League of Legends XL: Season on Hold 'til Morello gets Gold

[McDouggal]

OK, so here's my contribution to the debate: Extra Credits did a video on "easy" games that I think actually has some relevance.

Basically, League is a "deep"game. My god, I'm just getting into the rabbit hole, and I've reached level 21, about 2 games from 22. And yet, I was able to pick the game up because their tutorial was insanely useful, and Co-op vs. AI was a good way to learn the basics before I started normals. I still use Co-op to warm up, as it lets me play in a low stress to determine if I'm going to suck it up in normals, and stop if I'm not.

Also: I seem to be running into more trolls as I get to higher levels. Lower levels, I'd run into the occasional smurf who was nothing but polite, and started running into the first actual trolls/ragers around level 11. It's been happening more and more often lately. Thoughts on if this is just my own bias/bad luck or what?

[sonofzeal]

So... I was asking on Mumble the other day but didn't get an answer - is Urgot a troll pick these days? Or stealth OP? Or something else?

I mean, I know he's one of the least-used champions in the game, not far behind Karma. Lolking and personal experience (literally never seen anyone else play him ever) agree on this point. And everything I hear about him says he got nerfed into the ground and sucks now. But I've been playing him, and virtually never fail to not only cope, but carry, wading into 2v1's and coming out with double kills. Granted I'm mostly talking about PG and Dominion rather than SR.

What are your takes on That Damn Crabgot?

[onasuma]

Hiya all! Been playing league for a couple of months now and Im now level 20. I figure most of you are probably already at 30, playing ranked games, but if anyone fancies a game with me some time Id really appreciate a few less random racists to play with (as that seems to describe everyone I find on random games). Im on EU west and my usernames Onasuma.

[PersonMan]

Personman, I really don't know how to 'log' your vote, particularly cause I know enough about LB to know she really isn't good outside the mage role(I could almost see her running Soraka+LB bot lane, but I doubt that'd work either).

I generally play her support or mid. When supporting I go for the "screw the enemy" type of support instead of the "wait for the enemy to do something, then react" type. Essentially in lane you use your harass-burst to weaken the enemy until your carry looks up from farming, sees low enemies and decides he wants some kills, too.

After laning you basically work like normal LeBlanc only you don't go for kills as aggressively because you want to save them for our team, if possible.

My vote isn't for ADC LB in particular, but rather just LeBlanc, because she's both fun to play and versatile, in my opinion.

What are your takes on That Damn Crabgot?

I occasionally play Supportgot (Ok, Harass/KillThatGuyButton -got) and he seems pretty cool. If I got farm enough for real items I imagine it'd work out pretty well.

[Winterwind]

Regarding the ongoing debate about additional game-modes for LoL, I'd like to add something, too.

I used to play WarCraft 3 a lot, too (in fact, it was the only game where I got good enough to count myself as "highly competitive" - I never played enough to actually get to the top of the ladder, or even just to a high level, but I did boost my matchmaking rating to a point where I was occasionally playing against people from the top 200 of the 1v1 ladder. And, quite a few times, winning.). And there were tons of custom maps for it - I'd guess tens of thousands. I could see a lot of them being remade into really fun mods for LoL, but I concede that this might require an overly huge resource investment, in particular for the mods very different from the basic game.

Here's the thing though. Amongst all those games, there were many MOBAs, too. Some of them were essentially DotA-clones, thus not notably different from LoL (EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying LoL is like DotA; anybody who knows me a bit should know that I love LoL and loathe DotA with a passion and use it as my primary example for "How to design a game as awfully and un-fun as possible"; but the map-layout, game objective and other core design elements are similar).

But some were, in spite of clearly belonging to the same genre, drastically different in actual gameplay. And I imagine they wouldn't be any more difficult to implement than Twisted Treeline or Crystal Scar were, nor would LoL's core design and balance clash too much with the way they were designed (at least if one took only the relevant interesting additional elements, tossing out the stuff that didn't fit LoL at all), yet adding them to LoL would create a very new and refreshing experience, in my opinion.

So I'd like to describe a few of those maps here:


- Desert of Exile
Desert of Exile had the same core set up as LoL - two bases with a "nexus", connected with a few lanes (four, not three, but that's not that important), towers along the lanes, and minions spawning on all the lanes and running towards the other side. It was played from left to right, and was a overall a bit bigger than Summoner's Rift, in particular in terms of length. In place of inhibitors, there were barracks, different in two things from LoL inhibitors; one of those being that it were the barracks themselves that spawned the minions, and if those barracks were destroyed, there would be no spawn for the lane anymore at all. They wouldn't respawn, either.

Unlike LoL, though, each side had a small secondary base on both the top-most and bottom-most lane, way closer to the front than the main base. Those small secondary bases contained a ring of towers, protected by walls, barracks (the main base had barracks only for the two middle lanes, not for these top and bottom ones), and a fountain (no shop though, and without a fountain laser). Between these secondary bases, there was just no man's land, no towers.

