游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

从玩家体验游戏的角度谈Riot游戏英雄联盟

发布时间:2014-11-25 14:44:24 Tags:,,,,

作者:Alexa Rau Corriea

我坐在一个凉爽的房间里,里面的光线有点暗,但却足以让我的眼睛适应显示器。我的右手腕有点疼,因为它支撑着我那不断移动的手指。

但是我却很沉重。但如果我不能按时逃离这座塔的话,我可能就会失去理智—-该死,游戏结束了。

我死了,能够暂时休息下,等待再生。

就像你们所看到的,《英雄联盟》可以说是一款让人上瘾的游戏。当我的再生时间越来越接近时,我便会添加一些新的道具和补充生命值的药剂到我的库存中,而当我的角色出现在团队的基地时,我便能够马上点击让他回到行动中。

这是我第三或第四次玩这款游戏,但很幸运的,我刚好处于学习的最佳时候。

Riot的员工在前往其它办公室的途中会越过我的肩膀瞄一眼我所玩的游戏,特别设计师还会在我遇到困难时引导我穿越游戏。我并非Riot的员工,而每次当我在游戏中消灭某些敌人时我便会异乎寻常地激动。这些人应该是在好奇我到底在这里做什么吧。

Riot Games会教授新员工如何玩《英雄联盟》,同时也会提供给员工的家人有关这款游戏的速成课。该公司主张学习游戏与爱,而《英雄联盟》便是其文化的重要组成部分。他们很少会邀请媒体参与这一过程,我们则是例外。

我觉得自己好像进入了一些我并不了解其规则的秘密团体。

这是我第一次正式玩MOBA游戏。幸运的是在该公司的办公室里有人能够告诉我创造一直大受欢迎的游戏的基本规则。

LOL(from polygon)

LOL(from polygon)

肌肉记忆

Riot的创意开发部的联合制作人Chris Cantrell在我进入Riot总部众多游戏室中的一间后便开始考验我的能力。

开始进行教育:玩家需要做的第一件事便是选择一个斗士,即他们在战斗中需要控制的角色。现在游戏中有将近120个可供购买的不同斗士,但玩家也可以从有限的免费斗士中做出选择。你可以花钱获得一些斗士的永久使用权,或者花钱去改变这些角色的外观。在像PAX等大会上,免费和限量版皮肤的代码都非常受欢迎,但这些也只能改变角色的外观而已。《英雄联盟》是一款少有的未将所需升级道具隐藏在付费墙背后的免费游戏。

每个斗士都拥有4种主要能力(游戏邦注:其中1种便是其最强大的终极能力),并且大多数斗士都拥有一种消极能力。Cantrell解释道,一些较早的斗士并未拥有这样的终极能力,但随着时间的发展,开发团队意识到如果控制一个没有超级特殊能力的英雄的话,游戏也就失去了乐趣。

最终证明我成为了这种终极能力的忠实粉丝—-但是我却并未去宣传它们。

斗士的4种能力分别映射到了Q,W,E和R这4个按键上,即你在游戏的时候左手能够触及到的位置。大多数键盘用户在PC上玩我们的游戏时都会将手指置于方向键上。《英雄联盟》主要是通过QWER表现出来。你可以通过多年的射击游戏和RTS游戏经验去训练你的肌肉记忆。

这便是玩MOBA的基础与特性。如果你之前习惯于玩其它类型的游戏,那么任何来自你手势上方的内容都要发生改变。

D和F键让你能够使用魔法或Summoner咒语,这能够帮助你更快速地移动或治愈。我经常做这些事,并且总是会将其搞砸掉。即我经常会在错误的方向运行能量或者不能快速地获得治愈。我在前几次游戏时简直就是一团糟,不过幸好我的老师很有耐性。他们习惯于看到人们摆脱掉其它类型游戏中的技能,并慢慢熟悉《英雄联盟》中的技能。

每种能力都有其缓冲时期,这便意味着在使用过后它们需要花些时间去充电,不过你也可以通过购买道具去减少缓冲时间。你可以使用金币并基于团队基础去购买道具,并且这些道具能够帮你做许多事,如加快速度或提升攻击力。在游戏中你将基于稳定的速度自动收集金币,并且如果你最终杀死了所有敌人,那么你的钱包里便会填满金币。

你也可以在死后再去买东西,并等着复生,这能够为你提供更多时间并确保你在回到游戏中时能够拥有许多很棒的新道具。游戏中存在一个指挥员将把你带回基地中去治愈你的角色或购买更多道具。从这时起游戏开始像是一个购物模拟器了。

Cantrell也同意强调购物有时候会适得其反。

“这便是我们为何会设置一个推荐标签的原因,每个斗士都拥有不同的推荐道具组合。但如果你想要的话也可以选择‘所有道具’,并根据你所控制的角色类型进行划分。”

在Cantrell的指导下,我玩的每一场比赛都是围绕着这样的行动,即需要获得更多金币去获得更棒的道具以创造更大的伤害。你不需要累积更多级别或打开更加强大的武器,你只需要从头开始去发展你的角色便可。

这是一种有趣的动态变化。在每次比赛的最后,你所塑造的角色都会面对死亡。即在《英雄联盟》中你经常会死亡。这样设定的目标是为了让你学习如何长期保持游戏。这是一款零和游戏;你的死亡可能会让敌人变得更加强大。犯错或死亡并不会对你的团队造成伤害,但却会帮助其它团队升级。这便是为何新玩家总是会遭受到严厉对待的原因;因为不断的死亡会带给其它团队优势。如果你经常死亡,或者因为一些愚蠢的错误而死亡,你便等于在推动其它团队的发展。

