Perception of Impact on Games

General Discussion
1

People keep saying “I have no impact on this game. Too team based for one person to have an impact. Impossible to carry.”

Then those same people also say “I lost because of one feeder.”

So one person can ruin a game but at the same time, one person can’t save it?

Making this topic, because I have had a couple games now where we have a bot and are losing badly, then when the person reconnects, we end up winning. I know this is anecdotal, but I really do think one person can make a difference. The issue is, that difference is not super visible.

Is soaking xp glamorous? No. But it is incredibly important. Is waiting in the bush while your team does camps glamorous? Is clearing creep?

But all of this adds up. Every little thing in this game adds up.

Point is, yes there are glory moments that are game defining that can be remembered. But don’t forget the little things while seeking that glory.

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one of the isues imo, is people consider it as a fighting game, and not strategy
leads them to think impact is only how much damage output you can make

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No one person have have a meaningful positive impact on the game. It takes everyone using teamwork to win.

However, one person being a feeder, AFK, etc (not the cow) can and does. Because it turns the game into a 5v4 instead of a 5v5.

Being down a human player is a huge disadvantage, which is why you will hardly ever see a team with a bot win.

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4

That’s essentially correct.

When you have an afk that comes back, it removes the handicap you had. But you did not win thanks to that person.

I can decide to make my team lose by suiciding over and over. If I’m on Spider queen, I can pick up as many gems as I can so my team loses them. And die in the same lane as my team during an objective so the enemy doesn’t split up to go kill me. I can pick Garrosh and throw team mates into enemies. It wouldn’t be hard.

I can’t however decide to make my team win. I can try to win. But one person trying to win, has much less impact than one person wanting to lose. Because the latter can easily succeed.

This so much.

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Honestly no. One person can not make up for one other persons trolling. The one person trolling makes you 4v5 while if theyare playing at equal to your level then well numbers gonna get ya.

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Some players can have more impact than others in game.
An even match won’t be won if someone is not participaring.
We may have had some rare matches where we won 4v5 with a leaver or some waste of spaces doing his thing solo but most of the time it was because the ennemy got complacent and had one or two people play solo to mirror the other idiot and lost after too much fooling around.

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Well said Pesky. People think impact has to be flashy with quintuple kills, but your knowledge and skill and the series of actions you make in a game have a cumulative effect that increases your chances of winning over a course of a game which spreads to the effect of all your games compared to someone who is less skilled than you.

It’s why I always laugh at people who say healers have no impact. If you suck at it sure, it may feel that way, but that’s not stopping me from winning when I’m picking the role.

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I don’t think I’ve seen anyone say that.
Why else would they insist the team always needs to draft a healer?

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I absolutely think one person can have an impact more than others. Take a well played garrosh feeding kills to his dps. Or the most annoying tracer racking up 15 kill streak. How about a godly Abathur (we have all had that game).

Overall it is the team that will win the game.

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There are nothing to save when one player makes a hard game even harder by feeding whole game insteed of doing what he is suppose to do.

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Well to make up for a 4x5 as 1 player, you have to be at least 2 times better. Just simple maths. Now what is 2 times better? Dunno, but a GM player in a silver game, can most definitely easily win a 4x5 game (assuming he still manages to maintain GM-level tryhard play and doesn’t start trolling bcz ‘game is too ez’), probably occasionally even a 3x5 (if all silvers are actual silvers and not other GM smurfs, ofc).

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You can do more ofcourse but if im doing all the turn ins on bhb or tomb while having top soak and siege and my team keeps dying I feel that I cant do more :sweat_smile:

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Well, especially on lower skill levels, and especially in QM, there is a point in game when ppl just give up (not necessarily stand in fountain, but they throw their brain out the window, turn off any tactics and just ‘go with the flow until it ends’ -zombie mode). At that point, if you’re still tryharding, you’re basically playing a 2-3x5 at best. Still winnable ofc (especially if all zombies respond to pings and you do make good meaningful pings), as the same thing can happen to the enemies (then it’s a game of 9 zombies and 1 player), but usually it’s a very uphill battle.

If I had to put a skill number on zombie mode, I’d say it’s at least 2-3 leagues lower on average. A master zombie would be playing like a gold-plat (well my zombie mode is somwhere around there for sure).

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I got this from NotParadox (he’s a coach for competitive gaming i believe).

30% of your matches are lost because of afk/dc/feeders in your team.
30% of your matches are wins because of afk/dc/feeders in the enemy team. Most of the time those matches are very short.
This leaves 40% where your impact matters. If you win all of the matches where your impact matters then you get a 70% winrate (30% plus 40%).
If you win half of the matches where your impact matters you get 50% winrate (30% plus 20%).
Those matches are reaching level 20 plus most of the time.

