teamfind

Teams from Bronze to Diamond are recruiting on Teamfind

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:49:00 -0400

Hey guys. We know how difficult it can be to find awesome people to play with – that’s why we made Teamfind. We want to make it easy for you to find a great team, or even manage your own. With that in mind, this is the beginning of a daily post for players that are currently LFG; a small sample of the hundreds of teams currently recruiting on Teamfind.

We’d love for you to check out the site – we’re rapidly approaching 50k members! Any feedback would, of course, be fantastic.

the Swagganauts

Current League

Bronze

Aiming for

Gold

Timezone

Central Time (US & Canada)

Members

3 / 8

“We’re looking to improve and climb the ladder! We’re a group of friendly guys who won’t rage or troll EVER. To our Applicants: We do still care about you! We’ve all been busy lately, but we do want to play with you and we are still forming a team. Thank you so much for your interest!”

the So Cal Gemstoners

Current League

Silver

Aiming for

Challenger

Timezone

Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Members

3 / 8

“We’re looking to compete in tournaments and see how far we can make it. Already have A Top Laner ADC and Jungler.”

bl00d Cry’s team

Current League

Gold

Aiming for

Platinum

Timezone

UTC

Members

1 / 8

“I’m looking for a team of Gold3 + players. Aiming at reaching into Platinum League. A team that trains hard, willing to cooperate and works well together.”

nøxy’s team

Current League

Platinum

Aiming for

Diamond

Timezone

Brussels

Members

3 / 8

“3/5 Platinum/Diamond elo players all capable of playing their respective roles. Currently looking for a support player. UK preferred but is obviously no requirement.”

Keishun’s team

Current League

Diamond

Aiming for

Challenger

Timezone

Eastern Time (US & Canada)

Members

3 / 8

“Looking for Plat+ players ONLY. Hopefully compete and make some sort of accomplishment out of our joint efforts. I am currently Plat I more or less on the way to getting promoted to Diamond, and am hoping to find other players around my caliber and above to see if we can win some competitions. Message me here or in game (Keishun) if you are interested!”

Win Lane; Lose Game: Intermediate League Strategy [Part 2]

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 01:57:00 -0400

The worst part about solo-queue is that you can own your lane but lose the game. You can totally outplay your opponent and demonstrate to everyone watching that you are better than him and that you deserve to win, but you can still lose. Because the system is plagued by one of the worst diseases to ever contaminate competitive gaming – the undeniable fact that sometimes, your own skill is taken out of the equation. Face it: if your teammates suck, you’re going to lose. You’re going to lose a game you deserved to win. That’s the worst part about solo-queue.

Or, at least, it seems that way. In 36 of my last 40 games, at least one person – and usually more than one – on the losing team said something to the effect of “bg”, or “this team”, or some other bullshit. Some implication that they had played well and indeed would certainly have won the game, if only they hadn’t had the shitty luck to be paired up with a group of idiots.

This blog is for those people.

Remember that it is not simply enough to be better than average to deserve a promotion. In every tier, in every division, players vary in skill level. It is perfectly normal skill variation for you to win your lane most of the time, but still lose often enough to keep you from getting promoted. Ok? Sure – maybe you’re better than the average Silver IV player, but that fact alone does not make you good enough for promotion.

You know what does? Abnormal skill variation. You’ve got to be so good compared to the rest of your division that you just dominate every game so hard that your win rate is absurdly high. You’ve got to be so good that the game is less fun for your opponents because of how hard you shit on them. You’ve got to be so good that people would whine endlessly about how it was unfair for them to have to face someone like you, and that Riot should develop some sort of ranking system so that you don’t get matched up against – oh wait.

But hey. I don’t blame anyone – and this is a strategy blog, right? I’m here to help you! But if you can’t get over that oh-so-common mindset that winning your lane means you should win the game, or that being better than average means you deserve a promotion, than you are probably not open to any sort of learning at all and should never click on a link like this again.

So let’s get started. You’re shitting on your lane opponent, you’ve got a great early lead. The game is winnable. How do you ensure victory? How do you make yourself so abnormally good for your division that you need to be promoted out? You’ve got to push your advantange, and two easy ways to start doing that is learning how to deny and how to roam. I’ll cover pushing your advantage with words (it’s more of a general mental framework than a technical or mechanical gameplay decision) and then link to two great guides on Roaming and Denying.

On pushing your advantage

Champions power curves vary. Consider Vayne and Miss Fortune: We’re not quite at the level of knowing who “should” win at specific levels, so we’ve got to speak in generalities. Now, in general, MF should stomp on Vayne early. Vayne should scale better than MF. But eventually, both Champions are going to hit a hard cap of effectiveness. Remember that the longer the game goes on, the closer everyone is going to get to that cap.