所有的这些,包括斗士,能力和金币都让人觉得难以承受。游戏设计似乎不是很友好。于是我便开始进行另外一次比赛。

我理解为什么我的那么多好友会花那么多时间去玩《英雄联盟》。我也想要那些很棒的靴子。我也想要最厉害的宝剑。我也想要所有的健康药剂。你的道具能够帮助你的角色变成杀人机器,即使是一个精心培养的角色,当在与其他斗士战斗时,他在死亡和成功间也具有很大的差别。

玩家会在网上贴出最棒的角色构建,最厉害的道具组合去突显自己的统计数据,从而去做一些不同的事。想要杀死其他人的角色与需要获得更久地生存下去并努力避免其它团队的攻击的角色是不同的。

越来越多Riot员工会带着苏打水或咖啡进出房间,并在路过我时看着我。我正在做笔记。Cantrell认为我到目前为止在游戏中的表现非常棒,似乎我已经非常熟悉游戏机制了。但我却不确定这是否准确,我仍然觉得有点焦虑。

我注意到Riot的员工在离开房间后会偷笑,并偷瞄因为获胜而庆祝的我。

你和小兵

在我的第一场比赛间我惊讶地看到了一排生物通过我并朝着敌人塔行进。这便是所谓的小兵,他们是你最好的朋友。小兵是可消费的,他们将有助于你削减敌人塔并提供给玩家更多喘息空间去击倒其他斗士。

塔是一些散布于地图上的自动防御系统,将会在几次射击后将你杀死,玩家很难凭借自己的能力将其击倒。而这时候小兵便能够帮助你—-通常情况下我的团队将让小兵慢慢地消耗它的生命值,从而在最后做出致命一击。如果攻击敌人的小兵,你将能够获得金币和经验值,并且你也可以通过在所谓的“农场”中攻击小兵或其他敌人而发展你的角色。

Cantrell解释道:“小兵的真正突出之处在于他们将帮助你推动角色向前发展,并在你尝试着攻击敌人塔时助你一臂之力。并且他们也将推动游戏的发展并帮助你获得更多经验值和金币。”

这些小兵将继续攻击敌人塔,并且敌人塔也会反过来回击小兵们。我犹豫着是否派我的小兵前往敌人塔周围,不过所幸没有发生什么不好的事。所以我便果敢地射击了敌人塔。但是很快地敌人塔也开始回击。我便因此死亡了。

死亡是件不好的事。但这也是获得学习的唯一方式。这便是为何长期与bot相抗衡如此重要的原因;你将在学习如何独自避免死亡(游戏邦注:而不是打败其他玩家)的时候发现游戏其实是很有趣的。

有经验的玩家经常会说避免因为是新手而被指责的最佳方法便是尽可能摆脱新手的身份,而这么做的最佳方法便是在与bot的对抗中学习如何游戏。我经常在游戏中死亡,但从某种程度上来看我也是一个不会拖累游戏中的其他人的新手。

此外,我处于一种非常棒的学习状态,因为Cantrell能够清楚地向我解释如何消灭敌人塔。

LOL(from polygon)

LOL(from polygon)

你会担心那些敌人塔

游戏中只存在3种路线:上,中,下。上和下路线将分别围绕着地图上下延伸,而中间路线将穿越中心进行分割。玩家将在游戏中选择他们尝试着去控制的路线,并沿着这条路线朝敌人塔前行。

《英雄联盟》是围绕着一张名为Summoner’s Rift的地图展开。这就像是游戏的棒球场或足球场一样。这也是为何在社区中地图的改变如此重要的原因。Summoner’s Rift拥有3种路线,并且这些路线中都分散着你或敌人所控制的塔。

当我询问这一切的意义时Cantrell解释道:“你想要在尝试着消灭敌人的同时守护自己的塔。”我拥有金币,道具,但是我的努力方向是什么呢?游戏终点又是什么?

他指着我的地图终端一个闪烁能量圈说道:“你拥有一个Nexus。他们也拥有Nexus。”他将手指指向地图另一端的另一个闪烁的圆圈。“破坏那个圆圈便是游戏的意义所在。如果你能够在对方摧毁你的圆圈前先摧毁对方的,你便获胜了。在所有不同的版本中都是如此—-你拥有3张左右的玩家地图,但是为了到达Nexus,你必须走不同的路线。你们双方都需要防御3个塔。而这些塔各自设在通向Nexus的道路上。”

你将控制路线,摧毁敌人塔,移向基地,并最终摧毁对方的Nexus。很简单吧?这与将足球踢进对方球门一样简单。

一开始我便直接奔向塔,但却因此轻松被敌人击中。我必须停止盲目地奔跑与射击;通常情况下我玩游戏的方式便是牢牢地握着枪。随着游戏的发展时间将慢下来,小兵即将出现。

塔保护着路线,而路线将通向敌人的基地。如果太过接近的话敌人便会杀死你。你必须学会隐藏在同盟身后,并朝着敌人塔射击。你必须不断平衡你需要注意的一切内容,并对提防的行动作出反应。

