Oh, you are saying that these are play options rather than create options. Okay.

You don't need to play the same champion every game. There's over 100 champions, so experiment. It's more fun, and don't worry about not succeeding immediately. Bot games are meant for practice ,so go play some of them as you learn the game.

Well, that explains it. If you select Howling Abyss then it doesn't have the Add Bot option but it seems to be available for the others. I assume that is a bug.

Ahh, well, they actually are... if you had gone into Co-op vs AI sooner.

In Battle Training, Ashe, Garen, and Ryze are the only 3 champions you'll ever have access to. In normal modes for other maps, you have access to the champions you've purchased, plus the 10 champions on the Free Champion Rotation, which changes every week.

But! For summoners below level 6, there is a separate Free Champion List (https://support.leagueoflegends.com/entries/21576124-Choosing-the-Right-Champion#h2q3) composed of only champions that Riot feels are suitable for a brand new player to cut their teeth on. Ashe, Garen, and Ryze are on this list. So if you had graduated from Battle Training to Co-op before level 6, whichever champion you used for training would be available for AI games.



Right. They didn't design AIs that function on Howling Abyss, so you can't add them to custom Howling Abyss games.

And all this is clearly stated in the New Player Guide (http://gameinfo.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/game-info/get-started/new-player-guide/), right? We both know that it isn't. And, I actually read the page you linked to on Choosing The Right Champion. However, the person who assembled that page concentrated more on style, hyperbole, and graphics than on clear instructions.

This is a constant problem when experienced people attempt to write documentation and then do so in an abbreviated fashion. The "just play it" attitude is fine when you are familiar with the game structure but is not inadequate for new players. You can't "just play" something you don't understand or not familiar with. For example, just trying to pick items to purchase would knock you out of the game for long periods which makes very little sense for a game that runs in real-time. With this attitude you'll end up either buying nothing or randomly buying things and then hoping that they help somehow. Again, I do understand why someone who is already familiar with the game would make an erroneous assumption like this.

Secondly, a great deal of the background for League of Legends is either completely arbitrary or of no consequence. For example, it is claimed that Ashe is an archer and yet this champion could purchase things like swords. Now, clearly this isn't a rational choice. But, whoever came up with the list of magic items simply picked values, names, and attributes at random without any connection to the game story. So, you have to ignore the nonsensical part and yet still memorize many items that you want to buy during the game. It makes the gameplay at lot harder but of course wouldn't be noticed by someone who is already familiar. You could even try to rationalize this by pointing out that chess uses arbitrary characters for the pieces with no connection to their behavior or movement. However, chess only uses six different pieces so memorizing these is not difficult.

While I understand the frustration, particularly if you are a scientist like your name suggests, you're gonna have to let it go on this one.

The entire genre of MOBA games are pretty much all nonsensical as far as canonical cohesion between item builds and characters go. Let's say you're a designer for one, and you need to make an item that says "This adds 50 damage to your auto attacks." Both melee (perhaps axe-wielding, sword-wielding, hammer-wielding, flail-wielding, or what have you) as well as ranged (bow-wielding, gun-wielding, shuriken-wielding, cannon-wielding, etc.) champions will be using this item if they want to boost their auto attack damage.

It wouldn't make sense to make a hundred different versions of this "+50 damage" weapon for each champion to fit their canonical lore weaponry, that's just convoluting everything for no benefit. Nor is there any real benefit to be derived from even just two copies of the item for melee and ranged; there's no gameplay to it and even with just two copies of every item in the game for melee/range, you're doubling the amount of item names a player has to memorize. And--as you've noted yourself, there's already an overwhelming number of items to remember for the new player, even with just one copy for each unique stat/effect combination. So in the end, you just choose a sword, slap the +50 damage stat on it, and everyone has to use it, whether they're a ninja or an archer or a cannoneer or a berserker.

Treat the items as stat sticks rather than the weapon types of RPGs and you'll find it easier to get into the game.

Wow! This thread escalated rather quickly. I think Time Bandit's done a great job explaining the reasoning behind the items and their non-cohesion with the lore, but I'll add in my two cents here by breaking down my reply into individual responses based on your post, scientious. And before anything, if you'd like someone to play with who can take the time to explain the game and help you along with champion builds and gameplay, please don't hesitate to add me; my in-game name is Cat Eyed Liar. You can add me from the League client by opening the buddy list on the bottom right, and I think on the bottom left, click "Add Friend."

Anyways!

//replying in progress//

You're absolutely right. Even with the Battle Tutorial, it's quite challenging to even attempt to get a handle on 119 champions and dozens of items. People have been talking about adding more infrastructure to the tutorial process (ex. Gating levels by adding requirements to do certain tasks in games, like buying and using at least 5 Sight/Vision wards excluding your personal trinket, etc.) because too many newer players are getting into the higher levels and still struggling to learn what to build, what each champion does, and how gameflow works. I think the Recommended Builds given in the shop for all characters serves as a good starting point, but a lot of knowledge has to be learned through experience or through supplementation from outside sources (guides, Youtube videos and tutorials).

I don't know what the new player experience is like for Demigod and WoW because I've never played them, but just looking around for a few minutes on Demigod, I already see complaints about a lack of a beginner-friendly tutorial for gameplay. These were comments taken from people in 2009 and 2010, so I don't know how much it's improved since then, but from what I can tell, the small range of playable characters (10) means that an in-depth tutorial might not be as necessary as it is for League.