That means that even though you’re snowballing hard, if the game goes on long enough, your early lead isn’t going to mean a damn thing. This should be obvious, and we know it is intuitively – would you rather be down 30 to 50 or 0 to 20 – but most players don’t actively put this sort of knowledge into play.

You’ve got to put as much distance as possible between your power level and your opponents, as fast as you safely can, and then take advantage of that difference to secure game winning objectives (see part 1).

Anyways. Here is an excellent guide to roaming (though dated, the core concepts are still very relevant) and here is one for denying (also dated, also good).

When you’re able to do consistently put these things into play, you won’t need intermediate league strategeries no more! :)

yep

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 21:00:59 -0400

yep

Intermediate League Strategy -- for noobies!

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:51:00 -0400

So. You’ve decided to start playing League. Good, because with 32 million players logging in each month, you’d have to be a giant nerd not to. Now don’t get me wrong – League is a great game. It’s remarkably deep, subtly complex and fosters a unique breed of competitive spirit. It is, however, a sad truth that the LoL community is made up in no small part of trolls trolling, ragers raging, and experienced smurfs queuing into lower level games to make sport out of sodomizing you.

All of that can make the League a rather daunting place for a newcomer. I’d imagine the average life expectancy of a brand new summoner is somewhere around level 10, which is totally unacceptable, but Obama still hasn’t done a damn thing about it. So fuck it, I guess. I’ll handle it.

I’m going to assume you’ve already tried a few games and know the basics about Summoner Spells, Runes and Masteries. I’m going to assume you’ve hopped into a game or two and are starting to figure out this whole click-to-move mess. And lastly, I’m going to assume that you know the basic mechanical goals – last hitting minions and the like. For these sorts of basic skills, check out Riot’s fantastic New User Guide.

The purpose of this series will be to go just a tiny bit deeper – to outline clearly some of the more subtle things you may have missed when transitioning from noob to pro. Think of it like Chess – you know how the pieces move, and you know you want to take down your opponent’s King — but there are a million different ways to go about that, and some really subtle changes can make all the differences.

I want this series to be defined by small, usable chunks of information. I’ll usually start with a premise or two, and draw from them a conclusion that you can immediately put into practice in game. I hope I don’t lead anyone astray.

So. Let’s get started. Today, I’m going to introduce the frame of mind that I think is most conductive to winning. This may seem really obvious — but you’ve got to keep it in mind. Practice doesn’t make perfect, effortful practice makes perfect. Anyways:

Premise: You win the game by destroying the enemy’s Nexus.

This is such a remarkably simple thing, but it’s something most new players – and plenty of experienced ones – simply don’t get. Having a high K/D ratio doesn’t mean a damn thing if your Nexus gets nuked. If you want to win, then every action you take in this game should be to further this single goal.

Premise: Getting a kill isn’t always the best play. You’ve got to take objectives.

Pros realize that kills don’t win games. Objectives win games. Taking a tower doesn’t just give you 150g, it gives your team 750g. It gives your team more map control. It gives your team more pressure. Get it? This game isn’t about you and you can’t win on your own.

You know what the best part about getting a kill is? It’s not that small burst of gold you earn for yourself – that’s just a few creep waves. It’s that your opponent gets to stare at a gray screen for thirty seconds or so and can’t do shit while you farm away with impunity or push down a tower with a 4v5 advantage.

Of course, the same is true if you die. Every fight you get in runs the risk of turning out poorly, and like I said above – being dead (your absence on the map) is far worse than getting killed (that relatively small bit of gold the enemy team gets).

That’s why at the highest level of play, battles often erupt over objectives like Baron or Dragon. When you’re fighting over an objective, the potential reward for your team is much higher, and in most cases outweighs the risk. That’s why the pros fight over objectives – because they’re worth fighting for.

Conclusion: The plays you make should have the best risk-to-reward payoff in light of the fact that you want to be taking objectives. So after a teamfight, don’t fucking chase Singed halfway across the map, turn the hell around and take Baron.

Well — if you’ve read this far, thanks! I hope this was at least a little bit useful. Check back tomorrow and we’ll talk about why CS is king, and why winning your lane is not nearly enough to win the game.

Seeding Positivity in League of Legends

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:54:00 -0400

Ah, Champion Select. How you can make or break a game. I can’t be the only one who feels that games are often decided well in advance of minions spawning. And why? Because spirits can be effing broken in Champ Select.