Cantrell解释当围绕着塔进行战斗时,这其实是一种微妙的平衡。微妙是有效的:你不能轻视塔,如果在敌人塔的范围内攻击敌方的成员,它便有可能朝你射击。这里存在的诀窍是让塔瞄准你的小兵,然后你便可以趁此将抢瞄准塔。

在《英雄联盟》中,玩家需要花时间逐渐意识到敌人所犯的每一个错误都必须遭受惩罚。如果你处在不适当的位置上,你便很快便会死掉。你必须清楚如何在适当的时候攻击对方,并在需要的时候计划如何安全地奔跑。这便是为何适当地使用道具如此重要;如果你处在危险的情况下,而对方却拥有最优化的架构,那么他们便很有可能获胜。不管多小,每一个优势都有可能起到帮助作用。

我想要忽视这些塔并穿越每个区域,但实际上只有一个个将其消灭才是最重要的。这便是联盟的推拉战术,即为了获取最后的胜利,斗士必须摧毁敌方的每一个要塞。如果你失去更多塔,你便更容易被敌人所击败。如果你想要了解到底是谁获得了最后的胜利,你只需要明确哪一方拥有更多塔便可。

我们还需要提到的是Inhibitor,即创造出超级小兵的发光结构体,它能够沿着路线飞行并攻击敌人塔。

喝饮料

我已经在Riot总部待了半天。我闻到了披萨,肌肉,啤酒以及咖啡等等食物的味道。Riot的员工总是会在工作室里走动着,并经过我所在的区域。

我发现对于这里的员工来说,《英雄联盟》不只是他们所专注创造的内容,同时也是一种生活方式。

Riot Games中的所有人都在玩《英雄联盟》。包括法务和会计。这是一种强制性的要求,而现在我也成为了这一团体的一部分。他们的雇员无需擅长于这款游戏,但却一定要玩这款游戏。当我在其办公室走动时发现,每三台计算机中便有一台在运行《英雄联盟》。该公司充满了浓浓的《英雄联盟》文化。不管你是谁,不管你是做什么的,你都需要玩这款游戏。

我控制的是Jinx这个角色,而Cantrell很认真地跟我解释着Jinx是如何游戏的。她是一个玻璃大炮,神射手,ADC,而我对此却非常困惑。我可以通过一些环境线索判别出其中的一些特征,但对于其它术语我真的很头疼。

他向我解释了ganking,leashing,jungling,但我最后只是绝望地举手投降。

Cantrell说道:“这就像是完全不同的语言,我之所以会忘记这一点是因为我已经使用了它们很长时间,但就像如果你突然跟我说一大串日语一样,我一开始也会懵住的。”

每一个斗士都有自己的优缺点,不同的能力以及在战斗中所扮演的不同角色,就像Jinx,她能够获得一些最强大的道具,但却很容易死亡。这便是所谓的玻璃大炮。即擅于攻击但却不善于逃跑。

她是一种携带型角色,即意味着她能够帮助其团队杀死最多敌人,但她还需要支持型角色作为其保镖,从而帮助她获得更多金币去获取更厉害的道具。游戏中存在一些不同的支持型,携带型,神射手以及暗杀者等角色,这里所存在的部分挑战在于识别你擅于哪种角色以及你该如何使用这些技能去帮助你的团队。ADC便意味着“攻击具有危害的携带型角色”,也就是现在所谓的神射手。

敌人,或者你的团队可能会在处于不利的情况下抛弃自己的角色和位置而想方设法击败对手,这种行为便是“ganking”。了解何时摆脱你的路线在战斗中具有决定性作用,并有可能接二连三击倒敌人;你必须在开始对付敌人以前理解规则。没有路线的角色被称为“junglers”。

专业技巧:如果你是《英雄联盟》的新手,那就先选择Garen。当你在初步了解游戏时,这是一种很容易掌握的角色,他很容易学习,并且很难被杀死。他带有能够轻松躲避敌人攻击的技能,如此你便需要为此多加担心。在比赛前选择Garen并打出“TOP”能够帮助你清楚自己在做些什么。

死亡并不意味着结束

在《英雄联盟》的每一轮游戏中,玩家都是从级别1开始。贯穿游戏,当玩家成功杀死敌人并获得经验值便能够升级。玩家将通过挣得点数而随着级别的上升去提升自己的能力,了解怎样的顺序能够提升这些能力便是一种重要技能。这对于每个斗士来说都是不同的,甚至在使用这些斗士的不同时间段也是不同的。玩家需要清楚牢记优势的重要性,而不了解如何去发展这些系统将造成你的死亡。

Cantrell说道:“根据不同情况,你将有可能面对死亡,但这并不是推动着你变得更加出色的唯一方式。”

除了耐性,Cantrell对于斗士和塔的另外一个建议便是:“保持奔跑。”

保持奔跑,保持游戏。你可能会死亡,但是你将学会减少死亡。一开始先谨慎地游戏。我询问了Cantrell有关游戏的节奏,为什么他们让游戏如此快速地移动。

我的手指抽筋了,但是对于所有的这些靴子,我唯一的念头便是它们能够帮助我更快速地逃跑,但是我仍需要花费3000个金币才能获得它们。Cantrell将《英雄联盟》的节奏与《魔兽世界》进行了比较:在暴雪的MMO中,你需要花费好几百个小时去发展将会一直陪伴着你到游戏最后的角色。而在《英雄联盟》中,你必须在每一个回合从头开始创造角色,并在你花时间于游戏中时学习做到这些的最佳方法。

