Author: Jeff Morgan (Page 180 of 260)

LoL: The perfect storm

Server farm.I made a post yesterday about my patch day woes, specifically the fact that I had to do a complete reinstall for the patch. It was a long process, impeded by thousands of other players with the same problem. I was talking to a friend who said, “You know, I kinda wish this was a crappier game.” If the game weren’t so good, it would be easy to write off all the technical issues. The game is good, though, great even, so the technical issues are all the more frustrating.

Once I got my game back up and running I hopped into a quick game over lunch. Everything was going splendidly until the other team’s Veigar ran up and dropped Event Horizon. Not typically a problem, but this time it stunned for eight seconds. Eight. Obviously I died, as most people would in an eight second stun. A hotfix came later in the day along with some more server downtime. I figured the worst was over.

I jumped in a game this evening and, low and behold, the server crashed. A post on the forums reveals that a portion of the game servers experienced a power failure, brining matches down for a slew of players. Obviously I don’t blame Riot for this, but it can be hard to keep a level head when so much goes wrong in such a short period of time.

On the one hand, I have to be sympathetic to these guys. They’ve made a great game, so great that they’re growing beyond their means. On the other, I really can’t wait for them to get the hiring process going.

LoL: Live Ezreal impressions

Ezreal in his Nottingham garb.I’ve only had the chance to spend a few games on Ezreal but he’s driven a lot of discussion on the forums so I thought it would be appropriate to post some impressions. Ezreal is definitely strong, but he’s likely going to be queue dodge material for a lot of people due to a very high skill ceiling. That’s mostly because he has four skill shots, but he’s’ also a terrible farmer in the wrong hands.

Let’s talk farming first, actually. Ezreal has big problems farming early game because he has no AOE farm skill like many other carries. You rely primarily on Mystic Shot, which can be difficult to land on the right creep, especially in a crowded side lane. I’ve personally been maxing Arcane Shift and Mystic Shot first, though I’ll probably try an Essence Flux build today. In either case, you need Mystic to keep your farm up and some sort of mana regen to allow some spell spam. If you can master farming on Ezreal you’ll be able to play him quite well.

While Ezreal can be built like a physical carry, he should be played in a support role, much like Nidalee, though with less early killing power. You should never be initiating fights unless you feel supremely confident in the win. He’s best used at the back of a fight, buffing and debuffing his team and enemies and pushing damage through with little risk of getting hit. He is extremely squishy, and while Arcane Shift might get you out of a fight for a quick second, it has a short enough range that it probably won’t save you against any ranged toon unless you see the gank coming and use it preemptively.

One of the big benefits of Ezreal is that he falls into the mixed heal/DPS category shared only by Nidalee. Mix in a Soraka, Alistar, or Taric and you have a team that will be very difficult to bring down, especially considering the state of anti-healing in the game. Depending on your lane comp, Essence Flux might be the way to go.

Overall, I can appreciate Riot’s stance on nerfs and buffs for this toon. We likely won’t see him at his full potential for a few weeks, though I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the player base calling for nerfs when that happens.

LoL: Patch day woes

Ghost Gangplank.It’s finally patch day, and for real this time. Unfortunately this patch has one very serious problem – it can completely trash your installation. There are now several posts on the forums filling rapidly with reports of trashed installations after attempting a patch. I’ve experienced the same problem and had to reinstall, a long and painful process with the number of players forced to do the same.

I don’t hesitate to say that I’m a little worried for Riot. The company is having huge scaling issues. Between the server crashes, the large number of bugs/exploits that come with each patch, and the string of nerfs and buffs that seem out of line due to a lack of testing, I can’t help wondering when they’ll catch up. The list of open positions is enormous and shows some gaping holes in current company structure. Here’s a short list of what Riot’s missing: Technical Director, Database Administrator, Director of Operations, System Administrator, Senior Game Designer. That’s a short list, obviously not including junior level positions. All of those gaps are presumably being filled along with other regular duties by the current staff.

As excited as I was for this patch, I can’t help feeling more than a little miffed by all the problems. Oh, did I mention the Jax buff? Yuck.

LoL: Matchmaking or Solomid

SoloMid logo.One of the hottest points of contention in LoL is the utter lack of a competitive ladder system. The longstanding response from Riot is that “it’s coming,” but without any timeframe players are starting to get restless. Solomid.net popped up some time back as an alternative for high-tier players looking for scrimmages. It has since continued to grow and is now offering an ELO-based league for anyone that’s interested.

Signups are simple – they’re using Quakenet IRC to run things with a bot to set up games based on the internal ELO. One of the big benefits to Solomid is that they use a draft system for official games, which is really the only way to have a skill-based competitive match in my mind. The downside, though, is that you’re playing most of your games in practice so you’re receiving reduced IP. There’s also the potential for the same kind of elitist community to pop up as did with TDA in DotA.

The good thing is Riot is embracing the Solomid community. Whether it will fail or fly, it’s the best solution for players looking at a competitive option until ladder season starts.

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