FML part II the F'iest

Believe it or not, I am still playing League of Legends. Why? Is it really that fun? Well, take a look at these and maybe you can decide if League seems like fun:

I have 2 account in League of Legends right now. My level 30 account "Ealdnarche" is in the 550 win range. I don't play ranked games, so these are all classic normal matches. Eald has lots of fun champs, skins, runes, rune pages, and even reserve IP for impulse purchases. Though I have no immediate plans for ranked play, I enjoy being able to play against 800-1500win players in normal matches. Most people take those matches seriously, so your only losses are due to misplays and connection issues. Then we have "Basaimah." Basaimah is currently level 23, which is subpar for the amount of time I have been grinding matches. For those who do not know, League of legends has "runes" that you buy outside of matches. You equip up to 30 runes on 1 page before a match; during the match you will have the increased stats that you have equipped. However, LoL has 3 tiers of runes. They are based on level, and the highest tier is only available at level 20, and provides too much advantage to make lower tier runes viable. This means that most knowledgeable players will NOT buy runes until level 20. The extremely knowledgeable players may even save ALL of their IP to go toward level 20 runes. It cost me 15,000+ IP to pay for 2 pages worth of runes. I accumulated around 19,000 IP from the grind to level 2...And what a grind it was. Even with ~4000 bonus IP, I only bought 3 champions: Annie (for stale AP mid weeks), Janna (for stale support weeks), and Evelyn (as a personal challenge for myself). That entire grind to 20(and beyond!) was with free week champs; after using the same champs for nearly 1000 games, FUN Champs, I am restricted to the lamest abd ugliest champions Riot wants to offer during free week. Then you have mirror matches, which is just as bad. In fact, I won't even play free week champions (like Irelia) knowing that the chance to play in a mirror is too high. So you are basically playing champs you may not necessarily like, with no form of runes to support certain champions. You may think this limits the game to a test of skill. However, when you are among the skill-less, you may not have the ability to carry the worst players in the game. This is where those above pictures become relevant. You can definitely play super-carries in every game: AP Tristana, Olaf, etc, but you also have to take into account your opponents. You could very well be the team that has no competency compared to a team with average players. Your super carry then has to fight every fed champion on the other team. Super carries win because their items far succeed anything else the other team can afford. If you don't roam 24/7 or push your lane to the inhibitor, then your allies will feed the other team items to match you.

Even against bots, I would lose matches all the way up to level 10! Bots are only tough because they can push towers and do skills when most players wouldn't (such as Soraka Bot and starfall). But it is sooooooo easy to not die to bots. It's even easy to not die to low level human players. One can almost say that an afk player is better than one that feeds, but that is wholly dependent on the enemy team. Basaimah is fun to play now, but my goodness was it hair-pulling for 80% of my playtime. I am also a player that tends to lock in last. I usually fill whatever gap in roles I see: support, ad carry, mid, top, jungle, etc. Yes I know that roles are not always important in low level gameplay; but I like to believe that every role can "carry" in its own way. Champs like Sona and Lulu can turn the worst AD carry into a sub-par one. Maoki and Sejuani can force your team to fight when you know it will be advantageous. Of course, this only works if your team actually follows your directions. Be it language barriers or IQ barriers, some people just don't want to win....There is no other way to explain it.

There is one thing to not know how to play a MoBA; it's another thing to be unfamiliar with PVP PC games; it's ANOTHER thing to just play to lose. I'd rather hear that the player is botting the game with a computer program. It got bad enough that you really hope that no human is behind the monitor..as the decisions they make cannot possibly have been "good" in anyone's mind.

As I am typing this, Basaimah is almost level 24, and will probably level up tonight. Much of the victory issues have subsided, and super carrying is still (perhaps even more) possible. Of course, I'm not smart or talented enough to first pick champs in solo queue; I still try to fill missing roles. The whole point of leveling up Basaimah was to learn new champions without fear of losing. "Learning" a few like Karthus and Xerath went terribly. I've had my fair share of games where I fed or just could not contribute. Heck, I even played Urgot once and didn't know how to use his Lock-on. That's pretty bad. But hey, getting carried is pretty fun too. It's not like I fail so badly that the game is unplayable.

Basaimah is up to 8000+IP, and can buy any champ in the game. Diana and Zyra both look promising. I will try my best to not buy anything...