Land of Chaos Online (LOCO) Review

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Land of Chaos Online: LOCO is a Fun online game with nice graphics, and runs slightly buggy on my laptop. However, there are few problems to be improved.

-The tutorial. The god awful tutorial. Please fix it, it’s simply horrible to sit there and wait for the letters to come up one by one.

-The targeting. Before I’m hit with “l2p noob” dozens of times let me explain. The targeting never really feels like it’s doing anything at all really. When you target someone it doesn’t drag the camera, which makes it hard to keep track of nearly anyone. However this I can live with, though I’d personally prefer that when you hold down the right mouse button I should be able to keep my view on my chosen opponent despite their movement. However the thing that really peeves me about the targeting is that when I slash or shoot at someone after targeting them, I never automatically face their direction. If someone is to the side of me and I’m facing them perpendicularly, when I slash I shouldn’t pray that I slashed wide enough I should automatically turn to them as I slash.

-Recalling. Honestly, it works for DOTA but it doesn’t exactly work for this game. The reason why giving invincibility during teleporting works is due to a very small thing: In DOTA you always have to spend even a fraction of a second targetting your home base before teleporting to it. In that fraction of a second, if you just try to port out while at minimal health like people in LOCO do, the odds are not on your side and most likely you’ll be killed. With LOCO it’s so easy to rush their base, wreak havoc, and then port out. This goes for both sides, but is a major disadvantage against newbies because most of them will not think to use recall so often. Besides, LOCO should be much faster paced compared to DOTA and fixing the recall is as simple as removing it’s invincibility but reducing it’s cooldown and cast time. A better way to use recall (which is more how teleporting is usually done in DOTA) is that it should be more of a convenient tool than an easily abused mechanic. Recall should be used if you’re killing creeps but suddenly realize someone is at your base and you need to get back quickly. It could still be used like it is now, but it’s much more fair and less frustrating if the person attacking your base must actually run away first in order to use recall.

-The game is not newbie friendly. At all. Not to say we need to give newbies lots of buffs but there is a distinct lack of direction and guidance in the game. The tool tips that come up are not helpful at all either. They’re EXTREMELY obvious and come off as annoying. Instead there should be a tips system that bases itself on your character. Newbies commonly pick up DOTA quickly as the tips command helps them recognize what their characters strengths and weaknesses are. It should say what your character’s distinct role in combat is and recommend things. For example, Octavian and Atin are completely different. Octavian is defense oriented and a tank who does better staying back at base and defending it so it’s best to stack defence and HP, and get items like Invulnerable Water which will give him 3 extra seconds of Invulnerability and heal him. Atin is offense oriented and works best killing lots of creeps and advancing on structures at the beginning, and then late game he becomes a very good hero killer. Of course these two tips are examples and not to be taken literally as I haven’t played the game long enough to actually be an authority on things like this.

-Game balance. The game is fairly balanced actually, but there are a few problems here and there that make life annoying. For Mary Bell for example, despite having items that allows me to see her when she’s invisible it’s still very hard to tell her apart from her clones. It’s also made harder by the fact that when a Mary Bell makes lots of clones and goes invisible, even when I can plainly see her there is truly nothing to tell her apart except the name. Even then the name has an odd habit of disappearing. Now without any equipment that allows me to see the invisible, this is fine. However this gear is pointless if I can’t even tell her apart with it. The clones should also have much less HP than the real one, as it’s very easy for a Mary Bell to spawn several clones and then run around and destroy things. The clones don’t do enough damage to matter, but their AI makes it so that they constantly form walls and prevent someone from moving.

-Collisions. The game once again does a very unfriendly thing to newbies by not clearly labeling the effective radius a skill has. Even when the fireworks from Mary Bell’s ultimate aren’t actually touching you, for a long time you still take damage. When you use a buff with a radius of effect or have an aura of some sort it’s hard to tell what contains it and what doesn’t. For area of effect spells, it would be nice if there was simple a drawn circle on the ground labeling where it is effect and where it isn’t. Secondly, the collision detecting in the game seems rather odd, as I have found myself randomly slashing through buildings and people without hitting them (note: Not lag, as everyone in the room with me had extremely low ping).