Cantrell解释道:“在《魔兽世界》中,你将花费6个月的时间去升级游戏,购买你真正喜欢的道具并继续游戏。与之相类似的是,在《英雄联盟》中,你将在每个回合执行完整的体验,即你总是需要从第1级开始并快速获得升级的乐趣。然后也可以选择一个新的斗士并再次经历完整的过程,并且如果你愿意的话也可以使用同样的斗士。”

LOL(from polygon)

LOL(from polygon)

在实践中发挥作用

最后,有人告诉我,我将离开Cantrell的指导并与Riot的其他员工一起玩《英雄联盟》。

在Cantrell听着我的各种叫喊将我带到游戏最深处前,我告诉了他自己关于《英雄联盟》的最初独立体验,即我进入了PvP模式去研究战术,但却因为敌人以及与我一起游戏的陌生人而手足无措。似乎我一路上都在遭受责备,并且我好像不可能对团队起到任何帮助作用。

我愤怒地盖上了笔记本电脑并伤心地流下了眼泪。也许我很讨厌这么做,或者也许我并不善于在团队中活动。

Cantrell说道:“这是受玩家驱动的游戏。你必须学习如何与其他人一起游戏。这款游戏的设计并不是作为游戏,你需要与别人组成团队,否则你便不能获得奖励。如果你未能进行团队协作,你可能就不会获胜。”

这里存在的技巧在于,你应该在与其他人一起游戏或相互对抗前先了解自己在做什么,并与那些你所知道的人组成团队。这是一个过程,如果你鲁莽闯入的话便很有可能遇到糟糕的结果。但这里并不存在什么有效的方式:如果你想玩《英雄联盟》,你就需要能够与其他玩家自在地相处。

不用多久我的队友便会到达,并带着激动的心情与我一起游戏。Erik Reynolds,Daphne Karpel,Matt Manarino以及Jessie Perlo(他们分别是交流负责人,公司的市场营销主管,Riot的创意写作团队成员以及公关主任)将坐在我身边的计算机前并马上引导我进入我的第一次游戏。我瞬间觉得这个房间变得较为暖和,我也对自己可能做出的蹩脚表现做出道歉。这是另外一个小建议:让所有人都清楚你还处在学习阶段,但是你愿意这么做并且承诺能够尽最大努力做到最好。

我的账号级别仍然较低,所以Perlo便将自己的另一个账号借给了我。基于这种方式,《英雄联盟》将把我们紧紧地维系在一起。我有点紧张,并且不清楚到底该不该在这些Riot员工面前表现出这种不安感。这感觉好像不是一款友好的游戏,我好像是与一群职业的冰球运动员一起站在冰面上。我拥有非常强烈的情感,包括激动与害怕。

我们坐了下来并连接到服务器。Reynolds评价了比赛安排,我便注意到我们将与真人进行抗衡。即来自世界上某个地方的真人。

于是我的手心开始出汗了。

Perlo对我说:“别紧张。你也许会死很多次,但这都没关系。这不是什么坏事,只是过程中的一部分罢了。”

在我们选择了各自的斗士并且游戏开始时,Karpel又说道:“说实话,这真的不是什么坏事。”

Perlo也说了:“我们要一起死!”

尽管我仍然很紧张。

第一次游戏进展非常顺利。我们展开了有利的对抗,并且我发现自己在中间和下面的路线间来回奔跑着,以掩护Perlo和Karpal。我很擅长与自己选择的斗士打交道—-他叫Lux,能够使用旋风能量打退敌人并暂时将其困在某处,从而为队友争取足够的时间潜入地方阵营。

当轮到我的时候,我便开始执行这样的攻击,而我的队员们也会在后方支应我。我们有效地合作着,尽可能地压倒敌方斗士,并将其赶出所处位置。

但我们的第二次游戏却非常让人崩溃。我继续控制着Lux,但是我就像一个白痴似的一直犯错—-跑到敌人塔面前,朝着其他斗士乱射枪,并犯了一些对方知道如何克服的错误。于是我们遭遇了失败,并且在游戏过后Manarno告诉我不能过分专注于打倒敌方斗士。

他告诉我:“在你的前几次游戏时不要想着要快速杀死敌方斗士,而应该先消灭小兵。杀死斗士只会给你招来杀身之祸,因为杀死斗士并不是件容易的事。”

Manarino先起身离开了,我们阵营剩下的成员开始进入一种ARAM游戏模式。

这是一种让我很郁闷的“随机,中等”模式。在这种模式中,游戏将随机分配给每个人一个斗士,并将玩家置于只有一条中间路线的地图上。在那里,你必须想办法摧毁敌人塔,并朝着Nexus前进,但不幸的是我们中的所有人都分配到那些我们并不熟悉的斗士。我所面对的是一个需要近距离战斗且带着一把铁锤的强壮斗士;但是我却更擅长于远距离战斗。

ARAM模式最糟糕的一部分便是推进。我们在不可避免的团队战斗中遭受到打击,并且很快便失败了。然而,现在我还需要面对那个我并不熟悉的斗士。我的队友们解释道,这通常不是了解新斗士的最佳方法—-只不过我们能够因此获得一些朋友并进入ARAM模式。这里所具有的风险较低,并且其它玩家可能也和你一样面对着自己不熟悉的斗士。你只需要担心一条路线,这里的比赛较为血腥,但却允许你能够频繁地战斗,从而去测试你的能力。

