Chapter 291: Novice Training
Soon, the game update was complete, and an icon of a capital letter "L" appeared on the desktop.
This icon was somewhat similar to that of *Diablo*, both using the first letter of the game's English name. The overall feel was rather plain, but it had a decent sense of style.
Jia Peng double-clicked the icon and entered the game.
The login screen was also relatively simple, looking like an unfinished version. In the upper left corner was the *League of Legends* logo, with golden Chinese characters and the English text "League of Legends." On the right side was the login module, allowing direct login through the Thunder Game Pass.
However, the main area of the login screen was still empty, with a line of small text: "There should be a very cool dynamic image here."
Jia Peng: "... Boss, what's this?"
Chen Mo explained, "The art assets aren't all in place yet. Just make do. But the in-game art resources are mostly complete, so the gameplay won't be affected."
"Alright."
Jia Peng entered his pass account and logged into the game.
Wen Lingwei and Chang Xiuya watched for a while but couldn't figure out what kind of game this was. With full suspicion, they entered the game.
Upon entering the game interface, the overall layout was also very clean. In the upper left were [Start Game], [Home], [Career], and [Collection]. In the upper right were the player avatar, currency bar, and [Shop].
On the right side was a long list of friends, which could automatically import friend information from the Thunder Game Pass. If two players were friends on the Thunder Game Pass, they didn't need to add each other again here.
The main area of the screen was looping a simple game demo video.
Scenes of the Nexus crystal, turrets, minion waves, elemental dragons, hero skirmishes, and an aerial view of the entire battlefield...
For Wen Lingwei and Chang Xiuya, this was very confusing, but Jia Peng instantly recognized the core gameplay when he saw the battlefield overview.
"Boss, this game's mechanics seem a bit like 3C and COG?" Jia Peng said.
Chen Mo nodded. "Yeah."
Chang Xiuya hesitated. "Then, then forget it. Based on my experience with *Warcraft III*, I can't handle games this hard..."
Chen Mo said, "It's fine. There's a very detailed tutorial, and the controls are much simpler than *Warcraft III*. You can play it too, no problem."
"Really? I'm very skeptical about that, Boss..."
Chang Xiuya still felt like quitting the game immediately, but due to the famous "since we're already here" theory, she decided to give it a try.
The overall layout of *League of Legends* was based on the new client version. The old client version was decent too, but it lacked some style. For someone like Chen Mo, he would definitely choose the more stylish option.
Clicking the [Start Game] button brought up several sub-options: [Training], [Co-op vs. AI], [Player vs. Player], and [Custom Game]. Once players met the conditions to unlock ranked matches, [Training] would change to [Ranked].
Of course, in this version, Chen Mo didn't plan to enable ranked matches yet.
These were all new accounts, so aside from [Training], everything else was locked. Players had to complete the tutorial before they could play other modes.
In Chen Mo's plan, the Chinese server of *League of Legends* would only have one region, so there wouldn't be the awkward situation of having to start over on a different server. All first-time players would be forced to go through the tutorial.
As for those who created new accounts to stomp on low-level players, they weren't considered, as this was an officially discouraged or even prohibited behavior.
The game loaded very quickly, as the current PC configurations were quite high.
The *League of Legends* Chen Mo created surpassed the original in terms of engine, graphics, and other aspects, but relative to current PC specs, it was still a low-spec game, far from those first-person blockbusters that burned out graphics cards.
Entering the game, Jia Peng first noticed the game's perspective.
It was a third-person god's-eye view, just like *Warcraft III* and *Diablo*.
In the center of the screen was a tall, mighty hero clad in heavy armor, with a large sword that was also very eye-catching.
At first glance, Jia Peng found the art style uncomfortable.
Chen Mo's previous games, *Warcraft III* and *Diablo*, both had a dark, realistic style that looked very serious. But *League of Legends* used a slightly more cartoonish, Q-style art style.
This was evident from the hero: his shoulder armor, large sword, and other elements didn't match normal proportions, with deliberate exaggeration.
Moreover, the overall brightness and saturation of the screen were very high, very bright, even brighter and more comfortable than the High Heavens scene in *Diablo*.
Although the High Heavens scene was also very bright and glorious, it gave players an unreal feeling and didn't help relieve stress. However, from a lore perspective, the High Heavens was the dwelling place of angels, a sacred realm that rejected mortals, so this art style was fitting for the setting.
In contrast, the map in *League of Legends* made players feel almost no sense of danger. By forced analogy, it was a bit like the Whimsyshire level in *Diablo*.
Players' minds unconsciously relaxed, without being highly tense.
A gentle female voice began explaining the tutorial.
[Welcome to the *League of Legends* Novice Training Camp.]
[In *League of Legends*, you are a powerful summoner, controlling various heroes in battle to ultimately achieve victory.]
[The ultimate goal of victory is: break through the enemy's defenses and destroy their Nexus.]
[Your hero is Garen, the Might of Demacia. Please right-click on the designated location on the map to control the hero's movement.]
Along with the tutorial voice, the game screen kept switching, showing players the Nexus, turrets, heroes, and other information.
This tutorial was also integrated by Chen Mo.
In the original tutorial, the basic training took place on the Howling Abyss map, and the tutorial instructed players to buy a Thornmail for Ashe, which was hard to take seriously.
So, Chen Mo moved the tutorial to Summoner's Rift and replaced the tutorial hero with Garen, to avoid giving players the false impression that "Ashe is a beginner hero."
Jia Peng clicked on the target location, and Garen immediately walked over.
Next came some more standard instructions, such as moving to the fog of war area, learning skills, game key bindings, using skills, destroying turrets, recalling to buy items, and so on.
After that were some advanced tutorials, like killing jungle monsters, changing the camera view, checking the minimap, and so on.
There were often small tips in the lower right corner of the map, such as last-hitting minions, staying near the minion wave to gain experience, and not diving turrets recklessly.
These operations were far too simple for Jia Peng, as he had already played *Warcraft III*. The amount of control required was less than a tenth of that in *Warcraft III*.
Finally, as Garen raised his sword to destroy the enemy Nexus, a huge victory icon appeared in the center of the screen. At the same time, an uplifting "Victory" voice made Jia Peng feel very satisfied.
He turned his head and saw that Wen Lingwei and Chang Xiuya were still fighting, not even having destroyed the inhibitor turret yet.
Moreover, these two had been playing with locked camera mode the entire time.