League of Legends may be a strategy game but it is played like a fighting game by the masses. Support: How players with high KDA ratios are valued unlike the player who destroyed 5 turrets and got every lane in a push condition in mid to late game. How players always say group up mid and wish to do an all or nothing push into the enemies' Nexus.
I had downloaded this game for the strategy but upon playing it, there is none, or at least in the lower levels of play. I have seen higher level players play and it is nothing above meh. It is called: The Meta buh buh buh... no but seriously the limitations that bruisers top, bruisers / tank jungle, assassins / mages mid, marksmen and support bot doesn't allow for variety. But when it is set in stone like that, doing things like lane swaps, marksmen and support switch with their top laner, becomes stupid like how your top is now in a 1v2 situation and it only worked because the enemy top is confused on how to do anything and the enemy bot can't push the advantages.
The game lacks strategy. I have had to use my brain more when facing against a boss in Tales of Syphonia: Dawn of the New World, as it took me over 15 tries to kill him, or any and all Legend of Zelda games-- it is, in a way, a puzzle game but the fact is, Zelda requires more brain effort than League (Hey LoL v LoZ) and Zelda games are dead simple to me-- but League does not challenge the strategy compartment at all. The reason is because League is a... faster pace fighting game where reaction times matter more than you thinking about the big picture. There is battle strategy and then there is big picture strategy. In the early game, the idea of battle strategy is how you are going to face your opponent as you are too weak to burst him/her down. After that point though, Zed can just run to the nearest Marksmen, ult him/her, do other stuff, and kill him before the marksmen can even auto attack, thus making battle strategy a non existent thing. Fights do not last long enough to show true test roles. Assassins are suppose to assassinate marksmen but how can they do that when they get killed in 1.3 seconds just as the fight starts? Longer lasting battles makes the strategy go longer and thus become more apparent, like MMOs and every dungeon ever.
League focuses on fights too much and there is nothing, NOTHING, in the Summoner's Rift to force players to act that way. Who cares if bot and top lane has enemy minions pushing down your tier 3 top and bot turrets when all 5 of you are in the base in their Nexus turrets. Who cares about top lane when only bot and mid are needed? When the only criteria to winning is to get to the Nexus but there are no other objectives to make it a longer road, like video game cliche #4: destroy 3 of anything to advance to the next objective, have factors that lean on one side over another that must always be addressed or it can be taken advantage of, or make their be some form of punishment for forgetting something, who cares about the big picture thinking?
If games are stomped in 20 minutes, then I feel sad for whoever knew what they are doing because games should never go by that quickly.
