League of Legends is a free to play PvP arena game in the style of DotA, otherwise known as a 'MOBA' if you're keeping up with the acronyms the kids are using nowadays. Being free to play, the major barrier to entry is the crippling fear of entering a game and having no idea what to do, resulting in some 12 year old kid hurling various expletives in your direction and causing your e-peen to shrivel up into a ball and cry.
Luckily though, I am here to tell you how to not make a complete embarrassment of yourself.
Character selection: When you play solo queue (unranked matches - you will not earn the privilege to play ranked matches until you've got a couple of hundred games under your belt) you will find that most people instantly lock in whichever character they feel like playing with no regard for what may help the team towards victory. So, you can dramatically increase your odds of winning by plugging up holes in the lineup.
The most important thing is to make sure your team has a "tank". I use quotes because this is just a label - the other team is not going to actually be beating on the "tank" unless they are stupid. Rather, the tank has enough survivability to deter being beaten on, allowing him to get up close and use skills that soften up or disable key characters on the other team.
An easy tank to play that is considered very effective even in top ranked PvP is Rammus, the armordillo (has naturally high armor as you can imagine). For a dirt-cheap option you can try Nunu the Yeti. My personal favourite is Cho'Gath, who can eat things to grow ginormous (including other players).
The next most important thing that I see commonly left out of team lineups is a ranged physical character. This character's main job is to let the team push down turrets, the automated defense towers that regularly dot the path towards the enemy's base. Without a ranged physical character, your team will end up milling around just outside tower range, scratching their heads and wondering why they can't push anything down, until the enemy gets their act together and wipes them. Your secondary job playing this character is to farm up an enormous amount of minions, getting you enough gold so that if the game goes long you will become an unstoppable DPS machine.
The best ranged physical character to recommend is Ashe. She's considered 'top tier', is cheap, you get to try her in the tutorial, she has one of the best initiating skills in the game, and she's pretty easy to play.
Next, the team will need to have a magical caster. These have high burst damage and are important for drilling down squishy types on the other team. These seem not to be in short supply in the general population. A popular past-time for the common or garden variety noobs is to lock in as many of these squishy characters as possible within the first two seconds of loading into the lobby screen. But if by chance nobody locks one in, you should go right ahead.
Laning vs jungling: The characters mentioned above will often be 'laning'. The most commonly played map is a 5v5 setting, with 3 lanes. An endless army of minions spawn from each base and stroll down one of these 3 lanes, striving to reach the enemy base, but inevitably being converted into gold/XP by hungrily waiting players on the other team. But the maths doesn't quite add up - with only 3 lanes, we will have one person soloing and two people in each of the other lanes.
The solo player levels up a lot faster because they don't have to share XP. So it's desirable to maximize the number of people soloing. To gain an additional solo spot, one player often levels up instead in the 'jungle'. This is imaginatively referred to as 'jungling'. This player moves around farming a gradually respawning series of neutral mobs that stand around in between the 3 lanes. You will note the positions of these mobs by little skull and crossbones symbols on the minimap. This player will periodically emerge from the jungle to gank unsuspecting players.
I don't recommend jungling in your first few games because it's quite easy to die and thus defeat the purpose of this post, which is to prevent you from embarrassing yourself. So wait until you've seen somebody else do it. When starting out I'd recommend that the easiest/fastest character to jungle with is Warwick, the werewolf, because of his combination of damage, healing, and gank-oriented skills. Whoever you jungle with, bring Smite from the collection of summoner skills to ensure that you remain high enough in level to succeed in ganks. Typical starting items are Cloth armor and 5 health potions.
If your team composition has one of each of the above when in solo queue, it will be a small miracle and you will be well on your way to a cruisy win.
Carrys: The players who are given solo lanes will level up faster and get more gold from minions. These players then become your most valuable assets - help them, protect them, and they will "carry" the team to victory.
Summoner skills: Every player chooses 2 from a pool of common skills regardless of your character. For mana-hungry characters I often take Ghost (run buff) and Clarity (mana recharge). Ignite or Exhaust are good on offensive characters. Flash is a nice escape skill on any character. Teleport is useful if you have a solo lane and can't afford to return to base to heal and then run all the way back (since you'll probably lose your tower if you do).
