ARAM is great for a fast way to get introduced to a champion even for seasoned players. I might not play a champ I don’t own that is part of the free champ rotation, but during ARAM’s I get a chance to check them out, see what their abilities are like. Which in turn strengthen’s your play against that champion.
This week I’ve gotten Zed a couple of times. I’m not a big fan of him at all, but now I have an idea of how he works and how one can play him. I’m certainly not going to pick him up though.
Conversely, Jayce, I’ve enjoyed a LOT and plan on picking him up.
It was too much for me. I played a bunch of bot games and watched a ton of how-to videos, jumped in and was turned off. This is not a game for someone who wants to learn as they go. You have to study and then sign up for voice-chat enabled tutoring classes and then practice. Then, you do everything as right as you understand it and someone still bitches at you because they thought you should have done something differently.
I would love to see a breakdown of the current playerbase by experience. I would wager there is a large, experienced population who have played a while and then a bunch that come in and out at noob levels daily. That middle ground must be filled with a couple of slow learners that are gluttons for punishment along with copious amounts of tumbleweeds.
I think the game is awesome and I love the pace of it, but people just suck.
Stopped playing it about 1.5 years ago I think. Tried it again the other day just to see the differences. The game had changed too much for me to feel familiar with it.
Without meaning to, I seem to be playing daily again and I am not really sure how that happened. It sort of feels like I am discovering myself to have sleep walked onto the freeway or something, except I am discovering that I played 5 or 6 games on a Saturday without any real desire to play LoL. When talking it over with a friend the best I have come up with is that it is comfort food in a way as it is familiar, compartmentalized, and low on time or cognative commitment. I think the official ARAM mode got me through the door, but nothing else of interest is pulling me back out.
I’ve found myself in the same boat. ARAM is fun, short, low stakes and low pressure, so it’s perfect to jump into and have a good time with. Now that I’m playing daily again, I find that I’m wanting a meatier experience, but its a crapshoot securing the role I want (mid or solo top). I’m not averse to learning a new role, such as support, but I’d prefer to pair up with someone who isn’t going to be upset that I may not be as hyper competitive as they are. I’m also bummed that Dominion seems to have fallen by the wayside, as I was a big fan of the mode when it first launched and played quite a few games there.
That’s my issue too. Most nights I feel like playing a certain champ or role but with pugs I tend to get forced into something. When I can get a group of 5 friends to play with, at least I have a good chance of playing what I want. However on most days it seems hard to get a group going so I just end up doing ARAM.
Few nights ago I accidentally queued Dominion while trying to pick ARAM. It launched pretty fast. I don’t think that mode is abandoned.
It happens in LoL, Dota, Dota2, HoN, etc. So I am not sure how much it is player community so much as it is game design. I don’t think you could design a game that is more efficient at creating player conflict (cross team and especially within a team) than the MOBA genre. I like to call it the fratricide genre. That said some interesting moves have been made to try to discourage this by different companies amongst their game’s player base. So maybe a happy balance can be struck in at least one of these games someday.
The especially interesting bit of brain candy that I have been chewing on lately is Tom’s recent statement that whole generations now are learning sportsmanship from online gaming. Which is horrifying not so much in a ‘get off my lawn’ kind of superiority, but more as a general reality that a totally different metric of sportsmanship comes from anonymous interaction hundreds or thousands of miles apart in a fratricidal video game than in a handshake and a juice box after a soccer game at the local park.
I wouldn’t say there’s a lot. At least, not more than you’d expect from a bunch of 18-25 year olds working together. TSM has a weekly reality show on Gamestop called GameCrib and I think Fnatic recently did a similar thing so those might give you some insight.
I don’t think it’s the dota player community, the same shit happens in every popular game. Loaded up Battlefield 3 a couple of nights ago on PS3 since I had recently subscribed to PSN+ and got it for free. In my first game there were two guys spewing all sorts of profanities due to the lack of competency of their teammates. I couldn’t even find a mute option in the game.
I don’t think dota genre game design has that much to do with it. People will be caustic over the smallest things. Pretty much the only way to deal with it in any game is to exclusively play with friends and mute opposing team communication if it’s allowed. I wish there was some way to create a subset of the gaming community that is only composed of mature gamers and ensure that you only play with this group, but I don’t know how you would go about creating something like that cross game and platform.
I’ve had good luck playing with members of the Lowelo community in LoL. The Lowelo podcast talks about dealing with this stuff all the time. I super recommend it (the podcast and the channel) to anyone who is interested in LoL but had a hard time with other players. Join one of their chat channels in game and mention that you’re new to the game and looking for a group. A lot of the guys there use Skype for voice chat during games, even if you don’t talk much it helps to be able to join the call and listen to what your team is saying.
I talked about this awhile ago, I forget whether it was here or another forum. I recall the response was extremely hostile to my stated notion that I fear for today’s youth because they appear to be much more casually selfish and assholish than the kids I played sports with growing up.
Instead, I got a bunch of supposed examples of people on their youth soccer teams apparently encountering behavior that is just as bad (and as frequent) as that which you routinely encounter in League of Legends.
I found those responses ridiculous and likely made just out of contrarianism. As I stated at the time, none of my teammates in my pickup basketball games growing up ever called me a “nigger faggot” because I made a bad play. That’s pretty common in League of Legends (where just last night, I was told I should get cancer and die when I “stole” the blue buff from a teammate).