Obviously, if you managed to kill one of the enemy team's secondary bases, you would have a massive advantage - you would have an entire lane where you would still have your spawn and the enemy wouldn't. This was quite difficult though, as the secondary bases were heavily fortified, with a lot of towers.

Here enters the real innovation of Desert of Exile: Most of your gold probably wouldn't go into items (items were quite cheap and not very strong, more used to tweak your champion in a certain way, rather than being crucial for scaling). Instead, at any time, you could spend money at any barracks of your side (without the necessity to be there; if you were bot lane, you could still spend money at the top-lane's barracks, if you wished to). Specifically, you could buy up to a certain number of units (3 or 4, I think? It's been a while) that would be added to the next wave. These units ranged from dedicated siege minions that were extremely good at killing towers, over healers, to keep your push going, over extremely strong tank minions, all the way to fliers, which couldn't be targeted by most heroes or units. With special points that you got on each kill or assist you could even buy special, big monsters, that could very well pose a danger even to an enemy champion.

This, naturally, added a whole new layer of strategy - which minions to buy, on which lane, and when? When to save up, when to spend? And so on.

Desert of Exile had another, fascinating mechanic, but that mechanic cannot really be implemented into LoL, as it would have to have been part of champion design from the very start to work. Since it was quite interesting though, I'd like to at least mention it, hence the spoilers:

Spoiler

Show

Desert of Exile had a certain number of conditions - basically CC effects - like "burning" (takes damage over time), "ruined" (has lowered defences) or "crippled" (powerful damage reduction). Every champion had some abilities that interacted with those conditions - be it by bestowing them on enemies, moving them from one target to another (ideally from a friendly target to a hostile one, or at least from the carry to the tank, or such), etc.

Here the fascinating part, though: A lot of champions had abilities that had special effects if their target was afflicted by particular conditions - basically like Brand's abilities have bonus effects on things that are Ablaze, or Anivia's E deals bonus damage to things that are Chilled - except in Desert of Exile, more often than not, abilities of a champion had special effects based on conditions that the champion itself was not able to bestow - basically, as if it was flipped around and Brand's abilities had bonus effects on units that were Chilled and Anivia's E dealt bonus damage to things that were Ablaze instead, except that both Ablaze and Chilled would be conditions that not just Brand and Anivia could hand out, but a fair number of other champions as well. This created much more intricate champion synergies and chances for cooperation.

- Stand of the Elves
Stand of the Elves was an example of a MOBA with asymmetrical objectives. One side (the Undead) had the usual goal: Kill the enemy nexus. The other side though (the Elves), had a different objective: Simply survive 30 minutes. Accordingly, the map was asymmetrical as well - in the middle was the base of the elves, with six entrances (two on each side, one top, one bot), and consisting of a double ring towers with the nexus in the middle. In each corner of the map, the Undead had one base that was essentially indestructible (their towers had absurdly high resilience and damage, so that for all intents and purposes, it was impossible to kill them), with teleportation platforms allowing them to jump between the bases at will; a lane would go from each of the Undead bases to one of the side-entrances of the Elf-base. The Undead also had stronger waves (basically, they had siege minions, the Elves did not). To put extra pressure on the Elves, every five minutes, a single big wave would spawn above the Elf-base, and rush to the top-entrance, and the Undead could (by making a major gold investment) purchase a (destructible) outpost in the south that would perpetually spawn waves to assault the Elf-bottom-entrance. To make up for this, the Elves only had to hold out long enough (though they would naturally still have to keep pushing the lanes, to make it more difficult for the Undead to overrun them).

Also, different heroes had different damage types - some might, for instance, have an auto-attack that dealt significantly reduced damage to both minions and heroes, but deal massively increased damage to towers, some might be extra-good at clearing minions, others might have an edge against heroes, and so on.


- Regicide
Regicide was based on the same principle as Stand of the Elves - one side (the Rebels) has to kill the enemy nexus, the other side (the Royalists) only have to hold out for a while (different game-modes here, but usually 45 minutes). The main difference was in the map layout - while Stand of the Elves had just a small base in the middle of the map for the defending side, and the attackers came from many directions, here, the attackers all started in the south, and the defender's base was huge - taking up some 90% of the map, in fact, all lined with towers and unit-spawning barracks.

It had a very interesting dynamic - in the beginning, the Rebels would have it tough, as the Royalists would have a ton of unit-spawning barracks, so their waves would be quite strong and difficult to push against. But as soon as the Rebels managed to finally kill the first few barracks (usually either by the usual back-and-forth of lane fighting or by surprisingly changing the focus of their attack (there were three entrances into the enemy base)), the flow of Royalist minions would diminish, and the Rebels would snowball into pushing faster and harder. In most of the games of Regicide I've played, it played out extremely narrowly - either the Rebels finally pushed through and won with only few minutes to spare, or the Royalists won, with it being quite evident that just a few minutes more, and the Rebels would have gotten through.

