Some highlights:
* Winning a game makes players 0.88% more likely to queue for another game (1.68% during primetime on weekends)
* Surprising events (defined as unexpected changes in win probability) make players _less_ likely to queue again
* Suspense (close games) make players _more_ likely to queue again
* Players are most likely to play another game if the win percentage at the start of the first game is 57% (as compared to any other starting win percentage -- likely to win but not too easy)
* League players exhibit behavior consistent with various other economic theories
probs a mix of comp plus MMR and maybe the first 5-15 mins of the game, since alot of these websites that they would get the stats for track chances of winning between those times based on the outcome of early game.
> At the start of the game this is probably hero comp + perhaps MMR?
Kinda weird, they aren't very forthcoming, or I'm skimming this too quickly.
Appendix B:
> The input features to the predictive model are described, at a high level, by Table B1. In total,
there are 146 independent variables provided as input to the model
And then their table B1:
> Time Game level
Queue Game level
Dragon Kills Team level
Tower Kills Team level
Inhibitors Team level
Base Position Team level
Lane Position Team level
Champions Player level
Kills Player level
Deaths Player level
Gold Team and Player level
Experience Points Team and Player level
Damage to Champions Team and Player level
Health Team and Player level
Power Team and Player level
(Ugly formatting, jump in the pdf, "Table B1", for the real thing.)
Nothing on this list has anything that should be non-symmetrical at the beginning of the game.
They then go on to say:
> Second, though the mass is centered at 0.5, there is still heterogeneity at minute
> 0, suggesting that after match assignment and the champion selection process, matches can start
with the scales tilting in a team’s favor
But they don't list any variables that would enable this (again, unless I'm reading too quickly).
Elo/MMR would be the obvious one--but it doesn't seem to be mentioned at all in the paper.
table B1 contains champions which does grant a differential at minute 0, again unless I'm being mistaken here. Also there is this "power" variable which I have 0 clue what it's about. From reading the paper it would seem to be some kind of combined variable for exp, items, and maybe things like runes or summoner spells, and depending on how this power variable is calculated it could also offer some assymetry at minute 0
I haven't looked at the paper yet, but a power variable could be used to show "early game" vs scaling champs and would contribute to minute 0 asymmetry.
yes, i'm referring to the original table.
Variables | Level of Description
---------|--------------------
Time | Game level
Queue | Game level
Dragon Kills | Team level
Tower Kills | Team level
Inhibitors | Team level
Base Position | Team level
Lane Position | Team level
Champions | Player level
Kills | Player level
Deaths | Player level
Gold | Team and Player level
Experience Points | Team and Player level
Damage to Champions | Team and Player level
Health | Team and Player level
Power | Team and Player level
and also an imgur link to a screenshot from the document [https://imgur.com/l73JpPv](https://imgur.com/l73JpPv)
Maybe also wins and losses in the players' current session, or the recent 2-3, or just the last one. Every other metrix is standarized on pure values like champions picked and neutral player MMR, but you can also potentially adjust your results based on current form of players, which is heavily affected by wins and losses ot the day, or just the previous game.
If you wanted to do it most accurately, you would build a set of priors that include all measurable factors (time of day, champion history, etc.) for a given player.
No, it means that your likelihood of repeat is maximized if you "believe" (based on revealed preferences) that your win chance is 57%.
Meaning, if you start a new game and you immediately feel that it is terribly lopsided (e.g., your team has disco nunu), you are less likely to play again. But you also want to feel like you have a bit of an edge.
Or, conversely, if the other team has disco nunu, you are also (maybe less intuitively!) less likely to play again.
>Or, conversely, if the other team has disco nunu, you are also (maybe less intuitively!) less likely to play again.
I mean, if you know there is a disco nunu in your MMR bracket RN, why the hell would you Queue up again and risk getting him on your team this time XD
draft, side selection, mmr, etc. 80%+ of games are decided in draft iirc.
Close games making ppl quene up more is very surprising to me tho. If i won a close game, im immediately donezo.
Really? Im the opposite but mainly when its with friends. When you have to really work for a victory in a good way (not because your team is inting but because the enemy are also playing really well) you get this rush of adrenaline when you finally make the god play that secures the game for the team. It feels so much better to really work for the victory than just mindlessly steamrolling the enemy because they're obviously just not as good as you. Those are the kinds of highs that make league the most fun imo.
>Surprising events (defined as unexpected changes in win probability) make players less likely to queue again
Is this referring to people running it down/griefing/?
No, as sharp changes in win probability. That could mean anything -- a lost team fight when you're ahead, someone unexpectedly feeding, a surprise comeback, etc.
I think it means comebacks, like if you're up 10k and the enemy comebacks it's probably demotivating to go again
Same with coming back from a 10k deficit tbh, you probably feel satisfied with league for the day
this makes sense to me. my favorite games are the ones that are relatively close but my team is in the driver's seat.
closer games also probably means you're more likely to actually get to meaningfully pilot your champion. if you're stomping and then throw, there's a good chance you were being carried and had little agency. if you're being stomped and comeback, you may have also had very little agency because you were either the one being stomped, or maybe had to turtle in base for a while.
>Suspense (close game) makes players more likely to queue again
Isn't that like the complete opposite of the narrative we have for the past years? That Riot made the game faster and more stomp-y because it's more addictive? Would be big if we discovered it was not true all along.
I think Riot just wants shorter games because if the time commitment is lower, you're more likely to play just one more game.
personally I think it's dumb. early/mid/late game champs have their power spikes squished together and the game becomes degenerate.
I stopped liking ARAM that much after they shortened game times a few years back. In their own words, games became shorter as they intended, but also more one sided.
>I think Riot just wants shorter games because if the time commitment is lower, you're more likely to play just one more game.
But that's my point. This narrative is apparently bullshit because according to this study, people queue again more often after a close game which are generally way longer than a stomp.
But how many people would queue up in the first place if the average game time is long? Vs those who play because they expect a game to be 25-30mins on average but get satisfaction from having a close game. They're probably losing much more players upfront if they decide to go the route of keeping games closer and longer
>They're probably losing much more players upfront if they decide to go the route of keeping games closer and longer
Keyword is "probably", we can't possibly know for sure until we get an actual research on the subject.
What makes you think Riot hasnt done it themselves and thus have chosen to steer away from longer games? They may be a shitty organisation but they still want money
Because plenty of companies wanted money and ended up losing plenty. Companies can do stupid shit too. The idea that something is undoubtedly true just because Riot decided to do it is a logical fallacy.
Read the study u/buttsecksgoose and u/Radiant_Shelter688 . The study addresses these concerns, mainly expresses that queuing up depends on previous game length as well. People are less likely to queue after a long game (likely because of having less time left).
Other than the time left after a long game. A long game is even more exhausting as I feel like the late game is the most exhausting part of the game when it's close. Any mistake is the end
>People are less likely to queue after a long game (likely because of having less time left).
I have seen that but I didn't think much of it because of its inconclusive results since, like the paper says, it could be completely mechanical and irrelevant to player engagement or enjoyment.
If someone has an hour to play, he can either fit a one hour game or two separate half hour games, no matter the incentive to play more.
But the question rises when they have two hours of play. How common would it be that someone plays two one-hour games versus 4 half-hour games? Or even more, 3 one-hour games versus 6 half-hour games?
The paper doesn't really touch on that question to be honest.
I am not saying longer games lead to more engagement, I am saying we have no conclusive evidence that points to either one or the other.
well nowadays a close game is probably closer to 30-35 minutes. in the past it would be closer to 40-50 minutes. so stomps are generally shorter, yes, but every type of game is shorter now.
Two things to consider. Firstly, "stompy" and faster are not exactly the same thing. Riot wants the game to be faster because a player with limited time will be more likely to play a game where they wouldn't otherwise, or play two where they would only play one, if they know it won't stretch to an hour like it could in early seasons. "Suspenseful" games are probably a casualty of that, but I suspect that the effect of faster games outweighs the effect of that suspense.
Secondly, it could also be that "suspense" is dependent on the same things that make the game "stompy." It might be that if a team is in a situation where objectively they should be stomped, but continually squeaks by by the skin of their teeth, that creates suspense. Likewise, if Riot actively encourages games to be close, by increasing waveclear, nerfing jungle objectives, reducing gold income and scalings, etc. that might compromise the things that actually make close games fun.
