On March 16 2012 01:27 Blasterion wrote:

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Lol yut no skill game, true athletes play konggi

You're dumb konggi is for little girls. You will lose your penis if you, a male, play this game.

CJ Entusman #50! #1 클템 fan TL! I am not jpak of jpak and friends, so stop asking me please.

son1dow Lithuania. March 16 2012 01:35. Posts 165

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On March 16 2012 00:00 Zergneedsfood wrote:

Show nested quote +

On March 15 2012 23:58 son1dow wrote:

On March 15 2012 23:45 Zergneedsfood wrote:

On March 15 2012 23:36 Exempt. wrote:

On March 15 2012 23:28 biology]major wrote:

On March 15 2012 23:18 Exempt. wrote:
There are a lot of posts and arguments I can't address nor does addressing them accomplish my points. I hope everyone will be able to go into reading this post in a rational sense without getting heavily invested in emotions. Emotionality, although impossible to ridden of, can reasonably be lessened to an extent as to help logic true for atleast a decent discussion.

I hope everyone from this point can discuss an argument with avoidance of emotion in an attempt to give a discussion that is useful. At the very least I have accomplished my point of simply throwing my ideas out not to prove that I'm correct, but
merely providing an alternate possibility that some agree with. In the end of this it does not matter whether I'm right or wrong, nor does it matter if any of you are correct. That's not the point of argument.

As thus since there is no emotional outcome of this discussion, and little reason in pointing out semantics and sensationalism of proposed ideas. I'm sure people can point out the common sense behind these ideas and that their overall idea is the obvious, true, and meaningful idea.

And with that, I believe that the problem is:

People blindly believe that it's impossible to reach a skillcap. Which is a highly silly assumption. There is nothing that proves human beings CANNOT perfect something.

The reason why this matters is that the game won't last long enough if isn't difficult enough to be competitive enough to warrant spectation for the game. This hurts the business in esports, thus hurting esports, and possibly ruining something i've grown to love.

I think the majority of problems is that people are viewing the concepts of skill, knowledge, and skillcaps in somewhat incorrect ways.

Skill isn't the result of knowledge, knowledge is just a means as a basic tool to allow access to skill.

And a skillcap is simply the highest possible peak human beings can achieve. In which case you could argue that Broodwar was somewhat "solved" or neared it's skillcap as it's highly unlikely for another human being to achieve a higher level of "skill" than Flash, etc.

A high level of all three result in the ability of the game to become an esport as their is a higher level of interest in spectating. As well, the measureability of all three result in our terminology of the competition of the game.

In which case under these definitions we can definitely measure the difficulty, spectatability, and competitive nature of any video game, including League of Legends. There is no reason saying we CANT argue these points.

you are really trying too hard man

You think it's a bad thing to constantly try to think, argue, debate? If anything there isn't enough of it. Just people like you who can't remove their emotions and even try to attempt rationality. If people tried harder there most certainly would be less wars. And probably better games.

On March 15 2012 23:21 Zergneedsfood wrote:

On March 15 2012 23:20 Exempt. wrote:

On March 15 2012 22:52 SmoKim wrote:
Why the FUCK is every fucking thing regarding the games we enjoy an act of war where everyone picks a side and throw shit against one another?

Great news for LoL, nothings changed for BW, SC2 still going. Can't we just be happy/passive about it?

Because theirs absolutely NOTHING wrong with arguing, it's people like you who get so emotionally involved that ruin the experience for everyone else.

Yeah dude, because picking a side and throwing shit at another side is a great demonstration of arguing.

There's nothing wrong with calling the game uncompetitive because whether or not it's competitive or not, or whether you're good or bad at a game or anything else, does. not. matter. It's only flinging shit to you because you care too much about opinions of others about the game.

It doesn't matter whether I'm right or wrong, like I said stop getting so emotionally involved in things that don't matter.

It's like it hurts peoples souls when someone tries to tell them that what they think or believe is wrong. It doesn't fucking matter if you're correct or not. Engaging in the activity is the important part. Fuck.

So what you're saying is...you like arguing about things that don't really matter and calling a sport not a sport just because you say so and anyone who tells you that what you say is irrelevant and pointless is suddenly a big cry baby who is infringing on your right to argue about useless things.

