Happy Super Late New Year!!!!!

So now that we have gotten that out of the way there has been a lot of gaming going on in the world. Either you are playing LOL, SC2, DOTA2 , or some new fighting game that comes out every 4 months. Let's do a little run down of the latest news.

-WiiU, HOTS expansion, LOL season 3 is under way and EA ruined a great game franchise. Search the web to find more in depth coverage.

But today we will revisit the competitive scene. LOL Season 3 is under way along with a riot games sponsored tournament. The LCS NA and EU leagues are battling it out for a spot in the playoffs. There are many other exciting events going on for every genre of gaming. The scene is truly flourishing with new talent, content and new life.

Everyone wants to be on top of this hill (its a pretty awesome hill). There has been a mix of popularity and ladder/skill contest in for each scene/game. LOL is no different. LOL has its own set of ladder system broken up in to divisions and medal tiers. I am in the lowly bottom tier and although the game is super fun ... the LOL ladder is a true form of gamer hell.

"I have seen gamer Hell, its the LOL ladder"

a)
There are so many steps to getting a ranked team match going. There's the bans in which you get to choose 3 characters that will not be playable for this game. There is the team selection in which each side has 3 30 second turns to make their team. Then there is the load screen which can take up to around 5 minutes some times depending on the connection speed of the players. Then there is the game which is about 30 minutes on average. During this whole time you are being flamed with comments like "You Suck" and "You're a noob". This last part isnt always the case, there are many people that are in it for the lolz (get it). The whole process away from the game play is very tedious. When trying to schedule your matches and reach your ladder goal it is important to get as many in as possible. So it sucks that there is about 10 mins of down time every match.

b)
The summoner honor system (a system of voting for and reporting LOL players) is supposed to weed out the trolls. But it doesn't. You still get the idiots that want to make your nice fun game a practice in how much can they make some one that doesn't even know them mad. Not only do you have to ignore these people, but you have to help them ... they are your teammates and if you care about your ladder time you will want them to do good because them doing good means a better chance for you at winning. You might say "Michael ... its the internet ... stop crying." And to that I say stfu. But the trolling and rudeness doesn't stop there ... it's in the game play. Feeding opponents, kill stealing , and just random acts of "I dont care ... derp." Waste your breath (or hand movements) that's fine... but dont waste my time any more than the selection screens do. I'm trying to level.

c)
Here lies the actual problem. Your ability to ladder relies on others. The best you can do is get a team of 5 together so that you at least know your teammates. Even then you might just have a bad game because your support got unlucky or miss clicked. There is no system for solely determining a player based on their own skills. There is no individual score vs team work score (or at least one that helps you ladder). The only way to ladder as far as I know is to win. And you cannot do that alone. Even if you play ADC every game (which will not happen).

The solution is to speed up the process in the select screen. The more one plays the easier it should be to pick the champion. Bans should be preset for the player with six pre selected so that any duplicates amongst players will still result in a total of six banned champions. The ability to move up a division is based on points. You lose points if you lose a game and you receive points if you win a game. If you win its most likely that you had something to do with it. At the very least you did not feed the other team to the point of making their adc too god like early in the game. If your team loses it might not be your fault at all. I propose that if your KDA ratio is above some threshold then you should still get points, or maybe your point total doesn't move at all. It is a terrible burden when you play competitively and are at the mercy of others for a chance to advance. This is what makes the ranking systems of fighting games so appealing. The only person to effect your ranking is you and the matches are quick (both the match play and the character selection).