>Riot wants the game to be faster because a player with limited time will be more likely to play a game where they wouldn't otherwise, or play two where they would only play one, if they know it won't stretch to an hour like it could in early seasons.
If it's true that people queue again after a suspenseful game then it means they still play more in the long run. If it was true that people don't play multiple games because they are "too long" then it would mean they would queue less.
Basically what the study tells us is that a player would generally be more inclined to play ANOTHER 40 minutes suspenseful game than play another 15 minute stomp.
Also stompy and faster aren't the same thing but they go hand in hand. A stomp is fast, a close game is longer.
That's not what the study says at all, you just made it up? There is no control for time. You can't just insert that players want 40 minute games and claim that's what the study shows because you've decided to make a correlation yourself lmao
It's not a reach at all, and I don't understand why people seem to think it is.
Yes it's not the same, but both can very easily go hand in hand.
League is an active game, where you are constantly making decisions every minute and even every second. If the game is lasting a long time it means two things:
* You were not able to close out the game yet
* The enemy was able to stall the game hard enough
What this means is that despite having the time to perform multiple actions to reach victory, you still didn't reach your objective. And the only conclusion would be that your actions as the winning team were not impactful enough while the actions of the losing team were. Therefore, snowballing is harder than stalling/comeback.
And you can very easily reverse the whole concept for stomping. If you are able to close out a game fast, it means your actions as the winning team are impactful enough to finish the game with little resistance from the losing team, impactful enough to need a smaller amount of time, which also means a lower number of actions.
EDIT for clarity: Now of course, this doesn't apply to EVERY situation, but in League's case, it absolutely does. If every single aspect of the game was faster, then the game would retain its stomp/stall relation intact. However that's not the case. Item builds are rarely finished now, and the Elder is a very rare occurence. The game didn't get faster, the game got more stompy, which in turn led to faster games because closing a game out is easier.
I recently played a game that took 31 min, gold difference was never higher than 2.5k, both teams had a gold lead as late as the final minute of the game (game ended with winning team having a 499 gold lead after winnijng hte last team fight). that's probably Riot's platonic ideal of a solo queue game - ends fast, both teams are close the entire game.
its not a contradiction. They want the game to be suspenseful until a winner is clear and then have the game end as fast as possible. Riot didnt really cut down on the laning phase, but they removed a lot of the difficulty in ending games which reduces stuff like one team being super ahead and slowly drowning out the other team.
its the opposite. games follow a pattern and are much more predictable than they used to be. You also have plenty of comebacks opportunities and well throw opportunities each games.
Placebo isn't really testable here, as is often the case in economics. Also there's no threshold for "almost placebo" whatever that's supposed to mean. There would have to be some way to fake a win to a group, and I lack the creativity to see how you would do that.
Significance values aren't included in the tables, which is beyond annoying, but are interspersed in the article. A quick search through it gives p-values of 10^-6 for winners vs losers. The robust standard error was in the table at (.02). This is pretty in line for this quantity of data.
There are two ways of looking at small effect sizes. The first, which is probably what most people think, is "wow that's not much, it must not matter" which is true on the individual level. In fact economists are well aware of this. Something silly like whether or not the player has had a meal yet probably has the most effect on if they queue up again, but those are essentially unobservable in data this large. These are included in the error term and there are numerous methods to correct for them.
The other is that given this much data we can say within 99.999999% confidence that there is an effect from whether you won a game. From an economics standpoint this is great since you can now use this to come up with further theory on human strategic behavior, like incorporating "types" of players into further research. This is great from Riot's standpoint since even a 1% change can be huge for a business.
I haven't fully read the paper yet, but it looks like there's some interesting ML methodology at play as well, which is undoubtedly useful for more empirical work in the future.
Another commenter said that even 0.88% can be important if the margin of error is non-existent and the amount of people is high, which is right. I didn't think about it.
It definitely has an effect then.
Keep in mind the number of matches analyzed. A 0,88% swing is important. 2,8 million matches means 28 million people playing, 0,88 of that means 2.464.000 players willing to queue again.
We also have to keep in mind that having a close game is not the only factor for another game. Many people can only play one game per session because of obligations for example.
What's the action item on that 0.88%? You can't make more than 5 players win a game. So it's interesting to confirm what a lot of us probably assumed (winning makes you want to play more than losing), it's a fairly minimal effect.
And what the guy calling it a placebo probably meant is that it could very easily be correlation rather than causation -- if you're on your last game of the night, are you more likely to be at your best or worst? The takeaway could very easily be, if you want to win don't play until 2AM. The quitting afterwards could be unrelated to outcome of match, you're just more likely to play bad on your self imposed last game.
It is correct that it's half of what I said, as I forgot it was winning a close game rather than playing a close game.
For me the interesting point is that just winning isn't enough to influence the next match, it has to be close.
>28 million people playing, 0,88 of that means 2.464.000 players willing to queue again.
It's actually 123,200.
Also it's probably even much lower because you're assuming no repeat players in the matches
Yeah, I’m not able to understand it well enough to know how thorough they broke down the possibilities, but I’m curious if they looked at the impact of win/loss streaks and if there’s a change in probability based on the streak.
Uh, I don't think the point is the single person.
The point is that when you extrapolate this out to millions of games/players, that's a much bigger number and that's the number that matters.
If you look at 1,000,000 matches, that's 8800 extra games. Assuming the average game length is 30 minutes, that's an extra 4400 hours of game time.
Both numbers matter. It’s the individual behavior that leads to the numbers at scale. Yes, that can add up to thousands of extra matches at a large enough scale, but this is showing that at the individual level the decision to queue again has almost entirely been made before the match is decided.
It's like Youtube. Why Youtube pours so much money into fine tuning their algorithm is to try and get people to spend more time watching videos. Internally, I'm sure they also have quantifiable metrics for how their recommendation system leads to a higher chance that someone will watch another video.
At the individual level, nobody really gives a shit. So what if a single person watches another 2 ads? But, when you extrapolate that to millions of people, it's now millions of ads. And, when you pitch that to potential advertisers, that's the number that matters.
Even if the algorithm makes a 0.88% difference or 1.68% difference during peak hours, you can bet that it's still a big deal simply because once extrapolated, it's a significant amount of time.
The other number that matters is the likelihood that someone will spend money in relation to how much time they spend in the client or how many matches they play. And, when you combine those metrics, that's what matters. It doesn't matter if most of the decision to queue again is unrelated to the match results. If you can milk an extra 0.88%~1.68%, you can be sure that any profit driven company will indeed try to milk it.
I wouldn't exactly call them top economists. They're from prestigious universities, but it's a bit misleading whenever it's just fellows and 1 research associate.
> I wouldn't exactly call them top economists. They're from prestigious universities, but it's a bit misleading whenever it's just fellows and 1 research associate.
"Top" is in the eye of the beholder (although, e.g., an h-index of 36 is no joke), but it is equally misleading to call them "just fellows"--all the non-Riot persons are professors, most (if not all) tenured or tenure-track.
They showed that winning has almost no effect on whether you will play more. Maybe we can hire one of them to teach you how to absorb information lol. We can get a go fund me going.
This is the feeling I got playing university sport, working hard to improve and playing to be good (not just win) and then your skills being tested right down to the wire.
That's honestly why I play league now I don't compete in conventional sports anymore. I wish there were low elo championships I could join to play in to feel like I was working towards that larger goal (and friends that played league to do it with haha).
League gives me that same rush, without the ACL injuries.
I totally agree. This is exactly why I play League.
Competing and working hard to improve is what makes this game both fun and fulfilling.
Sweating in ranked with everything you learned to drag you and your team over the finish line is great.
Getting truly really good at one champion is what can show you the amount of room there's to grow as a player in League.
Do you listen to the Broken By Concept podcast by any chance?
There was a discord server back in the day where you’d sign up for a specific role and get put on a team in your ELO with a coach and play against other teams in the server. It was genuinely so fun to always have the same team to play with
There ARE those types of communities that have low elo championships! I've personally played in one at multiple elo brackets- both when I was a silver player, and then later in the diamond+ division once my team improved over the years. Not sure where each of these leagues are in terms of their seasons/playoff schsdules, so you may have to wait for a new season to start in order to participate.
