Technically speaking I'd say that Card Hunter is a very low-demanding game: turn based, no latency or sync problems, simple and lightweight graphics, simple (yet clever) mechanics, extremely simple interface, extremely simple movement with almost zero pathfinding.

In that sense I agree that it could be a bit cheaper (example: figurines and Club aren't cheap).

It's a very nice game but at level 12 I'm quite burned out, meaning that -for me- there is something missing to keep me hooked with the game. Maybe it's a bit too simple, in some way... I don't know.
 

You're making a classic error regarding the word adult that us non-native English speakers make a lot.

The term adult doesn't mean the same as mature. Adult is specificly sex-related, an adult for example is someone who's reached sexual maturity, or of sexual reproductive age. There's some overlap between the two but not always. Adult content is sexually explicit, whereas mature content doesn't have to be.

In order to be 'adult' your global warming discussion would have to be about something more intimate than greenhouse gasses affecting the Earth. Let's not go there :-)
 

I can't see this going down well.

Gamers in particular seem to have a great deal of difficulty identifying and accepting when they are in a niche to begin with.

Certain factions within the mmorpg community being the perfect example (or anyone discussing a game on a blog /forum) .

There will be a lot of whining when asked to pay more than they do in mass market games.

Instead they prefer to play the mass market game and constantly complain when it doesn't cater to their niche tastes - usually directing their anger at the mass market consumers who are paying the bills.

Don't expect them to willingly dip their hands in their pocket!



 

Keep in mind LoL has had the same business model from day one, back when it WAS a niche title 3-4 years ago. And part of the reason it has the millions it has now is due to that model being as solid as it is.

Finally, the average price for skins has gone UP, not down, as the game grows. The quality has increased significantly as well, which 'justifies' the cost increase, but 3-4 years ago they did not have legendary skin bundles or 1350RP skins.
 

Sorry, League of Legends was never a "niche" title, not even on release day. It had more players in beta than niche games like Card Hunter (or Darkfall) will ever have.
 

Yes! I so agree. Although, alas, I also agree with Woody that while they should they usually won't.

As a non-game software developer, I have problems with too much focus on the per-person costs. E.g., say it costs $200mm to develop the next AAA title and its infrastructure, I don't see the "but they distributed it digitally so it should be cheaper" is that relevant.

I have little idea of the economics, but it would not surprise me if CH will spend more per person on Google-like advertising/acquisition than on infrastructure.

I would quibble and claim even bandwidth & servers scale a bit better than linearly.

I have made the point on MMO forums that niche MMOs' customers should accept less scope or less polish. But if you have all the features and cost of a mass market game, then it needs to have mass market appeal to get mass market income. Which is not what the special snowflakes want. I think MJ's DAOC2 is more about nostalgia than great gameplay, but I think his focus on a subset of AAA features is wise.
 

If the world was "fair" then niche titles would be able to charge more but the sad truth is they rarely can. From what I can see it is usually only the mass market leaders like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft who can get away with charging a premium price. Smaller niche games usually have have to sell at a discount to make enough sales to break even.

Jeff Vogel from Spiderweb games wrote some interesting blog posts about this.
 

Err... I almost can't believe you actually wrote this.

"For 4.9 million of those 5 million players Card Hunter would be too intellectually challenging and difficult" -- this is a slur/insult of immense proportions, isn't it? And from someone claiming to be 'for' intellectual games & stuff (and being scientist in RL).

As a person who played a little bit of LoL and Card Hunter, I would say that in many ways LoL is more complicated/intellectually challenging game that Card Hunter is -- for example, to play LoL propely one has to understand both strengths and weaknesses of each champion AND also how these work in groups (e.g. two 'weak' champions may in fact be a perfect complement to each other and become a force to be reconned with if played properly).

The fact that in addition to everything else in LoL you have to do things in 'real time' doesn't make it any less intellectually-challenging (nor being turn-based automatically grant 'intellect powers' to a game -- myself I found Card Hunter rather boring and shallow and too luck-based -- but admittedly I only played a few levels and TCG is probably not the 'right' thing for me anyway).

