At the start of any draft match in League of Legends each team gets to ban 3 champions. Those champions can't be chosen by anyone on either team in the upcoming draft. On top of that any champion can only be drafted once. This means you need to have access to at least 16 champions before you're allowed to play. (If you're the last pick it's theoretically possible that the 6 bans and 9 previous selections will cover off 15 champions you own. If you only owned 15 or fewer champions you'd have no one left to pick!)
One thing that isn't explicitly stated anywhere and which confused me the first few times I had to ban is you aren't given a selection of every hero in the game to ban. (My team told me to ban Morgana and I freaked out when I couldn't find her on the list.) You're actually only allowed to ban a hero which is owned by the other team. So if Morgana isn't in the list it means the other team is actually incapable of choosing her. That would mean you'd waste your ban if you used it on Morgana and it's actually pretty awesome that the game prevents that from happening.
This feature actually has a few consequences. If you're paying attention and notice that the other team doesn't have a popular hero (like Rammus for example) you can't ban him. But that knowledge also means you don't need to draft him highly either! You can guarantee that he'll still be around at the end of the draft (assuming they don't use one of their bans on him) and use your early picks on actually contested champions. It's also possible if you see the enemy team has very restricted choices for a role (perhaps they only have 1 or 2 of the healer champions) you could use your bans on those champions and force the opposing team to run with a 'bad' team composition.
This all was really brought to the forefront when we played our first ranked team games on Friday. Some of us have a very restricted number of champions and as a team combined we only had 50 champions between us. Our opponents in the match we noticed this had 83. This gives them a lot of information and power if they bother to pay attention to it. It also came to mind that we don't have a lot of ability to trade champions since we don't really own a lot of the same ones either. If I'm picking early I actually can't grab Rammus for Robb to use since I actually don't own her. And even if I did he doesn't own Akali or Nasus so he wouldn't be able to trade a hero back to me for her.
Obviously the solution to both of those problems is for everyone to play more games to earn more currency to buy more champions. But the question I've been asking myself is which problem is better to resolve? If I'm going to blow some points on a champion I'm not likely to use is it better to buy one no one on my team owns (potentially allowing the other team to ban a champion we won't use) or is it better to start building a swapping matrix by buying all the champions the rest of the team wants to use? I think possibly the first step is going to be determining precisely which champions each member of the team owns?
Does anyone have any opinions one way or the other as to which is the best start? My initial feeling is that I should pick up frequently banned champions (Morgana, Kassadin, Shaco, Rammus, Lee Sin, Skarner...) and then work on setting up trades? Ideally if I keep playing the top lane with the team I want to have my selection happen last in order to counter whatever champion they pick so being able to trade properly with the last pick player would be optimal. (But we couldn't figure out why it was ordering us the way it was so I don't know if that's even feasible to figure out.)
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
League of Legends: Ranked Teams
Last night marked the first time I've played in a full 5v5 ranked team match. We had a moderate amount of success (3 wins, 2 losses) but importantly it was a lot of fun. Even the losses were more enjoyable than a regular game with puggers and I think it's for one primary reason... Communication.
The game by default is played with a mouse and keys strictly on the left side of the keyboard. You can change the key bindings but the basic keys for your abilities are always Q-W-E-R. This makes it a lot easier to play different champions because while the buttons will do different things it's always the same button that does something. (DotA used to use the first letter of ability names for the button press. It made things very annoying. I remember downloading a keyboard modifying program where you told it which hero you were playing and it would remap your QWER keys on the keyboard to whatever WC3 thought the keys were supposed to be.) This is great for playing the game but not so great for chatting with your teammates. In order to start chatting you need to hit enter (a key which is nowhere near either of your hands), type out your message (during which time any key presses go to chat instead of to the game so you can't use any abilities), and then hit enter again. It's better than not saying anything at all but each time you do it you're giving up an edge in game-play. It's frustrating to call out missing players with in-game chat since I often end up missing a creep kill while I do it.
Using a voice chat program (Skype/Ventrilo) removes this problem. I can call out a missing enemy while still using my mouse to click on creeps in order to get the killing blow on them. I can ask for help while actually fighting an enemy hero. I can also hear a response from my teammates on if they're coming or not without having to shift my vision focus to the small chat window in the corner of the screen! It's very useful!