Communication: When you are fighting against the enemy and they disappear from your view, they might be running off to go and surprise your unsuspecting team mates in another lane. If you type 'mia' (Missing In Action) into the chat when they disappear, you will absolve yourself of your minimal obligations, preventing people from raging at you when they die (actually they will still rage at you, but at least you'll know it's not your fault). You can give additional warning by clicking on the minimap ('pinging'). When the player you thought was missing in action returns, type 're'.
Items: There are recommended items for each champion which will get you by in your first couple of games. If you want to stray from these, take note of items that particularly effective players on either team seem to dominate with. You can view items on members of both teams by pressing TAB (this only updates for enemies when someone on your team has seen their character since their last purchase). You'll pretty soon build up a good idea of which sorts of items are good for which sorts of characters.
Brush: Maps are dotted with brush that you can hide in. When in the brush, players outside the brush can not see you. This can lead to comical ambushes where the entire enemy team comes charging out of the brush like clowns from a tiny car. Some skills are able to be aimed at brush and will make an audible sound if they connect with another player. If you don't have a brush-checking skill such as this and you are not sure where the players in your lane have gotten to, they are probably hiding in the brush.
Important neutral monsters: Several monsters around the map give very useful benefits when you kill them. These monsters always spawn in the same location. 'Blue' or 'Golem' refers to a buff that gives huge mana regeneration and cooldown duration. 'Red' or 'Lizard' adds damage and slowdown to attacks. The Dragon gives a nice bonus in gold to the entire team. The Baron is the most difficult and is generally not attempted until your team is level 15+ - it gives a massive bonus to damage and stats, and is usually taken by the winning team to allow them to steamroll and win the game.
Wards: Wards are cheap and ridiculously effective. New players never buy them because they don't know where to place them. Useful places include the Dragon and Baron mentioned above. Generally if you want to push a tower, placing a ward in the most likely place that a gank will come from is a good idea too. Pink wards can see other wards, and they can see invisible players.
Alright, that oughta do for now. Off with ye, go forth and perhaps now avoid complete and utter failure :D
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Sad panda
Courtesy of Ravious I see that there are no ally targeted skills in GW2.
Ergh.
Remember how we've talked about the revolutionary things that Guild Wars brought to the MMO combat table? I shall quote myself:
"Guild Wars introduced the concept of "Protection" skills, which are cast on allies before damage is inflicted on them, with the goal of avoiding said damage. These types of skills are much more efficient than healing skills, and are really good for the game because they add an extra layer of depth and skill in terms of reading the play of the other team."
On the plus side my rapidly plummeting hopes will minimize my disappointment on release.
Ergh.
Remember how we've talked about the revolutionary things that Guild Wars brought to the MMO combat table? I shall quote myself:
"Guild Wars introduced the concept of "Protection" skills, which are cast on allies before damage is inflicted on them, with the goal of avoiding said damage. These types of skills are much more efficient than healing skills, and are really good for the game because they add an extra layer of depth and skill in terms of reading the play of the other team."
On the plus side my rapidly plummeting hopes will minimize my disappointment on release.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Stopped playing, now playing
It's been about 2 months since my last post. Have I been too busy with work, family and friends? Did real life get in the way? Pfff, hell no! Crimson and I have been gaming it up as per usual.
StarCraft II has been put on the backburner for the moment. As much as my inner Achiever wanted to reach diamond ranking across all categories (1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4), it was starting to get a little stressful. I prefer team settings, where the multitude of failures I make have less of an impact on the game :) I will come back to it in a couple of months as it's still great fun, but a break was in order. With the equivalent of "rest XP" in the ranking system, I know that I'll be able to fly up the ranks fairly quickly when I do (after sucking horribly for my first 10 games or so, I'm sure).
