Laning Is Not Boring

Laning is not boring.

First of all, let's explain what laning is. In a MOBA style game, the map has a number of laes. Typically 3. Most of the combat and battles will take place in one of those 3 lanes until the battle is taken to the bases. Laning, while it may appear boring, is actually the most critical part of the game. In games like League of Legends and Dota 2, laning is how characters get gold, and characters use gold to get traits and power-ups. In Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm, laning gives characters XP, which in turn helps them level up. The main difference between LoL and HotS is that one game gives you gold, and the other gives you XP. And in Heroes of the Storm, the XP goes to your entire team. This means, that whoever is getting the XP in one lane, it is shared across the entire team. Whereas in LoL, each character is responsible for their own gold. And they must manage their gold and their bank throughout the length of the game. While this adds an extra level of strategy, it gives LoL infinitely more options for defining their characters. There are many, many, different configurations you can make to your heroes in Heroes of the Storm, but that pales in comparison to the number you can create in LoL or Dota 2.

But the only way to get those levels and character traits adn extra power is to lane. Of course, there is also jungling, but that's a different player type with a different purpose.

Laning is where your character spends most of his time. And most of his time will be spent battling the others teams minion. Minions, not the cute yellow characters from Dreamworks Animation, are wave after wave of enemy characters who's main purpose is to die and give players XP (or gold). While you are trying to soak up as much resources as you can killing minions, the enemy team is trying to do the same thing. In the same lane. And sometimes players get brazen.

While in you're in the lane, you'll periodically antagonize the other players. Step our too far and try and strike them. Lead them back towards your base and then unlease a special power on them. And sometimes you'll distract them or lure back your way, only to have your entire team lying in wait to attack them.

Laning has a lot of back and forth movement, as well as psychology, because you have to out think your opponent and you have to out maneuver them. The faster you can get to your next XP level, or buy that next item, the more powerful you'll be the next time you go up against an enemy. And the more enemies you kill, the better chance you have of attacking their base.

Now a little about Jungling
Jungling players don't get to lane. They don't get to soak up those resources like the other players do. They're forced to wander around the jungle and gather resources by battling bosses and enemy camps. They can earn resources as much as the laners, but the battle are usually tougher, and they come at greater risk. Junglers need to be strong and know when to back away from a fight and when to push the fight.

They must also know when to give up and let the other team have to the boss or camp. Sometimes, just surviving is victory enough, and the resource may not be worth your death in the long run.
Junglers also get a better path to choose from and typically get to wander the map more freely, coming in to lanes to help out their compatriots, and then returning to the jungle to farm for more resources. Jungles can go from the top part of the map, through the jungles in the middle and through all three lanes if necessary. It depends on what objective is in that part of the jungle.

Junglers sometimes spend more time searching for an enemy to attack then people in the lanes. People in lanes always know an attack is coming and must keep their options open for a hasty retreat. Junglers are sometimes like guerrilla warriors, lying in wait, or ambushing each other, trying to get the upper hand.

To be honest they both have a lot to offer, and one couldn't survive without the other. For my money, I'd rather lane than be a jungler. I find the strategy of knowing when to engage and when to retreat more rewarding, and I also like being able to help the team improve by gathering more XP.
One of the other reasons I'm partial to laning, is I try and main support characters. Support characters need to be around other players in order to do their job. So if I'm going to be good at support, I need to be where the action is. And, for most of the game that's in the lanes.

I've watched enough MOBA tournaments now to understand the basic mechanics of these games. Personally, I still prefer Heroes of the Storm, but I think it's more accessible than the other games. As I learn more I will try and branch out more, but I like the visual style and the familiar characters that Heroes of the Storm offers. If I could learn to be a better support character, and be better for my team I would probably play HotS more often, but I'm not as well versed or familiar with the game enough to know how to help my team. So until I feel I can contribute something valuable to the team, I'll continue to play the easier AI matches, and just do it for fun. I'm not the kind of person who goes around trying to play the best in the world for bragging rights. That's just the kind of player I cam, or the kind of player I need to be.

TIL: eSports Popularity

There are many barriers in getting eSports, or competitive gaming, or whatever label you want to stick on it, to mass market appeal. I think the first one that needs to be addressed is making it easier for viewers to understand what is happening in the games.

For over a hundred years now, the rules of stick and ball sports have been ingrained into our psyche. Almost everyone knows about the pitcher and catcher and batter, an alley-oop, a touchdown pass, or they've heard of the term snapshot. None of the terms that commentators describe in an eSport match are recognizable to move causal viewers. Check out this World Cup match around the 5 minute mark,

How much of that do you think a casual viewer would have followed the first time?

