Category: Editorial (Page 10 of 34)

Is casual MOBA play possible?

January 23, 2012 / Jeff Morgan

Since I got started with the DotA 2 beta, my time in League of Legends has dropped off significantly. At first I thought it was just that DotA 2 was a new game and that I might someday reach a point at which I was splitting my time between the two. That hasn’t happened yet, and I honestly don’t see it happening in the near future.

Every time I’ve gone back to League over the past couple weeks, I’ve been sorely disappointed. My games have been quick and unenjoyable, whether winning or losing. Those same kind of games have been happening in DotA on occasion, but with DotA I’m playing enough to balance the bad games with plenty of good. With LoL, that’s just not the case.

I think this is a core part of the MOBA experience, and something MOBA developers may have to address over the next couple years. Though I go into each play session hoping for a hard-fought, drawn out battle, I would bet the majority of games tend to be shorter and fairly one sided, at least to some degree. Once the lopsided game has played out, my inclination is not to walk away; it’s to stay and play until I get the game I was looking for.

This situation isn’t totally unique to the MOBA genre. RTS players have long dealt with a protracted gaming curve, wherein they might spend as much as 70-80 minutes developing a strategy only to be wiped off the map in 90 seconds. In a lot of RTS matches, though, there are things to be learned. Maybe I should have had more resource nodes. Maybe I needed more unit diversity. Maybe my micromanagement needs work. Most competitive RTS matches provide an immediate and actionable feedback loop. That is, the player knows what he/she can do in order to improve their next experience.

With MOBAs, it’s more like two teams of five people trying to throw darts at the same dartboard, all at the same time. If they all get a bull’s-eye, the game is a success. As players start to miss, the game deteriorates. A few people from a team may be playing well, but when there are two people who can’t even hit the board, the game gets dramatically skewed. That actionable feedback loop from RTS games is all but gone. It often doesn’t matter if I’m hitting the bull’s-eye every time (and let’s be clear, I don’t); the failed efforts of my teammates have a dramatic effect on the outcome of the game.

So back to the question at hand – is it possible to play MOBAs casually? I can’t do it. I’ll own that. I can’t just jump into one game, unless that one game is the 50+ minute back-and-forth that MOBA dreams are made of. How do you guys do it? Do you focus in on a small subset of champions? Do you save up your playtime for one long play session every so often? Do you even bother? Sound off in the comments.

DotA, Editorial, league of legends

arts casual gamers casual moba casual players dota 2 gaming lifestyle lol lol vs dota 2 moba rts

Should Riot focus on unplayable champion remakes?

January 21, 2012 / Jeff Morgan

evelynn_splash_2

I was browsing around Riot’s forums this morning and stumbled upon an interesting comment that got a few upvotes. The thread was a discussion of Kayle’s current status and whether or not she should receive another remake. Here’s the comment that caught my eye:

“Evelynn too, while you’re at it. I dislike how I spent IP on the champ and RP on her skin only for you to literally make her unplayable to the point where I will be reported for playing her.”

This is not a new concept – far from it, I know. It is, however, an issue that has never really affected me. I’ve been writing about the game for almost as long as it has been a game. I’ve had every champion for probably a year, and I play enough that I have the IP to buy new champions every time they release. At least, I did until now. Now that my time is spread between a wider variety of games, I don’t have that luxury. Champions I buy will be the result of a long, slow IP grind, and you can bet I won’t be spending RP on them. At this point, too many champions have stagnated, in desperate need of a remake. When I had a seemingly endless fountain of IP this was no big deal – I always had another champion I could be playing.

But what about people who spend cash to unlock champions as they go. When those champions get nerfed beyond viability, it’s essentially a hit to their pocketbook. Again, this isn’t anything new. Players of all kinds of games have seen potential “investments” deteriorate as the result of nerfing. Any MMO player knows the pain of putting a couple hundred hours into the class, spec and gear that goes behind a character just to have it wiped out by developers. A game like LoL seems unique though, because while I may still be able to participate in large portions of an MMO with an underperforming character, most of the lower-tier champions in League can’t hope to compete with any reliable success. The options those players have to enjoy the game diminish far more quickly than those of an MMO player in most cases. Sure, there are always the free champions, but players don’t pay for access to free champions. The champions that have been purchased should have some viability.

So what do you think? Should Riot be spending more time and resources on remaking underplayed/unplayable champions or does the current method suit you just fine?

Editorial, league of legends

champion design character balance character remake eve remake kayle remake live balance live design remakes stealth remake stealth update twitch remake

Happy Holidays!