Next was Minecraft. I haven't written anything about Minecraft yet because I didn't want to jump on the "me too" bandwagon. But Minecraft, in all its blocky, low-res glory, is probably the best game that I saw in 2010. Even a cold-hearted PvP addict such as I was able to revel in the sheer beauty of exploration, the desperation of survival (and claustrophobia), and the opportunity to realize anything that my feeble imagination could concoct (somebody made a COMPUTER in the game, for crying out loud. A freaking computer!). Some of you may have tried the multiplayer and seen that it was a buggy mess (for example, you couldn't die). The major bugs there seem to have been fixed as of around the end of November, and together with Crimson and the Melfette the three of us have whiled away some merry hours in our own private sandbox.
At the moment though, the game du jour is League of Legends, one of the ever growing number of Defense of the Ancients clones out there. I had tried to play the oh-so-wittily acronymed "LoL" a few months ago, but an atrocious account registration process that kept forgetting my details drove me away. Crimson, ever the glutton for punishment, picked it up again a month ago and insisted that it was good fun, and so I gave it one more shot.
League of Legends is absolutely nutty fun thanks to the ridiculous freedom that the artists seem to have been given with the character design. There are ~70 different characters currently in the game. Despite a lot of overlap in function they each have a really unique personality or "feel" to them... from the little boy riding a giant yeti, to little orphan Annie and her ferocious teddy bear come to life named Tibbers, to the giant demon that eats other players and grows ridiculously huge, to the psychotic homicidal maniacally giggling clown, to the freaky fricking scarecrow, there is really something to tickle everybody's fancy.
I'll write some more about LoL in coming posts, but for now suffice it to say that if you enjoy DotA style games or are curious about them, this is a good starting point. There are a lot of gameplay design features that I preferred about Demigod, but at the end of the day League of Legends has two important advantages over Demigod:
1) There are actually people playing it because they did not botch their launch
2) There is a match-making system, meaning that you are actually allowed to learn how to play the game without people raging at you (any more than they do in any other PvP game, anyway :D)
The game itself is free so really is worth checking out. The characters are unlockable through either money or a form of in-game experience points that you receive for playing games (bonuses for winning). You will be given enough points to unlock one of the cheaper (and easier to use) characters right from the get-go, but most importantly there are 10 free champions that get rotated each week so that you can try always be trying somebody new. You'll develop your favourites though, and I'm not ashamed to say that I've now plonked down about $70 on the thing, and consider them pennies well spent.
StarCraft II has been put on the backburner for the moment. As much as my inner Achiever wanted to reach diamond ranking across all categories (1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4), it was starting to get a little stressful. I prefer team settings, where the multitude of failures I make have less of an impact on the game :) I will come back to it in a couple of months as it's still great fun, but a break was in order. With the equivalent of "rest XP" in the ranking system, I know that I'll be able to fly up the ranks fairly quickly when I do (after sucking horribly for my first 10 games or so, I'm sure).
Next was Minecraft. I haven't written anything about Minecraft yet because I didn't want to jump on the "me too" bandwagon. But Minecraft, in all its blocky, low-res glory, is probably the best game that I saw in 2010. Even a cold-hearted PvP addict such as I was able to revel in the sheer beauty of exploration, the desperation of survival (and claustrophobia), and the opportunity to realize anything that my feeble imagination could concoct (somebody made a COMPUTER in the game, for crying out loud. A freaking computer!). Some of you may have tried the multiplayer and seen that it was a buggy mess (for example, you couldn't die). The major bugs there seem to have been fixed as of around the end of November, and together with Crimson and the Melfette the three of us have whiled away some merry hours in our own private sandbox.
At the moment though, the game du jour is League of Legends, one of the ever growing number of Defense of the Ancients clones out there. I had tried to play the oh-so-wittily acronymed "LoL" a few months ago, but an atrocious account registration process that kept forgetting my details drove me away. Crimson, ever the glutton for punishment, picked it up again a month ago and insisted that it was good fun, and so I gave it one more shot.
