yay!  broke 3k views on the twitch stream tonight.  Glad some folks are digging it. 

Several fun games tonight.  I even got to play blitz to end my fuck blitz season.  Actually did pretty well with the robot in that game.  Thunder had like 1-2 really clutch saves for his adc that game.  I hate when I miss good opportunities, but there are moments where I'm like immediately - "wow - nice save."

Heh - there was some other game where we had a lux and she just blew up some folks and 3 or so of us immediately said "uh... wow" in chat.  Fun to have the jaw dropping moments.

Also fun that we were able to get so many folks. I think at one point we had like 16 people up for a 5v5 tonight.  I dislike turning folks away, but am really happy to have so many people to play with. 

Anywho - thx for the games tonight all!  cya

Here are some vids of a few of our in house games.  I got to play blitz in game 2.

2nd in house game live in a few min - http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1

First, people just need to not talk in /all except like when a pause happens or like pre-game banter before minions spawn.

(or like extremely obvious joking - like, for example, if you were trying to recall and i used Kog's artillery to stop it and you typed "rude"). It's extremely BM. (this is also what annoyed me with Krdx's game). And like saying "up for another game?" is like. Wow really? 

The other part of it is like. Bryff tends to be one of the weaker lanes in our games. When we were playing, and Bryff got those quad/triple kills, we were laughing and having fun - we figured Bryff was enjoying carrying in the in-house games and doing really well. Suddenly, next game, he starts trash talking everything. i mean wtf? The guy has one good game and decides to start trash talking? 

Esp since like he's playing a lane that is going to be largely in his favor, with a more competent jungler, and getting a lot more camp. 

Thanks for all the feedback, etc.  Going to reply to things in kind of a random order.

This approach sounds really nice, but I personally don't think is necessary.  If I was under the impression that you had someone on your team that a single targeted ban would wreck, I'd probably do it.  If Hedgie could only play Anivia mid, I'd ban her out as long as we didn't need something more important done with bans.  That's my personal opinion on it. That said, if everyone on my team was like, don't ban Hedgie's mid (eg they tell me that's a dick move), then I probably wouldn't ban anivia.  As it stands, I haven't felt like I could shut down anyone on your team with a single ban or 2, so its not much of a concern.  Anywho, your way is certainly nicer, but I personally wouldn't be pissed if Bryff's kass was banned out as a targeted ban - I'd probably just cycle him to adc/support if I was concerned.  Let me know if you think I'm really being a dick here as I don't.

That's not my assessment of bryff's replacement (though I did explain my wonderful ability to handicap skill in lol).  Also keep in mind that I went through my invite list multiple times, pm'd several folks in skype and in game all to try to get us 1 replacement.  When we finally got rawr, I think that may have been after like a 10-15 minute wait (not sure if my brain is exaggerating the time we waited), so I really just wanted to start.  If the obstacle was who's on a given team, then all I wanted to know was who you folks wanted me to swap.  I understand your POV, though.  Sadly I was more stunned trying to figure out why the heck you guys wouldn't just tell me who you wanted to switch up (I also get why you were hesitant to do so now). 

I'm on board with however you'd like to handle that.  If you'd just like to get the 2 of us on a separate skype call while we'd sort who we pick, then I'm fine with that.  Or your grouping system, etc.  We can make whatever work here. 

re: bryff - I don't think he meant to be a dick.  I've never known him to be all that exceedingly hostile to folks or taunting.  Based on that, I didn't interpret whatever he said as being that.  I was actually really surprised when it became clear that the other team was pissed at him.  Honestly, I didn't fully follow at the time, but hedgie/thunder explained that well enough.  I'd wager its safe to say that Bryff will be much more sensitive in the future, though. And hedgie made clear how he feels about all chat as well, so I'd think we can resolve that.

I got the server undefined error just now.

to fix, type in "thereisnourflevel" with the client highlighted, and you can get on.

If i only played Anivia, you knew this, invited me to a game, put me on the other team, then banned it, i would leave the game. If you didn't want to play with me - only win against me - then i want no part in that. If you accepted me on your team, then the opponents banned Anivia, and i lost every single game playing as xxxxx then you would pretty quickly stop inviting me, i think. 

Now, we were in Go4LoL or some other somewhat competitive environment, then that would be totally different. 

The problem is two-fold:

(This is purely from a competitive argument viewpoint)

1- Bryff has a shallow champion roster.

In the past 7 months:

Kassidin: 128 games, 59% win

Taric: 47 games, 53% win 

Corki: 27 games, 33% win

Everybody knows that Kass destroys typical AP mid champions. Since Bryff has a lot of games as Kass, he is going to know matchups better than most people he is playing against, since Kass is relatively unpopular - not like Viktor levels of unpopular, but still an uncommon pick.

2- Sharp has a shallow mid champion roster, and with the people we typically play with, mid is the best role to cram her into. 

Unfortunately, she doesn't really play very many ADs. Since Gotnades plays a lot of AP tops, and Kog does a lot of AP damage, it'd be pretty easy for us to put GP mid against him every game if she actually played GP. 

