Current status of LIHL

[dweiler]

Recently, several high-skilled and well-respected members of our league have left the league. After speaking with them and informing with others, I found out that they did so because they feel there are things wrong in the league. It was also brought to my attention that several other formerly active players have become inactive because of this. They mentioned reasons like the skill level and manners of a group of players in LIHL.

It saddens me to see that a group of people who belong in the LIHL are leaving and playing other games or 1200+. I also like playing in 1200+ and it has its advantages, but more skill and manner should definitely not be among them.

I need to know if there is a small group of people who feel like this, or if this sentiment is shared by a big group in the LIHL. If this shared by a big group, actions should be taken, because this league should not become a place for 2nd or 3rd rate legion players to play, and ill manners, with the top players avoiding it. So that is why I need the help of everyone to see if we are going in the right direction now and if things need to be changed. I want to urge everyone to give their opinion, whether it be by writing in this topic or sending the LIHL moderators a PM. This also goes for people who are currently inactive in the LIHL. It is very important for everyone to do so, because if we don’t know how the members of our league feel about things, we cannot act on it and improve it.

Please be very specific with your feedback. Don’t write ‘certain players aren’t good enough’, or ‘some people need more respect’ only, but give names. We would also like to hear from you if you think things are going fine or if you have no opinion.

[MarshMallows]

It's just the nature of a high level league... People are going to get pissed off.

[Artichoke]

I dunno, when I joined there was just a totally different atmosphere. Less flames, better players, and a tighter community. Even though we had less people games would still run and the quality of games was way better. Now there's such animosity people are just waiting to report eachother and complain about something or other.

Another problem is security. A few people were caught MHing, but I'm convinced several more MH as well, they're just smart enough not to get caught. There'll always be the problem that it's very hard to catch MHers. However, earlier on I think there was more trust and integrity. People wouldn't MH just out of principle, because everyone was friendly with eachother.

Finally, the mods have made some very, very poor decisions. Shrimp was a massive disaster who would ruin the experience of many people. He'd report me for something minor and I'd troll the thread a bit thinking everyone would realize how much of a joke the entire thing was. Instead nabo., who I guarantee you is physically weak and soft-spoken IRL, wanted to be a tough guy so he banned me for 3 days while leaving shrimp untouched. shrimp had many, many issues and should have been banned a long time ago, yet it took months before mods finally decided to take action. Then I check back and mods for some reason decide to revouch this guy. Forget the fact that mods have vouched some really questionable people in terms of skill/attitude recently, revouching shrimp just shows how low this league has sunk.

That's just my 2c. I have lots of things I can do with my time. If I choose to waste my time on video games, I have many better ones to play than WC3 LIHL. I used to be able to play for hours on end and have a blast here. Now I get bored/disheartened after one game.

[Nore]

I will just use this as an example for why LIHL is struggling; a player Avadakedavra, says all the time that he wants to !ff, sell towers, blah blah blah.. and it just brings down the whole mood of the team. When they should really be focusing on how to comeback and pull off some sweet against-the-odds win, they are instead being forced to feel like shit because one person on the team that is made up of 3 others wants to be a negative nancy. Then, there are players like pokemon-rouge, who.. don't get me wrong, is probably a great guy IRL, but quite simply is not good enough to be in LIHL. Not yet, at least.. yet this player is playing a good amount of games, and messing up the flow of the league. There are others i'd name, but his stands out above the rest from what i've heard from many players.

My thoughts are, make your judgments based on the replays for new vouches be more strict. Small mistakes should be pointed out and corrected before they ever enter the league. With a lax attitude, these new vouches think they are ready when they get in, and play many games, affecting the morale and outcomes of most of the games they are playing. I'm strictly speaking on behalf of the small percent that are just not LIHL material atm. I could go on, but you get my point.. there's alot that's happened, with players like beep and 1007 not playing recently, that has changed the face of LIHL in a way. I just hope that the players that have played here for a long time do not just leave because of things that come naturally with such a league. If we want this to still be great, we can't give up on it. Look for some changes that need to be made; make them, and move forward.

