One can learn a lot by viewing other players' matches, but it often requires very close attention to subtle details even to judge who is ahead in a closely-contended game.
Since there are a lot of matches, I don't generally search out individual champions to spy upon. I just scroll down to the bottom of the matches that are in progress. I watch the opening moves as a high-speed replay. Then, when I catch up to real time, the game slows down.
However, when I review a match it invariably ends in Defeat! with neither hero at zero health. Are these matches truncated by the server, or does one player concede when he recognizes he has no solution for the opponent's threats? How do you tell?
I wish replays would make it possible to tell which player played first, who played last, and what the final result was. Instead, we get meaningless reports that 'Player X disconnected 599:29 ago'
The present system always puts the game's creator at the bottom of the screen, but this detail is meaningless for rated matches. Nobody knows or cares which contender pushed the button first when they play a match, why would spectators want to know this trivial detail?
People care who played first, not who clicked the button first. Wouldn't it be better to put the player who played first at the bottom, and to summarize the results when the game ends?
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