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[miauw62]

Yeah, i heard that the LoL community is horribly anti-newbie and elitist.

[penguinofhonor]

Well do your friends have reason to? I wouldn't assume the worst of them.

Whether or not they had a reason to, they all ended up hanging out without me. Apparently it was "kind of spontaneous" so they didn't really invite people, though everyone but me still ended up there.

I was in your position a while back, I suspect.  I hung out with a group of friends and we all had a blast... for a while.  After a year, they started getting together without me, and invited me less often.  I had to put a lot of effort into meeting up with them, and they put a lot less effort into meeting up.   I think the last straw was when they all went to a theme park across the state without me.  We all went there the year before, and it was a big deal and a lot of fun.  The fact nobody bothered to let me know... yeah that made it pretty clear they didn't want me around anymore.

That pretty much tore my heart out for a while <_<;;  This group made me feel special, then tossed me aside once they realized the shy and anti-social kid was (SURPRISE!) social awkward and a bit eccentric and weird.  I'm with a new group at my new college... and I dunno if they're gonna do the same to me someday.

Eh, for now I'm going to assume they just forgot and are making up excuses to cover their asses. There's no pattern or anything yet.

[SalmonGod]

Yeah, i heard that the LoL community is horribly anti-newbie and elitist.

And it's supposedly the best of the MOBA communities in this regard.  Sad.

Also, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena is a horrible name for a genre.  It's stupid that it's the one that caught on.  The words could be describing any genre of game with combat and online play.

[Euld]

I heard LoL came up with the name?  I suspect they made sure it was on everyone's lips in as little time as possible.

[Aklyon]

MOBA is a terribly broad description.

ABRS fits much better.

[MaximumZero]

The whole holiday season makes me rage. Stupid ass customers are the worst, and they're even worse during the holiday shopping season.

Fuck you, public. I declare your holiday season null and void until you stop being assholes.

[Solifuge]

At home today, and the neighbor's super-loud custom car alarm has started going off every few minutes since 8am. To illustrate, it's gone off for a minute and then stopped two times while writing this message.

It is now 2pm. It's still going off. It's piercing through 4 walls, my headphones, and the angriest music I have. I wrote them a neighborly note since they appear to be out. 6 hours later, it's taxing my deepest reserves of the inner peace to not bolt-cut open their car hood and disconnect the battery.

[kaijyuu]

I was in your position a while back, I suspect.  I hung out with a group of friends and we all had a blast... for a while.  After a year, they started getting together without me, and invited me less often.  I had to put a lot of effort into meeting up with them, and they put a lot less effort into meeting up.   I think the last straw was when they all went to a theme park across the state without me.  We all went there the year before, and it was a big deal and a lot of fun.  The fact nobody bothered to let me know... yeah that made it pretty clear they didn't want me around anymore.

That pretty much tore my heart out for a while <_<;;  This group made me feel special, then tossed me aside once they realized the shy and anti-social kid was (SURPRISE!) social awkward and a bit eccentric and weird.  I'm with a new group at my new college... and I dunno if they're gonna do the same to me someday.

* kaijyuu hugs

I was always the tagalong Yeah, I can understand that to some degree (though not quite THAT degree; ouch).

[nenjin]

2.  Snowballing rpg mechanics, which I really find to be fucking unforgivably horrible game design for obvious reasons.

This, I think, is truly my primary complaint with DOTA-esqe games. When someone gains an advantage and knows how to keep it, GG. If you're not maximizing your creep kills, your gold intake, your upgrade scheme.....you progressively slip farther and farther behind. And then an actual player kill just fucking blows their advantage sky high because it compounds ALL those things.

It's not like a FPS where skill > tactics > progression. You're simply outclassed at a certain point in DOTA, before you even add class differences, double-teaming, tactical ganking and actual skill into the equation. I mean, I do enjoy the cooperation and tactics, but it all falls apart for me when you're numerically incapable of beating another opponent one-on-one. It's not fun to run and hide. It's not fun to scream like a little girl for a player with more success/a better class to come save you. You at times find yourself reduced to the position of doing nothing because it's the best thing you can do for your team at that point.

I'm usually all about RPG mechanics woven into MP games but DOTA clones take it to unfun levels for me. It's not even like WoW PvP where the range is at least broad enough to encompass a variety of players/skill levels/progression. At 2 levels of difference in LoL, 1v1, if you ain't kiting you might as well just not fucking bother.