The nexus here was, incidentally, a King that actually fought himself, when attacked, casting abilities and so forth. Think Baron Nashor, basically.

Furthermore, both sides could, in addition to buying items, also spend their gold on permanently adding new units (of new types, with different specializations) to all wave spawns, or upgrade all of their side's minions in various regards (defense, attack, and so on).

Lastly - though this is, again, something that couldn't really be implemented into LoL - it had champions that would simply be unthinkable in LoL, but actually worked in this game-mode. How about a champion, for example, that could build proper, regular towers? Better than regular towers, in fact? Permanent ones? And able to have like 8 of them out at a time?

___

So, what I would really like to see (and am actually somewhat surprised it doesn't exist already) would be LoL maps, still PvP, still MOBA, but with added aspects like (not necessarily all of them in the same map, naturally):
- purchaseable minions added to spawns just a single time
- permanently upgradeable minions
- asymmetrical objectives for the two teams (including, accordingly, assymetrical maps), for example with one team having to kill the nexus, the other just to prevent that from happening for a preset time.

[Eldariel]

So... I was asking on Mumble the other day but didn't get an answer - is Urgot a troll pick these days? Or stealth OP? Or something else?

I mean, I know he's one of the least-used champions in the game, not far behind Karma. Lolking and personal experience (literally never seen anyone else play him ever) agree on this point. And everything I hear about him says he got nerfed into the ground and sucks now. But I've been playing him, and virtually never fail to not only cope, but carry, wading into 2v1's and coming out with double kills. Granted I'm mostly talking about PG and Dominion rather than SR.

What are your takes on That Damn Crabgot?

He's still a lane bully. His nerfs have hurt him tho and he's not that strong but I still routinely win my lane with him, against almost whatever. He's essentially what amounts to a ranged bruiser with the ult for initiation and then just a lot of natural damage, tankiness and annoyance.

I feel he's okay as it stands though probably not stealth OP or anything. CLG.EU also ran him against Curse last weekend (though they lost that game but not due to lanes; CLG lost two kills in first blood and played catch-up still winning their lanes after) to decent success so clearly he isn't competitively entirely unviable either. Nobody is quite at efficient at hurting AD carry laning as Urgot is.

[ex cathedra]

It might help to have a game mode designed to be PvE, rather than just having PvP with bots replacing the enemy team.

How could you take a game with League's champions and mechanics and make a meaningfully functional and balanced PvE experience? In the tower defense example, what do you do with the champions who excel at tower defense (pushers, AD carries, not much else) or the champions who would be useless in the format (most assassins, such as Akali, Kassadin, and Fizz)?

[LordShotGun]

Spoiler

Show

Regarding the ongoing debate about additional game-modes for LoL, I'd like to add something, too.

I used to play WarCraft 3 a lot, too (in fact, it was the only game where I got good enough to count myself as "highly competitive" - I never played enough to actually get to the top of the ladder, or even just to a high level, but I did boost my matchmaking rating to a point where I was occasionally playing against people from the top 200 of the 1v1 ladder. And, quite a few times, winning.). And there were tons of custom maps for it - I'd guess tens of thousands. I could see a lot of them being remade into really fun mods for LoL, but I concede that this might require an overly huge resource investment, in particular for the mods very different from the basic game.

Here's the thing though. Amongst all those games, there were many MOBAs, too. Some of them were essentially DotA-clones, thus not notably different from LoL (EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying LoL is like DotA; anybody who knows me a bit should know that I love LoL and loathe DotA with a passion and use it as my primary example for "How to design a game as awfully and un-fun as possible"; but the map-layout, game objective and other core design elements are similar).

But some were, in spite of clearly belonging to the same genre, drastically different in actual gameplay. And I imagine they wouldn't be any more difficult to implement than Twisted Treeline or Crystal Scar were, nor would LoL's core design and balance clash too much with the way they were designed (at least if one took only the relevant interesting additional elements, tossing out the stuff that didn't fit LoL at all), yet adding them to LoL would create a very new and refreshing experience, in my opinion.

So I'd like to describe a few of those maps here:


- Desert of Exile
Desert of Exile had the same core set up as LoL - two bases with a "nexus", connected with a few lanes (four, not three, but that's not that important), towers along the lanes, and minions spawning on all the lanes and running towards the other side. It was played from left to right, and was a overall a bit bigger than Summoner's Rift, in particular in terms of length. In place of inhibitors, there were barracks, different in two things from LoL inhibitors; one of those being that it were the barracks themselves that spawned the minions, and if those barracks were destroyed, there would be no spawn for the lane anymore at all. They wouldn't respawn, either.

Unlike LoL, though, each side had a small secondary base on both the top-most and bottom-most lane, way closer to the front than the main base. Those small secondary bases contained a ring of towers, protected by walls, barracks (the main base had barracks only for the two middle lanes, not for these top and bottom ones), and a fountain (no shop though, and without a fountain laser). Between these secondary bases, there was just no man's land, no towers.

