Was he banned? Also, I'd still think winrate in pub games is more important to the majority of the Dota playerbase.
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So why does League of Legends still have a larger playerbase than Dota 2?
- Thread starter ScOULaris
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Was he banned? Also, I'd still think winrate in pub games is more important to the majority of the Dota playerbase.
All you people saying Dota 2 is based around competitive players - this is a problem too.
90% of the playerbase do not care about that. They want have fun and if they can not have fun, because let's say easy to use items get patched out or something like that... that just kills fun for non competitive players.
90% of the playerbase do not care about that. They want have fun and if they can not have fun, because let's say easy to use items get patched out or something like that... that just kills fun for non competitive players.
Holundrian
Unconfirmed Member
Nope he is not a popular pick.
I can't speak for the 13 million other players but from any place where players that care enough to write something on dota I get the general feeling that most people out of that group are pretty happy with the focus on competitive.
Pub winrates/Favor of the months are just too whimsical to reactionary nerf/buff them and I don't think many like the idea to balance around lower brackets. Speaking for myself I'm very happy about them balancing for competitive the highest level.
It means that I can always improve myself and strife for more, as long as there are not clear heroes in competitive that are overwhelmingly better, it gives me the feeling that anything that might feel lopsided in pubs I can make for with playing better or even finding something out for myself.
Like Bounty Hunter support that's a hero I've been abusing for over a year and I'm sitting at around 70% pub winrate in about a 100 games with the guy. There are almost no matchups I feel like balance makes it impossible for me to win, actually I feel so comfortable on the hero that any of those stats are kind of meaningless(his overall winrate is currently 47% over all brackets which I find mind boggling).
Srsly people need to get away from better/worse. Dota is a game with an entirely different philosophy on design and unlike Riot seems to make people want to believe that there is this design book of good design everyone should adhere to, I'd wish people would just be happy about games having so much range and can speak to many different people.
Cause what I can tell you under the Riot book of good design I feel like many games that I dearly love wouldn't exist, Souls Series, Metroidvanias, Spelunky, etc etc(given that many of those put the burden of knowledge on the player)
Certain characters are good for when you solo play, versus a fixed comp.
Priapus10101
Member
I could think of a few reasons:
Head start (by a few years)
Streamlined mechanics
Superior and more widespread advertising (Riot employs over 1000 people for advertising)
Player time / money investment too great to switch over
League will forever remain the more popular game (by a large margin), however, Dota 2 will continue to be an immensely popular game thanks to the help of Icefrog (Dota 2 lead) and Valve. I personally prefer Dota2 and will continue playing it for many years to come. Once you get over that initial hurdle in Dota2, no other game can compare, at least that is what I have found.
Head start (by a few years)
Streamlined mechanics
Superior and more widespread advertising (Riot employs over 1000 people for advertising)
Player time / money investment too great to switch over
League will forever remain the more popular game (by a large margin), however, Dota 2 will continue to be an immensely popular game thanks to the help of Icefrog (Dota 2 lead) and Valve. I personally prefer Dota2 and will continue playing it for many years to come. Once you get over that initial hurdle in Dota2, no other game can compare, at least that is what I have found.
And yet the current patch is the most fun the game has ever been for regular people. Patch out easy to use items? huh
SirPinkyNose
Member
Nope. The only hero banned from Captain mode is Arc Warden.
I think he means banned in the last major. No he wasn't banned.
Arc Warden is the only hero in the game that's not available for pro play.
A chinese newb team picked Omniknight mid against Wings' Ember Spirit mid and completely fucking dominated in the laning phase. That wasn't for Manila major though, it was some other tournament - but it was during the same patch as Manila.
Pretty sure the low winrate hero you quote there is Io, who is extremely strong and has been first ban material for years... IF they have a player that is renowned for playing it. It's an extremely difficult hero to play but also requires a team that knows how to play with it.
You will never get that in the majority of pub games and so the hero looks unbalanced the way you have set your comparison up.
This is just one example, there are more all over the roster that further show how pointless that comparison was.
