Category: Editorial (Page 34 of 34)

      My luck has officially run out

      September 12, 2010 /

      failure

      Earlier this week I was really excited to be playing ranked solo 5v5. I was making my way up the charts, thanks in part to good luck with teammates. My allies were cooperative and ready to coordinate, and chose teams that had a good mix of magic and physical damage, tankiness and crowd control. I made it from the high 1300s to 1530 in just a couple days. It was great.

      That all changed at the start of the weekend. I played a few games for some Miss Fortune testing on Friday and it was loss after loss. Teammates weren’t paying attention, they were making bad champion choices, arguing about who would take middle, never bothering with dragon. I plummeted, all the way down to 1412 in something like seven straight losses, and I haven’t been able to pull myself back up.

      I’ve pictured one of my most recent losses above. As you can see, my teammates were feeding early and often. Singed was 0-7 by the 18-minute mark. It wasn’t that he had a tough lane – he really didn’t – but he was running into fights he had no chance of living through. After engaging Warwick for a spell, I watched him start to run away at 200 hp just to go back in because Fling was off cooldown against a 500 hp Warwick. He died, of course, and it wasn’t the first time.

      It’s strange how this game runs in streaks. I want to say that it points to a problem in the matchmaking system, but I don’t know if that’s accurate. I do think matchmaking needs to account for ELOs that drop dramatically in a short period of time. You don’t want to artificially inflate a player’s ELO so that he’s in a bracket he doesn’t belong in, but it’s also absurd that I can drop more than 100 ELO in a couple games, largely because of underskilled teammates. What if matchmaking tried to make you the lowest ELO player on a team if you lost, say, four games in a row. Losing that many games in a row is indicative of a problem with the MM system. Either a player who shouldn’t have been winning so many games was winning and he’s beyond his means, or a player is losing more games than he should, likely because the other team overmatches his own. I think the system should try to correct itself to better provide the service it’s designed to provide.

      Editorial, league of legends

      Should Philospher’s Stone snowball?

      September 10, 2010 /

      philosophers-stoneOne of the smaller changes that made this latest patch was an update to an item I haven’t seen in months. Philosopher’s Stone got a new recipe, now made of a Faerie Charm and a Regrowth pendant. I still don’t think it’ll see much use. Let’s face it, health regen items are terrible. They never save you in a fight. Lifesteal occasionally does. Heals do. But little ticks of health every couple seconds don’t really give you much in terms of lanestay. If you want mana regen, there are much better options. The only thing left is gold per five, which really doesn’t do much. It could, though.

      What if Philosopher’s Stone was a snowball item, like a Mejai’s or a Leviathan? You get increasing amounts of regen (regen that actually helps your laning) and increasing gold per five. You don’t to make it so great that everyone gets one, as was the case after the Leviathan buff, but it might be a nice option if you’re settling in for a long game. Also, I don’t really dig on Sword of the Occult or Leviathan all that much. Mejai’s either, come to think of it. It would be cool to have another option.

      Another option would be turning Philosopher’s Stone into a Warmog’s-style item, one that grants you permanent bonuses based on units killed. Again, don’t make it crazy, but something that can help you out if you know you’ll farm well early but maybe be out of lane or grouped a lot late.

      It’s nice to know Riot’s thinking about some of these underused items. I hope a few have their functionality changed, not just the recipe.

      Editorial, league of legends, Patches

      Miss Fortune Impressions

      September 10, 2010 /

      Cowgirl Miss Fortune.

      Miss Fortune joins Gangplank among the pirate champions of LoL, but after playing her, I feel like that cowgirl skin should be her default. Not only is it the hottest of the three skins, but she has a run-and-gun feel to her that makes me think of games like Sunset Riders. She’s a ton of fun to play, but that may be because she is so strong.

      If you were ever into Gangplank, you’ll probably find Miss Fortune really enjoyable. She has all the great things about him – a cannon ball slow, a “wtf just hit me” shot, anti-healing, a fun ult, and very high move speed – and she has the added benefit of farming from range. She doesn’t have his free cleanse, but her range and her passive more than make up for it.

      As far as build goes, it seems like AD is the way to be. I’ve personally been starting with Manamune and moving straight to Infinity because her farm is nearly unstoppable. Bloodthirster is also a good rush item, though I think you’ll realize how much she needs mana early on. The key, though, is keeping up that farm. With her movespeed you should always be near creeps, always last hitting everything you can see.

      As far as playing against her, you better bring a lot of stuns. Because she has no inherent escape mechanism, I think you’ll see a lot of Miss Fortune players running Flash/Ghost for summoner skills, which means you need to lock her down fast. As a mid player, you may want to think about taking a cloth armor first with a bunch of health pots. It will mitigate some of her Double Up damage, which is where she gets most of her harass, and force her to use more mana to get you as low as she’d like, which means she won’t have tons of mana for that big ult. If you’re playing a carry, Flash is almost a must. Her ult hits so hard so fast that you need to get out of there within a half second. With a minimal farm she can hit you for 800 damage at level 16, which is a LOT on a carry. Add in a 300-400 damage Double Up and you’re looking at some fountain time.

      I would not be surprised to see her nerfed next patch. Despite some of the posts in the forums calling her “useless” and “way underpowered,” she has that mix of magic and physical damage that both scale off of her attack damage. It allows her to provide a heavy mix of damage that is very difficult to build against. I would love to see Riot introduce another hybrid mitigation item like Aegis of the Legion. Players need an item to help against toons like Ezreal, Miss Fortune, and even Kog’Maw, who can all provide a mix of damage in huge waves.

