This is a bit of a rant so forgive me.  
 
I find that most people in this game have atrocious map awareness, being unable to focus on any area of the map other than their own. Every game, there will inevitably be at least one person that complains to me about how his death was because I "didn't call MIA" (MIA being Missing In Action, to mean that the whereabouts of an enemy champion are unknown). Enemy icons show up on the mini-map, and when they are out of range of either an allied champion or minion's line of sight, then they disappear off of it. Maybe it's just because I'm used to playing RTS, where you have to keep track of a dozen things at once, but if you die because of getting ganked by a champion from another lane, it's your own fault for overextending and getting out of position. Even though I'm on the same team, it's not my job to babysit my teammates when the mini-map is available to all of us, and we should all be equally capable of using it. I spend about 80-90% of my time staring at the mini-map, not the main gaming field, and this is how I always know where the enemies are and where to position myself; pushing when appropriate and backing off when necessary. I've only been playing for a week and I manage a 2:1 W/L ratio with random matchmade teams, and something like a 5:1 K/D ratio in an average game; this is without even unlocking half the rune slots or mastery points. Clearly it's not an issue of experience or level, but skill. In other words if you're bad, don't complain, just get better.

This is a bit of a rant so forgive me.   I find that most people in this game have atrocious map awareness, being unable to focus on any area of the map other than their own. Every game, there will inevitably be at least one person that complains to me about how his death was because I "didn't call MIA" (MIA being Missing In Action, to mean that the whereabouts of an enemy champion are unknown). Enemy icons show up on the mini-map, and when they are out of range of either an allied champion or minion's line of sight, then they disappear off of it. Maybe it's just because I'm used to playing RTS, where you have to keep track of a dozen things at once, but if you die because of getting ganked by a champion from another lane, it's your own fault for overextending and getting out of position. Even though I'm on the same team, it's not my job to babysit my teammates when the mini-map is available to all of us, and we should all be equally capable of using it. I spend about 80-90% of my time staring at the mini-map, not the main gaming field, and this is how I always know where the enemies are and where to position myself; pushing when appropriate and backing off when necessary. I've only been playing for a week and I manage a 2:1 W/L ratio with random matchmade teams, and something like a 5:1 K/D ratio in an average game; this is without even unlocking half the rune slots or mastery points. Clearly it's not an issue of experience or level, but skill. In other words if you're bad, don't complain, just get better.

I blame it on the shitty default camera lock function. What kind of decision was it to disable scrolling unless you enabled it???

Me: "MIA BOT." 
XxswordsephirothxX: "TOO LATE SCRUB. Quit playing."

Almost every solo queue game is like that, find people to play with and stop playing solo altogether.

@artgarcrunkle said:

Almost every solo queue game is like that, find people to play with and stop playing solo altogether.

Yeah having a group of dudes to play with is better than just joining randoms.

That's where you're wrong. If they don't call MIA's (Or "ss" here in Europe) you can't be sure of enemy's whereabouts no matter how good you think you are. It's not about "babysitting", it's about being a goddamn team player.

@valrog said:

That's where you're wrong. If they don't call MIA's (Or "ss" here in Europe) you can't be sure of enemy's whereabouts no matter how good you think you are. It's not about "babysitting", it's about being a goddamn team player.

Thank you. Calling MIA is not something we do just to let "noobs" be aware of an incoming attack, its to allow players who are focusing their efforts forward (for the team). I am sorry, but if I am in the middle of a push I don't have the time to look down constantly and check to see if the guy(s) your covering are still there.

It's lazy for players to bitch about this, just do it. Hell, look at pro-teams, they call it.

That's where you're wrong. If they don't call MIA's (Or "ss" here in Europe) you can't be sure of enemy's whereabouts no matter how good you think you are. It's not about "babysitting", it's about being a goddamn team player.

As for calling MIA. Half the time I do not have time to even type or I WILL get ganked. 

@csoup said:

@valrog said:

That's where you're wrong. If they don't call MIA's (Or "ss" here in Europe) you can't be sure of enemy's whereabouts no matter how good you think you are. It's not about "babysitting", it's about being a goddamn team player.

Thank you. Calling MIA is not something we do just to let "noobs" be aware of an incoming attack, its to allow players who are focusing their efforts forward (for the team). I am sorry, but if I am in the middle of a push I don't have the time to look down constantly and check to see if the guy(s) your covering are still there.

