Badfinger

I was interested in having discussion in the general Lords Management thread, but in my couple attempts it appeared all of the League of Legends had been successfully removed from the thread previously. I think the fact that these are fresh threads where people don't already have dozens to hundreds of posts in them makes people feel like it's more even ground? I tried to keep my point relevant to the discussion on the actual cast, but I guess I did still say the LoL word.

I did not own any of the games in the bundle. It was like Indie Christmas. I think I've bought one other bundle? This one was perfect.

I definitely remember having the same sort of ability burnout he did. "Oh look, another free-damage bruiser. This one has *X's* Q, *Y's* W, etc". I mean, there are only so many things you can do that are in the realm of balanced, and some of them do damage while some prevent it so they're going to feel the same. I am long since past that, but I took a break and then came back. Lords do similar things in different ways. But you can look at Zac and then the to-be-released Aatrox and say "Oh heh two health-based champions with a revive skill passive". Or him and Lissandra "cool two champions released in a row with a free Zhonya's built in". When you get right down to it, every lord has 4 skillable abilities and a passive and you can get SUPER reductive about how they do what they do. But then on the flip side people freak out about Jayce and Nidalee and Elise because they're all "THEY HAVE 7 SKILLS INSTEAD OF 4 RIOT PLS". I think over the last year or so they have done a fantastic job with champion DESIGN. It's not all boobs and breastplates, they have been creating some extremely fun and likable and unique characters. I will probably play Vi forever because her attitude and big punchin' fists match her playstyle. e: I don't want to hijack another Dotato thread, but Riven is the best. I <3 Riven. I do not love battle bunny Riven, sadly. Redeemed Riven is where it's "at". Nami is apparently coming in a huge way. I bet you'll see her in the LCS this season.

Hooray, Dotato Day!

^^^ I have learned very thoroughly that Tom McShea and I approach games and gaming in very different ways. I saw the E3 Demo, was suitably interested and excited, and did not see another thing until I found out the reviews came out today. I literally learned today that it is a zombie game. I could not be more disappointed.

Every time I try to have a discussion, and I very much would like to have a discussion, I feel like i'm not allowed to have anything nice or be right or make salient points. I mean, I listened to the Dota podcast because I like Nick and Sean talking about Dota. I am looking forward to this week's podcast, because holy shit Brad Muir facing about Dota for a half an hour sounds rad. I'm posting in the podcast thread because I liked it and am interested in their discussion. But I also play a ~different video game~. It's not a secret that I am interested in Sean's reaction to touristing another popular LoMa, because I think that could be an awesome discussion. Shit, play SMITE instead that would be cool too. But it's also not as if I'm hoping my cleverly worded posts will transform our gallant hosts into League fans suddenly. Frankly even if you could somehow declare one better over another someone's community will keep them in one place over another. The inertia of your friends list will keep you playing WoW even if Rift or SWTOR or GW2 or whatever is "objectively" a better game. Actually no wait, they should tourist this game.

I really don't think there's anything to be afraid of (unless you are afraid that your Dota wife will suddenly have to compete with a LoL mistress ). There's truly nothing to be contentious about between the games. They're both well made, popular, fantastic games. One of them is better in some ways, one of them is better in others, and if you play more of one than the other when you swap you'll feel what's different. I imagine conversations between lomas must seem like what it's like to have a conversation between a fan and someone that doesn't play one. If you wanted a LoL Posse to play the game I'd more than happily volunteer, but of course no idea what your plans are with Nick having played before.

That is a completely rational fear, because 100% of the time this is the thing hiding in that water. http://i.imgur.com/Hr5KHNZ.png

Cool, that is basically a must-have for me. Now I wonder why I never see anyone play with it.

Compare the Ancient being destroyed to the Nexus being destroyed... it's not even close. The art and animation for Dota is absolutely amazing. The portraits for the Dota Lords vs the League Lords, again not close. I enjoy the color palette for LoL much more, though. Everything reads better for me, as well. Some of that comes from the fact that the walls and forests are static. Some of it is straight up that the colorful palette for the map doesn't cross over to the characters - very few bright greens whereas the Dota lords have plenty of muddier colors. Some of it is little stuff - instead of teardrops and 'X's on the map denoting teammates and enemies, League shows a portrait of the champion on the map ringed in the Friendly or Enemy color. So you can tell at a glance who is where.

I am only somewhat familiar with DOTA items, but this is a very fair point. A common complaint for LoL is that everyone wishes the items did more STUFF rather than a large majority of them being different combinations of stat sticks.

Nothing about rune or masteries limits your item choices, though? You're LESS versatile, because you have no choice but to do everything in itemization. It's just the opportunity to point a champion in one direction or another depending on what your team needs ahead of time. You could get a head start on being a tanky, cc peeling machine, or because you know you're going all out offensive items you could a) go completely glass cannon runes and masteries and just do it or pick defensively because you know you're not going to get help from items. I know you don't like it, but I enjoy the extra pre-game strategizing opportunity it gives. It's another layer during picks and bans.

The D stands for Dotato.