      Champions, Editorial, league of legends, Patches

      Riot responds to server instability concerns (right here on FG!)

      August 28, 2010 /

      Riot Games logo.A few days ago I made a post regarding the recent instability issues with Riot servers, a post that seemed to resonate with a lot of you. In case you missed it, RiotChris dropped by this very blog to respond to some of those concerns, and he was followed shortly by Marc Merrill, the president of Riot Games, who linked his own response to the situation from the League of Legends forums.

      Here’s what RiotChris (who is Chris Enock, the company’s Director of Marketing) had to say:

      We are sorry that we have been having server stability issues and growing pains recently. Fixing them and making a better player experience is our company’s top priority.

      We are as frustrated by the server issues, and we will be taking time to bring everyone up to speed on what we are doing to make the issues better. I know it doesn’t help you play the game, but I can tell you that all the problems are due to the growth – if it was just a matter of buying more servers we would do so instantly – and the cause of the problem is rarely the same issue twice because we fix the problems. Of course none of that makes LoL available to play, but our top men are also working on improving the server stability night and day.

      – RiotChris

      First of all, I want offer my thanks for your response, Chris. On the official forums it’s one thing – players either go there or they don’t, and it doesn’t exactly feel personal when that’s the only place we see an official response. You guys (meaning the readers, not Riot) have chosen this blog and continually choose to come back, which has made the time I spend writing here infinitely worthwhile and interesting, and the fact that Chris not only reads here, but decided to comment does feel personal, sounds informed, and seems empathetic. Despite a few blunders, I do think Riot is among best developers around in terms of community involvement and outreach, and anyone who has spent time in the customer service industry knows what a horrible, mad bitch of a task it is to keep people happy.

      President Marc Merrill’s response further edified the good vibrations RiotChris delivered with a detailed look at the source of the recent issues and the efforts currently underway to resolve those issues (make sure you read his post as well as the service post he links). I had a good feeling that LoL was growing fast. I had no idea it was more than doubling the game’s audience every three months (which could mean a lot of things, but empirically means the game is exploding). That kind of growth would be hard for any young developer to keep up with, and it would be unfair to Riot to not bear in mind the company’s youth.

      The takeaway message here is “stick with it.” I think we can all agree that the game is a lot of fun – it’s complex, exhilarating, and interesting enough that I can write about it every single day, and often in a positive light. Though the current stability issues are frustrating, even infuriating at times, there are “top men” working on them, and those top men really are invested and interested in what we, as a community, have to say.

      N.B. – I’m really sorry about the delays on posts this past week. Moving in North Carolina in late August is horrible, but it will be done by the middle of next week. Things will return to normal. I will be my typically witty, charming, and timely self, soon.

      Development, Editorial, league of legends, News

      All Roads Return to WoW: The decision

      July 6, 2010 /

      WotLK loading screen.

      As you all know, I play a ton of League of Legends. The game has a lot of what I’m looking for in my ideal gaming experience – complexity, challenge, variety, frequent updates, and on and on. I still find myself craving something different from time to time, though, and most recently I’ve been wanting to play an MMO.

      The obvious solution was to resub to WoW – I had played Warcraft at the same immersion level as I played LoL between my 600th and 900th win, which is to say every day, a couple hours a day. But I left WoW for a reason, a lot of them actually, so I did a bit of research and decided to give a couple other games a chance.

      A friend from LoL recommended I try Global Agenda, a futuristic dystopian MMO. It’s had some decent reviews and I liked the idea behind a couple of the classes. Unfortunately, the magic wasn’t there. For me to put in the time it takes to learn all the new mechanics and intricacies an MMO brings (I can’t do it casually – moderation just isn’t my strong suit) I need to be hooked and hooked early. Global Agenda couldn’t do that. The first five levels are a scripted intro in which you don’t see any other players. You get dumped into a small city at the end, from which you can queue for battleground-style missions with other players. That’s pretty much it. I know there are a few more options as you level up, but for the most part you end up standing around a city, staring at other characters who, for the most part, look exactly alike. Not worth my $50.

      There wasn’t much else out there. I had tried Dungeons and Dragons Online some time back and never really gotten into it. I picked up Age of Conan and Warhammer back when I was falling out of love with WoW and they both just made me go back to Warcraft. Reading over their current news, patches, and forums, I realized they were probably the same drab graphical and mechanical experiences that turned me away in the first place (seriously, can anyone actually tell what is happening in your typical Warhammer fight? Fix your spell animations, Mythic).

      There was really only one option left, and it was the first one I had thought up. Go back to WoW. Oh, those dreaded words. It felt almost immediately like I was giving in to a habit I had managed to kick. I felt beaten, my resolve trumped by Blizzard’s finely-tuned skinner box. In truth, though, I had a lot of fun with WoW, and I still have faith that WoW can be an enjoyable game for casuals and hardcore players alike.

      With that in mind, I’ll be mixing this column in with the usual League of Legends posts, covering my impressions on a return to WoW after more than a year away from the game (even a year ago I only played for a couple months, returning from a short hiatus). So far it’s been a lot of fun. Stick around to see if that can continue.

      All Roads Return to WoW, Editorial, MMO

      Newer posts »

      © 2026 Fearless Gamer

      Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