Even playing with friends who are supportive and patient I just find it so very hit-and-miss on whether I'm enjoying myself or getting owned. I think LoL is honestly a game that appeals to the dick-side of people's nature. Because it's not really about an "honorable" match, it's about cluster-fucking and ganking and reducing people down to being completely unable to retaliate. At least in FPS, the playing field stays level and the gun is the great equalizer. There is no great equalizer in DOTA clones, at least as far as I can tell.

That's really what MOBAs or ARBSs or whatever you want to call them are to me...they're like a FPS where 90% of the time you end up spawn camped within the first 5 minutes. Or an RTS that reaches totally unbalanced levels of escalation within less than 10 minutes.

[Pnx]

At home today, and the neighbor's super-loud custom car alarm has started going off every few minutes since 8am. To illustrate, it's gone off for a minute and then stopped two times while writing this message.

It is now 2pm. It's still going off. It's piercing through 4 walls, my headphones, and the angriest music I have. I wrote them a neighborly note since they appear to be out. 6 hours later, it's taxing my deepest reserves of the inner peace to not bolt-cut open their car hood and disconnect the battery.

Phone the police? I'm pretty sure there's ordinances against this kind of thing.

[Solifuge]

I'd rather not make things hard for them when they aren't around to even know something's wrong.

Seems someone called the police already though, and the car's getting impounded... several hundred dollars in fines and towing fees is exactly the sort of thing I'd have liked to not have happened.

...and as I was writing this, I looked out the window and saw the owner walk up to it, get my note, and is now chatting with the police. We'll see what happens.

If it turns out she was home all this time, my sympathy will be nonexistant.

[penguinofhonor]

Snowballing has a purpose in PvP games when executed properly. Games without it lack tension because anyone can come back at any time. This sounds like it'd be more tense, but it removes the excitement of getting a winning position and the excitement of making a comeback.

You have to strike a balance with snowballing in your game. If the snowballing is too weak, then wins become long and grueling as the winning team doesn't have enough of a position to come back from. If the snowballing is too strong, then the losing team has no chance of coming back and there's no point to playing the game once you start losing.

[Knight of Fools]

I was in your position a while back, I suspect.  I hung out with a group of friends and we all had a blast... for a while.  After a year, they started getting together without me, and invited me less often.  I had to put a lot of effort into meeting up with them, and they put a lot less effort into meeting up.   I think the last straw was when they all went to a theme park across the state without me.  We all went there the year before, and it was a big deal and a lot of fun.  The fact nobody bothered to let me know... yeah that made it pretty clear they didn't want me around anymore.

That pretty much tore my heart out for a while <_<;;  This group made me feel special, then tossed me aside once they realized the shy and anti-social kid was (SURPRISE!) social awkward and a bit eccentric and weird.  I'm with a new group at my new college... and I dunno if they're gonna do the same to me someday.

Worrying about it is as useful as worrying about how old you're getting and whether or not you're going to die soon. Realize you have little to no control over it, and enjoy the moment. Don't do anything crazy or stupid, but don't stress about things you can't change, either.

It works retrospectively, too. If something bad does happen, do some damage control and, once nothing else can be accomplished, forget about it.

Best two things I ever figured out about life.

[Graknorke]

Snowballing has a purpose in PvP games when executed properly. Games without it lack tension because anyone can come back at any time. This sounds like it'd be more tense, but it removes the excitement of getting a winning position and the excitement of making a comeback.

You have to strike a balance with snowballing in your game. If the snowballing is too weak, then wins become long and grueling as the winning team doesn't have enough of a position to come back from. If the snowballing is too strong, then the losing team has no chance of coming back and there's no point to playing the game once you start losing.

I think you're thinking more about rubberbanding than snowballing. If rubberbanding is strong then it'll let people who are losing win easily and make winning less satisfying. Reducing snowballing would just make the winning side's success play out a bit slower, with a chance for things to turn back around.

[penguinofhonor]

They're linked, though. Increased snowballing makes rubberbanding more difficult. For instance, in League of Legends the classic rubberband moment is beating the winning team in a fight and taking a bunch of objectives while they're dead.

The snowballing mechanic in League is the gold and experience advantage you get from winning. This makes your team stronger as a whole. The bigger the power gap there is between the winning and losing teams (determined by how much they're snowballing), the less likely it is for the losing team to win that fight and regain an advantage.