Teamfight Tactics (2019)

I have barely touched this for about 2 months - finally had enough I guess, since it's my most played game of all time by an enormous, probably unbeatable margin. I don't even want to guess my total hour count, it's... yeah let's not. And it's not just been a game for me, but also a major source of entertainment via watching others on Twitch/YouTube, and of community as I discussed the game daily with fellow veteran players and helped out those in the lower ranks. I guess I never would have spent that much time with a single game as an adult were it not for the COVID era and some other factors that had me stuck at home for a while.

There's something that can't be matched about that kind of experience where you go that deep on one super complex game, especially one that gets such amazing support and ongoing changes as this, so I'm glad I did that once. (It became much better than it was during the initial auto-chess hype wave, especially some of the stuff they did at the end of 2021 through most of last year.) I've even interacted or played with some of the developers and popular streamers and things many times which will probably never happen in another game. I don't see myself grinding out high ranks on the ladder ever again, but I'll definitely pick it back up here and there and play casually, just really love the game and still consider it one of my favorites.

Just talked about this game a bit on another post, and it reminded me to note some updated stuff here. So a couple weeks ago Set 5.5 of TFT ended. For me this was a good set, as I was able to reach nearly the top 500 ranks of NA, but this set had become really stale and the community generally has a distaste for Set 5-5.5.

I do think large improvements were made over time, and the culmination of this is the release of Set 6 at the start of the month which has taken a massive amount of player feedback on past sets to create what most are calling the game's best set ever.

The ideal goal of a game like this is to create a type of randomness where you never really know what's going to happen in each game, but with enough player agency that the most skilled players will naturally rise to the top, feel like they have some agency and be able to make the most out of even bad situations. With the addition of the new mechanic "Hextech Augments," which give a set of randomized choices throughout the game of modifiers that can drastically affect your strategy, I think they have come as near to achieving this goal as possible. Somehow with this mechanic they made the game more appealing to both hardcore players and casuals (as far as I can tell).

I continue to really admire what the small TFT team within Riot is doing with this game in terms of communication. The lead developers are extremely communicative about changes and open to talk on reddit, Twitch, and Discord in a way I have not seen in any other game. I've had this game's lead designer just pop into my conversation at random, and at other times played against other main developers and gotten to talk to them in-game. I think this is the best time to be playing the game, and the only downside is that I put so much time into last set that I don't quite want to play as much anymore. Still having a great time though.

Thoughts on TFT's Set 5 as it wraps up... Though these kinds of games aren't too popular around here, it is still my most played game of the year by a few hundred hours, so I may as well give an updated time capsule status entry on it.

This past set's new signature mechanic, "shadow items," which are more powerful than regular items and usually have some drawback, seemed to be a failed experiment as it's already being removed at the big mid-set update. The TFT team already seemed to struggle to keep this set balanced and fun in general, and shadow items seemed to make that issue substantially worse. I liked the idea but had an overall distaste for the actual implementation for many reasons, though I know a few people didn't mind it.

By the end of the set, the team finally seemed to hit a stride with some smart mechanics updates and a generally balanced and diverse meta that wasn't receiving such heavy-handed earth-shattering updates as it had been earlier in the set. Now that the meta will be shaken up again by Set 5.5's introduction of loads of new items, champions, and traits, it raises a key question, though.

It's great to have a game that gets regular huge updates to keep things interesting, but each set we only seem to get a few weeks at the end where everything is balanced. Is it really better to do big updates so often and have the most passionate players sit through weeks of frustrating imbalance each time, than it is to have a few more weeks of the final balanced state and risk things getting stale? Not too sure myself, but I think there is a better balance to be found there.

As for this set, though, I never really loved it, so am pretty happy to see it dramatically shifted this time. Unfortunately, they took out some of the most exciting champions and left some of the meh stuff, but the new changes in 5.5 look great. The 5.5 beta has been really neat so far. That live update in a couple weeks will be a significantly better starting point for new players than Set 5 ever was.

2022 Edit: This game gets better over time, with some really nice mechanics meaningfully evolving its genre well past what the competition is doing. It has near-infinite replayability for me and has become one of my all-time favorite games. This review was written a couple months after I started playing and still holds true.

I love the core genre of this game, the auto-battler. It is my personal favorite online game genre of all time and this is the most updated and active game in the genre. It nails all the genre's most important fundamentals.

The item building system in this game is extremely flexible and well-balanced with the game's other elements of randomness. As a whole, the game really rewards those who can overcome RNG to consistently make the most of what they're given.

The many League of Legends characters featured here are mostly distinct and appealing. Many of the different team compositions you can assemble from them are really exciting to pull off and see in action. Getting to that completed team build is a fun push and pull of risk/reward and resource management. Unit positioning and enemy scouting really matter, meaning there is rarely a dull moment once you're in the higher ranks.

(2024 Edit: This paragraph isn't really accurate anymore, but keeping it for historical purposes I guess lol) Some convenience features and helpful tooltips as seen in other games in this genre are currently missing from TFT. This is downright brutal for new players in a game that is already more complex than its competition, but creates a higher skill ceiling and rewards deep game knowledge.

Seasonal gimmicks such as Set 4's "chosen" unit mechanic are big swings that can dramatically impact the game's strategy. I find this particular mechanic to be kind of a mixed experience, and I worry that I will downright hate one of these future experiments. I at least approve of how far they're willing to go to keep the game fresh, especially considering the short length of each set.

Being stuck inside the League of Legends client on PC makes for some clumsy setting of TFT-specific options, and a poor matchmaking experience. The mobile client is worse, though, especially considering that on tablets, you're forced to play a blown-up version of the phone app. Valve's Dota Underlords and Riot's own Legends of Runeterra have amazing iPad implementations, so that's pretty unfortunate. (2024 Edit: This was also resolved, yay)

Overall, I've had an amazing experience playing the game despite its flaws and balance issues. This is definitely the auto-battler of the future.