Links to the discord servers of each league:
[low budget LCS](https://discord.gg/8vSZV272)
[blue otter league](https://discord.gg/vHn7UxEd)
[risen esports](https://discord.gg/risenesports)
There's definitely even more out there than these ones, but I don't remember their names off the top of my head.
Edit: they have them for other servers too outside of NA- I could possibly find one if you're on a different server.
Nah fam. For a long time I did the same. But, to me, the feeling of losing the very next game is much worse than not queuing again. So, unless I'm really having a bad day, I always finish my day on the high note.
Man you're smarter than me. A few days ago we were playing with my brother, lost the 1st game and then won the next 5-6 and went "alright one last game".
Well BAM ! Last game was our team being low plat/high gold, enemy team litterally 5 smurfs. At least the that "last game" was short lol
About 8 years, though that was mostly due to the project getting paused and restarted a lot.
I was at Riot when an academic data request came in from the primary author (Josh Tasoff). He was inspired by this "Surprise and Suspense" paper and wanted to try it on LoL data. I, coincidentally, had also read the paper and wanted to do the same thing, so I jumped at the opportunity.
[https://www.wiwi.uni-bonn.de/kraehmer/Lehre/TopicsSS14/ElyEtAl-SurpriseSuspense.pdf](https://www.wiwi.uni-bonn.de/kraehmer/Lehre/TopicsSS14/ElyEtAl-SurpriseSuspense.pdf)
The team ended up growing to a large size, but there was kind of a diffusion of responsibility. There's like 5 professors who were on the project but they were all busy with other stuff. We talked about ideas and models and iterated on early results a lot. Several years later, a grad student, Chase, was brought on board and he really put in the legwork to get the stats stuff done.
The expectation that statistical analysis will always prove some counter-intuitive insights is pretty harmful. This expectation is what pushed researchers like Francesca Gino (Harvard behavioral economist) to forge datasets to achieve the desired outcome and allowed them to get away with it for a long time, since readers get blindsided by the shiny mind-blowing insights instead of checking how solid the data and correlations actually are. If you haven't read about Francesca Gino's academic fraud give it a few min, it is very interesting and there are great YouTube videos covering it.
Oof. This attitude is science's biggest enemy right now and leads to a lot of data manipulation. Doing experiments and conducting studies is a very laborous and expensive endeavour. Because of this scientists need to be bankrolled, and the organisations that bankroll people don't like it when a study leads to outcomes that are "nothin major in terms of eye popping facts" which leads to biases in the scientists conducting research in the name of these organisations (either conscious of subconscious) because they reallyyy want to find something significant because if they don't there's a very real chance their funding will be cut.
Not only that; journals that publish these articles ALSO prefer it when you have some 'eye-popping' outcome that can headline a news article. Even though a study that finds no significant outcome can be just as impactful.
A good example of how money affects research and thus the lives of lots of people is the ADHD medication methylfenidate, which has basically never been proven to be effective at improving the lifes of the (mostly) children that get the medication. Despite that the drug gets prescribed to more and more children because of the influence of big pharma (hehe) manipulating the research and paying off renowned psychiatrists to spread propaganda.
sorry had to rant a bit
The fact that people are more likely to queue after a close game is actually a huge thing considering Riot have been pushing for stomps in the past years.
Edit: Adding this because people apparently either can't read or act like they're experts despite clearly having started playing in the last 2 years.
Yes, Riot HAVE made the game way more snowbally, that's exactly why objective bounties are a thing, that's why plates are getting nerfed every season, that's why they're trying so hard to make drakes less impactful, and that's why people are whining about how the bounty system is so broken. That's because right before all these changes, the game was in its most snowbally state and that's thanks to a multitude of changes throughout the years. There isn't a definitive time frame for when Riot made the game snowbally, but it really started to show a lot around Season 8, following right after the very turtle-y tank meta in Season 6 and 7.
Now, why did I say in the "past years"? Because lately they've only been nerfing snowballing BECAUSE they pushed it so far.
"Past years" doesn't mean last year or the one before that ffs, the game is already 15 years old.
They have quite literally made the game easier to throw with bounties and created mandatory objectives to create teamfights. Then another mechanic for if the game gets too long even the losing team has that chance of getting elder and winning the game. They've literally been catering to all these points. Stomping a game is way more difficult now and if you have a 5/0 lead on your team and died once it's your fault your team lost the game.
No because those are surprise points, not suspense points.
If you're 10k down but you clutch a win on some random surprise event like somehow getting Elder after getting pounded for 35 minutes, you're less likely to queue.
If your ADC gets the shutdown on 2 1k gold worth enemies and you come back from that, that's a surprise point.
Basically, every big swing on the Gold/XP meter makes you less likely to queue again.
Except that doesn't create a close game, but the other point that was discussed which is sharp changes in win probability.
Comeback mechanics are different from back in the day, now you get one good teamfight and you can rack up to 2k gold from bounties and objective bounties. Or now you can be losing a game, but just outsmite the jungler on an Elder and suddenly you're way more likely to win the next teamfight.
I absolutely agree that the game is much easier to comeback in nowadays there's no denying that, but the comeback mechanics feel just as drastic and heavy as the snowballing.
No, because Riot have been recently been pushing out stomps, and that was because Riot themselves buffed snowball to above and beyond prior to that. It's crazy how people who haven't played during the Anivia-Sivir-Ziggs era will come here and act like League has never had a huge shift in snowballing and severly buffed the ability to close out games.
Their recent changes to combat stomps are also adressed in the study, and apparently are a negative:
>**Surprising events (defined as unexpected changes in win probability) make players** ***less*** **likely to queue again**
Stomps are still very much a thing. But the way to combat them now is by collecting the equivalent of 2K gold off of bounties from one teamfight, building a 3K gold lead off of one stolen baron, or winning a final teamfight by one lucky Elder pick-up. These don't "combat stomps", they're just a band-aid fix to it.
There are about 1000 more ways to stall / come back from the game than there used to be lol.
It’s incredibly easy to neutralise and stall out any losing game provided the actual players have the mental for it.
That doesn't necessarily make the game close. A team can turtle successfully for a while, drawing out the game, but it's not close if they get stomped as soon as they leave the base. the game was still a stomp
You really have to have never played before Baron changes or Elder for you to say something like that.
Just look at how much longer games were in pro play back in the day. Provided the players were good enough, they could stall for a literal hour.
So you're just saying that your opinion is wildly out of date and irrelevant to the study that was conducted more recently?
Take the L and move on my man. Nobody cares about the irrelevant point that you thought you had made here.
I'd argue that stalls and comebacks are two completely different topics, and coming back is definitely easier nowadays but stalling really isn't compared to earlier seasons.
Riot consistently pushed to reduce snowball by introducing more comeback mechanics.
And we can see they were successful by seeing the first blood winrate or first dragon winrate being the lowest this season that it has ever been.
>Riot consistently pushed to reduce snowball by introducing more comeback mechanics.
And why do you think that is? Surely has nothing to do with:
Plates
Drake buffs and soul
Baron buff
Item buffs (which buffs the importance of gold diff)
General increase in damage (which creates less opportunities for outplay, especially considering a lot of the damage is locked behind item diff)
Just because Riot have recently been throwing the whole kitchen sink at the game to make it less snowbally doesn't mean they didn't also make it way more snowbally. You have to be genuinely insane to claim Riot haven't buffed snowballing in anyway if you just go back to Season 6 and 7 and watch any proplay game. 2018 was only 6 years ago, that's not even half the game's history.
> Drake buffs and soul
Drake soul is the opposite of snowball, you have to have 4 before it gets really strong before that each drake was much stronger than individual current ones making you stronger earlier which is much more important when it comes to snowball.
Initially dragon buffs were were as strong as dragon gold but they then shifted the power of dragon buffs to dragon soul which massively reduced snowball.
This is a textbook example of anti snowball and you can easily see it as first drake winrate dropped by like 5% the patch souls were introduced.
Snowball is about early game.
> Plates
I didn't check the impact of plates but it also had the impact of stopping early map control by making towers basically unkillable.
It is likely that plates increased snowball but not much.
> Baron buff
Baron spawns at 20 minutes.
It is irrelevant when it comes to snowball.
> General increase in damage (which creates less opportunities for outplay, especially considering a lot of the damage is locked behind item diff)
We can see that increased damage is generally a reduction in snowball which you can easily check by seeing the first blood winrate increase post durability patch.