Obviously, if you managed to kill one of the enemy team's secondary bases, you would have a massive advantage - you would have an entire lane where you would still have your spawn and the enemy wouldn't. This was quite difficult though, as the secondary bases were heavily fortified, with a lot of towers.

Here enters the real innovation of Desert of Exile: Most of your gold probably wouldn't go into items (items were quite cheap and not very strong, more used to tweak your champion in a certain way, rather than being crucial for scaling). Instead, at any time, you could spend money at any barracks of your side (without the necessity to be there; if you were bot lane, you could still spend money at the top-lane's barracks, if you wished to). Specifically, you could buy up to a certain number of units (3 or 4, I think? It's been a while) that would be added to the next wave. These units ranged from dedicated siege minions that were extremely good at killing towers, over healers, to keep your push going, over extremely strong tank minions, all the way to fliers, which couldn't be targeted by most heroes or units. With special points that you got on each kill or assist you could even buy special, big monsters, that could very well pose a danger even to an enemy champion.

This, naturally, added a whole new layer of strategy - which minions to buy, on which lane, and when? When to save up, when to spend? And so on.

Desert of Exile had another, fascinating mechanic, but that mechanic cannot really be implemented into LoL, as it would have to have been part of champion design from the very start to work. Since it was quite interesting though, I'd like to at least mention it, hence the spoilers:

Spoiler

Show

Desert of Exile had a certain number of conditions - basically CC effects - like "burning" (takes damage over time), "ruined" (has lowered defences) or "crippled" (powerful damage reduction). Every champion had some abilities that interacted with those conditions - be it by bestowing them on enemies, moving them from one target to another (ideally from a friendly target to a hostile one, or at least from the carry to the tank, or such), etc.

Here the fascinating part, though: A lot of champions had abilities that had special effects if their target was afflicted by particular conditions - basically like Brand's abilities have bonus effects on things that are Ablaze, or Anivia's E deals bonus damage to things that are Chilled - except in Desert of Exile, more often than not, abilities of a champion had special effects based on conditions that the champion itself was not able to bestow - basically, as if it was flipped around and Brand's abilities had bonus effects on units that were Chilled and Anivia's E dealt bonus damage to things that were Ablaze instead, except that both Ablaze and Chilled would be conditions that not just Brand and Anivia could hand out, but a fair number of other champions as well. This created much more intricate champion synergies and chances for cooperation.

- Stand of the Elves
Stand of the Elves was an example of a MOBA with asymmetrical objectives. One side (the Undead) had the usual goal: Kill the enemy nexus. The other side though (the Elves), had a different objective: Simply survive 30 minutes. Accordingly, the map was asymmetrical as well - in the middle was the base of the elves, with six entrances (two on each side, one top, one bot), and consisting of a double ring towers with the nexus in the middle. In each corner of the map, the Undead had one base that was essentially indestructible (their towers had absurdly high resilience and damage, so that for all intents and purposes, it was impossible to kill them), with teleportation platforms allowing them to jump between the bases at will; a lane would go from each of the Undead bases to one of the side-entrances of the Elf-base. The Undead also had stronger waves (basically, they had siege minions, the Elves did not). To put extra pressure on the Elves, every five minutes, a single big wave would spawn above the Elf-base, and rush to the top-entrance, and the Undead could (by making a major gold investment) purchase a (destructible) outpost in the south that would perpetually spawn waves to assault the Elf-bottom-entrance. To make up for this, the Elves only had to hold out long enough (though they would naturally still have to keep pushing the lanes, to make it more difficult for the Undead to overrun them).

Also, different heroes had different damage types - some might, for instance, have an auto-attack that dealt significantly reduced damage to both minions and heroes, but deal massively increased damage to towers, some might be extra-good at clearing minions, others might have an edge against heroes, and so on.


- Regicide
Regicide was based on the same principle as Stand of the Elves - one side (the Rebels) has to kill the enemy nexus, the other side (the Royalists) only have to hold out for a while (different game-modes here, but usually 45 minutes). The main difference was in the map layout - while Stand of the Elves had just a small base in the middle of the map for the defending side, and the attackers came from many directions, here, the attackers all started in the south, and the defender's base was huge - taking up some 90% of the map, in fact, all lined with towers and unit-spawning barracks.

It had a very interesting dynamic - in the beginning, the Rebels would have it tough, as the Royalists would have a ton of unit-spawning barracks, so their waves would be quite strong and difficult to push against. But as soon as the Rebels managed to finally kill the first few barracks (usually either by the usual back-and-forth of lane fighting or by surprisingly changing the focus of their attack (there were three entrances into the enemy base)), the flow of Royalist minions would diminish, and the Rebels would snowball into pushing faster and harder. In most of the games of Regicide I've played, it played out extremely narrowly - either the Rebels finally pushed through and won with only few minutes to spare, or the Royalists won, with it being quite evident that just a few minutes more, and the Rebels would have gotten through.

