League of Legends

[Mooga]

So League of Legends (LoL) has completely taking over my life.
Does anyone else play?

[YomMamasHouse]

Fuck Sona, thought I'd plug that in.

[Anshinritsumai]

I play it every once in awhile, but it's not my main game. Haven't played since the major update though.

[Bridget]

I played it so much in the closed beta that my video card died.

[Dexter]

awesome concept, lost interest in the initial learning curve

[AfterShock]

I play heroes of newerth a lot which apparently is very similar.

[NeonLight]

I lost interest in LoL since Riot is a pos company.

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by NeoNL

I lost interest in LoL since Riot is a pos company.

Care to explain that? I've personally had no real issues with Riot, they update regularily, release champions regularily (which to me after a new champion release refreshes the "newness" to the game each time). They interact with the community a lot on the forums. They sponsor major tourny's for the hardcore players, with lots of prizes.

My only real issue with them, is that their server down time can be random, long and annoying, but they seem to be learning and getting better at it atleast. That, and I'd like a new map or two at some point.

I play heroes of newerth a lot which apparently is very similar

From what I hear, LoL and HoN are both derived from DoTA, I've never played DoTA or HoN, but it's like the exact same arguement as TFC, TF2 and FF.

HoN was created for the hardcore DoTA players, like FF was created for us oldschooler TFC'ers. And LoL was created for the more common average player like TF2 was created for the same in the first person world.

Get people on the forums in a debate about LoL and HoN, and you see the same damn arguements that you see here when a FF/TF2 debate comes up. It's pretty funny actually.

Sona rules all!

[NeonLight]

It's just that yeah sure Riot releases updates frequently but they leave major problems still there. Like how OP a lot of the new champs are compared to the old ones. Especially their new passives with This trait gives + to this trait and reverse.

Releasing champions as often as Riot is doing is not a bad thing... but like above why not balance every other champion before releasing shit that will wreck everything else.

It also doesn't help that they have random downtimes and shop bugs liek the RP/IP bug a few months back.

There's just small little bugs that are just overlooked by Riot and they seem to never listen to their community.

The one thing that I love from LoL compared to DotA and HoN that they actually did right was item builds (the suggestions) and correct item categories. Marxist actually just figured out a way to change the recommended items. So if you wanna know spam him.

I played my share of LoL and am considering HoN, but I don't think I could get into that elitist of a game. It is definitely a step up from the FF pickup community.

[AfterShock]

They both suffer from a really bad design decision: That poor teammates can ruin the game for your team (if someone on your team dies, the other team gets a lot stronger). Imagine if killing a newb in FF doubled your damage. People would be shouting at each other all over the place. Thats pretty much what happens in HoN a lot. It also makes people kick / leave other people at the slightest glimpse that they may be incompetent.

I dont blame the community, I blame the game design. But I still play it anyway. If there was something better I'd play that instead... (playing a bit of minecraft with my girlfriend.. hehe)

[Hammock]

You have to play LoL a lot to average out who you get teamed up with. They use a derivitive of the Elo system from chess, your Elo goes up if you win a game, it will go up more if you win a game that you were expected to loose, and your rating doesn't take as big of a hit if you loose a game you're expected to loose.

At first I called bullshit on that system, because it just seemed it didn't matter, you'd get the shittiest teammates ever, and then sometimes you'd just steam roll your oponents.

But I don't notice it as much now because my history is like, Win 2 games, Loose 2 games, Win 2 Loose 2. Sometimes I have 10 game winning streaks, and others I have 10 game loosing streaks.

They say the system is designed to give you a 50% chance of winning your games. On a game by game basis, I don't believe that, but over a large number of games (like 100) it almost seems true.

I say almost because, if you're good at the game, your win Loss ratio does go up, if you're crappy, it goes down. Also picking champs you're good at, or don't know really impact it too. I don't know what I'm currently at, but I was +90 Win/Loss at one point.

Also it's not nescessarily bad team mates that loose games once you average out your Elo. The people you're playing with can be really good players, just not with you or your teammates. There's been many games where I've been called a shit player, a noob...etc. But I know i'm not a noob and I'm pretty decent. The chemistry of your team just doesn't work for you, you just don't click.

And early game deaths mean squat, so long as you work well together as a team. There's been many times (tons actually), I used to think the same thing. Holy fuck, my teammates have died 10 times already within the first 10 minutes, and we have no kills "This game is over". Then once the laning phase is over and we start doing team fights, we just destroy the enemy team. I'm talking like within the first 20 minutes the score is 25 kills to 5 for the enemy team. Then in the next 15 minutes, the score is like 30 kills to 25 (still in the enemy team's favor), but we've destroyed their Nexus and won.