They are only bad or good because the majority of Dota players are fucking awful and will never play them well/buy or pick counters.
Dreams-Visions
Member
Show me that Challenger rank.
LoL isn't easy. Like most decent multiplayer competitive games, it's easy to understand and nearly impossible to master. More importantly, you have to be better at it than the other million people to be "good".
Neither LoL nor Dota2 are easy to be great at.
Omniknight is garbage and is rendered useless by a midgame item. He only has such a high pub winrate because pubs have the #RefusalToBuyDiffusal. I will buy it on almost any hero to beat him if no one else on my team is.
That's a major reason he hasn't been picked, as well as having a terrible lane presence.
SirPinkyNose
Member
Omniknight is an incredibly strong laner against melee.
He however fall off late game when people start building Diffusal blade to counter him and his Purification damage no longer a threat. Giving him farm is generally not a good idea.
Phoenix does everything he does but better anyway.
SirPinkyNose
Member
i started off in dota2, then switched lol for a few months (even spent money on it), then went back to dota2... i hated the hero rotation system... i.e. getting rekt by some hero you cant even try to learn cos u gotta wait for the rotation to try them... while id like some new heroes in dota as its been awhile, theres incentive for riot to make more... cos you have to fucking buy them if you want to use them when you want
lol is 1 dimensional in so many ways... and it looks like ass
dota = battlefield
lol = cod
lol is 1 dimensional in so many ways... and it looks like ass
dota = battlefield
lol = cod
I have put about 250 hours into Dota 2 and 1000 hours into LoL. I will say that Dota 2 is the more strategic game with a lot more mechanical depth but I still prefer lol because of the character designs and the game being more enjoyable overall. I think the main reason is the abilities in lol being more spam-able even if they are less impactful.
As for character designs, lol has some really shitty ones but it also has some really good ones like Rengar, Azir, Jax, Vi, Vayne and Riven to name a few. Dota 2 characters are overall more consistent but none of them really stood out to me with the exception of Templar and Juggernaut.
As for character designs, lol has some really shitty ones but it also has some really good ones like Rengar, Azir, Jax, Vi, Vayne and Riven to name a few. Dota 2 characters are overall more consistent but none of them really stood out to me with the exception of Templar and Juggernaut.
Dota forces a burden of knowledge on the player in a way that LoL never will
Pulling, stacking, creep aggro, rune control, denying + last hitting
These are all things that require hundreds of hours to understand
League is way less complicated as a whole, and that counts a lot imo.
Pulling, stacking, creep aggro, rune control, denying + last hitting
These are all things that require hundreds of hours to understand
League is way less complicated as a whole, and that counts a lot imo.
If you can point out when this has been a problem in Dota's history, I'll consider it an issue.
I prefer the overall gameplay and balance in League than Dota 2. Slower but more action packed fights, the weaker towers so they are more easily destroyed, the wide variety of heroes who's been lately seeing some really interesting gameplay developments.
I will say though, if League only had the same business model with all heroes being free and cosmetics being sold, it would be freaking awesome. As of now the heroes are a bit nickel and diming of players, extremely expensive and tedious to grind.
I will say though, if League only had the same business model with all heroes being free and cosmetics being sold, it would be freaking awesome. As of now the heroes are a bit nickel and diming of players, extremely expensive and tedious to grind.
Dota's playerbase absolutely does, even if they do not watch pro matches often. Builds often come from pro level, strategies too, and pub players even come up with their own. When you get into those 50+ minute games, everyone is generally playing on a competitive level.
Doesn't LoL do last hitting too?
SecretMoblin
Member
Ya and there are tons of things that are burdens on the player in League too... trying to describe jungle monster buffs or active spell abilities to a brand new player can be a nightmare. It's part of the genre, but undeniably DotA has wayyyyyyy more crap that simply requires out-of-game research like purges/dispels/immunity/damage types/armor types/spell interactions/etc. -- even the list of interactions and exceptions in a single ability's tooltip can be paragraphs long.
