The unnecessary aggravation of League of Legends

It’s no secret that I tend to play a lot of old shit.  I played Left 4 Dead long after the heydays passed by, and the public servers were reduced to long queue times and dwindling players whom began to all look familiar as players gradually disappeared.  On my phone, I still play Pokémon Go and Fire Emblem Heroes despite the fact that the OCD generation of gamers have already flocked onto at least 2-3 other more recent and time/money sucking mobile games.  And, with some regularity, I am still playing League of Legends.

Oh, League of Legends.

I can’t honestly say that I believe that they’re still the world’s most played video game anymore, what with the Overwatch League really gaining momentum, and Fortnite seeming like today what my nightly L4D sessions were 8-9 years ago (really, that long ago?).  Despite my general interest in both games, I have an issue with first and third-person perspectives where they make me a little motion sick and it takes me some time and reps to break through until it doesn’t bother me, and despite the fact that I overcame them in the past with L4D, Resident Evil and Mass Effect titles, I just don’t really feel like investing the time yet to do it again.  So, I still continue to play League, which hasn’t totally alienated me like it pretty much has with all of my other friends and mythical gf, all of whom I used to play with on a very regular, nightly basis.

That is until my most recent losing streak, which hit eight games last night.  And put me in a really dejected, and salty mood, that lingered up until this morning, even after a night’s sleep.  The thing is, this isn’t even my worst losing streak ever (14 consecutive losses), but at the current combination of game interest and the stage of my life in general, this particular losing streak really left me feeling with a completely disillusioned feeling that I’ve completely wasted my time and debating on whether or not I should just stop cold turkey, and go find something more constructive to do with my time.

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Turds in the pool

Ever since Rito rolled out the League of Legends update signifying the end of season 7 and into the preseason of season 8, things have been a little bit interesting in my gaming observations.  Among the very numerous things that have been changed up, I would have to say that one of the more notable actions was the removal of the level cap, which for the previous eight years had been level 30.

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure why Riot decided to do such, but I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that once 30, many players go off and create alternate (smurf) accounts, so they can either have multiple accounts to play from with ulterior motives, or if they’re actually really good players, climb the ranking ladder with multiple accounts and/or then try to sell them for actual currency.  Either way, they end up diluting the player pool with multiple accounts, and I feel like by removing the level cap, it incentivizes continuous play on one main account, since there’s no more limit to how much the account can level up to.

However, one of the (I feel is like an) unintended result of removing of the level cap is that there’s a mad rush of players suddenly looking for the quickest way to level their accounts beyond 30, so they can have some bragging rights or try and look better than they actually are, by getting their accounts higher than everyone else.  Effectively, when Riot removed the level cap, level 30 became the new level 1 all over again.

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Writing when it feels like there’s not a lot to write about

Like the subject says, I haven’t really felt like there’s been a lot to write about.  It’s times like these when I sit down and try to clear out all the noise in the world and in my head and just see what happens when I open up a Word doc and just start typing.

Usually, I surf a large variety of news sites, local and worldly to see if anything piques my interest.  Then it devolves into sports sites and op-ed outlets, just to see if there’s anything that triggers any sort of writable tangent.  Failing any of that, it’s the happenings in my own fairly ordinary and nondescript life, wondering if there’s anything worth talking about, or anything I actually want to put something down into writing.

My life, hasn’t been particularly interesting for a while.  My days and weeks consist of the same things often, and I’m occasionally fretting over the fact that I feel like I don’t make enough money which kind of puts a damper on some of my ambitions when it comes to things I want to do, or travels I want to indulge in.  I think about spending habits, spending plans and how to shave down the credit card debt that I’ve built back up throughout the moving process, and it frequently feels like an endless cycle that just chews up time and often doesn’t actually pan out like it should.

Like in my current state, I feel like I’d need like 6-8 months to really wipe out a lot of my debt while not having to starve in the process.  I’m sure that some additional sacrifices could be made to reduce my costs a little further, but it just doesn’t feel like it would be enough to warrant the inconveniences.  But really though, 6-8 months?  That’s literally from half to two-thirds of an entire year.  I’m not getting any younger, and the whole concept of getting older is another can of worms that has been on my mind increasingly these days, and I just feel like if I made more money outright, things might improve for the better, overall.

But then I feel like I’m kind of in a rut where my skillset doesn’t command as much money as I hope it would, and I give a lot of contemplation to my own career.  I really like where I work and the team I’m on and the people I work with, but again, money.  I make enough to pay my mortgage and pay my bills, but with the new house, I’m also paying more for a mortgage than I have before, and it’s still an adjustment knowing how much of a larger percentage of my incoming funds are going right back out the door paying for my property.

And we can’t talk about money and not talk about the correlation with time, and then the endless debate of money versus time.  I certainly value my time, and often times more than money, but at the same time, there are certain things that cannot be accomplished without the need for money.  And then it rotates in this perpetual cycle of feeling like I have enough of either, and then I begin to wonder if I may be bordering on the lines of a slight depression.  Which is a maybe.

It would be nice to just win a substantial lottery.  That just might actually make things improve for the better, contrary to the notions that huge influxes of money have accomplished in ruining several people out there.

But really, I can’t really complain that much about my life in some regards.  My life itself isn’t at all terrible, aside from the fairly minor gripes I have that I’m not unaware that there are worse people out there that would love to have my gripes versus their own more substantial issues.