I was thinking about it a little today and I think Robb and I have the most success when we play together (2 of us and 3 random people against 5 random people) and he's mid while I'm jungling. And the reason I think it works out so well is communication. I can ask him if showing up to gank will help while still killing neutral monsters in the jungle. If he says no I can continue getting gold and experience from the monsters. If he says yes I can head over and we can properly plan when to engage without losing focus on killing monsters or obviously running away to chat. I often find when I'm jungling with a full pug team that I have to walk up to a lane and wait around in the hopes it makes sense to gank. I have to stop and wait and chat with the guy there to set up an attack. And if it doesn't work out (he wasn't paying attention, the opponent was ready for some reason, my teammate was wounded and couldn't commit fully to the attack or had no mana) I lose a lot of leveling time. If the ganks work out we win, otherwise I become useless, and I don't really have the ability to know which is going to happen because I don't know how my teammates are going to react and can't ask them about it properly.
Last night, for example, I was playing top and was getting brutalized early by my opponent. I couldn't really get hits in on the enemy creeps without taking a lot of damage. All I had to do was mention that in voice chat and the jungler asked if ganking would help. I said yes and then on his way up he was able to talk about coordinating the attack. He got there, I jumped in just as he did, and we blew up the enemy Mordekaiser. I went back to heal, he covered the lane getting the experience, and things stabilized for me since I was able to buy some items with the assist gold without the enemy outleveling me when I went back. With a pugger jungler I would have had to run away from the creeps to ask for help (losing gold for sure and maybe experience) and then hope he responds in time and that I can guess his timing. (If I go too soon I die, if I go too late the enemy gets away easily.)
Also it's really hard to continually make jokes about which key is bound to CV in a pug since you won't keep playing with the same support game after game...
The game by default is played with a mouse and keys strictly on the left side of the keyboard. You can change the key bindings but the basic keys for your abilities are always Q-W-E-R. This makes it a lot easier to play different champions because while the buttons will do different things it's always the same button that does something. (DotA used to use the first letter of ability names for the button press. It made things very annoying. I remember downloading a keyboard modifying program where you told it which hero you were playing and it would remap your QWER keys on the keyboard to whatever WC3 thought the keys were supposed to be.) This is great for playing the game but not so great for chatting with your teammates. In order to start chatting you need to hit enter (a key which is nowhere near either of your hands), type out your message (during which time any key presses go to chat instead of to the game so you can't use any abilities), and then hit enter again. It's better than not saying anything at all but each time you do it you're giving up an edge in game-play. It's frustrating to call out missing players with in-game chat since I often end up missing a creep kill while I do it.
Using a voice chat program (Skype/Ventrilo) removes this problem. I can call out a missing enemy while still using my mouse to click on creeps in order to get the killing blow on them. I can ask for help while actually fighting an enemy hero. I can also hear a response from my teammates on if they're coming or not without having to shift my vision focus to the small chat window in the corner of the screen! It's very useful!
I was thinking about it a little today and I think Robb and I have the most success when we play together (2 of us and 3 random people against 5 random people) and he's mid while I'm jungling. And the reason I think it works out so well is communication. I can ask him if showing up to gank will help while still killing neutral monsters in the jungle. If he says no I can continue getting gold and experience from the monsters. If he says yes I can head over and we can properly plan when to engage without losing focus on killing monsters or obviously running away to chat. I often find when I'm jungling with a full pug team that I have to walk up to a lane and wait around in the hopes it makes sense to gank. I have to stop and wait and chat with the guy there to set up an attack. And if it doesn't work out (he wasn't paying attention, the opponent was ready for some reason, my teammate was wounded and couldn't commit fully to the attack or had no mana) I lose a lot of leveling time. If the ganks work out we win, otherwise I become useless, and I don't really have the ability to know which is going to happen because I don't know how my teammates are going to react and can't ask them about it properly.
Last night, for example, I was playing top and was getting brutalized early by my opponent. I couldn't really get hits in on the enemy creeps without taking a lot of damage. All I had to do was mention that in voice chat and the jungler asked if ganking would help. I said yes and then on his way up he was able to talk about coordinating the attack. He got there, I jumped in just as he did, and we blew up the enemy Mordekaiser. I went back to heal, he covered the lane getting the experience, and things stabilized for me since I was able to buy some items with the assist gold without the enemy outleveling me when I went back. With a pugger jungler I would have had to run away from the creeps to ask for help (losing gold for sure and maybe experience) and then hope he responds in time and that I can guess his timing. (If I go too soon I die, if I go too late the enemy gets away easily.)
Also it's really hard to continually make jokes about which key is bound to CV in a pug since you won't keep playing with the same support game after game...
Friday, February 10, 2012
A Few Acres of Snow: Introduction
A Few Acres of Snow is a deck building board game that has really caught my eye in the last month. I can't stop playing it on Yucata and I'm really looking forward to playing it at the World Boardgaming Championships this year. I want to win! In order to do so I need to answer the two important questions about any game... In the immortal words of James Coburn... How do you play? How do you win?