-Game flow. There’s no real strategy in the game really, creeps spawn too slowly or in too little amounts to really make a difference. When you engage an enemy, whoever has to run first usually loses unless the opponent has a large lack of chasing skills (Octavian comes to mind as his only good chasing skill is Divine Crash [I think that's what it's called]). Along with that, most of the time those who have better chasing skills have better skills overall and usually trounce those who don’t. Due to the recall function most of the game revolves around rushing the base and seeing who’s better in a 1v1 contest (or 1v2, 2v2, 3v2, etc. etc.) and then using recall if you’re about to die. You don’t have recall? Tough luck. The towers are also a little bit too hard to kill most of the time, but once they’re gone it’s really quite horrendous. Most of the time, whoever takes down a base point first wins. After this, the game really drags on and on. A valiant struggle is always nice, but there’s a point to which the players just plain get tired and give up. This is only compounded because the moment you go defensive, you lose, to put it simply. You will die very often as the aggressors were good enough to get past everything else and they will very easily get past you, and you’re given one of two choices which usually results in lose. You can stay and defend the base, but most of the time this will get you killed. You could also try and just run to their own base and take it down while they all rush yours, but this very rarely works. Unless you’re level 20, taking down buildings by yourself is simply not easy unless you’ve picked a character built for that, and this leaves your own base open. Most likely they aggressors will take down your base before you can even get half way through their headquarters, and trying to get everyone on your team to counter-rush their base won’t work because: A) Most people obey their instinct and protect the base, B) They’re already half way through your own base and will usually destroy it first.

tl;dr for those who can’t read that much: There are only three main problems with this game:

1. The game gives you no guidance, no tips, just tells you how to move, attack, and use stuff. It’s like teaching someone how to ride a two wheeler, then giving them a dirt bike and telling them to complete a world-class Moto-cross course in under 10 seconds. Works for a single player game, but not for a massively multiplayer game. Most people are too skilled to leave you time to learn (why would they, they don’t give a crap about newbies they just want to win and it’s an appropriate attitude for a competitive game) and you will never be given a chance to learn how to get better or how to counter your opponents. Losing is necessary for learning, but for newbies it’s demoralizing to lose so easily without knowing what’s going on. Losing is okay, so long as someone has something to learn from it, not if it feels instant and arbitary.

2. The game drags on and on, and has no room for strategy. You could take out the creeps, the towers, the NPCs and just leave the shop and headquarters. No one would really notice a difference. Creeps need to be a viable threat, and towers need to lose their AOE blast, but keep the power and slightly increase the rate of fire. It’s too easy to rush and win because you have better twitch reflexes than anything else. Twitch reflexes are important, but intelligence and strategy should be just as, if not more, important.

3. Recalling. Seriously, that pisses both me and my opponents off to hilarious extremes.

1.The tutorial isn’t exactly grand. You’re unable to skip the messages or speed them up forcing the player to sit there and reach each letter one by one.

2. Majority of games consist of AFK players without the possibility to kick them. My suggestion is to auto-kick players after a certain amount of time including the host.

3. Recall causes players to become invulnerable which I personally have a issue with. Granted the cooldown to recall is lengthy most players can escape easily with dash, jump, and a spell immunity potion to prevent being attacked with chasing skills. Which means players will simply use the recall mechanic in a abusive format by rushing towards the opponent’s base and wrecking havoc destroying towers (they aren’t exactly tough), ignoring players on them for as long as possible continuing to wreck havoc and simply using recall to become invulnerable when they reach near death.

-Bubble hearth needs to go. The Z button is a get-out-of-jail free card, saving the worst of players from their deaths at the last possible second. I think the solution is easy enough. Reduce the cast time by up to about a third, maybe a half, and remove the invulnerability on it. Frustrating.

-It is currently possible to have infinite run. While running, jump and release your W key while in the air, allowing it to recharge, then double-tap forward again before hitting the ground. If you get this down and use it all the time, you’ll never have to walk again. And I don’t think that’s what was intended.