The Complexity of League of Legends
League of Legends is a highly complex game. It is important to understand and appreciate the immense factors that players must consider in order to make the best decisions. Every decision in the game requires players to process large amounts of constantly changing information in real-time. The level of complexity is overwhelming, even for the most skilled players.
The Challenges Faced by Mid Players
Mid players, for example, have to keep track of various things in order to navigate their lanes effectively. They need to know their own champion’s abilities, as well as the abilities, base stats, items, and summoner spells of their lane opponents. Understanding how all these factors interact determines how the lane matchup is played. This is just the basic knowledge required for the laning phase and doesn’t even consider the other players on the map.
Applying Knowledge to the Whole Map
Mid players also need to understand the same level of knowledge for both team’s junglers. They need to be aware of where their own jungler is and how healthy they are, as well as where the enemy jungler could be and their health status. They must also consider ward placements. All this knowledge needs to be constantly reevaluated as the game progresses. It is an unrealistic expectation for a player to calculate and process all this information perfectly. Even the best players cannot reach perfection due to the overwhelming burden of knowledge and the need to execute precise motor skills simultaneously.
The Reality: Players Make Mistakes
It is important to recognize that every player will make mistakes in every game. It is impossible to make the perfect play in every moment. Players rely on their experience to guide their decision-making. They develop rules and guidelines that they believe to be generally correct and repeatedly test them until they become instinctive. This comfort with decision-making comes from experience and is crucial for performance. However, even with extensive practice, players cannot have enough experience to know every detail of every situation. Most player habits are based on general rules rather than specific matchups.
The Underrated Variable: Increasing Complexity
One often overlooked aspect of a champion’s power is their ability to significantly increase the complexity of the game for their opponents. Champions with high mobility, such as Twisted Fate, Shen, or Nocturne, can drastically change the dynamics of positioning. Players who are not used to facing these champions will make positional errors based on their usual habits. This increases the burden of complexity on the opponent and makes it harder for them to recognize and adapt to mistakes. Similarly, champions with extreme power in a specific statistic, like Alistar’s damage reduction, can alter the rules of the game and create new possibilities.
By understanding these factors, players can better evaluate champion power and develop strategies to counter them.
League of Legends, esports, complexity, decision-making, mistakes, champion power, mobility, increasing complexity