League of Legends

Since I played both HoN and LoL, are they looking to improve connection speed or loading time for LoL, to something comparable to HoN?

Another thing I’m curious about. It’s funny you mention that as their connect speeds are pretty long, though thank God you can reconnect now.

I was always kind of curious about why theres 2 waiting screens.

yep, that’s the reason I stop messing around with LoL, joining/start a game takes forever.

they might learn something from Demigod, how a bad networking method ruins a good game.

Yeah, it really does. It’s better now, believe it or not, than it was before. Surely that will be fixed before release

I’m not a fan of how they did that either. It’s not a very integrated experience.

I agree, the front end really seems so separate from the actual game. I would have also liked a little bit of front loading rather than having the game re-launch every time. I’m not sure I like the multistage loading of HoN either though. It’s better than LoL but why do I have to go through a load screen to get to a lobby? That could be loaded up front rather than every time I enter a new lobby.

Has the decision of making the game Free2Play changed the way from it was originally designed?

I got a hook up shortly after my post, but thanks.

Aside from interface and polish issues ranging from the strange choice of windowed mode lobby to balance, I think LoL has a real solid future. I got in a few heated debates with a friend about this. If you ask me RIGHT NOW, which is better, I would say HoN. However, I think several months down the road LoL looks to pull away at some point once they get past their growing pains. Why? Well, HoN has taken a much easier and safer path by using probably a good amount of pre-existing code of Savage 2 to copy/ paste nearly down to the numbers the DotA mod. Obviously they will have a head start. LoL on the other hand with masteries, runes, and heroes and items that are not direct ports looks to be trying some new additions which seems to give it a wider vision (could be bad, who knows) that could lead to a much more superior product given enough time to make up for the less “pre-packaged” development. Both games are great and I plan to own them both. So it really is a Pepsi vs Coke thing for me (I like both and prefer one over the other depending on my mood).

That said, the thing I would REALLY like to see Riot comment on is VoIP. I know this is a nearly dead horse debate. The argument basically boils down to camp 1 saying “Vent/ TS is better, I don’t want to listen to kids” and camp 2 saying “That is fine if you have a guild or clan, but give us the option so premades don’t dominate pick up groups by communication advantage alone.” I fall in the second camp and it is the one feature that draws me to HoN over LoL the most. The fact is I don’t play with my friends all the time, and I appreciate the option to have a chance to communicate with a pick up team especially when these games (Moba or whatever) rely on teamwork so heavily.

These games are very fast paced and seconds matter. Needing to use the keyboard to communicate is suicide and reminds me of those magazine ads showing FPS soldiers holding “typed” message signs. This usually means dead silence unless you brought your own Voip which degrades not only the competitive balance, but also the sense of playing a multiplayer game at all. The same friend that vastly prefers HoN said that LoL feels like playing alone in a single player game (refering to the lack of VoIP). I can see his point.

I think they explained that the first load (upon entering the lobby) is map-related loading. The longer loading that happens after picking is everything else (once hero models are decided and so on).

I think the loading screen itself is silly, but some loading at that time makes sense. What I mean, by the screen being silly is that it should immediately dump you into the lobby, and load the map in the background.

My guess would be that because the map determines the number of slots shown on the screen, that screen can’t be drawn before the map is loaded, and the whole thing is set up as one big sequential load (game isn’t parallel at all). Hope they fix it… should be able to work it out.

My question for the folks in Riot Game would be,

Within one sentence, how do I convince my friends who play DotA to try LOL ?

With HoN, all I said was “DotA with better graphics”. Bang, they are instantly interested.

With all due respect to HoN, it’s got more than better graphics.

I haven’t played League of Legends, but you could say “DotA without the douchebags”, but then it wouldn’t be DotA.

That would only make sense for the host though, once a client connects he can get slot counts or other data from the host/server. They could also easily change their data format to load a small header of the level for the lobby rather than the whole damn map. Beyond laziness or poor design there is no reason to have a load for the lobby, especially when you consider people go in and out of lobbies frequently. There should only be a load once all players have committed to the game or when initially launching the application. Still I think it’s much better than LoL’s approach, which is even more asinine.

Giant Bomb did a quick look of this and it looks pretty nice. I wish it had singleplayer, but I guess that’s asking a lot from a microtransaction-based free-to-play game.

Bunch of updates lately to get ready for launch, still have some invites if anyone wants.

Oh, apparently it does have skirmishes against bots. That’s pretty awesome. Definitely on my radar now.

Saw this on the shelf today at Best Buy, didn’t know it had been released already and I haven’t been hearing much about it at all. I see no reviews yet, and the only player review I found so far is one sentence long.

Does anyone own the game? How do you like it so far?

The only game of this type I’ve played is Demigod (I never played DOTA). How does it compare? I won’t be nearly good enough to compete with the hardcore crown online, but I’d play this if it would be fun for enough between my wife and I to play 1v1 with bots and whatnot. I’m also curious to find out if the game is fun without resorting to $50 in micro-upgrades on top of the purchase price.

You could get the HoN beta as it’s currently free and I’d say a better game. Neither is going to be terribly good 1v1 though and I’m not sure what the bots are like in either. Give HoN a try and see how you and your wife feel about the overall gameplay, if you like it then worry about which (LoL or HoN) would be better for the two of you.

LoL is and will remain a free game. You can just download it and try. Last time I checked, everything was still unlocked to “celebrate the launch” (i.e., store software is still buggy), so you can even try all heroes. (But take note that US and Europe have separate publishers and servers).

I’ve played a few games, and even though I’m quite bad at DotA, the automatcher gave me opponents who were even worse. That’s one of the big advantages of it being free to play, you get a varied demographic of all skill levels, and the persistent accounts mean the automatcher can make a good guess where you stand.

The bots are ok to learn the basics, nothing more. They’ll get boring very quickly. If you insist on playing bots – and I can see why someone would, the matches really are too long without being able to pause or quit – do pick up War3+DotA, the DotA AI is much better and more interesting.

I saw this in Target yesterday. The price was $39.99 which seemed high for a supposedly “free to play” game, even with the $20 worth of store points it included.

Are you sure that’s not $20 in addition to a bundle of preselected unlocks? Because some deal like that was advertised as a ‘Collector’s Edition’ on the forums.