December 26, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

Reindeer Kog'Maw

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy holiday season! I’ll be back to a regular posting schedule in the near future. In the meantime, check out Steam’s holiday sales and keep wishing for a DotA 2 beta key. That is one thing I didn’t find in my stocking this year.

Editorial

holidays

Has the power creep gotten out of hand?

December 16, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

I already know what most of your answers will be on this question, but I participated in a situation so bizarre today that I knew I had to write a post. For anyone who may not know, power creep is essentially the process by which a game becomes unbalanced, often by the continual addition of powerful features and mechanics. In the case of League of Legends, power creep can be seen in the amount of AP on an average late-game carry, or the health/damage ratio of a bruiser, just to name a few examples. On with the story.

I decided to play a quick game before bed, as I often do. I was playing Vayne, planning to run the build I used when she first came out (Sheen -> Wit’s End – > Trinity – not sure I’m in love with it). I ended up in our bottom lane with my ally, Kennen. We were up against a Graves and an Amumu, which went really well for us. Well enough that Kennen was unstoppable within 12 minutes. It was a solid game. What baffled me, though, was Kennen’s rapid AP increases. I hadn’t looked before the game started, but suddenly he was level 7 with more than 100 AP. It wasn’t long before he was over the 300 mark, which is when I attempted to do a little mental math.

Kennen was sitting on something like 365 AP with just a Deathcap and a Will of the Ancients. That’s it. At first I thought, my god, he only has 190 AP in items and yet I’m seeing 365. I had forgotten about the aura from WotA, which brought him up to 220 base. Even with the bonus from Rabadon’s and the 5 percent mastery, that would still only be 297. Shortly thereafter, Kennen bought another Needlessly Large Rod, bringing his base up to 300. His shown AP: 535. Yup. He had 535 AP with just 300 AP in items. What the hell is going on there?

That’s power creep, and it’s totally out of hand. One of the biggest problems I see is that it can be difficult to understand and difficult to predict. Players are already dealing huge amounts of incoming information for an average game. Do we really need to be performing this kind of math while playing, too? Trust me, I don’t think things are going to change; Riot has been using the additive method of problem solving for far too long. I do wish we could go back to a slightly simpler time, though, when a player’s items and his numbers lined up in expected ways.

Editorial, league of legends

balance balance issues champion balance imbalance league balance lol balance power creep

A week without games

November 28, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

It’s been a week since I last plopped myself down in my office and fired up a game of LoL or knocked out a few quests in Skyrim. I always think these holiday weekends will have some profound effect on the way I think about games or the way I play them or even the way I write about them, but it just doesn’t happen. I’m not entirely sure why, just as I am unsure why that would be a good thing.

I think part of the problem is that I would like to be playing a wider variety of games. In the past two years I’ve spent the vast majority of my time with just a small subset of games. I’ve pumped more time than I care to tally into League of Legends. I’ve played a lot of Minecraft. I’ve dipped in and out of WoW. I’ve been playing the hell out of Skyrim. I even had a brief affair with Diablo II. It’s a short list, and two of my five games aren’t really all that new. Why such a limited list?

For starters, time. It’s not the amount of time spent actually playing a game that concerns me. It’s the amount of time it takes to learn a game. To get to know its mechanics. To see whether I like it or not. A few weeks ago I was given access to the Star Wars: The Old Republic beta for weekend testing. I spent probably 10 hours with the game over the first two days, but those 10 hours were painful. The storyline wasn’t gripping, the combat was a complete WoW-copy – I was completely underwhelmed. I took my concerns to a couple forums, trying to figure out what I was missing. Plenty of reviews claimed the game was good, even great. What had I overlooked?

According to the internet, I hadn’t even cracked the surface of the game. Granted, 10 hours is a tiny chunk of time compared to the years people have spent with games like WoW, but 10 hours before the game even becomes remotely enjoyable? I’ll pass, as I do on most games. I would say that I’ve “missed out” on some big titles, but have I? What have I really missed? I can count on one hand the number of titles that have truly changed the way I think about games in the last 10 years. Even League of Legends, a game I play and write about on a daily basis, isn’t on that list.

I’m not trying to make the case that every game should break the mold, forever changing the way that we game. No industry supports that kind of innovation. I do, however, wish it happened more often than it does. The next big games on my watch list are Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3, and I only have high hopes for GW2. Diablo 3 is a load of fun, but it’s fun at its most mindless.

I’m going to end this post here, because I’m not sure I have much else to say. I love games, I just wish there were more games worth loving. You know, variety being the spice of life and all. What about you? What are you playing? What games made you rethink the medium? What’s on your gaming horizon?