It's lazy for players to bitch about this, just do it. Hell, look at pro-teams, they call it.

That stuff, and it's expected that other people WILL call mia so people focus more of their energy on their lane to try and get a kill or something. You said you just started playing, trust me, when I just started playing I was getting like 12:1.2 K:D ratios or something silly like that. I'm level 18 now and often time get grouped with 30s cause of my friends, it gets harder. The windows of opportunity for getting kills becomes really small so you need to be focused and ready. I don't condone that behavior when someone forgets to call mia or waits a bit too long to call it, but you're still at fault if you don't. For the record, I've been playing RTS pretty much my whole life and was a diamond level SC 2 player before I stopped playing, my map awareness is pretty good but I still don't notice every time an enemy goes mia. Especially since people don't tend to call it if they just duck into the bushes or something so more often than not, if no mia was called and you don't see someone on the map it's a safe bet they're healing or trying to gank within their lane.

What does annoy me is the people who ping 80 god damn times in a span of 3 seconds.

Also, don't worry about runes until you're level 20. Waste of IP.

This is a bit of a rant so forgive me.   I find that most people in this game have atrocious map awareness, being unable to focus on any area of the map other than their own. Every game, there will inevitably be at least one person that complains to me about how his death was because I "didn't call MIA" (MIA being Missing In Action, to mean that the whereabouts of an enemy champion are unknown). Enemy icons show up on the mini-map, and when they are out of range of either an allied champion or minion's line of sight, then they disappear off of it. Maybe it's just because I'm used to playing RTS, where you have to keep track of a dozen things at once, but if you die because of getting ganked by a champion from another lane, it's your own fault for overextending and getting out of position. Even though I'm on the same team, it's not my job to babysit my teammates when the mini-map is available to all of us, and we should all be equally capable of using it. I spend about 80-90% of my time staring at the mini-map, not the main gaming field, and this is how I always know where the enemies are and where to position myself; pushing when appropriate and backing off when necessary. I've only been playing for a week and I manage a 2:1 W/L ratio with random matchmade teams, and something like a 5:1 K/D ratio in an average game; this is without even unlocking half the rune slots or mastery points. Clearly it's not an issue of experience or level, but skill. In other words if you're bad, don't complain, just get better.

MIA calls are for the noobs who don't buy wards.

Almost every solo queue game is like that, find people to play with and stop playing solo altogether.

I agree with your title, but not your refusal to call MIAs.

It takes half a second to type 'mia.'

Always assume your teammates are retarded. I don't trust mia calls or even ward vision to cover my teammates, I spam pings aswell.

I'm on the other side of this discussion. When I play these games I expect people to be teamplayers. It's how I play DOTA-style games, like a team. 
  
If you clearly see your enemy hero leaving to go to another lane, it's basic teamplaying to chat "mia". 

I'm glad most people in LoL (and Dota when I used to play it) agree with this. Sadly, some people are like: "Screw being helpful, look at your maps for the entire match!". That's just wrong.  My calling out 'MIAs' means that laners don't have to feverishly look at the minimap for the entire laning phase. I'm glad I can do that for my team. 
 
But seeing as my perfect world vision is not true for public games, it's best to forget about expectations and just buy wards ;)  
 
As an aside: I always say miss instead of mia. Is this a dota thing or an european thing? I didn't come across the term 'mia' in a dota-style game untill I played on the US LoL server.

I always call my MIAs, better safe than sorry.

That being said I rarely play pug games anymore, at the very least i duo-queue. That way when I lane with a friend I can tell him via Skype to type the MIA if I'm busy.

And this is why I stopped playing after like 5 matches. LoL is not a friendly game.

I would enjoy online games so much more if random people weren't so dead serious about them.

What happened to playing games for fun?

I haven't played LOL in a while, i generally would win and found it to be a bit monotonous after a while. But the one thing i noticed is that there are a ton of assholes out there that aren't friendly to new players. I don't care what your reasoning is, the last thing i wanna do is play a game with people bitching at one another.

like @theguy said, LOL does not have a friendly community

Having just started trying this game out, it's nice to know that some people expect this.

I haven't even graduated out of bot matches yet, so when I step it up I'll keep this in mind.

