For now, I'll leave you with some of the games we're currently tackling and activelly playing.
To start it of, here you go:
League of Legends
In-game Screenshot:
For anyone familiar with Defense of the Ancients, this should be no surprise. League of Legends brings quite a few amounts of RPG elements, while being, mostly, a strategy game. You, the "Summoner", are able to invoke a wide array of champions - and they keep launching more and more! - to the fields of Runeterra, the imaginary world LoL takes place in. With two different maps (3v3, Twisted Treeline, and 5v5, Summoner's Rift), your goal is to bring down the enemy's Nexus (essentially, the place where you, the summoner, are controlling your champion from.). Placed at strategic points, but on a fairilly symmetrical map, the problem to point is really the lack of more maps. There has been a long time since LoL launched, and two maps might bore you quickly.
However, the aburdly high amount of possible combinations you can juggle with will keep you going almost indefinatelly. So many champions, so much customization (through a rune system, through the items you buy in-game, through Summoner spells and through team compositions) can really make each match unique.
The controls are fairilly simple and work well. Each and every champion uses exclusivelly Q, W, E, and R as abilities. Their individual powers are unique (Well... you're bound to find similar "Next melee strike is stronger" skills, but with 80+ champions (320+ spells), that's bound to happen).
The system balance of "paid VS free" is absolutelly perfect. Champions aren't fully available to you, and must be unlocked to be available at all times. There are always 10 free champions, rotated each week, but no one guarantees the champion you want will be there. All of them have 2 prices available, IP (influence points, earned by playing) and RP (Riot points, bought). Buying the champion offers no other benefit. Alternativelly, champions have skins that can be bought though RP alone, but are purelly cosmetical.
Such a complex system is pretty hard to balance, but mostly, if both teams are a well thought out roster, they both have a good shot at winning.
The role of a supporter, in my oppinion, is at the moment not emphasised much, and that's something I don't particularly approve. There are maybe 3 pure supporter characters worth playing, while most other supports can be built as tanks or spellcasters.
As for solo content, don't expect too much of it. You can create custom games against bots, but their AI is beyond pathetic. They can catch a newcomer off guard and actually be hard at first, but once you know the basics, they can be completelly thrashed to absurd scores (Such as 50+ kills with no deaths. That won't happen on normals unless against the WORST possible players.). There is a Co-op VS AI that is at least more tolerable, and requires
at least a good teamwork, but even with some minor effort, you can still faceroll the overcomitting bots with ease into 16 minute matches. (To give you an idea of how fast that is, you can only surrender a game at 20 minutes+.).Overall, especially for being free, this game has a very high potential. If you're a fan of the style, you may find a few oddities; LoL does take a quite unique approach to the style.
We're playing on US servers (since the game was US exclusive when it first came).
We're still figuring how often we'll update - we most likelly won't have a set schedule at first.
Until than, good luck.