League of Legends is absolutely nutty fun thanks to the ridiculous freedom that the artists seem to have been given with the character design. There are ~70 different characters currently in the game. Despite a lot of overlap in function they each have a really unique personality or "feel" to them... from the little boy riding a giant yeti, to little orphan Annie and her ferocious teddy bear come to life named Tibbers, to the giant demon that eats other players and grows ridiculously huge, to the psychotic homicidal maniacally giggling clown, to the freaky fricking scarecrow, there is really something to tickle everybody's fancy.
I'll write some more about LoL in coming posts, but for now suffice it to say that if you enjoy DotA style games or are curious about them, this is a good starting point. There are a lot of gameplay design features that I preferred about Demigod, but at the end of the day League of Legends has two important advantages over Demigod:
1) There are actually people playing it because they did not botch their launch
2) There is a match-making system, meaning that you are actually allowed to learn how to play the game without people raging at you (any more than they do in any other PvP game, anyway :D)
The game itself is free so really is worth checking out. The characters are unlockable through either money or a form of in-game experience points that you receive for playing games (bonuses for winning). You will be given enough points to unlock one of the cheaper (and easier to use) characters right from the get-go, but most importantly there are 10 free champions that get rotated each week so that you can try always be trying somebody new. You'll develop your favourites though, and I'm not ashamed to say that I've now plonked down about $70 on the thing, and consider them pennies well spent.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
We're #1, We're #1!!
So what have Crimson and I been playing these last few weeks, with nary a posting between us? Two things:
1) MineCraft for a while - we're waiting on the multiplayer to becomes patched so that you aren't invulnerable to being poked at by zombies (much less atmospheric than the single player to me).
2) StarCraft II:
As you can see, we have climbed our way up through the ranks and made it to #1 of some Diamond league. There are many Diamond leagues so it's not like we're #1 in the world. It would be disappointing if we were, because we have gotten here through the use of the following build:
Yes, cheese. We have tried many flavors of cheese in our ruthless quest for the top. Such cheap tactics will only get you so far as silver-gold league if you're playing in 1v1, but in 2v2 it seems that the combined might of focused cheese is nigh on unstoppable.
So what is our favourite flavour of cheese? It's not very complicated. Crimson is a Protoss, and very sneakily lays a pylon near an enemy. He then lays down Gateways and starts pumping out Zealots. I am a Zerg and follow a "9 pool" Zergling pump with a Queen and Zergling speed boost as soon as possible.
Frequently, our early aggression is scouted by the enemy. Usually, this makes little difference, as we proceed to focus fire one of them down and then the other.
Fear the might of our 30 APM (actions per minute - a common metric of measuring how Korean somebody is.... pro 1v1 players have somewhere in the vicinity of 200 APM)... fear our hotkeyed production buildings, and our pushing of 1-A-click. Rawr.
1) MineCraft for a while - we're waiting on the multiplayer to becomes patched so that you aren't invulnerable to being poked at by zombies (much less atmospheric than the single player to me).
2) StarCraft II:
As you can see, we have climbed our way up through the ranks and made it to #1 of some Diamond league. There are many Diamond leagues so it's not like we're #1 in the world. It would be disappointing if we were, because we have gotten here through the use of the following build:
Yes, cheese. We have tried many flavors of cheese in our ruthless quest for the top. Such cheap tactics will only get you so far as silver-gold league if you're playing in 1v1, but in 2v2 it seems that the combined might of focused cheese is nigh on unstoppable.
So what is our favourite flavour of cheese? It's not very complicated. Crimson is a Protoss, and very sneakily lays a pylon near an enemy. He then lays down Gateways and starts pumping out Zealots. I am a Zerg and follow a "9 pool" Zergling pump with a Queen and Zergling speed boost as soon as possible.
Frequently, our early aggression is scouted by the enemy. Usually, this makes little difference, as we proceed to focus fire one of them down and then the other.
Fear the might of our 30 APM (actions per minute - a common metric of measuring how Korean somebody is.... pro 1v1 players have somewhere in the vicinity of 200 APM)... fear our hotkeyed production buildings, and our pushing of 1-A-click. Rawr.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Langdell's comeuppance
Courtesy of Chaos Edge, this little gem should please anybody following the professional patent troll saga that is "Dr" Tim Langdell.
