game reveiw.

Before I begin, I know its in beta. If it wasn't in beta I wouldn't bother leaving my thoughts.

TLDR; Interesting idea, Poor execution.

After a number of games, I have determined that this is not a strategy game. Its a lottery.

For a start, your starting pick is a randomly determined hero that spawned in the selection ring and either A: nobody wanted it or B: randomly spawned close to you.

Highly prized picks that don't spawn in the correct spot are effectively outside of your reach.

Subsequent picks from this ring are also RNG topped with RNG. Even if a hero or item you need spawns you have to ALSO get lucky enough for it to spawn NEAR you or have nobody else need it. Players who are playing poorly are released to pick first, which leads to problems I will cover later.

Furthermore. Items dropped from neutral fights are pure RNG. this is particularly important as is is fully possible for you to be the only person to come out of the first three neutral fights with 1 item. and you may find several people have 4 or 5. this is where the winners and losers of nearly every game are decided. right here. no need to go further. if you don't get at least 2 items you are very, VERY likely to be wasting your time.

Its also important to note: You have better RNG the WORSE you are doing in the game.

Do you see the problem?

The most effective strategy to win, is to do as POORLY as possible for as LONG as possible, without getting knocked out. Because items are relevant, and you have the most agency over which you get (and to less extent which champions you get), and how many you get overall by being in LAST. Its a race to the bottom as you are actively rewarded for failing by being handed stacked odds in a game ruled by luck of the draw. Furthermore, if you get LUCKY with the first three fights and have 5 items, and then just hold onto them and intentionally lose, increasing your RNG to get MORE items. you'll quickly find yourself in a position where you have a 2nd tier item for every champ and some people barely have a 1 tier item.

and WHY is that? because they didn't get lucky early, and they didn't intentionally lose hard enough fast enough to have a good shot at collecting enough items to be relevant later. and sure maybe they have a 3 star champ or two. but it takes very little knowhow to stack up an all silver team that can stomp pretty much anything when you have the freedom to throw three items at high impact champions.

A complete breakdown of this mode follows. To win you need:

95% Raw dumb luck.

You have to get lucky with champ rolls. Lucky with item rolls. Lucky with more champ rolls. Lucky with your champs not staring at a cloud and picking their nose. Lucky with them picking relevant targets for their spells. You just have to get lucky.

4% knowing how to point and click.

0.5% knowing how team bonuses work and what items work well with what. there aren't that many, it isn't very hard.

0.5% skill in champion positioning.

So to recap, this mode is 95% luck. 4.5% knowledge. and 0.5% skill.

Other issues:

The AI is broken. Target acquisition sucks on all levels, and sometimes results in champs doing nothing at all or taking nonsensical actions, but some champs, such as Veigar are broken to the point of uselessness. Veigar will only kill someone with his ult if his ult will kill any enemy in range. If there is an enemy in range he CANNOT KILL, he will shoot that one, regardless of who he was attacking previously. This issue is present in some other champions as well, though less impactfully so.