Updated Eventually!

Here at Don't Click That Link Gaming, we believe in a relaxed friendly environment. Therefore we will be updating this blog as often as were in the mood to. However, we will keep it updated at least once a week.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

League of Legends

By now most of you know what League of Legends is. We started playing it a while back, before Season One. To be honest, Season One was not that big a deal for me. All it meant was the release of a new champion. At the time, we had only been playing less than a month, or maybe just over a month.

Anyway for those of you who don't know what League of Legends is, it's a strategy RTS where you control a single unit rather than an entire army. You can choose between nearly 70 champions at this point, possibly more. They add a new one every two weeks. Each champion has five abilities. One passive ability that affects the game in small ways that is always on, and four abilities that you can level up to make more powerful as the game progresses. The point of the game is to battle you're way through the enemy team and their defensive turrets so you can destroy their nexus.

The game is hard to get into because it's so unforgiving. When you die, you give the enemy team gold and experience. When you lose a turret, they gain gold and experience. If you can't effectively land the killing blow on the little minions that spawn from the enemy nexus, you won't be getting any gold. This means new players cant buy items, can't become more powerful, and will just get further and further behind.

To help alleviate the situation, every player has a summoner level. This level is a reflection of how long you have been playing, and you will usually only get matched with other players around your level. This doesn't stop an experienced player from creating a low level account and stomping on noobs, but it certainly helps. As your summoner level raises higher, so do your options of customizing your game-play. You can buy runes, and put in mastery points to give yourself small bonus' is every game. Things like a small attack damage boost to give you that early edge, or higher mana regeneration so you can cast spells more often.

When you start playing every single champion in the game is locked. Each week 10 free champions are rotated in to give new players a chance to try them out before they buy them. You buy champions with IP, which is a sort of in game currency earned after each match based on how well you did. The 10 free champions each week are chosen to fill specific roles. usually it's 2 Casters, 2 Melee, 2 Tanks, 2 Support, and 2 Range.

In game, your individual champion starts off at level one each game, and maxes out at 18. Each of the abilities have 5 levels, except your 4th ability, which only has 3. Your 4th ability, your "ultimate", is your signature move. Usually it's a hugely devastating attack. Most abilities can be used every 3-10 seconds. Most ultimate's have upwards of a 70 second cool-down. This means you have to save them for the right moment.

League of Legends attempts to be more noob-friendly than its predecessors, DotA and HoN. LoL offers a tutorial on the basics, and an advanced tutorial that give you specific instructions on how to be more effective during a match. Things like buy sight wards so you can see enemies coming before they get to you.

Game play is fun once you stop dying non-stop. You learn a champion and stick with it until you feel confident enough to move onto another one. Teamwork is essential and even one team member out of place can decide the game. Communication and awareness plays an even bigger part in the game. Mentioning when your opponent has gone missing might mean the difference between getting ambushed and killed, or pushing down an enemy turret.

If you want to play this game seriously, you NEED a good gaming group. Random players can be very very good. However, more often that not they tend to be more than unpleasant. Keeping a level head and getting along well with your teammates will help to win games. If you're getting upset at your team and yelling at them, you're not helping the team. Barking orders at people will cause people to start hating you and doing exactly the opposite of what you want.

I play this game most every day now. There are a lot of problems I have with the development team, but that's for another day. Suffice it to say they are very unprofessional and like to do things their own way regardless of what the community says or wants. Even so however, they do communicate and listen more than some others out there. After you can get passed all the rage-hards and trolls, I would give this game a solid 8/10. However problems with the dev team kind of bring it down a notch to 7/10.

1 comment:

  1. Ciatic Side Note. The Community is hit or miss. They can be the biggest meanest jerks or they can be outwardly friendly. Unfortunately, it tends to be the former then the later. It's a great game marred by some of the worst "trolls" I've ever met. Trolls are suppose to pranksters. Not jerks.

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