The only case I can see as kind-of being valid is that if someone does engage their brain at all that someone might conceivably get more 'enjoyment' out of LoL because there's no 'hard wall' in the form of 'you didn't pass this adventure'. This doesn't make 98% of LoL players idiots and/or people unwilling to engage their brain though (nor it makes Card Hunter players any kind of intellectual heroes).

Well, and minor technicality (which isn't really minor in practice) -- bandwidth and processing power doesn't scale linearly with number of players, it's more likely to scale by the quadratic function -- e.g. consider 2 players vs 12.

For 2 players server sends data to 2 players about actions taken by 1 (other) player.

For 12 players server sends data to 12 players about actions taken by 11 other players, so it's 12/2 * 11/1 = 66x traffic increase for 12/2 = 6 fold increase in players.
 

@ Solf

I guess that's the main reason why I'm currently stalled with Card Hunter: it's a bit too repetitive and boring on the long run. I like the mechanics though, and I hope it will get improved over time. Righ now it can just give a glimpse of what it could be (I'd love bigger parties and bigger levels, for example).

On the intellectual side I guss that Tobold's was referring to the "old school" gamers, those who loved pen and paper stuff and get a lot of emotional feelings (aka nostalgia) just by seeing the virtual wooden table with a virtual cardboard game and figurines. The game itself is pretty simple (so far), I agree.
 

for example, to play LoL propely one has to understand both strengths and weaknesses of each champion AND also how these work in groups

I think you failed to notice that you need at least as much knowledge of strengths and weaknesses of characters and cards in Card Hunter because you never played it "propely".

get more 'enjoyment' out of LoL because there's no 'hard wall' in the form of 'you didn't pass this adventure'

Let's take a hypothetical example of a 5-year old trying to play both LoL and Card Hunter by not much more than random clicking on shiny stuff. In Card Hunter he would probably not even get to the end of the first adventure, or at some point find the "pass" button and press it repeatedly until he loses. In League of Legends that same child would have a much bigger chance to actually do damage to the enemy team by pure chance, and could presumably even win a game being carried to victory by his team-mates.

If we go from that as point zero of our player skill scale, it is easy to see how people might have a lot of fun in League of Legends without ever playing it "propely". Of course at the very top of that scale the game requires a lot more thought, but on the lower part of that scale you already get quite far by simply button-mashing.

A lot of people prefer games in which they don't have to think, where they get rewards and shiny graphical effects without having to work their brains. That is why Farmville had more players than League of Legends, and League of Legends has a lot more players than a tactical turn-based game will ever have. It is why anybody who can use a mouse and keyboard can reach the highest character level in typical MMORPGs like World of Warcraft.

That is not to say that there can't be a tiny group of highly competitive players that play a game like WoW or LoL at a level far above the average. But how intellectually challenging a game is does not depend on the 1% of top players, it depends on the average player. And the average player doesn't need to be a rocket scientist to play League of Legends.
 

> Let's take a hypothetical example of a 5-year old trying to play both
> LoL and Card Hunter by not much more than random clicking on shiny stuff.


As a father of two boys (3 and 6 years old) I can tell you that both games aren't easy for a 5 years old, in any way. LoL needs much more eye-keyboard-mouse coordination and reaction, and that's pretty hard at that age (compared to any random console controller, for example, which can be mastered quite easily).

Card Hunter requires reading, basically, which can prevent a 5 years old from actually playing. It also requires some logic, yes, such as "pnetrating means you can damage that kind of armor" but -overall- I'd say that CH is a lot more accessible and playable than LoL, for a 5-6 years old.
 

@Tobold

I think you failed to notice that you need at least as much knowledge of strengths and weaknesses of characters and cards in Card Hunter because you never played it "propely".