First we need an idea of what the game is like. It's a deck building game (the genre brought to the mainstream by Dominion) that has a lot of very interesting twists. It's similar to Dominion in that you start with a basic deck which you use to acquire more cards which get put in your discard pile. Then when your deck is exhausted you shuffle the discard pile. As such you end up drawing the new cards which determine what actions you can take in future turns. Deck building games tend to have a period of time where you're building up a powerful deck and then a period of time where you use your powerful deck to win the game (typically by picking up efficient point scoring cards). A Few Acres of Snow takes that idea and changes the dynamic in a few ways to end up with a substantially different game. Those changes are:
In future posts I'll go into more detail about the different types of actions that can be taken and then I'll try to delve into how those actions actually help progress towards a victory condition.
First we need an idea of what the game is like. It's a deck building game (the genre brought to the mainstream by Dominion) that has a lot of very interesting twists. It's similar to Dominion in that you start with a basic deck which you use to acquire more cards which get put in your discard pile. Then when your deck is exhausted you shuffle the discard pile. As such you end up drawing the new cards which determine what actions you can take in future turns. Deck building games tend to have a period of time where you're building up a powerful deck and then a period of time where you use your powerful deck to win the game (typically by picking up efficient point scoring cards). A Few Acres of Snow takes that idea and changes the dynamic in a few ways to end up with a substantially different game. Those changes are:
- It's strictly a 2 player game which allows for more player interaction. There can be ways to attack the other player and good 'blocking' plays can exist that aren't just kingmaking.
- The game is asymmetrical. Each player starts with their own deck and has their own set of cards to add to their deck as the game goes on. There are a few communal cards that either player can buy but by and large if you buy something it doesn't stop your opponent from buying the same card since they'll have their own copy.
- Money is built up over time and isn't exhausted each turn. This means you don't need to be capable of generating cash every turn where you want to spend cash. One of the annoying things in Dominion for me is having a turn with 7 bucks and then a turn with 9 bucks. Someone who gets exact change (8 and 8) will outscore you. That's gone here since you carry over extra money every turn. It also allows cards to have minor costs tacked on to them since you can spend some of your stockpile to activate them.
- There's a board! The game simulates the French/British conflict in North America. The board has spots for cities which you can go around settling. Most of these spots are worth points for game end and all provide you with an extra card for your deck.
- Many of the cards have multiple ways in which they can be used. The Boston card, for example, can make money, or let you merchant, or provide a military strength, or give you a boat for coastal travel, or lets you connect to New York, New Haven, Pemaquid, Port Royal, and Halifax. It can also be used to upgrade a settlement to a city. It can be used to provide settlers to initially colonize a settlement location. Finally it can block incoming raids at Boston. That's a lot of versatility for one card!
- Perhaps most importantly... You don't discard unused cards at the end of the turn! You do draw back up to 5 cards after each turn (where you can take 2 actions) but you don't have to discard the stuff you haven't used. This does all sorts of things to the way the game is played. It lets you actually play with defensive cards and know they'll get to do their thing. Moat in Dominion is a pretty swingy card. If you keep drawing it the turn your opponent draws his attack card it's amazing. If you never draw it when they draw their attack card it's absolute garbage. But if you could always hold on to your moat until you need it? That has potential. There are still plays that can be made (buy 2 attack cards to use in the same turn, use your attack right after they reshuffle and draw it again before they can draw their defense) and it does clog up their hand the whole time. But those are all things you can control unlike the timing of card draws in Dominion. It also lets you build a deck with certain combos in it since you know you can always hold on to the first piece until you draw the second one. And it heavily punishes players who fill their deck with useless garbage. If you don't have a way to use a card you don't get to just cycle it away at end of turn. You have to take some action to get rid of it. (You can discard a card as one of your actions, for example. Or you could buy the governor that permanently removes cards from your deck.) Tracking hands becomes a thing you can do and actually make plans with that information. In all it really feels to me like this change more than anything else adds a lot of skill to the game.
In future posts I'll go into more detail about the different types of actions that can be taken and then I'll try to delve into how those actions actually help progress towards a victory condition.
Thursday, February 09, 2012
Final Fantasy IV: Land of the Summoned Monsters
I can remember having real trouble with both the Land of the Summoned Monsters and the Sylph Cave in previous playthroughs of Final Fantasy IV. Both dungeons have massive damage zones on the floors which can only be avoided with the float spell. If you're not high enough level for Rosa to know that spell you're in for a world of pain just walking through the dungeons. On top of that some of the monsters are actually pretty dangerous. Especially for a party that isn't high enough level to have float since they're hit by the double whammy of fewer maximum hitpoints and not being anywhere near that max because of the damage floors.