在某一天我们完成了最后一次游戏,我也准备着分享我从中获得的乐趣,并愿意倾听队友们对我在游戏中糟糕表现的吐槽。但似乎这种情况并未发生。

他们反而称赞着我的进步。他们说我是一个学习能力很强的人,我也惊喜地发现自己竟然能在如此短的时间里学到这么多。当然了,在Riot的办公室里玩游戏真的很有帮助,因为在那里四周都是那些制作这款游戏的人。而现在我知道如何玩这款游戏,如何处理游戏中的斗士以及角色,并且我也理解了游戏中的比赛。我了解了游戏中的一些术语,并且成为了一名有能力的玩家,虽然还称不上游戏专家。

曾经有人跟我说过,如果想要尝试MOBA游戏,你最好从《英雄联盟》开始。因为这是一款很容易学习的游戏。但其实它也带有一定的挑战。但请一定轻松地玩游戏。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转功,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

RIOT TAUGHT ME LEAGUE OF LEGENDS (AND NOW I’M TEACHING YOU)

By Alexa Ray Corriea

League of Legends is a humbling game.

I’m sitting in a cool room, the lights just low enough to keep my eyes comfortable as they dart from corner to corner on my monitor. My right wrist is an achy mess, resting on the table to support my fingers, which are always moving.

But I’m calm. I’m collected. I’m about to lose my goddamn mind if I can’t get away from this tower in time and — crap, it’s over.

I die and can lean back for a moment, waiting to spawn.

League of Legends, as it would turn out, can be addictive. I rush to fill my inventory with new powerful items and health potions as my respawn timer ticks down, and by the time my character pops up at my team’s home base I’m already clicking away to get her back in action down the middle lane.

This is the third or fourth time I’ve played the game, but luckily I’m in the best place to learn.

Riot employees passing through peek over my shoulders as they walk to other cubicles, eyeing first the designer instructing me through my game and then me, as I break into a nervous sweat. I’m not a Riot employee and I get unusually excited every time I kill something. These people have to be wondering what I’m doing here.

Riot Games teaches League of Legends — its one and only game — to new employees, and also offers crash courses to the families of those who work for them. Learning to play, and love, League of Legends is a large part of the company’s culture. It’s rare they invite the press into this process, but here we are.

I feel like I’ve infiltrated some secret club where I don’t know the rules.

This is my first time playing a MOBA, any MOBA, in a serious way. Lucky for me I’m being taught the basics at the offices of a company that has created what may be the most popular game of all time.

MUSCLE MEMORY

Chris Cantrell, associate producer for creative development at Riot, put me through my paces as I settled into one of Riot headquarters’ many play rooms, a cozy bank of computers nestled into a glass-walled cube decorated with numerous plaques celebrating the champions of Riot’s in-house tournaments.

Education starts simply: The first thing players do is choose a champion, the character they will control in combat. There are currently close to 120 different champions to buy, but players can pick from a limited pool of free champions which rotate regularly. You can pay for perpetual access to as many champions as you’d like, or put some money towards skins that change how those characters look. Codes for free and limited edition skins are huge hits at shows like PAX, but these only change how the characters look, nothing else. League of Legends is the rare free-to-play game that doesn’t hide needed upgrades behind a paywall.

Each champion has four main abilities — one of which is their most powerful ultimate ability — and most have one passive ability. Cantrell explained that some earlier champions didn’t have this ultimate ability, but over time the team realized that playing a hero without a super special powerful attack “just wasn’t fun.”

As it would turn out, I would come to be a huge fan of these ultimates — just don’t do what I did and spam them whenever you could. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Champions’ four abilities are mapped to the Q, W, E and R keys, where your left hand will sit during your matches. Most keyboard users rest our fingers on WASD when we sit at our gaming PCs. League of Legends is spoken in the language of QWER. You have to retrain your muscle memory from years of shooters and RTS games to play well.

This is how basic, and how different, it can be to play MOBAs. Everything from your hand position on up has to change if you’re coming from any other genre.

The D and F keys give you access to your magic, or Summoner spells, which can do things like help you move faster or heal. Both of these I did frequently, and also messed up frequently. I’d power-run in the wrong direction or not heal quickly enough. I made a mess of my first few games, but my teachers were patient. They were used to seeing people rid themselves of the skills of other genres, and slowly pick up the skills of League of Legends.

Each ability has a cooldown period, which means after its use it takes time to recharge, although you can buy items to lessen the amount of time this takes. Items can be purchased at your team’s base with gold, and can actually do pretty much anything, from granting speed boosts to bolstering attack strength. As for gold, that is automatically accumulated at a steady pace as you play, and sneaking in the final kill on enemies will also fill your wallet.

You can also shop after you’ve died and are waiting to respawn, maximizing your time and ensuring you can jump right back into the action with buckets of awesome new stuff. There is a command that teleports you back to your base to heal your character or buy more items. It began to feel like a shopping simulator.

Cantrell agrees that this emphasis on shopping can sometimes get to be a little too much.

“That’s why we have a recommended tab, and every champion has a different set of recommended items. But then, after that, if you want to, you can go to ‘all items’ and sort them by what you need based on what type of character you’re playing.”

