League of Legends/Headscratchers

Gameplay

• Silences, stuns, "suppression", etc. blocking Summoner spells. Based on the Excuse Plot/Metagame, shouldn't the Summoner -- the player -- be able to use his/her own powers regardless of a particular Champion's status? Or, if the Summoner is somehow "silenced" by Silence, shouldn't the Champion be effectively stunned by that effect as well, since the Summoner wouldn't be able to communicate? Come to think of it, the "global" spells (Clairvoyance, Fortify) shouldn't depend on the Champion being alive, but they do (the obvious exception being Revive). Obviously, the answer is Gameplay and Story Segregation, justified with Competitive Balance. But...*scratches head*.
  • You answered your own question.
    • The Hand Wave given is that the Champion acts as a physical anchor for the summoner's spells, so they can't be cast while the champion respawns, and the reason some status effects block them is that the close link between summoner and Champion ensures that the summoner feels some of the Champion's pain.
  • Wait, what? Fortify can be cast when the champion in question is dead, as it doesn't affect the champ. Also, crowd controls do not block summoner spells except Flash (which can be handwaved by the champ needing to be alert) - the one crowd control which does that is suppression, which is the suppression of the link between summoner and champion.
  • Even in the lore the League has rules. I think it's safe to assume that one of those rules contains summoner spells which can't be used when your champion is dead or incapacitated.
• I've seen some players reach level 20 with 10 wins. I'm level 18, yet I have about 70 wins / 70 losses. How the HELL can you do so badly? It boggles my mind.
  • You were Born Lucky. Because League of Legends is a free game, it's fully possible for people to have only two wins at level 10 because every other match they get into is full of Saboteur accounts as I call them. I don't know if this is happening in Heroes of Newerth now that it's free or not, but you're not free from dummy accounts that are dumped at level 20 or so for people to just go in and troll, intentionally feed, and make newbies' lives a living hell by wrecking their games. If they get reported, then who cares? You're not losing anything - it's just a dummy account that's banned. That and they probably are playing more bot games. I play bot games mostly because I don't have the time to get into a game that can drag on for over an hour and people rarely let bot games drag on that long.
    • Also, bot games don't appear on win/losses, but do give experience.
• Has Riot ever played World of Warcraft or Guild Wars? Shouldn't they have known that nobody defends in capture and hold games and added something to encourage defensive play? Just about every game, there's a big fight for top...and then everyone disperses and leaves only one person to defend it. Or the sole defender asks someone to take their place because they need to heal or buy only for the other person to abandon it.

Current Champions

• Why does Twisted Fate, a character described as a gypsy gambler, have a thick Texas accent?
  • Because it suits him as a suave Las Vegas gambler kind of person. That's as far as the meta and character style aspect go. If you want a story answer, he was born to Gypsy parents, but gambled his way to prosperity in Noxus. Hell knows what Noxian accents are like. Maybe all upper-rich criminals speak Texan?
  • There is no Texas in Runeterra. Therefore, he doesn't have a Texan accent within his universe. So!...it doesn't really matter. At least he doesn't sound like Commander Boreale. Then, I'd complain about his accent.
  • You'd probably not wanna think too hard about it - how does Caitlyn have a british accent yet Ezreal doesn't?
  • He was born in the Terran Confederacy.
• How come Vlad's normal skin depicts his hair as reddish, yet his ingame model shows his hair as white? I'd assume probably the glow of his blood makes it look reddish...
  • That would be correct. If you look close enough, you can see the silveryness of his hair showing up. It's just reflecting the blood.

Upcoming Champions

• So...end of season one, and they announced they got three more champions in progress. Who else thinks the Monkey King is gonna be cancelled?
  • Considering we haven't seen dick about the Monkey King since his teaser trailer, I'd say he got tossed months ago when the idea for Vayne came along.
  • Consider again, then. He's been formally announced.
• So is the Nine-tailed fox going to be like the Monkey King and not released until four months after she was announced?
  • Ahri was released about a month and a half after the leak/announcement.

Fanbase

• How come whenever I use the Tibbers-Incinerate-Ignite-Disintegrate combo, people are surprised when I do it? annie's been in this game for awhile.
  • Newbies. There's a lot of them. Learning 70+ champions and their quirks is going to be hard enough especially when you don't own him/her, not to mention their opponents may be just as new... they maybe playing against someone who don't know the above combo, and you're basically throwing them for a loop.
• How come people are complaining about having waited forever for Leona when she was delayed, and that it was so unfair that people wait to make sure she wasn't like Yorick the Gravedigger? Sides...we've waited longer for champions: Lee Sin The Blind Monk was intended to be in the beta, and the Monkey King is for all intents and purposes canceled. (He was announced before Yorick, Leona, and Skarner. The latter is in development, and the other two have been released.
  • The Monkey King was never supposed to be released soon after his preview, so it's not a surprise that he hasn't been released yet... until now.
  • Considering Leona, I was more pissed off about the fact the day she was originally released the servers were shut down for nearly 10 hours. I figured the reason was she was so bugged and broken that they took the servers down until they could iron all her bugs out.
• I know that this certainly didn't come from THIS game, but what on earth is it about MOBA games and their ability to bring out the absolute worst in people?
  • I don't even think this problem comes from MOBA games at all. All the bad aspects existed before, but were allowed to magnify by video games' competitive spirit and the Internet's ability to spew it everywhere.
    • But for some reason, it's especially bad in MOBA games, especially Defense of the Ancients, Heroes of Newerth, and this game.
  • Losing is not fun in a MOBA. Any other multiplayer online game a round is 20 minutes at max, plenty of time to dust off and try to get another win if you lose your current game. A MOBA usually takes 45 minutes minimum. Like Tycho of Penny Arcade said, the fact that you have to spend fifteen minutes farming stretches out the length and emotional investment of a multiplayer game far longer than it should, which makes losing worse, which in turn makes the community more resentful and angry. It essentially means that at any given time, half of the player base feels like they just wasted an hour of their life. That brings out the worst in people for obvious reasons, to a higher degree than any other genre.
  • When there's a bad player in most games, the worst they can do is not help their team mates or increase their opponents score, making them more likely to lose. In MOB As, when someone does badly, they're actively increasing the strength of their opponents, making every competitive aspect outright harder for their team mates. Not only does this make them frustrated, but, the resulting drop in the entire team scores makes everyone assume it must be someone elses fault.
    • The last two points would imply people behaved better in Dominion. This doesn't seem to be the case; GIFT still applies.
      • That's a given, especially if you consider that no matter where you are, no matter which game are you playing, the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys control most, if not all, of the metagame with their beliefs.
        • Which is why you should never play ranked or any games that are "pro" environment like DotA or Heroes of Newerth - If you're having fun, you WILL be chased out and kicked from games, blacklisted, trash-talked, etc. "Stop Having Fun!" Guys cannot be removed - they can only be quarantined by "pro" environments that stroke their egos.
        • Although for some reason, I have actually noticed that since around January, people started to behave better in Dominion. I don't know if it's because it's more fast-paced (and therefore people have less time to type insulting comments in /all ) or if all the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys are busy playing ranked or have moved onto Dota 2. If it keeps the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys out...Go right ahead. Seriously - I don't care if you consider your game the best. Games are all about having fun, and you guys take all the fun out of these games.
          • I recently started playing, and I haven't found any jerkass players yet. Hell, most of the ones I met help teach me how to play, and I did pretty good cause of them. Guess I'm just lucky
            • You are, lucky that is. Please find someone knowledgeable to help/train you a bit before you attempt ranked games. You'll thank me, trust me on this...