Both dungeons provide extra summoned monsters for Rydia to call in combat. The Sylph Cave has the Sylph spell but you need access to the overworld in order to get it. (You have to get a frying-pan from Bung's wife in Fabul so you can crack him over the head with it to convince him to stop being lazy...) The Land of the Summoned Monsters has both Asura and Leviathan in it (queen and king of the summoned monsters) but in the traditional manner of earning a summon you need to beat them up first.
Asura is a tricky one. The only actions she ever takes are to spam massive heals on herself. She never takes an offensive action unless you hit her first at which point she counterattacks for brutal damage. Ultimately she ends up being extremely trivial because of the wall spell. You cast it on her and then when she tries to heal herself she ends up healing you instead. Then it's a matter of controlling how frequently you attack so her heals will undo her counterattacks. Avenger turned out to be a real detriment here and I ended up just letting Cecil die so I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore and slowly killed her with jump.
I remember having real problems with Asura in the past because I'd get to her without having the wall spell. I don't think she's impossible without it but she's certainly a lot trickier. I'd imagine you'd need to be high enough level to know wall in order to be powerful enough to kill her! I know I'd gotten down to her and had to leave before because I didn't know wall. But I just looked up the levels where Rosa learns spells and she learns wall 2 levels after she learns float. How could I not have had wall? I guess I must have gone there first and run from most of the random encounters? Or possibly plowed through the dungeon without float? (That does sound like me...)
Anyway, I killed her easily last night. I saved and decided to give Leviathan a try. I remember him being really hard. I've always had to wait for FuSoYa to join my party and for Rydia to learn lit3. Then I'd use them both spamming lit3 to burn him down before he obliterated me. I didn't have FuSoYa and Rydia certainly doesn't have lit3 but I figured I'd give him a try anyway. Avenger may have been bad against Asura but it was a complete beating against Leviathan. And the Asura summon made Rydia better than just an off-healer... She was healing everyone for double or triple their maximum health! This left Rosa without much to do so she just cast fast on Cecil over and over to make him berserk more often. (It turns out fast doesn't really stack all that well and 2 applications gets you to max speed. Good to know!) He ended up dying without really being much of a worry at all. His big spell almost killed everyone for sure but Asura just undid all that damage.
I wonder if I can take out Odin with this plan or if I really need lit3 for him...
Both dungeons provide extra summoned monsters for Rydia to call in combat. The Sylph Cave has the Sylph spell but you need access to the overworld in order to get it. (You have to get a frying-pan from Bung's wife in Fabul so you can crack him over the head with it to convince him to stop being lazy...) The Land of the Summoned Monsters has both Asura and Leviathan in it (queen and king of the summoned monsters) but in the traditional manner of earning a summon you need to beat them up first.
Asura is a tricky one. The only actions she ever takes are to spam massive heals on herself. She never takes an offensive action unless you hit her first at which point she counterattacks for brutal damage. Ultimately she ends up being extremely trivial because of the wall spell. You cast it on her and then when she tries to heal herself she ends up healing you instead. Then it's a matter of controlling how frequently you attack so her heals will undo her counterattacks. Avenger turned out to be a real detriment here and I ended up just letting Cecil die so I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore and slowly killed her with jump.
I remember having real problems with Asura in the past because I'd get to her without having the wall spell. I don't think she's impossible without it but she's certainly a lot trickier. I'd imagine you'd need to be high enough level to know wall in order to be powerful enough to kill her! I know I'd gotten down to her and had to leave before because I didn't know wall. But I just looked up the levels where Rosa learns spells and she learns wall 2 levels after she learns float. How could I not have had wall? I guess I must have gone there first and run from most of the random encounters? Or possibly plowed through the dungeon without float? (That does sound like me...)
Anyway, I killed her easily last night. I saved and decided to give Leviathan a try. I remember him being really hard. I've always had to wait for FuSoYa to join my party and for Rydia to learn lit3. Then I'd use them both spamming lit3 to burn him down before he obliterated me. I didn't have FuSoYa and Rydia certainly doesn't have lit3 but I figured I'd give him a try anyway. Avenger may have been bad against Asura but it was a complete beating against Leviathan. And the Asura summon made Rydia better than just an off-healer... She was healing everyone for double or triple their maximum health! This left Rosa without much to do so she just cast fast on Cecil over and over to make him berserk more often. (It turns out fast doesn't really stack all that well and 2 applications gets you to max speed. Good to know!) He ended up dying without really being much of a worry at all. His big spell almost killed everyone for sure but Asura just undid all that damage.
