LordRaptor
Member
Good game design is such that everything works exactly as a player expects it to, and they never even realise you were there anticipating those needs.
League of Legends has over 100 million monthly active players, ~8x larger than Dota 2
- Thread starter Interfectum
- Start date
Exactly how I feel about it.q
Kinda random, but I worked in Riot's production for five years. My teams did things like experimental content, Facebook Friend Importer, our game APIs and data collection, match history, etc. I just left to pursue my MBA.
I thought I'd just chime in and say that I think a huge reason they're so successful is they aspire to be the most player-focused game company in the world. It's Riot's mission statement.
If you work in the gaming industry, Riot is a magical place to work because of its unrelenting focus on that mission. Everything they do, every conversation they have, is all about making the best experience possible for gamers. I pitched numerous features to Marc (Tryndamere) and Brandon (Ryze), and it was always about player value and never about budget, profits, etc.
If you do get the opportunity to work at Riot, a lot of people will have the "oh wow" moment, where it hits you that every Rioter is solely there to focus on creating amazing experiences, regardless of monetary gains. There's a purity to their pursuit that many who'd joined had never encountered. It's even more impactful when you realize just how selective they are in recruiting. Riot has been recruiting talent from places like Pixar, Uber, Netflix, etc., and again, a huge part of the draw is the mission. My "wow" moment was while pitching on colorblind mode, which was greenlit because 1-in-12 men have some form of color deficiency. In the pitch meeting, Marc's focus was squarely on the experience of those players: not profits, not competitors, just the experience.
It does sometimes backfire. Sometimes the pursuit of maximizing player value causes them to miss low-hanging fruit. Or sometimes the large-scale pursuit of "multipliers" (ex: new client) leaves few teams pursuing raw enjoyment propositions and players notice. Sometimes they'd just plain screw-up (ex: Magma Chamber). But they're quick to learn and guided only by a positive intent: add player value.
Point is: Riot's mission matters.
I really do think why they've been so successful is that they set very high bars for player empathy and raw talent for new employees, and then they aggressively indoctrinate incoming Rioters to focus on making the best experiences possible. Their mission is an aspiration that each employee is required to share in order for their careers to progress.
Yeah, the timing mattered. Yeah, free-to-play mattered. Yeah, first-mover. Yeah, their international strategy is strong. But their player-focused intent and team culture represent a significant competitive advantage.
I thought I'd just chime in and say that I think a huge reason they're so successful is they aspire to be the most player-focused game company in the world. It's Riot's mission statement.
If you work in the gaming industry, Riot is a magical place to work because of its unrelenting focus on that mission. Everything they do, every conversation they have, is all about making the best experience possible for gamers. I pitched numerous features to Marc (Tryndamere) and Brandon (Ryze), and it was always about player value and never about budget, profits, etc.
If you do get the opportunity to work at Riot, a lot of people will have the "oh wow" moment, where it hits you that every Rioter is solely there to focus on creating amazing experiences, regardless of monetary gains. There's a purity to their pursuit that many who'd joined had never encountered. It's even more impactful when you realize just how selective they are in recruiting. Riot has been recruiting talent from places like Pixar, Uber, Netflix, etc., and again, a huge part of the draw is the mission. My "wow" moment was while pitching on colorblind mode, which was greenlit because 1-in-12 men have some form of color deficiency. In the pitch meeting, Marc's focus was squarely on the experience of those players: not profits, not competitors, just the experience.
It does sometimes backfire. Sometimes the pursuit of maximizing player value causes them to miss low-hanging fruit. Or sometimes the large-scale pursuit of "multipliers" (ex: new client) leaves few teams pursuing raw enjoyment propositions and players notice. Sometimes they'd just plain screw-up (ex: Magma Chamber). But they're quick to learn and guided only by a positive intent: add player value.
Point is: Riot's mission matters.
