Thursday, July 25, 2013

"What's a MOBA?"

Last night, after failing to resume the previous week's Civ V multiplayer game because of a combination of general Steam issues and an apparently crappy "set up multiplayer game" UI (according to the host), I was told to download and try out League of Legend.
Kevin explained to me that it was a "moba" as if I would know what that word meant. He didn't even give me room to ask, so I had to google it and find out that there's a rich history behind this specific type of game.
Apparently this is a whole class of games that already has a huge lexicon associated with it, and players on public internet games who are nothing but newbie-hating dicks.
The tutorial told me "Get In Your Lane" without explaining that terminology, for example.
And the tutorial even called me bad names for idling too long when I went to talk to my wife just getting home from work. It said it might flag me for bad behavior -- in a single player tutorial!
I didn't play long enough to say I've formulated a full opinion on the game, but I didn't seem to understand what the big deal was after playing through the tutorial.  I'll have to try it.

The same Kevin tried to get me into a similar, but turn-based, game on iOS. I think maybe it was called "Hero Academy"? I got bored of that one pretty quickly too (not just because I kept losing, but because there wasn't a lot of variety in what you could do), so maybe this just isn't my style of video game.

(Ironically, a game like Hero Academy in boardgame form might actually be fun for me. I dunno why)



2 comments:

  1. League of Legends... I've only played a few minutes of it, but it has been in the news lately. And it was mentioned in the most recent Wired magazine.

    It's a two-team based competitive game. I compare it to Magic: the Gathering. Competition brings out the bad in a lot of people. It got so bad in League of Legends that they had to put in repercussions for player behavior, including a tribunal system where the player community enforces player conduct.

    Thing is, it works. They've been able to retain players.

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  2. I like playing casual Magic with friends (although I haven't done it in maybe 10 years).
    I'm not sure if I would compare these 2 styles of games directly.
    In Magic, you have a whole variety of things you can do. In League of Legends you just seem to have to click the right pixels and choose from one of 2 or 3 special abilities.

    (I also have the reflexes of a sedated slug, so I prefer turn-based games)

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