Challenge in Gaming: Why I Still Play League

It's been a while since I wrote an article as I was mixed up quite heavily in two newer games, The Last of Us, and Saints Row IV. I started them both on the hardest difficulty first time through as I am a firm believer that Normal mode in games is the way reviewers should play it and nobody else. After beating both games on the hardest mode they had to offer, I had a sudden epiphany which I'll get into in the next section.

By the end of both of the games, I had learned how the game worked, the mechanics of my characters and had simply learned to be better than the AI to a point where the game was pretty much normal mode. So what makes a game challenging? It's simple really! A game introduces you to its mechanics and then ramps it up to 11. Let's take Dark Souls for example, it's first 10 or 20 minutes introduces you to the player control mechanics and then sets you on your way to go die a million times until you can master the mechanics and the environmental traps.

How does this apply to League of Legends?

So I sat down to play some league, and I queue'd up for solo queue after having beat Saints Row IV. I got my main role, which is mid, and went Ahri. I was against a Zyra and had a pretty easy time in lane and was able to carry the game to the finish. This felt like league was on easy mode, until I queue'd up again and faced a Katarina as Ahri and she took me much easier than I would have liked. Suddenly it felt like the hardest game in the universe, and that's when I had the epiphany. This is why I play league, because the challenge can either be non-existent or so hard that I might as well be a four year old trying to figure out how to turn on his NES.

The game when I very first started, had introduced me to the game mechanics in a tutorial and then ramped it up to 11 by giving me access to real people, AI, and various game modes. The challenge then was how to refine the mechanics and become better at the game. Within the year I was level thirty and had 1000+ games played and had generally mastered a few champs I greatly enjoyed.  So it leads into this question...

How do I challenge myself?

Now as some of you may know, there are champions out there with a much more difficult skill curve than others.  Vayne is a prime example of this, as people who are not mechanically sound can't play her effectively and those who are easily win the game on their own. It's things like this that you use to challenge yourself. I am a good Ahri, Lissandra, and Nidalee. I play them all the time, in and out of ranked games.

However, if I want to challenge myself I'll play Rengar, Jayce, or Warwick. Champions I hardly ever play and will most likely feed on. Scumbag Mothra plays champs he isn't good at in ranked, I know, but in the end its about a person's personal fun and I feel playing a champ I'm not best at in ranked can often times make me better in the long run and keeps this air of challenge for me that keeps me interested. An example is this one time I got to jungle, and I went Diana. My main junglers are Zac and J4, so the style was pretty different. I had to gank differently, build differently, and make different calls. We ended up winning because I was able to get to the enemy backline with her Q-R combo which I practiced landing all game, despite having not to much experience with her. Now next time I jungle her, I'll have that mechanic down more than I did previously. You can do this all in normals sure, but the challenge comes in losing something if you don't get it.

How can you challenge yourself?

Go play a ranked game right now as a champ you always wanted to learn in whatever space you get. If you have Nami but never play her in a support role, go do it right now! Use different runes and masteries for your champs as there is more than one way to play most champs. Try changing up your style, if you're an aggressive counter-jungler, try being a jungler that does more defensive jungling and works on helping the team instead of themselves. If you're worst role is top, go there over and over until its no longer something you dread doing.

The challenge lies in becoming a better gamer through trials. If you aren't pushing yourself to be better in all aspects of the game, how are you going to get out of that bronze 5? Or get into that diamond 1? In the end you are the one constant in all your games and should always be challenging yourself in order to not only get better, but to make those around you better as well.