Quoth the judge:
"...given the suspect nature of Dr. Langdell’s representations to both the USPTO and the Court concerning plaintiff’s current and future sales and business activities, it is an open question whether plaintiff’s business activities legitimately extend beyond trolling various gaming-related industries for licensing opportunities."
First use of the word 'trolling' in a legal document? Fantastic.
It's a shame that it took the bottomless coffers of EA's legal team to shut this fool up, and that an innocent and talented indie was powerless to fight it. I'm not sure how "Dr." Langdell could have been so stupid as to take on EA, but I'm glad that the bigger bully in the playground ROTFL-stomped him.
Hopefully now somebody will follow up all the fraud allegations and put this gentleman out of commission permanently.
Quoth the judge:
"...given the suspect nature of Dr. Langdell’s representations to both the USPTO and the Court concerning plaintiff’s current and future sales and business activities, it is an open question whether plaintiff’s business activities legitimately extend beyond trolling various gaming-related industries for licensing opportunities."
First use of the word 'trolling' in a legal document? Fantastic.
It's a shame that it took the bottomless coffers of EA's legal team to shut this fool up, and that an innocent and talented indie was powerless to fight it. I'm not sure how "Dr." Langdell could have been so stupid as to take on EA, but I'm glad that the bigger bully in the playground ROTFL-stomped him.
Hopefully now somebody will follow up all the fraud allegations and put this gentleman out of commission permanently.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Commitment issues
I used to worry about whether XXX MMO would offer "enough" "endgame" "content" (whatever those words mean).
These days I mostly... don't care. I don't feel anymore that I need to assess a new MMO the way I would a potential mate, and make sure that we have a '5 year plan' together. The relationships that I pursue have become of a more casual nature and I seem to have much more fun this way. Maybe once a year I find a new one that adds itself to the permanent roster, but such relationships are not exclusive - the lass in question finds herself instead part of a gaming harem, a bevy of beauties that are at my beck and call. On the other hand if she shows herself to be the "high maintenance" variety that demands my attention to the exclusion of all others, she will find herself discarded by the roadside rather quickly.
These days I mostly... don't care. I don't feel anymore that I need to assess a new MMO the way I would a potential mate, and make sure that we have a '5 year plan' together. The relationships that I pursue have become of a more casual nature and I seem to have much more fun this way. Maybe once a year I find a new one that adds itself to the permanent roster, but such relationships are not exclusive - the lass in question finds herself instead part of a gaming harem, a bevy of beauties that are at my beck and call. On the other hand if she shows herself to be the "high maintenance" variety that demands my attention to the exclusion of all others, she will find herself discarded by the roadside rather quickly.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
StarCraft 2 Update
I've been casually playing SC2 for around 7 weeks and I dare say that I've become quite addicted to it's PvP. I've mainly been playing Protoss, but I've also given the other races a fair go.
I'm still only in Bronze League with 1v1 and 3v3, but I'm happy to say that Melf and I managed to get to Silver League with 2v2. We also made it to the top of our division. The matching system in SC2 is very impressive. It's rare that we will go for more than 3 wins without being matched up against a superior opponent. Some of the games are so close that it literally comes down to the probes/SCVs/drones.
StarCraft 2 is all about the rush tactics. Most of the games I win, are because I've rushed an opponent at the start crippling them in some way so that I can destroy them on the next wave (if not the initial rush). I've learnt to use quite a few different rush tactics, but my favourite is still the cannon rush. It's not really that hard to beat, but if you execute it correctly it can be an instant match winner. I like to consider executing a perfect cannon rush as a form of art. In the first 4 minutes of the game, you have to sneak a probe into their base and then warp in a Pylon unnoticed. Then you get one Photon Cannon operational and slowly creep into range of their base. At such an early stage in the game, there are no units that can destroy the cannons before they destroy their main building. Once the main building is down, they can no longer collect resources and it's GG.
