The last time I discussed with you, and the ones before, you always said that you play exclusively casual, so is not an assumption.
I replied to you due to something you said that sounded pretty bad, maybe it was how was written, maybe something else, but as I said before, it sounded like “I’m boring of winning every match I play” which gives a bad image of how you are, that’s why I pointed it.
Edit: I don’t want to start a discussion since the thread is not about behavior, it was just a comment trying to show you how dit it sound for me. No bad intention here.
I get ya and you are exactly right. I do play nearly exclusively casual and I am bored of winning almost every match. And I kinda don’t give a darn about the image. Just how I am sometimes, lol. But I appreciate the intent.
Whats your view on the heavy snowballing thing? I’d be interested in an argument for it, something that would convince me its a good thing because I don’t see it, though I am open to logical reason. I do think that it’s definitely an emotional boost for good players as well as a necessity to some degree to provide a challenge, but I can’t see the logic behind not having robust comeback mechanics like vg has.
In casual aral for example, which is what I usually play, the 8 min mark usually kills it for me, because by then if you can get an ace on the enemy team you can close out the game simply by blowing through each turret, which dulls the win for me. I would at least like enemies to be able to respawn with enough time to challenge a push at the last 2 turrets but by that time the respawns are so long that you can just waltz from first turret all the way to the crystal.
By the way my big fuss with ranked is just the time frame. I find i like 10-15 min games a lot better than the 25 minute slog, and I like the power heroes get early game in casual instead of having to work for 5-10 mins to just the basic items alone. I hate how much work is involved in trying to kill someone early game sometimes. Also matchmaking of course, but that’s a given. Maybe 20 min at most for ranked would be ok with me but I definitely got tired of the 25 min slog just to lose, including the 15 min issue where you kinda know without some good ganks or a dragon capture you’re probably gonna get steamrolled anyway.
What Ido think about snowballing? Is really strong and easy to do. Most earlygame heroes are just brain dead at those stages, because the lack of mobility and outplay makes them better just by brutal force.
If the team knows what they are doing, is almost impossible to recover from it, however, thanks to how broken bounties are, you can just kill one enemy and get into the match again, so the earlygame heroes are no longer relevant, leading to a supremacy of lategame carries.
Overall, snowball is inconsistent: if done well, the enemy has no chance of recovering; if you make one single mistake in lategame, all that effort (ganks, rotations, stealing farm…) means nothing. Snowball is broken in both ways.
Completely agree. I definitely think it’s strong as well, though not as strong as it used to be. Some heroes of course, many top laners, are still a bit too strong early.
And definitely agree that when a team is coordinated it makes snowball a menace. Especially if the high bounty player knows how to switch tactics and play cautiously after a good steamrolling. Also agree with the late game carry issue. Especially if your late game carry can snowball early through good teamwork and last hitting heroes. I understand some early game heroes become situational late game but that means they should have mechanics to help the carries even if they don’t have the strength to do well on their own.
You hit it on the head imo, snowball is so inconsistent that it sways way too hard either way. Not as bad as before with some heroes but man…countering, say, cp sang feng snowball? Brutal.
I was planning on a big write about about the “issue” because it’s way more complex than just fast snowballing. Just have not had time.
I will say right now, I don’t agree with your analysis of the situation. You seem to be saying in 5v5 once you get a lead it takes too long to finish the game, you’ve already won, why does it have to go on forever? My answer would be, you have not already won. Vainglory has very forgiving gold balance, because of the crazy high kill bounties one victory after a losing streak will often equal the gold. You seem to be mixing up skill discrepancy with, gold/power discrepancy. In an even match up (which most ranked games are), unless you snowball really really well, the other team almost always has a chance to come back. Like seriesly, with how easy comebacks are rn, you should never surrender a game. Just the other day I came back from an 9k gold lead. I would actually say early leads don’t matter enough right now. Since you are better than the average casual player, you are likely to win most games, but for no one playing ranked except the likes of L3on is that the case. I believe you’re lack of play with evenly skilled players has warped your perception of the game, since you are destined to win most games.
First off thanks for taking the time to reply. I definitely do think this is a dynamic issue that isn’t just based on one thing.