The nexus here was, incidentally, a King that actually fought himself, when attacked, casting abilities and so forth. Think Baron Nashor, basically.

Furthermore, both sides could, in addition to buying items, also spend their gold on permanently adding new units (of new types, with different specializations) to all wave spawns, or upgrade all of their side's minions in various regards (defense, attack, and so on).

Lastly - though this is, again, something that couldn't really be implemented into LoL - it had champions that would simply be unthinkable in LoL, but actually worked in this game-mode. How about a champion, for example, that could build proper, regular towers? Better than regular towers, in fact? Permanent ones? And able to have like 8 of them out at a time?

___

So, what I would really like to see (and am actually somewhat surprised it doesn't exist already) would be LoL maps, still PvP, still MOBA, but with added aspects like (not necessarily all of them in the same map, naturally):
- purchaseable minions added to spawns just a single time
- permanently upgradeable minions
- asymmetrical objectives for the two teams (including, accordingly, assymetrical maps), for example with one team having to kill the nexus, the other just to prevent that from happening for a preset time.

So basically just more maps and game modes. Seems resource heavy. I think that riot should start allowing us more custom settings for the different maps. Higher gold start, higher level start, double minion count per wave, double gold/experience from minions, All random mode (not necessarily all mid though, just "here are 5 champions, pick your lanes"), health relic mode (add health relics to certain spots on SR) and so on.

Things that are relatively simple to create versus having to totally restructure the game for a custom map creator, or having to focus millions of dollars on creating other maps like what winterwind stated.

[NineThePuma]

AR is actually available as is.

Also, assassins in a PvE environment are obviously going to be less useful, but bursty single target is what the Minibosses and Portal Guardians are for; they go in and try to wreck this guy's **** (and I'm imagining that he's about on difficulty level with Dragon, but with some actives).

[Math_Mage]

How could you take a game with League's champions and mechanics and make a meaningfully functional and balanced PvE experience? In the tower defense example, what do you do with the champions who excel at tower defense (pushers, AD carries, not much else) or the champions who would be useless in the format (most assassins, such as Akali, Kassadin, and Fizz)?

You add mechanics; you vary the challenges. I've been saying all along that development resources are a likely prohibitive issue, but it utterly baffles me that you seem to think it simply can't be done.

Anyway, this is largely a reflection of hunger for more varied game modes; it's not like I would sniff at asymmetrical or multi-base PvP of the sort Winterwind describes.

[ex cathedra]

You add mechanics; you vary the challenges. I've been saying all along that development resources are a likely prohibitive issue, but it utterly baffles me that you seem to think it simply can't be done.

Anyway, this is largely a reflection of hunger for more varied game modes; it's not like I would sniff at asymmetrical or multi-base PvP of the sort Winterwind describes.

i can understand the desire for additional game modes, though i don't share it, but i do sincerely doubt that one could turn LoL into a meaningul PvE experience. PvP custom game modes are perfectly plausible, if an arguably poor use of resources.

[Silfir]

How could you take a game with League's champions and mechanics and make a meaningfully functional and balanced PvE experience? In the tower defense example, what do you do with the champions who excel at tower defense (pushers, AD carries, not much else) or the champions who would be useless in the format (most assassins, such as Akali, Kassadin, and Fizz)?

Once you're in a PvE environment, champions no longer need to be balanced against each other since they won't be playing against each other. Playing a poorly suited champion would simply increase the difficulty.



The reason Coop vs. AI is fun is that using the champions themselves is fun, even in a solitaire-like kind of way - the same reason people play anything single-player.

My experience in Normals is that I have about a one in two shot of getting destroyed and subsequently getting yelled at. The other half of the time, I do decent enough - and either still get yelled at or have a fairly enjoyable experience. I don't like getting yelled at - and ignoring doesn't help. I just don't want to play with mean people period, and ignoring them after they've started being mean doesn't make me forget I'm playing with mean people. Reporting them after the whole thing is done is little solace.

I rarely get that kind of negative experience anywhere close to that often in either Coops or ARAMs - an ARAM matchmaking system would make me tremendously happy.

[NineThePuma]

ARAM queues are a possible thing in the future.

[ex cathedra]

I strongly disagree. League is at its core a strategy game and gross imbalance, even if it doesn't give you an advantage against another actual person, really detracts from my enjoyment. Single-player games need to be balanced. Where that statement *really* falls apart, I think, is that League is still a multiplayer game, even if it's PvE. I sincerely doubt you'd enjoy playing League normals if every game included a teammate who'd intentionally cripple themselves (e.g. 5 ionic spark 1x ninja tabi mordekaiser). You're playing towards an objective, and the capabilites of your teammates can obviously be detrimental to your enjoyment of the game.

FWIW, i'd suggest that you try playing with nice people.

[NineThePuma]

... You know, I just want to note.

You have this habit of taking things to extremes just to try to prove a point. 5x Ionic Mordekaiser isn't a thing. Akali is still going to be Akali regardless of whether or not she's going to be ganking and crushing enemies. She can still contribute to the proposed game mode quite easily.

