Highway to the Bummer Zone
Today was generally a downer. I didn’t wake up in a good mood, and my right hand informed me I had not just an ache, but something more serious. It appears to be some sort of thumb tendonitis relative. I’ll be seeing my doctor about it tomorrow, and while it appears to be okay to write and do most of what I normally do, I’ll be keeping an eye on it and following the doctor’s recommendations.
That said, I did get a chance to play a little bit of League of Legends today, which I realize does not sound like a ton of fun. Indeed, League is often a Bad Time. The more people on your team that you don’t actually know, the worse the game gets. In my first game, I jumped in to help out two friends who were having diminished fun because of random players who had either negative attitudes or a complete refusal to group up and fight together with the team when asked to do so.
League is a strange beast, and it turns out two randoms is not significantly better than three. In that first game, our top laner took the idea of “split pushing” to the extreme, costing us a severe map advantage while they did things like “try to solo dragon and get killed due to lack of vision”.
My last few League games, mostly in “All Random All Mid” (ARAM) mode, which is the Commander analog when compared to the more competitive Summoner’s Rift map.
Our second game, though, was much more fun. We managed to field a full group of five players all together in voice chat, with our most experienced player generally directing our overall strategy. When I used to play this game regularly, my main role was “ADC”, which stands for Attack Damage Carry. The ADC lives in the bottom lane and is flanked by a Support player who staves off opponents while helping place wards in the Fog of War to improve visibility and often provides healing, shields, stuns, slows, or other utility abilities. ADCs spend the early game killing lane minions to accrue gold and experience points while trying not to die to opposing stuns/roots/etc from enemy laners or timely “ganks” when opposing junglers show up from the river. Later in the game, they deal lots of damage to structures and can tear apart unarmored foes in a hurry, but the first 20 minutes are so are not about making flashy plays - they’re about surviving and accruing resources.
In the first game, I played Ashe, the champion I have the most experience on, and performed quite poorly. This wasn’t a surprise, as these were my second and third games on Summoner’s Rift since the start of the pandemic, if my memory serves me correctly. In the second game, Ashe was picked by the opposing team, so I chose Jinx. Both Ashe and Jinx have long-range ultimate abilities that can fly across the entire map, and some other similarities exist as well. Where Ashe clears waves of minions out with her Volley ability, Jinx switches her weapon from a speedy chaingun to a splashy rocket launcher to deal AoE damage. Ashe fires cold arrows that slow opponents, while Jinx uses her “Zap!” ability to deal damage and slow a targeted opponent. Where Jinx exerts some minor map control with a set of three traps that halt opposing champions, Ashe fires a magical bird from her bow to view distant areas of the map. And finally, the ultimates - Ashe’s is an enormous crystal arrow that stuns anyone unlucky enough to be hit, while Jinx’s “Super Mega Death Rocket” deals lots of damage, especially to enemies at low health.
All in all, they’re not too dissimilar, so after a single game with Ashe, I was ready to play better, and I did. More importantly, though, I could easily express myself to my teammates, and what’s more, since they were friends, I was excited to do so. Calling out the positions of enemies I sighted or asking for assistance taking down a target is much easier when everyone is able to communicate easily, and when I made mistakes, I was just as easily able to own those mistakes in voice chat so my teammates would be confident I was working to avoid future errors.
Where most of the communication about gameplay between our three-person unit and the two randoms in the first game was the randoms complaining or generally being toxic and us asking them to stop, all of the communication in the second game was positive and constructive. Just cutting out the negative element of unknown toxic internet dwellers was enough to improve our communication between each other as well, as we could talk freely about things no matter how they were going.
I don’t know if there’s a driving point to this post or if it’s just me talking about my day, so I’ll just close by saying I’m excited to play some Chrono Trigger on stream tonight. I stream twice a week at 8 PM Eastern, once on Tuesdays, where I play old Japanese RPGs with my friend Tim in our “JRPG Club” series, and once now on Thursdays (formerly Wednesdays) with my friend Cassie in our flagship show, “Pixel Crimes”, where we’re currently attempting a Nuzlocke run of Pokémon Shining Pearl. Check that out at http://www.pixelcrimes.live to see what all the fuss is about!