The majority of Bronze players are not toxic. That's right. The majority of Bronze players are not toxic. Most players will at least start out the game with a positive attitude. Despite the fact that I purposely try to tilt the team by choosing off-meta picks in champ select or "accidentally" banning their pick declaration, they're usually OK with it.
However, once the game starts, they may begin to get more toxic depending on how things are going, but that isn't actually different from any other ELO bracket. I do feel that people are more vocal in all-chat in lower ELO, and perhaps the amount of outright verbal abuse and profanity is greater than in higher ELO brackets, but toxicity exists in all levels of play, and is not categorical of just Bronze.
I think that the stereotypical Bronze toxicity comes from people hopping on the bandwagon once a player is targeted for flaming. I intentionally make myself an easy target, and once one guy starts harassing me, others on the team will join in, and the inevitable all-chat message will invite the enemy team to harass me as well. I honestly don't care what these Bronzies think of me, but if it were another Bronzie under verbal assault, they can easily break or retaliate with their own barrage of verbal abuse.
An interesting phenomenon that occurs is that people can actually become friends through a common enemy. After flaming someone for an entire game, they'll add each other after the game. I've actually seen it quite a few times. In the post-game chat, a few players will let loose the last of their slander upon me before exchanging a few cordial messages amongst themselves, presumably adding each other to their friends lists afterwards. Whether or not this is a good basis for a friendship is up to the reader to decide.
Monday, May 9, 2016
Never Lucky
This attitude is prevalent amongst the Old Guard type of player. They feel that fate is victimizing them in some way, and Lady Luck never seems to smile at them. They always have trolls or AFK on their team, and the enemy team always gets the smurf.
A lot of people recommend watching videos or reading guides in order to get better, but that means that you have to be willing to identify your own areas for improvement. If a player attributes his ELO primarily to luck, then he's probably already blind to his own mistakes. For those players who do not play a lot of games, luck is obviously a larger factor, but by the Law of Large Numbers, after a pretty decent number of games, your ELO is pretty representative of your skill level, which is to say that you deserve your rank whatever it may be.
This manifests in games when people call out the enemy laner for being "lucky" when they score first blood on them, or by flaming a fed champion for getting "lucky" or something. In some cases, they are correct, but in most of those cases, there's usually some underlying factor. In the case of first blood, they could have been fighting in the enemy creep wave, and minion aggro put a lot of damage on them. A classic excuse is the fact that they were out of mana. Whether or not the opponent was capitalizing on this fact may not be clear, but the putting themselves in a dangerous position without mana is their own fault entirely.
I will rarely outright tell people I'm smurfing, since there is no real reason for anybody to know, but if they interrogate me or call me lucky, I will tell them. Almost always, they won't believe me. Stats aren't everything, but they are a decent representation of someone's skill and playstyle. I'll link them my op.gg so they can browse my match history if they want, but almost always, they'll ask how I get lucky every single game. Those numbers on a Bronze player are highly suspect, but to a stubborn Bronze player, the only reason they die 12 times per game is because they're unlucky. The only reason I average a KDA of 13.86 is because I'm lucky. The only difference between us is luck.
When an outplay actually happens, they either won't admit they got outplayed, or won't even be able to recognize the fact that they got outplayed. Most of the fights are done Runescape-style: two champions standing there auto-attacking each other and casting spells off cooldown until someone dies. There are no mechanics whatsoever--no jukes, no clever use of bushes, no spell combos. When someone ends up making a good play, you can expect the defeated player to type "lucky" followed by one or more obscenities in all-chat.
A lot of people recommend watching videos or reading guides in order to get better, but that means that you have to be willing to identify your own areas for improvement. If a player attributes his ELO primarily to luck, then he's probably already blind to his own mistakes. For those players who do not play a lot of games, luck is obviously a larger factor, but by the Law of Large Numbers, after a pretty decent number of games, your ELO is pretty representative of your skill level, which is to say that you deserve your rank whatever it may be.
This manifests in games when people call out the enemy laner for being "lucky" when they score first blood on them, or by flaming a fed champion for getting "lucky" or something. In some cases, they are correct, but in most of those cases, there's usually some underlying factor. In the case of first blood, they could have been fighting in the enemy creep wave, and minion aggro put a lot of damage on them. A classic excuse is the fact that they were out of mana. Whether or not the opponent was capitalizing on this fact may not be clear, but the putting themselves in a dangerous position without mana is their own fault entirely.
I will rarely outright tell people I'm smurfing, since there is no real reason for anybody to know, but if they interrogate me or call me lucky, I will tell them. Almost always, they won't believe me. Stats aren't everything, but they are a decent representation of someone's skill and playstyle. I'll link them my op.gg so they can browse my match history if they want, but almost always, they'll ask how I get lucky every single game. Those numbers on a Bronze player are highly suspect, but to a stubborn Bronze player, the only reason they die 12 times per game is because they're unlucky. The only reason I average a KDA of 13.86 is because I'm lucky. The only difference between us is luck.
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| Snapshot from op.gg of my recent 20 games on the smurf |
The Three Types of Bronze Players
The New Players
There are plenty of people starting League of Legends, as it is a popular game, and most people will end up in Bronze when they start ranked, especially if they do shortly after they reach summoner level 30. The game is just very complicated, and unless you're extraordinarily talented or have prior experience in the genre, it'll be hard to not be a bad player. There's nothing wrong with being placed into Bronze.
For background, when I first started ranked, I had already been summoner level 30 for a while. I was not a great player by any means, and I didn't even know how to set up my rune pages properly. I was placed at 1400 ELO, which is around Silver 1 today. I would consider myself extremely lucky, as I went 7-3 in my first set of placement matches without much of an idea what I was doing. Shortly after, I fell down to around 1000 ELO where I belonged, which is probably around Bronze I today.
