Calling LoL just a video game would be an understatement. Not that it’s one-of-a-kind. Not that it’s flawlessly made. Not that… well, at some point, you don’t feel like smashing your keyboard into a thousand pieces. And definitely not that… fuck you, Riot. With all due respect.
Is matchmaking toxic? Yes. Are games unbalanced? Yep. Are there scripters and other scummy players who’d probably sell their grandma just to climb a division? Pay-to-win? Hmmm… Anyone who’s really played the game has asked themselves these same questions at some point.
I’ve had endless discussions about all this. But to be fair, not everything I have to say about the game is negative. Far from it. Over time, I’ve gained skills I didn’t have before, and I’ve come to appreciate the game in ways I couldn’t see when I first started.
For someone like me — an old, broken dude — there’s not much to do: my reflexes are what they are, my mind’s what it is, and the only path forward is to improve one step at a time, after screwing up a thousand times. Understanding my own limits has even made me enjoy a loss — as long as it’s a good one. A real fight. A close match where the enemy team is just skilled enough to keep things tense, where the balance is fragile. I love winning, too — but not free wins. I like fairness. I expect fairness from the game.
I’ll leave the endless “mental game” talk to others, along with all the other trendy strategies that seem more like distractions from the one real truth behind progression in this damn game — and probably in every game, but especially this one: if you’re not fucking good, you can play upside down or with your head in the fridge — no strategy will save you.
When I was on the edge of giving up, thinking this was just a frustrating mess of a game, Alessio proved me wrong. He showed me that real skill means a lot more than I thought. Today, he’s outdone himself — and to me, he’s a real expert.
hf