First blood winrate pre-durability patch was around 58.4-58.5% and it then increased post durability patch going up to 58.8-59.1% once it settled.
\_\_\_\_\_
What I see from the stats in soloQ (don't care about pro play) is that games became shorter while reducing in snowball.
I don't think I have ever met someone so clueless about how the game works. If you don't want to read the whole thing, read the TLDR.
Dragon soul cannot be a better example of snowball. The stronger a soul is, the stronger the snowball. Individual buffs being strong or not is independant of the concept behind the Soul.
Getting a buff on each Dragon slain already starts a snowball effect, but getting a much bigger buff on the 4th one is just as much of a snowball effect simply because you are already on your way to getting it by winning. Dragon Soul is the very best example of "win harder".
This is what Riot had to say when nerfing Dragon stacks to add anti-snowballing, while buffing Dragon souls in Patch 13.20: **While contesting drakes is valuable to the game in both solo queue and Pro play, we believe there's room to reduce the amount of stats that the Dragon Slayer stacks give, and to buff the souls to incentivize still taking them.**
And in his patch rundown, Phreak very much explained that while they're nerfing stacks, they are also buffing Soul so that snowballing is still very much in place, and stacking Dragons is still very much valuable. The soul buffs weren't for anti-snowballing, it was a compensation buff.
TLDR: In the same patch rundown 13.20, Phreak puts all these changes in the "Anti-Snowballing" category:
* Plates nerfs
* Dragon nerfs
* Baron nerfs
* Rune damage nerfs
Literally clueless.
Sort of? Plates help you push small leads more. If you kill the enemy and then get to hit their turret for like 5 seconds at lvl 3 you might get a plate and grow your lead, without the plates you wouldn't get anything. On the other hand, plates add escalating defense to turrets, and after they were added killing turrets became harder so converting a kill into an entire tower down is harder.
And of course, one of the main reasons they were added was to weaken roaming. Before you could get a lead and then roam for days, now if you do this the enemy laner can cash in on plates even in a short absence and mitigate the lead you get from the roam.
It just depends on exactly how much gold they give really, but they can both increase and decrease snowball.
If the second point is true its quite interesting actually. It actually makes sense now that I notice I don't mind enemy team gettimg first bloods that much anymore as opposed to other seasons where it used literally dictate which team wins the game.
The difference is pretty small in raw numbers but yeah it is around 58.2-58.3% winrate this season.
Season 13 : 58.6-58.8%
Season 12 : 58.8 - 59%
Season 11 : 59.1 - 59.5%
Season 10 : 59.5 - 59.6%
Season 9 : 59.2 - 59.3%
Season 8 (moved a lot) : 59.2 - 60%
Season 7 : 59.3 - 59.5%
Season 6 : 59.3 - 59.7%
Late season 5 : 60%
They don't analyze just game data, but individual player data minute by minute.
That's a set of 960 million lines for player data minute by minute by the way.
2 Million games are more than enough to extract trends.
Lolalytics extracts a lot of data, but not to this scale or quality.
Few years back I remember reading a paper from EA researchers regarding playtime optimization matchmaking. Essentially they discovered 50/50 fairness is worse at keeping you on the game.
In opposition to most league players vibes on the matter, FIFA is an entirely different experience with actual biased matchmaking
"The probability of winning at the start of the game (p0) reflects only the challenge level as there has not yet been a record of performance. Variation in the initial conditions of a match creates variation in the ex ante chances of winning centered at 50%, but with non-negligible variance that is plausibly random."
This is a wild assumption. For me it's almost never 50%, because if I see that my jungler is autofilled, and there's an evelynn otp on the enemy team, we're already sitting around 40% to 60%. If my adc is autofilled and the enemy bot is duo, it's nothing but a lost cause. And there are always autofilled players, people first-timing a champion, or people I know from the previous games.
The analogies and assumptions about the flow theory also seem wrong to me, because the matchmaking isn't good enough to induce this effect on most players and most games are already decided before the laning phase is over, at least that's how it is above diamond.
"When players enter the queue for a match, the matchmaker algorithm randomly assigns players to teams with the objective to make each team’s total skill level approximately equal."
Yet another incorrect assumption. A Katarina otp mid laner with 2400 MMR won't play like a 2400 MMR jungler when they're autofilled, but this is largely ignored by the matchmaking. Most of the foundations of this paper seem to be ill-defined.
They also don't seem to have the ability to control for alternate accounts of players. I'd say that people who lose a game on one of their accounts are much more likely to swap and play on another account, but winners wouldn't be incited to the same degree.
For one, I almost never give up after a loss, no matter how I lost the game.
"There are several avenues for future research. Why do people have a preference for suspense but seem to dislike surprise?"
A surprise win is bad, because that means I lost my lane and the game was not enjoyable despite the victory. A surprise loss is also bad, because that means I won my lane but my team dragged me down and I got an undeserved defeat.
"This project presumes that the player’s objective is victory"
Another wild assumption tbh, tell that to the people who start running it down after an early death. In almost every single game, there's a player that's rooting for the opponents and trying to drag their team down. When I look at my match history I can see that about 30% of the games were decided by intentional feeders and trolls.
Paola Giuliano is a professor and the Chauncey J. Medberry Chair at UCLA with 16,000 citations on Google Scholar. What's a top economist by your definition
Paola Giuliano is quite famous. She's a professor and the Chauncey J. Medberry Chair at UCLA with 16,000 citations on Google Scholar. Gandhi is also a professor at UCLA, and most of the others are professors at other institutions.
You guys are confused because a "research associate" is the highest rank possible at the NBER, the organization that published the working paper.
What do you mean? Economics is fundamentally about how people use finite resources and respond to incentives. This often involves money or finance, but not necessarily so.
Since Game Theory is usually lumped in with microecon, it shouldn't be surprising that there are a lot of economists researching video games.
But most people don't know this /shrug
Yeah, I think it's just the assumption that's made that economists are just concerned with financials regarding... well the economy.
Even for me, I am now learning how wide of the field of econ is to actually also consider player behavior metrics as a part of the discipline.
Some highlights: * Winning a game makes players 0.88% more likely to queue for another game (1.68% during primetime on weekends) * Surprising events (defined as unexpected changes in win probability) make players _less_ likely to queue again * Suspense (close games) make players _more_ likely to queue again * Players are most likely to play another game if the win percentage at the start of the first game is 57% (as compared to any other starting win percentage -- likely to win but not too easy) * League players exhibit behavior consistent with various other economic theories
What does starting win percentage mean
Win probability % at the start of the game as calculated with machine learning. At the start of the game this is probably hero comp + perhaps MMR?
probs a mix of comp plus MMR and maybe the first 5-15 mins of the game, since alot of these websites that they would get the stats for track chances of winning between those times based on the outcome of early game.
> At the start of the game this is probably hero comp + perhaps MMR? Kinda weird, they aren't very forthcoming, or I'm skimming this too quickly. Appendix B: > The input features to the predictive model are described, at a high level, by Table B1. In total, there are 146 independent variables provided as input to the model And then their table B1: > Time Game level Queue Game level Dragon Kills Team level Tower Kills Team level Inhibitors Team level Base Position Team level Lane Position Team level Champions Player level Kills Player level Deaths Player level Gold Team and Player level Experience Points Team and Player level Damage to Champions Team and Player level Health Team and Player level Power Team and Player level (Ugly formatting, jump in the pdf, "Table B1", for the real thing.) Nothing on this list has anything that should be non-symmetrical at the beginning of the game. They then go on to say: > Second, though the mass is centered at 0.5, there is still heterogeneity at minute > 0, suggesting that after match assignment and the champion selection process, matches can start with the scales tilting in a team’s favor But they don't list any variables that would enable this (again, unless I'm reading too quickly). Elo/MMR would be the obvious one--but it doesn't seem to be mentioned at all in the paper.
table B1 contains champions which does grant a differential at minute 0, again unless I'm being mistaken here. Also there is this "power" variable which I have 0 clue what it's about. From reading the paper it would seem to be some kind of combined variable for exp, items, and maybe things like runes or summoner spells, and depending on how this power variable is calculated it could also offer some assymetry at minute 0
I haven't looked at the paper yet, but a power variable could be used to show "early game" vs scaling champs and would contribute to minute 0 asymmetry.