League is far less obnoxious in that regard, and it definitely helps for those who don't want to have a wiki front and center in their bookmarks bar
bananabread
Member
I've played both pretty extensively. While I personally prefer Dota2 it's not hard to understand why more people play LoL.
- It's mechanically simpler and feels more responsive
- You're less likely to end up in a situation where your character can't act in the early game (due to mana costs and cooldowns being smaller)
- You can surrender if things are going badly
- Better marketing to the masses, through community engagement and relatable/desirable characters
Playing LoL can be an entertaining way to spend 40 minutes working as a team with your buddies and have fun actively aiming and dodging skillshots. It doesn't require too much commitment and deep strategic thinking and most games fall into a pretty predictable pattern, but the smooth control over your character and fast reactions required in fights can make for some exciting and rewarding gameplay.
In comparison, DotA is this huge commitment where you're looking at spending 40-70 minutes engaged in an epic tug of war where at any given point you have something like 30+ seemingly viable options and you have to choose what to do. Every game of DotA feels like it has it's own narrative and leaves you thinking about it afterward, pondering what decisions you could have made differently. I've rarely felt that way about League. It's a pretty intense experience and you have to have a certain sort of mindset and level of commitment to want to play it regularly, so it's very intimidating for new players.
- It's mechanically simpler and feels more responsive
- You're less likely to end up in a situation where your character can't act in the early game (due to mana costs and cooldowns being smaller)
- You can surrender if things are going badly
- Better marketing to the masses, through community engagement and relatable/desirable characters
Playing LoL can be an entertaining way to spend 40 minutes working as a team with your buddies and have fun actively aiming and dodging skillshots. It doesn't require too much commitment and deep strategic thinking and most games fall into a pretty predictable pattern, but the smooth control over your character and fast reactions required in fights can make for some exciting and rewarding gameplay.
In comparison, DotA is this huge commitment where you're looking at spending 40-70 minutes engaged in an epic tug of war where at any given point you have something like 30+ seemingly viable options and you have to choose what to do. Every game of DotA feels like it has it's own narrative and leaves you thinking about it afterward, pondering what decisions you could have made differently. I've rarely felt that way about League. It's a pretty intense experience and you have to have a certain sort of mindset and level of commitment to want to play it regularly, so it's very intimidating for new players.
zombieshavebrains
I have not used cocaine
BKB grants magic immunity except for this list of X spells which go through BKB and then this list of X spells that it blocks the damage but X still goes through.
Some people get bent out of shape about stuff like that. At the end of the day who cares? Learn from your mistakes and play the game.
Saying these things take hundreds of hours to understand is a gross exaggeration. I think it's more accurate to say that most players have only grasped these mechanics by the time they've played hundreds of hours, because they don't need to know about them in lower level games when they're still learning more important things.
I feel like anyone who has anything to say about league but either never played it or played it exclusively during season 1 and season 2 bring no relevant view point or opinion to the table regarding league as it is nearly an entirely different game now.
Edit: as to the "mechanically more difficult" argument. This might hold true if you're some bronze shitter in league, but the instant you start playing against people who know the literal numbers craft of their champions, things get insanely mechanically difficult to play against. And this isn't artificial increased difficulty (turn time), it's pure pvp difficulty in decision making and twitch reaction time
Edit: as to the "mechanically more difficult" argument. This might hold true if you're some bronze shitter in league, but the instant you start playing against people who know the literal numbers craft of their champions, things get insanely mechanically difficult to play against. And this isn't artificial increased difficulty (turn time), it's pure pvp difficulty in decision making and twitch reaction time
SirPinkyNose
Member
Turn time is artificial difficulty now?
Well I guess Batrider is a hero who put artificial difficulty onto his enemies instead of making it hard for them to retreat of juke.
And games are about about the numbers. Big deal. The difference is Dota 2 gives you way more number to manage, and it's counter system actually requires the player to plan ahead of time during draft and adjust their item build to fit the situation.
Well I guess Batrider is a hero who put artificial difficulty onto his enemies instead of making it hard for them to retreat of juke.