[AvadaKedavra]

I made a post a looong time ago, asking for a !ff option in lihl. I was told that it would not be implemented, and the only way to forfeit a game in lihl is selling all towers. So naturally I ask my team mates to sell towers as the only way of giving up, just like on 1200+ I would ask for people to write !ff.

[pewpew lasergun]

there are few players that whine too much when they lose a game. it becomes annoying to other players.
but overall i think LIHL is much better from a behavior perspective, nothing like before.

Toxic players are non existent now or not active.
The best time to play completely drama free remains evening time EST. very good atmosphere.

most players who are inactive i think r just busy in real life, like ba and beep.
1007 please come back if you read this, we miss u

also would like see the following players participate more in lihl.
mickey
diablo
michone
jason
cutie

[dweiler]

https://entgaming.net/customstats/lihl/game/7735623/

Dedicated to you pew!

[MarshMallows]

I kinda agree with pew in a sense, for example I find it annoying when you guys come into the lihl channel with no intention to play. It is hard to gauge whether there is going to be a game soon and also the chat box gets a bit clogged with non lihl chat. I would prefer if people have no intention to play lihl games if they went to a private channel. It's not a big deal really, I just find it a bit annoying.

[CreativeLP]

In my opinion recent meta changes killed the fun of playing LTD competitively. When I play Lihl people will try everything to win (not that bad, I mean that's ok) but this leads to a really unhealthy game, every game has a team going straight 7, 1-2 people going suicide to make up for a hige 15 send that noone can hold and people focusing on delaying their lanes instead of holding. If you go on 1200+ instead, you can see that people focus more on their builds, focus more on holding and simply play a cleaner game, actually how it's meant to be played. On the old clog map, going suicide was a ban reason, it got removed because of the new map, but actually the map didn't change the peoples behaviour and we can see delays+suicide all over and see that suicide doesn't even have any downsides. So either rules need to be changed back to make the game more healthy or the map needs to be fixed so it's more "holding-friendly".

That some lihl players flame and others may not be skilled enough is something I would agree upon but it's not the deciding factor here, because if I look back (and yes I am talking about a time before I got vouched, since this is an open forum I can see that those problems existed already) this always existed and it should be the task of the older players to help newer ones to get in touch with the league, but ofc only works if they want the help, I've seen a few examples that were not willing to learn even though it was definitely needed, I completely support an unvouch in this case.
Maphacking is something that I consider a problem aswell, some other mentioned it already but I also think that there are still some black sheeps in the league, I don't know how often you check it but I was never part of a screenshot-test.

So all in all people need to get some manners again, don't tread someone who lies on the ground already and remember that people don't leave because of just 1 event.

[KinG23]

My main reasons: League moderation (biased/favoritism, unfair rulings), as well as anyone getting a vouch/no steps being done to unvouch players that refuse to learn. Last few times I played a month or two ago felt like the 1200 bot.

[bugatti_veyron]

Funny how broad the spectrum of issues people are mentioning here. I guess everyone has a different trigger. Anyways, as i see it, there are several degrees to messing up in LTD :
a) the obvious - greed, which is actually not necessarily a bad thing, i'm probably more guilty of this than anyone. but u dont fucking go 4/0 lvl 1 with aquas because the risk greatly outweighs the rewards. ya i went 1 pyro and 1 mudman for lvl 3 and leaked 5 units and i wasn't happy about it but i can live with it. but going 1 alpha male and 2 tribes for lvl 3 and leaking 24 units without a send is practically sentencing your team for a 3v5 from the get-go.
b)build-optimization is the best term i could find, for example, i dont want to add a freaking medicine with my yggs to hold lvl 6, or not wanting to add dead value to a lod on 4 and things like that, basically any time u take a risk that makes your build more crisp for later stages. this is also a good thing and u wont see me ever complain when someone does it unless the team predicted it beforehand and it was ignored.
c)this is everything else, and if u continously make mistakes that dont fall under a/b then u shouldn't be in LIHL period. if everyone on your team has anti 10 and u have prisoners with skeletons u dont stay 7/3. if u have 2 yggs and and the heal aura thing u dont use the gold from lvl 5 to upgrade it and then find yourself stuck with 200 gold and no 3rd ygg. i could literally go on forever but bottom line is, without mentioning names, sometimes playing LIHL is like a pub game where u have to go over all other 3 lanes and and babysit. and that's not even the bad part, giving advice and improving is what LIHL is for, but the worst of it all is that you have to be proactive, meaning, "im just gonna do the most random shit and unless someone tells me not to then its not my fault". reason why i lost my will to ever play again is that i just realized that i do this so much in my games, it probably comes off as condescending and it's exhausting as hell on top of that.
Maybe if you stopped accepting everyone who puts on a fake smile when playing a pub with a LIHL player, or if everyone stopped being little bitches and vouching for everyone like it's a disney movie, we'd have a higher skill floor.