Every match I played under Cantrell’s instruction focused around this action, this constant need to get better items to do more damage to earn more gold to get better items to do more damage. You don’t earn persistent levels, nor unlock more powerful weapons; you have to build your character from scratch every round.

Which is an interesting dynamic. At the end of each match the character as you’ve built is essentially dead to you. And you will die often in League of Legends. The goal is to learn how to stay alive for as long as possible. This is a zero-sum game; your death makes the enemies more powerful. Making a mistake and dying doesn’t just hurt your team, it helps the other team gain levels. This is why new players are treated so harshly online; constant death leads to a numerical advantage for the other team, a condition called being “fed.” If you die often, or die due to stupid mistakes, you’re “feeding” the other team.

All of this — the champions, the abilities, the gold — feels overwhelming. It is overwhelming. The design of the game can feel unwelcoming. I started another match.

I understood why so many of my friends spent so much time on League of Legends as the day continued. I wanted those awesome boots. I wanted the best sword. I wanted all the health pots. Your items help turn your character into a killing machine, and a well-built character can mean the difference between death and success when fighting another champion.

Players post optimal builds online, the best combination of items that will work together to buff your stats to do different things. Characters who want to kill others will be built very differently from a character who needs to survive as long as possible while holding off the attacks of the other team. My coworkers at Polygon have talked about keeping their smartphone open to the best builds, so they can peek at a cheat sheet while they play to know what to buy.

More Rioters pass in and out of the room with cans of soda and paper cups of coffee, eyeing me as they walk by. I’m taking notes. Cantrell comments that I’m doing an excellent job at the game so far, that it looks like I’m comfortable with the mechanics. I have no idea if any of this is true, but I shrink in my seat a little bit, still incredibly anxious.

I notice the employees hiding grins as they leave the room again, peeking sidelong at me as I celebrate winning a match against bots with a small whoop.

YOUR MINIONS AND YOU

During my first match I was startled by a row of small creatures, marching past me in single file to the enemy towers. These are called minions, and they are your best friends. Minions are expendable, but they’re invaluable for whittling down enemy towers and giving players some breathing room to take down other champions.

Towers, the automated defenses sprinkled around the map that can kill you in a few shots, are tough to take down alone. Your minions are helpful — oftentimes my team would let the minions eat slowly away at the towers’ health, only to swoop in for the finishing, gold-collecting blow. You earn gold and experience by attacking the enemy’s minions; building up your characters by attacking minions or the other enemies on the board is called “farming.”

“What’s nice about minions is they’ll run up and help you push your characters forward, making it so that when you’re trying to attack a tower, it actually gets a lot easier,” Cantrell explained. “And they’re very useful in the game for going up in level and for getting experience and gold.”

These minions will continuously attack towers, and the towers will in turn shoot back at the minions. I wandered hesitantly into the range of a tower surrounding by my minions … and nothing happened. So I shot the tower. And immediately, the tower shot me. And I died.

Dying is bad, But it’s the only way to learn. This is why playing against bots for as long as possible is so important; you’ll find the game much more welcoming when you learn how to not die on your own time, not against other human players.

Experienced players will often say that the best way to avoid abuse for being new is to not be new, and the best way to do that is to learn the game, and your champion, in bot matches. I was dying often, in many ways, but I was being new in a way that wouldn’t hurt others in the game.

Besides, I was in a good place to learn, and Cantrell was about to explain how to kill the towers.

YOU WORRY ABOUT THOSE TOWERS…

There are only three lanes: top, middle and bottom. The top and bottom lanes snake around the top and bottom of the map, respectively, while the middle cuts right through the center. Players will take a role in the game and call out the lane they’ll handle and attempt to control, making their way towards the towers.

League of Legends is played almost exclusively on a single map called Summoner’s Rift. This is the game’s baseball diamond, its soccer pitch. This is why changes to the map are such a big deal in the community. Summoner’s Rift has three lanes, and those lanes are dotted with towers, those controlled by you and the opposing side.

The towers.

“You want to defend your towers while trying to destroy your enemies’ towers,” Cantrell explained when I asked what the point of all this was. I had my gold, my items, but what was I working towards? What was my endgame?

“You have a Nexus,” he pointed to a glowing circle of power on my end of the map. “They have a Nexus,” he moved his finger to another glowing circle on the other end of the map. “Destroying that is the point of the game. If you can do that before they destroy yours, you win. And that’s true of all the different versions — we have a three player map and so on, but in order to get to that Nexus, you have to push down lanes. That’s it. Three towers are the innate defenses that both sides have. They’re set up on the way to the Nexus.”

You control the lanes, you destroy the towers, you move into the base, and you destroy the Nexus. Easy, right? Soccer is just kicking a ball into a goal, after all. This is simple stuff.

I began my bootcamp by running straight into the towers, only to get zapped. I had to stop running-and-gunning; my usual way of tackling games that put a weapon in my hand. Time to slow down and smell the minions.

The towers protect the lanes, and the lanes lead to the enemy’s base. Get too close and they’ll kill you, and quickly. You have to learn to hide behind your allies, and take shots at the towers to wear them down as you hold the enemy champions at bay. It’s a constant struggle to balance everything you need to watch, and react to the opposing side’s play, and above all not die.

Cantrell explained that it’s a delicate balancing act when fighting around towers. Delicate is right: you can’t run by the tower and if you attack anything on its team within its range it will shift its focus to you. The trick is to allow the tower to target your minions, and then focus your fire on the tower while it’s distracted, while keeping an eye out for the enemy champions.

