Having been off the loop for years from playing any games, my esports experience as a player pretty much stopped from the Starcraft era. But having friends around, I do aware of the recent ones (e.g., the League of Legends, DotA2, PUBG, Fortnite, and etc.) and lately was curious to try out the League of Legends.
To be honest, I was quite confident to try out LoL (knowing the rules of RTS in general and MOBA being one of type of RTS). But…
Put it simply, this game is deep. There is so much to learn. The game itself is closer to Diablo team play rather than Starcraft as you choose your own single character (called champion) to control, level up your character to gain more skills, and buy items with the gold you gained by killing the opponent champions or minions. With the combination of leveling up and strong items, your champion gets stronger as the game progresses and so are your opponents.
If starcraft was about strategy, tactics and multi-tasking management (as you need to manage 100+ units in real-time in the virtual galactic battle field), for LoL I didn’t find much component on multi-tasking management as you are to manage your one single champion. But there was a different dimension. As the game is for 5-vs-5, team strategy and tactics were the key to winning the game. This means your team needs to have clear role & responsibility (we called R&R back in Hyundai), quick on-demand coordination as the opponent team changes their tactics (thus the in-game voice chat function to facilitate that), back up team tactics as unforeseen situations come up, at the very least.
At work, luckily I found a good handful of colleagues who were interested in trying LoL and kind enough to join together. We gather up at the PC bangs in Shin-Okubo once every other week or so, play a good three-hour LoL (while slurping cup ramen noodles, of course). When we are very lucky, we have a special guest, i.e., someone at work who has been playing LoL for years (there is always someone, trust me), and that’s when we really learn the nooks and crannies of the games.
Just eSports 