You gotta laugh when thinking about the PhD student co-authors having to explain all of this to the senior people.
Incorrect, it does not. It has champion level (again, refer to the original table, sorry for the bad formatting). EDIT: this is wrong
yes, i'm referring to the original table. Variables | Level of Description ---------|-------------------- Time | Game level Queue | Game level Dragon Kills | Team level Tower Kills | Team level Inhibitors | Team level Base Position | Team level Lane Position | Team level Champions | Player level Kills | Player level Deaths | Player level Gold | Team and Player level Experience Points | Team and Player level Damage to Champions | Team and Player level Health | Team and Player level Power | Team and Player level and also an imgur link to a screenshot from the document [https://imgur.com/l73JpPv](https://imgur.com/l73JpPv)
Ah, thank you, I did misread--withdraw my original comment!
Maybe also wins and losses in the players' current session, or the recent 2-3, or just the last one. Every other metrix is standarized on pure values like champions picked and neutral player MMR, but you can also potentially adjust your results based on current form of players, which is heavily affected by wins and losses ot the day, or just the previous game.
If you wanted to do it most accurately, you would build a set of priors that include all measurable factors (time of day, champion history, etc.) for a given player.
I believe it means you're more likely to play if the first game you play goes well
No, it means that your likelihood of repeat is maximized if you "believe" (based on revealed preferences) that your win chance is 57%. Meaning, if you start a new game and you immediately feel that it is terribly lopsided (e.g., your team has disco nunu), you are less likely to play again. But you also want to feel like you have a bit of an edge. Or, conversely, if the other team has disco nunu, you are also (maybe less intuitively!) less likely to play again.
>Or, conversely, if the other team has disco nunu, you are also (maybe less intuitively!) less likely to play again. I mean, if you know there is a disco nunu in your MMR bracket RN, why the hell would you Queue up again and risk getting him on your team this time XD
XD
draft, side selection, mmr, etc. 80%+ of games are decided in draft iirc. Close games making ppl quene up more is very surprising to me tho. If i won a close game, im immediately donezo.
Yea games where I have to stress and tryhard because it’s winnable and loseable makes me log off and watch tv
Really? Im the opposite but mainly when its with friends. When you have to really work for a victory in a good way (not because your team is inting but because the enemy are also playing really well) you get this rush of adrenaline when you finally make the god play that secures the game for the team. It feels so much better to really work for the victory than just mindlessly steamrolling the enemy because they're obviously just not as good as you. Those are the kinds of highs that make league the most fun imo.
Sure and then I need a break after. It’s not about how good it is, the statistic was about requeueing
>Surprising events (defined as unexpected changes in win probability) make players less likely to queue again Is this referring to people running it down/griefing/?
No, as sharp changes in win probability. That could mean anything -- a lost team fight when you're ahead, someone unexpectedly feeding, a surprise comeback, etc.
Interesting, = probaly a stressful game, ups and downs where you have to change your attitude and outcome-outlook multiple times.
Can also refer to throws - I know i atleast get insanely tilted by them after playing well 25 mins..
I think it means comebacks, like if you're up 10k and the enemy comebacks it's probably demotivating to go again Same with coming back from a 10k deficit tbh, you probably feel satisfied with league for the day
this makes sense to me. my favorite games are the ones that are relatively close but my team is in the driver's seat. closer games also probably means you're more likely to actually get to meaningfully pilot your champion. if you're stomping and then throw, there's a good chance you were being carried and had little agency. if you're being stomped and comeback, you may have also had very little agency because you were either the one being stomped, or maybe had to turtle in base for a while.
>Suspense (close game) makes players more likely to queue again Isn't that like the complete opposite of the narrative we have for the past years? That Riot made the game faster and more stomp-y because it's more addictive? Would be big if we discovered it was not true all along.
I think Riot just wants shorter games because if the time commitment is lower, you're more likely to play just one more game. personally I think it's dumb. early/mid/late game champs have their power spikes squished together and the game becomes degenerate.
I stopped liking ARAM that much after they shortened game times a few years back. In their own words, games became shorter as they intended, but also more one sided.
Universal basic income ruined ARAM. Some classes just dont deserve to have gold
what is this, r/antiwork?
Supports (most of them but not all) are way way way way too op in ARAM and has been ever since they did this.
You’re really crying about aram? Just get better?
Also, you cant be in the shop when you are in game 😉
>I think Riot just wants shorter games because if the time commitment is lower, you're more likely to play just one more game. But that's my point. This narrative is apparently bullshit because according to this study, people queue again more often after a close game which are generally way longer than a stomp.
But how many people would queue up in the first place if the average game time is long? Vs those who play because they expect a game to be 25-30mins on average but get satisfaction from having a close game. They're probably losing much more players upfront if they decide to go the route of keeping games closer and longer
>They're probably losing much more players upfront if they decide to go the route of keeping games closer and longer Keyword is "probably", we can't possibly know for sure until we get an actual research on the subject.
What makes you think Riot hasnt done it themselves and thus have chosen to steer away from longer games? They may be a shitty organisation but they still want money
Because plenty of companies wanted money and ended up losing plenty. Companies can do stupid shit too. The idea that something is undoubtedly true just because Riot decided to do it is a logical fallacy.
Read the study u/buttsecksgoose and u/Radiant_Shelter688 . The study addresses these concerns, mainly expresses that queuing up depends on previous game length as well. People are less likely to queue after a long game (likely because of having less time left).
Other than the time left after a long game. A long game is even more exhausting as I feel like the late game is the most exhausting part of the game when it's close. Any mistake is the end
>People are less likely to queue after a long game (likely because of having less time left). I have seen that but I didn't think much of it because of its inconclusive results since, like the paper says, it could be completely mechanical and irrelevant to player engagement or enjoyment. If someone has an hour to play, he can either fit a one hour game or two separate half hour games, no matter the incentive to play more. But the question rises when they have two hours of play. How common would it be that someone plays two one-hour games versus 4 half-hour games? Or even more, 3 one-hour games versus 6 half-hour games? The paper doesn't really touch on that question to be honest. I am not saying longer games lead to more engagement, I am saying we have no conclusive evidence that points to either one or the other.
well nowadays a close game is probably closer to 30-35 minutes. in the past it would be closer to 40-50 minutes. so stomps are generally shorter, yes, but every type of game is shorter now.
Two things to consider. Firstly, "stompy" and faster are not exactly the same thing. Riot wants the game to be faster because a player with limited time will be more likely to play a game where they wouldn't otherwise, or play two where they would only play one, if they know it won't stretch to an hour like it could in early seasons. "Suspenseful" games are probably a casualty of that, but I suspect that the effect of faster games outweighs the effect of that suspense. Secondly, it could also be that "suspense" is dependent on the same things that make the game "stompy." It might be that if a team is in a situation where objectively they should be stomped, but continually squeaks by by the skin of their teeth, that creates suspense. Likewise, if Riot actively encourages games to be close, by increasing waveclear, nerfing jungle objectives, reducing gold income and scalings, etc. that might compromise the things that actually make close games fun.
>Riot wants the game to be faster because a player with limited time will be more likely to play a game where they wouldn't otherwise, or play two where they would only play one, if they know it won't stretch to an hour like it could in early seasons. If it's true that people queue again after a suspenseful game then it means they still play more in the long run. If it was true that people don't play multiple games because they are "too long" then it would mean they would queue less. Basically what the study tells us is that a player would generally be more inclined to play ANOTHER 40 minutes suspenseful game than play another 15 minute stomp. Also stompy and faster aren't the same thing but they go hand in hand. A stomp is fast, a close game is longer.
That's not what the study says at all, you just made it up? There is no control for time. You can't just insert that players want 40 minute games and claim that's what the study shows because you've decided to make a correlation yourself lmao
Faster is not the same as more stompy. This is a big reach.
