Category: league of legends (Page 41 of 163)

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

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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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Champ of the Week: Fun with Flying Kicks

July 21, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

Acolyte Lee Sin.

When Lee Sin first launched I was totally underwhelmed. He just didn’t seem to have that special something that makes a champion fun. He had all the right stuff – decent damage, excellent mobility, cult status with the community – but it was still missing. He was just too…boring.

Things have since improved. He caught a little buff here and there and I’ve found him a bit more enjoyable, but I’m still having trouble really getting into his playstyle. There are a couple of basic problems. First, I don’t have a clue how to build him. So much of his damage comes from steady, consistent attacks that it seems like just about everything works (except maybe attack speed). Wriggles? Sure. Sheen? Yeah, why not. Bloodthirster? Some of my best games so far. But I’ve also worked with Ghostblade and Frozen Mallet and Sunfire and the list goes on. Lee Sin doesn’t feel particularly good at any one thing, and for me that’s just not very enjoyable.

It’s not that I’m doing poorly, either. I’ve had some bad games, but I’ve also had some pretty incredible games. I went 12-1 today with a Wriggles -> Bloodthirster build. It was a decent game, but thinking back on it I realize part of what makes Lee Sin a bit less enjoyable than other champions. He seems to best on the outskirts of a fight, waiting for that one moment to dive into the fray and land his AoE slow. From there, it’s pretty much just praying that the enemy splits up enough that your Resonant Strike can land on your desired target.

I’ll have more thoughts later in the week I’m sure. Keep checking back, and if you have some other build ideas, let me know. I’m still not sure what’s best.

Champ of the Week, league of legends

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Riot releases Wukong gameplay video

July 20, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

In preparation for the Monkey King’s release, Riot put together a preview video of his abilities and mechanics. Wukong is a melee DPS that looks as though he’ll be most effective building tanky. He also has enough mobility that I could see him working well as a straight damage dealer. Before I get into too much discussion about his skills let’s take a look at his kit.

Stone Skin: Wukong gains armor and magic resistance the more enemies are nearby .

Crushing Blow: On next hit, Wukong deals extra damage and decreases the armor of his target.

Decoy: Wukong goes invisible and leaves a decoy in his place. After a short delay, the decoy spins, dealing damage to nearby targets.

Nimbus Strike: Wukong dashes to an enemy champion and deals damage. If there are multiple targets in the area, Wukong will make up to two decoys that will also dash to nearby targets.

Cyclone: Wukong spins to win, dealing damage in an AoE and knocking up enemy units caught in the cyclone.

I’m not sure what it is, but I’m having a serious case of champion fatigue with Wukong. He doesn’t seem to bring anything that the League really needs and I think he has the potential to be brutally overpowered. Leona was exciting because she looked like a return to sanity with regard to tanks. Wukong looks like just about every other melee DPS out there. Dash? Check. Armor Debuff? Check. Knockup or stun? Check, and some invisibility for good measure. Continue reading »

Champions, Development, 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.