[dweiler]

Thanks for your feedback. I really want everyone to respond (either here or with a PM) and I want to hear names of people who you feel are not at their place here (that's probably done best through PMs). Also I want to hear names of people who ruin the atmosphere. Obviously, @AvadaKedavra , you can ask once if your team wants to PP, but if they don't want to, accept it. As you can see here, things like this ruin the fun for others.

We have already decided to unvouch pokemon-rouge.

We will certainly take the advice with us of having stricter criterions for vouching people.

I also agree with @CreativeLP, I have really been annoyed at all this leaking strategies in LIHL.

The two main things I get out of it here right now are: 1. More strict on vouching people, 2. People in the league who should not be there (But I want to hear more names besides pokemon-rouge)

[aRt)Y]

It's like politics though. If you leave, nothing will change. Instead, communicate objectively and get people behind your idea.
This whole "I dont like it, I qq" is childish behavior and makes me question your passion towards the very league you claim to love so much.

[bugatti_veyron]

It's like politics though. If you leave, nothing will change. Instead, communicate objectively and get people behind your idea.
This whole "I dont like it, I qq" is childish behavior and makes me question your passion towards the very league you claim to love so much.

I agree to an extent, but this is not the first time it has been brought up, not even the first time this season, and from my experience, it has gotten worse. And sure, the fact that 1007 is god knows where, and beep, who is by far the best LTD player is not a part of this league anymore is no one's fault (probably). but i can tell u for a fact that none of them enjoyed having to go through what i said, and they just never gave a damn enough to the point of saying this openly. People who really want to win and are competitive, will go over everyone's builds and give insight or advice or straight up tell someone what to do, i'm like that, and there are others. But people who just like the game and the league and wanna relax, will eventually get worn out and either slowly detach or play a game once a month to remind themselves why they don't play in this league anymore. Personally i can never be like that. The main issue used to be people's attitude and toxicity, and that was easy to solve with a heavier ban hammer, but now it's just a low quality of games most of the time (NOT always!). And revouching shrimp really is a testament to how close to politicians mods are.

[Diablo_]

Personally I don't really understand all the complaints about LIHL's status.

The activity is great.
The attitude of the players is probably better than ever before (at least flame-wise, maybe they are a bit more whiny).
And skill level ... there have always been "bad" players and I don't see a big difference between now and x seasons ago.

Good players will always have to look at their teammates' builds/actions because they will always be worse than them and do more mistakes. There will also always be worst players. Sure we could try to increase the average skill level, but to achieve this we would probably need at least 10-20 unvouches which would then again have a big hit on activity. Not to mention that this would also include many nice and friendly players who other people will complaint about being unvouched and again result in less fun for many people because they can't play with their friends anymore.
On top of that if we listen to all unvouch requests we would lose half of our players because everyone sees different players as unfit.

Also that people leave LIHL over time is just natural. Some of us are playing since 3 years here (and LTD as a whole even far longer), it's just normal more and more people stop playing after such a long time or become less active. And if people cry after them it just creates bad atmosphere implying that everything is becoming worse when in fact it is just logical that old players leave over time and new players come, everyone stops playing eventually.

Seeing that the skill level is apparently the biggest complaint we can still try to work on it and be more strict with new vouches and possibly unvouch some of our players (but then again, some people who cry about the skill level might be caught by an unvouch wave themselves ...).