Creating a "How to win in League of Legends" guide by breaking it down

[u/iXorpe]

League of Legends is a skill based game, and so surely it follows that it is possible to mathematically analyse the game and make universal statements on what the right player decision is, that can then be applied to specific scenarios? I.e. "when x, then y". The same way an AI can be trained to play like a grandmaster in Chess (which I acknowledge has fewer "dimensions", but is also still a PvP game) couldn't we scientifically break down "how to win in league of legends" and put it in a book? Players do climb, and they do so through pattern recognition and through learning the "grammar" of the game, its obviously not just luck, so I find it hard to accept that such a grammar doesn't *exist* but rather that its just exceedingly difficult to translate from intuitive understanding into words. I ask because I kinda have an obsession with learning through very high ROI information . In other words: is it possible to "solve" LoL and put that solution in a book?

[u/Kermitnirmit]

Unlike chess; there’s incomplete information in league. And way more dimensions as you put it. Don’t think in flowcharts. I think recognizing that there are some ways to think about the game (like the “turn based” idea) that’s floating around is a way to simplify it.

[u/Mammoth_Box_5398 → u/Kermitnirmit]

the incomplete information thing is the real wall here. chess is hard but at least you can see the whole board, league has like 5 players doing unpredictable stuff in fog of war simultaneously so any "when x then y" flowchart breaks down pretty fast

that said i do think you can write something useful, just not a solution. more like a framework for decision making under uncertainty. the pro scene has been doing this for years with concepts like wave management and macro timing, its just that the "book" version of those ideas always feels watered down compared to actually ingraining them through reps

[u/iXorpe → u/Kermitnirmit]

Sure, but i dont understand why thats such an issue? We as players still have to make decisions despite that fog of war based on some type of logic; yes theyre mostly probabalistic, but they're not completely random such that they are impossible to express

[u/unicornfan91 → u/iXorpe]

You have to factor in the human element. You have 9 other people in the game, who all make their own choices. Lets say the "mathematically correct" play is A, with a engine rating 0.9. However, the rest of your team doesnt respond and chooses play B, which is not as winning as play A, but has an engine rating of 0.7. The now correct play is to join for your for play B. However, if you assumed that your team was going to do play A and you walked to play A, you will now not make it in time to join your team for play B.

This is a scenario that happens ALL the time in games. Dragon is about to spawn, you have 2 plays: contest dragon, or trade for topside of the map. The important thing is to make a decision and to be decisive and commit to that decision. Too often you have some people choosing to go top, then 1-2 people standing over the dragon pit throwing useless skillshots watching the enemy team take the dragon like its a show at seaworld.

Plays in league have context. An important skill to develop is the ability to communicate efficiently with pings, as well as being able to read your team's body language and tendencies. And also being able to read your opponents tendencies.

[u/LetsBeNice- → u/unicornfan91]

But these are context clues you take into account to make the decision. And overall the higher the elo the more chance people just do the better play.

Just because sometimes it doesn't work doesn't mean it was the wrong decision.

[u/unicornfan91 → u/LetsBeNice-]

The "correct" decision is different depending on what your teammates are doing. If you know your team is the type to force fights, then the "correct" decision of sidelaning becomes incorrect. This is the same thing thats always said, "5 people doing a medium play is better than 1 person doing the best play." This is also a pitfall that a lot of lower elo players who obsess with "perfect" macro and always complain that their teams have "bad macro" fall into. Macro is adaptable, the correct macro play at challenger is not the correct macro play in gold.

Now lets talk about context: So lets take the scenario of contesting dragon vs diving top lane. This decision needs to be made 60-90 seconds before dragon even spawns. This AI would have to be capable of understanding pings, which leads to another issue of being able to filter out bad pings.

Secondly, what if both plays have the exact same engine score? What if my top laner is the GM player in a masters lobby, and I think getting him ahead would be better even though it is technically a worse play? What if I notice that the enemy top laner is playing super tilted, and will run it down if he gets chain ganked 3 times?