K. Gotcha.

This is getting annoying.
The things matter. He explained why they matter. I can't wrap my head around the world view some people have that says we should never argue what's better for a platform we all love.
Imagine the a football league closing the competition, running a bowling competition instead. If the viewers wanted that, you couldn't argue, but anybody with a clue would understand that it's not going to turn out well for them in the near future. The difference being that esports are so underdeveloped, that not all people understand that some games are indeed more difficult. This is the reason we must understand what games are more difficult... And unfortunately I have not the time that I had previously to actually argue on the merits of the game.

Right, because LoL getting more attention in Korea automatically means that SC2 is closing down.

Oh, and why is this LoL's fault? Blame the fact that SC2 is a colossal failure in Korea because maybe...I don't know....people don't like it there?

What point are you guys trying to make. Everything has just been nonsense sensationalism or downright dumb comments, bringing up stupid ideas that somehow is supposed to persuade us that people shouldn't be liking this type of game.

Here, let me try it too.

Hey guys. I can fucking click really really fast. People should like me playing my game. \o/

Never said anything about SC2 closing down. Actually, didn't even say anything about sc2. If anything, I'm more worried for scbw.
The point I was trying to make was pretty clear, and yet all I can see is void claims about everything being sensationalism and downright dumb. I'm not even sure you read my post... Did you?

Hesmyrr Canada. March 16 2012 01:35. Posts 4172

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mistook konggi and algagi pfffft

Last edit: 2012-03-16 01:42:23

"If watching the MSL finals makes you a progamer, then anyone in Korea can do it." - Ha Tae Ki

spinesheath Germany. March 16 2012 01:37. Posts 5147

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On March 16 2012 01:17 archonOOid wrote:

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You're saying games can become popular (even as popular as LoL, we're talking WoW dimensions here) without being interesting?

Whether something is interesting or not is subjective. It is plain obvious that there are tons of people who find LoL interesting. The numbers speak for themselves.

gosuMalicE Canada. March 16 2012 01:38. Posts 624

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On March 16 2012 01:32 b0lt wrote:

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But the thing is, SC2 is the only current generation starcraft game we have, where there are 3 extremely popular current generation mobas, and lol is by far the least graphically appealing, least skill based, and most uninteresting one to watch. In fact i'm convinced that the success of lol is 100% the advertising, I mean no offence to the people that like to make the claim that "people just like lol better" but for the most part the majority friends of mine who play lol have either never heard of dota or at least never played it. So we can hope that when dota 2 is finally released it will have the marketing power behind it to overtake the joke that is LoL.

Last edit: 2012-03-16 01:43:53

I play Protoss, because lets face it, who doesn't love hyper-advanced Egyptian ninja-aliens that kill people with lightsabres attached to both arms?

Blasterion China. March 16 2012 01:39. Posts 10268

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On March 16 2012 01:35 jpak wrote:

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You're dumb konggi is for little girls. You will lose your penis if you, a male, play this game.

You believe that urban legend?

[TLNY]Mahjong Club Thread

DonKey_ Liechtenstein. March 16 2012 01:39. Posts 805

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On March 16 2012 01:09 Exempt. wrote:

Show nested quote +

On March 16 2012 00:46 Rorance wrote:

On March 16 2012 00:06 Exempt. wrote:

On March 15 2012 23:53 Rorance wrote:

On March 15 2012 23:36 Exempt. wrote:

On March 15 2012 23:28 biology]major wrote:

you are really trying too hard man

On March 15 2012 23:21 Zergneedsfood wrote:

On March 15 2012 23:20 Exempt. wrote:

Because theirs absolutely NOTHING wrong with arguing, it's people like you who get so emotionally involved that ruin the experience for everyone else.

Yeah dude, because picking a side and throwing shit at another side is a great demonstration of arguing.

Wow...

There is nothing to argue about, so why argue? You haven't said one constructive thing at all this entire thread.

I posted this with the expectation that people would find this as good news, that e-sports are growing outside of just SC2. We aren't losing anything, nobody is... Well some people are freaking out over this like somebody is ruining your birthday party by having more people over to their house with a bigger cake 10 blocks away.

I've seen amazing discussions over the years on this site, actually arguing back and forth and not fighting like a bunch of spoiled brats over something that has no effect on them. I'm just going to ask a mod to lock this thread if people keep trying to smear other games and don't have any reasoning besides "LOL DOESN'T MAKE YOU HIT BUTTONS AS FAST SO IT MUST BE EASIER!!"

