League of Legends!

The Game Room
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Is anyone playing this game? It’s a free version of the (inferior) game “Heroes of Newerth,” which is itself a version of the fan-created game “Defense of the Ancients”.

All I can say is they finally got the genre right! League of Legends is a mix of MMO style pvp and RTS games, where you control a single hero that gains power through items and levels throughout the match. Matches last about half an hour each. There are probably 50 or 60 different heroes to choose from, all with unique play styles.

There are enough people playing this game that it takes less than a minute to find a game match, and so far the game seems to find opponents close to your skill level.

Did I mention it’s free?

The developers make money by using a facebook-game marketing style. People who want to pay for it can get new skins for their heroes. You unlock new heroes to choose from by playing the game, but if you want to pay for it, you unlock new heroes faster.

If anyone is playing this game, what do you think of it?

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Which itself is a remake for the Starcraft map “Aeon of Strife.”

Anyway, I don’t play LoL, I never could get into the “you only can play as five random people unless you explicitly buy a hero” model. Though watching it on youtube is fun sometimes.

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Remake was an incredibly poor choice of words, it’s a “Aeon of Strife type map” for Warcraft 3, AoS is a genre of games that started as custom maps in Starcraft, then took off in Warcraft III, it’s probably by far the most popular genre of map, with DOTA (specifically, DOTA Allstars) being the most triumphant example.

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There are actually 10 free heroes, which rotates each week. Also, unlocking a hero does not cost any money, as long as you use points you get from playing the game. It might be my favorite “free” game of all time, since nobody can just buy their wins. The things that exclusively require money to obtain are purely cosmetic.

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My son plays this and would play 24/7 with an IV hooked up, if possible.

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I was super addiced to this game a year ago. Then I got married, and barely have any time to play computer games. But it was a lot of fun.

What are your favorite champions? My favorite caster is Lux, finishing off enemies with her deathlazer.

Yeah the game can be played free, but some of the epic skins arw just too good to pass up, I.e. corporate mundo and gentleman Cho’gath.

The voices are pretty good. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I heard Veigar’s voice.

:mad: “I AM evil! Stop laughing!” :mad:

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I’m playing Akali, and doing pretty well against other newbs like me. I read some guides that recommended building her pure ability power instead of the hybrid the designers intended. By the end of the game she’s a wrecking crew.

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I just started playing due to this thread, I’m liking it, though it seems like unlocking champions is going to happen on a geologic time scale. Vladmir is pretty cool, though he seems to be very much a team fight character, lacking a good ability to kill himself but rather being really good to help with assists. Ryze was who I picked up first, liking him in the tutorial, but I just can’t get him to work right in PvP (though that may have been the match, there were TWO Fiddlesticks on the other team, and our team was caster heavy, not fun).

Right now my main is Annie, I’m really, really liking her, and I think I’m getting her game down. I’ve looked at some recommended builds and it looks like I’ve more or less got her down in theory all by my lonesome, aside from some item choices (I was mostly sticking with recommended). She’s quite the teamfight character, but I feel like I can hold my own more than I could with Vladmir. Getting a stun-charged Tibbers off in the middle of a team fight and turning the tide is pretty rewarding too.

I’m still getting last-hitting down. Since I’ve played these types of games before, I’ve always known the theory, it’s just a matter of getting comfortable enough with my abilities to be able to do it consistently, as is I’m liable to overestimate the damage I do, or else hesitate and sacrifice the last hit to a minion.

At my level, I feel like matches are too erratic for me to really be able to know where I stand. Since it’s such a team game, I feel like I’m heavily constrained by who I’m playing with, I’ve had plenty of games with feeders, spazes, and general weirdos. I had one dominion where I got so frustrated I got tempted to leave. I pinged and we were all lined up to initiate a teamfight gank, two of us charged in and then… three of them just ran away to stop a lone champion on the other side of the map, leaving us to get rolled. Which isn’t to say I don’t make plenty of obvious errors too*, nor that I play at a high level, I just feel like a lot of times it’s pure luck whether I get stuck with a team of autoattackers and people who kamikaze towers** all the time, or decent players who make a few mistakes.

Ah well, nothing to get too frustrated over. Right now I’m working towards unlocking the Fox girl and Lux, they both look like casters I’d like – if a bit above my skill level, but they take a lot of points so I’m not too worried.

  • I’m still not too clear on the metagame about when to creep (not sure if that’s the term in this game – killing monsters in the woods), or who picks up blue/red and when, when it’s worth it to kill the dragon etc. I also make a lot of mistakes where I get greedy – I probably chase a little too often.

** I had this one game where every time the minions pushed to the tower one guy, as a carry at low level, just would NOT let that tower go, and got killed without fail every time. We won, but that guy who SHOULD have been our late game powerhouse was stuck at a pathetically low level due to his frequent dying.