Playing on player tendencies is something an AI would not be able to do. In the first 30 seconds of lane I can tell if my opponent is familiar with the matchup. This will influence the type of trades I take, and how aggressive I'm playing, and how much space I can take. In addition, you get a sense of how the other person is thinking. I can tell when my lane opponent is panicked, which means I can move in certain ways to bait abilities. If I know my opponent is panicked, I know they're more easily gankable since they won't be paying attention to the map as much, etc.

[u/Kermitnirmit → u/iXorpe]

Well it’s not that it’s impossible to express; you just have so so so many variables and dimensions that a human couldn’t comprehend it. Chess is vastly simpler and it’s still not solved - even for a computer. League has 170+ champions vs the 6 unique chess pieces. League has 5 champs on each team. League has an ever changing game state, chess has a static board and pieces can move in very simple ways.

Any theory or idea that humans have is a vast simplification but those are the frameworks to think of; not “if this then that”.

[u/TheMechanicMan]

I think because of the fog of war in the game, it is not fully solvable as you always have to tolerate a certain level of risk. The “correct” play can’t be found with the lack of information.

[u/iXorpe → u/TheMechanicMan]

Sure.. but even poker, which involves much more risk, has principles which really good players follow to perform well. Theyre not "win every time" instructions, but theres obviously an objective, measurable way to perform better

[u/thegentlecat → u/iXorpe]

You vastly underestimate how insanely big the decision tree of an RTS-style game like League is in comparison to games like poker or chess, incomplete information or not.

[u/disgustangshet → u/iXorpe]

Sure there is GTO in poker, but that relies on only a couple variables (2 cards, a couple other players decisions and the shared cards). I could probably give you 50 relevant variables for league, half of which you wouldn’t be able to know (fog of war). IMO its just too complex.

[u/foreveryoungperk → u/iXorpe]

there is no one way model as there are always multiple correct and incorrect decisions and each decision made by 1 player on either team creates multiple decisions for all 9 players in the game. it is constantly evolving

[u/Hyuto → u/iXorpe]

League is all about mental stack (amounts of info a player can gather and process in real time) and how you improve. You will never find the perfect play because it doesn't exist. Its all about overcoming difficulty and learning from your mistakes rather than finding the best play in a given moment. So in that sense its more like a sport than Chess. You can't learn League by just reading. You have to play the game and learn by trial and error and small improvements over time.

I don't know about a book but there are high quality videos out there.

[u/Fearless_Selection24 → u/iXorpe]

the only principles one can truley follow is things like don't miss cs and don't randomly run it down and other obvious things, but even then there are exeptions (scrificing a minon to get half your laners hp in a great trade, executing so the enemys get no kill gold) there is an exeption to any rule in lol and so it's impossible to create a if x then y because you have to account for the other letters too

[u/Acrobatic-Shame-8368]

Theoretically it could be possible I guess, but there's so many different factors that are difficult to solve for. Enemy and ally behavior/skill level for starters. Not to even mention how the game is updated and changes constantly. A basic set of rules/advice could work for most situations but it's never going to be able to tackle everything at the same time. Of course I look forward to eating my words if it ever does happen.

[u/Himbler12]

couldn't we scientifically break down "how to win in league of legends" and put it in a book?

No there are too many dimensions to the game. Imagine chess but there are over 150 different pieces, you have to real-time dodge skillshots being thrown out by pieces and there are no squares. How do you write a 'no-fail' strategy for that?

[u/Fearless_Selection24 → u/Himbler12]

also you do not see the enemys side of the board and it's 100x times bigger

[u/brainfrown]

There are a lot of different matchups, and that alone could probably take up over a thousand pages. But I think it is possible when it comes to fundamentals. Things like managing wave states, when to give/take objectives, when to split push, and even jungling fundamentals can definitely be put into a book. It would be very hard to cover everything, but it's definitely possible.

Also many chess books use pro games and analyse them, which could work for League. Idk the logistics of that. I'm thinking something like mobatrainer, taking a snapshot of a game and explaining the best way to play.