I wonder if I can take out Odin with this plan or if I really need lit3 for him...
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Final Fantasy IV: Avenger!
One of the things I noticed when I was reading about bugs in Final Fantasy IV was how many bugs revolved around a weapon I'd never used. This weapon is the Avenger and the reason I know I'd never used it is it automatically berserks the person using it and I'd have remembered using a weapon with that ability! Other than getting a pink tail I'd thought I'd done pretty much everything there was to do in the game at some point so I had to find out where this weapon was found...
It turns out the weapon is in the Sylph Cave which I've certainly cleared out every time I've played long enough to learn the float spell so I was confused as to how I'd never had it before. Is it hidden in some obscure chest? I didn't dig any deeper and figured I'd just put a thorough searching into the dungeon once I reached it. Well, last night I'd finally silvered up the Falcon (I always loved how the airships in this game were named after Star Trek and Star Wars) but didn't yet have the float spell. I figured I'd clear out the sealed cave in order to level up and Rosa ended up learning float off of the very first trap door. That settled that! Off to find the Avenger!
It turned out the Avenger was just sitting in a treasure chest in the loot room of the Sylph Cave. It was guarded by monsters (as were the other 5 chests in the room) and I couldn't see how I could have missed it every time I'd played the game to this point. Then I went to equip it and saw that it was greyed out. That's odd. I tried to put it on anyway and got the cryptic error message 'to equip'. Which made me remember a bug fix in a future version of the game where they fixed that very error message related to Cid trying to equip his 2 handed hammer... Avenger must be two handed! I quickly took off Cecil's shield and lo! I was able to put on Avenger.
There's nothing I can find in the game that would indicate this weapon is 2-handed. The icon looks the same as the other swords Cecil can equip. The error message if I even try to put it on is nonsensical. If I hadn't read about the bugs I wouldn't have thought anything of it again on this playthrough. No wonder I'd missed it in the past!
At any rate, I tried it out on the next fight. In reading about the bug I knew the berserk effect doesn't kick in until you're 'supposed' to get a turn and therefore Cecil should be put in slot #1 (the middle one). I rearranged my team to put him there and opened the next trapped treasure chest. It was a fight with 6 ghost things. I'd fought them before and it was a little rough. They (like almost all enemies) kill Edge in 2 attacks. I actually doubt they could kill Rosa no matter what they did but the melee people take a lot of damage from their spells. But with Avenger the fight became trivial. By the time Kain had resolved his first action the berserked Cecil had killed 3 of the 6 enemies. The end result had Cecil killing 4, Kain killing 1, while Edge, Rosa, and Rydia had to team up to take down the 6th.
Losing control of my secondary healer bothers me a little, but when it comes right down to it his heals suck compared to Rosa's. I'm likely better off using Rydia and Sylph/Asura as a secondary healer and just have Cecil kill everything in sight with the berserk weapon. He gets to go so much more often by getting around the ATB system. Another option would be to give up on jumping with Kain and give Avenger to him. But since jump gets around the ATB a little too that seems worse. (And I worry that I'd forget to unequip it before Kain turns traitor again and lose it forever.)
It turns out the weapon is in the Sylph Cave which I've certainly cleared out every time I've played long enough to learn the float spell so I was confused as to how I'd never had it before. Is it hidden in some obscure chest? I didn't dig any deeper and figured I'd just put a thorough searching into the dungeon once I reached it. Well, last night I'd finally silvered up the Falcon (I always loved how the airships in this game were named after Star Trek and Star Wars) but didn't yet have the float spell. I figured I'd clear out the sealed cave in order to level up and Rosa ended up learning float off of the very first trap door. That settled that! Off to find the Avenger!
It turned out the Avenger was just sitting in a treasure chest in the loot room of the Sylph Cave. It was guarded by monsters (as were the other 5 chests in the room) and I couldn't see how I could have missed it every time I'd played the game to this point. Then I went to equip it and saw that it was greyed out. That's odd. I tried to put it on anyway and got the cryptic error message 'to equip'. Which made me remember a bug fix in a future version of the game where they fixed that very error message related to Cid trying to equip his 2 handed hammer... Avenger must be two handed! I quickly took off Cecil's shield and lo! I was able to put on Avenger.
There's nothing I can find in the game that would indicate this weapon is 2-handed. The icon looks the same as the other swords Cecil can equip. The error message if I even try to put it on is nonsensical. If I hadn't read about the bugs I wouldn't have thought anything of it again on this playthrough. No wonder I'd missed it in the past!