That's what I love about this game, it's rarely some lone super star being the deciding factor (unlike in FF), and it's all about how well you work together as a team.

And as for unbalanced champs being released. Yes Riot has made a few mistakes, at first they released them overpowered, peopled would bitch for a week, then they started releasing them underpowered and nobody would play them. But they're generally pretty quick in fixing the issue, if it's blatantly over powered, they've been known to Hot Fix within a few hours. Other times they just wait it out a week. But they're always constantly tweaking their champs, and their last few champions release (Vlad, Miss Fortune, Sona for example), have been pretty well rounded on the first release.

The thing that sets people off on thinking they're OP is that if there's a different game play mechanic to that champ, people don't know how to deal with it, and cry OP'd right away. I sorta felt that way about Vlad, but now that I know how to counter him, he's not a problem.

But ya, there are definately things they can fix, or improve on, or impliment, but I would hardly call them a POS company because they haven't gotten to those concerns yet, I would call them a POS company if they just released their game, and did nothing about the problems. But there's a patch almost every week, which makes me a happy consumer of their product, because I know they're actively working on their game to improve it, which is why I personally like them as a Company.

The downtime does suck, but I remember when Everquest first came out, their downtimes could last 2 weeks, AND I was paying a monthly fee for that game, AND they gave no reimbursements. LoL always reimburses the XP and IP boosts, and the downtime has never lasted for more than 2 days (and never 2 days straight, so I've always been able to get a game in every day I want to play no matter what).

[Bridget]

Fuck Ryze

[Mooga]

*Digs up another dead thread*
Anyone still playing LoL? I play nearly ever night with a group of people. It's always nice to have a few extra people handy... We all voice chat on Mumble, which is awesome.

[battery]

I don't believe this. You jerks are playing LoL too? No wonder my games get ruined by noobs time after time. I am not allowed to say this in LoL, but here on this forum I can get this off my chest.

Fuck you, you feeders.
Fuck you, you Ashe with pure AP build.
Fuck you, you leavers.
Fuck you, you tower divers.

Haha just kidding

[Hammock]

Man I haven't played this since I got SC2, I should log back in and check it out.

Other than new champs anything new and interesting about the game? Different game modes? maps? spectator mode?

[NeonLight]

Just a few new champs, 6 total maybe??

[Mooga]

Every 2 weeks they release a new champ and bug fixes/changes.
There is a new player vs AI mode, but no major changes.

If you want to play with me, add me: Moogagot
Also PM me and I'll pass you the Mumble info.

[Hammock]

I should already have you added, unless you changed your user name, infact you're the reason I have mumble installed on my computer lol.

[Hammock]

Well now I remember why I stopped playing the game.

My game screwed up on one of the patches, and the patcher would just crash at 10% downloads.

Tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game, and its dependency software, so now it no longer crashes with an error message, but now it just stalls out during the Adobe.AIR 1/2 patch. Download starts fine at 700 kb/s then once it gets down to 0.6 K remaining it throttles down to 14 kb/s then continues to fall down to 1 kb/s then jumps back up to 14, and it just repeats that cycle. The status bar says 100% complete, but just won't go beyond that point.

[battery]

Originally Posted by Hammock

Well now I remember why I stopped playing the game.

My game screwed up on one of the patches, and the patcher would just crash at 10% downloads.

Tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game, and its dependency software, so now it no longer crashes with an error message, but now it just stalls out during the Adobe.AIR 1/2 patch. Download starts fine at 700 kb/s then once it gets down to 0.6 K remaining it throttles down to 14 kb/s then continues to fall down to 1 kb/s then jumps back up to 14, and it just repeats that cycle. The status bar says 100% complete, but just won't go beyond that point.

For some reason it is impossible to download an up-to-date version directly from their website. You have to obtain and install an outdated version, and then let the patcher incrementally download and apply each individual update. Sometimes patcher fails and the process gets stuck in a loop.

I see this as some kind of deliberate mechanism to kick out some of the non-paying members. Their server is already overloaded. It is imperative to make the paying customers happy, so they have to remove the non-paying guys. Well, people who pay tend to be in the game every day or every week. They don't miss more than 2 patches in a row...But of course the non-paying customers may eventually buy Riot points. Not a good idea.