I really do think why they've been so successful is that they set very high bars for player empathy and raw talent for new employees, and then they aggressively indoctrinate incoming Rioters to focus on making the best experiences possible. Their mission is an aspiration that each employee is required to share in order for their careers to progress.
Yeah, the timing mattered. Yeah, free-to-play mattered. Yeah, first-mover. Yeah, their international strategy is strong. But their player-focused intent and team culture represent a significant competitive advantage.
Stone Ocean
Member
Players should feel bad when they fuck up. Fucking up however shouldn't amount to "I was in the same screen as this particular character".
I'm not quite sure what point your trying to get across.
Taking specifically what you said, that situation should be something a player should learn to avoid whether by knowing how all the parts work beforehand or by simple trial and error.
Stone Ocean
Member
The situation shouldn't exist (in League), that's the point. You're supposed to have ways to deal with an enemy's kit within the situation itself, not just by avoiding the situation altogether because there's nothing you can do in it.
That's not treating your players like babies, that's just giving equal burden to the attacker and recieving end. You're supposed to feel bad for eating a skill you could have dodged and not because you exist in that place of the map.
Eeeeh. For the type of game it is structured as (more class oriented or role oriented), I think it's silly to make every encounter able to go either way. It's hard to describe without specifics but the way I'm reading what you're describing, I'm hearing that, say, a weaker support should always have the ability to get away (whether they can or not through skill) when they put themselves in bad positions, say, caught out by a ganker hero. When that situation in itself is a misplay by the support character. That's what I'm reading your statement as, though.
____
On a side note, a lot of this design philosophy just reinforces my criticism of "feel good" gameplay and how it is detrimental to a lot of high skill multiplayer games. Having put a lot of time into Evolve recently and dropping back into Halo 5, I see the difference between that type of competitive multiplayer and things like Overwatch and DotA-likes and what I've come to know as "ultimate-focused gameplay" and I've grown very weary of it. I've grown to somewhat detest game mechanics that act as "let me win this encounter" moves or feel good tools just to, well, make the player feel good by giving them a single huge burst of potential and influence. I think consistent high skill gameplay is something I think is much better to aim towards (Counter Strike comes to mind for me, or Evolve or Halo as I mentioned) where it's less about play around those bursts and more about consistent demand for skilled play all throughout whether it is encounter avoidance, positioning, aiming ability, etc. The latter can and is present in things like Overwatch but the "ultimate/super" play is such a larger part of encounter interaction. I still enjoy DotA 2 but after getting back into the two games I've mentioned (Evolve/Halo), I've realized which multiplayer designs I prefer.
Personally, if something happens and the game design didn't explain it clearly, i feel cheated, not stupid.
I feel stupid when a perfectly well explained game design makes everything clear and i still fail due to my own lack of skill.
No, the idea is that, ideally, your game is designed that landing or countering moves is a burden of SKILL, rewarding and punishing performance, not ignorance.
A weaker support should have the tools to potentially get away from a gank with skill, likewise a good JG will land the gank anyways if they're skilled.
Stone Ocean
Member
Not always. You should be able to get away if you have your CC up or flash and time it correctly so you stop the enemy before he can get to you or dodge their CC. In the same vein, the ganker dodge your CC and burn his own flash to brute force his CC on you.
Fucking up doesn't mean you get to get out for free, but you have opportunities within encounters that can be exploited by both sides. Its less about being champion X or Y and more about how you as a player can deal with the situation. You die because you missed your shit/didn't dodge, you miss a kill because you missed your shit/didn't dodge.
Acerac
Banned
Aye, it is one of the reasons I stopped having fun with the game. The aspects of the game I enjoyed were "anti-fun" so they were slowly removed til we got to the point where I didn't really feel like playing any more.
According to that post apparently buff auras are anti-fun, I'm sure the game is better off with one less support main.