[Joran]

Christina Norman (Kitae on the Riot Forums, @truffle on Twitter), former lead designer on Mass Effect 2 and now lead creative designer gave an interview which gives insight into what LoL is trying to do with their lore.

When she arrived at Riot, this process involved a writer getting inspired and dashing off a biography. This resulted in a lot of characters like Mordekaiser, an “undead death knight with a giant mace” whose personality began and ended with the word “badass”.

Under the new system, which Norman developed from the TV writers’ room model, character creation is a highly collaborative process that happens in meetings that can last for more than ten hours. After this treatment, Mordekaiser became a much more nuanced character: he has allies and enemies, a homeland, and a tragic back story (the death knight, it seems, cannot remember who he was before he became so very badass)
...
“We want to create characters,” Norman said, “like Tony Soprano and Don Draper.”

The thought is deeper backgrounds will increase player attachment to the game and the characters.

http://killscreendaily.com/articles/...death-knights/

[Silfir]

I strongly disagree. League is at its core a strategy game and gross imbalance, even if it doesn't give you an advantage against another actual person, really detracts from my enjoyment. Single-player games need to be balanced. Where that statement *really* falls apart, I think, is that League is still a multiplayer game, even if it's PvE. I sincerely doubt you'd enjoy playing League normals if every game included a teammate who'd intentionally cripple themselves (e.g. 5 ionic spark 1x ninja tabi mordekaiser). You're playing towards an objective, and the capabilites of your teammates can obviously be detrimental to your enjoyment of the game.

FWIW, i'd suggest that you try playing with nice people.

"Single-player games need to be balanced" is really just an unsubstantiated claim in your post, isn't it? I do agree, they need to be balanced to be fun. That's a very different thing from multiplayer balance of characters, though.

I very much enjoy playing Coop vs. AI with people that have wacky builds on my team, actually. See, the capabilities of my teammates aren't detrimental to my enjoyment of the game in the least - if I'm playing Coop vs. AI, since chances are excellent I can pick up a good build and make up for it myself - now having to face an additional challenge.

I'm not really sure how to read that last sentence. It's in fact what I'm already doing - I'm playing with friends whenever I can (not so much Normals since I don't have that many LoL-playing friends and the ones I do have... tend to prefer Coops too for pretty much the same reasons), and ARAM and Coop vs. AI people are nicer to me already.

Didn't you ask the Coop vs. AI crowd at some point why they enjoy playing that way? There's your answer, or at least part of it (mine). I'm a Coop player, this is me, this is why.

Of course I agree that PvE doesn't and will never match the strategic depth or focused, competitive excitement of PvP (even in Normals). I play Normals, too, after all. But I need a certain mindset to do it, and that doesn't happen that often. I get most of my competitive fix by playing online chess, where I don't get teammates yelling at me - I'm pretty good about ignoring anything my opponents say with a smile on my face. I also happen to be not nearly as terrible at chess as I am at LoL, which probably has got something to do with it.

[ex cathedra]

... You know, I just want to note.

You have this habit of taking things to extremes just to try to prove a point. 5x Ionic Mordekaiser isn't a thing. Akali is still going to be Akali regardless of whether or not she's going to be ganking and crushing enemies. She can still contribute to the proposed game mode quite easily.

I didn't say that it was a thing, but i felt it was necessary point to make. With that in mind, it's much easier to argue that balance in a co-op setting would be an issue, isn't it? After all, even if it isn't a 5x ionic spark Morde, it's still a Fizz. I can safely suggest that putting the current champions into a minion-pushing and raid-boss killing scenario would create a game state significantly more imbalanced than any other portion of LoL.

I'd reply to that other person's post if my break wasn't ending, so i'll get back to that later.

[dgnslyr]

So, I've been playing a lot of Olaf lately. A lot of Olaf, actually, with great results. Right now, though, I'm wondering what I should buy as a last item, after Tabi, Shurelia's, Randuin's, GA, and Zeke's. If nobody else plans on buying it, I get Aegis, but when the support actually does remember that Aegis is a core support item, I'm a bit at a loss on what to fill the last slot with.

Right now, I get Frozen Mallet, but it feels a bit redundant when I already have both the axe permaslow and the Randuin's active, so the on-hit effect never feels noticeable. I guess Warmogs, maybe, but I'd buy it so late that I'd have no time to properly farm it up, not to mention that Warmog's is one tank item I don't like getting, because it's too expensive for an item with no utility. FoN is an option, against magic-heavy teams, because I don't buy much proper MR, but it's going to be removed soon, so that's not an option either. Triforce is a possibility, I guess, when he can Reckless Swing every 3 seconds and throws his axe as fast as he can pick it up, but I dunno if I really want to spend 4k on an almost purely offensive item, when I already do plenty of damage with just my 40% CDR. Any suggestions?

