Our author Schuhmann fell for the free strategy game Teamfight Tactics while on annual vacation. That doesn’t suit him at all, because he had laughed at a colleague for years for exactly this free2play game in the world of LoL.
In my defense: I always liked Teamfight Tactics, so in the beta around 2019. I liked it back then, just not for very long.
For 4 years I found it really silly that my colleague Leitsch kept trying to tell me how great and relevant this was and that we urgently needed to continue producing guides and articles about the latest patch notes.
“Nothing there,” I said. “Look at the speedometer, it’s 2023 – no one cares about that thing anymore, please write about stuff that interests people today.”
Teamfight Tactics: Gameplay Trailer – League of Legends
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Teamfight Tactics was totally hyped – in the summer of 2019
Teamfight Tactics is a so-called “auto battler”, that was a short hype in 2019 that I also fell for. Back then, everyone wanted to do one. The idea is:
Teamfight Tactics is exactly that game, but with heroes and items from the League of Legends universe.
Either you’re totally into it or you don’t care at all
The thing is: Teamfight Tactics is the kind of game that you’re totally immersed in when you play it yourself. Your head is full of a myriad of tiny detailed information about the game. For example, Annie is a very small hero, but she is really strong when you have collected her 9 times, she then has 3 stars and you equip her with a certain combination of items because one of her abilities is then permanently active.
At that moment, Teamfight Tactis is the dominant theme in your life, you dream about drafts at night and constantly think about what you should have done differently in the last game.
But once you’re out, you don’t care about the game at all and you look at everyone who plays it in amazement at what they find in the stuff.
And that’s how it went for me for years with Alexander Leitsch, who insisted that he was somehow one of the best 0.7% players in Europe and who told me something about new sets.
When it was time for my annual vacation, which like any sensible gaming author I use to expand my already extensive knowledge of games, I decided to play Teamfight Tactics again.
Actually, that was just one item on a long list of things I’ve always wanted to do when I have time for things that I just don’t get around to in everyday life.
And the game is exactly the same and completely different than it was 4 years ago: Although almost all of the mechanics – apart from a clever, new “headliner” function – remain exactly the same, the meta has completely changed.
But it’s not that easy with the “meta”: You have the team in your head that you ideally want to play and that is somehow the best, but for that to happen, chance has to play into your favor and the game has to give you that Offer heroes that you want to play.
After a 4 year break I just lost
Now the “really good” player is of course able to keep several plans in mind and apply the one that the game and the opponents offer him. But I’m wired in such a way that no matter what I decide to do, I’m always magically drawn to the same team, which can work wonderfully or fail terribly.
After I spent the first few hours getting really excited, which really hurt my ego, I sat down, read up on the game (i.e. had tier lists and cheat sheets open parallel to the game) and then fully surrendered to the pull of the game.
Riot’s games exude an uncanny fascination with their battle pass, constant rewards and a ranked system: To advance in Teamfight Tactics, you don’t have to win at all, all you have to do is not lose.
8 people play against each other in every game, as soon as you get to 4th place or higher you get bonus points and everything is fine.
I just fell for the damn Teamfight Tactics
Over the course of my vacation I got so into the damn Teamfight Tactics, climbed ranks and got into the groove that I barely did anything else.
Two days before the end of my vacation, relief came: I won two games in a row, immediately heroically declared the end of my Teamfight Tactics career and have never logged in again since.
I immediately sent Cortyn the screenshot as proof that I’m not a “dirty casual who wrongly snatched the Overwatch key from her 7 years ago.”
And this Leitsch, admittedly, may have some idea what people really want to play these days.
More about my adventures in strategy games: Steam: I started as a lonely Viking – 400 years later I have half of Europe, 12,300 descendants and one problem