Views: 703 Personal Thoughts: DOTA 2 and League
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Hey there MOBA Fire, Firbane here. You know, as of recently I've started thinking a little bit about DOTA 2 and League of Legends, as I've come to a small impasse. Let me preface this by saying the following; a good portion of my friends play League of Legends, I prefer League of Legends, and I've started on League of Legends, so a lot of what I'm going to say is coming from the opinion of a long time League fan.
So, now that that's out of the way, let's get into where this impasse has come from. I've a smaller group of friends that play DOTA 2, one of them very...I wouldn't say religiously but he is very much into the game. One of the things that is asked of me is to come onto DOTA 2 and play with that smaller group of friends, either making a fool of myself or doing quite well. I have my qualms with the game and have always been fronted with the into-it friend with "but this game is so much better than League."
Yeah, right, I want to believe you man, but when you play a couple of games and you get pub stomped by a couple of Russian players a couple of times after the majority of your team leaves, and at one point not even having selected a hero so the bots weren't playing, it's really hard to believe your friends. Y'see, I've never seen that in League, I've never gotten so horribly stomped before.
After those said games I contemplated uninstalling; that's not a fun thing to even fathom happening to you. Of course, being a gamer I didn't let one horribly bad game dictate the fate of whether or not I'd play a game ever again, but it's been lingering in the back of my head, as has another mechanic in DOTA 2;
Evade, yeah, you know that one thing Riot took out of League entirely? DOTA 2 has it, and I have got to say it's one of the least balanced things in the game. Now I'm not saying it can't be countered, melee champions usually hit these targets, and there's an item that fixes that...after you've saved a literal
Trinity Force worth of gold to buy the damn thing. That wouldn't be so bad if gold weren't so hard to get, the rate you get it is claimed to be 1.2 a second, averaging about 100 every minute, which just feels so slow compared to League. I get that both games have evenly balanced the gold the creep gets based on this, but there's a vastly annoying mechanic in DOTA 2 where when you die you lose a good percentage of your gold.
In my mind that severely restricts play variance; it's play smart and don't die or the rich get richer situation. The game promotes a very passive play style as such, and when you're me having played the likes of Ahri, Akali, and Quinn, aggro and kiting is literally in your blood. So I run into the common issue of too heavy into being passive, where I get my creep score, prevent my opponent from getting any, fall back, restore health, Town Portal Scroll back into lane, rinse and repeat until I see my opponent step out of line and can kill him no problem. That's all fine and dandy, and the game is punishing as all can be which is minorly problematic with the whole "loss of gold on death" situation. So often times the games are excruciatingly polarizing and heavily reliant on kills to determine which team is winning or losing.
Which would bring me to League, there's no dodge, no loss of gold on death, and the game is truly dictated by which team has taken the most objectives. Yes kills are important, but I've pulled back in games where my team has about two-thirds the kills the enemy team has and won anyway. In DOTA 2 I literally see that as impossible to happen. There's no way a team that has fewer kills, less gold, and lower levels to win against a team that has been dominating all game. It really makes me wish there was a surrender button, but then again there's the disconnect button.
Yeah, so to my knowledge leaving in DOTA 2 isn't nearly as punishing as leaving in League, the most you get is a smack on the wrist by being placed in low-priority matchmaking if you leave one too many games in DOTA 2, and that's probably because a bot fills in for you, or even "better" a teammate that has two brains can work his and your hero at the same time, making it effectively like you never left. For crying out loud, in a MOBA like League or DOTA, having a human player or a player's full attention on one character is paramount, is it impressive this one person is playing two champions? Yes, it is, but his attention is split and he can only do so many actions per second while playing two characters. We all know in League leaving runs potentially two risks; lower priority matchmaking, and possible banning up to perma-banning if our track record is bad enough. That spells absolute doom to an aspiring League pro, but in DOTA? Nah, just jump into a different game and keep working at it, your teammates sucked anyway right?
That's about it on that side, both games are great and they have their flaws, but I really feel like DOTA 2 needs to see a lot more polish and work if it wants to achieve the same fidelity or level of true skill that League requires, rather than a **** shoot of dodge RNG and whether or not you can hit your target. My more nitpicky remarks regard the games skill shots, those are god awful in letting you know the range and just letting you shoot from where you're standing. You click outside your range you go in range to use your ability which just...why Steam? That literally makes me cry.
