Leagues of Legends (LoL) is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game, developed by riots games. Two teams of maximum 5 players each, battle and challenge each other to overcome the opposing team’s base. Players need to use real time strategy and cooperate with teammates in order to defeat the opponent.

Before the match begins, each player chooses a character, also known as Champion, which has their own strengths, weakness, and skills. The game ends when one team loses the heart of their base, the nexus, or when one team surrenders. There are different modes in this game, the most popular being Classic, a normal 5 vs 5 in the summoner’s rift map. My favorite mode would be Aram (all random all mid), where the Champions are chosen for you at random.

Official website: lol.garena.com

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-157HBpPZ24

Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics:

• Controls:
  • Uses keyboard for activation of skills, ping, and screen control.
  • Uses mouse for targeting and champion movement.
• Map:
  • Sets of different maps.
  • There is limited vision that can only be seen by your team. If you lose a turrent (tower), surrounding area of visions are lost.
  • Minions (soldiers) also provide a small range of vision
  • Mini map at the bottom right which shows location of teammates, wards, and minions.
  • Enemies within our vision are also shown on minimap.
• Champion:
  • Champions are unlocked using game money, or a set of free to play champions are rotated every week.
  • Each champion have their own levels, health, mana and stats.
  • When a champion reach 0 hp, they are killed off, and must wait for a period of time before they are respawned.
• Champions skills and abilities:
  • Each champion have their own unique passive.
  • Click-on skills, which require vision of the enemy.
  • Skill shots which are projectiles-base that only the first target it collides with.
  • Area of Effect (AOE) which affects a wider range and multiple targets.
  • When champions level up, they can choose to increase the abilities skill.

Aesthetics:

• The maps are 3D and more colorful as opposed to DOTA 2.
• Each champion has their own splashart, and skin (a different character theme different from the default).
• Their skills each have their own special animation and may change depending on skin.
• There are mild cartoon blood animation.

Technology:

• In Singapore, LoL is hosted Garena, a social and game platform, and can only be played using Windows. In some countries, it is also playable on mac OS.

Story:

• The game does not have main story which affects the progression of the game.
• Each champions comes with their own lore, their own background story of how they came into Leagues of Legend.
• Some lore are tied in with others which brings about secondary quest, for example, Ashe, Lissandra and Sejuani are all princesses of Freljord. If either two champions are in opposing teams, they must kill or assist in the kill of the other.

Lenses

The Lens of Competition vs Cooperation

• You need to work with your teammates to win the other team. Without cooperation from the team, there wouldn’t be much of a competition, it will be a one sided massacre.
• Competition in this game is used to encourage cooperation as a team to defeat the other.

The Lens of Chance

• In the Aram mode of LoL, champions are selected at random from the current champions that you own, and those on free to play for the week.
  • When one gets a character that they know how to play well, they usually get very excited. While on the other hand, if the champion rolled is one that you cannot play well.
  • You can choose to reroll the champion, or swap with someone who also have that champion. Some people are lucky, while others can be quite sore about it, and dodge the game (leaving when the game has yet to start).
  • This makes the experience to be both joyful and frustrating at the same time.

The Lens of Surprise

• As mention above, there is limited vision, allowing opponents to hide in bushes and ambush you.
• To prevent this, one can use wards which allows for vision within the single bush for a limited period of time.
• Certain champions can be invisible to opponent players. For example, Teemo and Twitch.
• Some skill can created by certain champions such as traps are invisible to the opponent as well. For example: Teemo’s mushroom (Noxious Trap).

The Len of Skill

• LoL will need players to come up with strategies to land a killing combo. The more one plays the game, the familiar they would be.
• They will be able to know in what order to use the skills to get the best damage, how to escape, when to escape, when to go in, or run.
• Hidden ‘elo’ system which determines how well a player plays and match them with other similarly skilled players.
• Usage of Runes and Masteries, which gives your champion additional benefits and stats. This allows for different customization of playing style.