MOBA Adventures - October #1

I think I'll do these more than once, so I'll go ahead an name this and such. Maybe sometime in the future I can turn it into something cool and fun to read. Hopefully this is fun. What ever anyways so I really really like the MOBA genre and really really hate somethings that people insist are necessary to its mechanics. Let's talk!

My only MOBA game I play pseudo-frequently at the moment is League of Legends, and honestly I'm not nearly as taken as I am with the idea of the genre itself. I feel like the massive amount of items and combinations thereof detracts from the experience as a whole, it's sort of a incredibly complicated, time-consuming method of being really lazy development-wise. Perhaps a bold statement? My point is the devs are free to develop characters often and not worry about how players will customize each champion because the customization options never change. Granted, the items are plenty and allow for massive permutations of character focus via stats, including a myrid of unique active and passive abilities which primarily alter stats but sometimes have specific gameplay uses similar to that of actual champion abilities. It's not an argument about whether or not the item system works, it's whether or not it's the best way of doing it, and I wholeheartedly believe it is not. Champion-specific upgrades and progressions (like the masteries used in the metagame or talent trees of traditional RPG fame) would provide for a much easier to understand gameplay and learning curve experience, and would allow champions to remain focused and prevent newer players from making "bad decisions", only different decisions. Any money spent is an improvement, and while certain "builds" will always exist, there are no options available to the champion that are bad. The downside to this is that customization and progression are no longer as player-driven, whereas with the items players can innovate beyond the scope of the developers, but ultimately very few players will be able to do that, a majority of them will have to learn and look up other players' builds, and the rest will all be doomed to play horribly or not at all.

But that's not what this is about. This is about the last couple of days playing Irelia, Heimerdinger and Alistar. First of all, I've lost like 8/10 games which is really frustrating, but second of all I can't for the life of me remember to use my active items. I usually play tank characters so I eventually end up with a Randuin's Omen for the most part, and I think I may have activated that item once every ten games. It's a really strange habit to not have formed by now, but dating back to my early years playing RPGs I never use items if I can avoid it. Final Fantasy Tactics, never used items. Chrono Cross, never used items. I just don't use them, I like using skills and strategy but WITHOUT the items. Unfortunately that's not the best way to play.

Irelia
Really awesome fun character to play, especially late game when she starts drowning everyone in blades, but I never really grasped how everyone did so well with her. Her ultimate seemed completely ineffective, and only halfway through my time with her did I start activating her W at the right time. Irelia's Ultimate summons four blades which are thrown at the enemy, however the tooltip nowhere says that you must hit R again (up to four times) to send them flying. I was under the impression it lasted for a certain amount of time and applied to every attack, which it also does not say, but it's not very specific. SO after figuring that out I started doing better with her, but ultimately I never had enough feed to be built early enough in the game and so my assassination efforts often fell short unless we were already winning. Great character, but she might be beyond my current ability.

Heimerdinger
Silly ass name, first of all. Second of all, I have a bit of an identity crisis with this guy. I can't tell if I should play him with turrets or play him with missiles, but either way I'm never good with him in team fights, only laning. Which is strange since it's normally the other way around. Normally I'll try to do things that weren't necessary at that point in the laning phase, like dying to save someone that wasn't going to die anyways... Anyways I started this post forever ago and only played like a couple of games with Heimer, suffice to say they didn't go so well and I think I'll pass on being super squishy.

Alistar
Now here's the funtimes. I'm very used to playing tanks for some reason, probably because they're the easiest to learn the game with. I'm also not very driven by kills, I like assists and always have, though less so in FPS games. Anyways Alistar's been a blast and a half, pushing lane early game and shaking off ganks with the ult, protecting squishies with the headbutt W and initiating with W/Q. I like how utilitarian his moves are, focusing on CC and less about damage, while remaining plenty tanky on his own. So far my only problem with him has been mana starvation, but I'm not sure I should re-build to deal with that, it seems more a side effect of careless mana expenditure.

Anyways, I've been on this post for days now, so let's go ahead and cap it off. New rotation started anyways, expect more of these to come!