The two grandfathers of the sport, Starcraft II and Counter Strike, are two different genres of games, with totally different play styles. Someone who just stumbles across one of them probably won’t be able to understand what’s happening in the game right off the bat.

I myself have spent a few hours just trying to understand what's happening in League of Legends, and I can still only follow part of the action. The hosts of the podcast Rally Point made a suggestion on one of their episodes that Twitch should have secondary streaming channels that provide an outsiders insight into what's happening in the game. For someone new to the game, trying to figure out what an Ultimate is and how fast it's charging, while trying to figure out which character we're now following is a daunting task. It's hard to know what's happening on screen when there is SO MUCH happening on screen.

In contrast, a football game starts with a group of men staring at each other on either side of an imaginary and slightly arbitrary line in the field, and then someone says "go" and they run at each other. Sure plays happen on a micro level and even in football the camera operators miss things, but decades of filming the sport have given us a pretty good ability to follow the important action.

In Overwatch, Blizzard's record breaking foray into eSports, has so much going on at the same time, we just haven't figured out how to broadcast the game successfully. We've only started to get instant replay functionality, and that's still hard to perfect because there just aren't enough cameras in a match. Still, in the semi-final match between Sweden and Spain, the very last round, went as long as it possibly could, with one team coming back from a 0-99 deficit and winning in overtime. Anyone could have tuned in to watch that and would have understood how exciting it was.

Some viewers might have missed the reason the "ulties" were being called and which teams characters were getting eliminated and having to run back into the battle. (On a side note, why do we have to use the term "ulties"?)

With all of the roadblocks and challenges the industry is facing, this is still probably the biggest challenge that has to be overcome. Duncan “Thoorin” Shields, and many other eSports analysts have commented on better ways to handle this and more accessible methods for getting casual fans, or viewers who aren't even fans, into the games.

Like I said, I had no idea how some games were played until recently. And games that I swore I'd never watch other people play are some of my favorite competitions to watch now. It's not that people unfamiliar with the games can't get invested in watching or following the games, we just have to help bring them in to the fold.

So, my two suggestions for helping attract new viewers and help keep them, is exactly the same as many other professionals in the industry. And that's because there are only a handful of ways we can start to fix this:

1. Better ways of communicating what is happening in the games.
2. Better ways of showing what's happening in the games.

Not everyone will start to enjoy it, not everyone will enjoy the same sports; just like baseball has its die hard fans and football has its die hard fans and never the twixt shall meet. But we can't let other people in if we don't respectfully lead them in.

As for the other barriers to eSports gaining main street popularity, those will be discussed in future articles. It's a complicated and multi-faceted challenge that lies ahead, but it's not an insurmountable one.

TIL: If You Don't Try

Most of us know the story of Gearbox's Battleborn game. Released against the Blizzard powerhouse of Overwatch, the game was unfortunately compared Overwatch and never given the proper attention it deserved. There are multiple reasons for this games quick decline into relative obscurity, from a horrible release date, to an incredibly unstable release on PC, and most reviewers and players thinking it was a direct contender to Overwatch.

I've spent a good amount of time with Battleborn, coming back to it every few weeks to spend a little more time with it. I've also spent the last few months siding further and further into the massive black hole of eSports. And while this isn't a game changing realization, I now know what some of the early opinions were of Battleborn not being an Overwatch game. It isn't. It's actually a MOBA. Randy Pitchford tried to do his best to distance Battleborn from the typical MOBA stereotype leading up to the game's release and I think that was a mistake. It's a MOBA. It's a first person MOBA plain and simple. I love the characters in Battleborn, I've always been a fan of Gearbox's art style and their sense of humor. I like the world and the lore that they've created for this game. I like it more than the Overwatch lore actually. But I'd personally rather play Overwatch. And this is why; I'm horrible at MOBAs. From League of Legends to Heroes of the Storm to Vain Glory. I should be in love with all of these games but I'm just not any good at playing them. I do however really enjoy watching them. And give the chance I would watch a Battleborn league in a heartbeat. I think the success of the Overwatch player base shows that there are people who would watch this kind of game. And I'm sad that it will never be given its chance.

According to a report from Riot two years ago, League of Legends averages about 27 million users a month. Valve's MOBA title Dota 2 averages almost 900,000 a month. Even the extremely popular mobile version Vain Glory had 1.5 million players when it was released.

Battleborn peaked at 12,000 according to Steam numbers. That's .008 of the player base of Vain Glory. Think about that for a second. There are times where there are more people streaming Gearbox's 2012 title Borderlands 2 than Battleborn. So Battleborn will never be given its chance to have a competitive league. Even if the game goes to a free-to-play model this battle has already been lost.