So we make her play AP mids, she gets predictably wrecked, feels bad because Kass gets out of control, then gets trash-talked.

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Banning out Bryff forces him to either play Taric (or we could even pick Taric early-on and deny him that), and also helps mitigate #2. Now, her mid isn't that strong, and she still might lose the lane against other players, but she probably wouldn't lose it quite as bad. 

Suddenly, instead of basically giving you a free midlane nearly ever game (okay, he can play a Karthus mid, 11 / 55%, but Orianna stomps Karthus. Ori also beats Ryze). 

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However, the real problem with this all, is it devolves these games into a predator-prey dynamic.

Rather than about letting each weaker player play as well as they possibly can, so that they can contribute and do things like get quad-kills, it's about making each weak player play as shitty as we can make them, then having the stronger players feed off of their weakness, and go 15/1/9 against a 50-win support that mostly plays bot games.

Although getting "fed" is how you win the game, it is a zero-sum game. A player who routinely goes extremely negative KDA because you're camping their lane / banning their best champs every game, is just going to go play against randoms. 

i don't think anyone here wants to have games where each team has one or two champs that are 10/1/15, going out of control every team fight, while the poor 1/10/5 sacrifice themselves, because we decided to ban out people.

This also completely ruins any sort of "balance" with teampicking. If we are going to do "oh you have the best AD we get the best AP" then we ban out all of that persons one champions, everyone needs to rotate around, and now your comp is screwed... yeah. 

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That said, i don't have a problem banning out the best champions of someone who plays multiple champions in a role - Karl, Thunder and Gotnades are the best three examples. Karl has multiple junglers, Thunder can play every support, and Gotnades has an extremely diverse champion roster.

Here, you're "respecting" their skill, and saying "we don't want to deal with Karl's Cho'gath", "we haven't been able to deal with Signed top - we need to ban it", "Nunu + Kog is too strong end game for us to win teamfights against", "we're confident that Hecarim is Krdax's best jungle, but he can play a few other jungles so let's take that away from them since we struggled with it last game". 

"LOL let's ban Bryff's Kass (Hedgie's Anivia) every game so they have to play champions and roles they are unfamiliar with so we can win, espiecially since Kass causes a lot of trouble for the champions we want to play". 

i'm pretty sure you're smart enough to realize the highest rated plat player on all of our friend's list going onto the team that has been winning all night is going to cause some problems. 

Not to mention the "comradeship" problem.

I guess that's more of a ground rule we should set then than just assume.  Perhaps we just have a difference of opinion re: the level of competition.  I'm really competitive with the in game match ups and I really enjoy trying to outplay, outmaneuver whoever I'm up against.  And all of that starts with the banning phase.  If we want to make some sort of specific house rule, then I'm all for it if that's what folks want.  Understanding one thing from my POV would go a long way, though.  I like the in house games and would love to keep them going.  And I know that will only happen if 10 other people enjoy them.  So, I'm quite willing to make adjustments to how we form teams, specific in house rules, whatever.  We can even come up with a simple list of basic rules and adhere to them.  I don't think that would be challenging in the slightest.  So, if you already have some thoughts on house rules, I'd love to hear them.  My guess is don't be a dick in all chat is rule 1.

yeah... I really don't want people to come away from our games feeling like shit or enraged.  I'm quite confident no one will be shit talking to sharp again (and again, I don't even know that it was bryff's intent to do that, but I'm also confident that your message has been heard). 

Another thought along those lines - I don't/didn't view sharp as a weak link.  Now, I'm not saying weak link to be a jerk or anything, but its like this - I know, of the people I play with regularly, what I can expect from folks in a given role.  But I don't know that for folks I don't play with regularly.  So, I didn't think there was some huge mismatch between bryff and sharp.  For all I know, sharp's a solid mid.  And really... that's all I know (eg not much about her skill level as a mid).  I just always prefer to put bryff at mid unless we are running a specialized comp or we need someone else at mid (we play with a guy named khan that mains mid, so I cycle those 2 out when possible to keep everyone happy, for instance). 

This is an interesting point, but I'm not really sure the best way to mitigate or change things for the better.  For instance, in a game against randoms, a jungler might very well camp a lane or prioritize it so his teammate can dominate later and the opponent is less likely to be able to dominate.  If you turn things so now its intentionally picking off a weaker player instead of trying to give your teammate an advantage, well, then your an ass to focus on a particular lane.   Which brings me back to saying "I'm not really sure the best way to mitigate or change things for the better."  I don't think any of us were vindictively trying to harass or punish a particular player... well anymore than if I was a in a solo lane against hedgie, I'd be doing my best to knock him off and he'd do the same.  Both of us pissed if we get killed and happy if we destroy the other.  blahblah - not sure what to do. 

maybe that all just lends itself to trying to get better balance when we form teams.  eg try to pair the weaker with the stronger.  Or even setup a lopsided game if a particular player is losing over and over.  Maybe just doing the team capt thing mitigates this completely.

i'm competitive as well - however, "outmaneuvering" by picking rawr and then setting yourself up as the victim because we don't want to say "____ is our weakest player, have them", isn't the same.

i also think that banning out people with limited champion options actually makes the game /less/ competitive. People playing unfamiliar champs and roles means that we are lowering our average level of play. Sure, it might make "you" more likely to win, but you could also probably beat 3 year old in wrestling, i'm not sure how proud you're going to be of that. 