This class of players is just simply trying to figure things out. These people are generally experimenting with builds, learning new champions, and practicing the basic mechanics of the game.
I believe that it's hard to improve your game in normals because matchmaking is more lenient on who you can play with/against, so the spread of skill in the game tends to vary greatly. Ranked matches you with players of similar skill, so the games are much more consistent.
Over time, they will fall into the one of the other two categories, depending on their attitude.
As an aside, for those seeking to improve, I actually recommend trying new champions in ranked on a smurf, because it will give you better room to practice in a more controlled environment without affecting the rating on your main account. Of course, smurfing is technically not allowed, although Riot generally condones this behavior.
These guys have been in Bronze for a while. It's pretty normal to see people with 500+ games per season in low Bronze. I won't provide names here since there's no reason to shame players, and I'm also too lazy to look for specific people. If you want to do your own research, you can always go to op.gg to find some low ELO players, or go to lolking.net, and you can see which summoners have the most games on each champion, and I bet for each of them you can find some person on the list that has very low ELO.
I believe that the primary reason that this class of players exists is because of their attitude towards the game. Clearly, they care enough about the game to keep playing it this much. However, they fail to improve because they either cannot or are unwilling to recognize their mistakes. These are the people crying on Reddit about being stuck in ELO hell. These are the people post on the forums that complain about having bad teammates. These are the people that "deserve challenjour" or something.
Oftentimes, they refuse to learn basic mechanics, or have skewed priorities for objectives, like kills vs. CS, towers vs. dragon, inhibitor vs. baron, etc. They also tend to itemize poorly, often believing that their build is the best build, and refusing to listen to others. They never acknowledge their own mistakes, and are usually quick to criticize others for their mistakes. Having been in Bronze for so long, I wouldn't be surprised if they turned extremely toxic.
The Silver Players
These are the guys who have learned from their mistakes and are actively improving their game, and therefore their ELO. While they still have a lot to learn, they know what they need to learn, and they will continually work to get better.
I call them the Silver players because they are on their way out of Bronze and going into higher places. I have great respect for these guys because they have a very good attitude. They focus on themselves instead of their teammates. Of course, the quality of your teammates will vary from game to game, but in solo queue, it is your job to make the most of each game.
Smurfs
I wouldn't give this its own category since they're not actually Bronze players, but there are a lot of smurfs in Bronze. Most often, they're secondary accounts of Silver or high Bronze players. There are also boosters, since boosts in Bronze are relatively cheap. Once in a while, you will meet a high ELO smurf who is just hanging out in Bronze for whatever reason they may have.
About
Why Blogger?
There isn't an "About" page on Blogger AFAIK, so I'm just going to make this the first post. I was really thinking of using Wordpress this time, but I've got several blogs on Blogger already, and this probably isn't going to be a big blog, so I figured it'd just be best to keep everything in one place.
I'm a Diamond I jungler on the NA server for League of Legends. During the mage rework patch that was very disruptive to gameplay because of how unbalanced the game became, I decided to sink a smurf into Bronze V to see what it's like to play at the lowest ranked ELO possible.
Background
I've decided to write a series of posts about the Bronze V experience, and hopefully it can help you if you are struggling to escape the depths of Bronze, or maybe it can help improve your game in other ELO brackets as well. Or it could just be an entertaining read.
Sandbagging
I didn't think this deserved a separate post, but here's a note on sandbagging games.
While I agree that it's somewhat unethical to lose games on purpose like this, I don't think it's too bad other than the fact that it might waste some people's time. However, no game is truly wasted time if you strive to improve--more on this later!
Additionally, my sandbagging methodology does not involve any intentional feeding. I will attempt to tilt the team by acting like an idiot, banning their pick declaration, and choosing off-meta picks during champ select. During the early game, I will generally try my best, and since it's low ELO, I'll probably get really fed. As the game progresses, I'll aid the team less and less, and if they can win the game given the massive lead I have provided, I'll let it happen. Otherwise, if we lose, I'll let it happen as well.
A lot of other sandbaggers just intentionally feed, or purposely bait their teammates into fighting without assisting them, but I don't do either of those things.
There isn't an "About" page on Blogger AFAIK, so I'm just going to make this the first post. I was really thinking of using Wordpress this time, but I've got several blogs on Blogger already, and this probably isn't going to be a big blog, so I figured it'd just be best to keep everything in one place.
I'm a Diamond I jungler on the NA server for League of Legends. During the mage rework patch that was very disruptive to gameplay because of how unbalanced the game became, I decided to sink a smurf into Bronze V to see what it's like to play at the lowest ranked ELO possible.
Background
I've decided to write a series of posts about the Bronze V experience, and hopefully it can help you if you are struggling to escape the depths of Bronze, or maybe it can help improve your game in other ELO brackets as well. Or it could just be an entertaining read.
Sandbagging
I didn't think this deserved a separate post, but here's a note on sandbagging games.
While I agree that it's somewhat unethical to lose games on purpose like this, I don't think it's too bad other than the fact that it might waste some people's time. However, no game is truly wasted time if you strive to improve--more on this later!
Additionally, my sandbagging methodology does not involve any intentional feeding. I will attempt to tilt the team by acting like an idiot, banning their pick declaration, and choosing off-meta picks during champ select. During the early game, I will generally try my best, and since it's low ELO, I'll probably get really fed. As the game progresses, I'll aid the team less and less, and if they can win the game given the massive lead I have provided, I'll let it happen. Otherwise, if we lose, I'll let it happen as well.
A lot of other sandbaggers just intentionally feed, or purposely bait their teammates into fighting without assisting them, but I don't do either of those things.
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