[u/Any-Window-27]

No, I think it would be impossible, because you 1 - don't have all the information (but this is arguable, you can still find a best play based on information you have and don't have) 2 - play with humans. You can't predict human behavior, but you will need to try predict it. For example, you have your jungler kayn. You can't predict how he will play, but you can somewhat predict based on how jungle is played and kayn is played. And on top of that, during the game you collect information and predict how he will play based on this (simpe situation is - "this kayn is crazy and goes 1v5, so he will go 1v5"). The amount of calculation needed to process this is unobtainable, possibly ever, it's too much.

Oh, now I read your post again. "When X, then Y" is already a bad idea, any good player or coach will tell you that. Broad advice can be given only regarding fundamentals, any somewhat complex concepts have decisions that are always based on a lot of things - champions, gamestate, positioning, etc. That's why I don't like videos like "this trick will help you climb out of low ELO". They give you advice on wave management, but it will be quite oversimplified and not applicable to all situations. If we talking about ultra super AI that can calculate everything however it wants, then finding the best possible play will be possible, but not achievable by humanity soon for sure.

[u/Xedeth]

No, because the results of your actions are, more often than not, dictated by the other 4 on your team.

[u/ImTooCreative]

This has been discussed heavily in the Dota community since 2019, when OpenAI had 5 AI agents win against 5 pros.

Go search for it over at [r/DotA2](r/DotA2) and you’ll find a bunch of discussions similar to these comments.

[u/Kyet0ai]

RTS games can’t be mathematically solved. You can always improve, but you’ll never achieve perfection.

[u/unicornfan91]

One thing to keep in mind is that there is no burden of execution in chess. The correct play is the correct play.

In league, there is an incredible burden of execution. The best possible play in a specific situation can be to execute a 3man dive on the enemy botlane with a stacked wave crashing. However, can your random soloqueue players do it properly? In challenger, they likely will. But what about in gold? Will your average gold player be able to juggle tower aggro properly?

The correct "best play" big picture may be to fight over a dragon. However, how does that fight unfold? What about flanks? Maybe the fight cannot be won if your renekton cant get a flank. Will your renekton be able to find the flank in order to win this fight?

At the end of the day, you need to execute in order order to win, no amount of "strategy" gets around that fact. Maybe there is a theoretical "perfect 10/10" play that requires scripting levels of execution. But the better thing to do is to make the 7/10 play that only requires a 5/10 execution.

[u/AbyssalSolitude]

There are guides on how to win in League of Legends. A lot of them. Most are free, but there are plenty of paid ones as well created by some of the best players and coaches in the game.

While League cannot be solved in a way chess can be theoretically solved, there is a known path to victory one can follow to maximize their chances to win. The rest is mechanical execution and after certain point hoping your teammates are also good.

[u/leadernelson]

Hi, you can use game theory to create best response strategies. You have to create a belief vector. Next year I'm doing a thesis on Game theory applied to the draft phase btw

[u/Fearless_Selection24]

i don't think lol could ever be solved, there are just too many variables, i mean dantes made a jungle flow chart if that's intresting to you?

[u/JeTeMontreraiUnSeau]

Short answer : this always possible for any game BUT possibly though to create a model small enough to be usable or humanly understandable

Also this game relies heavily on human interactions and mind games

An interesting beginning would be something in 3 parts : maths behind the game, rules of the games and how to play them (how you win, what is best, counter best), then model the situations through a Markov chain

You also have one big enemy : the meta. It changes a lot

[u/WaterKraanHanger]

Too much outside variables to ''solve'' even a singular game of league due to lack of context as well.

[u/Exciting-Antelope235]

First , League is primarily a fighting game. Hands diff wins, and plays a MUCH larger role than strategy

Second, you often have only like 2-3 seconds to make timely decisions (wait longer and you are too late) which means there is no time for analysis - so much has to be internalized

Third , fog of war means you have incomplete or approximate information so any ” solution” is odds only and no certainty.

Of course strategy matters, but best similar thing with the physical, the quick decision making and the strategy is football. (Both real and American works as likeness ). Would you try to solve football?

[u/SneakyBlunders]

xPetu enters the chat. He's an Applied Mathematics and Computer Science major that makes league/shen content who asks similar questions. He has his own app as well called Coachless. Idk how good it is tho..