So here’s what I did: played 8 League games. In 4 of them, in Champ select, I said “I’ll play anything”. In another 4, I said “prefer adc”. Then I computed a performance score (the ratio of player gold earned to player deaths) and compared the average scores in the two conditions. I found a statistically significant performance score difference!

This is just a fun way of saying something everyone already knows: make your teammates happy! It can have a huge effect on the game.

For the science-y types (this was just for fun. there’s about sixty five million problems, I know! :P)

Seeding Positivity: A Short Little Study

The link between positive affect and cognitive performance is well documented (see Baron, 2006; Lyubormirsky, 2005). Ashby (1999) proposed a neurophysiological theory of positive affect and cognitive performance, suggesting that increased dopamine release in the anterior cingulate cortex facilitates cognitive selection and perspective. A series of experiments in 1987 (Isen) demonstrate the effect of positive affect on tasks requiring creative ingenuity. The present study investigates the effects of positive affect on player performance in the computer game “League of Legends”. Positive affect phrases were seeded in pre-game chat. Performance, measured by the ratio of total team gold earned to total team deaths, was compared to a neutral affect control condition. Findings indicate that seeding positive affect has a positive effect on performance in the video game League of Legends.

Method

Participants were randomly selected from a player pool with a peak of 12 million concurrent users. Participants were not informed of the experiment in any way nor were they made aware of any of their rights. No data related to participant demographics was collected, save the fact that the study took place on the North American League of Legends servers.

A phrase intended to induce positive player affect [“I can play anything, just let me know!”] was seeded in pre-game League of Legends chat (in “champion select”). From that point on, the game was played as normal. A “performance score” — the ratio of total team gold to total team deaths — was computed for each player and compared against a neutral affect control condition [“Prefer adc”].

Results

An independent t-test compared mean performance scores. The positive affect condition (mean performance score = 5322, sd =432, n=32) showed a statistically significant positive effect size (p=.0213) when compared to the neutral affect control condition (mean = 4198, sd = 584, n=32).

Discussion

This is obviously mostly a joke. The numbers are real, though. And I think the point stands: Make your teammates happy! This is probably going to have a much greater effect on the game outcome than anything you can do :)

References

Ashby, F. G., & Isen, A. M. (1999). A neuropsychological theory of positive affect and its influence on cognition. Psychological review, 106(3), 529.

Baron, Robert A. “Environmentally Induced Positive Affect: Its Impact on Self‐Efficacy, Task Performance, Negotiation, and Conflict1.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 20.5 (1990): 368-384.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja, Laura King, and Ed Diener. “The benefits of frequent positive affect: does happiness lead to success?.” Psychological bulletin 131.6 (2005): 803.

Nowicki, G. P. (1987). Positive affect facilitates creative problem solving. Journal of personality and social psychology, 52(6), 1122-1131.

One fun year - Teamfind has a teamfinder

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:05:00 -0500

A year ago today, I told Rzn and Neilyo about a site I had launched just moments before - Teamfind. It turns out that they had been streaming, and the response was overwhelming. We’re pleased to say that the community is now almost 30,000 strong.

Since the beginning, it’s been our mission to make finding a team (or players for your team) as easy as possible. This is what we’ve done.

Team Lobby

Today, I’m happy to announce that Teamfind now includes the ability to create and manage your teams. Not only that, you can now participate in the Teamfind lobby system. As a player looking for group, you can have a look at the Team lobby and see a list of team ready to play at that very moment. If you’re a team looking for more, you can also see a filterable list of players to recruit to your team.

Achievements

Now you don’t have to wonder whether someone’s stretching the truth. You can know exactly what they’ve accomplished.

Class selection

You can now display what classes and roles you need for your team.

New Premium Features

We’ve also revamped the premium offerings. By default, you can be on up to 3 teams (one of them you own), and you can increase that by supporting us with a premium account! We’re also putting in features for those of you who need the extra organizational power (for a regular team or guild group) - you can get larger team rosters and enable the team messaging tab as well.

We’re committed to making sure you can play whenever you want without having to worry about who to play with. Let’s make sure trade chat is used to simply trading items. Don’t ever hesitate to let us know if you have any issues or suggestions.

For realsies and stuff!

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:04:34 -0400

Hi guys, we’ve been ramping up the output on Teamfind features and wanted to share what we’ve been doing and what’s on the horizon. For one, we’ve improved the player finder by allowing for infinite scrolling and sortable table columns. This should help filter for the right details. We’ve also streamlined the registration process to allow players to get to finding others as quickly as possible.

We’re building out features for finding teams and guilds as well, and we’d welcome your input for what you need most out of guild and arena/RBG recruitment.

Diablo 3 out tonight!

