Blue House Games is heavily involved in the local gaming community. More that just enjoying the participation, what we learn from our time with local digital and tabletop games clubs influences and inspires us. Due to this sentiment, we thought it would follow with the spirit of our blog that we shared the perspective of some of these organizations, and what we learned with them.
Who are we?
"We" are the Carleton Ravens, similar to another sports team, except we represent our school across North America competing in League of Legends. I'm Jungroan "Jezie" Lin. I used to play somewhat professionally, but have since allowed the game to take a backseat to my studies. This blog series does not serve the purpose about giving deep insight into the game itself, nor into the individuals on the team; much of that information is already easily accessible. Instead it will take one person's perspective on how a League of Legends team can hope to "elevate its game", from each stage of proficiency on to the next.
Preface
The team was built off of the "legacy" from the previous year; an early exit in the Collegiate Starleague (CSL) playoffs and not much promise as far as talent nor commitment goes. Going into the 2014-2015 year, I had taken a personal hiatus from the game after dedicated 30 hour weeks to it as a freshman in university and saw this as an opportunity to enjoy myself with the game some more alongside good company. After an incredibly poorly organized tryout process, our team was finally formed, mostly at the discretion of myself and my top lane player.
"Scraps"
That's what we were - not much different from grabbing a random collection of 5 players from the playground to form a team to compete in a fairly competitive collegiate league, most of the teams comprised of players with at the very least, familiarity with each other. We did hold the edge of having some professional experience, alongside a lot of untapped potential. That word "potential" is really a piece of garbage though. One of my basketball coaches in early high school preached to me "hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard". I understood that we wouldn't necessarily have the level of hard work needed to be a top tier team, but hoped to circumvent this problem by employing my own macro mastery of the game alongside designating conservative roles for my teammates.
Acceleration
And, we elevated our game as a team as such. Players were taught a very elementary standard of macro play, directed to generally take the most conservative route as individuals and follow shot-calling down to the letter. In one of our earliest matches against York (IIRC), we employed a 4v1 top-lane strategy that I had learned from one of my scrimmages against team Dignitas way back when. We used a composition of Jinx, Warwick, Xin, and some other champs I can't quite remember with the purpose of destroying structures at a rapid rate. We were able to get to the inhibitor turret before 5 minutes had even passed on the clock. Using this global gold lead alongside funneled farm and kills to our ADC, we used this objective based composition to quickly end the game, moving together as one cohesive unit that honestly looked LCS ready. While matches to follow didn't always employ such a volatile strategy, our opponents (generally fully-diamond composed) struggled to keep pace with us once we transitioned into the midgame and were constantly lagging behind our rotations.
Stagnation
So imagine, you're a mid-tier team with a washed up pro player and some talent, barely getting a couple hours of practice on a good week. Naturally, you're going to hit a roadblock; ours happened to come by the name of McMaster. They had a talented midlaner and really no weak points across the board. While League of Legends may have started out being more comparable to basketball, it has slowly crept towards becoming more like hockey. What I mean by this is one player has a much lower capacity to single-handedly carry a game, and you are instead limited by the weakest link on the team. Every NHL player can handle the puck reasonably, skate fairly quickly, and is a threat to shoot. Sometimes in the NBA, a highly valued player (all-star level even) such as Rajon Rondo shoots 30% from the free throw line and can't hit a 3-pointer to save his life. For myself, I was extremely frustrated in the bottom lane, feeling that I was consistently better than the enemy ADC but being limited to playing a farming game with my partner.
Towards Excellence
We failed to qualify for the NACC through CSL, and looked towards our next tournament. Leading up to it I had personally duo queued over 30 games with our support but things weren't quite clicking. I understood that the meta had shifted from what it was half a year ago, when essentially games were decided by who had a slightly better mid laner; it had become a derivative of the team's collective skill and effort instead. We decided that we needed a change-up in the roster and decided to move forward with a different support. Our recruitment was on the basis of skill, and each player since has been individually putting forth time to hone one's own skills. The team is re-initiating its approach to the game. All of us are working to become better friends with one another first, then sharpening our own talents to bring to the table, where we will hopefully make one last bid for the NACC. Now we also bring with ourselves the breadth of experience from the first run and are ready to take that knowledge with us into hopefully a new age. Eating 250 chicken nuggets among the team wasn't part of the plan, but who's going to say no to a 50 dollar feast?
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