[Mephit]

6th items are generally all about rounding out your build depending on the enemy team. Bloodthirster is an option, as with the items you have you're so tanky you can't really be bursted, and the lifesteal makes you even tankier.Triforce isn't really that good as a 6th item, especially on Olaf.

I don't really get your choice for Zeke's herald. If you really want 40% CDR, Frozen Heart seems much more worthwhile.

[sonofzeal]

I didn't say that it was a thing, but i felt it was necessary point to make. With that in mind, it's much easier to argue that balance in a co-op setting would be an issue, isn't it? After all, even if it isn't a 5x ionic spark Morde, it's still a Fizz. I can safely suggest that putting the current champions into a minion-pushing and raid-boss killing scenario would create a game state significantly more imbalanced than any other portion of LoL.

I'd reply to that other person's post if my break wasn't ending, so i'll get back to that later.

Actually, all experience (and straight up common sense) has shown me that small imbalances matter much more in a highly competitive environment, and hence that PvP games require far more care in balancing than Co-op games. Hence your premise that co-op is harder and more important to balance strikes me as, not just wrong, but the opposite of the reality of the situation.

[dgnslyr]

6th items are generally all about rounding out your build depending on the enemy team. Bloodthirster is an option, as with the items you have you're so tanky you can't really be bursted, and the lifesteal makes you even tankier.Triforce isn't really that good as a 6th item, especially on Olaf.

I don't really get your choice for Zeke's herald. If you really want 40% CDR, Frozen Heart seems much more worthwhile.

Triforce isn't good? Olaf slaps things a lot, so plenty of chances to leave a slow proc, and his abilities have very low CD, so he also has plenty of chances to leave a Sheen proc. But yeah, it's the sort of luxury item I wouldn't usually consider.

I like Zeke's because it gives CDR and attack speed. The aura is also nice for the carry, doubly so when the jungle/top (whichever I'm not) is also an auto attack heavy champ. Frozen Heart feels like overkill when I already have two chain vests of armor from Randuin's and GA, so a third mountain of armor feels excessive.

I'll try out Bloodthirster sometime, though, and see how it goes.

[Mephit]

Actually, all experience (and straight up common sense) has shown me that small imbalances matter much more in a highly competitive environment, and hence that PvP games require far more care in balancing than Co-op games. Hence your premise that co-op is harder and more important to balance strikes me as, not just wrong, but the opposite of the reality of the situation.

Yes, but League was designed as a 5v5 PvP game on Summoner's Rift, and porting the champions over to a Co-op vs. minions game would lead to massive differences in power level of those champions. That's the imbalance he's talking about.

That issue is present in every other map that isn't Summoner's Rift, but it would become more apparent if you warp the game even more.

[Nadevoc]

New Tiamat and its upgrade look interesting:

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/....php?t=2795397

Most notably, a short CD active which does up to 100% of your AD in an area around you. And when upgraded, life steal counts for damage dealt by it. I really want to try it out on Renekton. I'm not good enough at Renek to say whether it will be good, but I think the feel of it really fits: stand in the middle of your enemies, tearing into them and feeding off their pain to keep yourself going.

[Math_Mage]

Actually, all experience (and straight up common sense) has shown me that small imbalances matter much more in a highly competitive environment, and hence that PvP games require far more care in balancing than Co-op games. Hence your premise that co-op is harder and more important to balance strikes me as, not just wrong, but the opposite of the reality of the situation.

Your reasoning is limited to PvE games that don't present a challenge to players with a modicum of skill. By contrast, challenging the player in PvE becomes much more difficult when his options are not balanced. Consider, for example, D&D 3.5e, at its core a Co-op PvE game. The wild imbalances between classes means you pretty much have to specify the power level of your campaign and handicap to match, hobbling high-tier classes with artificial restrictions and giving low-tier characters a boost so they can be useful. I'm sure there are zillions of video games I could cite too, but the point is that balance still matters for giving people meaningful choices in the face of set challenges.

[Todasmile]

Yes, but League was designed as a 5v5 PvP game on Summoner's Rift, and porting the champions over to a Co-op vs. minions game would lead to massive differences in power level of those champions. That's the imbalance he's talking about.

That issue is present in every other map that isn't Summoner's Rift, but it would become more apparent if you warp the game even more.

There's always a lot of reasons to not do something.

Instead, I'd rather ask myself why I should do something, and if those reasons are compelling enough, how to do it well. In a case like this, obviously champion power discrepancy is an issue. I also see the issue of it becoming very formulaic; with a game like LoL, which is played so much, such a game could easily become a source of either easy IP or too little IP for your time.

So what if the game mode offered different rewards? Maybe a summoner icon of a champ you beat it with five times or something. Maybe there are skins or ward skins or something available. If it's a problem of Riot spending lots of resources on things you don't want, well, they do that every time they release a skin you don't like or something like that. Also they seem like they're making a decent amount of money and can probably afford a simple game mode like this.

Such a game mode also offers the possibility of new, possibly fun game modes in the future. Those custom enemies could show up as options in custom matches, maybe.