You're totally right. It absolutely has to do with persistent account leveling being a thing that appeared to be important in 2009, and it's sort of a legacy system now. You can obviously play them differently just with items, but a mastery page with mostly offense vs a mastery page with mostly defense can end up making a large difference in how the game goes early, and have an effect on late game teamfights.

"Don't worry sweetie, you'll find someone in your life, just like your wonderful friend Sean did. And even if you don't, well I still found your father and he's been good to me." 'No love for dad?'

I like how runes and masteries allow you to play the same lord very different ways right from level 1, depending on how you build them. I can understand why someone might not like them, but they have value. I know Flash is divisive, but it's a significantly different tool than a Blink dagger. It's been nerfed pretty significantly since 2010. 5 minute cooldown, 400 unit range (about 2/3 of standard ranged lord AA range) compared to 14s CD with 1200 range (about 2/3 of the range between the base towers and the inner mid tower). It does a different job, honestly. The idea that you buy a blink every game is super interesting, though.

You mean pay in the match for the usable item, correct? As opposed to Actual Dollars. Not sure I disagree with you, although my brain has atrophied so much that everyone always has it it's hard to get a perspective without it. The problem comes that if you just straight up removed it from the game it might actually be cripplingly unbalanced, because they have to design everything around the idea that everyone might have flash. It's a tough nut to crack. On the other hand, the inclusion of an ability like Smite (a ~1 minute cooldown ability that does up to 1000 true damage to monsters) means they have reinforced that the game is about contesting neutral objectives (Baron, dragon, Blue & Red buff) to gain an advantage which I think is a good thing. It encourages team fights in the earlier game for reasons other than just BATTLIN' for its own sake. You could have everyone take Smite and have much better/faster monster control, but generally you only have the Jungler take it to secure an objective, because it keeps you from taking other summoner spells that might be more useful for the type of lord you are. Masteries are purely a leveling thing. It's a sort-of-weird MMO idea carried over. The game actually starts at Level 30. They don't cost money, everyone has exactly the same trees, and the way you get more points is by leveling your "summoner" (account). You can have up to 20 pages, and they cost nothing. I guess they're possibly monetizing in that you can pay for an XP boost with real money, but looking back from the perspective of hundreds of games played, if you are just starting the game that 1-30 leveling curve is for your own good. You get to slowly learn what all the summoner spells are, the skill trees slowly unlock, and you get to earn a big chunk of IP for runes and lords while you figure out what a Last Hit is. So sort of the exact opposite of monetizing the game. If someone wants to smurf and pay for an XP boost to rush up a second account, hey knock yourself out. I don't have a problem with that because all competitive play starts at level 30 and it doesn't matter how long it took you to get there. Runes are something you can only buy with IP (sweat equity), but to get more rune pages they will sell them to you. THAT'S a monetization thing, because buying the pages with play money costs as much as the most expensive champions.

I think most lyrics are dumb and/or bad. You're never going to convince me that Coldplay and Snow Patrol are deep and meaningful. It's part of the reason I'm such a fan of RHCP. Their lyrics never made a damn bit of sense whether you knew the whole song or not, so it doesn't detract from the listening experience not to know them. Which makes it weird that I enjoy joke songs that are all about the lyrics.

The weird thing about the League character designs is that LoL tries to have Lore with a capital L. For a while every character's backstory had a hook about why they came to fight in the League of Legends, which is an Actual Thing in the world they've created. Thankfully they've gotten away from that for the most part and now the characters are just sort of notable people who live in this world and the fact that you select 10 of them ever game isn't included in the backstory, but every character fits in somehow. There's the Generic Good Guys and the Generic Bad Guys, Far Away Asia Land, the warring factions fighting for the ice plains, and a little yordle town where all the yordle people (gnomes I guess?) live, and the monsters all come from another dimension. So you'd thing in general terms they would all make more cohesive sense, but outside of some of the core characters of those places they don't really.

Really enjoyed the cast! It's fun hearing the enthusiasm. I enjoyed your post Corelli, it's fun to hear people with both sides of perspective talk about this stuff. Looking forward to going to dota.giantbomb.net for more continuing DOTA coverage.

I do that sometimes. It's extremely weird, because I feel like I'm terrible at remembering song lyrics compounded with being TERRIBLE at picking out the actual conversation in a room that has a lot of busy chatter in it (also paying attention to idle chatter). I remember an older sister of a middle school friend who took the position that if you didn't know all the lyrics to a song, it couldn't possibly be your favorite. Under those criteria, I don't think I've ever had a favorite song.

The Spin Doctors tangent was fantastically enjoyable. I love it. I liked the tweet that spawned the conversation. Pretty clever if you do actually know the lyrics. One of my favorite songs, it's so dumb.

Didn't he attend the London arm of the Molyjam, and basically give the pope's blessing to the entire proceeding? He seems extremely self-aware of how people view him on the internet.

If Microsoft hits half a billion in sales in what we consider a "typical" console life cycle (5-8 years, who knows what it will be for the future), they will be a runaway insanity smash success and chortle at the copycats that lag behind them.

How many times are they planning them to be multiple sales as a replacement to the same individual? Like 3-4? e: Re - things you learned when you played video games, I answered questions in college that I knew because I'd played Age of Empires and Civilization. I may have been taught those things later, but that's where I learned them.