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Nah, when you play incredibly and way above your current mmr, those matches are, as a rule, super short and 1-sided stomps. But really, that doesn’t happen that often. You can’t magically become a superhero for just 1 game, even if you do find that ‘zone’ and you do feel sharp as never before, there’s still the matter of not being practiced at playing at that level.

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hm yeah that’s right - i mean in every game that goes lvl20 plus you probably had the chance to have some impact but did not play that well.

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I wouldn’t say that good even games often go to lvl20. That’s really rarely the case. Games only go way over lvl20 when BOTH teams make a lot of mistakes.

The team that asserts dominance early will start to compound on it and push towards finishing the game. The team that falls behind, if they are equally good, will generally attempt risky plays to come back. Now if those plays work out, then they’re now the stronger team and compound on their dominance. If the risky plays fail and fail again (they ARE good plays, but they’re risky for a reason), then that naturally makes the loss even faster.

On the outside it may look like one sided stomp against a weaker opponent, if the other team fails to comeback, but in reality that most likely was an even game. It just didn’t work out for the other team in that game. If the same teams play each other again and the other team asserts dominance first and the other team fails to make a big play, the game might as well be a 1-sided stomp the other way.

The 1-sided stomps between 2 equally matched teams are the ‘textbook’ good games. The games that go on forever and look equal to an observer are really not that good.

P.S. Team level difference and/or structure count is not always a good indicator of which team is ahead and which is the underdog (that needs to start doing something crazy). E.g., a full macro team might be 3 lvls ahead on soak and have 3 more structures down, but they might be still heading to an inevitable defeat because their comp/current strategy is not made to win a tf and they can’t finish the game. While the other team sacrificed soak to push 1 lane, set up a boss there and is just waiting to execute their core strategy: get a pick or two, get that boss and finish the game right there, possibly still 2-3 levels behind in the end, even though they were hatching their own plan the entire game perfectly.
Same goes for kill count as an indicator. As a contrary example to above, the global team might be dying like no tomorrow and still be heading for an inevitable win (if the other team doesn’t start making big plays).

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As for this, these are heavily bloated numbers. AFK/dc are really rare, i’d say 5% per team at most. Not to mention, games are still winnable even with a bot.
And feeder? How do you exactly define that? Dying 10 times doesn’t mean you’re playing bad (well obviously, not that good either), definitely not bad enough to be throwing the game on your own. That would only be true if the person is dying intentionally (maybe even strategically picking the worst possible time to die) to sabotage the game, but, again, that’s excessively rare (a lot rarer than afk).

If one dies 10 times on liming trying to wipe the entire enemy team on his own, is he throwing? What about when he succeeds in that lategame and instawins the game?
Not a great strategy, especially if you’re already ahead in a game and then do that; but, hey, it’s a big play strategy and it can pay off. I’m not a fan of gambling when there’s no reason to, but it’s one way to play the game. If you have a teammate like that, you just play along. It doesn’t mean that having him on your team is a “guaranteed” loss.
A leoric might die 15 times to kill a keep. Is that intentional feeding? Maybe, or maybe it’s just a strategy and actually contributes to winning (obviously that’s not a very successful strategy and doing it without dying would be a lot better).
And if you keep getting picks on the same enemy over and over again (say 10 times in a row early-mid game), is that a guaranteed win? What about when that person goes “mmmkay, it’s lategame and we can lose now if I die first again, so enough goofing around, time to play serious” aaand suddenly your ‘free win’ is out the window and you have to work for it. Let’s say it’s a 50/50 at this point, so if the “feeder” team loses now, it might look like they were destined to that 100% loss, but in reality it was a 50/50, it just didn’t go their way that time.

If some1 only plays well lategame, then his mid-early game will often look really bad, but he will still win his 50% of games (well, when he gets to his correct mmr), but to the others he would look like he’s throwing every single game (because of playing really badly early-mid game, which matters a lot less than lategame).
On the other hand, a more typical extreme player is one who focuses really hard early-mid game, plays really well and then gets tired and consistently blunders lategame. He looks great on the stat page, but he just consistently throws games. He will, of course, also win his 50% games when he gets to his mmr.
Most ppl would consider the first player a feeder/thrower and the 2nd one a “good” player, while in reality they’re equal and maybe the 2nd one actually fits the “thrower” tag even better (because doing big mistakes lategame are really “throws”).
Those are of course extreme examples and there not that many players who consistently fit the bill, but that just illustrates how it’s impossible to tell why a particular certain game was won/lost.

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I’ve seen this a few times. It baffles me, but at least last time, we did win.

You make some good points on perspective. I know for sure that I have been placed on teams that cannot fathom my play style, and I feel that I get rendered useless and blamed for many a shortcoming. Of course the opposite happens too. Anyway, your statements inspire me to keep an open mind.

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I only see this as partially true in the most extreme cases. For example you have someone on your team deliberately walking into enemy towers dying, re-spawn repeat. Even saying that, I have won a couple of games with that kind of player, this is why I’m very against a surrender option.