There's a pretty wide range of things you have to consider, which I always wonder about when I see people reject new ideas so outright, so... unexcitedly. Surely this can't REALLY hurt the game in any tangible way. It's nearly too big to fail, now.

[Silfir]

Dynamic difficulty calculation: The higher the overall win count for a certain champion on the PvE maps, the lower the IP rewards for players who do it again. Best way to score? Playing harder and more obscure champions.

As for the apparent uselessness of assassin characters, nothing says the map has to be all tower defense play. There could be other incentives strewn all about that assassins would be uniquely suited to defeat.

I think a fun PvE game mode is completely possible - it poses design challenges, but those can be overcome. It's probably not worth the investment of money for now, but what's so wrong with investing thought?

[sonofzeal]

Your reasoning is limited to PvE games that don't present a challenge to players with a modicum of skill. By contrast, challenging the player in PvE becomes much more difficult when his options are not balanced. Consider, for example, D&D 3.5e, at its core a Co-op PvE game. The wild imbalances between classes means you pretty much have to specify the power level of your campaign and handicap to match, hobbling high-tier classes with artificial restrictions and giving low-tier characters a boost so they can be useful. I'm sure there are zillions of video games I could cite too, but the point is that balance still matters for giving people meaningful choices in the face of set challenges.

You misunderstand, I'm not talking about an all-or-nothing pattern.

Put otherwise - there's a reason WotC didn't notice the glaring balance issues in 3rd ed, and were satisfied with mere token corrections moving into 3.5, whereas those same balance issues would have been utterly devastating in a game like LoL. Yes they still matter, and yes they're still important, but that relevance decreases significantly the less competitive the game is. One can certainly argue that 3.5's balance disparities are a bad thing, and you'd have a point, but the continued popularity of the system demonstrates just how resilient this sort of cooperative environment is to those issues.

In an environment like this, yeah there'd be some balance issues. Some champions like Anivia and Janna and Heimerdinger would probably do very well, while others like Karthus and Teemo and Evelyn might take a step or two down. However, I would argue that the co-operative environment would be inherently less sensitive to those balance disparities than Ranked PVP. Not completely insensitive, but less sensitive.

Yes, but League was designed as a 5v5 PvP game on Summoner's Rift, and porting the champions over to a Co-op vs. minions game would lead to massive differences in power level of those champions. That's the imbalance he's talking about.

That issue is present in every other map that isn't Summoner's Rift, but it would become more apparent if you warp the game even more.

Eh... what I've found from playing Dominion regularly is that, while the balance is different, it's not all that worse. A lot of champions who really struggle on SR are much happier on Dominion. And there's some who are awesome on SR who are much more mediocre on Dom. But both modes show a large degree of variety, and in any series of games you're going to see a few recurring faces but also wide number of less-common picks that are still doing well. And Dominion's pretty darn different than SR.

I do think there would be some significant power disparities in this sort of PvE environment. But I think we'd still see a good variety of champs represented in viable team comps. Maybe not as many as in SR, but a variety still. It's honestly hard to name champs who'd be hopeless at it - anyone who can build AD viably, or has sustain, or has AoE wave-clearing, or has skills with special effects against minions, or can push lanes while elsewhere, will probably do just fine. And between all of those, that's a pretty hefty variety.

[Averis Vol]

new poster here, so:

SERVER:NA
ACCOUNT NAME:AverisVol

Spoiler

Show

Champs:
Top: Garen, Wukong, Kayle, Olaf, Jarvan, Lee Sin, Renekton, Nidalee, Gangplank, Xin zhao, Malphite, Shen
Mid: Brand, Fizz, Galio, Talon, Malzahar, Fiddlesticks, Karthus
Jungle: Its safer to never let me jungle, just sayin'
Support: Blitscrank, Janna, Kayle, Karma, Shen
ADC: Sivir, Ashe

I've got a quick question. I like to counter pick, as my champion selection is quite diverse, and I also prefer to perform a role based upon my position in the champ selection order. Now has anyone noticed recently how the game has become less "Okay, your last pick and you called mid, good on you" and more "Ohh, your best able to lane against their (Insert role here)? Too bad, I'm first pick, so I get to do what role I want(And will normally get countered to hell because, hey, you first pick auto locked in Brand.... what do you really expect?)

Now I'm feeling like I'm ranting, but ever since the honor system came out (and this isn't indicative to its failure, just a time reference) people have been less concerned about this being a team game, and more about fulfilling their blatantly selfish want to play a champ at the expense of the rest of the groups enjoyment and possible victory in the game.

Now is it just me, or does the quality of gamer feeling like its dropping? I remember way back when (Three months ago, ya know, back when people really knew how to play the game:P) people wanted to win the game rather then flailing about helplessly because they got hard countered and fed their partner to the other end of the world.

[Forrestfire]

I think it's just you, since my experience is that people are more friendly to lower picks calling a role than to first pick.

I main support in ranked, so it doesn't matter to me in the slightest, though