Author: Jeff Morgan (Page 31 of 260)

Are you playing Summoner’s Rift?

Summoner's Rift.

This may seem like a foolish question to ask, but there’s a reason I ask. When Dominion first launched to beta I was playing the hell out of it. Part of my fascination was obviously the fact that we finally had something new in front of our faces to play with. The other part, which actually took a couple play sessions to recognize, was that I always had a full group of people to play with. It was never hard to find four other people who would get on voice chat and try a little capture and hold.

Just three days since the new mode launched, though, I’m already having trouble putting together a Dominion group and frankly, Dominion just isn’t that fun without a premade group. It can often be particularly unfun, even more so than Summoner’s Rift. So I’m bouncing back and forth a bit. I’m playing ranked games here and there with some friends in duo queue. I’m hitting Dominion when I have three or more friends ready to play.

What about you? Are you still playing Summoner’s Rift? Are you totally wrapped up in Dominion? Are you boycotting Dominion for some reason? Do you play Dominion with less than three people? Let me know in the comments.

DotA 2 originally scheduled for year-long beta

The release of League of Legends: Dominion made me wonder what the other big players in the MOBA world have been up to, particularly the good people at Valve. Valve has always been known for the glacial pace of its development, but the word on the street was that DotA 2 would be out this year. Apparently that was never Valve’s plan.

According to an official blog post made late last week, DotA 2 was originally slated for a year-long beta, beginning this fall. During that time, Valve was planning to slowly increase the number of available heroes until it matched the original title and only then would the game be released.

It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which releasing DotA 2 a year from now would make any kind of sense. Granted, DotA players are a loyal breed, but the options for filling the MOBA need are ever-increasing. As Dominion has shown us, there are also emerging models for arena-style gameplay that stray from conventional base-killing. Also, why hold a high profile tournament for a game that won’t release for a full year? In short, DotA can’t keep MOBA players interested forever. Pushing that interest for another 12 months seems like a surefire way to kill the game.

Luckily, Valve has changed its plans. The new schedule has DotA 2 coming out as soon as possible with the set of heroes that were playable in the International tourney. From there, Valve will be rolling out updates with more heroes along the way.

Weirdly enough, I think their terrible initial plan will turn into a really smart release cycle. DotA 2 will be a tough change of pace for players who never played the original. Even veteran DotA players, like myself, might have trouble adjusting after being away from the game so long. That adjustment period is only compounded by the number of new champions and mechanics a player has to learn. By launching with a limited set of champions, DotA 2 will probably be much more approachable than the version we would otherwise see a year from now.

Xerath mechanics preview different from PC Gamer

The Xerath preview in the latest PC Gamer made him out to be a resource-management champion. Based on the latest info from Riot, though, it sounds like he’s really more of a hyper-range champion than anything else.

Morello posted a mechanics preview of the new mage yesterday, which included a description of several of his skills. Xerath was described as a “howitzer” designed for “long barrages and sieging.” Anyone remember the days of sieging? Remember when it was called poking? Yeah, baby, those days are back.

I think the design concept for Xerath sounds pretty cool, provided it takes a reasonable amount of skill to land and effectively use his spells. It’s always a great feeling to snipe a player with a cross-map Ashe or Ezreal ult, a feeling I’m hoping Xerath can recreate.

From the sound of things, he’ll be dealing big AoE damage from afar. That could easily be something of a problem if his range/damage are too good. Even with the spell Locus of Power, which locks him in place for extended range and defensive penetration, I think we could see too many easy snipes without really sacrificing much in terms of mobility. Also, consider the kind of zoning a character with long-range burst could perform on Summoner’s Rift. If he’s the Caitlyn of AP carries, I think he’s probably going to have some balance issues.

I would be interested to see a character with Xerath’s mechanics have a minimum cast range. Imagine if you couldn’t hit players that were right on top of you, but had to play from a distance. That could be a very cool mechanic. With the prevalence of dash/mobility mechanics in the game, though, it could be really frustrating.

I’m definitely intrigued by Xerath’s design direction so far. I’m hopeful he won’t be instaban OP, but it’s hard to imagine a way to make a character with his described skillset feel balanced. We’ll have to wait and see.

No champ of the week this week

Dominion Quarry.

With the release of Dominion and a backlog of videos for both Trundle and Veigar, I won’t be playing a Champ of the Week this week as I typically do on Summoner’s Rift.

In the interest of transparency, allow me to explain the Veigar/Trundle delay. Two weeks ago my hard drive started acting screwy. It didn’t seem like a big deal, but when I started to cut together the Veigar video, several of my clips became corrupted and wouldn’t work. After trying to recapture those clips, I realized the partition of my hard drive that housed my Fraps recordings was corrupt and needed wiped.

I now have a new hard drive up and running, a fresh Fraps install, but sadly, no clips. I’ve been using LoLReplay, which means going through quite a few games and capturing important moments without the benefit of a replay feature, which is time consuming.

The good news is that I should have time to work on both Veigar and Trundle tomorrow. I’m also planning a new feature specifically focused on Dominion, though I’m not totally sure where that one will fit.

Keep an eye on the YouTube channel for the newest videos as I have them. If you haven’t seen it, check out my Dominion commentary video for some tips and basic information on the latest game mode in League of Legends.

Dominion draft may soon force captains into lobby

If you’ve queued up for a draft game in Dominion, you may have noticed that the game doesn’t dump team captains straight into the lobby. For instance, I queued up for a game this afternoon and went back into my match history to check some stats. The queue popped but I was still reading some stats so I clicked “Finish what I was doing.” When I was finally dropped into the lobby, I was the team captain, and with first ban I only had three seconds left to ban. In my confusion, I totally missed it.

In 5v5 and 3v3 draft modes you don’t see this happen because the client forces the captain to join the game immediately (and maybe everyone else – I’ll have to test it later). I made a post about the issue in the Dominion forums, to which Morello responded with the following:

Good catch – will raise visibility on this issue. Thanks!

If you see similar issues, I would highly recommend posting them to the Dominion forums. They’re much less cluttered than General Discussion and will probably see a flurry of Rioter activity today.

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