Category: Current Affairs (Page 5 of 17)

Community unhappy with Kayle remake

July 24, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

If you’ve been on the forums over the weekend you’ve probably noticed the pile of threads about the Kayle “remake.” I use quotation marks because, c’mon, a new passive and some late game nerfs and we’re calling it a remake? This is what took six months? The majority of the community seems as unexcited as I am. I think there are a couple reasons.

First, there is precious little to get excited about in the game right now. Everyone is waiting on Season 2 or waiting on Magma Chamber news, or waiting for something that changes gameplay in a significant way. The Kayle remake was at least something to get pumped up about in the interim. Even if it went well, though, it would just pull another champion into viability, which really doesn’t do a whole lot for the game’s longevity.

I think the biggest reason people are upset with the remake is that it’s going to be very easy to make Kayle either under or overpowered but nearly impossible to balance her. The fact that she can heal, speed boost, and make herself invulnerable means her carry potential better be in the toilet, but Riot is trying to give her something like 75 percent carry, 75 percent support power. While I think the idea of condensing two roles onto one champion is a good one, I’m not sure the game supports the change, at least not in its current state.

Supports are already a huge balance problem. Giving a support some carry power doesn’t resolve the issue, it makes things worse. Take away too much of Kayle’s damage, though, and she becomes horrendously unfun. She’s a terrible early game farmer as it is, which seems to point her toward support, but she doesn’t have the skills to truly support a team as needed.

I think Riot would have done well to scrap her kit entirely, think about what they really liked about the kit and kept it, and then built a champion from there. Is a targeted nuke/slow really an exciting ability? No – scrap it. Same for her ranged skill and her passive, old or new. Now you’ve got a champion with a heal/speed boost and a potent shield. It’s a nice setup for teamfighting, but how do you make her enjoyable in lane? Working with her existing kit makes for a really lackluster buff to an already underplayed champion.

Current Affairs, league of legends

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Is tournament play killing LoL?

July 22, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

LoL Tournaments.

For my Champ of the Week features I always try to play a mix of normal and ranked games because I think it’s important to see how each champion plays in the different environments. In my experience, ranked games tend to be a bit more focused – teams attempt to pick solid team comps, fill each of the roles, and at least someone on the team will try to ward and control dragon. Normal games are a bit less organized – I see very little warding, team comp is kind of all over the place, and map control isn’t as important as getting kills. On the whole, I think normal games tend to be much more fast paced and much more fun, but that’s been changing and I think the tournaments are to blame.

Lately my normal games have been against focused players with tournament comps. I just got out of a game against a Rammus/Anivia/Xin Zhao/Lee Sin/Soraka. Was it a perfect comp? No, but it was way out of my team’s league, and the fact that they also had Clairvoyance made it even worse. The game went long, mostly because I think it was full of decent players, but it was insanely boring. Let’s face it, the cautious play seen in high-ELO matches just isn’t that fun in practice. Kill counts are painfully low and most of the game is a dance about who will initiate a fight. That’s not what got me into League of Legends in the first. I fell in love with LoL because it was active and engaging and rewarded aggressive gameplay.

I’m not complaining that the game is getting more challenging. In fact, I would love it if that were the case. I would love to have closer matches. I would love to see less surrender votes. Instead, I’m seeing slow tedious games that make me reconsider playing more than a game in each sitting. The excitement is rapidly disappearing from the game as more players turn to the tournament meta.

The only cause I can see for the shift in gameplay is the accessibility of tournament streams. I think it’s wonderful that League’s competitive game is getting a lot of attention, but it’s making the lower ELOs a boring mess to play. As this dominant metagame trickles further down the ELO chart it becomes increasingly important for Riot to make major adjustments to the game. Support has to get nerfed. Tanky DPS has to go away. Riot needs to address all of the attrition reduction mechanics in the game, not just the new ones.

What do you think? Are you seeing the same comps every game? Does the game feel less exciting to you or is it just me?

Current Affairs, Editorial, league of legends

boring gameplay boring games competitive comp competitive picks competitive play elo gameplay changes metagame normal games normal vs ranked picks and bans ranked games tournament play tournaments

Jungle changes on the way

July 21, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

Guinsoo held a Q&A session on the Chinese version of Twitter in which he talked about some upcoming changes to jungling. Jungling has grown into a staple of the meta game, to the point that I almost never see a game without at least one jungler, and most games have two. In some ways, jungling can be blamed for a lot of the passive play in the game. Junglers are the reason pushing is so frowned upon. Junglers push back aggressive play with ganking, and a big part of a successful gank comes from the slow on lizard buff, but that’s about to change.