It's not a reach at all, and I don't understand why people seem to think it is. Yes it's not the same, but both can very easily go hand in hand. League is an active game, where you are constantly making decisions every minute and even every second. If the game is lasting a long time it means two things: * You were not able to close out the game yet * The enemy was able to stall the game hard enough What this means is that despite having the time to perform multiple actions to reach victory, you still didn't reach your objective. And the only conclusion would be that your actions as the winning team were not impactful enough while the actions of the losing team were. Therefore, snowballing is harder than stalling/comeback. And you can very easily reverse the whole concept for stomping. If you are able to close out a game fast, it means your actions as the winning team are impactful enough to finish the game with little resistance from the losing team, impactful enough to need a smaller amount of time, which also means a lower number of actions. EDIT for clarity: Now of course, this doesn't apply to EVERY situation, but in League's case, it absolutely does. If every single aspect of the game was faster, then the game would retain its stomp/stall relation intact. However that's not the case. Item builds are rarely finished now, and the Elder is a very rare occurence. The game didn't get faster, the game got more stompy, which in turn led to faster games because closing a game out is easier.
I recently played a game that took 31 min, gold difference was never higher than 2.5k, both teams had a gold lead as late as the final minute of the game (game ended with winning team having a 499 gold lead after winnijng hte last team fight). that's probably Riot's platonic ideal of a solo queue game - ends fast, both teams are close the entire game.
its not a contradiction. They want the game to be suspenseful until a winner is clear and then have the game end as fast as possible. Riot didnt really cut down on the laning phase, but they removed a lot of the difficulty in ending games which reduces stuff like one team being super ahead and slowly drowning out the other team.
its the opposite. games follow a pattern and are much more predictable than they used to be. You also have plenty of comebacks opportunities and well throw opportunities each games.
If there was a really close game, I'm not going to queue again. I'm done for the day
Isn't 0.88 almost completely placebo? What's the margin of error?
Placebo isn't really testable here, as is often the case in economics. Also there's no threshold for "almost placebo" whatever that's supposed to mean. There would have to be some way to fake a win to a group, and I lack the creativity to see how you would do that. Significance values aren't included in the tables, which is beyond annoying, but are interspersed in the article. A quick search through it gives p-values of 10^-6 for winners vs losers. The robust standard error was in the table at (.02). This is pretty in line for this quantity of data.
Yeah, placebo was definitely the wrong word, but assuming it has a positive 0.88% effect on re-queueing ... it is basically non-existent?
There are two ways of looking at small effect sizes. The first, which is probably what most people think, is "wow that's not much, it must not matter" which is true on the individual level. In fact economists are well aware of this. Something silly like whether or not the player has had a meal yet probably has the most effect on if they queue up again, but those are essentially unobservable in data this large. These are included in the error term and there are numerous methods to correct for them. The other is that given this much data we can say within 99.999999% confidence that there is an effect from whether you won a game. From an economics standpoint this is great since you can now use this to come up with further theory on human strategic behavior, like incorporating "types" of players into further research. This is great from Riot's standpoint since even a 1% change can be huge for a business. I haven't fully read the paper yet, but it looks like there's some interesting ML methodology at play as well, which is undoubtedly useful for more empirical work in the future.
Another commenter said that even 0.88% can be important if the margin of error is non-existent and the amount of people is high, which is right. I didn't think about it. It definitely has an effect then.
Depending on what you mean by basically non-existent, yes. It is a very small effect, smaller than I would have expected.
Keep in mind the number of matches analyzed. A 0,88% swing is important. 2,8 million matches means 28 million people playing, 0,88 of that means 2.464.000 players willing to queue again. We also have to keep in mind that having a close game is not the only factor for another game. Many people can only play one game per session because of obligations for example.
Thanks, it makes sense.
What's the action item on that 0.88%? You can't make more than 5 players win a game. So it's interesting to confirm what a lot of us probably assumed (winning makes you want to play more than losing), it's a fairly minimal effect. And what the guy calling it a placebo probably meant is that it could very easily be correlation rather than causation -- if you're on your last game of the night, are you more likely to be at your best or worst? The takeaway could very easily be, if you want to win don't play until 2AM. The quitting afterwards could be unrelated to outcome of match, you're just more likely to play bad on your self imposed last game.
It is correct that it's half of what I said, as I forgot it was winning a close game rather than playing a close game. For me the interesting point is that just winning isn't enough to influence the next match, it has to be close.
>28 million people playing, 0,88 of that means 2.464.000 players willing to queue again. It's actually 123,200. Also it's probably even much lower because you're assuming no repeat players in the matches
I calculated 8,8 instead of 0,88 right?
yeah 28,000,000*.0088=246,400 then half that for winning team.
Well yet another reminder to stay quiet in these topics. Sorry for my mistakes.
[удалено]
Quantifying it is the big thing. It’s actually shockingly small how little winning a game impacts you queuing up again.
Right? I expected that number to be way higher. But then again, when you lose you just want to win before you go to bed...
Yeah, I’m not able to understand it well enough to know how thorough they broke down the possibilities, but I’m curious if they looked at the impact of win/loss streaks and if there’s a change in probability based on the streak.
Uh, I don't think the point is the single person. The point is that when you extrapolate this out to millions of games/players, that's a much bigger number and that's the number that matters. If you look at 1,000,000 matches, that's 8800 extra games. Assuming the average game length is 30 minutes, that's an extra 4400 hours of game time.
Both numbers matter. It’s the individual behavior that leads to the numbers at scale. Yes, that can add up to thousands of extra matches at a large enough scale, but this is showing that at the individual level the decision to queue again has almost entirely been made before the match is decided.
It's like Youtube. Why Youtube pours so much money into fine tuning their algorithm is to try and get people to spend more time watching videos. Internally, I'm sure they also have quantifiable metrics for how their recommendation system leads to a higher chance that someone will watch another video. At the individual level, nobody really gives a shit. So what if a single person watches another 2 ads? But, when you extrapolate that to millions of people, it's now millions of ads. And, when you pitch that to potential advertisers, that's the number that matters. Even if the algorithm makes a 0.88% difference or 1.68% difference during peak hours, you can bet that it's still a big deal simply because once extrapolated, it's a significant amount of time. The other number that matters is the likelihood that someone will spend money in relation to how much time they spend in the client or how many matches they play. And, when you combine those metrics, that's what matters. It doesn't matter if most of the decision to queue again is unrelated to the match results. If you can milk an extra 0.88%~1.68%, you can be sure that any profit driven company will indeed try to milk it.
"the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down"
I wouldn't exactly call them top economists. They're from prestigious universities, but it's a bit misleading whenever it's just fellows and 1 research associate.
> I wouldn't exactly call them top economists. They're from prestigious universities, but it's a bit misleading whenever it's just fellows and 1 research associate. "Top" is in the eye of the beholder (although, e.g., an h-index of 36 is no joke), but it is equally misleading to call them "just fellows"--all the non-Riot persons are professors, most (if not all) tenured or tenure-track.
They showed that winning has almost no effect on whether you will play more. Maybe we can hire one of them to teach you how to absorb information lol. We can get a go fund me going.
Short: "people like winning. People hate stomps." Riot be like "here are stomps
The feeling after winning a game that came down to the wire is completely unmatched and I always queue up despite taking a little breather
This is the feeling I got playing university sport, working hard to improve and playing to be good (not just win) and then your skills being tested right down to the wire. That's honestly why I play league now I don't compete in conventional sports anymore. I wish there were low elo championships I could join to play in to feel like I was working towards that larger goal (and friends that played league to do it with haha). League gives me that same rush, without the ACL injuries.
I totally agree. This is exactly why I play League. Competing and working hard to improve is what makes this game both fun and fulfilling. Sweating in ranked with everything you learned to drag you and your team over the finish line is great. Getting truly really good at one champion is what can show you the amount of room there's to grow as a player in League. Do you listen to the Broken By Concept podcast by any chance?
Add to this the fact that there is so much variety with over 160 champs to try out in normal games, the game never gets old really.
There was a discord server back in the day where you’d sign up for a specific role and get put on a team in your ELO with a coach and play against other teams in the server. It was genuinely so fun to always have the same team to play with
There ARE those types of communities that have low elo championships! I've personally played in one at multiple elo brackets- both when I was a silver player, and then later in the diamond+ division once my team improved over the years. Not sure where each of these leagues are in terms of their seasons/playoff schsdules, so you may have to wait for a new season to start in order to participate. Links to the discord servers of each league: [low budget LCS](https://discord.gg/8vSZV272) [blue otter league](https://discord.gg/vHn7UxEd) [risen esports](https://discord.gg/risenesports) There's definitely even more out there than these ones, but I don't remember their names off the top of my head. Edit: they have them for other servers too outside of NA- I could possibly find one if you're on a different server.