I think I feel like what drags me down is my empathy for others, to where I always feel like the problems of others become problems for me.  I don’t think it’s untrue either, because there are people out there that are close to me going through some rough patches, and I feel helpless that there’s nothing that either I or anyone else can seemingly do about them, and I empathize for their sadness and grief with my own.  Obviously, I won’t get into the business of others, but they are substantial problems, and I’ve come to the realization of the increasing difficulties of life that come with getting older, and that things just might not get better any time soon for the people all around me.

And that’s not even taking into consideration the shitty cesspool of a world we live in, full of rotten corrupt people, politicians, terrorists and mentally deranged people who somehow all seem to have way too large caches of firearms.

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Everything happened I said would happen at Worlds

At this point, I really don’t care who wins Worlds, because regardless who wins the final best-of-five, the winner is still Korea.  I mean, I’m aware that the scenario I was hoping for was like wishing the 90’s Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan would do good each year, but it’s still never a smooth journey for the most competent of competitors year after year.  And this was supposedly the year that the rest of the world was thought to have caught up in League of Legends talent, and frankly that wasn’t wrong, it’s just that it just wasn’t enough.

But a week from now, will the finals of the 2017 League of Legends World Championship – pitting Souh Korea’s SK Telecom T1 against, South Korea’s Samsung Galaxy.  This is also a rematch of the previous year’s Worlds, and since all spectator events love to raise the importance of scenarios by stating first times for things, this is the first time that the same two teams have made it to the finals of Worlds, ever and in consecutive years much less, even in a league just seven years old.

LCK Fall Split memes, right here.

However, it’s not just the fact that it’s two Korean teams that has me all smug and arrogant, it’s also the narrative in which such a matchup came to fruition.  Worlds this year has been taking place in China, the region that has yet to hoist a championship in the seven years of competitive League, despite often being perceived as the #2 region in the world.  But don’t tell the Chinese that, because in their own opinion, they’re gods amongst mortals who can’t be touched in competitive League of Legends, except for the fact that, they’ve never won Worlds, and have almost never beaten Korean squads with very few exceptions.

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Cloud9 is going to find out the hard way

Oh, how little they realize the danger they’re in: Cloud9 secures $25M in Series A financing from various notable entities, including the WWE

In other words, the world of eSports has let the wolf known as World Wrestling Entertainment into the chicken coop.  AKA Triple H, the de facto ultimate usurper and infiltrator has found his way into the burgeoning and profitable world of eSports.

And now that his foot is in the door, it’s only a matter of time before Triple H ultimately takes over every single C9 professional team, and then it’s only a matter of another time until Triple H, and just Triple H is the champion of League of Legends, Overwatch, Counterstrike and Smash Bros.

Granted, eSports will have been systematically ruined and destroyed, but hey, it would at least be a North American champion in some of these games, for once in the history of competitive gaming.

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Life is boring lately

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but as it pertains to my want to write every now and then, it sure doesn’t help when there’s nothing to really talk about outside of sports.  Like really, I comb through news sites, and I try to watch a little bit of news here and there, but on a regular basis, it’s the same old shit that’s being driven further into the ground every single time it comes up, so there’s really nothing particularly interesting to me that gives me any inspiration to really write.

On the local level, the AJC further reinforces the notion that they’re a clown outlet, since the front page of the site has basically turned into the SEC football daily, providing links and news for not just Georgia, but just about every single SEC school’s football programs.  Granted, I guess it sure beats the alternative to the daily shootings, robberies and killings in Southwest Atlanta, but surely, surely, there has to be stuff worth reporting on aside from college football.

National and global news are more of the same crap involving sexual harassment dogpiling, talk of building a wall, and the perpetually constantly rising tensions between the United States and other countries.

Same shit, different day.

It’s no wonder why I always fall back onto sports and wrestling to talk about, because there’s not much else worth writing about that doesn’t just trigger, bother, infuriate or simply annoy.

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Money > Loyalty – The Rito Way

I was thinking recently about how interesting it is to be actively witnessing the formation and establishment of the rise of professional competitive gaming.  Obviously having been around since like the 1960s long before I, or anyone else in my generation or younger were even born, competitive entities like MLB, NFL, NBA and even the NHL have been around for decades, and had the vast majority of their rules and infrastructure already build, established and requiring no more than occasional tweaks and union-related agreements to operate smoothly on a seasonal basis.

On account of that, I’m often fascinated by the way the ever-growing professional League of Legends scene as well as other professionally played video games operate in, by comparison, some very fast, loose and always changing rules and structure.  I get that they’re the new kids on the block in professional competition, but it would be kind of nice to not have to re-read the rules and conditions of the league every single season.  In LoL alone, the format has switched from best-of-ones, to best-of-threes, and then there’s all these weird convoluted tiers when it comes to playoff seeding, and they’ve basically invalidated the entire first half of a season, by making the first half winner not a lock for Worlds, while the winner of the second half is an automatic #1 seed, which makes absolutely no fucking sense to me at all.

The global professional League scene is just now at the tail end of just their seventh year, but it’s safe to say that aside from the map they play on, it’s entirely a different game now than in which it started when Europe were kings and Korea and China hadn’t even entered the playing field.

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