League of Legends is a game of inches, and it takes time to realize that every mistake on the part of your opponent must be punished. If you find yourself out of position you can expect a quick death. You have to know how to attack the other side when appropriate, and also have a plan to run to safety as needed. This is why proper use of items is important; if you’re duking it out with an enemy champion and they have a more optimized build, even by a few percentage points, they’re likely to win. Every advantage, no matter how small, helps.

I wanted so badly to bust through each area while ignoring these towers, but it’s important that you destroy them one by one. This is part of League’s push-and-pull tactics, the ebb and flow, or sometimes tidal wave, of champions walloping each other’s strongholds in order to win. The more towers you lose, the closer you are to defeat. If you want a quick and dirty way to see who is winning a match, just find out which side has more towers. They’re winning.

And the end of this line is something called an Inhibitor, a glowing structure that spawns super minions, which can fly down lanes and attack opposite teams’ towers and …

I’m getting ahead of myself again.

DRINKING (AND SPEAKING) THE KOOL-AID

I have been at Riot HQ for half a day. I smell pizza, buffalo chicken, the faint twang of beer and the comforting, heavy scent of coffee. Rioters were milling around the studio, wandering past my tiny glass-walled arena.

Amid talk of recent movies and real-world happenings, I hear strange names being thrown out. I pick up words like “mid” and “gank.” I’m told that for everyone here, League of Legends isn’t just something they work on, it’s a way of life.

Everyone at Riot Games plays League of Legends. Lawyers, accountants. It’s mandatory — and now I’m part of the club. Employees don’t have to be good at the game, but they have to play. There’s probably a janitor in this building somewhere that could kick my ass. Every third computer had LoL up and running on it as I walked through the offices. The building is steeped in League culture. No matter who you are, no matter what you do, you play.

I’m playing as Jinx and Cantrell is explaining how Jinx is played. She’s a glass cannon, a marksman, an ADC, and I am so completely confused. Some of it I can work out from context clues, but other pieces of lingo are completely opaque.

I’m being told about ganking, leashing, jungling, and finally I throw my hands up in despair.

“It’s almost like this other language, and I forget it because I’ve spoken it for so long, but if you were to start speaking Japanese to me, I’d be like, ahh!” Cantrell said. “But, you know … it is similar to that.”

Every champion has different strengths and weakness, different special abilities and roles in battle Jinx, for example, can get some of the most powerful items but will also die very easily. That’s a glass cannon. Powerful on attack but easy to take out.

She’s a carry character, which means she’s likely to get the most kills on her team, but she needs a support character to serve as her bodyguard as she racks up gold to get better items. There are a handful of different supports and carries and marksmen and assassins, among others, in League’s cast of characters, and part of the challenge in figuring out which role you’re the best at and how best you can use those skills to complement your team. ADC means “attack damage carry,” which are now called Marksmen.

The enemy, or your team, will sometimes abandon their roles and positions to take down an enemy champion while they’re in a vulnerable spot, and this move is called “ganking.” Knowing when to move out of your lane to tip the scale of battle and take down an enemy champion or two comes with experience; you have to understand the rules before you begin to subvert them. Characters without a lane, who farm and gank as needed, are called “junglers.”

Pro tip: If you are a League of Legends newbie, top with Garen. It’s an easy role when you’re learning the ropes, he hits hard once you learn his combos and he’s hard to kill. He has skills that make it easy to retreat if needed, and you don’t have to worry about mana as his attacks don’t consume it. Choosing Garen and typing “TOP” before the match begins is a good way to almost look like you know what you’re doing.

DEATH IS NOT THE END

Every round of LoL starts players at level one. Leveling up happens throughout the game as you make kills and gain experience. You earn points to power up your abilities as you level up and knowing which order to power up those abilities is also a crucial skill. It’s different for each champion, and even for different roles when using those champions. Remember, every advantage counts, and not knowing how to maximize these systems is what’s contributing to my death.

“It happens. You’re going to die,” Cantrell said, “and that will become, hopefully, not the only way as you get better, but you’ll die a lot.”

Another piece of advice from Cantrell as I constantly bit off larger pieces than I could chew, going straight for champions and towers instead of being patient: “Keep running,” he said.

Keep running, keep playing. You’ll die, but you’ll learn to die less. Play conservatively at first. I ask Cantrell about the pacing of the game, why it’s designed to move so quickly. I feel like I have whiplash, or motion sickness of the mind.

My fingers are cramping, and all I can think about are those damn boots that will allow me to run away faster, which I still need something like 3000 gold to be able to afford. Cantrell compares LoL’s pacing to that of World of Warcraft: In Blizzard’s MMO, you spend hundreds of hours developing a character that you carry for your game’s entire lifetime. In LoL, you have to build your character from scratch during every round, learning the best way to do so as you pour hours into the game.

“In World in Warcraft, you spend six months leveling up your character to max level and buying items you’re really excited about and going through and playing,” Cantrell explained. “Similar to that, in League, you do that whole experience in every sitting — you always start at level one and you get the fun experience of leveling up your champion quickly. And then you can pick a new champion and do the whole thing over again, or the same one if you want to keep practicing.”

PUTTING PRACTICE INTO PLAY

I’m told I’ll be leaving Cantrell’s instruction and playing LoL with other Rioters within the company at the end of the day, and I freak out.

