League of Legends adds ‘Honor’ system to foster friendlier community

I can’t say this is the main reason I stopped playing LoL, but one of the biggest reasons was definitely the community. Each time I played was just a huge reminder of how much I sucked. And then the berating started. From my own team. Basically when a player in LoL figures out that you are not on the pro circuit or whatever the hell everyone seems to think they play on, that invites a slew of wild accusations of how terrible I am. Dude, like, I already know. I’m playing the damn game so I can get better.

Anyway, in an attempt to promote those who are maybe a little more helpful than simply calling me out on my IQ score, Riot will be starting a new ‘Honor’ system to reward players with ‘Honor’ points. Players will choose to upvote people at the end of the match and be asked to choose why they are giving them honor. Categories of honor include Helpful, Friendly, Teamwork and Honorable Opponent.

Collusion and round of ARAM at MLG disqualifies top teams from LoL tournament

Over the weekend Major League Gaming held its semi-annual tournament for several games including StarCraft II and newly added and now ridiculously popular League of Legends. In one of their first rounds the top two teams at the tournament: Dignitas and Curse NA secretly agreed to a round of the fairly popular ARAM variation of LoL to the obvious confusion of the crowds. But what also happened behind the scenes was much worse as both teams came out as colluding for profit.

Riot games has updated bots big time

League of Legends has been updated in a big way for players fond of the more casual Player vs. AI mode, a cooperative mode that pits 5 real players against 5 AI-controlled bots.

Reasoning for working on this feature in particular instead of something we would normally expect like a new character or perhaps even a new map was that the majority of players played at least one AI game per week and “it’s actually the primary game mode for a surprisingly large percentage of players.”  There will now be AI for 40 of the game’s champions plus AI for the very alternative Dominion game mode.

Razer’s Naga Hex mouse for DotA/MOBA-style games

Razer’s latest mouse appends some strategically-placed buttons for MOBA (or DotA) games that you will probably forget to use.  I’m not sure if anyone was actually asking for this thing, I personally don’t think the Q,T,E and R keys are that far out of reach, nor the 1-6 keys for items.  I could see myself assigning these buttons to items, but its probably likely that I would sooner forget I even had the buttons to begin with.

Are games just overpriced?

 

Every so often a huge game like Skyrim or The Old Republic or Modern Warfare 3 comes out.  They charge $60 and we accept it because its the standard price for a high-quality, AAA title.  In these situations I think most people don’t mind because there is a significant premium associated with these titles and we all accept that they will be the most popular (and time consuming) of the crop.  They keep that $60 price tag for months, even years at a time.

Then other games come out at the same price point and only weeks later we see their price-tag slashed in half.  Duke Nukem Forever had a huge build-up of hype and had a lot going for it in terms of word-of-mouth prior to the game’s release.  Had it been a great game I think it would’ve retained its initial price tag all the way until Christmas.  Instead it was awful and people barely touched it even when it was on sale for $10 on Steam only a month or two later.

Code Giveaway for League of Legends – Riot K-9 Nasus!

In celebration of fullnovazero’s 100th post I am giving away six Riot Nasus skin codes for League of Legends!  All you need to do is comment on this post before midnight Thursday (PST).  Six random winners will be chosen on Friday.

Note: You may see a delay in your comment and it being posted, they need to be manually approved by yours truly, I will try to get to them as fast as possible!  Only one comment per person please!

Also don’t forget we are still giving away a copy of Trine if you purchase the Humble Introversion Bundle and comment on this post by midnight tonight.  Not many entrants yet and that is a lot of quality games for only $5!

UPDATE: The time for submissions has been officially closed, codes are being sent!

League of Legends is now 32 million strong

League of Legends (LoL) is the hottest DotA-based game around right now, their popularity is spreading quick.  According to Riot Games, at any one time there are 1.3 million players on at once.  Not so bad for a start-up free-to-play game!  Hit the jump for a sweet infographic!

League of Legends remaps Masteries

Personally I never get around to building out the masteries pages for individual characters.  Its been a problem of mine since day one of playing the game.  Why?  Probably the idea that most of the bottom-tier masteries feel like they aren’t helping me much, so I just don’t usually bother.  I’m pretty excited to hear that Riot will be redoing the masteries page soon to address some of these issues:

We also wanted to normalize the value of each individual mastery point across the mastery trees. As we have added more items to the game, the value of altering certain stats has changed. With the cost-benefit relationship of each stat more strongly determined through all of this iteration, it made sense to reevaluate the masteries with this new data in mind.

In the new system, every point matters. Each mastery point that you spend feels like a strong, impactful choice.

That’s some news I like to hear.  You can checkout the full description of soon-to-be changes below:

Inside Design: Masteries in Season Two

New League of Legends character is…Stitch?

Actually its not, his name is Fizz, but the teaser comic looks a hell of a lot like the character from Disney’s 2002 animated film Lilo & Stitch.  You can check out the comic here:

Look familiar?  Here’s a comparison image:

Looks just a tad bit inspired...

My Closest Match of League of Legends: Dominion

I’ve been playing a bit of Riot Games’ new mode for League of Legends called Dominion and its been a blast! In this video I show you a very close match that a few of my friends and I had and explain some of the basic mechanics of Dominion as well as some of my amateur strategies. I also try my hand at casting the game, which I think was fun to try, but I need a lot of practice with color commentary.