I will say that I’m not quite saying what it might seem to you. I don’t think that the comeback potential isn’t there when it comes down to the 15 min mark. What I’m saying is that coordination along with a lead usually means that after that 15 min mark, it doesn’t matter. I’m not saying that if the team that’s behind doesn’t make good plays, they can’t come back. I’m saying that if the team that is making good plays gets the lead, and stays coordinated, the game is likely to be a washout even if the losing enemy team is coordinated, being that the advantage you get from a snowball lead is much more impactful on a coordinated team, than the efforts of a coordinated defense against snowball would usually be. Meaning a lead team is in a much more advantageous position when they know what they’re doing, than a non-lead coordinated team is during their attempt at a come back. Not saying a coordinated losing team can’t come back. Just saying that due to the game design the favor is heavily in the lead team most of the time if the lead team has skill.
On a side note, I agree that my win rate in all modes except ranked tier 8+ might have warped my view, because my win/carry rate is crazy on any level except against high skilled players. I learn fast. Sue me.
I actually like long and interesting games (given that both sides of players are skilled/or atleast decent) rather than a short games where the other team just obliterate the other side…dunno may just for just for me
I don’t believe there is long interesting games in vg , if they are long then they are games of throws , once you not ending the game as a snowball team then the other team should comeback and end the game without problems , snowball team not ending means there are mistakes happening and the same for the comeback team if they not taking advantage and ending there are mistakes .
It’s been a long time since I feel like I’ve needed to speak on a topic, but I actually have what some would call an interesting take on this, so…
There are a lot of problems with Vainglory right now that have caused me to run off to LOL alongside like, half of the community, but basically the way that Vainglory is designed FORCES snowballing to be inconsistent for it to be ‘balanced’ at all.
Before they cranked up the kill bounties, the game was becoming very stale, especially in the side lanes. Safe top laners and safe bot laners alongside gank heavy junglers were the norm in soloQ because of how strong snowballs were when they started rolling. Any characters that COULD snowball in that meta despite a jungle camp were automatically busted; think GJ back when he was stronger and could just spaghetti you in lane at level 1 or even Rona at level 2 when she could one hit people. Once all of these characters got nerfed, the game was incredibly boring with both teams just waiting to scale.
So what they did was jack up kill gold (especially first blood) and shut down gold to try and encourage people to stop being cowards and actually fight. What this does is makes it so that snowballing is viable, but it isn’t unbeatable since one or two bounties can straight up permanently screw over your game. This isn’t fun either, but at least people are fighting each other. Even that hasn’t worked though, considering how often Grace is picked top to just negate lane trading.
The core of the problem is that, as you said, ’
', but there’s a deeper issue here. Most characters in Vainglory are very low counterplay characters and those with counterplay have either slowly had it removed from their kits or just fallen off the map (think SAW/Petal). It mostly comes from a combination of character design that doesn’t work in 5v5 and the time to kill being way too low late game.
I’m going to use Alpha as an example for the first. Alpha seems like a very braindead character now, but she was actually not that bad in the 3v3 days. Before your first item, she was weak to a variety of junglers and could be invaded early game or with the right team comp, you could try and survive her her mid game powerspike and try for a late game with a BP sniper and 2 peelers.
Nowadays, since time to kill is so low in teamfights, she can’t function as a late game character, which forces her to go for an early/mid game strategy. However, since when she’s powerful she can steamroll you and rotating in to save your jungle is way more difficult on a 5v5 map, as soon as she becomes strong at level 1 she just farms both jungles for the entire game with very few ways to combat it.
Malene is another example I want to bring up. To make up for her weakness of low range, she has enough damage to pop a squishy during her light A and enough survivability to not require any peel in a teamfight. The problem is that her weakness of low range is basically irrelevant when your team can engage for you and you can utilise your survivability well enough that you can slide in, pop an enemy and slide out. I’m not saying that she’s ZERO counterplay, but what I am saying is that she has an excellent early/mid game and her ‘weakness’ isn’t actually as relevant as you might think. Plus, her lower scalings are supplemented by how much better a lot of the CP items are than the WP ones.
SEMC keeps shaving off the counterplay on a lot of there characters, both directly and indirectly. Stuff like the Reim B change is really baffling and the reason the game is becoming less and less fun to play. If the kits for a lot of these characters were less ‘stat-checky’, then you could give those characters the ability to go for early game snowballing, giving the opponent a chance to do something about the snowball like actually making a cool play. Then you could nerf the bounty and then you could FINALLY have something that isn’t so inconsistent. I would ask for all the characters in the game to be less stat-checky, but you have to shove Gwen in somewhere I guess.
Now if only SEMC could fix their servers and kits to make it so that their core game mechanics were more consistent.
