Response to “Prompt Time” (8/11/2011)

Hello,

It has been a long time but I am back! (Name is Eric if you forgot!) Either way, the games I find most exhilarating and captivating are PvP-oriented; of the many that I have played my favorite is Bloodline Champions (BLC). It is one of my favorite games because it takes everything that is good about World of Warcraft (WoW) and League of Legends (LoL) and does away with everything else.

To start off BLC is accessible to all types of gamers since it follows LoL’s micro-transaction sales strategy rather than the WoW’s subscription strategy. Furthermore, BLC 1-ups LoL such that even the cosmetic items (outfits, different weapons, emotes, avatars and titles) are purchasable with in-game currency.

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Finally, F2P players get to look badass :D!

Something that really stood out for me in LoL was the intuitive controls but lack of abilities while WoW was the total opposite: too many abilities and therefore almost impossible to find a good set up without a significant amount of conditioning. BLC finds an almost perfect balance. In LoL, champions just have four abilities and two summoner spells; with so few abilities there is practically a set rotation you follow with each character and almost no room for be innovative based on the ever changing scenario. In WoW, champions’ skill-sets are just too large (over twenty abilities) that the player’s reaction time is severely hinder when trying to deal with memorizing the cool-downs of multiple abilities as well as the location of all your key bound abilities. In BLC, champions’ skill-sets have a total of nine abilities; this is just enough, in my opinion, for players to feel like they have to make choices about what abilities to use and when. Should I also mention that abilities in Bloodline Champions have utility and therefore aren’t just used for dealing damage like in LoL and WoW.

Using abilities just to deal damage is not utilizing their full potential.
***Sorry, having issues with this image and there is no easy fix***

Besides BLC being real time, quick and intense it is also very skill oriented; however, unlike WoW and LoL there are no randomized damage, no critical hits, no passive avoidance abilities and no target locking. These things do not involve skill, or can lead to victories by chance, which is exactly what the developers at Stunlock Studios were trying to avoid when creating BLC (and all the gamers rejoiced). Furthermore, you are not handicapped in BLC for not boring yourself with farming points (gold in LoL and honor/conquest points in WoW) to get better gear in order to compete. A specific problem in WoW is how they reward competitive players with even better gear thus making it significantly harder for newer players who are entering the competitive scene from obtaining the rating required to unlock similar gear. BLC solves this problem by giving high rated players access to different, not essentially better, looking cosmetic items. A specific problem in LoL is how the mostly passive and boring farming part of the game either accelerates or inhibits your ability to PvP due to you or your opponents out-leveling either other. BLC solves all these issues by having all the bloodline champions being pre-set; your specific bloodline champion will have the same potential as anyone else’s.

I am better than you because I am more geared than you ,,l,,

One of Stunlock Studios most amazing achievements with BLC is how all the bloodlines champions are viable for competitive play; even more impressive is how they were able to break down and essentially remove the idea of a single meta-game (the highest level of strategy). In BLCs it is possible to win with virtually any 3v3s setup and therefore allows casual and competitive players a-like to pick characters they would prefer to play rather than characters that are OP (over powered). This allows for multiple styles of combat to exist rather than just those that are dictated by specific team compositions such as in LoL current two tanky carries, caster carry, physical carry and support meta.

We don't need your fat, ugly support/healing ass anymore, Blood Priest: GTFO!

If you are a casual player there is no need to worry about being stomped by competitive players in BLC due to a very accurate match making system. Unlike LoL and to a certain extent, WoW - BLC’s matchmaking system works because the game is hundred percent skill based; since your performances (recorded as CVPS – combat value per second) are not based on random occurrences (critical hits, passives, etc), you will never find yourself in a competitive bracket that is too high or too low.

It is roll-your-face-on-controller noob friendly! Trust me!
Dante's Inferno ***Trolololo... Tom :(!***

However, the best part of BLC is the fact that it is team oriented and therefore remarkably fun to do in-houses given that no preparation needs to be done before playing with friends unlike the leveling and gearing that needs to happen in WoW. The fact that matches are only five to ten minutes long versus the thirty to sixty minutes required for LoL not only means less of your night with friends wasted on grinding creep but also less time wasted enduring twenty to thirty minutes more of a game where there is virtually no chance of recovery; if you lost the first team fight when things were relatively balanced between the teams, you will most likely lose every team fight thereafter before losing the game. This doesn’t happen in BLC since each round is a team fight and subsequent team fights do not give the winning team some sort of benefit for having won the previous round.

Here is a game of BLC to give you some insight on the gameplay (more videos of me playing BLC and LoL can be found here):

Epic Comeback Match: Estimated Chance of Winning = 8%

The Warm Team won the first two games and just needed to win the third game to have aced us. We made an epic comeback and won three games in a row and ended the match.

Warm Team:

Rnn (Alchemist): grade 10

airon97 (Seeker): grade 6

VaKa (Blood Priest): grade 19

Cold Team:

HyperNewbie (Harbringer): grade 1

[GK] grims (Igniter): grade 17

[SCs] Otomai (Seeker): grade 13 (Eric; me)

Given the option to balance teams to 50/50 chance of winning in this custom, the player "Rnn" decided not to and therefore stacked his team. Sucks that his team lost; oh, the misery! I will take this time to mention that all ladder (ranked) games are automatically balanced and most creators of custom games set their games to auto-balance or do it manually.

BLC is an amazing indie game that has very little exposure to the North American audience. Stunlock Studios is attempting to get BLC advertised on Steam, which will hopefully help it catch the eyes of many more casual, threshold and competitive gamers.