Another nitpicky remark is that it seems like some heroes are just straight up better than others. I mean this either through their kit, their range, what their core stat is, what have you. In League, and this is more a complaint than an observation as I do want variety, just not straight up improvements, but a lot of ADCs are very similar to one another in terms of range, base stats, and occasionally kits, but they differ enough that one isn't inherently better than another, just because X counters Y and Y counters Z doesn't mean X is better than Z, especially when Z counters X. In DOTA it feels like heroes like Gyrocopter are terribly difficult to play around to the point where their counter is early game starvation. This does promote a more skill based play, but when a champ has a stun that lasts two seconds and deals more damage the further it goes that's actually really really silly in my book. See Fiddlesticks for a decent-ish example of this malarkey, minus the scaling damage with distance.
I just feel like there are heroes in DOTA 2 that you MUST pick to see a large rise in your victories versus League, where there you play the champions you feel most comfortable with, for me see Ahri, Graves, Master Yi, Braum, and Darius, for you refer to yourself. I get that these heroes are actually very challenging to master in DOTA, but at the same time that's excruciatingly discouraging for a player like me who feels like he's hot stuff from League, then he jumps into DOTA and he can't figure out how the hell to make an ability like Frost Shot turn on as a passive modifier to your auto-attacks instead of single cast it, and I have problems holding Alt then hitting Q for that so get rid of that nonsense and make it a simple Q toggle!
In the end, I'm not saying DOTA 2 is terrible or bad, I mean I love the idea of a secret shop, side shops, and the ability to buy items whenever, but it's just poorly balanced, and I honestly feel you won't see the day where DOTA 2 is perfectly imbalanced, where one week one comp is popular than one comp is found to beat that comp so that comp becomes popular, so on and so forth. Not until dodge is removed from that game so not nearly as much faith is put into an RNG than into actual skill, because Phantom Assassin is way too much a good pick overall. She can dodge melee attacks, abilities which she can't dodge don't scale and/or take too long to cast or have far too long of a cooldown, and having a passive crit is a similar issue as letting Yasuo double the crit he gets in my opinion. Anyway I wanted to get that off of my chest and to not discourage you from playing DOTA 2 if you would like, but be aware it's barely anything like League, and I think it suffers because it feels like a downgrade versus a sidegrade like Smite is compared to League. Anyway, I'll see you guys later, and may you all become champions, heroes, gods, whatever you aspire to become, in your own right.
So, now that that's out of the way, let's get into where this impasse has come from. I've a smaller group of friends that play DOTA 2, one of them very...I wouldn't say religiously but he is very much into the game. One of the things that is asked of me is to come onto DOTA 2 and play with that smaller group of friends, either making a fool of myself or doing quite well. I have my qualms with the game and have always been fronted with the into-it friend with "but this game is so much better than League."
Yeah, right, I want to believe you man, but when you play a couple of games and you get pub stomped by a couple of Russian players a couple of times after the majority of your team leaves, and at one point not even having selected a hero so the bots weren't playing, it's really hard to believe your friends. Y'see, I've never seen that in League, I've never gotten so horribly stomped before.
After those said games I contemplated uninstalling; that's not a fun thing to even fathom happening to you. Of course, being a gamer I didn't let one horribly bad game dictate the fate of whether or not I'd play a game ever again, but it's been lingering in the back of my head, as has another mechanic in DOTA 2;
Evade, yeah, you know that one thing Riot took out of League entirely? DOTA 2 has it, and I have got to say it's one of the least balanced things in the game. Now I'm not saying it can't be countered, melee champions usually hit these targets, and there's an item that fixes that...after you've saved a literal
Trinity Force worth of gold to buy the damn thing. That wouldn't be so bad if gold weren't so hard to get, the rate you get it is claimed to be 1.2 a second, averaging about 100 every minute, which just feels so slow compared to League. I get that both games have evenly balanced the gold the creep gets based on this, but there's a vastly annoying mechanic in DOTA 2 where when you die you lose a good percentage of your gold.In my mind that severely restricts play variance; it's play smart and don't die or the rich get richer situation. The game promotes a very passive play style as such, and when you're me having played the likes of
Ahri, Akali, and Quinn, aggro and kiting is literally in your blood. So I run into the common issue of too heavy into being passive, where I get my creep score, prevent my opponent from getting any, fall back, restore health, Town Portal Scroll back into lane, rinse and repeat until I see my opponent step out of line and can kill him no problem. That's all fine and dandy, and the game is punishing as all can be which is minorly problematic with the whole "loss of gold on death" situation. So often times the games are excruciatingly polarizing and heavily reliant on kills to determine which team is winning or losing.Which would bring me to League, there's no dodge, no loss of gold on death, and the game is truly dictated by which team has taken the most objectives. Yes kills are important, but I've pulled back in games where my team has about two-thirds the kills the enemy team has and won anyway. In DOTA 2 I literally see that as impossible to happen. There's no way a team that has fewer kills, less gold, and lower levels to win against a team that has been dominating all game. It really makes me wish there was a surrender button, but then again there's the disconnect button.