Well because it's just your opinion whether or not there is something to argue about. If you don't feel it's worth arguing then the obvious decision is to not engage in argument. You flinging shit because some people want to argue doesn't make you any better than anyone else.

The constructive argument I placed was that I felt LoL was bad for esports as it didn't support competition that would last many years to come for reasons such as lack of differentiating skill and what not. My conclusive thesis was that because of this lack of competition LoL would just hurt esports in the long run. Not help it.

The problem is people didn't go with retorting my opinion. They shit talked it. All that needed to be done with this argument was
someone to post what juicyfruit said recently in his opinions as to why lol is worth competition and thus esports by talking about:

- How many competitors there are
- Potential for skill improvement (i.e. skill cap)
- Balance

if someone simply, academically brang those points up to disprove my opinions on lol as a competitive game I would of left the discussion more open-minded.

But no, that didn't happen, because people can't think in a logic fashion, they get too clouded by their emotions because of the fact that I was arguing something that they certainly didn't believe in.

Here's one to hoping public school systems slowly improve / college is stressed more in society so that some day a larger portion of the human race can participate in a scholarly debate that so many simply aren't prepared to do now.

Okay, understood.

I'm going to try and parallel E-Sports with Sports in order to draw a comparison most people can grasp, I hope.

You can look at any sport that makes people compete on an individual level such as table tennis or golf and argue that they require more individual skill to succeed in. Which is of course correct, but that's only because if you make a mistake it's a lot more unforgiving then if you make a mistake in a team oriented sport like Hockey or Football (CFL/NFL variety).

What hurts my head is when people say team games require less or no skill because they aren't punished nearly as hard for making individual mistakes. If a table tennis player over shoots and misses the table, bam the opponent is up a point, if you are a quarterback and throw an interception you at least have the rest of your team on the field to stop an immediate touchdown and the defense to recover the ball. Taking away individual accountability doesn't make any team based sport require less skill on an individual level, they aren't mutually exclusive. We wouldn't have individuals on teams like Wayne Gretzky or Peyton Manning getting held up on people's shoulders and being heralded as masters of their craft if individual skill didn't matter.

Of course no sport really has a skill cap, it would lead to a very uninteresting viewing experience. If two people hit the skill cap in table tennis i'm sure it would be fun to watch for the first 3 minutes but after that when you realize no player is going to drop the ball so to speak it removes any aspect of suspense. I think this holds true for e-sports as well, if you had even 10 people hit the skill cap in LoL and pitted them in a 5vs5 the game would simply never end. People would realize the game isn't a viable competitive medium and move on, or Riot would fix it somehow, maybe make people maintain 300+ APM or get booted as so many people hold that number as a measure of skill these days.

Balance is also a relatively easy thing to address, even in a game with as many diverse pieces as LoL has. Day[9] summed balance up really well on an episode of the Daily or SotG, I can't quite remember. To paraphrase he said something along the lines of if something is overpowered then every single person would simply use that race/class/strategy/character. That of course would mean the game would get very stale very quick and not be a viable competitive medium. Of course the volatility of LoL simply means this won't happen, if one combination of characters seems to be unbeatable somebody will find a crack in that and exploit it with another combination of characters. It's like mixing boxing, rock paper scissors and chess into a sport between two opponents who have 5 hands that act on their own but are guided by one person.

Let me break that down a bit and explain... The boxing aspect comes from the fact you are trying to beat your opponent in a set number of rounds either by knocking him out or through a much longer game plan and simply out playing him. Rock paper scissors covers the randomness that is inherent in every game and sport; you, you're team and your opponents can't be predicted and individuals will have advantages over others but generally balance over all as a team. Chess simply because each person has a set amount of pieces to play with, 5 in the case of LoL with their active skills (You can go into items but shhhh), knowing what to use and when and being able to make those decisions in a split second repeatedly and accurately over a 20-30 minute game is exhausting. Doing all that is hard enough, but doing it with 4 other people while trying to act as a coherent whole is a difficult task.

I agree with you when you say knowledge gives you the tools you need to improve and be skillful. You don't see many pro golfers using a driver on the green >.<' Having the knowledge to know what tools to use and when is what really separates E-Sports from sports in my opinion.

