Love the Vainglory dev team

For all the misgivings players may have against vainglory, the matching system, and the gameplay tweaks and balances...

I do love the dev team for being so active and so quick on their server status updates.

It's not the first time I've experienced game play connectivity problems... But each time I'll fire up twitter and see tweets from @vainglorystatus about how they are already aware of the issue. This is then followed by a server maintenance... and the problem is mostly fixed pretty darn fast.

See today's tweet:

We are aware of connectivity issues on SEA server right now. Will be going into maintenance mode to fix.

— Vainglory Status (@vainglorystatus) February 11, 2016

09:53 SGT - We are gradually letting players back into the SEA server. We continue to monitor and improve stability. Thanks for the patience

— Vainglory Status (@vainglorystatus) February 11, 2016

10PM SGT -We have allowed 60% of players back into the SEA servers. Rest is still in maint,. Monitoring and will let people in gradually.

— Vainglory Status (@vainglorystatus) February 11, 2016

That's just 11 minutes between the first tweet and the second. And another 7 minutes later 60% of the players are back in the game. Even the massive server lag after a new character release + major update took only about 30 minutes to an hour to fix. After being used to MapleSEA's infinitely long server maintenances that gets extended, and extended, and re-extended,  the service provided by Vainglory seems almost too good to be true. And keep in mind that it's the same company maintaining different servers for different regions.

Sure, Vainglory is still kinda new... But I'm excited to watch and follow this game as it continues to develop. With regular updates and new characters, it's definitely something that'll keep me entertained for a long time to come. If anything, the quick response from the developers to fix server issues and bugs certainly keeps players like myself happy.

Edit:

10:18PM SGT - We are allowing 70% of players to play again in SEA. Remainder of % is in maintenance. Thanks for the patience everyone!

— Vainglory Status (@vainglorystatus) February 11, 2016

Still waiting for my turn to get back in. Should be soon now. Regular twitter updates make a HUGE difference. Really. (Well it doesn't have to be twitter, but twitter is really a pretty darn good platform for such things.)

Vainglory again

Don't we all love games that end up like this? Of course... This isn't a perfect score by any means. Not like those epic 30-0 kills kind of thing... But 15 kills in a game is a pretty nice score for me. Thanks to the saw that just keeps letting himself get killed. And killed. And killed....

Tried out the new monkey hero aka Ozo. Can't try it out properly in solo practice since both the B skills and ultimate skills only work against other players. Not gonna buy it with ICE though. I'll just wait and get it with glory. I've saved up 30k glory after all. 

Glorious Vainglory

Recently a new season just began on Vainglory! Featuring the new hero Reim. I'm loving Reim so far. As a Celeste user... I find Reim very similar to Celeste. Think of it as a melee version of Celeste. It can both jungle and lane effectively, though laning at the start of the game against aggressive players would be slightly challenging - as with all characters with melee basic attacks trying to lane. Once you get some crystal power, and perhaps, an hourglass, laning becomes much easier.


Here's a bunch of screenshots from playing as Celeste and Reim.

I tried taking a few screenshots during gameplay but... accidentally ended up exiting the app completely a few times -.-... Probably have to do it with the phone hooked up to the lappy next time... 

Yes. Playing it safe and only taking screenshots when I'm dead + we won. Hahaha.

Just love the 3rd win and 7 day bonuses!

Level 20 is the max you can get. I reached level 20 long ago... Though the same can't be said of my rank. Ha! Still a long way from being a pro.

Hmm. That's all for now!

Mackenna - Call of Champions

Yes, it's yet another Mackenna COC video. It's been quite a while since I played and I couldn't remember the skills and stuff... So yeah. I didn't play well. Thankfully we scraped a win in this game/ We were actually down on hero kills (thanks to me dying so much I guess), but thankfully we downed more towers and so won the game.

Call of Champions

I've been playing some MOBAs, or Mobile Online Battle Arenas recently... Vainglory would be my favourite. But today, I'd like to share some videos from another MOBA I like - Call of Champions.

With a super fast paced, quick gameplay of 3-5 minutes, this is the perfect game for when you just have that little bit of time to spare. Unlike other MOBAs that takes 20-30 minutes a game, Call of Champions let's you get in a quick fight during your break. Each game lasts no longer than 5 minutes - the game is forcefully ended even if no clear winners emerge by then. The winning team will then be calculated based on the number of towers destroyed, or if that's the same, the number of hero kills per team.

When playing MOBAs... I realised that somehow ranged/mage characters are easier to pick up for me than high HP tanks. Somehow I prefer standing at a distance and sniping. That was the case for me with Vainglory too.

Anyway, here's two videos I took today with the in-game record feature. Enjoy! (PS: Sorry, the first video has no sound... I usually play games with all the sound off hahaha!)

Implosion: Never Lose Hope - Crimson

I did it! Gathered the 42 badges to unlock the Crimson Warmech.

Here's a quick look at the Warmech... together with gameplay videos of my first time using that thing. (And dying, how embarrassing!)

I definitely miss my Avalon skills hahaha! Need some time to get used to this guy. (Ok ok, I know I suck.)

Implosion: Never Lose Hope First Boss

I'm pretty amazed with myself. Well... like I said in my previous post, this game has a pretty good learning curve... Which makes it great for not too skilled gamers like me. It gives replay value to the game... because achievements are not that way out of reach.

So yes. I managed to beat the first boss, Terminatrix, in Hard Mode, with Zero Shield activation. And not once, but twice. First for the badge, then second time for the video recording.

The first boss isn't take hard to do for the bloodless or zero shield achievement. So long as you keep your distance, the long range attacks are pretty slow and you have plenty of forewarning on when to dodge. Nonetheless, I've had to try quite a few times, because of silly mistakes nearing the end of the battle... including once when I've downed the boss, but stood too up front and when the dead body appeared, it slammed right into my avalon. There goes my badge sigh. Once I hit the 'strike' button instead of the dodge too... Other times the movement pad wasn't responding because my finger has trailed too close to the edge... The problems of playing games on the phone. My Christmas wish list...: A Mfi controller for the iPhone 6s.

Alright. Here's the video:

There's basically just three attacks from the boss if you stay as far as possible. 

The meteors --> Big red marks on the floor. Run away or dodge them!

Fire breathing --> Watch the head of the boss, if there's smoke coming out, he'll breath fire so don't stand in the center. If you don't stand in the center, and he won't breath fire. Some games I didn't see any fire breathing at all.

The laser --> Red mark on the ground where you are standing. If you keep moving, it'll miss. Or you can dodge left/right.

If you move up closer, he'll smack you with his left or right hand. If you wish, you can move up front to taunt the boss, then dodge back when the hand comes smacking so you can use your melee attacks on the arm. I just played it safe for my badges. 

Ark equips with ballistic damage would definitely help in getting those badges.