I think it should be important then to define what constitutes ignorance and what constitutes skillful comprehension of whatever situation you find yourself in which leads into my reply to Stone Ocean as well:
I think positioning and "game sense" is as much a skillful exercise as just knowing what tools to use at a certain point and allowing a player to put themselves into bad positions should be just as possible on either end (ganker getting too greedy, support being too out of position). I agree with both of you on some parts (burden of skill) but I guess the minutiae of the example is where I disagree.
I guess for me, ignorance and the elimination/weeding out of it for the player is as much a part of the skill curve as just how dexterous the player is. I agree that the developers can and should take steps to facilitate player learning but at the same time I don't think that should lower the skill ceiling.
"anti-fun" hasn't even been used as a word by Riot for a long time. Not all of Zileas list is necessarily something that's relevant to the design of today's League.
The main game design word nowadays is counter play. A lot of the older champions have been updated with this in mind, as well as giving them more pronounced strengths and weaknesses.
Nah, the buff auras were changed because they were powerful abilities that were difficult to appreciate as powerful. People in general didn't realize or see how powerful the auras were, so they thought they were weak unless they were grossly overtuned. Many auras have been changed to a way where it is simpler to appreciate the power.
Nothing to do with anti-fun or whatever.
The main game design word nowadays is counter play. A lot of the older champions have been updated with this in mind, as well as giving them more pronounced strengths and weaknesses.
Nah, the buff auras were changed because they were powerful abilities that were difficult to appreciate as powerful. People in general didn't realize or see how powerful the auras were, so they thought they were weak unless they were grossly overtuned. Many auras have been changed to a way where it is simpler to appreciate the power.
Nothing to do with anti-fun or whatever.
I don't have much experience with LoL (or history) and am struggling to get what you mean by this. Could you provide an example (manufactured or actual) by which you mean they "simplified" the clarity of an aura? To me it just reads that many players were just plainly ignorant and short-sighted and didn't have the skill to read the usefulness and utility of a skill and can only read immediate feedback.
edit: I have to step out and won't be able to reply for a few hours
Acerac
Banned
It's literally the first thing in the post that was referenced a bit ago.
Dunno, I guess I just enjoy Riot's old outlook towards balancing the game over the outlook that seems to have taken hold since LCS got big. Auras are hard for viewers to appreciate, that much is true. =/
Stone Ocean
Member
Positioning and game sense are definitely important, they're just not the core of the experience as opposed to a part of it.
This kind of thing doesn't lower the skill ceiling, just the floor.
Sona used to have 3 types of passive auras that just gave you stat boosts if you were around her and they were hard to appreciate because they were just that, stats. You don't see +10 damage or that you're taking 10 less damage or that you're walking slightly faster. Now she has 3 auras that work for a specific amount of time after she casts them and grants extra things to people that walk within a very defined AoE around her. One gives you extra damage on your next attack - shown by having your champion's arms glow blue, the other gives you a temporary shield and the last one gives you very high movement boost when you walk within it.
Same goes for Janna, she used to have a passive aura that gave your entire team a small amount of extra movement speed, now you get extra movement speed when walking torwards her, but it's a lot more and it's more visually distinct as you get a trail of wind behind you when its active.
Well, in my opinion, it's like this, because even people who understand the game can fuck up due to ignorance, im mostly a LoL player so i'll use the example with LoL situations.
One of my mains is Heimerdinger, a squishy mage type whose main gimmick is setting little turrets to attack the enemies.
The turrets have a well defined area of effect, they have tells to know when they're aiming at you and when they're going to shoot you with their special big shot, you might not know the character but playing against him you can pretty much have a rudimentary knowledge of the dangerzone of the turrets are just by looking. Getting hurt is because you're being reckless since the game telegraphs the danger.
That doesn't mean ignorance cannot be a factor for fucking up, many people who don't understand the character still make ignorant choices because they think they can take the turret heat (pro tip, most characters cant!), so yeah, ignorance costed them, but only in the way that they took a risk without insight, not because the game didn't clearly express that the move was incredibly risky, they just din't know the full consequences. That's ignorance that you can blame on the player, because the game did it's job telegraphing the danger.
