Expert Article
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The pandemic hits and you're stuck at home. Everything's closed and you're bored out of your mind. You can't hang out with friends because of social distancing. You hop online to see what's fun. You notice all your friends playing League of Legends, a massively popular game with 27 million players active each day (Claypool). You join your friends and play for a couple hours. It's lit. You discover that the game has a ranking system. You try out the placement games and end up in Iron tier. Is that good? You don't know. You ask your friends and all they do is snicker. In the next couple of weeks, you grind countless games, but your rank doesn't improve. Doesn't practice make perfect? Only if you're practicing the right way. Well, what is the right way?
Just like any sport, understanding the fundamentals and concepts of the game and applying them allows us to avoid unnecessary mistakes, improve ourselves, and achieve our goals more easily. The three most important concepts to apply in League of Legends are micro, macro, and meta.
Micro-Know Your Limits In League of Legends, you're usually matched with nine other random players and engage in a five-on-five match. Each player will be able to control a character of their choice and to win, you must destroy the enemy base. The map of the game consists of three different lanes and a jungle on each side, and players are assigned to a location on the map based on the role they chose. In each location, players will be matched against enemy players.
How you play against the enemy player in that single location on the map is related to the micro aspect of the game. Sometimes you'll be at a significant disadvantage because of the character you chose or because of your skill level. In these situations, it is important to recognize that you can't beat them alone. Imagine playing the point guard position in basketball. You dribble down the court and match up against the opposing point guard. However, the enemy point guard is faster, stronger, taller, and more skilled than you are. What do you do? You don't try to score one-on-one. You assess your choices. Maybe set up a play for a teammate or ask and wait for help. This simple concept applies to League of Legends as well. However, an article on ranked experience in League of Legends discusses how lower-ranked players tend to think that their skills are higher than their peers and can outplay them (Mora). This explains why some players have a difficult time improving. They always take a knife to a gunfight and they think they have the upper hand.
What if you want to win the one-on-one in the future? You would then need to spend some time alone in the League of Legends Practice Tool to understand the abilities of your character, learn interaction with other characters, and memorize other in-game mechanics. In his article, Donaldson also talks about how League of Legends is more about the construction of knowledge rather than in-game manipulation (Donaldson). Obviously, I don't think this is as fun compared to playing against a real opponent, but, just like traditional sports, there are dull aspects, such as dieting and conditioning, that are essential to improvement.
Macro-Teamwork Actually Makes the Dream Work Macro is related to the map-wide activity. Oftentimes, it involves being aware of the many situations happening on the map and effectively communicating it with your teammates through pings and chat so they can act accordingly. Imagine the previous basketball example, but this time you're the better player. Two defenders come up to double-team you. Wouldn't you want to communicate with the open player so that they can score? This skill is rarely seen in the lower ranks because they are too focused on their own performance. A great way to develop effective communication is to play with a partner. This also allows you and your partner to hold each other accountable in performance and behavior, which leads to my next point. What is often seen in the lower ranks and contributes to the negative new player experience is toxic, disruptive communication. In a statistical study, several in-game performance metrics, such as gold per minute, KDA, etc., are used to see the effects of toxic behavior. Not only is exhibiting toxic behavior harmful to our own performance, but it is also harmful to the overall team performance (Monge). Next time you encounter toxic behavior, I suggest you mute them or say something nice back. Although it is hard to put away our ego, being able to deal with toxicity and maintain your composure will drastically improve your chances of winning.
Meta-Most Effective Tactic Available Remember Steph Curry? The guy who changed the game of basketball by making the midrange jumper obsolete because shooting threes is the optimal way. Similarly, League of Legends has a most effective way of playing, and we refer to it as meta. Meta is also part of the outside knowledge that a player needs to research to develop their expertise. However, the meta in League of Legends changes quite often through game patches. In Claypool's article about game patches, it talks about how the game developers buff some characters, items, or aspect of the game while nerfing others to balance the game and make it more interesting. Knowing this information is incredibly valuable because it helps players formulate a game plan, such as what to avoid and what to expose (Claypool). Imagine you're playing against the Los Angeles Lakers, and you know a recent change made Lebron James two feet shorter, 100 pounds lighter, and 30 years older. You'd be a lot more inclined to play him one-on-one and expose him on the defense.
Ultimately, this is not an exhaustive list of dos and don'ts, but it'll definitely improve your skills and rank if you keep these concepts in mind. In the season that I played the least, I managed to reach my highest rank, which was in the top 5% of the North American player base. This is because I spent a bit of time understanding my mistakes and thoroughly understanding the many concepts in the game.
Claypool, Mark, et al. “On the Impact of Software Patching on Gameplay for the League of Legends Computer Game.” The Computer Games Journal., vol. 6, no. 1-2, Springer Nature B.V, 2017, pp. 33–61, doi:10.1007/s40869-017-0032-9.
Donaldson, Scott. “Mechanics and Metagame: Exploring Binary Expertise in League of Legends.” Games and Culture, vol. 12, no. 5, SAGE Publications, 2017, pp. 426–44, doi:10.1177/1555412015590063.
Monge, C. K., and T. C. O’Brien. “Effects of Individual Toxic Behavior on Team Performance in League of Legends.” Media Psychology, vol. ahead-of-print, no. ahead-of-print, Routledge, pp. 1–23, doi:10.1080/15213269.2020.1868322.
Mora-Cantallops, Marçal, and Miguel-Ángel Sicilia. “Exploring Player Experience in Ranked League of Legends.” Behaviour & Information Technology, vol. 37, no. 12, Taylor & Francis, 2018, pp. 1224–36, doi:10.1080/0144929X.2018.1492631.
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