And games are about about the numbers. Big deal. The difference is Dota 2 gives you way more number to manage, and it's counter system actually requires the player to plan ahead of time during draft and adjust their item build to fit the situation.
League does all of this too, without archaic game mechanics that act as a barrier of entry.
I generally dont play either anymore except for an occasional Howling Abyss match on LOL.
Feel like you basically pick an MMO and accidently get into it and the sunk cost of learning keeps you from moving to other ones. This is what makes HOTS kinda appealing because they remove the item learning curve somewhat which is a huge part of DOTA moreso than LOL even.
Feel like you basically pick an MMO and accidently get into it and the sunk cost of learning keeps you from moving to other ones. This is what makes HOTS kinda appealing because they remove the item learning curve somewhat which is a huge part of DOTA moreso than LOL even.
Now we are throwing the term "artificial difficulty" around?
The same thing goes for Dota with being out of the 1-2k MMRs. Dota is still more mechanically difficult. There are lots of numbers to know, what levels you need in what skills. There are a handful of heroes where it is actually advisable to not take your ultimate at level 6, and some of those to just leave one point in for a while. Some heroes particularly benefit from leveling stats early instead of additional skill levels. An example of this is Anti-Mage, where you should get one point in each skill by level 3, take stats for 4 and 5, and get ult at 6 and level skills from there. This is because stats provide more survivability, mana for blinking, and going from 0 to level 1 of your passives is a huge jump and all you really need in the early game.
On top of that you have to choose items carefully. You might have heard about BKB being the bread and butter of Dota, but it isn't a catch all, and even has become less so over time. More options to itemize against heroes are available.
Skills in general are more complex in Dota. Some skills can actually hinder teammates if used incorrectly. Some require a lot more thought and forward thinking, such as Ancient Apparition's Ice Blast, which you want to cast far away and takes a good amount of time to cast, but landing a good one can be game changing.
SirPinkyNose
Member
Archaic mechanics like what?
Like how turn rate actually taken into balance for heroes like Batrider, Shadowfield, Slark or Phoenix? Or trees being used to obscure vision? Or high ground giving you multiple advantages which force you to think before choosing place for engagement?
Dota 2's mechanics are utilized fully by experience players. They are not barrier of entry, but actually a progression system where people slowly learn and master.
And League can barely scratch the depth of Dota 2 even without deny, turn rate or secretshop. Dota 2's hero and item design allow you to actually counter you opponent to their core.
League of Legends has a lot more waifus then Dota 2 (especially when it comes to strong female tanks). Dota 2 only has 1 female tank waifu (Legion). Beyond that, Dota 2 obviously has way more features and is a game I'd love to spend more time with. Atm, been busy with Overwatch/DS3 but I definitely have dota in my queue. I love Dota's mods
I find it kind of funny that you'd single out turn rates as archaic game mechanics when LoL had a very notable time period where melee AD carries were unviable due to how broken kiting was - something that would never happen if league had turn rates.
Most things in DOTA are there for a reason, otherwise they would have been taken out a long time ago.
Gully State
Member
LOL came before DOTA2 as a properly packaged game to reach the masses
LOL actually has a huge arm in its company that markets the game ( I remember reading that the most of Riot's staff is marketing compared to the small DOTA 2 team at Valve)
Tencent gives them preferential treatment and access in China. Valve tried to rely on word of mouth
Riot marketed the game aggressively in South Korea and South America. Again, Valve fucked up royally in SK. They really should've pushed it harder than just partnering with Nexon.
MOBA's in general are time commitments. The genre just doesn't lend itself to sampling.
Those are the only real reasons. The other stuff (art design, names of characters-wtf... mechanics differences, etc.. etc...) are just fanboy wanking about which game is subjectively better. Personally I'm content with the fact that both games exist and thrive in different ways.
LOL actually has a huge arm in its company that markets the game ( I remember reading that the most of Riot's staff is marketing compared to the small DOTA 2 team at Valve)
Tencent gives them preferential treatment and access in China. Valve tried to rely on word of mouth
Riot marketed the game aggressively in South Korea and South America. Again, Valve fucked up royally in SK. They really should've pushed it harder than just partnering with Nexon.