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LoL is Dota Jr. If anyone has a Dota 2 beta key and wants to play let me know.

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I find LoL actually fun, not sure about II, but the original DotA: Allstars was always stressful because of the terrible community. LoL also has several mechanics (such as base teleport without needing an item) that I think are improvements, rather than “baby mode” additions.

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Also, I forgot to mention, I got Ahri and she is AMAZING, my favorite character by far now.

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I’ve been playing LoL on and off for the last 12 months or so. I enjoy it mostly, but get annoyed when I get stuck in a crap team. I play almost exclusively public random match ups.

My handle is ‘Icepelt’ if anyone cares to look me up.

My favourite champ is Amumu, I like to think I’m pretty damn good with him. I also like Ashe too, but my success with her seems to depend somewhat on how well the rest of the team play.

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For my playstyle, it’s the perfect pace. If I need to scratch a “new character” itch, I just play the heroes that are free this week. Otherwise I spend lots of time perfecting a single character at a time.

His direct damage single-target ability (I forget the name, but it’s mapped to “Q” on the keyboard) isn’t very powerful, but it’s the only direct damage in the game that has NO animation time. You push the button, enemy instantly takes damage, THEN the animation shows vlad gaining health. It’s impossible for the other player to react to, which is nice. Other direct damage abilities have a “wind up” animation, or a “flight” animation, in which the projectile sails toward the enemy and they can push their oh-shit-please-don’t-die heal button before it catches up to them.

I love Ryze! He’s very friendly to new players, and does tons of damage. He gets a lot stronger in the end of a match once he has a huge mana pool and can chain cast.

Agreed! Also, Annie is the best character for learning last-hit timing. She gets so rewarded for last hitting with her fireball thing that you can’t help but try to get it perfect every time. If you stick with her long enough, you’ll be a last-hit master.

I’m still at the stage where I’m playing beginners all the time. I’m still a beginner myself. It’ll be like that for awhile, I think.

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Oh, forgot to add; “creeping” in this game is referred to as “jungling.” If you want to go kill the creeps in the “jungle,” you say “i’m going to jungle” or “i’m jungling.” If you’re killing minions in the lanes, you’re “laning.”

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Played it a little after the beta ended, dropped it, then picked it up again over the summer and now it’s pretty much the only game I play on a regular basis. I played a lot of Dominion and bot games, so now I’m level 30 with only 20 normal wins. If anyone wants to get a SDMB group going so we can queue together, that’d be cool. My name’s the same there as it is here.

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Ahri is so much fun to play, build her for AP and Spell Vamp. You can still die, but it’s really hard, you can get tower dives, and people go down real nice. During the teamplay phase I can regularly get triple kills, and semi-frequently get near-aces. So far my only match was this bizarrely unkillable Miss Fortune build, who was stacked up so hard she could even kill our tank in a few hits, regenerating her health right away; she was damn near unkillable unless you spotted her early and stunlocked her right off the bat. We lost that game, but it was the best match I’ve played so far. Every tower was down except one of ours, we kept trading inhibitors. It lasted about 15-20 minutes in a straight deadlock, until they finally managed to rush us and get our base. It was a game that could have truly gone either way until the last minute.

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One thing they don’t tell new players: don’t waste your money on Tier 2 runes. They’re not all that better than the Tier 1, they cost more, and you’re gonna have to toss them anyway when you get to level 20. It’s not a big deal, and you’d only be spending fakebucks, but it’s fakebux that would be better spent on new champions or saving up for the last big upgrade.

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Last hitting is important, particularly on champs that get bonuses if their ability kills someone (sion, veigar, gangplank, nasus). With these guys you want to carefully farm minion waves.

Another important thing is proper pushing. Newbies will push minion waves as hard as they can, but you usually dont want this. Early game, you barely damage their tower and make it easier for them to ambush you.

Spell vamp is only useful on a few champs. The problem with it is that it only does a small % of spell dmg with aoe spells.

I like trolling other teams with AP teemo. So much fun to set up ambushes with him.

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I play LoL occasionally, usually when I’m on a losing streak in SC2 and need a break. I find it fun, if not particularly deep or addictive.

I’d like it a lot more if the matches were more like 15-20 minutes instead of 30-40. Also, I find the sheer number of items you can purchase a little daunting. I think it would be better if there were fewer items with more distinction between them.

Plus, it’s not like you can do any serious shopping for items during a game. You either find a build on the internet before the game and buy those items in order, or you pick the most expensive item you can afford in the category you want and then get back to your lane.

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Have you been back since they rolled out the Dominion version? Most of those games take 20-25 mins. I think the longest I’ve ever had one run was 35mins.