Haramburger
kiwifarms.net
What Is Dota Auto Chess And Why Is Everyone Playing It?
There's a cool custom game in Dota 2 that's making waves.
www.gameinformer.com
If you believe the internal tracking in the Dota 2 client, upwards of 70,000 concurrent players are engaging in a single custom map: Dota Auto Chess. It's definitely not chess, and although the characters share some similar abilities to Dota 2 counterparts, it's absolutely not Dota either. Instead, Dota Auto Chess is a turn-based tactical strategy game that pits you against seven other players in round after round of resource-management action – you won't need any APM to compete here, as all the units do battle on their own after you place them.
Players begin simply by picking a single unit from a selection of five. After that, options expand rapidly as the game gets under way, as your population cap and unit choices grow larger. You can pick any units you like as long as you have the gold and space, and that's where team-composition strategy comes in. Putting units of the same race and class together has powerful and often game-deciding effects. For instance, a team stacked with mages will cause the opposing team's magic resistance to greatly decrease, meaning your spells will absolutely ravage them. Assassin stacks get giant crits, knights get shields, mechs regen, hunters get massive damage boosts – you get the idea. Mixing and matching race/class combinations to stack all kinds of bonuses and effects is critical to success. Other race/class combos offer more interesting synergy, like druids being able to "rank up" using fewer units than others. Ranking up is an important aspect of the game and another layer of strategy, as it makes your characters much more powerful.
To rank up, you'll need three of the same unit, which is made more difficult if everyone in your game is trying to play the same races/classes, so it's to your benefit to try and seek out lesser-played characters in order to rank them up easier. Everyone draws from the same unit pool, so if everyone wants to stack mages, those players will crumble easily as they struggle to rank up units while the knight player gets all the uncontested rank ups to themselves.
In addition to attempting to forge the best team, keeping an eye on your funds is critical. You get money from wins, win streaks, lose streams, and interest each round. You can sandbag early on and take some losses and damage to try to get a big interest stack kicking, but try and tempt fate too much and you may lose the game before your big stack of cash starts providing meaningful dividends.
Each round you face a random opponent from whoever is remaining in the game, until there's only one left standing. Placing in the top three will net you some candy, which you can use to unlock cosmetics you can use from game to game. After a few games, you'll also get a ranking based on chess pieces, like pawn, knight, or bishop, and this will go up and down as you continue to play games.
Every so often the custom map scene has a mod that catches fire. While its longevity remains to be seen, if you're into this sort of strategy experience, you can play it for free inside the Dota 2 client (which is free) on Steam, so I recommend giving it a shot. It's not chess, and it's not Dota, but it's a great game to queue up and play with friends or solo. It takes a few games to start to understand how everything works, but it's got some really fun strategy hooks underneath everything. If you like reading, check out this great Reddit post for more on how everything works in the game !
Not to be outdone, and smelling shekels and yuan like the jewish-chinamen they are, Riot Games has in an unprecedented burst of work output generated a fleshed out Autochess clone of their own, Teamfight Tactics(built into the existing League of Legends client): https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/gameplay/teamfight-tactics
Both games, themselves modded fan-driven offshoots from Starcraft & Warcraft 3 level editors, are generating very large viewer counts on youtube and twitch despite being highly watered-down derivatives of their source game. Riot in particular is probably gunning for the gamer girls who have long been fans of LoL character design, but unable to play the actual game at a high level of skill, and are subsequently marketing the player avatar chibi-penguins towards them. How long will the trend last & have women finally slain MOBAs for good with glorified mobilegame-style team managers? Stay tuned!
Teamfight Tactics is a totally new game mode in League that'll hit PBE later this month.
TFT is a round-based strategy game that pits you against seven opponents in a free-for-all race to build a powerful team that fights on your behalf. Your goal: Be the last person standing.
How It Works
You’ll spend gold in the store before each round to recruit League champions to your team. Throughout the game, your team will become more powerful as you draft champions that share origins and classes to unlock trait bonuses. Additionally, you can combine three duplicates of the same champ to upgrade them into a super version of themselves, and combine three supers to create the ultimate version.
Your team will then travel to an opponent’s board (or they will come to you) and a battle will unfold. During combat, your champions will move, attack, and cast spells automatically. Just like in League, you’ll need to choose a team comp and position your champs wisely to unlock their full potential.
At the end of each round you'll earn gold to spend in future rounds. Occasionally, everyone will gather for a special event and draft from a single line-up of champions of varying strengths. Players will pick in the reverse order of their current standing, giving the players falling behind the chance to make a comeback. Win teamfights consistently to avoid losing health and deal damage to your opponents. Outlast everyone else to win, and don’t forget to spam your emotes along the way.
How and Why We’re Making Teamfight Tactics
Recently, we've been trying different kinds of modes that are deep and unique additions to the League experience. TFT is our next big exploration in that space and the first time we’re jumping into a different genre. We’ve always loved strategy games and recently we’ve gotten into the new auto-battler genre—folks around the office have been playing an insane amount of Dota Auto Chess in particular. We love it, and it actually got us inspired to create something new as a mode in League.
We’re building this one with you. TFT’s initial launch is a beta, so expect it to be a work in progress as we work all of the kinks out. Every step of the way we’ll be listening closely to your experiences and feedback, so please let us know what you think. For our part, we’ll be in frequent contact via dev articles, updates and patch notes.
Part of treating this like a Real Grown Up Game Mode means we'll support it with cool metagame features. That includes ranked. You can expect to see the ranked for TFT start up around patch 9.14. At that point, we should be in a good spot with bugs and initial game balance.
Introducing Little Legends
With the introduction of Teamfight Tactics, we’re excited to bring a whole new personalization option to League: Little Legends. These critters will be your avatar in TFT, dancing, emoting, animating, and generally showing off. After your first few games, you’ll unlock your first LL just by playing.
After picking up your one-time-only free Legend, you can purchase additional species in the store for 750 RP. We’re launching with six species:
If you’re not yet smitten with these Little Legends, expect more varieties with each patch, just like skins. Additionally, for those of you who want your Little Legends to really pop we’ll feature Rare LL Eggs, purchasable for 490 RP. Rare Eggs contain special variants of those same species, with an added twist: hatching a variant you’ve already found will make them star up just like the champions in TFT, powering up their models and effects. Once a variant has reached its third level, it will not drop from future Rare Eggs you open.
Little Legends will also join you on the Howling Abyss, where they'll cheer you on from the sidelines while you battle.
You’ll see all of the Little Legends emoting their faces off on PBE, but we’ll talk more about what they are and how they work before they go live.
Expect TFT to hit live servers during patch 9.13.
Teamfight Tactics becomes most viewed game on Twitch hours after release
Teamfight Tactics, League of Legends' latest game mode, became the most viewed game on Twitch just hours after its release. What do these numbers mean?
www.dailyesports.gg