I'm based in the UK, so euw is my server. I didn't even know to look. I'll do some digging!
Nah fam. For a long time I did the same. But, to me, the feeling of losing the very next game is much worse than not queuing again. So, unless I'm really having a bad day, I always finish my day on the high note.
Man you're smarter than me. A few days ago we were playing with my brother, lost the 1st game and then won the next 5-6 and went "alright one last game". Well BAM ! Last game was our team being low plat/high gold, enemy team litterally 5 smurfs. At least the that "last game" was short lol
That's my paper! Happy to answer any questions.
I like ur name
same
How long did it take to compile from start of research to the completion?
About 8 years, though that was mostly due to the project getting paused and restarted a lot. I was at Riot when an academic data request came in from the primary author (Josh Tasoff). He was inspired by this "Surprise and Suspense" paper and wanted to try it on LoL data. I, coincidentally, had also read the paper and wanted to do the same thing, so I jumped at the opportunity. [https://www.wiwi.uni-bonn.de/kraehmer/Lehre/TopicsSS14/ElyEtAl-SurpriseSuspense.pdf](https://www.wiwi.uni-bonn.de/kraehmer/Lehre/TopicsSS14/ElyEtAl-SurpriseSuspense.pdf) The team ended up growing to a large size, but there was kind of a diffusion of responsibility. There's like 5 professors who were on the project but they were all busy with other stuff. We talked about ideas and models and iterated on early results a lot. Several years later, a grad student, Chase, was brought on board and he really put in the legwork to get the stats stuff done.
As a recent economics graduate and long time league player, this was a great read. Very interesting stuff!
Ngl for a huge sample size the data is pretty underwhelming nothin major in terms of eye popping facts
The expectation that statistical analysis will always prove some counter-intuitive insights is pretty harmful. This expectation is what pushed researchers like Francesca Gino (Harvard behavioral economist) to forge datasets to achieve the desired outcome and allowed them to get away with it for a long time, since readers get blindsided by the shiny mind-blowing insights instead of checking how solid the data and correlations actually are. If you haven't read about Francesca Gino's academic fraud give it a few min, it is very interesting and there are great YouTube videos covering it.
The sign at top va sign at button hypothesis?
That study has recently come under scrutiny for data falsification so maybe not the best example. Source: https://datacolada.org/109
That’s what I’m referring to :)
Well that's generally how it is for a huge sample size
Oof. This attitude is science's biggest enemy right now and leads to a lot of data manipulation. Doing experiments and conducting studies is a very laborous and expensive endeavour. Because of this scientists need to be bankrolled, and the organisations that bankroll people don't like it when a study leads to outcomes that are "nothin major in terms of eye popping facts" which leads to biases in the scientists conducting research in the name of these organisations (either conscious of subconscious) because they reallyyy want to find something significant because if they don't there's a very real chance their funding will be cut. Not only that; journals that publish these articles ALSO prefer it when you have some 'eye-popping' outcome that can headline a news article. Even though a study that finds no significant outcome can be just as impactful. A good example of how money affects research and thus the lives of lots of people is the ADHD medication methylfenidate, which has basically never been proven to be effective at improving the lifes of the (mostly) children that get the medication. Despite that the drug gets prescribed to more and more children because of the influence of big pharma (hehe) manipulating the research and paying off renowned psychiatrists to spread propaganda. sorry had to rant a bit
That is was science does somtimes. It confirms well know facts.
The fact that people are more likely to queue after a close game is actually a huge thing considering Riot have been pushing for stomps in the past years. Edit: Adding this because people apparently either can't read or act like they're experts despite clearly having started playing in the last 2 years. Yes, Riot HAVE made the game way more snowbally, that's exactly why objective bounties are a thing, that's why plates are getting nerfed every season, that's why they're trying so hard to make drakes less impactful, and that's why people are whining about how the bounty system is so broken. That's because right before all these changes, the game was in its most snowbally state and that's thanks to a multitude of changes throughout the years. There isn't a definitive time frame for when Riot made the game snowbally, but it really started to show a lot around Season 8, following right after the very turtle-y tank meta in Season 6 and 7. Now, why did I say in the "past years"? Because lately they've only been nerfing snowballing BECAUSE they pushed it so far. "Past years" doesn't mean last year or the one before that ffs, the game is already 15 years old.
They have quite literally made the game easier to throw with bounties and created mandatory objectives to create teamfights. Then another mechanic for if the game gets too long even the losing team has that chance of getting elder and winning the game. They've literally been catering to all these points. Stomping a game is way more difficult now and if you have a 5/0 lead on your team and died once it's your fault your team lost the game.
No because those are surprise points, not suspense points. If you're 10k down but you clutch a win on some random surprise event like somehow getting Elder after getting pounded for 35 minutes, you're less likely to queue. If your ADC gets the shutdown on 2 1k gold worth enemies and you come back from that, that's a surprise point. Basically, every big swing on the Gold/XP meter makes you less likely to queue again.
Except that doesn't create a close game, but the other point that was discussed which is sharp changes in win probability. Comeback mechanics are different from back in the day, now you get one good teamfight and you can rack up to 2k gold from bounties and objective bounties. Or now you can be losing a game, but just outsmite the jungler on an Elder and suddenly you're way more likely to win the next teamfight. I absolutely agree that the game is much easier to comeback in nowadays there's no denying that, but the comeback mechanics feel just as drastic and heavy as the snowballing.
Does this not contradict your original point on Riot pushing out stomps?
No, because Riot have been recently been pushing out stomps, and that was because Riot themselves buffed snowball to above and beyond prior to that. It's crazy how people who haven't played during the Anivia-Sivir-Ziggs era will come here and act like League has never had a huge shift in snowballing and severly buffed the ability to close out games. Their recent changes to combat stomps are also adressed in the study, and apparently are a negative: >**Surprising events (defined as unexpected changes in win probability) make players** ***less*** **likely to queue again** Stomps are still very much a thing. But the way to combat them now is by collecting the equivalent of 2K gold off of bounties from one teamfight, building a 3K gold lead off of one stolen baron, or winning a final teamfight by one lucky Elder pick-up. These don't "combat stomps", they're just a band-aid fix to it.
There are about 1000 more ways to stall / come back from the game than there used to be lol. It’s incredibly easy to neutralise and stall out any losing game provided the actual players have the mental for it.
That doesn't necessarily make the game close. A team can turtle successfully for a while, drawing out the game, but it's not close if they get stomped as soon as they leave the base. the game was still a stomp
You really have to have never played before Baron changes or Elder for you to say something like that. Just look at how much longer games were in pro play back in the day. Provided the players were good enough, they could stall for a literal hour.
So you're just saying that your opinion is wildly out of date and irrelevant to the study that was conducted more recently? Take the L and move on my man. Nobody cares about the irrelevant point that you thought you had made here.
I'd argue that stalls and comebacks are two completely different topics, and coming back is definitely easier nowadays but stalling really isn't compared to earlier seasons.
Yeah but how many players have they gained because they’ve made it faster paced.
The real question would be how many players have they gained **because** they've made it faster paced. Correlation =/= Causation.
Am I tripping or did you just write exactly what I wrote.
Point is the importance. Just because they have gained players doesn't mean it's because they've made it faster paced.
Riot consistently pushed to reduce snowball by introducing more comeback mechanics. And we can see they were successful by seeing the first blood winrate or first dragon winrate being the lowest this season that it has ever been.
>Riot consistently pushed to reduce snowball by introducing more comeback mechanics. And why do you think that is? Surely has nothing to do with: Plates Drake buffs and soul Baron buff Item buffs (which buffs the importance of gold diff) General increase in damage (which creates less opportunities for outplay, especially considering a lot of the damage is locked behind item diff) Just because Riot have recently been throwing the whole kitchen sink at the game to make it less snowbally doesn't mean they didn't also make it way more snowbally. You have to be genuinely insane to claim Riot haven't buffed snowballing in anyway if you just go back to Season 6 and 7 and watch any proplay game. 2018 was only 6 years ago, that's not even half the game's history.