I think if you'd be interested in actually playing LoL (it's perfectly fine that you don't, but *if*) you might've changed your point of view here. I strongly suspect that LoL *is* in fact a more complex (and thus intellectually challenging at least initially) game than Card Hunter is. The fact is that one is turn-based and the other is not does not mean one is automatically more intellectually challenging.

But I might be wrong -- I really played very little of either.


Nevertheless...

It should be obvious that from "it is easy to see how people might have a lot of fun in League of Legends without ever playing it "propely"" (which I completely agree with in my original post) it DOES NOT follow that "For 4.9 million of those 5 million players Card Hunter would be too intellectually challenging and difficult anyway".

From the fact that A doesn't conflict with B, does not follow that B is true.

So sorry, I still can't see your assertion as anything but a slur/insult of immense proportions.

I mean, it is conceivable that you might even be right. That doesn't make it right to say so unless you can conclusively prove that 98% of LoL players indeed play at the level of engagement / intellectual effort of a "hypothetical 5-year old".

Or, in other words, the fact that hypothetical 5-year-old can play and enjoy LoL to some extent doesn't automatically make LoL an intellect-free game. If anything, it makes LoL a better game in this aspect that Card Hunter (but in this aspect only of course, I make no claims as to 'overall quality').

At this point I really wish you'd admit your mistake and apologize rather than continuing to insist that 98% of LoL players are morons and/or slackers (to borrow Gevlon's terminology).
 

So what do you think of the 80 million Farmville players? How did that game get so many players at its peak? Isn't it a reasonable theory that a game gets more players if the intellectual barrier to entry is lower?
 

@Tobold

Oh come on now.

You can't be serious.

Yes, Farmville requires probably less 'brain power' than Card Hunter or LoL. No, it doesn't mean that *only* idiots play it (or that 98% of its players are idiots and/or intellectually lazy all the time). Hell, didn't *you* play it? Are you *that* special a snowflake?

Hell, let's look at the statement "for 98% of checkers players Card Hunter would be too intellectually challenging and difficult anyway".

You see something wrong with this statement?

And I'll bet you that proverbial 5-year-old will find checkers easier to play than Card Hunter.

And yet: http://www.usacheckers.com/worldchampionshipresults.php
(10 seconds google search, apologies if the link is 'incorrect'; the intended point is that lots of people spend serious intellectual effort on checkers).
 

You see something wrong with this statement?

I see something wrong with your interpretation of that statement. You appear to be interpreting it as "98% of LoL players could under no circumstances even if they wanted to grasp Card Hunter". But that is not what I said. Try looking at is as "98% of LoL players prefer to spend their time with a fast action game instead of a difficult, intellectually challenging game".

And exactly the same is true for Farmville. Pretty much everybody of the 80 million players COULD have played something more challenging, but CHOSE not to. I'm not even saying that there is something wrong with that, because I never subscribed to the theory that games HAVE TO be challenging.

Games are entertainment, and the same rules apply to games as apply to every other form of entertainment: Harry Potter books sell better than Ulysses. Lady Gaga sells better than Beethoven. Dumb and Dumber sells better than The Seventh Seal. League of Legends sells better than Card Hunter.
 

> 98% of LoL players prefer to spend their time with
> a fast action game instead of
> a difficult, intellectually challenging game

To be fair, you are implying that LoL is easier and less intellectually challenging than Card Hunter. In that sense I think you're wrong. LoL is more difficult and more challenging both physically (fast action, fast reaction) and mentally (champions, rules, counters, tricks, tactics, ...).

Card Hunter is quite easy, in my opinion, and sometimes you can just win by a good opening hand. Also, it offers much much less variety and "interesting stuff to see", which can be a letdown for many people.
 

Are you saying that if I searched the blogs and forums of League of Legends I would not find a "Gevlon" telling me that the majority of LoL players are morons & slackers who are not fully aware of all the tactics and tricks of the game? That would surprise me, as in my experience every game has the veterans complaining about the st00pid n00bs who don't know how to play the game.