So TL;DR: burden of knowledge means the game isn't communicating the basics clearly, skillful comprehension means you understand the basics, ideally game mechanics explain themselves and ignorance is downplayed while skill is up played, knowledge still plays a role in the metagame, but not in the basics, my ignorance about how much damage a move makes might cost me, but i wouldn't be able to say the game didn't show me how to react to it.
chillybright
Banned
The pinnacle of anti-fun: AP Yi and AP Tryndamere, proxy Singed.
Pure frustration to play against, or even play with.
Pure frustration to play against, or even play with.
Sure, this is a simple real example. A character had an aura that passively increased the armor and magic resistance of nearby allies. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the mechanics of this so I'll be extra clear in my explanation. Extra armor and magic resistance will make you take less damage, depending on the ally's current armor and magic res they might get a 5-15% extra reduction in damage taken. This aura was really really powerful, but neither enemies nor allies really could appreciate the effect as there was no way to see how much damage was reduced due to the aura.
The aura was later changed to give a short duration shield to allies who enter the aura range. Shields works as an above layer to the current health; if you have a 200 health shield it will block any damage you take until you have taken more than 200 damage; enough to break the shield. The shield will also expire after a few seconds even if it was not broken. This new shield aura worked a bit differently to the armor and magic resist aura in that it would a big percentage of the incoming damage if there was low damage incoming but a smaller percentage if there was a lot of damage incoming. You can also time the shield activation to block the damage right before it applies, whereas the armor and magic resist was completely passive, you didn't have to do anything if the aura was active before.
The shield aura is much easier to appreciate than the armor and magic resist aura; you directly see the shield and thus how much damage it reduces as the shield is broken or not broken. Enemies can also wait for the shield to expire before they use their damage if the aura is activated too early, they could do nothing with the old aura.
The character with the aura had three different completely passive auras, she only had to switch which one was active. The auras were all changed to be more active, more shorter bursts with bigger power that were easy to appreciate rather than passive always-on small powers that were hard to appreciate.
Sure, it's not as relevant right now as it was at the time. There have been a couple of design shifts over the years. I always thought auras were a bad example of that "anti-fun" word. I'm glad they're not using it anymore as the word is kinda loaded, and plagued by some bad examples that keep following it. That's the case of many of those words, they were followed by bad examples even if the idea was sound in some way.
Stone Ocean
Member
Auras aren't anti fun, they're just hard to balance and to notice.
Pretty much.
QuantumSquid
Member
I think Riot has definitely fostered a friendlier, more inclusive community with League too. There are so many popular League YouTube channels, and Riot makes blog posts highlighting their favorites, and they host their own talk show about the game, and... fuck, man, there's a YouTube channel specifically dedicated to making League-based covers of popular songs.
Dota 2's community feels so clinical by comparison. It's a great game on a mechanical level but it's lacking a real sense of community. I feel like I'm a part of something when I play League and keep up with new champion teasers, community-made videos, and upcoming champion/role reworks. Riot's doing something right that Valve isn't in that area.
(gotta say that Dota 2 is much more balanced than League though, at the most recent International almost every single hero was picked because of their viability in certain situations while League's meta tends to revolve around a handful of flavor-of-the-month "who's the best this patch?" champions.)
Dota 2's community feels so clinical by comparison. It's a great game on a mechanical level but it's lacking a real sense of community. I feel like I'm a part of something when I play League and keep up with new champion teasers, community-made videos, and upcoming champion/role reworks. Riot's doing something right that Valve isn't in that area.
