League Of Legends

League Of Legends
14th Jan 2010 - 13:07	by jansic
One of the most played games this (last) year has been DotA, a teamplay Warcraft 3 mod. It's very good and I enjoy playing it. I was recently given League Of Legends as a gift. Ignoring the the subtle differences in implementation it's essentially a carbon-copy of DotA. DotA is finicky but good. League of Legends is polished and also good. I play it, I win some, I lose some, that's how gaming is... What I don't understand is why I don't actually enjoy playing it. Really. Why is that? Apart from subtle mechanical differences and some polish in the UI the whole premise is absolutely identical to DotA - even the map is the same shape! I have my suspicions that it's due to League of Legends being almost exclusively an online experience. It's not that online play is bad, but I play games in order to have fun. League presents its games in a way that winning is good and losing is very bad and its community acts in very much the same way. The randomised matchmaking system means you'll never be in the same team of anonymous people more than once and that makes every game you play very aggressive and not just against the opposition - you're playing to win or not play at all. There's practice mode, of course, but getting the necessary 10 people together to play a balanced game is difficult. For my kind of gaming, League of Legends defeats the point. I'll keep on playing it but I don't think I'll ever enjoy it.

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