What are you playing?

Think of it like a team sport. I don’t know the current trends, but back when I played LoL, teams typically sent a tankier AD top, a mage mid, a ranged AD bottom with a support, and one jungle. The idea was to spread XP around in the most ideal way while also having a roster balanced between different skill types. Much like a team sport where different types of people have different roles. Now, it didn’t mean that there was no change to that, and it didn’t mean that nobody ever left their lane, but you typically played your role with little deviation early game.

I’ve played a few games of this recently where people load up in middle, or just seem to pick some random lane every time they spaw. Now I don’t know the game mechanics 100%, but to me that would be like a hockey goalie just suddenly skating out to play forward because he feels like it. I try to stay patient because it is only a game, after all,and I can’t expect everyone to adhere to any kind of strategy, but when you’ve experienced great team cohesion and lane discipline, experiencing the inverse can be very grating.

Oh, and what you’re doing sounds very reasonable to me. I take mid, too, as it seems the attack damage carries stomp the mages there. Then an occasional surprise attack to the other lanes is a great strategy. My complaint is more like imagine you’re playing really well mid, then the two bottom lane players just decide to leave their lane for no reason and come mid to push your lane, maybe even dying in the process and making your direct opponent stronger while leaving bottom to be pushed and destroyed by the other team. My guess is you would be scratching your head a bit over your teammates’ decisions.

I’ve played MOBA’s before. I was curious what you meant by lane discipline since there are so many terms and phrases that surround the genre.

Right now in AoV casual, I usually see the ADC in mid - all of them seem to be super mobile. Tank +1 top and a Warrior +1 bottom. Not that anyone is ever in the jungle usually, just that it’s 2, 1, 2 for the lane split. I’m trying to work out a good hero for the jungle in AoV because it’d be nice to have some jungle farming going on.

I had a game last night where I got to experience the ADC running into the jungle to steal the junglers kills (I mean, we actually had a Jungler so I was pretty happy). Then rolling into my/others lane just to wipe out a wave and then bounce when 3 enemies show up. All while yelling about how we all suck. I finally turned voice on and said “If you weren’t a kill stealing piece of shit we might all be leveled enough.”

EDIT: Adding on because I missed your second post. They all do it - jump lanes like that. Usually because I’m at +2 towers down, and no other lane is (what? I’m efficient at burning down towers). So they all try to pile on to get the last tower and die horribly because no one has any idea what “focus down the carry” means, or really “focus down one character at a time” and the other team has a smidgen more focus, which ends up with top and bottom getting pushed. My usual gameplan is to push all the way through the towers and then start lane diving the other lanes to help get them pushed. Once all of the lanes are pushed and we’re defending moderately well, it’s a matter of time from there (the other team screws up and dies which means all heroes pile on and kill the crystal. Super Minions in all lanes etc etc etc).

I might actually start jungling when I have the right hero since there doesn’t seem to be too much competition for the role right now. Not my favorite, but I’ll take one for the team.

My question is, what is the right hero? I don’t see “jungler” as a role, so it’s hard for me to make out what hero I should be aiming for to do it.

Also: I hate being the ADC usually. First one to die (if the other team has a vague idea how to play), laning is so booooooring (it’s important. It just bores me to tears), it’s a numbers ramp up to nothing. No real defense. Itemization is the same no matter the ADC.

Yeah. And mobs seems to go down easy, so a mobile assassin might be nice. Then again, a mobile tank with some kind of stun could work for the ganks.

Should we move this to a new thread so as to not bog down this one? I honestly don’t know how much I’ll be playing consistently due to time but I am always happy to talk MOBAs.

Done :wink:

So…as always I am late to the party but…

The Battle for Polytopia…heck what a fun little 4x game…if only the AI on normal wasn’t total “make hole in sand - stick head in there!” moronic level…

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Invisible Inc. On the laptop, unusually, because I’ve been floored by a virus this week and so have time during the day. Invisible Inc is one of my comfort games, pushes my buttons perfectly, and in my view it’s an absolute masterpiece of design. I live in perpetual hope that the Contingency Plan dlc will make to iOS but I don’t think it will ever happen. Alas.

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Mobile: Mostly playing Darts of Fury on my iPad and Lost Cities on my iPhone. I keep an older iPad 3 just for the games that were eliminated in the iOS 11 Purge, and battled through the British campaign on AcePatrol this week. Race for the Galaxy seems very popular these days, so that’s probably my next purchase.

Console: Played some Champions of Norrath and Burnout 3 Takedown on my PS2 yesterday. What a blast!

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fond memories of playing Champions of Norrath together with my then about 12 years old youngest son. we had so much fun.
another great game in the same mould was Advanced AD&D Heroes.

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Just grabbed Monster Hunter World while grocery shopping. I haven’t played my PS4 much since the Switch came out, so I figured a AAA feedback loop of killing monsters and harvesting their parts so that I can kill thouger monsters to harvest their parts would be a good return to Sony’s console for me.

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I am mostly old school right now.

iPhone - Drop7, I had never really played this, but someone suggested I try it, as I was getting bored with 3s. My eyes are going, and don’t like to pull out my glasses to play a game on the subway or standing in line for something. So these types of games are all I play on the iPhone any more.

iPad - Star Realms obsessively. Patchwork, thanks to the Decathlon introducing it to me. FF Exevus - I had played it just briefly when it came out, but I only have room for one Gacha type game. This has filled that hole since I stopped playing Gems of War.

Mac/PC - We finally got the fall update for Civ6 on the Mac side, so been playing that. I could have played on Bootcamp, but the partition is not that big, so I manage space carefully. I have been playing my way though FF XIII on Bootcamp as I had never played it. I am not a huge fan of the ATB system, but I do like the story so far. About half way through it right now.

Switch - We still only have Mario Kart 8, Just Dance and Pokken Tournament. Actually we have Jackbox Party 3 also, that I got just for a dinner party we had a couple weeks ago, and it was a huge hit.

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I was watching some Monster Hunter streaming on twitch yesterday, that looks fun. But I don’t have a PS4.

Ploughing through the Phoenix Wright games. Absolutely Japanese, with twisting cases that constantly challenge my deductive capabilities.

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Just beat Darkest Dungeon. Great game, but I’m not crazy about the way the endgame is designed.

Got a code for Staxel (what if Stardew Valley was Minecraft?) to maybe write up here. I’m not sure if adding a z-axis is worth the increased input complexity, but I still need to put more time into it. I’ve also been playing Iconoclasts and Symphony of the Night because I’m in that Metroidvania mood. Monster Hunter World should arrive by Tuesday. On iOS I’ve fallen into the Dream Quest hole again. There’s so much #content there that I’m not sure I’ll ever be fully done with it. Unfortunately, it may have prepared me too well for Meteorfall, which just seems piddly in close comparison.

After a few hours playing Unity of Command, I finally understand how it works.

I am stupid.

Dungelot is currently my game of choice, interspersed with some Jade Empire. It controls wonky on the phone, but nothing that spamming Dire Flame can’t fix. And it is as well-written as ever.

I wanted to like this one, but it was too puzzly for my tastes. I need to carve out some time for Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa…

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