My theory is that the number of players of a game is determined by how hard it is to play the game at its basic level, not by how hard it is to become a top champion. I have played League of Legends, and at the casual level I've been playing it, the game wasn't much more difficult than Farmville. And I still won games.
 

@Tobold

Try looking at is as "98% of LoL players prefer to spend their time with a fast action game instead of a difficult, intellectually challenging game".

Ah, but if you'd actually said that, I would have less of a problem with what you did. But you didn't say that.

What you said *can* be interpreted as this clarification, but I don't think it's the most *obvious* interpretation of the original statement.

Could you please amend the OP in order to avoid these kinds of misunderstandings?


With that said, like Rugus, I also honestly think you're not quite on the money regarding the relative "intellectual" merits of the Card Hunter and LoL. LoL is probably easier to get into and probably easier to have mindless fun with than Card Hunter. But checkers are probably even easier in that regard. Do you think checkers are less intellectually challenging that Card Hunter?

So to the some extent you set your own level of "intellectual effort" in LoL and checkers (them being pvp games and all). Whereas there's a 'hard wall' in Card Hunter. Doesn't mean Card Hunter is more difficult to play 'well' than LoL (I bet you can grind gear / random luck your way to victory in a lot of Card Hunter adventures if you were so inclined -- same as you can mindlessly click stuff in LoL).
 

> I have played League of Legends, and at the casual level
> I've been playing it, the game wasn't much more
> difficult than Farmville. And I still won games.


Farmville doesn't have any "difficult" aspect. It's a decorating/collecting game, there is no strategy, tactic, deepness or anything else. I mean it's like feeding a fish in a tank, you just sit, feed it and watch. Saying that LoL wasn't "much more difficult" than Farmville sounds weird.

 

There are more gold-ELO LoL players than all of the CH players combined. At Gold, everyone knows the champs, meta, and counters.

At that level LoL makes CH look like Farmville in terms of thinking/difficulty (you way, way overrate CH in terms of strategy/thinking, right now its a rather simple game).

So to turn this around, why are all those morons playing CH when they could be playing a far smarter game in LoL?
 

I think you are confusing two things here: PvE games and PvP games. LoL is "hard" if you consider the challenge being winning against another player. ALL PvP games are "hard" that way, because the intelligence of the opposing player does not depend on game design. If there was a PvP-variant of Farmville, counting who gained more meaningless rewards per unit of time or something, PvP-Farmville would be a hard game.

Nobody ever failed League of Legends because he didn't understand what he was supposed to do. Everybody can play LoL at some basic level of success. Higher level of success might potentially involve some tactical thinking, but also involves rote learning of champions, and pure reaction speed. Even PacMan has tactics, but that doesn't make PacMan an intellectual game.

If you ask somebody why he isn't reading Ulysses, why he isn't watching The Seventh Seal, he will always tell you that this stuff is boring. When in fact those are forms of entertainment which require a higher degree of intellect to understand and appreciate. Everybody understands League of Legends.
 

@Tobold

This is completely bogus assertion. Checkers are PvP, chess are PvP, everyone can play 'at basic level of success' in these.

Are you seriously implying that Card Hunter is more intellectually challenging because it is PvE?

I freely admit that it's easier to 'kind of play' LoL with your brain turned off. But so is checkers and probably chess too. Does it make any of them 'intellectually unchallenging'?

I'm no fan of LoL (I don't play it), but come on, you can't simply dismiss the complexities in this game just like that.

What is, in fact, so intellectually challenging in Card Hunter? Is it in any way more challenging compared, to, say, solving chess problems (if you insist on PvE stuff so to put)?

And if chess is more intellectually challenging than Card Hunter, then you can't dismiss the complexity of LoL with 'everybody understands what LoL is'. After all 'everybody understands what chess is' -- and it doesn't make it any less intellectually challenging.
 

If League of Legends players are all so intellectual, how do you explain the widespread complaints that this game has one of the most toxic communities ever? Look at the chat log in this example.