Melf and have been employing a dual cannon rush for our 2v2 games with high success. The only downside, is that if your foe beats your cannon rush, it can take a while to build up a second offense. It's pretty much GG if you can't get a base going before they rush you with their first wave of units. Still fun though.
The key to winning in SC2 is being able to adapt to your opponents tactics. If you're good enough you can greatly influence their tactics and thus counter them. For example: A game I played recently was against someone playing Terran. Right from the start I devoted all my resources to building Void Rays (an air unit). They absolutely decimated his tanks and Marauders, which prevented him from getting the upper hand in the match. I knew that he/she would build Vikings (mostly air-to-air) to combat my Void Rays, so I stopped building them and began pumping out Stalkers (ranged unit). I won because his Vikings couldn't easily attack my Stalkers. The point here is that by building certain units, I was able to anticipate what units my opponent would build to counter and thus counter that. Confused? It's the fast decision making and micro management skills that makes SC2 so challenging and thus rewarding.
The other cool thing is that the game replay system allows you to view your previous games and thus learn from your mistakes. It's like a virtual level up. In fact the replay system is so awesome, that Melf and I have been emailing each other replays of our 1v1 games and analyzing them later. I find it really interesting to watch how people think.
In summary, I'd like to say that SC2 is the TF2 of RTS. If you are serious about PvP and haven't tried SC2 yet, then what are you waiting for? You don't need to be scared about getting into the PvP, since the matching system will always make sure you only play against opponents of relatively equal skill. In my opinion, SC2 is a bottle of adrenaline waiting to be opened.
I'm still only in Bronze League with 1v1 and 3v3, but I'm happy to say that Melf and I managed to get to Silver League with 2v2. We also made it to the top of our division. The matching system in SC2 is very impressive. It's rare that we will go for more than 3 wins without being matched up against a superior opponent. Some of the games are so close that it literally comes down to the probes/SCVs/drones.
StarCraft 2 is all about the rush tactics. Most of the games I win, are because I've rushed an opponent at the start crippling them in some way so that I can destroy them on the next wave (if not the initial rush). I've learnt to use quite a few different rush tactics, but my favourite is still the cannon rush. It's not really that hard to beat, but if you execute it correctly it can be an instant match winner. I like to consider executing a perfect cannon rush as a form of art. In the first 4 minutes of the game, you have to sneak a probe into their base and then warp in a Pylon unnoticed. Then you get one Photon Cannon operational and slowly creep into range of their base. At such an early stage in the game, there are no units that can destroy the cannons before they destroy their main building. Once the main building is down, they can no longer collect resources and it's GG.
Melf and have been employing a dual cannon rush for our 2v2 games with high success. The only downside, is that if your foe beats your cannon rush, it can take a while to build up a second offense. It's pretty much GG if you can't get a base going before they rush you with their first wave of units. Still fun though.
The key to winning in SC2 is being able to adapt to your opponents tactics. If you're good enough you can greatly influence their tactics and thus counter them. For example: A game I played recently was against someone playing Terran. Right from the start I devoted all my resources to building Void Rays (an air unit). They absolutely decimated his tanks and Marauders, which prevented him from getting the upper hand in the match. I knew that he/she would build Vikings (mostly air-to-air) to combat my Void Rays, so I stopped building them and began pumping out Stalkers (ranged unit). I won because his Vikings couldn't easily attack my Stalkers. The point here is that by building certain units, I was able to anticipate what units my opponent would build to counter and thus counter that. Confused? It's the fast decision making and micro management skills that makes SC2 so challenging and thus rewarding.
The other cool thing is that the game replay system allows you to view your previous games and thus learn from your mistakes. It's like a virtual level up. In fact the replay system is so awesome, that Melf and I have been emailing each other replays of our 1v1 games and analyzing them later. I find it really interesting to watch how people think.
In summary, I'd like to say that SC2 is the TF2 of RTS. If you are serious about PvP and haven't tried SC2 yet, then what are you waiting for? You don't need to be scared about getting into the PvP, since the matching system will always make sure you only play against opponents of relatively equal skill. In my opinion, SC2 is a bottle of adrenaline waiting to be opened.
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