[LoL] Level-Setting or Randomization?

I have been playing a lot of ARAM. My win rate recently is in the 50% range, but it’s streaky: 2-4 in a row either way, rarely win-lose-win-lose. I’m not sure if I have reached my appropriate level with hidden ELO or whether ARAM is just so random that each game is more or less a coin flip of who gets good team composition, who gets utter rubbish players, whose team is randomly the perfect counter to the other…

On the other hand, I seem to have gotten above the point where half the matches are 4 vs 5 because someone AFKs/disconnects. And I am starting to appreciate queue dodges because of that: I would rather have someone reset the whole game than make it an uneven waste of time.

: Zubon

6 thoughts on “[LoL] Level-Setting or Randomization?”

  1. It’s a pickle.

    I have tracked my wins and losses over 200 games in League (Summoner’s Rift) because I was curious about the trends. I categorized it simply by:

    1. Someone intentionally threw the game (troll pick, intentional feed): 11.36%
    2. There was an AFK: 15.15%
    3. The game was severely lopsided (only one team had a legitimate chance of winning): 57.58%
    4. The game was ‘close’: Either team had a chance of winning: 15.91%.

    I have played almost 900 games total, but with the AFK’s etc I just started tracking out of curiosity sake.

    #3 isn’t so surprising considering the snowbally nature of the game. The best, and most fun games (win or lose) are #4 obviously, and because they are so rare when they happen it is quite the joy to have participated in it. Shame that it’s less than 1 in 5 games end up that way.

    So, answer = randomization?

    1. The detail within #3 matters to this line of thought, though. In ARAM, lopsided team distribution is random and unfun; in draft, that’s part of the game. If the game is lopsided because of a fair but consistently won lane that snowballs, that’s what is supposed to happen; if the game is lopsided because three members of the winning team were screwed by ELO and three of the losing team had been carried by better players, that’s just an unfair match the computer could not have predicted.

      In ARAM, you can usually tell pretty quickly if a team has no legitimate chance of winning. Team composition will decide a lot of the matches. Then you add in the people obviously great or terrible, like when I saw Alistar rush Lich Bane this weekend. Other games are hard to tell; someone might be on a bad part of the character’s power curve or not getting the swing of the team mechanics, and I have seen A LOT of big comebacks because one good ace late game lets you clear a lot of map.

      You’re suggesting the Summoner’s Rift is also highly random, not so much because of the champions but because playing solo means 9 random people who, hey, who knows?

      1. I think in any team based multiplayer game, random players will overwhelm any attempts at balance. At least in smaller teams; the 40 vs 40 Alterac Valley in WoW is probably fairly balanced, just because the team distribution will end up closer to even. But the 5v5 MOBA is just asking for pain when played with random teams.
        That said, tracking the win/loss stats of ARAM is just asking for trouble. You’re tossing out most of the rules the game is balanced on, so expecting anything other than amusing insanity is folly.

      2. I haven’t played enough ARAM to make those conclusions though – I was just shoe-horning my own observations of the randomness that seems to be throughout LOL. =) The past two games have been particularly frustrating for me. I have played an amazing lane, winning outright, helping other, close lanes (me playing top, helping mid) and ultimately losing due to our bottom lane playing reckless and giving up needless deaths.

        So, in that case, is it my fault for not ALSO helping bot (while winning my lane, and helping mid win theirs) or just accepting that getting bad players/matchups/luck in the ‘main’ lane is part of the fun of the randomization?

    1. Getting Lich Bane is not absurd. Rushing it seems absurd, especially if Alistar is initiating fights as quickly as he can respawn and make it back to the front line (rather than relying on that ult). He made it to level 12 and spent about half of the game dead, with one Ruby Gem as his lone tanky item.

      I am not saying there is not a workable build there. I would say that it requires some skills to make it workable, and the sort of Alistar who initiates by knocking his target away from his teammates is not the guy who should be trying out an awesome build he just read about.

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