Does "DONT ARE A FKING NOOB? DA FUQ LEARN HOW TO TYPE MEXICANOOOOO" strike you as a highly intellectual form of expression? Or is that somebody barely sentient playing LoL?
 

@Tobold

Strawman? Of course you'll win against strawman.

No one here (I think) asserts that *all* LoL players are intellectuals of the first order.

I didn't make claim of 100% LoL players being nice people. You did make claim of 98% of them being morons and/or slackers. The onus is on you to prove your point. And I'm sorry your original statement (which you didn't edit I believe) doesn't read like 'would not want to play', it reads like 'would be incapable of playing'.

Furthermore you've made claim that Card Hunter is more intellectually challenging than LoL. A number of people chimed in that it might not be true. You didn't provide any real argument that supports your point of view (it is also true that the other side didn't provide any argument proving their point). I think we can agree that it is "debatable whether Card Hunter is more intellectually challenging than LoL". Which again circles back to your original post where you needlessly insulted 4.9 million people and are unwilling to apologize.
 

You did make claim of 98% of them being morons and/or slackers.

No, I didn't. I said that 98% of them wouldn't be interested in Card Hunter, which is an intellectually challenging game.

If you are a League of Legends fanboi, and bound to react to any statement that doesn't outright praise LoL or could possibly be interpreted in a negative light with raging anger, I am afraid I cannot help you.

There is sufficient evidence on the internet that young children can play League of Legends successfully. Meanwhile the Card Hunter forums are full of people complaining that the game is too hard and quitting in frustration because they get stuck.

But as you dismiss any evidence I bring that Card Hunter is a more intellectual game than League of Legends as "strawman", I really have no idea how I could prove my point.
 

Card Hunter requires reading, basically, which can prevent a 5 years old from actually playing. It also requires some logic, yes, such as "pnetrating means you can damage that kind of armor"

How is this NOT proof that Card Hunter is more intellectual than League of Legends. A game which requires you to be able to read, understand, and apply logic, compared to a game you can play perfectly well while drunk or stoned. What more do you want?
 

@Tobold

No, I didn't. I said that 98% of them wouldn't be interested in Card Hunter, which is an intellectually challenging game.

Well, actually you didn't. You said:
For 4.9 million of those 5 million players Card Hunter would be too intellectually challenging and difficult anyway, and of the remainder the majority doesn't like turn-based games.

I am, unfortunately, not a native speaker, so we'd need an outside judge here, but I'm fairly sure that my interpretation of what you actually said is more obvious that yours.

'Accusing' me of being LoL fanboi is plain old ad hominem and doesn't do you any favors. I already said I don't play it, but I guess you choose to dismiss it as lies.


Your 'evidence' that Card Hunter is more intellectually challenging that LoL conveniently ignores all my questions about checkers & chess.

Let's establish two things here:
- Are checkers (and even chess) easier to get into (play for a proverbial 5-years old) than Card Hunter? I'm willing to bet that yes, they are.
- Are chess (and most likely checkers) more intellectually challenging than Card Hunter? I'm going to bet that they are. But gosh! You can play them drunk or when you can't read!

So please either assert that Card Hunter is more intellectually challenging than chess/checkers, assert that Card Hunter is easier to get into than chess/checkers, or admit that your arguments 'proving' that LoL is less intellectually challenging than Card Hunter on the basis of 'easier to get into' and 'can play drunk' are nonsensical.
 

No, you can't play chess drunk. You can move chess figures over the board in some more or less random manner, but if you are drunk enough those moves won't even be legal. And you certainly can't win against a sober opponent.

In League of Legends you can win games using an AFK bot (if you couldn't, they wouldn't exist. And if you play while just totally drunk or stoned, you will actually still contribute more to your team's victory than if you were afk.

So what we have is:
- A game I proved you can win sometimes with absolutely no intellect required.
- A game with a reputed "toxic" community with a number of players clearly showing proof of low intellect.

