League of Legends (Ranked)

I know I've talked a lot about how much I dislike League of Legends, and there are still a lot of things that I don't like about the game (and the developer). However, I decided to give the game a shot again after more than a year of not playing it (my last games were in December of 2011) in order to play with my brother who has continued playing occasionally. That means I missed the entirety of season 2 and whatever happened in season 2, including the changes to items and all of the new heroes (I refuse to call them champions any more; they're heroes).

The main thing I noticed about coming back to League of Legends is how toxic the community is. It's really ridiculous that I communicate openly with the team, describing what I don't understand and the things I need help in (items and matchups mostly), only to be flamed incessantly for being the worst <insert hero I'm playing> they've ever seen. Interestingly, after a good 5 games of being flamed, my next game I was complimented as being the best support (Sona) they'd ever seen. Now I don't know what Riot should (or could) do to attempt to solve the problem with the community, but I've never dealt with this kind of abuse in Dota 2. HoN seems to be similarly angry about things.

Anyway, I have played a number of ranked games in the last week or so, and right now my profile reports an Elo of 1151. I recognize this isn't a pro ranking or anything, but I believe that 1200 is roughly the 50% mark, so I'm only slightly below the average of all people who play the game, even after taking a year off. I should also mention that I had only played a single ranked game before last week, so the ban and picking procedure was brand new to me. I do have a real job, and a real social life on top of the games I play, so I probably won't be playing anywhere near as much as other gamers. However, at the present time, I plan to play and stream League of Legends ranked games at least a couple times a week as I get a chance. If I can convince some of my RL friends to play on a team, I might even attempt to coordinate a 5v5 team too.

To give you a taste of how bad I am, here's a ranked game where I played Malphite in the jungle because somehow both sides forgot to ban him.

Bloodline Champions

A couple of my friends told me yesterday that they wanted to make an arena team in Bloodline Champions to play somewhat competitively. A while back, I had bought some starter pack for the game, so I was quite interested by this prospect and told them that I would give it a shot with them. Thus, yesterday, we played 5 of our 10 placement matches required to be placed into a competitive league. We won all 5 matches, which is very encouraging.

In addition, I brought my gaming stream back online using a new streaming tool that I'd be glad to discuss at some point in the future. Maybe I'll even update my streaming tutorial page. Regardless, since I recorded all of the matches, I decided to upload them to my new youtube channel, so you can find the videos there. I also have embedded the first match here.

Guild Wars 2, World vs. World

Guild Wars 2 has a fun game mode called World vs. World or WvW for short. The way it works is everyone from your world (server) can join together and fights against the players from 2 other servers for control of 4 maps. 3 of the maps are called "borderlands" for each of the worlds, where one world spawns in the middle and the others spawn on the edge and fight to control the nodes on the map. The fourth map is called the Eternal Battlegrounds and consists of 3 spawns around the edge of the map along with 3 keeps to control along with 1 castle (bigger than the rest) and many towers and supply camps. Supply camps are worth the fewest points, but they are the only way to increase the amount of supply in your larger buildings. Supply is important, because without it, you cannot repair buildings, build siege units, or upgrade your buildings to have stronger walls and greater defenses. There are NPCs that will help defend points you control, and you can hire more using supply and a small amount of in-game gold (usually only costing silver).

While I think this is really one of the best game modes for PvP in any MMO yet, it's not without issues. Probably the primary issue is when there is a huge player count imbalance between the worlds. It's not immediately clear what the right solution would be to having the wrong number of players from each world, but at least World of Warcraft tried something with Wintergrasp (even if it didn't always work the best). Another issue for WvW is that it split among 4 separate maps, and there doesn't appear to be any easy way to call for help from players on the other maps when you need it. Guild Wars should build in better tools for commanders to communicate with each other in order to organize the war. Even with these weaknesses, I still believe Guild Wars 2 WvW is one of the best PvP and PvE combined game modes I've seen.

Dota 2 Giveaway Ideas

I was just given 5 copies of Dota 2 on Steam that I don't know what to do with. Pretty much all of my friends that are interested in the game already have it, so I was thinking of doing a giveaway to hand them out to people. I'd also like to be able to use this giveaway to increase the visibility of my blog if at all possible, so if you have any ideas how I should do this giveaway, feel free to leave a comment here or send me a twitter message (my twitter link is in the left column at the top).

Jetpack Joyride Controls

Jetpack Joyride is a game that I've played a fair amount on my iPhone. It's a fun game of the single-button style where you move up by pressing the button and down by letting go in order to dodge obstacles that travel from right to left on the screen. The bad part about the iPhone version of this game is that the only place they could put the button was on the screen. That means that part of the screen must be covered by your finger in order to control the game, meaning that part of the screen is not visible when you need to interact with the game. That is a problem since the only way of knowing if there is something to dodge is by looking at the screen, some of which is now covered by the controls.

This week, I was pleasantly surprised to find Jetpack Joyride as a free download for my Playstation Vita. I thought, "Perfect! Now I can play this game by pressing a button." It turns out that I was wrong in my thought. The only way to press the button in the PS Vita version of Jetpack Joyride is to touch the rear touch pad. While the rear touchpad is a huge improvement over using the screen to cover up your vision, there exists yet another problem. The problem with the PS Vita controls is that it is nearly impossible to hold the device without accidentally touching the rear touchpad. There is no way to configure the controls to be anything else, and so I am left wondering why they didn't just use the 'x' button, or better yet, allow the player to use any of the buttons they want. It couldn't have been that difficult to allow any of the controller buttons to indicate a desire to move in the game.

Please game developers, don't use touch controls when a button will work better. Let me repeat, do not use touch controls when button inputs will work better. Thank you.

Guild Wars 2

In the last 2 weeks, I have played quite a bit of Guild Wars 2. In my opinion, it is currently the best MMO on the market. This post will just be a few brief words about my first experiences with the game. As my highest level character is only 30 (out of 80 levels) and I've played very little of the PvP or WvW game modes, this should not be considered a comprehensive review.

First, the movement controls in GW2 feel very tight and as I would expect based on my experience in playing World of Warcraft, which has perfect MMO movement controls in my opinion. The abilities are on a hot bar from 1 to 0, with a couple other skills mapped to F1-5 and the ` key depending on the profession (class) you are playing. Unlike most other MMOs, you are restricted to only this number of active skills at any given point in time, making it much less obnoxious in terms of key bindings in comparison to others. Keys 1-5 are based on your currently equipped weapon and profession. Key 6 is a healing ability, 7-9 are basic profession skills, and key 0 is an advanced skill.

Weapon abilities unlock as you use the weapon. When you dual wield, the main hand weapon decides skills 1-3 and the offhand decides 4 and 5, while 2 handed weapons come with all 5 abilities. Every profession starts with a healing ability, and can unlock others as they level. The basic ability slots unlock as you level, with abilities costing skill points to unlock. Skill points are earned on level, and can also be obtained through skill point challenges throughout the world. The advanced skill becomes available at level 30, and you can unlock those skills with a larger number of skill points.

Based on your choices during character creation (and some decisions as you progress through the story), your character develops in a personal story with the major characters in the universe. Almost all of the personal story quests develop through well voice acted sequences, with reasonably well lip-synched characters. Then on top of the personal story, each place you travel to in the world has regular events that you can participate in, or choose to leave on your journey. Your character naturally levels down to whatever area you are in, so adventuring remains a challenge even as you gain levels. This also makes it easy to jump in and quest with a friend who is lower level.

To top this all off, there is no monthly fee and the game can be had right now for only $60. If you know me personally and want to play with me, I'm on the Eredon Terrace World.