I guess I don’t quite get what you mean about counterplay exactly. You don’t seem to mean outplay, since heroes like Malene who have some of the most potential to out skill your opponent in the game (in my opinion comparable to many characters in LoL) you give as an example of lacking counterplay.
You seem to mean heroes who are easy to counter, which in my opinion is generally bad for the game. Heroes like SAW don’t bring dynamic gameplay and potential to make amazing plays. WP SAW is super one dimensional, and is the kind of hero that actually creates a need for built in comeback potential in the form of bounties. Let’s pretend WP SAW was buffed to be viable. Now you have a game that is entirely match up dependent in stead of skill and mechanic dependent. That solves nothing. Petal is the same way, there is no skillfull way to counter her, she’s just one thing.
I feel like newer heroes such as Warhalk, Ylva, Inara, are actually examples of where hero design needs to go for 5v5. All have clear strengths and weaknesses (unlike a classic hero like Gwen or Blackfeather), but aren’t too reliant on one thing that makes them break (like older heroes such as petal and SAW). They lot’s of potential for risky and high skill plays that can turn around fights, and are generally interesting to draft. They also all have compelling multiple build paths which is good for draft.
That’s because counterplay =/= outplay potential. I will pick Malene as she fits perfectly the argument. She is an early game bully, but as long as her player isn’t stupid you can’t outplay her in the early game. Most early game heroes (if not all) are that strong because of brute force, you can’t outplay them in the early game because of the lack of tools at that point in the match, while for late game heroes even if they are the strongest scaling ones they all give windows for countering them.
To beat early game heroes you depend on the enemy making mistakes, against late game heroes you depend on yourself to outplay them. In this case, Malene has tons of outplay potential against her opponents, but no counterplay potential, she will always snowball you hard (if she doesn’t throw) without giving any opportunity to the enemy to outplay her.
Edit: koshka is also a good example to that, you either counter her or she destroys you early game, you can’t outplay her, her strength comes from massive early game damage. Compare it to for example kensei, a late game assassin (or half assassin half bruiser), you can kite, cc, mortal wound him etc, the amount of tools available late game allows you to try to outplay the enemy doesn’t matter how strong they scale, all that just can’t be done early on, it all revolves around brute force.
@coltonJW Malene snowballs you in early just by shaming her abilities without control due to the amount of damage she has (and CC), that’s brute force. In lategame she outplays you using her abilities when she has to, that’s outplay. Just to clarify a little bit what @Guest_78 said about Malene in early and lategame.
To me. I feel like Malene is perfect hero for snowballing in team or solo fight. And TO ME, in good hands I feel like Malene is actually late game hero once she has all her build to her needs. She can deal lots of damage and not to mention her recent buff on dark and light A. That does not mean she isn’t early or mid game hero either. She is but depends on how you play as her and the type of build you go for to counter enemies build. Yes her damage buff is little but in late game. It’s actually a lot. And the fact that her Dark A deletes 3/4 of health giving malene the advantage to snowball you and bully you. In late game she can delete 3/4 of your health too. The trick is, not make your too availble for their team to reach you. Your Dark and Light A has enough range where your AA doesn’t.
Thats the thing. She snowballs not because the player is amazing (which may or may not be)l but because she deletes 3/4 of your health with one dark A. Other heroes just can’t even attempt to fight her. That’s what we mean by “brute force” with no counterplay. Late game while she still can do that it’s easier as heroes have more tools and can compete with her in damage.
I felt that it was justified. She is extremely squishly and requires lots of skill floor to execute the damage and fight safely. One wrong move, let’s say you have no def build. Purely cp malene and captain already used his cruci on team. And malene makes a slight mistake… she is done for. That’s how squishy she is. And only one of ability is has huge damage… while wp heros like baron and gwen, within 2 AA they delete the hero from the match.
Malene’s playstyle is just that way I suppose. A combo snowball mage. Root, Dark A, their team jumps on your. Dark B… go back to your team and engage safely… repeat rinse…
That is the case for everyone though, not just malene. In fact malene would have more chances of surviving than most.
I’m not against malene, I just use her as an example of what @ThePinkOtter meant. While she has lost of outplay potential, she offers no counterplay early one, but that’s the case for every early game hero, and that’s the reason why snowballing tends to be stronger than late game.
Even if she is squishy, she is one of the heroes with more tools to survive. Yes, she can’t take too much damage, but same with Celeste or Skaarf, however, Malene also has barriers, invulnerabilities, root, slow… and no, she doesn’t requiere skill to bully anyone in early, no earlygame hero does (but her lategame requieres skill to outplay the enemy)