At any rate, I tried it out on the next fight. In reading about the bug I knew the berserk effect doesn't kick in until you're 'supposed' to get a turn and therefore Cecil should be put in slot #1 (the middle one). I rearranged my team to put him there and opened the next trapped treasure chest. It was a fight with 6 ghost things. I'd fought them before and it was a little rough. They (like almost all enemies) kill Edge in 2 attacks. I actually doubt they could kill Rosa no matter what they did but the melee people take a lot of damage from their spells. But with Avenger the fight became trivial. By the time Kain had resolved his first action the berserked Cecil had killed 3 of the 6 enemies. The end result had Cecil killing 4, Kain killing 1, while Edge, Rosa, and Rydia had to team up to take down the 6th.
Losing control of my secondary healer bothers me a little, but when it comes right down to it his heals suck compared to Rosa's. I'm likely better off using Rydia and Sylph/Asura as a secondary healer and just have Cecil kill everything in sight with the berserk weapon. He gets to go so much more often by getting around the ATB system. Another option would be to give up on jumping with Kain and give Avenger to him. But since jump gets around the ATB a little too that seems worse. (And I worry that I'd forget to unequip it before Kain turns traitor again and lose it forever.)
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Starcraft 2 Winter Arena Qualifiers
I haven't actually been playing games much in the last week after work. Major League Gaming started running their qualifiers for a big tournament later this month and have been streaming the games on their website (MLG.tv) from 7pm each day. They're streaming the games off of replays from the looks of it so I imagine the games have already been played but they're spreading out all the content over 3 weeks building up to the main event. I can't say no to ~50 hours of quality SC2 games!
The winter arena seems like an interesting idea. It's going to be a 32 person invite only event where MLG is paying airfare and hotel for the 32 players who qualify which seems pretty sweet. The $10k first prize isn't too shabby either. They're giving invites to the top 8 players from MLG Providence and then they're holding 3 regional tournaments with the top 8 from each of those qualifying as well. Today marks the last day of the European tournament but there's still a Korean tournament starting on Thursday and the North American one next Thursday. Some of the favourites are missing (Huk and Idra for example have invites from Providence) but it's been pretty great so far. Worth tuning into I think! The schedule is here if you just want to tune in to the final rounds.
The winter arena seems like an interesting idea. It's going to be a 32 person invite only event where MLG is paying airfare and hotel for the 32 players who qualify which seems pretty sweet. The $10k first prize isn't too shabby either. They're giving invites to the top 8 players from MLG Providence and then they're holding 3 regional tournaments with the top 8 from each of those qualifying as well. Today marks the last day of the European tournament but there's still a Korean tournament starting on Thursday and the North American one next Thursday. Some of the favourites are missing (Huk and Idra for example have invites from Providence) but it's been pretty great so far. Worth tuning into I think! The schedule is here if you just want to tune in to the final rounds.
Monday, February 06, 2012
Final Fantasy Games You Must Play
Andrew mentioned an article to me a couple weeks ago which centered around the idea of picking just 3 of the games from the Final Fantasy series as the ones that someone absolutely should play if they were only going to play 3 of them in order to get a feel for the series. Without telling me what the article picked he asked me to answer the question. But I wasn't really sure what question was being asked... Am I trying to guess which 3 they'd say? Which 3 I'd say? Which 3 should probably be said taking my bias for FFIV into account?
I ended up guessing that they'd picked I, VI, and VII. Depending on who you listen to on the internet either VI or VII is the 'best' game so I hedged my bets and picked both of them. Then I tacked on I since I figured if you wanted to get a feel for the series you should start at the roots. My own biased list would be IV, VI, and X. And in a general case I'd go with I, VI, and X. That way you'd cover 3 of the 4 hardware eras and you'd hit the 3 high points. (I liked VII, don't get me wrong, but as someone who played it long after it was released it never really resonated with me like it did most people.)
It turns out they actually chose IV, VI, and VII. Having now read the article it seems like they didn't care so much about getting a feel for the series but rather were just trying to pick 3 awesome games and I can't dispute that they did. Andrew also gave a very convincing argument for including VII that I hadn't known... It sold a stupid amount of copies. We're talking more copies of VII than were sold of the first 6 entries combined at almost 10 million! The only game to outsell it for the original Playstation was Gran Turismo. 3rd on the list was Gran Turismo 2. 4th was Final Fantasy VIII and 10th was Final Fantasy IX. Wow!