An easy analogy is Demigod - you could just play UB + Rook + Ereb/Oak against every team all day every day. But against a weaker team, you're going to have a closer (and more fun) game if you decided to play a few weaker heroes. In Demigod, it was more of a self-ban against the strongest characters, in LoL it is about less diverse people playing who they want to.

And it's not to say that Bryff's Kass is bad or anything - like i was saying before, he has a lot of games as him and is going to be pretty knowledgeable about matchups and such. And Kass dominates a lot of matchups mid to begin with. Back to Demigod, if "bans" existed, and we were having a fun game, you probably wouldn't have banned Sedna/TB against Thunder and i.

That said, it was your best thing to do, if you wanted to win. But if you decided to play against us, you already knew from the get-go you were going to play against Sed/TB. If you didn't want to play against Sed/TB, why did you challenge us to play? Does it even count as winning against us if we aren't playing Sed/TB. You already know we aren't playing at the best of our ability.

And if you did do it, then went to your tier list (hedgie is T2 because they can only play Sedna - i banned Sedna and lol they went 0/5), i would have just stop playing with you, and go play against randoms. 

On the other hand, if it was a tournament or whatever, then we should have expected a Sedna or a TB ban, and that's just what it would have been. It was our fault for not having a diverse champion pool in a tournament. 

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That said, i do agree that the game starts at the banning phase. Banning is really an important part of the game, and i don't want to tarnish it when it comes to banning more diverse players. 

This can also get pretty sketchy when it comes to contested champions - for example if KHAN was playing mid, Orianna. i can play Orianna as well, and "stealing" her Orianna could be the best way for us to win. i don't know how many other champs KHAN can play - if he has a few others, then that might be a fair thing to do. If he doesn't, i'd let him take Ori. 

If we want to 'really' relegate this, we can always create some sort of 'anti-ban'. Basically, you can choose to "pre-pick" certain heroes for people who play limited champions. In exchange you have to "waste" bans; eg, you have to ban Shen/Amumu/etc even though you're first pick. You're still getting some use out of your bans, but the opposing team doesn't have to use bans on Shen/Amumu either. 

However, i really don't think this is necessary unless we start playing with multiple less-diverse people. Typically it's only 1, maybe 2 people a game, which we can work around. 

Well, i think that banning level 1 invades/lane camping/etc would be pretty silly. Those are all really important parts of the game.

Now, if you were going against a team of weak players, invading with Blitz, then going 2v1 top... well that is getting to be a little rough. If you are that confident in your team and ability to win all 3 lanes, you don't need to make the enemy team just wait for the 20 minute mark. However, i don't think that the teams are (generally) going to be that out of balance, so i don't see it as a problem. 

But i do think that banning limited champion people, forcing them into a weird lane, and then camping them (which, coincidentally, your strongest lane happens to be the lane you forced them into), is an un-fun way to play the game and a good way to stop in-house games from continuing. 

i don't think that it was wrong for WW to go mid a lot against Ori. Kass ganks Ori /really well/ and WW is really good at ganking mid. But when someone is going to be on-tilt about the game before minions even spawn, and then you just turn them into a gold-factory for your strongest player, it can get negative. 

Similarly, if Jona or Cow went against a weaker mid, i wouldn't expect them to hold back. It wasn't "wrong" for you to go really hard on that Sona and end up carrying your game to victory with a good score. "We" put her there, and that was our decision. But if you banned Sona, made him play Soraka, picked Blitz... 

It's all about context. i really don't think that you can't see the difference between abusing an already-weaker team, and achieving an advantage over a team you're actually threatened by. 

ah - i remember that too - felt the same way.  But that was a guy with literally 1 character that he could play apparently.  I wouldn't feel like there was no chance in hell at win if bryff's main was banned.  At any rate, maybe we just make a simple house rule.

Generally, i'm not convinced that having mis-matched teams is the biggest problem that we've had.

Even though we've had a few stomps here-and-there in the teamfight stage, there's only been two games (out of 10) that i can think of where one team had every single lane lose. 

Comeback have happeend (the first game last night, and the one time we were coming back but then let you have two inhibitors). 

For me, at least, the only time i had a problem with the teams was when we were having a plat player come in from nowhere. If we had been winning or whatever, i doubt i would have had as much of a problem with it. 

game 2 up

You didn't really fail in the team fight phase the last game.  We had you outscaled - no way your team could outscale darius/kog/ww.

Really close games though.  Well played all around.