Man I love Dota games but hate the community so much. Your playing a 5 year old riding a yeti stop bitching and acting elitist it's a game. *Sigh* I hope Dota 2 does stuff that pisses the community off so they don't pick it up and I don't have to play with them.

This game just sounds like why I try to play games where friendly fire is on. If they want to bitch and moan.. give them something to bitch about. Never played LoL, but It doesn't look like I would have the option to whack the teammate who pisses me off. I'm sure I could think of other ways to piss someone off though if need be.
 
This is the proper use of griefing. 

@psylah said:

Having just started trying this game out, it's nice to know that some people expect this.

I haven't even graduated out of bot matches yet, so when I step it up I'll keep this in mind.

Unless you cannot handle people berating one another, and sometimes you, with pointless insults that you can ignore, you will be fine. I play a mean Jax and Twisted Fate, but sometimes I have a pretty bad game where for some reason I cannot get a kill, or I am just being the focus target of ganks and team fights. Whenever this happens, regardless of the fact that I consider myself a very learned LoL player who uses guides, forms mathematically tested item builds, and plays like a team, it seems a couple of assholes are very quick to judge and jump. There will be constant assaults of insults and such, but really just forget about it and just keep playing. You'll come across a game or two where people refuse to lane with a noob, etc etc, but pay them no heed.

However, don't think your going to participate with jackasses like this constantly. Play some Co-op vs. AI and learn your char before jumping into a match-making game. Before I throw myself onto a new hero in 5v5 PVP, I test him out once or twice in COvAI to learn his moves, test my builds, and really get a handle on the character. You will notice that most of the bitching that happens pre-L30 is from people either "feeding" or running into 1v5 battles as if they could win because they don't have common sense.

PS: This post is really for anyone new to game or new to the genre. I play a lot of games with those that are newer, as I feel they mesh well with me by not being so stubborn to take a little advice like some of the people I have gamed with. If you need a friend up on LoL to do a couple of 3v3 or 5v5 with without judgement, send a Friend Invite to csoupeth.

Yep, totally agreed. Hate it.
 
The people  I was playing with the other day would call MIA if the enemy just pulled back in lane a little and left their fog of war. The chat was just filled with ''MIA!...re....MIA!...re....MIA! FUCK WATCH OUT FOR ANNIE....re nvm..'' etc It was irritating. Then I got flamed for not calling MIA and I wa just like ''Dude, she's right in the bush in front of us....''
I generally rely on my minimap/ward usage to spot potential ganks and only call MIA if I see someone very deliberately leaving their lane.
 
You just have to accept that the skill level of the general LoL doesn't tend to be very high.

awww those meanies hurt your feelings?

just ignore that.. all MOBA games are quite the same.

I can see the sea of complains once DOTA 2 is relased, That game includes denying and loosing gold on death.. The snowball is way wrost makes the game more punishing for bad players.

Play with fellow duders, guaranteed to reduce your anger

Play with fellow duders, guaranteed to reduce your anger

calling mia is very important at the early laning phase. if they are not on the map minimap it doesnt mean theyre going to my lane. you should of seen which direction they are heading and gave that lane fair warning.
having good map awareness is important though. wards wards wards wards.

calling mia is very important at the early laning phase. if they are not on the map minimap it doesnt mean theyre going to my lane. you should of seen which direction they are heading and gave that lane fair warning. having good map awareness is important though. wards wards wards wards.

I'll agree with the sentiment that the LoL community is extremely unfriendly, especially toward newcomers. In addition, the game itself is a factor in this because when a new player dies it hurts the team, ultimately having your own teammates getting upset with you (usually unfairly). Yes there are tutorials for new players, but more often than not it requires another human being teaching a newbie the ropes. If your community blasts newcomers for even trying, then what is the point of them playing the game and growing your player base. Also, matchmaking is often filled with smurfs who love to just artificially win by beating up on newbies. Where is the fun in that?

Play with fellow duders, guaranteed to reduce your anger

If you don't call MIA, it's your fault. End of story.

@Levio: There's a good reason why Pro's don't use MIA or SS. Like Geno said, you should be keeping your eye on the map at least every 5-10 seconds. Think of it like looking in your rear view mirror while driving.