But I've been mulling the idea over in my head recently and think from a 'feel of the series' perspective there's a whole other direction that needs to be taken. There's one game that is very polarizing among fans of the series, and it happens to be the second highest selling in the series. Especially when contrasted with the highest selling entry I think it really demonstrates what Final Fantasy is all about. Some similar underlying themes (there's magic, you enter commands on a menu, there are side quests, there's crazy collection quests, there are summons, there's incredible music...) but two very, very different games. So I think having thought about it more the three games I'd tell someone to play to really feel Final Fantasy would be VI, VII, and VIII.
I ended up guessing that they'd picked I, VI, and VII. Depending on who you listen to on the internet either VI or VII is the 'best' game so I hedged my bets and picked both of them. Then I tacked on I since I figured if you wanted to get a feel for the series you should start at the roots. My own biased list would be IV, VI, and X. And in a general case I'd go with I, VI, and X. That way you'd cover 3 of the 4 hardware eras and you'd hit the 3 high points. (I liked VII, don't get me wrong, but as someone who played it long after it was released it never really resonated with me like it did most people.)
It turns out they actually chose IV, VI, and VII. Having now read the article it seems like they didn't care so much about getting a feel for the series but rather were just trying to pick 3 awesome games and I can't dispute that they did. Andrew also gave a very convincing argument for including VII that I hadn't known... It sold a stupid amount of copies. We're talking more copies of VII than were sold of the first 6 entries combined at almost 10 million! The only game to outsell it for the original Playstation was Gran Turismo. 3rd on the list was Gran Turismo 2. 4th was Final Fantasy VIII and 10th was Final Fantasy IX. Wow!
But I've been mulling the idea over in my head recently and think from a 'feel of the series' perspective there's a whole other direction that needs to be taken. There's one game that is very polarizing among fans of the series, and it happens to be the second highest selling in the series. Especially when contrasted with the highest selling entry I think it really demonstrates what Final Fantasy is all about. Some similar underlying themes (there's magic, you enter commands on a menu, there are side quests, there's crazy collection quests, there are summons, there's incredible music...) but two very, very different games. So I think having thought about it more the three games I'd tell someone to play to really feel Final Fantasy would be VI, VII, and VIII.
Sunday, February 05, 2012
League of Legends: Ninja Tabi
League of Legends recently made the interesting decision to remove dodge from the game completely. I would imagine they thought it was too spiky a stat. Against Nasus, for example, if you managed to dodge one of his Q attacks it would basically take away most of his damage output. Fail to dodge it and you'd get blown up. There was one champion based around dodge and they remade how he works. There were glyphs with dodge on them and they took those out and refunded the cost to anyone who bought them. When they redid the mastery trees a few months ago they pulled dodge out of them. And then there's the one item in the game that had dodge on it...
Ninja tabi used to be the set of boots used against people who mostly auto-attack. For the low cost of 850 you got the level 2 speed boost, 25 armor, and 10% dodge. This changed to a set of boots that for 850 gives you a level 2 speed boost, 25 armor, and 10% damage reduction from non-turret basic attacks. That sounds like quite a mouthful of a restriction but I'm pretty sure it works out to only working against the same things dodge used to work against. The difference is now instead of taking full damage 90% of the time and nothing 10% of the time you always take 90% of the damage. In the long run it has the same impact on durability but it is much smoother in the short run. There's no getting lucky and surviving when you 'should' die. There's no getting unlucky and bursted out with your defenses having no impact.
But the question I have is should it ever be purchased? How does it compare to other defensive stats you can buy on items? How does it compare to other pairs of speed 2 boots? Now that dodge is gone we really can use the old 'effective health' formula to calculate how long someone's going to live. There is healing in the game (many teams will run someone with a healing ability and there is life leech) which will make mitigation better than it looks when compared to straight health but for now I'm going to ignore healing...
Going back to a previous post on the subject Z=X*(100+Y)/100 where X is your max health, Y is your armour, and Z is your effective health. If all the incoming damage comes from auto-attacks (maybe you're fighting a fed Tryndamere, for example) the formula changes to Za=X*(100+Y)/90.
Ninja tabi costs 850. Possibly the best way to compare is to scale up chain vest which is 45 armour for 700 gold. If it cost 850 you'd get 55 armour out of it. So compared to ninja tabi you're picking up an extra 30 armour but losing the modifier. When, if ever, do these two things line up as equals?
Z = Za
X*(130+Y)/100=X*(100+Y)/90
With Y=0...
1.3X=1.11X
With Y=100...
2.3X=2.22X
With Y=200...