Mon, 14 May 2012 19:13:00 -0400

See you all on there later :)

Login fixed, really sorry about that

Mon, 14 May 2012 18:52:00 -0400

From about 7 PM yesterday to 4 PM today, the site would 404 for members trying to log in due to a misspelling in an update to the site. Sorry about that, it was my fault for not catching it.

New design, extra characters, tournament realm!

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 13:56:00 -0400

It’s been a while since the last update, sorry about that. I’d mostly like to let the site speak for itself, but the broad strokes:

The site has a new design.
The site now warns you when it can’t find your character. You can then change the info if you did transfer your character under your character settings.
You can now add new characters by inviting 5 people per character.
You can now post to the tournament realm stream to do stuff there. You need to enable it through your character setting.

Enjoy, and let us know what you think about the changes. :)

New - Invitation links! Stable server! Yay!

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 23:36:00 -0400

Good news everyone! The site no longer crashes every 6 hours when someone runs a really general character search (try it, I dare you). So… that’s a plus.

Invitations

Also new is the ability to invite anyone through short links, check it out:

As you can see, there’s some html text that’ll generate the Teamfind banner that you can see on some awesome peoples’ streams (like Talbadar, Rzn, Frozire, Filo, Vidraz, Belligerentz, and many more…) which will give you credit for your invites.

Why?

Great question! The answer’s simple. The more people there are on Teamfind, the more useful it is for everyone on the site - the links are short so you should be able to share them in-game. And the reason you can see your invitation count is that… there might be some things it’s associated with later on :D

More to come. Cheers.

Maintenance 2/26 - new stuff!

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 21:07:00 -0500

We’re improving site performance and improving the character profile pages:

10,000 and counting, success stories...

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:54:00 -0500

Over 9,000 10,000

No big deal - we hit over 10k members earlier this week. Just thought you should all know :)

Success stories?

If you have any successes/good experiences using Teamfind, we’d be overjoyed to hear them! Head over to the feedback/success stories forum to let us know what kinds of partners you’ve found.

Kollektiv, New Search Filters, Better Performance

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 21:05:00 -0500

I’m happy to announce that Kollektiv has joined in working on providing Teamfind with much-needed development expertise. Beyond being arguably the best Shaman in the world, Kollektiv is also a prolific addon creator, having made must-have PvP addons like SpellAlerter, PvP Trinket Tracker, and InterruptBar. He’s already added some convenient features to Teamfind! Welcome to the team :)

New Search Filters

The biggest change and most convenient change has been to the search. The find page was vastly improved - you can now filter by arena or RBG rating and which brackets you’re looking for (so make sure you set these in your character preferences). By default it grabs whatever your highest current arena/RBG ratings are.

The brackets (2s/3s/5s/RBGs) are also important to set so others can find you based on what you want to play.

Better Performance

Along with all these filter/search changes, lots of stuff was improved under the hood to provide faster pages. Of course, there are more improvements coming along to make sure the experience as snappy as possible.

Facebook

Teamfind also now has a Facebook page! If you want to ask anything non-feedback related, that’s one easy way to get in touch.

If you have any feedback, comments, let us know in the comments here, on the Facebook page, or in the feedback section. If you’d like to help out in creating an awesome experience for your fellow players, you can reach us at contact@teamfind.com.

Thanks to Rzn, Iblazen, Talbadar, Filo, Frozire, Nuvoz, Lewisyo, Diziet, and Maldiva for continued support through TwitchTV.

Stream posts available!

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 19:44:00 -0500

Teamfind now gives you the ability to post a message to your stream. Anyone who’s interested in your realm will be able to read it.

Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and happy WoWing :)

Teamfind: An Intro

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

What a week…

For those of you who haven’t come from ArenaJunkies, the story behind Teamfind is this: I stopped playing WoW to create this site for others to find teams for arenas, BGs, or just to have fun in WoW. I launched last week Thursday night with the help of Neilyo and Rzn and a post on ArenaJunkies. Since then, the site has grown to over 2,000 members and counting.

So here’s what’s changed since launch:

Added this blog!
Better searches. There was an issue that surfaced as search volume increased. I won’t bore you with the details, but that’s been fixed.
Added forgotten password functionality.
Polished a lot of pages (including browse, messages, news…). Of course, there’s more to do.

Here’s what you can look forward to:

More features - additional character slots
Character validation
Better search parameters and matching (ratings, activity level)
Email notifications.
More bug fixes.
More polish.
News posting (shows up in others’ news stream)
More members!

This blog is intended to communicate what’s going on with Teamfind. Kind of like patch notes I guess.

So don’t hesitate to email me at skander@teamfind.com or add feedback in the bottom right if something’s not working for you or if you have a suggestion!