My thoughts on League of Legends

I've been playing, and more importantly enjoying League of Legends (LoL) recently.

I'm only at level 12 and mostly been plying against bots. I feel that this is necessary until you find the champions that you're good at.

I realised in a recent game that I'm not that bad as I went against real players and had my teams highest damage output, most assists and second highest kills by 1. I was playing as Soraka who is a healer so was shocked to get that much. After the game I found I was the least experienced vs human opponents and I put my win down to honing my skills against the AI.

Enough bragging about my skills ;-P

What I like about LoL is that it's a very board game like experience. You pick you character, play on a map that's the same each time, you have clear objectives, you level up and get stronger throughout the game. Then when it's all over you can start again with a different character and try a new strategy.

Some people may not like that reset and start again feel that this and other MOBA's(Multi-player Online Battle Arenas) have but as an avid board gamer I don't mind it. Besides I have other games like Guild Wars 2 for that persistent character thing or many other console RPG's, so I find it fresh and fun. Besides trying an AP build over an AD build would cost much gold in most MMO's and isn't even a choice in most JRPG's. I like the variety and with over 100 characters that can each be built and played a different way I'm happy that I don't have to invest in just one or two.

I'm thinking that I'll start playing more PP matches now that I have a few champions that I'm good with. Though the new rotations each week keep offering me something new to try so I'll be going back into bot matches to see what I can do. The problem with the AI games is that there's not that much in the way of teamwork and the amount of games that I say what lane I'm going in only to find another two people in it is annoying. Plus I'm the type of player who doesn't trash talk so I just suck it up and try another lane, sometimes going top with an ADC (a late game champion whose damage output can turn the tide at later levels) can work right?!

I don't like calling for jungle, picking jungle spells then finding no one goes top so I end up with useless spells. OR when I play support and have no one to support. The pre-game chat window is meant to eliminate that, but not every player is literate it seems and this leads to some frustration.

Also I think some people need to stick to the easier bot matches before moving up a tier. Often it's easy to tell before a game who is least experienced as they come in with the default spells instead of changing to something more useful. Then they make it even clearer my dying to a bot before minions spawn.

At the other end of the scale you have the players with loads of skill who rack up huge champion kills but never push the lane and finish the game early as they just want a big number next the their name. I'll call these players ePeeners. These guys should be playing more PvP and let us noobs practice more.

I haven't experienced too much of the famous trolling and bad mouthing that many mention, but this could be more of PvP issue so I guess I'll see more of it in the coming weeks.

Overall playing LoL has been fun and I've barely scratched the surface as far as trying skills and champions out, so I will keep playing it and maybe soon I'll be in a ranked match working my way to Platinum :-)

Of course some real coinage will be spent on skins at some point, Udyr's Spirit Guard skin looks very good to me right now, I wish Soraka had a better skin though.

Look forward to seeing you on the fields of battle, my in game name is shockingly AbsurdNerd.