(gotta say that Dota 2 is much more balanced than League though, at the most recent International almost every single hero was picked because of their viability in certain situations while League's meta tends to revolve around a handful of flavor-of-the-month "who's the best this patch?" champions.)
like everything in game design it's a matter of finding the right kind of information that suits the exact game you're making
for competitive games transparency is an important goal to pursue because it feels awful to be beaten by something that "you couldn't have predicted" or that wasn't intuitive or whatnot
in something like dark souls it feels alright to be screwed by the devs every once in a while because it's a way of them checking you're paying attention and keeping you on your toes, but even then a lot of those traps are heavily telegraphed so a cautious player could notice them
now bear in mind zileas didn't say that doto was full of those things, he just mentioned one example he felt wasn't clear enough. there are examples of the same in league and there are examples of doto being pretty clear (giant snowball spell looks like something you should avoid)
that was just the way you were coming off as based on some inaccurate comments you made and you being so focused on that one particular example while missing the larger point
i'm giving you the benefit of the doubt by replying to you politely, so i don't think i'm being rude here
well if it's telegraphed well then it's just a bad example but still a valid concept he's making (as evidenced by doto designers also considering it worth applying)
it depends on the game but that's a way of looking at design that was made with league in mind, not other games
the general idea of league is that for everything there should be interaction between players, nothing should be unilateral because that's lacking counterplay and feels bullshitty when done to you
it doesn't apply to every game, but in a game like league where you have so much control (no turn speed, low spell cooldowns, lots of mobility) it feels terrible to lose it, and it feels terrible to be beaten in a way you couldn't react to
so it makes a lot of sense for league, idea is that counterplay is king and that there are heavy tradeoffs for the less counterplay driven abilities in the game. if you add counterplay to everything this also makes taking action more risky which in turn makes the game more satisfying when you pull shit off
it doesn't always work out the way rito wants (or they don't quite know what they want) but it's a big part of what people enjoy about league
well it's a moba so it's never that simple
the idea is that the answer shouldn't just be "don't be in that position", so league provides other answers like:
- do you have flash and they don't?
- are you able to dodge their abilities?
- are you able to time your abilities to block off theirs?
- do you have backup that can help you out with teleport or a global ultimate or something like that?
- have you cleared your route to this situation from wards?
- etc.
i'm sure if you think about it doto shares many of these things too, because that's just simply good game design
i don't think the anti-fun stuff really relates to this whatsoever, but overall every multiplayer game that isn't idk quake is gonna be like that
strategy works around bursts, even in games like starcraft that are insanely demanding of individual minute-to-minute skill you build things and deploy things and it all blows up in smaller or bigger bursts, but that's just how strategy works
heck even in counterstrike it works like that, i'm not sure i get what you mean here
that's not lowering the skill ceiling, that's lowering the skill floor, which is already insanely high
remember these are still games with 100+ champions and hundreds of items, comps, strategies, timers, buffs, and whatnot to track of
i think we all generally tend to underestimate people
people are a lot more intelligent and driven than we give them credit for
they're also no fun at all
Hierophant
Banned
i spent like 600 hours of my life on that game
Hierophant
Banned
i know, i spent 400 on dota 2 so i wanna say i have at least 1000 hours in the genreThat's nothing tbh.
between the two i've actually found more assholes willing to int feed in dota
Gipsy Danger
Member
Really impressive numbers and great for the genre overall. I played around 1000 hours of LoL from 2010 to 2012 and switched to Dota after that. Had some good times with the game and occasionally go back to it for some ARAM games.
Nooo I love getting destroyed and being wiser after my misery. It motivates me more to research the stuff and learn the game for real. Good game design is your whole team not dieing by one OP character which is currently in the meta if you didn't have a good start - FOR ME.
But I also don't just start playing games but I inform myself about things beforehand so I rarely have this problem in not knowing what the fuck happend.
It's really simple and consists of these factors:
- it's free
- it works on toasters
- it has some great looking waifus and many of them in generall
- big pool of cool looking champions
- Levels, Farming for runes, farming shards for a hextec treasure box for a skin
- you have to buy champions if they are not in the free rotation, people play days and days and look forward to buy a new character
- people often play with friends together and...