You just can't admit that you are wrong and I am right.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

(edited to remove inflammatory remark)
(edited to clarify a misleading sentence)
Play chess on the computer while drunk and you can't make illegal moves and arguably you'll contribute more to 'something' -- say a team chess event -- than if you don't play at all (because if you don't play, your team loses by default).

Your assertion that you can't win against sober opponent is spurious -- it really depends on who plays and how drunk one is. Drunk Kasparov playing vs. 5-year-old? I'll bet on Kasparov. I can make an identical 'drunken' claim in 1v1 LoL with the same degree of certainity (I don't think 1v1 LoL exists but suppose the rest of each team is /afk or something).

Your 'afk bot' argument is similarly says nothing -- there are plenty of chess programs around that will win against the majority of population. Such a program can successfully play in a team event (to make more an apples-to-apples comparison with LoL).


Your yet-another ad hominem is noted if not appreciated.


I fully concede the point about toxic community but I don't see how it is relevant.



BTW, if you assert that Card Hunter is more intellectually challenging than chess, I'll call you bonkers but will also drop the argument -- because it is remotely possible that you are right and I'm not equipped to tell one way or another.

Otherwise I want to clarify what the argument is about. There are in fact two separate points:

(1) In my opinion, your arguments that Card Hunter is more intellectually challenging than LoL are extremely weak (to put it mildly). It might very well be that Card Hunter is indeed 'objectively' more 'intellectually challenging' than LoL. I have no beef with that. But it is yet to be proven. It would be completely satisfactory from my POV if you downgrade your claim to something like: "Based on my (limited) experience I find Card Hunter more intellectually challenging than LoL but I cannot make definite claims in this regard as I haven't played LoL at the high levels/ELO". Or if you want: "Based on my experience Card Hunter is more intellectually challenging game than LoL at low ELO".


(2) Based on (1) above I'd really wish you'd modify the original claim about 4.9 millions. At best it is potentially inflammatory; at worst it is deliberately insulting to a huge amount of people.
 

> How is this NOT proof that Card Hunter is more intellectual
> than League of Legends. A game which requires you to be able
> to read, understand, and apply logic, compared to a game you
> can play perfectly well while drunk or stoned.
> What more do you want?


I was just pointing out that CH is challenging for a 5 years old because it requires the ability to read. Which is not always possible for a young boy. Thus making the game unplayable for a young child.

That said, I still can't see how you can consider CH a challenging and/or intellectual game. It's very simple, it features quite simple mechanics and repetitive schemes, even considering some randomness. Having played both of them (LoL and CH) I can say that CH is just slower, quite boring on the long run and much less rewarding in many aspects. Of course it's still a beta, so that's fine.

About the toxic community: LoL features an enormous amount of players. On the other side of the barricade... CH is mostly played as a single-player (as you correctly stated in a previous article). The sense of "community" is quite non-existant in my opinion. The game itself doesn't really offer any incentive to "group" with anyone (you can't even trade cards). And the online chat (and active games) are quite dead too.
 

I never let myself get bullied into changing my posts.
 

@Tobold

That is a very strange way to look at it. Did I ask you to change what you mean (according to you) in the OP? No. I only asked for an edit to remove possibility of misunderstanding.

Well, it's your blog and your conscience.
 

Where would that end? Anything you say on the internet is likely to be misunderstood, sometimes deliberately. Trying to only express yourself in ways that can't be misunderstood and can't offend anyone leads to horrible political correctness style.
 

Thank you Tobold and Solf for that quite interesting discussion. I would like to not that I especially like the techniques used by Solf.
He was never aggressive and very accurate in his summaries.
I also see his point in the 4.9/5 million player insult.
I play LoL, i loved Magic the Card game but have not yet tried CH. I assume that:
If you understood Magic the Card game, all other derives are quite easy to master.
Does that make me more intelligent than the player of other games? I fear not. It is more a matter of preference.
What was mentioned in your dispute, but not worked our clearly is: If you compare PVE with PVP, than you are comparing apple with peas.
And for me the translation of:
The majority complains that game is too hard, indicates the same %percentage of maroons & slackers are in CH as in any other game.
They just do not harass, or build the mentioned toxic environment (Which in case, at least does not exists to the level you are indicating here in LoL) because it is PVE.
 