As Guinsoo has it, red buff will be going from a slow on target to a haste, granting the jungler extra killing power without offering too much utility. I think it’s a great change. I’ve often thought that jungle buffs last entirely too long. I would much rather see a short duration, short respawn time on the buffs than the current long duration, but that’s not really the point here. The point is that jungling is being looked at in some significant ways.

Unfortunately the changes are a long ways off. The forums caught wind of the changes and started up the QQmobile, so Riot has stepped in to reiterate several times that the changes are in very early testing.

I really hope the testing goes well. I would bet that 50 percent of my games go stagnant around the 20 minute mark, the other 50 being the early surrenders. At 20 minutes you’re usually looking at the third full jungle clear, maybe waiting on the second dragon spawn of the game and a couple turrets might be down. At that point it’s still way too dangerous to overextend, so teams just stand around waiting for lanes to push. It’s insanely boring, and something I hope we’ll see change sooner or later.

Current Affairs, league of legends, News

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Riot struggles to maintain server stability

July 19, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

For the second time in as many days, Riot had a hard time keeping League of Legends stable. The servers were set to busy sometime this afternoon after recovering from a critical error. Players were none to pleased, as you might imagine. The forums exploded just before servers ground to a halt with posts like “Stability Issues 7/19 – reserving this for Riot” and “Want to know how many times VALVE Servers have crashed?”

I can understand the frustration. Last night’s FG LoL Monday was cut short due to service issues. Two days of problems are somewhat rare for Riot, but certainly still annoying when they happen. When coupled with the extended Leona release window and the downtime around her launch, Riot has a woeful lack of positive buzz around League of Legends. I’m sure the game will bounce back, but it would be very cool for the company to do some things to drive a little positive interest in the League.

This isn’t some “Riot doesn’t do anything” post – just today they’re bringing down the EU servers to split them into two regions to improve stability. It’s a good move, but it’s almost invisible to the player (except for the downside of not being able to play with friends across the EU servers). Riot could do some little things to help keep League of Legends players happy during the lull between Season One and Season Two.

The easiest suggestion would be an IP-boost weekend. Those seemed to happen fairly often in the game’s first year, but I haven’t seen one in a long time. Why not give double IP for a weekend here and there leading up to the Season Two launch? It could easily drive sales for other IP boosts – 4x IP rocks – and encourage people to spend some extra time online over the weekend.

What about a skin giveaway? Hell, they could even tie it in with a livestreamed tournament or event. Just make a reusable code for the store that’s shown on-screen at the end of a tourney stream and make it available for 24 hours after the tourney. People love exclusivity with skins and it would be a great way to drive traffic for a specific tournament. Riot could even use the stream they’ve been promoting during server downtime as a stage for this.

In short, Riot needs to meet the concerns of the player base head on. Show the people crowing about HoN or DotA 2 something that says, ‘hey, we hear your concerns, we know you could be playing other games, thanks for sticking with us.’ I love LoL, but Riot has to do more than say that they’re the most player-focused company in the industry. It’s time show it.

Current Affairs, league of legends, News

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What’s your top priority for the League?

July 15, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

This post started as a brief thought the other day and has since been echoed in forum posts by other players and an email chain between a couple of my friends. League of Legends is definitely in a bit of a lull after the end of the Season One Circuit. Dreamhack was a very cool event, and Riot did a nice job getting players excited to see the top teams compete. It was an event that made me hungry for more, but my excitement has waned a bit over the past month and I’m not alone.

There have been quite a few threads criticizing Riot lately, some of which have received very thorough response. Most every communication from Riot involves a breakdown of priorities and why it’s hard to put some features over others on the to-do list. Players experience the game very differently depending on level and skill, so how can Riot prioritize one group’s expectations over another?

I’m curious what your top priority would be when it comes to LoL. You can only pick one, so pick carefully. I’d like to suggest avoiding server stability because frankly, the servers are remarkably stable for a game that scaled as quickly as LoL. Also, server stability is such a tired subject I don’t think I can take much more. Give me something that you think will have a dramatic effect on the game.

For me, it’s new game modes. I loved the different game modes that were available in DotA. Hvaving different rulesets available that modify the experience of the game would add incredible replay value. Random Deathmatch would be fantastic, but I’d love to see other custom rulesets like the progressive draft we occasionally play on FG LoL Mondays. New game modes would also carry over to newer maps, should they release, giving players additional ways to enjoy the new maps.

What about you? What’s your top priority for the future of League of Legends?