3.3X=3.33X
This is a pretty obvious pattern. Until you reach a really silly amount of armour you're better off just getting more armour instead of shifting to a ninja tabi. EXCEPT! You do actually get the speed boost out of the boots. It really isn't fair to assign the entire cost of the item to the defensive stats since the speed is a very real part of the item. You're not getting one or the other. You're getting some set of boots no matter what you do. How much of the cost should we deduct for that? Well, tier one boots cost 350 on their own. Lets be super generous and assume the boot upgrade is only an extra 50 on top. Then the defensive stats on the ninja tabi only cost 450 instead of 850. In this case the chain vest is really only worth 29 armour. This isn't even a comparison. You can get 4 armour or the 10% modifier. But for fun...
Z = Za
X*(104+Y)/100=X*(100+Y)/90
With Y=0...
1.04X=1.11X
With Y=100...
2.04X=2.22X
With Y=200...
3.04X=3.33X
So, yeah... Even if you didn't have any armour at all you'd be better off with the ninja tabi. Looks pretty good! EXCEPT! All the incoming damage is practically never going to be entirely auto-attacks. Maybe against Tryndamere, Master Yi, or Nasus? (And against them you should be all over ninja tabi!) But what about someone like Gangplank who does a lot of physical damage with special abilities? I was thinking this was going to be a question but with the current valuations it isn't. Only getting 4 extra armour means as long as practically any incoming damage is auto-attacks the ninja tabi is better than buying a chain vest.
Ninja tabi used to be the set of boots used against people who mostly auto-attack. For the low cost of 850 you got the level 2 speed boost, 25 armor, and 10% dodge. This changed to a set of boots that for 850 gives you a level 2 speed boost, 25 armor, and 10% damage reduction from non-turret basic attacks. That sounds like quite a mouthful of a restriction but I'm pretty sure it works out to only working against the same things dodge used to work against. The difference is now instead of taking full damage 90% of the time and nothing 10% of the time you always take 90% of the damage. In the long run it has the same impact on durability but it is much smoother in the short run. There's no getting lucky and surviving when you 'should' die. There's no getting unlucky and bursted out with your defenses having no impact.
But the question I have is should it ever be purchased? How does it compare to other defensive stats you can buy on items? How does it compare to other pairs of speed 2 boots? Now that dodge is gone we really can use the old 'effective health' formula to calculate how long someone's going to live. There is healing in the game (many teams will run someone with a healing ability and there is life leech) which will make mitigation better than it looks when compared to straight health but for now I'm going to ignore healing...
Going back to a previous post on the subject Z=X*(100+Y)/100 where X is your max health, Y is your armour, and Z is your effective health. If all the incoming damage comes from auto-attacks (maybe you're fighting a fed Tryndamere, for example) the formula changes to Za=X*(100+Y)/90.
Ninja tabi costs 850. Possibly the best way to compare is to scale up chain vest which is 45 armour for 700 gold. If it cost 850 you'd get 55 armour out of it. So compared to ninja tabi you're picking up an extra 30 armour but losing the modifier. When, if ever, do these two things line up as equals?
Z = Za
X*(130+Y)/100=X*(100+Y)/90
With Y=0...
1.3X=1.11X
With Y=100...
2.3X=2.22X
With Y=200...
3.3X=3.33X
This is a pretty obvious pattern. Until you reach a really silly amount of armour you're better off just getting more armour instead of shifting to a ninja tabi. EXCEPT! You do actually get the speed boost out of the boots. It really isn't fair to assign the entire cost of the item to the defensive stats since the speed is a very real part of the item. You're not getting one or the other. You're getting some set of boots no matter what you do. How much of the cost should we deduct for that? Well, tier one boots cost 350 on their own. Lets be super generous and assume the boot upgrade is only an extra 50 on top. Then the defensive stats on the ninja tabi only cost 450 instead of 850. In this case the chain vest is really only worth 29 armour. This isn't even a comparison. You can get 4 armour or the 10% modifier. But for fun...
Z = Za
X*(104+Y)/100=X*(100+Y)/90
With Y=0...
1.04X=1.11X
With Y=100...
2.04X=2.22X
With Y=200...
3.04X=3.33X
So, yeah... Even if you didn't have any armour at all you'd be better off with the ninja tabi. Looks pretty good! EXCEPT! All the incoming damage is practically never going to be entirely auto-attacks. Maybe against Tryndamere, Master Yi, or Nasus? (And against them you should be all over ninja tabi!) But what about someone like Gangplank who does a lot of physical damage with special abilities? I was thinking this was going to be a question but with the current valuations it isn't. Only getting 4 extra armour means as long as practically any incoming damage is auto-attacks the ninja tabi is better than buying a chain vest.
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