So those of you reading should know that I'm a gamer. While I dabble with board games, console games, and role playing games, I primarily fall under the category of PC gamer.
My primary games have been League of Legends (LoL), Hearthstone, and more recently Counter Strike:Global Offensive (CS:GO).
I set myself some goals this season and its been a fun and frustrating journey.
So what are these goals?
- Gold in LoL
- Gold in CS:GO
- Legend in Hearthstone
Doesn't seem too crazy right?
Well here is a brief breakdown of each game.
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| http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/League_system |
There are 8 tiers in LoL; Unranked, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, Challenger.
The game starts in Unranked with a summoner level of 0. You play games to gain experience and reach a level of 30. Once you reach level 30 you can start competitive matches. Each season you start by playing 10 games to get placed into a division. Once you get placed there are 5 Divisions within each tier. You generally start in division 5 and gain points from winning games in that division.
You can receive anywhere from 1 point to 23 points per win. While it is rare to gain less than 15 points the algorithm is complicated and it does happen. Once you receive 100 points you start your series to advance. In tiers five through two you need to win 2/3 games to advance to the next division. Once you reach division one you will need to win 3/5 games to advance to the next tier.
Currently 19.40% of active players are currently ranked Gold. 9.65% of players are ranked higher than Gold. I'm happy to have made it to Gold! I was placed into Silver 1 and played over 300 games moving frequently between the divisions to rank up. Each game can last from 20 to 60+ minutes. One of the hardest parts of the game is consistency. If you have good team communication and team synergy things go very well. In the lower tiers of Silver and Gold there are less mechanics and more anger to deal with. If you can make your teammates feel good you have a better chance of winning, even if you are behind.
This was a challenging and mentally straining adventure. I had a lot of support from my friend Dave, he talked with me about the current meta, game changes, and helped me to develop my skills in the game.
In my ranked journey I got really good at demoting from Silver 1 into Silver 2 and then winning a bunch of games to advance back into Silver 1. I got my series from Silver 1 to Gold 5 eight times. The way the ranking system is structured players in Gold 5 have a skill range from low Silver to low Gold. This makes constancy non-existent and frustrations amplify more than ever. The last game of my series was a combination of good plays and begging and pleading with my team to complete objectives and finish the game. We were very much ahead but my team was more interested in griefing the enemy than they were in finishing.
While competitive game play has been a part of the Counter Strike series for many years it was tracked by third party websites and you had to join a league in order to get any sort of ranking or collaborative game play. I remember playing in a team in the Cyberathlete Amateur League (
CAL) in the open division. We didn't advance at all, but it was a fun experience.
With the development of Steam and more interest in casual competitive game play a new ranking system was created for CS:GO.
A competitive match of CS has 10 players and two possible teams T and CT. You play as each team for 15 rounds. Each round is two minutes with the objective of eliminating the enemy team or destroying or defending a location specified on the map.
There are 18 rankings broken up into three main tiers: Silver, Gold Nova, Elite. The actual naming convention can get a little strange, but they display like badges.
You start the game at level 0, in order to play competitively you need to reach level 3. In order to get placed into a division you need to
win 10 ranked games. This means you can play any number of games, but you need to win 10 in order to receive a placement. While this in itself seems reasonable, there is a limit of two ranked wins while you are in this Unranked limbo. Once you get two wins a 23 hour cooldown begins. So best case it will take 5 days of games before you are ranked.
I was happy to play with my brother Noah and his friends. He has a current ranking of Gold Nova Master. So while I played with him I was against other players in that tier of play. While it was challenging, as I became more familiar with the maps and the habits of other players my confidence in the game increased.
After getting my 10 ranked wins I was placed into Silver Elite. At the time of placement I was no longer able to play with Noah's friends because they was too much of a gap in ranking for the game restrictions. If we had a full team of 5 players it would allow us to play, but we did not always have 5 players. So I played several games alone or with my brother as a duo. After 6 wins I advanced to Gold Nova 1! The movement was much quicker than I expected, but CS is not a new game for me, so I had past experience and the guidance of my bro to get me ranked quickly! I intend to play some more games with my bro and see how far I can rank.
Here is my current adventure! Hearthstone is a virtual trading card game (TCG) developed by Blizzard. There are 25 possible ranks in Hearthstone. Once you receive 6 wins in rank 1 you reach the "Legend" rank which give you your exact ranking in the region. this game has quite a bit to do with reading your opponent, and playing a tremendous amount of games and having, even if every so slightly, a win rate of over 50%.
There are several websites which provide a optimized set of cards (each deck has 30) which synergies well with each other and counters the most commonly played decks. The issue with this is that everyone uses these websites and copies the cards that professional players use. The best way to counter this is to be aware of what deck your opponent is using and to play knowing the potential next move.
If you are able to read your opponent and make a fewer number of mistakes you have a pretty good chance of winning!
Once you reach rank 5 you need to win 25 games in order to reach Legend status. This can be very frustrating and overwhelming. My current rank is 4 but I expect this to fluctuate greatly until I reach the top. This season is set to end on June 30th, once that happens I'll start from the bottom again!
A
post from September last year a Blizzard shared some stats which showed that only 2% of players reached ranks 1-5. So that is an achievement at least!
Once again I must give props to my friend Dave. He has been keeping me
up to date with the current meta and has helped me to craft decks and
see options in the game play that I might miss or forget about. He has
been a great support for me!
Well I'll continue to climb to reach my goal ... and after that? Well maybe I'll go outside or something.
* Update *
So I don't think I'm going to make it to legend this season, while I intend to try, I'll see what I can do next month.
I did however reach 500 wins on my hunter today :D
For that you get a "Golden Hunter Portrait"
Which looks cool at least! You get a moving portrait and some glowy graphics ... you could say that was a golden achievement *rim-shot*
The climb to Legend has been challenging though, much of the same going on in the ladder. The same optimal decks on popular deck building websites run amok between 5 and the top ranking. There is a good quantity of luck and just knowing what the other player has to work with. Every once in a while I see a deck that makes me scratch my head, 80% of the time they lose because of the non-optimal cost of varying from the meta unfortunately. But I'm happy with another win closer to Legend.
In other Hearthstone news, there has been the announcement of the
Hearthstone Grand Tournament!
This is a release of another expansion of the game. This means a 132 new cards to collect, find synergy with, and become angry about. At least they keep things interesting! I intend to save up my in-game currency and spend minimal amount of real dollars on the expansion, but we will see how things go. I have about 1000 gold saved up, which will buy me 10 packs when it gets released.
The 10 Principals of Burning Man are declared as the foundation of the event
