Welcome to part two of “Thoughts about MOBA tutorials” – I hope you are as excited as I… WAIT COME BACK!

Tutorials might sound like a weird thing to devote two columns to given the wealth of other shenanigans and dramas in the MOBA communities at any given time but tutorials (or lack of them) can be the difference between having a good introduction to those games and communities and bouncing off so hard you could have treated the game as a launch rocket.

Last time I took an in-depth look at what Valve are doing in Dota 2’s Reborn client, this time I’ve had a chance to return to Smite [official site] and League of Legends [official site] to check out what they’re doing and not doing. I also have some suggestions for other ways to get players up to speed. Here’s what I reckon:

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Not Global Offensive. Not Source. I’m talking the original Counter-Strike. The Half-Life mod; the game that was more popular than its online competitors combined; the game that in many ways pioneered both games as services and games as playable alphas; the game that spawned two follow-ups but which even right now, as I’m writing this, has 20,211 concurrent players through Steam.

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The Majors have been on the horizon for the Dota 2 [official site] pro scene for a while now. They’re a series of big tournaments spaced through the year and around the globe culminating in The International. But Valve were reluctant to go into further detail until this year’s International was done and dusted – i.e. now.

The bit I’m most interested in is the restrictions this places on teams with regard to kicking players or reworking the lineup but first here’s some basic detail:

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I have just booted up Half-Line Miami [official site] – a mashup of Hotline Miami and Half-Life as created by student Thomas Kole.

As someone who has never really played Half-Life 2 or Hotline Miami (I did about one level of Hotline Miami at a demo booth one time and apparently own it on this here PC – who knew? As for the Half-Life games, I played the original until a bit where you have to climb into a ceiling vent which you reach by dragging a box over. I’d killed something directly below the vent and their corpse became an immovable object so I couldn’t put the box in the right place to climb up. After trying all the solutions I could think of I gave up rather than restart at my last save which was ages away. I tried the second game as part of the Orange Box on XBox 360 and got as far as Water Hazard.) I feel well placed to explain Half-Line Miami.

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Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty> is a fine television show, a bit like Back to the Future> reimagined as the wacky and grotesque adventures of an alcoholic genius and his fool grandson across time and space. Their latest misadventure flings them into the world of Dota 2 [official site], where they voice a new replacement announcer pack.

If you want Rick burping his way through your games and Morty freaking out over everything, you can now buy the pack for 5.35/$7.99. Come have a listen.

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Louis, Francis, Bill, and Zoey, and Ellis, Rochelle, Coach, and Nick have returned, though probably not in the way you’d hope for. The Left 4 Dead survivors have found themselves transported back to Nazi Germany to tackle those dreadful Nazi zombies in Zombie Army Trilogy. A free update last night added the eight survivors to Zombie Army’s character lineup for your undead-redeading enjoyment.

To celebrate this merging of zombworlds, the game’s on sale on Steam this weekend.

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Tutorials and practice in MOBAs is something I think about a lot. It came up again over the last couple of weeks because Riot ventured the opinion that a sandbox mode in League of Legends would introduce problems and take away from fun of the game.

I already talked about the sandbox situation in greater detail here but I figured I’d put forward a few of my own ideas for useful practice scenarios. Before doing so, though, I wanted to check on the current state of tutorials in MOBAs. A quick peek turned into a longer look because Dota 2’s Reborn beta has introduced a whole bunch of new tutorial stuff in the form of these guided bot games you can play in their entirety as well as a demo hero mode. What I’ll do, then, is go into Reborn’s guided bot matches in more detail to say what’s good and bad about them – how they work and what’s still not covered. Next week’s Dote Night will be for broader thoughts about MOBA tutorials in general. Feel free to pitch in with your own in the comment section!

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Isn’t it nice when companies become friends? Valve and Bad Robot, J. J. Abrams production company responsible for TV shows like Lost and movies like Super 8, have teamed up to produce a new mode for Team Fortress 2 [official site]. It’s called PASS Time and it blends Team Fortress 2 with the “fast-paced sports of soccer, hockey and basketball.”

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Alice is on holiday, leaving it to me to ask us and you that timeless question: whatcha playin’ there buddy?

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Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na Vi s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart. Today she’s going to talk about the aftermath of TI5 for pro players and spectators.>

With the confetti [mostly] picked out of my handbag and Aegis of Champions in the hands of five new gentlemen, it’s time for the fallout from The International 2015.

For the players that all began a little while ago. The International is a great place to try and win stacks of money with your current team but it’s also a networking event and a recruitment opportunity. The best teams in the world (and their managers and associated folk) are all in attendance and an attractive prospect dissatisfied with their current roster is a veritable Cinderella in a shoe shop. I don’t think that analogy worked but you get the point.

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