Before he throws me into the deep end, after a whole day dealing with me yelping and swearing, I tell Cantrell about my first solo LoL experience, in which I jumped into PvP only having lightly read up on tactics and was immediately burned, both on the map by my opponents and off the map by the strangers I was playing with. Abuse was hurled my way and I couldn’t seem to do anything to help my team.

I had slammed my laptop shut and retreated in tears. Maybe I was horrible at it, and maybe I wouldn’t do well in a team setting.

“It’s player driven” he said. You have to learn how to play with others, he told me. There’s no other way forward. “It’s just, it’s not like it’s designed into the game or like, hey, you have to team up or you don’t get these bonuses. It’s more like, if you don’t use teamwork, you’re probably not going to win.”

The trick is to wait until you know what you’re doing before you play with and against other people, and team up with people you know. It’s a process, and jumping directly in will end badly. But there’s no way around it: If you want to play LoL, you have to be comfortable with other players.

It doesn’t take long for my future teammates to arrive, all smiles and very excited to play with me. Erik Reynolds, Daphne Karpel, Matt Manarino and Jessie Perlo — a communications lead, a corporate marketing associate, a member of Riot’s creative writing team and a PR coordinator — settle themselves down at other computers surrounding me and immediately guide me into my first game. I feel like the room has gotten a little warmer and blurt out my apology for what I already think will be a crappy performance. This is another tip I picked up: Let everyone know you’re learning, what you’re comfortable with and promise to do your best.

The level on my own account is still super low, so Perlo lends me one of her secondary accounts. This way, the League of Legends matchmaking tool will stick us all together and not skate over me. I feel nervous and a little sick and I can’t tell if it’s my desire to not look bad in front of these Rioters or the enormous cup of coffee I drank. This doesn’t feel like a friendly game, it feels like being on the ice with a group of professional hockey players, and being given a stick. It’s an intense sensation, both exciting and scary.

We settle in and join up to the servers. Reynolds makes a comment about matchmaking and it comes to my attention that we’re going to be playing against real people. Real people somewhere else in the world.

My palms start sweating.

“Don’t be nervous!” Perlo tells me. “You’ll die a lot and that’s okay. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just part of the process.”

“Seriously, it’s not a big deal,” Karpel adds just as we finish picking our champions and the game starts up.

“We all die together!” Perlo adds.

I’m still freaking out.

The first game goes great. We put on a good fight and I find myself running support back and forth between the mid and bottom lanes, covering Perlo and Karpal. I find I’m really good with a champion I randomly selected named Lux, who has the power to snag enemies in a whirlwind of energy and temporarily pin them in place — just long enough for another teammate to sneak in a hit.

I begin to regularly execute this attack when it’s available to me, and my teammates compliment me on my aim. We do well working together, using our abilities to overwhelm the enemy champions, knocking them out of position and taking advantage of them when isolated.

But the second match is a complete and utter trainwreck. Still sticking with my homegirl Lux, I get in the way one too many times like a dumb idiot — running in front of towers, taking potshots at other champions when I just shouldn’t, and generally making the sort of mistakes that the other side knows how to exploit. We lose, and afterwards Manarino tells me to not be so hung up on taking down champions.

“That comes after,” he tells me. “Don’t worry about killing champions during your first games, worry about killing minions first. Killing champions is just going to get you killed, because there’s a complexity in killing champions.”

Manarino takes off — important writing to do! — and the remaining members of my bootcamp squad take on an ARAM mode game.

This “all random, all middle” mode is infuriating and initially makes me ill. In this mode, everyone is assigned a random champion and you’re thrown onto a map with just one middle lane. From there you have to smash down enemy towers and just plow straight ahead to the Nexus, but all of us are served up champions we are unfamiliar with. I find myself as a brawny guy with a hammer that needs to fight close-up; I’m better at long-range, so this is already going poorly.

The worst part about ARAM is the push. We get trounced in inevitable team fights and lose quickly. However, I now have a small handle on a champion I would have normally not picked. This, my teammates explain, is often the best way to learn new champions — just grab some friends and jump into ARAM. The stakes are low, and it’s more likely other players are just as new to their champion as you are. You only have to worry about one lane, so matches are bloody and allow you to fight often and test your abilities.

We finish our last game for the day and I’m prepared for some smiles, some chatter about how fun that was and then to hear them whisper about how much I suck as LoL as they walk away. None of this happens.

I’m complimented by how well my training went as my day comes to a close. They tell me I’m a quick learner, and I’m pleasantly surprised at how much I’ve picked up in a short period of time. It certainly helped to be in Riot’s office, surrounded by the people who make the game. But I now know how the game is played, how to handle a few champions and a few roles, and I can watch and understand matches. I know a bit of the lingo, and am now a competent player, if not a proficient one.

Want to know something cool? If this is your first time reading about the guts of the game, you probably learned a fair amount as well.

The sun begins to set but still nearly blinds me as I step outside. I’ve been in a computer lab all day, after all. My fingers are dead. I walk out into the balmy Los Angeles evening feeling accomplished. Proud.

I’ve been told that, to get into the MOBA genre, you need to start with League of Legends. It’s simple to learn, my friends tell me. Simple, but it gets challenging. Relaxing, even.

I believe them.(source:polygon)

 


上一篇:

下一篇: