Unrelated Blog Post: League of Legends

As the days go by and I find myself having less and less things to do I find my way back to my blog to talk about things I don't relatively care about.

If anyone remembers I pretty much rage quite Megaten and ran over to League of Legends. Needless to say no matter how addicted you are to a game it does not last forever.

League of Legends was my introduction into the MOBA genre and it was very fulfilling. I played about 500 games with each one averaging about 40 minutes long each. I look back to myself and just get ashamed of what I've been spending my time on (there's worse things I've done but I'll get to that later). As I've played more and more rounds though I can't but feel like I hit a wall in any progression in the game. It feels like I'm having a second job in order to get through with it.

Anyways, the MOBA genre is very hard to explain in words. What it is in a nutshell though is a hybrid of MMO + RPG + RTS all meshed together. You control only one character that starts at level one in the beginning of every game and levels up by killing mobs on the map. The overlying point of LoL is to destroy the other team's base, just like in RTS games. The difference is, is that instead of micromanaging hundreds of minions at once you only control your character, with your other teammates' characters. As you level up you gain better stats and can level up your skills. While all this is happening you are also fighting the enemy team's characters, all from level one too (highly unrecommended though because of how easy it is to die). The game gets very challenging as it is based more around on how well you cooperate with yuor teammate than it does with individual skill. Essentially, one bad teammate = GG.

So although LoLwas a ridiculously fun game in the start, I saw the problems starting to show. First, since the game is heavily based on teamwork there is a lot of quite a bit of (negative) chatting going on. If you so much as die first or do ONE thing wrong you will be flamed and blamed for losing the game throughout the rest of the match. This discourages trying new things as you will be the fault of the team if you do. Second, no casually playing attitudes. Because of the traditional -find a room and join it- system is not here they used something else. They match you against other players who are similar to your skill level and tries to get as close to 50% win/loss chance as possible. This matchmaking makes a lot of trouble within the community for "being faulty" (I don't find it faulty unless you have more losses than wins), but that isn't what irritates me. Since matchmaking puts you against other players around your skill, it means you are going to have to try your hardest in that game. Did I mention that there are roughly 40+ characters in that game and all have different abilities? So you can't be picking someone new after you've been playing a while. You will get stomped with the unfamiliar controls. This is the position I am in currently, pic kthe same character I've played +200 games with or pick someone new and get stomped?, And on a plus get flamed for it too.

So although the MOBA genre and League of Legends has its faults, it does have its merits too. I have had a lot of fun playing the game but the fun is waning and I can't bear myself ot play another round with that same character. Imagine remaking your character in Megaten every hour to retrain him just for Act 4. Not as bland as that since you hit max level in 30-35mins, but it gets boring replaying the same thing over and over again.

Do I see myself playing this game again? Probably, but very, very little of it in moderation.