- ...all these factors are like heroin and you are not alone with that
Also a game on average is not even 40 minutes long and there are also other play options for people that hate the normal league and would rather go for more action (ARAM).
QuantumSquid
Member
Mendrox brings up a great point - League is incredibly easy to run.
Dota 2 is much harder to run at an acceptable framerate than League is, and League does it while looking much better than Dota 2 does on lowered settings.
With League, you can play the game at your native resolution with some bells & whistles turned on and still get great framerates on older machines. With Dota 2, you have to run the game at a lower resolution, lower the render quality, disable animated portraits, and more just to get it to be smooth. By that point, the game looks really ugly.
Dota 2 is much harder to run at an acceptable framerate than League is, and League does it while looking much better than Dota 2 does on lowered settings.
With League, you can play the game at your native resolution with some bells & whistles turned on and still get great framerates on older machines. With Dota 2, you have to run the game at a lower resolution, lower the render quality, disable animated portraits, and more just to get it to be smooth. By that point, the game looks really ugly.
killatopak
Member
Oh believe me, dota has anti fun elements as well. It has before lol, it has now.
Like they said, it's more of counter play now which league has more on dota. If I have to say an ability that Riot is trying to put more emphasis on counter play right now that dota also has then it has to be invisibility.
There's this champ called Rengar where his ulti is he turns invisible for a few seconds. I omitted a few other effects but that's the main thing the ability does. He is an assassin so his burst is kinda through the roof and having an invisibility while having the potential to deal an absurd amount of damage in a single burst is kinda lacking in counter play especially if your squishy carries are targeted. They get killed in less than half a second. This is why Riot patched that champ and now it show an exclamation point ala metal gear on Rengar's opponent whenever he is in the vicinity while invisible. This allows the enemy to react and anticipate the Rengar's engage allowing for some flashy highlight saves from support or great predictions from carries. While this nerfs Rengar's engage, more intelligent engage is now anticipated on the Rengar's part allowing for all sorts of play.
Now I don't know if this still hold true cause I haven't played Dota in two years since I started LoL but the closest example I could compare with Rengar is Shadow Fiend using Lothars and using his ult directly on top of a hero. You don't get a warning, you get no counter play. By the time you see it, SF has already unleashed his load unto you. The only thing you could hope for is to survive the initial burst and somehow get away or stun lock him to death. There are a number of ways to find SF while he is invisible, like getting dust, or sentry wards. All of those are reactive and cannot allow for counter play unless you have them. Closest you could get of a preparation is looking at your own status bar and checking to see if you have SF's passive applied on you. The thing is, that shit is tiny and you have to constantly look at your own status bar aside from looking at the map a well. It adds an additional difficulty for playing on the side of SF's enemy. Switch SF with Luna Moon fang and you get the same effect. Even worse actually cause at least SF has that little delay where he can be seen and you can interrupt him between being invisible and finishing the cast time of his ult while Luna Moonfang has little to no cast time to react to. Not even an aura.
Now you may say that high elo or mmr players can react to SF and use sentries and dust or look at the status bar constantly as well, well no shit. High elo League players can do that as well. The problem is that it affects the larger population of the League which is the low elo. Riot constantly want to retain balance in competitive and casual so it's completely different with Dota's balance at the very high level so you don't get shit like Omniknight who has fucking 60+% win rate at lower mmr. That's more about the companies' goals tho.
Just siting some examples that I know of. TBF even after the fact that Rengar has this warning thing, he is still too fast to react to that's why Riot is reworking him in the future and possibly invisibility as a whole itself as well.
Except it's not shrinking and is actually growing. How long is your "it won't be long"?. If WoW is to be set as an example, although it will shrink, it is still fucking big. Bigger than any competitor even now.
