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The Unkillable Demon King

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11–20 of 44 posts

Re: The Unkillable Demon King

#11
post #6

Very interesting article. I must admit, that I never played League of Legends. So could please someone explain, how is it possible to reach top position simply by using this strategy in this game: "My strength is in understanding the flow of the game, when to fight and when not to fight," he explains. "Regardless of which champion I play, that strength is there." Either he's very humble or does not tell the whole sto…

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Re: The Unkillable Demon King

#12
post #6

Very interesting article. I must admit, that I never played League of Legends. So could please someone explain, how is it possible to reach top position simply by using this strategy in this game: "My strength is in understanding the flow of the game, when to fight and when not to fight," he explains. "Regardless of which champion I play, that strength is there." Either he's very humble or does not tell the whole sto…

It's the way the spell is used in the game.

In short, there are two way you can use a spell in the game: you can click on the spell, then click on another character. Or you can click on a spell, then click on the direction you want the spell to be used, the spell then fly in that direction, hitting first character that it hit (this type of ability is called "skillshot").

The blue character has a jumpy ability that let him jump a short distance in a direction, during the jump, it can't be hit nor targeted by any ability. The player use the jump ability to dodge the first set of spell by the enemy team, then use an item to turn yellow (which allow him to avoid the second set of abilities, while waiting for the jumping ability to be ready again). Then he jump again to avoid the enemy team's spells, while killing them with other abilities. You can see the character switching direction momentarily while running to avoid skill by the other team.

The skill in that specific gif was: timing/ reaction to avoid spells with both spell usage and movement, correct sequence of spells were used (you can see the cooldown and usage of the 4 spells with their icon at the middle bottom of the screen, it wasn't bashing spells randomly).

MOBA like League of Legends is the middleground First-person-shooters and full-on strategy games like Starcraft. In first person shooters, reaction time is more important, in strategy games, you don't have to deal with sub-second reaction time, but your "action throughput" needs to be much higher since there are more things to be taken care of (multitasking and metagame knowledge). League of legends requires faster reaction time than strategy game, but more multitasking than first person shooters.

Re: The Unkillable Demon King

#13
post #6

Very interesting article. I must admit, that I never played League of Legends. So could please someone explain, how is it possible to reach top position simply by using this strategy in this game: "My strength is in understanding the flow of the game, when to fight and when not to fight," he explains. "Regardless of which champion I play, that strength is there." Either he's very humble or does not tell the whole sto…

It is much easier to a 19 year old to be good at this game than to articulate why he is so good.

Re: The Unkillable Demon King

#14
post #6

Very interesting article. I must admit, that I never played League of Legends. So could please someone explain, how is it possible to reach top position simply by using this strategy in this game: "My strength is in understanding the flow of the game, when to fight and when not to fight," he explains. "Regardless of which champion I play, that strength is there." Either he's very humble or does not tell the whole sto…

If you're more into FPS, maybe look at SMITE (3rd person view)? Or come and join me and play Awesomenauts (2D MOBA) for a more gentle (and friendly..) introduction to the genre.

Re: The Unkillable Demon King

#15
post #4
post #2

Am I the only one who can not understand the hype about esports? I like playing myself and find watching others boring. It's cool if you like it, but I don't watch soccer either.

I just don't get why people who watch normal sports get all up in arms about "nerds playing video games". Why can't we all just like what we like and leave it at that? As for me I used to be into League of Legends tournaments, but every match I watch just feel the same. For me esport of choice is CS:GO, while the maps are the same the spots differ quite a lot and there is a lot more action since the rounds are so muc…

For me, gaming was about variety. I always hated games like CS, which all my friends played when I was young, because they always played the same maps. Same with StarCraft and later with DOTA or LoL. Which ended up being about skills and not about variety anymore.

Re: The Unkillable Demon King

#16
post #6

Very interesting article. I must admit, that I never played League of Legends. So could please someone explain, how is it possible to reach top position simply by using this strategy in this game: "My strength is in understanding the flow of the game, when to fight and when not to fight," he explains. "Regardless of which champion I play, that strength is there." Either he's very humble or does not tell the whole sto…

To achieve pro-level in first place, you must already master most of the game.

This leaves the difference between pro-players being one or two specific things.

Faker in particular, what he meant in that phrase, in the game translates to: "I can see the future".

I used to play Dota (before LoL existed) with a guy with that particular hability, it was utterly annoying, the only way to win against him was to use all your other skills perfectly, because he was always several steps ahead of you and if you made a mistake, he would use it against you.