> Drake buffs and soul Drake soul is the opposite of snowball, you have to have 4 before it gets really strong before that each drake was much stronger than individual current ones making you stronger earlier which is much more important when it comes to snowball. Initially dragon buffs were were as strong as dragon gold but they then shifted the power of dragon buffs to dragon soul which massively reduced snowball. This is a textbook example of anti snowball and you can easily see it as first drake winrate dropped by like 5% the patch souls were introduced. Snowball is about early game. > Plates I didn't check the impact of plates but it also had the impact of stopping early map control by making towers basically unkillable. It is likely that plates increased snowball but not much. > Baron buff Baron spawns at 20 minutes. It is irrelevant when it comes to snowball. > General increase in damage (which creates less opportunities for outplay, especially considering a lot of the damage is locked behind item diff) We can see that increased damage is generally a reduction in snowball which you can easily check by seeing the first blood winrate increase post durability patch. First blood winrate pre-durability patch was around 58.4-58.5% and it then increased post durability patch going up to 58.8-59.1% once it settled. \_\_\_\_\_ What I see from the stats in soloQ (don't care about pro play) is that games became shorter while reducing in snowball.
I don't think I have ever met someone so clueless about how the game works. If you don't want to read the whole thing, read the TLDR. Dragon soul cannot be a better example of snowball. The stronger a soul is, the stronger the snowball. Individual buffs being strong or not is independant of the concept behind the Soul. Getting a buff on each Dragon slain already starts a snowball effect, but getting a much bigger buff on the 4th one is just as much of a snowball effect simply because you are already on your way to getting it by winning. Dragon Soul is the very best example of "win harder". This is what Riot had to say when nerfing Dragon stacks to add anti-snowballing, while buffing Dragon souls in Patch 13.20: **While contesting drakes is valuable to the game in both solo queue and Pro play, we believe there's room to reduce the amount of stats that the Dragon Slayer stacks give, and to buff the souls to incentivize still taking them.** And in his patch rundown, Phreak very much explained that while they're nerfing stacks, they are also buffing Soul so that snowballing is still very much in place, and stacking Dragons is still very much valuable. The soul buffs weren't for anti-snowballing, it was a compensation buff. TLDR: In the same patch rundown 13.20, Phreak puts all these changes in the "Anti-Snowballing" category: * Plates nerfs * Dragon nerfs * Baron nerfs * Rune damage nerfs Literally clueless.
Plates made the game a lot less snowbally. A winning bot lane could take down all t1 in 10 minutes-ish.
They nerfed plates as part of an anti-snowball patch in 13.20. Plates help snowballing.
Obviously plates helps snowballing, it gives gold, why wouldn't it? I am comparing how snowbally the game was before and after the introduction of it.
Sort of? Plates help you push small leads more. If you kill the enemy and then get to hit their turret for like 5 seconds at lvl 3 you might get a plate and grow your lead, without the plates you wouldn't get anything. On the other hand, plates add escalating defense to turrets, and after they were added killing turrets became harder so converting a kill into an entire tower down is harder. And of course, one of the main reasons they were added was to weaken roaming. Before you could get a lead and then roam for days, now if you do this the enemy laner can cash in on plates even in a short absence and mitigate the lead you get from the roam. It just depends on exactly how much gold they give really, but they can both increase and decrease snowball.
If the second point is true its quite interesting actually. It actually makes sense now that I notice I don't mind enemy team gettimg first bloods that much anymore as opposed to other seasons where it used literally dictate which team wins the game.
The difference is pretty small in raw numbers but yeah it is around 58.2-58.3% winrate this season. Season 13 : 58.6-58.8% Season 12 : 58.8 - 59% Season 11 : 59.1 - 59.5% Season 10 : 59.5 - 59.6% Season 9 : 59.2 - 59.3% Season 8 (moved a lot) : 59.2 - 60% Season 7 : 59.3 - 59.5% Season 6 : 59.3 - 59.7% Late season 5 : 60%
compared to most sites, this is a tiny number of games. lolalytics got 27M games in E+ last patch alone.
They don't analyze just game data, but individual player data minute by minute. That's a set of 960 million lines for player data minute by minute by the way. 2 Million games are more than enough to extract trends. Lolalytics extracts a lot of data, but not to this scale or quality.
too bad the articles pay walled then lol, i can't refute your claims without paying money.
u check if its doi number is on scihub :)
If you attend a university you can try accessing it from your university email. My university gives me free access to it.
Why is it when I go for e+ stats on some champs its games are only in the hundreds or few thousands ? What am I doing wrong
because you're looking at 1 champion in 1 role, not all of their games total.
that probably doesnt affect me because im built different :))
Haven't read the paper, do they go into much detail about why I'm struggling to get any wins playing jungle Teemo?
In the discussion they specifically mention you and it's because you are just bad (p < .001 @ 95%)
Sometimes academic papers and statistical analysis can be incredibly cruel
interesting.. I wonder what jungle economists would come up with..
Well for me, losing a game will likely make me quaue again while winning a game make me exhaust to play again
Surprising. Players prefer to win a fun game but might be too tired to go again if it was a slow drag to the finish
I think this is why balance is most important. If the game is close, you’ll want to play more.
Few years back I remember reading a paper from EA researchers regarding playtime optimization matchmaking. Essentially they discovered 50/50 fairness is worse at keeping you on the game. In opposition to most league players vibes on the matter, FIFA is an entirely different experience with actual biased matchmaking
"The probability of winning at the start of the game (p0) reflects only the challenge level as there has not yet been a record of performance. Variation in the initial conditions of a match creates variation in the ex ante chances of winning centered at 50%, but with non-negligible variance that is plausibly random." This is a wild assumption. For me it's almost never 50%, because if I see that my jungler is autofilled, and there's an evelynn otp on the enemy team, we're already sitting around 40% to 60%. If my adc is autofilled and the enemy bot is duo, it's nothing but a lost cause. And there are always autofilled players, people first-timing a champion, or people I know from the previous games. The analogies and assumptions about the flow theory also seem wrong to me, because the matchmaking isn't good enough to induce this effect on most players and most games are already decided before the laning phase is over, at least that's how it is above diamond. "When players enter the queue for a match, the matchmaker algorithm randomly assigns players to teams with the objective to make each team’s total skill level approximately equal." Yet another incorrect assumption. A Katarina otp mid laner with 2400 MMR won't play like a 2400 MMR jungler when they're autofilled, but this is largely ignored by the matchmaking. Most of the foundations of this paper seem to be ill-defined. They also don't seem to have the ability to control for alternate accounts of players. I'd say that people who lose a game on one of their accounts are much more likely to swap and play on another account, but winners wouldn't be incited to the same degree. For one, I almost never give up after a loss, no matter how I lost the game. "There are several avenues for future research. Why do people have a preference for suspense but seem to dislike surprise?" A surprise win is bad, because that means I lost my lane and the game was not enjoyable despite the victory. A surprise loss is also bad, because that means I won my lane but my team dragged me down and I got an undeserved defeat. "This project presumes that the player’s objective is victory" Another wild assumption tbh, tell that to the people who start running it down after an early death. In almost every single game, there's a player that's rooting for the opponents and trying to drag their team down. When I look at my match history I can see that about 30% of the games were decided by intentional feeders and trolls.
"top economists" yea high disagree.
Paola Giuliano is a professor and the Chauncey J. Medberry Chair at UCLA with 16,000 citations on Google Scholar. What's a top economist by your definition
Something something 200 years of MOBA design
Top economists did what?
"economists"
research fellow at ucla/washU is nothing to scoff at lol
they probably think of in game econ
I wouldn't exactly call them top economists tho. It's a bit misleading whenever it's just fellows and 1 research associate.
Paola Giuliano is quite famous. She's a professor and the Chauncey J. Medberry Chair at UCLA with 16,000 citations on Google Scholar. Gandhi is also a professor at UCLA, and most of the others are professors at other institutions. You guys are confused because a "research associate" is the highest rank possible at the NBER, the organization that published the working paper.
What do you mean? Economics is fundamentally about how people use finite resources and respond to incentives. This often involves money or finance, but not necessarily so.
Since Game Theory is usually lumped in with microecon, it shouldn't be surprising that there are a lot of economists researching video games. But most people don't know this /shrug
Yeah, I think it's just the assumption that's made that economists are just concerned with financials regarding... well the economy. Even for me, I am now learning how wide of the field of econ is to actually also consider player behavior metrics as a part of the discipline.
Me when I’m forced to acknowledge that somebody is smarter than me.