D
Deleted member 77995
Unconfirmed Member
The SF example is kind of weak. You would just use sentries in lane or when pushing just like in league you use trinkets and sightstone to guard against a ganking mid or jungle. The buzzword for that is anticipation
Thanks for highlighting something. I've given up the idea that I can be knowledgeable of the intricacies of every game genre. I'll settle for nearly all, hehe. MOBAS simply really don't interest me. Same for rogue likes. Can't like em all, I know what they're about and generally how they work at least, but that's it. Game design is incredibly broad and there are things I'm more an expert on than other things. I'll look into anti fun. Your cheating example frankly isnt something new or particular to mobas though.
Holundrian
Unconfirmed Member
This absolutely false. The counterplay is sentries/dust and seriously unless you're that high up the bracket where people mindgame you on the mapgame it's rather trivial to keep check on enemy inventory and keep the item timings in the back of your mind(of course you need to adjust given how good a game the sf has).
Then when you see SF is missing around that timing you just drop a preemptive sentry especially when you're trying to take objective.
And once you killed that SF 1-2 he wasted 2.8k gold on an item that set him back that mostly is there to allow his ulti to shine which has a non insignificant cooldown, he becomes a liability to the enemy team. Honestly if you'd want an item to exploit the ulti Euls would be the far better choice.
killatopak
Member
how many people do that in low mmr? lol
Checking the enemy build is trivial now? Bullshit. Once you kill SF 2 times? But if you don't kill him two times? You're fucked?
Sure drop a preemptive sentry on all lanes. As if this happens.
i don't see what's stopping you from buying it if your teammates don't get sentries
at high mmr, people would know the sf is getting shadowblade from the item build up, obviously that's a hard thing to do in low mmr, so in those games sf would probably use his invis into ulti combo at least once
then your team would know he has shadowblade now and buy sentries for the upcoming fights
gamingPotato7
Member
Most players are chinese, around 90% https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3c35w1/did_you_know_90_of_lol_players_are_chinese/
Sure its impressive but why would anyone expect LoL to have mainstream appeal in the west? China is a whole other deal, they have enough people to make gigantic things like LoL or an app that does everything in your phone, Google Play isnt even a thing there and still they have their own app stores, their own social networking apps, etc. Anyway, good for Riot although the only thing that matters to me is that Dunkey stays away from it and continues to make videos of diverse games
Sure its impressive but why would anyone expect LoL to have mainstream appeal in the west? China is a whole other deal, they have enough people to make gigantic things like LoL or an app that does everything in your phone, Google Play isnt even a thing there and still they have their own app stores, their own social networking apps, etc. Anyway, good for Riot although the only thing that matters to me is that Dunkey stays away from it and continues to make videos of diverse games
killatopak
Member
Well for one, the only people who buy sentries are either those who lane against an invi enemy like sf, bounty hunter,rikimaru and supports and even supports don't exactly use it in their lane and use it to deward instead. People aren't exactly keen on buying sentries or just wards in general because that delays their purchases and gold in dota compared to LoL is much more valuable due to the gold you lose on death and other stuff.
In my experience, the laning phase lasts long enough that SF can either repeatedly kill his laner, roam the other two lanes and snowball off of that before the whole team can group and prepare for his kit. That's really frustrating and is exactly what is not welcome in LoL. TBF like I said, I haven't played in two years. I dunno if sentry wards cost less now or if there's no limit to the amount of wards and dusts available to be bought or if the cooldown for buying is less now but if it is then I could see why it would be easier to shut down an SF buying a Lothar's edge.
This is due to Tencent lol.Most players are chinese, around 90% https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3c35w1/did_you_know_90_of_lol_players_are_chinese/
Sure its impressive but why would anyone expect LoL to have mainstream appeal in the west? China is a whole other deal, they have enough people to make gigantic things like LoL or an app that does everything in your phone, Google Play isnt even a thing there and still they have their own app stores, their own social networking apps, etc. Anyway, good for Riot although the only thing that matters to me is that Dunkey stays away from it and continues to make videos of diverse games
Imagine if Google and Apple sponsored Dota officially.
valkillmore
Member
Have never played it and I have not even seen any footage of this game. I don't even know what it is
GhostWriter24
Member
You didn't? I mean, I assumed most gamers knew LoL was one of the most lucrative games of all time. It's insane.