Solf: “A straw man or straw person, also known in the UK as an Aunt Sally,[1][2] is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position”

Not really sure why you felt the need to drag this discussion onto other blogs, it isn't as if I had deleted any comments here.

Anyway, regarding your definition of strawman, if you are so much of a stickler for exact representation of what the other guy said, isn't your whole point in this thread a strawman?

I was writing a post about the need to pay more for niche games because of economies of scale. And you take one remark in that post, misrepresent it in the worst possible light, and then go on trying to bully me into changing my post.

I still believe that League of Legends is a far less intellectual game than Card Hunter. But you dismiss all my examples where I'm showing how low the intellect of the average LoL player is as strawman. How can a game be intellectual if there is so much proof around that it can be played perfectly well by bots, by drunks, by people who can't write a sentence, by little children, and by pretty much anybody able to mash some buttons? I'm not saying you can be top of the league like that, but you *can* win with a bot, otherwise there obviously wouldn't be one.

I apologize for the fanboi personal attack, but at that point that was the only logical explanation I could find why you would get so hot and bothered about a remark that needs to be interpreted in a certain way to be taken as an insult.
 

First of all, I appreciate the apology. Thanks!


I think, in order to avoid potential misunderstandings, I'd best restate my whole 'case' fully.

You wrote: For 4.9 million of those 5 million players Card Hunter would be too intellectually challenging and difficult anyway, and of the remainder the majority doesn't like turn-based games.

Now your own interpretation of this is: I said that 98% of them wouldn't be interested in Card Hunter, which is an intellectually challenging game.

I think you're still indirectly slighting people with this last remark ('which is an intellectually challenging game' implies to me that this is the reason they won't play, so they are, so to say, 'morons/slackers'). But if you'd wrote this in OP, I probably wouldn't have commented at all.

But thing is -- I think your interpretation of original phrase is far from the most obvious one.

I think a way more obvious interpretation is that '98% of LoL players are morons/slackers'. This is the sole reason I called you out on this phrase and asked for it to be amended -- so that you don't seem to be insulting people (especially so if that wasn't your goal).

Now if you're convinced that my interpretation has no merit (me not being native speaker and all), then you have a valid case that I'm attacking a strawman.

Are you really convinced that my interpretation of your original phrase has no merit?


Everything below will be about the ensuing argument -- which is completely meaningless if you are trully convinced that my interpreration of your OP has no merit (in which case please ignore it entirely).

Below the sole point I'm trying to prove is that there are no justifiable grounds to call 98% of LoL players 'morons/slackers' (again -- this is only relevant with the view that your OP *can* be interpreted like this and you don't want to edit it to remove the ambiguity) (I'm also not trying to prove that LoL is 'smarter' than Card Hunter; I'm saying that there's no 'real' proof either way)

I still believe that League of Legends is a far less intellectual game than Card Hunter.

You are absolutely entitled to believe that. But other people may believe differently. My only contention here is that your arguments 'proving' that Card Hunter is more intellectually challenging than LoL actually prove nothing of the sort. NOTE: in fact it doesn't even really matter whether Card Hunter is more 'intellectually challenging' than LoL (just don't use it as a fact).

But you dismiss all my examples where I'm showing how low the intellect of the average LoL player is as strawman.

I do, because of two things:
- The fact that 'idiots' can play doesn't make game mindless or stupid. It simply means that 'idiot' can make mechanical moves. This is not a bad thing in itself.
- Your evidence only shows that some people playing LoL are 'idiots'. It doesn't follow that 'average' (or 'mean') player is, in fact, 'idiot'. Internet, vocal minority and all that.