Yeah, so to my knowledge leaving in DOTA 2 isn't nearly as punishing as leaving in League, the most you get is a smack on the wrist by being placed in low-priority matchmaking if you leave one too many games in DOTA 2, and that's probably because a bot fills in for you, or even "better" a teammate that has two brains can work his and your hero at the same time, making it effectively like you never left. For crying out loud, in a MOBA like League or DOTA, having a human player or a player's full attention on one character is paramount, is it impressive this one person is playing two champions? Yes, it is, but his attention is split and he can only do so many actions per second while playing two characters. We all know in League leaving runs potentially two risks; lower priority matchmaking, and possible banning up to perma-banning if our track record is bad enough. That spells absolute doom to an aspiring League pro, but in DOTA? Nah, just jump into a different game and keep working at it, your teammates sucked anyway right?
That's about it on that side, both games are great and they have their flaws, but I really feel like DOTA 2 needs to see a lot more polish and work if it wants to achieve the same fidelity or level of true skill that League requires, rather than a **** shoot of dodge RNG and whether or not you can hit your target. My more nitpicky remarks regard the games skill shots, those are god awful in letting you know the range and just letting you shoot from where you're standing. You click outside your range you go in range to use your ability which just...why Steam? That literally makes me cry.
Another nitpicky remark is that it seems like some heroes are just straight up better than others. I mean this either through their kit, their range, what their core stat is, what have you. In League, and this is more a complaint than an observation as I do want variety, just not straight up improvements, but a lot of ADCs are very similar to one another in terms of range, base stats, and occasionally kits, but they differ enough that one isn't inherently better than another, just because X counters Y and Y counters Z doesn't mean X is better than Z, especially when Z counters X. In DOTA it feels like heroes like Gyrocopter are terribly difficult to play around to the point where their counter is early game starvation. This does promote a more skill based play, but when a champ has a stun that lasts two seconds and deals more damage the further it goes that's actually really really silly in my book. See
Fiddlesticks for a decent-ish example of this malarkey, minus the scaling damage with distance.I just feel like there are heroes in DOTA 2 that you MUST pick to see a large rise in your victories versus League, where there you play the champions you feel most comfortable with, for me see
Ahri, Graves, Master Yi, Braum, and Darius, for you refer to yourself. I get that these heroes are actually very challenging to master in DOTA, but at the same time that's excruciatingly discouraging for a player like me who feels like he's hot stuff from League, then he jumps into DOTA and he can't figure out how the hell to make an ability like Frost Shot turn on as a passive modifier to your auto-attacks instead of single cast it, and I have problems holding Alt then hitting Q for that so get rid of that nonsense and make it a simple Q toggle!In the end, I'm not saying DOTA 2 is terrible or bad, I mean I love the idea of a secret shop, side shops, and the ability to buy items whenever, but it's just poorly balanced, and I honestly feel you won't see the day where DOTA 2 is perfectly imbalanced, where one week one comp is popular than one comp is found to beat that comp so that comp becomes popular, so on and so forth. Not until dodge is removed from that game so not nearly as much faith is put into an RNG than into actual skill, because Phantom Assassin is way too much a good pick overall. She can dodge melee attacks, abilities which she can't dodge don't scale and/or take too long to cast or have far too long of a cooldown, and having a passive crit is a similar issue as letting
Yasuo double the crit he gets in my opinion. Anyway I wanted to get that off of my chest and to not discourage you from playing DOTA 2 if you would like, but be aware it's barely anything like League, and I think it suffers because it feels like a downgrade versus a sidegrade like Smite is compared to League. Anyway, I'll see you guys later, and may you all become champions, heroes, gods, whatever you aspire to become, in your own right.
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