Just as a followup I believe the reason why most people say team games like LoL are less skilled than sc2 is because if one is to be punished less severely on a mistake it slowly discludes the mistake over time. The problem with LoL is exactly that -- it discludes a lot of mistakes into a severely nasty punishment to the team in the end where one team wins a teamfight and ends the game.

That's a huge problem with the game because it emphasizes the skill needed for the singular teamfight and less on everything that leads up to the teamfight. This leads to the game being less dynamic / strategic. With the game being less strategic players can then focus more practice in perfecting a smaller number of mechanical skills in the first place. When the player can then focus more energy into a singular skill at hand they can then reach the supposed skillcap for that mechanical skill and perfect it. At this point we're at a dilemma as to whether or not players can do this as there is no proof or not this is theorteically possible. My proposition is that this is possible for players to perfect the mechanical skills required in LoL and thus hit or enclose the skillcap unlike ever seen before in any other competitive esport seen yet.

That's why I believe LoL in it's current state won't last as a competitive game.

You bring an interesting point about if 10 players hit then skillcap then a 5v5 would never end. I think this will happen to a lesser extent. Games will continuously get longer and longer if something isn't done to fix it because pushing and ending a near even game is too highly difficult for either team to do. As well, when games get longer and longer those mistakes we were talking about before will continuously become less important -- ever much so that the team fight becomes increasingly more important.

I think you are completely correct about balance, it's a pretty easy fix to design the game to be better. In order to make the game better I feel they need to rebalance the game in a way where the end team fight plays a slightly less importance in the grand scheme of things. In which case LoL certainly would be a more competitive game in my eyes.

One area in which I think they could do this is revamping their summoner spell system, the game would be much more dynamic and strategic if it were possible for players to change their summoner spells during the game. This would further increase the skillcap by adding larger strategic depth to the game. The means by which they do this whether by cooldowns, gold use, whatever, doesn't matter.

TL;DR: I simply don't understand why people are so vehemently against my opinions when their were thousands upon thousands of SC2 related threads stating that starcraft was designed wrong and was a bad game. Well it was, and blizzard redesigned and balanced the game until shit like 4 gate weren't so predominant. LoL NEEDS to go through this same phase in design change or it flat out won't deliver as a good competitive game.

To follow up on your follow up I would like to point out that your experience with LoL appears to be very lacking as you only describe one of the ways to play the game.

In your limited assessment of how LoL is played you have missed an ENTIRE playstyle called split-pushing that focuses on avoiding team fights altogether, knowing this it is difficult for me to agree with your very narrow view of "The problem with LoL is exactly that -- it discludes a lot of mistakes into a severely nasty punishment to the team in the end where one team wins a teamfight and ends the game."

If you had put more effort into researching your argument rather than arguing it, you would find that your argument is composed of many glaring flaws that individuals who are more experienced with your subject matter (LoL) will recognize with ease.

Also to address the myth of skill cap I pose you the question of" what if anything has ever hit a skill cap?" I for one believe it is impossible to hit a skill cap. You can only ever approach a skill cap never hit it, think of it as an asymptote on a graph.

And Then There Where None

Hesmyrr Canada. March 16 2012 01:41. Posts 4172

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On March 16 2012 01:39 Blasterion wrote:

Show nested quote +

You believe that urban legend?

urban legend: 1
Blasterion: 0

"If watching the MSL finals makes you a progamer, then anyone in Korea can do it." - Ha Tae Ki

MaV_gGSC Canada. March 16 2012 01:43. Posts 1306

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On March 16 2012 01:35 Hesmyrr wrote:
mistook konggi and algagi pfffft

what??

Life's good :D

Blasterion China. March 16 2012 01:44. Posts 10268

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On March 16 2012 01:41 Hesmyrr wrote:

Show nested quote +

urban legend: 1
Blasterion: 0

Dammit all T.T

[TLNY]Mahjong Club Thread

NEOtheONE United States. March 16 2012 01:45. Posts 1703

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On March 14 2012 20:37 ratgod wrote:
SIgh both LoL and SC2 are very good games.
I think the reason LoL is bigger is cause its a lot more forgiving because it is team based. I also think at lower levels LoL definately takes less skill because there is no real teamwork occuring (There is some) and your controlling one unit TT. I personally found my self playing LoL for hours because it simply was less stressful than Laddering on sc2. I also really dont enjoy watching LoL because it is so much slower and unlike sc2 its really not fun to watch unless you play the game and know all the items. Another major factor why LoL is bigger is because its F2P. But overall they are both good game but yes its kind of sad to hear this news

That's funny. I find it to be a lot more frustrating for this exact reason. Not to mention the try-hards that will tell you to "unistall and go kill yourself." LoL is a fun game, but it would honestly be better if it was just 1v1, just so you don't have to deal with all the ragers, try-hards, trolls, a-holes, leavers, AFKers, newbies, incompetent players, etc.