I do grant you (easily) that taken as a whole LoL community is much more toxic than Card Hunter community and that 'bad examples' are much easier to find in LoL.

How can a game be intellectual if there is so much proof around that it can be played perfectly well by bots, by drunks, by people who can't write a sentence, by little children, and by pretty much anybody able to mash some buttons?

Trivially easy as I've pointed earlier -- playing chess on the computer (that prevents illegal moves) has the same qualities. And there are chess bots that can easily beat the vast majority of human population :) And if you play as a part of a chess team, you can easily have nearly apples-to-apples comparision (being carried by your team).

(post character limit)
 

I think it about covers everything -- apologies if I've missed something.

And let me stress again and again -- if you trully believe that my interpretation of your OP has no merit, then please basically ignore everything I wrote and just say so. I will quit the argument immediatelly (as there's no way for me to prove whether my interpretation is valid or not).

If you believe my interpretation has possible merit, then I'd like an explanation as to why you don't want to amend your OP slightly. I'm sorry, but 'bullying' argument is extremely weak -- if you unintentionally insult (or potentially insult) 4.9 million people, the least you could do is apologize, imo.
 

I didn't play the original Farmville, but I did play a number of Facebook games that were not more intellectually challenging than that. I also spend some evenings watching TV shows that are far from being intellectually challenging. So what I would say is that on any given evening I am making a decision what degree of intellectual challenge I desire from my entertainment that night.

What I sincerely believe is that pretty much everybody has a similar system. Maybe you're tired after work, maybe you just want to have some fun mashing buttons and seeing stuff explode. That does NOT mean that I or somebody else going for the less intellectual option is a moron or a slacker. It is a completely valid choice to go for a less intellectually challenging option.

I believe that certain games, League of Legends among them, would be a typical choice for when you want to spend an evening just playing without having to engage your brain too much. The reason I believe that is that I played it myself (not very long, but sufficiently to be familiar with it), and for me it worked perfectly well as such a low intellectual challenge choice. I also believe that BECAUSE it can serve so perfectly well as a "just for fun" game, League of Legends has 5 million concurrent players every day. The top players who play not for fun but to remain on the top face a very different challenge, which obviously requires more thinking, but a lot of people just play the game to relax.

You wouldn't play online chess or Card Hunter in that way, "just for fun", to relax without having to think. And because of that, there are a lot less people playing these games. Chess as a board game is wide-spread due to a long history of the game, but if you look at how many people download a chess app in the App store compared to how many people download Angry Birds, you will see that my hypothesis is true there as well: The less intellectually challenging a game is in "normal mode", the more players it attracts.
 

I pretty much agree with everything you've said in your last comment.

Only problem is -- you still didn't say whether you find my interpretation of the fateful phrase in OP reasonable (as in: it can be 'easily' thought to mean that 4.9M people are morons/slackers).

And if this is a reasonable interpretation -- why don't you 'fix' it by e.g. adding clarification or something.
 

I agree with "it can be easily thought to mean". I'm less happy with "it's a reasonable interpretation". I would say that IF somebody is already sensitive to accusations that his favorite video game is maybe not rocket science, then he could easily be offended by my remark.

As a general policy I am not trying to avoid remarks that could potentially offend somebody. I find that if I do that, my writing becomes extremely bland. This is the internet, somebody can be offended by me saying that World of Warcraft is a fun game.

In this specific case I am additionally reluctant to change my remark because that could be construed as an "admission" that I thought that playing a game at less than your maximum intellectual capacity is not a valid choice. I totally do NOT agree with "I'm not interested in playing a hard game" meaning "I am too stupid to play a hard game", it goes against everything I stand for. I'm not Gevlon.
 

A minor point -- since LoL is not my favorite game (I don't even play it), I think 'misunderstanding' doesn't require being fan of a LoL.

You could keep your OP remark as is and simply add something like:
(by which I mean '...')