@el_tajij said:

@Levio: There's a good reason why Pro's don't use MIA or SS. Like Geno said, you should be keeping your eye on the map at least every 5-10 seconds. Think of it like looking in your rear view mirror while driving.

No, pro's use vent or talk in person. They are actually communicating way, way more.

And the minimap doesn't tell anyone whether the enemy had recalled or is bush hiding, or if the enemy has been seen throwing skill shots in the area. This is really basic stuff.

I don't know if the even look at the mini map. Same thing in HoN.

I consider it rather helpful letting your team mates know you're uncertain of the whereabouts of your opponent, even if they might have spotted their absence already. For one thing, if you see them move up the river in the direction of another lane, pinging them a possible gank is important even if he might eventually see that someone is missing (since he didn't see where he went exactly). It's also a sign of an actual team player and probably someone more experienced with the game, not someone who wants to just 1v1 in his lane. I usually have enough map awareness since I play StarCraft 2, so I always call SS, sometimes even for other lanes. Pro teams use exceptional amounts of communication and coordination, especially on this level, it's never the individual skill that wins a game. 
 
Also, what's this bullshit about "oh, and I totally rock even though I don't even have all the masteries and runes", you're matched against similarly ranked and experienced opponents. You shouldn't even buy runes before level 20 because you're gonna replace those for tier 3 runes anyway.

This doesn't sound fun at all…

@BenderUnit22 said:

You shouldn't even buy runes before level 20 because you're gonna replace those for tier 3 runes anyway.

The tier one runes are so inexpensive, you should buy them anyway, and you definitely want to use your quints as soon as they open up.

When I started, I just bought the tier 1 runes until I could use tier 3 then replaced them all, completely skipped buying tier 2.

Yesterday I played as Zilean and I put bombs on people.
 
This is the beginning and end of my strategic efforts in League of Legends.

@Levio: Solo queue matches don't have everyone chatting on vent so that's a null point. You've contradicted yourself a little though, you should be looking at your map every 5-10 seconds, you should know who's visible, who's not and how long they've not been visible. How do your allies know they're hiding in a bush or have recalled or on their way to another lane for a gank?

Don't get me wrong, teamwork is the (Read: supposed to be the) foundation of League of Legends, but the 'I overextended and got ganked because you didn't call ss / mia' attitude that 90% have is pathetic.

@el_tajij said:

How do your allies know they're hiding in a bush or have recalled or on their way to another lane for a gank?

Skill shots. Sound effects. Aura buffs/debuffs. Heck even tryn's shout detects enemies in the bushes. And none of those show up on the minimap.

I will say that since almost all games have a jungler, extending is almost always a bad idea anyway. But playing defensively when you can be aggressive (after a gank, etc.) is poor gameplay, and is just as much a newb thing as being too aggressive when you shouldn't be.

@Levio: It's a pretty simple concept.

1) You look at your map

2) You see 5 enemy champions

3) You look at your map 5-10 seconds later

4) If you see a champion missing you need ask yourself - where is the most likely place this champ has gone? Is he just in the bush? Has he gone back to shop or is he closing in on your position.

Now, it's unlikely that a tryndamere is going to teleport from the top lane to a teemo mushroom in the bot lane brush in an attempt to gank you, but you do need to be aware of your map and everything going on about it. It's not somebody elses fault if you mess that up. If everybody did have great map awareness there'd be much better players around.

I'm going to stop replying, because you obviously are just trying to justify your behavior to yourself. If you want to play poorly, I honestly don't care.

@Levio: It's your 'blame everyone else for my mistake' attitude that gives League of Legends such a poor community and wrecks 90% of games. Learn to be responsible for your mistakes when you're not paying attention to the match as a whole.

Very much the same in Dota, although you won't get someone like that every game. I used to be like that when i started playing, but it's actually really easy, just check the map every 10-20 seconds in early game, and if an enemy hero...or champion is missing fall back to tower just in case.

My friends play with Skype so it cuts down on typing. Sucks there is no general team voice chat for randoms.

So this has turned into the age old MIA vs Minimap debate, interesting.

The answer is not one or the other, but both. You can't always rely on your teammates to call MIAs and you can't always rely on the minimap(bushes, to give you an example).

I got called a KS'ing bitch just for helping out - my bad, I didn't know we were playing for money. 
 
No one give s a flying fuck you ended the game with 24 kills instead of 25.