Example of a game against such players: he notices you are not on his minimap (MOBAs usually use standard RTS minimap), then he thinks a bit, and deduces where you went, suppose you are retreating after getting too damaged after a mistake, then he deduces that you are doing that, deduces where you will be, and deduces that he can get there before you, then he goes there, wait for you to pass while retreating, and kills you, then he helps his teammates that were fighting you to advance their position.

Compare that to a master player that DON'T do that: suppose the guy main skill is to always win 1vs1 fights. You are gone from the map.. the guy DOES notice, but he does not know where you went, so he waits until you return, he might still figure a way to draw you out and win a fight, but probably won't help his team much.

Yes, there are players that are really good at killing enemies, and rack very high individual scores, but that don't make their team win.

Re: The Unkillable Demon King

#17
It's tough to overemphasize just how good Faker is/was. When he first appeared on the scene there had been other players before that had been considered to revolutionize their role. People like Diamondprox (for jungle) and Reapered (for top). But Faker was just something else completely.

Re: The Unkillable Demon King

#18
I play Dota 2 every once in a while. Fun game. I never played League of Legends (LoL), which seems to be more popular, just because I've read that they look very much alike, and I can't really afford, time-wise, to learn another game at all.

Interesting to see if someone plays both and has any comment on how they differ.

Re: The Unkillable Demon King

#19
post #6

Very interesting article. I must admit, that I never played League of Legends. So could please someone explain, how is it possible to reach top position simply by using this strategy in this game: "My strength is in understanding the flow of the game, when to fight and when not to fight," he explains. "Regardless of which champion I play, that strength is there." Either he's very humble or does not tell the whole sto…

One of the things that's unique about MOBAs compared to first person shooters is that killing opponents doesn't necessarily translate into winning the game. It's a little more more complicated than this, but for the sake of simplification, the victory conditions in MOBAs are more like capture the flag. The goal of the game is to destroy the enemy's nexus, in the center of their base. Killing enemies makes it easier to take objectives and eventually the nexus, but strategic gameplay can also do the same thing.

One of the primary differences between high level players and beginners are decisions on when to fight. Beginners love to try to get kills, so they run around the map chasing enemies. This can get them short-term enjoyment, but is usually a poor strategic decision. Experienced players will concentrate more on acquiring resources and taking objectives, only fighting when it's strategic to do so. Since beginners are fighting all the time (and are less skilled), they'll end up having less resources and objectives than experienced players as the game progresses, snowballing the experienced players to victory.

While there's an element of mechanical skill involved in the fighting highlight reels (like the one you posted), there's an equal element of skill involved in getting a resource lead on your opponents so that your character is more powerful than theirs. Once you have that lead, fighting and securing victory is much easier. Conversely, if your character is weaker than your opponent's, it's usually a good idea to avoid fighting them until you can secure resources or objectives to even the odds.

Re: The Unkillable Demon King

#20

I play Dota 2 every once in a while. Fun game. I never played League of Legends (LoL), which seems to be more popular, just because I've read that they look very much alike, and I can't really afford, time-wise, to learn another game at all. Interesting to see if someone plays both and has any comment on how they differ.

I played League for a very brief period, before I got my Dota 2 beta invite, so some of these might not be valid any longer. Also note that those are differences in game design, one is not necessarily better than the other:

- DotA 2 metagame undergoes major changes every patch, whereas League metagame is mostly guided by Riot towards a certain playstyle. E.g. in DotA 2 lane assignments are extremely flexible, under certain conditions you can see any hero in any lane, whereas in League champions are mostly only viable in certain lanes.

- Mechanics wise, DotA 2 is more punishing. If you die, you are dead for much longer, you lose a significant portion of aquired gold. Laning wise, you can deny your own creeps in order to prevent the enemy from gaining gold and experience, and you can modify where the opposing creep waves meet in lane via pulling from the jungle camps. You cannot do that in League. Teamfights in DotA 2 are usually very fast and deadly, due to the presence of strong disables/burst (which is something League shies away from), strong initiators, and the fact that heroes are very asymmetrically balanced.

- The map in DotA 2 is bigger which puts a great emphasis on mobility and positioning on the strategic level - The International 3's Grand finals were a great example of that.

- DotA 2 comes with a lot of complexity. There are a huge amount of synergies, item/spell interactions, and generally mechanical knowledge that a player needs to absorb before they can play semi-efficiently (not that the process is not fun; it just takes a considerable amount of time in comparison).

- On the technical side, DotA 2 has a better client by an order of magnitude. Also, it has a Linux-native version which runs perfectly.

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