As I've mentioned, I think the Recommended builds presented to the player when opening the shop do a pretty decent job of giving the player a build to follow while they familiarize themselves with the admittedly large number of items and build paths. However, I think the large number of items, while cumbersome to remember, gives the player the freedom to explore new item combinations and allows them to adapt to different conditions depending on the composition of the other team. Is the enemy team attack damage heavy? Buy armor. But wait - a Thornmail to reflect damage back to those pesky basic attack damage dealers like Ashe? Or a Randuin's Omen to deal with AD champions that need to be slowed and peeled away when they dive your high-priority teammate?



I also agree that the items sometimes don't make any sense at all (Cassiopeia with Boots? Riot pls), but with a huge champion pool of humanoid and non-humanoid characters, some of which don't use weapons at all, it's quite challenging to design items that can be bought by everyone and still make sense without turning everything into "A magical talisman that grants x stats when adhered to their body."


In the past, when League began with 40 champions, the lore was that they were all summoned to Runeterra from other realms in order to become champions that would battle each other on Summoner's Rift. The League of Legends would serve as the mediator to solve conflicts between the different states of Runeterra. The most notable example was an Ionia vs. Noxus showmatch (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Ionia_versus_Noxus:_Rematch) that ended up with the team representing Ionia as the winner, and the story was written so that these "Summoners" were allowed access to the Arcanum Vault in the LoL to choose a new item to be added to the Shop (and this is where the item Ionian Boots of Lucidity came from). Back then, when the Journal of Justice (http://joj.leagueoflegends.com/) was still being published, Summoners could follow the politics of Runeterra, which would often be used by Riot to set up events like the Ionia vs. Noxus match.

Over time, Riot decided they wanted to focus less on telling the story of Runeterra through the system of the Summoners and the League of Legends, and more on bringing the world of Runeterra to the players by focusing on character-driven lore that would indirectly introduce the world of Runeterra. This has resulted in an ongoing debate about the state of the Summoners and the LoL as an institute of war and a mediator, and whether it even exists anymore (but that's another issue entirely).

For the character-driven lore, though, here's an example: Jinx (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nlJuwO0GDs&feature=kp) was released as a psychopathic criminal who wreaks destruction with her rocket launcher Fishbones and minigun Pow-Pow. Her ultimate spell, Super Mega Death Rocket, is a giant global range missile with some hilarious and satisfying sniping potential (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvxneq62WEQ). As you can see, Riot has taken care to make her crazy run-around-the-fight gameplay make sense with her lore and her personality.

The Frejlord campaign (http://promo.leagueoflegends.com/en/freljord/) was also an event that saw the rewriting of many Champions' lores to tie them into the conflict over Frejlord, a frozen wasteland in the northern regions of Runeterra. Most notably, the Summoners and the League of Legends are barely mentioned at all, not even as a mediator for this conflict. I feel like Riot has the right idea with exploring Runeterran lore indirectly via champion lore, but the push away from the Summoners and the Institute of War at the LoL could have been done with more grace. But anyway.

I hope this rather unpleasant new player experience doesn't prevent you from enjoying the game.

That is true of both Demigod and WoW.


In terms of the gameplay, this seems to be correct; there is no obvious distinction to me between ranged and melee. As far as I can tell, all weapons are the same but with varying ranges. Boots are pretty obvious, they make you run faster. However, for multiple types of weapons, you need a different concept. I wouldn't have any trouble thinking these up but I do have a writing background. For example:

Grip of Thunder. When wrapped around the handle or grip of any weapon, it adds a magical punch to the weapon strike.


That is still difficult given the stacking and arbitrary recipes for more powerful items. The game relies far too much on rote memorization.

One good note is that I did buy Ashe and found the custom games to be much more difficult than the Battle Training. So, I'm learning again. As soon as I am comfortable with this, I'll work on team play.

To be fair, pretty much any RPG or RPG-derived thing does this. Most MOBAs in particular harken back to a WC3 mod, which sort of had to work this way due to restrictions of that game's engine. Whether they should have changed it for League is another question, but it's a little late for that now.

Just stick to recommended builds for now and you'll figure out more as you go.



Seriously... you can just play beginner co-op. The beginner bots are brain-dead and a good player can 1v5 them with the right champ. You will not be making anyone lose and you'll have an easier time.

It's difficult for a game company to create a perfect tutorial for such a complex games because the player inevitably must seek out information on their own. The game client is never going to explain the strengths of every item, the weaknesses of every team composition, the ins and outs of every champion.

Can you imagine the nice announcer lady pausing the game every 6 seconds to say not just "Watch out!" and "Stay behind your minions!" but also "The enemy Lulu will attempt to interrupt your ultimate with her Whimsy and Giant Growth. Wait for an ally to stun her, or bait her into using these abilities by focusing her, before you begin channelling Death Lotus!" Or "Move closer to your ally Jax so that he can target you with Leap Strike and escape!"

There has to be a line drawn somewhere, where Riot says that you've learned enough from tutorials and you need start gaining knowledge from other players... either in game or through outside materials like forums and fansites. Like it or not, the current version of Battle Training is where that line ended up being drawn. Knowing that you would have to do research eventually, they opted not to include every bit of info that they feasibly could, but instead to show you the very basics and then encourage you to learn by doing (and by communicating with other players).

They could have better demonstrated how to last hit properly, how to choose which lane you're going to, what order to level up your abilities, where to place wards, when to stay with your team, etc. But in a way, this would imply to players that they shouldn't be playing Co-op or Normal games until they know these things. And that's not the case. Players who are that new to the game are expected to be ignorant of all the various game concepts. They are expected to know nothing more than what's taught in the tutorial, and if they don't even know that much it's not the end of the world.