Abstracts, the too long didn't read of the educated world.

Gondlem Australia. March 16 2012 01:48. Posts 564

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On March 16 2012 01:30 gosuMalicE wrote:
Ugh, it extremely unfortunate that this would happen to a moba instead of SC2, Even more unfortunate when the moba in question is the unbalanced and boring pos lol, instead of DOTA 2 or HoN.

What's unbalanced about LoL? If anything the single greatest achievement in the managment of LoL is how well balanced it is. There's 94 champions in the game currently and virtually every single one of them is viable in some way at all ELOs in solo queue, give or take maybe Evelynn. At least half or so are viable in tournament play. No idea how that compares to other games in the genre but champ balance certainly isn't a big issue in LoL.

Xiphos Canada. March 16 2012 01:49. Posts 5732

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On March 16 2012 01:45 NEOtheONE wrote:

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The only reason why you are hating on LoL is because you have no social companions to join you. If you have real-time friends on your team, the experience is so much better. I have to say I've strengthened my friendship with many by playing LoL.
So get skype, get people to play with you and stop whinning!

2012 - Remember of the Fallen Heroes and Command the way to your victory.

nonentity March 16 2012 01:53. Posts 151

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So apparently it is possible to make your game an esport by throwing money at it until it sticks.

Don't get me wrong, DotA like games are great, but LoL is such a shallow example of the genre to use for competition :/

Learn how to play EvE and join me at my stream at www.twitch.tv/TawaSuyo666 - aimed at Furball171, but feel free to troll anyway!

Talack Canada. March 16 2012 01:54. Posts 2485

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Is LoL easier than SC? Yes but that's ok there is a huge disparity in skill between top players and low-tier players just like SC. Really a negligible fact since they are completely different games.

Why is LoL so popular compared to SC? Completely based on the social factor.

LoL you can play with up to 9 friends in an exciting matchup. SC you play 1v1 or you sacrfice ALOT of the fun (imo) to do 2v2, 3v3 4v4 which is just horrible for most. There is no community on SC2 when you're playing.

LoL you can play the exact same game solo as you can with your friends. It's alot more fun to play with your friends than sc2 is by far. LoL is a more social game, that's why it does better.

Personally? I find SC2 alot more exciting to watch than LoL just because of the back and forth aspect. LoL when i'm watching it feels very one sided almost always, maybe not immediatley and obviously but it's gradual and there isn't as much of a "can they win?" aspect. But that's just me personally. I enjoy watching both alot.

TL:DR - LoL promotes alot more viewers because it is a way more social game than starcraft is currently.

DonKey_ Liechtenstein. March 16 2012 01:55. Posts 805

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On March 16 2012 01:53 nonentity wrote:
So apparently it is possible to make your game an esport by throwing money at it until it sticks.

Don't get me wrong, DotA like games are great, but LoL is such a shallow example of the genre to use for competition :/

So apparently posts that criticize games without any substance are acceptable and standard now.

And Then There Where None

Nikon Bulgaria. March 16 2012 02:00. Posts 4712

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On March 16 2012 01:17 archonOOid wrote:

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This post exemplifies why esports is a joke.

In real life, you never see people shitting on 100m sprint, saying how much easier it is than running 5000m, for example. In here, you see the equivalent every day, and this is something that is done by a lot of people. The "too good for you" attitude is not something the community can afford at this point of its development, and probably never will, judging by how it is going.

koreasilver Canada. March 16 2012 02:04. Posts 7480

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On March 16 2012 02:00 Nikon wrote:

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Sprinting is so fucking easy anyone can just run around a track, right?

"I don't think that the polls accurately reflect how far this race has swung in Romney's favor. I'm still expecting a landslide victory for Romney." - TL's very own Nostradamous, xDaunt