So in my usual display of utter brilliance I found some extra money this holiday season and decided to get myself a new laptop in order to play League of Legends.
As per usual I can't remember if I mentioned that I want to try to play LoL at pro-gamer levels, and I'm not going to check if I did, but I do and seeing as my medical form is going to take 6-12 months [because, let's face it, if something worked for me like it does for the average fucker on earth then reality would come apart at the seams] I need something to do, and trying to score 10/0/10 with Fiora in a Challenger ranked match seems like fun.
Two issues there of course.
The first is that I tried to find out how you become a pro-gamer of League of Legends, and found that you need to rise to Challenger in the ranked mode of the client, which of course I cannot do because of a system fault Riot pretends doesn't exist called 'ELO Hell'.
For those reading this who don't know and can't be asked to look up what that is; ELO Hell is where the matchmaking system pairs you with a team of 4 other players in a team of 5 total who are well below the skill level of the opposition. This results in you losing regardless of your personal skill level, and being kept in the lower Leagues [Bronze, Silver, Gold, etc.] despite whatever your skill level may actually be. For me for example, I regularly score, outside of the ranked mode, much higher than my allies with few very deaths and reasonable to a lot of kills, however if I then play the ranked mode I tend to get paired with allies who feed, hand power to the enemy, and force me to lose the match.
What angers me most about ELO Hell, asides from the fact that Riot themselves are solid in their convictions that their matchmaking system is entirely fair and unbiased in it's operation, is that the general playerbase of the game are equally sure not only that ELO Hell doesn't exist that also if you suggest that it exists you clearly cannot play the game and belong in Bronze league.
I mean, if you ask why you're allies feed heavily, why you're losing matches because your allies can't hold their lanes, why your personal score is much higher than your allies on a regular basis, then the end result of that enquiry, regardless of the facts of the situation or knowledge of you're ability to play the game, will be that it is your fault you can't rank up.
The possibility that ELO Hell could, not does but mere COULD, exist is instantly and automatically negated. If you ask or suggest or say it exists you are declared to be an inept player by default, like you cannot be a good player and believe that Riot are fallible and could create, through design or accident, a flawed system.
Some of the best comments I've ever had about it include the fact that if you yourself are any good then you alone should be able to carry your team, as though 1 good player with 4 others who hand power to the 4-5 reasonable/good players on the other team can be fought when even the worst player who's been fed is powerful statistically.
Common sense says that if you've got two teams of 5, 90% of team 1 is useless and 90% of team 2 is good, then it doesn't matter if the other 10% of team 1 is the best player on the planet, they cannot hope to win against the other team who will make it their business to focus and slaughter that one good player and then finish off the others whilst that guy is cursing his allies and looking at a death screen.
I have tried three times to rank up to Challenger mode, back when I was playing a dozen or two matches per day a year or so ago, and each time I ran into the same issue; I would play matches, rank up to maybe the top of silver on a steady rising column, and then my allies would be terminally useless and my personal score would sink like an anchor and drop me back down to bronze. The worst is when you get to promotion matches [series of matches in best out of 3 or 5 which bring you up a division or league] where you're allies maybe reasonable for one or two matches and then be shockingly useless so you lose the promotion 75-90% of the time.
A lot of players have said they encounter this from the ranked
matchmaking system but they always receive the same responses as I've
described; people don't have reasonable arguments against what is obvious to someone on the receiving end of it, they just knee jerk declare that the speaker is obviously useless at playing and start using bad reasoning about game theory and even physiological. I can't remember those right now but there's this list somewhere online about how people blame others and shirk responsibility for their own mistakes, so it's not their allies in LoL it's actually them. A lot of bullshit anyway.
So the point is that I could, given the hardware, sit here for a year and play the game and never get beyond silver because the ranked system, for whatever reason, has a bias against my account to ensure that I can't rank up.