They just built a gorgeous office building/arena in Santa Monica, CA. They have more money than God.
It's a DOTA-style 4v4 or 5v5 game in which you take out towers and try to destroy the other team's fort before they do.
valkillmore
Member
Thanks. Now, why are 100 million people playing it each month? That is a lot of people. Holy shit. It's addicting I suppose? Lol
killatopak
Member
MOBA or Dota-like games are pretty popular even a decade ago especially in Asia. Majority of those 100 million are Asians. I think the thing that makes LoL the most popular is that it's pretty easy to play the game while not being too hard. It strikes a balance while still leaving room for the super competitive players to thrive.
My reason is because of the waifus.
Heres Dota on its lowest settings. I had to play like this for two weeks when my GFX card died a while back
Those jaggies though
I can see the appeal of LoL but the fact that you have to buy champs really rubs me the wrong way. Dota is 100% F2P and the entire roster of 110+ heros are available from day 1.
Holundrian
Unconfirmed Member
Eh ok I guess I have to explain this.
You aren't fucked if you don't kill him 2 times, I mean just think about the nature of Shadowblade as an item on most heroes it's a high risk high reward item. Meaning to make it pay off you have to get kills with it.
If you can prevent kills that already is an advantage over the SF in itself since he doesn't farm faster with it and it makes his play predictable in a way since when the Sblade doesn't work he only has the jungle to fall back on which is a huge disadvantage since information in dota is insanely important.
As for trivial, it's trivial in the sense that it doesn't take any kind of high mechanical skill to do.
Like there is nothing fancy about clicking on enemy heroes showing on the map and watch their inventory for a second and checking the ingame timer regularly.
Everyone can condition themselves to do it really.The rest is about actively thinking about the game, and yeah sure I guess the majority of dota players in 3k and down don't really do that but that doesn't mean putting the effort in to do it is especially hard, since like I said it's just a matter of thinking instead of falling into the playing by instinct with no reason for anything routine that many fall into.
There are many other things that are actually quite demanding and far from trivial like perfecting Storm mana management, being insane with razes, etc etc but this isn't certainly one of them.
Besides that the point still stands. There is absolutely counterplay.
Just because people are too lazy to do it or somehow can't understand this(which seems highly unlikely really given how it's a very simple conclusion to make so just go with lazy) doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Also not sure what the preemptive sentry comment is about of course this happens those are like common plays like again nothing fancy about it. You spend 100 gold on either securing an objective that gives you more than that back or to secure a farm lead for your cores that is multiples of hundred golds. Like that's not insanely complex like playing the mapgame the right way depending on enemy lineup(when can you be in enemy jungle when do you have to hide/show yourself, etc).
DeadManWalking
Member
Lots of noobs not being able to play real moba AKA dota 2.. I guess not everyone can play with skill.
Played from 2010 to 2014 and have just recently gotten back into it. The game has come a long way and I still love it despite playing it for so long.
That said, nowadays I almost never interact with the community outside of the game. Most of it seems centered around esports and I have no interest in that stuff.
It's crazy looking back at matches from 2010 and seeing just how much the game has changed since then. Riot has done an outstanding job with their continued support for the game. I hope their next big project, the rumored fighting game, pans out. If it does come out and it's good then 99% of my gaming time will consist of LoL and the Riot fighter haha
That said, nowadays I almost never interact with the community outside of the game. Most of it seems centered around esports and I have no interest in that stuff.
It's crazy looking back at matches from 2010 and seeing just how much the game has changed since then. Riot has done an outstanding job with their continued support for the game. I hope their next big project, the rumored fighting game, pans out. If it does come out and it's good then 99% of my gaming time will consist of LoL and the Riot fighter haha