I ran a test once where I used non-ranked matches in all the modes to see if I could rank up outside of the ranked mode, recording match results in MS Excel spreadsheets. I got to Diamond before I stopped measuring it. If those modes also match you with allies and enemies of similar power [because why wouldn't they?] then the bias definitely exists. If they don't, then I still have my ranked scores where my allies have folded their lanes and there was no way I could fight well fed organised enemies.
That's the first issue.
The second issue with trying to become a pro-gamer of LoL is that I don't have the hardware anymore.
Like I've mentioned in previous posts I've been trying to join the Metropolitan Police in London for the past 6+ months. I'm still not in full time paid training with them because of a medical form which other people have been able to collect in a few days but because my doctors unregistered me, and sent my medical records to the health authority holding bank, in London as it happens, my new doctors can't sign a new medical questionare confirming my good health, and the old questionare that IS signed is with my medical records, which have been requested from the health authority and not mailed, emailed or faxed to them in the last month.
As mentioned, I've been through hell trying to pass the college course and the interviews and keep the job centre from fucking me over, and now I'm sitting here, developing some really awesome anger issues about the last 6+ months, out of work, out of money, and feeling like my entire like is afflicted with ELO Hell [I just can't win because of other people].
My PC which could run League at better than Medium graphic settings is broken. I need a new PC to run it which isn't sitting in Meltdown London, the eSports bar, so I can practise and play the ranked mode [I wouldn't care if it was on the lowest graphics setting, it's just got to run and be responsive and playable].
So even though I don't think ELO Hell will allow me to rank up [and no one gives a damn about that] I managed to get some funds together and dropped a couple of hundred quid on a new laptop. The minimum specs of LoL are 2ghz with 2 gig RAM. I got a 2.1ghz with 4 gig of RAM, except it ISNT that because it was advertised as a 2.1ghz duel core and windows is saying is 1.88ghz duel core, so that could be why, even on the lowest graphics setting I'm getting 500ms lag, or it could be because I'm staying in a hostel with crappy wifi [though I've seen others play LoL here fine, and Hearthstone and uTorrent work great, though Christmas + Riot's crappy EUW server may be enough to fuck my game, I just don't know].
Then, just to add insult to injury, when I looked up the specs on the Tesco website [online they sell computer hardware], which is where I double checked that it was being advertised at 2.1ghz, I then found out they had dropped the price by 50 fucking quid three days after I bought it, and one day after I started using it.
So if I had waited 3 days I could've saved 50 quid. If I had been told the actual power of it, I never would've bought it to begin with. And now I have to clean my files off it, return it, shout at them a little, and then go to Gumtree and buy a second hand laptop from someone, though if I'm careful I should be able to get a 3ghz with 6-8 gig RAM, so it's very annoying but maybe it's all for the best. One way or the other this thing is going back because I want that 50 fucking quid anyway.
So, yeah, I hate Christmas.
Worked my ass off for 6 months, dealt with some shit, tried to just get myself into ranked LoL play over the holidays with a new laptop and failed, boxing day sales fucked me, I can't even go to the gym to work off my current anger issues because the gym is shut for the holidays, and I'm surrounded by happy fuckers during a time which in usual circumstances pisses me off anyway because of the hypocrisy and my utter failure to understand how to act like a human being.
Bad year, punctuated by an aggravating holiday season with the new year looming over me and no end in sight to my misery because I cannot believe that after the holidays I'll get my medical form, the MPS will still have my application active, I'll get into paid work within a month or two, or even the ranked system of LoL will allow me to rank up.
And more work up next; return this laptop tomorrow, buy a new one and hope it wasn't the wifi, check with doctors for my medical form which won't be there, a hard gym session because I haven't gone for more than a week now [recovery + Christmas closure], and then New Fucking Years which is like today only with a lot more drunken bastards.
Joy.
Going to watch some Banshee, eat something maybe, and try to get to bed before 5am so I can get to the gym tomorrow after I've returned the laptop.
Probably post again soon once the bullshit running up to New Years hits...