MOBA's in general are time commitments. The genre just doesn't lend itself to sampling.
Those are the only real reasons. The other stuff (art design, names of characters-wtf... mechanics differences, etc.. etc...) are just fanboy wanking about which game is subjectively better. Personally I'm content with the fact that both games exist and thrive in different ways.
D
Deleted member 77995
Unconfirmed Member
Dota has loads of anti-fun game mechanics in it like mana burn, denying minions, losing gold upon death, etc.
The better game has the bigger playerbase, simple as that.
The better game has the bigger playerbase, simple as that.
This is probably the best response to my OP that I've come across in this thread.
LordRaptor
Member
I don't know why I thought on page 1 it would be possible to have this not become the usual DOTA2 versus LOL argument, without the usual blanket statements thrown by each side by people with barely any time spent playing the other game.
Yeah, as someone who's spent quite a lot of time with both and actually enjoyed both of them it's really sad people would rather just throw out completely untrue statements instead of, you know, playing the other game.
Who knows, maybe they'd actually had fun if they did that. I know I did.
There is no such thing as a melee ad carry. That's more season 1 and preseason 1 talk demonstrating that most people who are posting here in favor of dota have no experience with league in the last 4plus years to actually answer the question of the thread without trying to make themselves feel superior about their [less popular] game of choice.
In reality, riot made changes to the game in very specific ways to not only make melee champions viable, but stronger than most adcs in the early and mid portion of the game as it should be. This was from buffs, champion updates, new items, new in game obtainable buffs, etc. League doesn't need a dumb limiter mechanic when riot decides to actually update the core elements of their game every year.
What is your definition of "anti-fun"? That term has never made and sense. Every single one of those mechanics make perfect sense. Gold loss on death is a negative result of dying, which should have negative results. Denying has been talked to death in this thread, so I don't need to explain it again. Mana burn is a part of a few heroes's skills. It's something you have to learn to counter (hint: none of them go through Spell Immunity).
D
Deleted member 77995
Unconfirmed Member
Jesus let me meme
old manatee
Banned
You are, of course, missing my point. I simply wanted to show that turn rates actually have a point instead of being only "artificial difficulty" - they are there to make kiting harder and absolutely prevent silly situations where melee heroes/champions just get out-kited in every situation.
Like you said, riot had to make very specific changes in order to fix this inherent problem that could never have happened had turn rates existed. Whether you think that is a good thing or not is up to you of course, but turn rates are far from dumb.
EDIT: you realize you're doing the exact same thing you're angry at other people about, right? From the other side of the board, of course.
...I didn't recognize your avatar change and just realized who you are. My bad, lol.
LordRaptor
Member
Anti-fun is a very solid design concept; its where if you have an equation of "global fun", the 'fun' one side of the equation is having is so fucking unfun for the other side that the overall game loses the quality of being fun.
Being spawn camped is an example of anti-fun.
The spawn camper gets to have fun with their ridiculous K
ratio, meanwhile the rest of the team are waiting to play the game properly, and the entire enemy team just quits playing the goddamn game entirely.
Being spawn camped is an example of anti-fun.
The spawn camper gets to have fun with their ridiculous K
ratio, meanwhile the rest of the team are waiting to play the game properly, and the entire enemy team just quits playing the goddamn game entirely.Aurean_Mentat
Member
The main reason why League is more popular than DOTA 2 (IMO) is:
When they went to make League, they took a look at DoTA (and talked to some of the devs for DoTA Allstars now working for Riot) and took a comprehensive look at the various parts of DoTA. They kept some parts, but threw out other ones that didn't make sense to them, or made had a less efficient complexity / depth ratio. They seemed very aware at the beginning that complexity was a currency you use to 'buy' depth, and wanted to be as efficient as possible.
DOTA 2 just feels like they took DoTA, and copied it wholesale while updating the graphics engine. At no point (that I am aware of) did they ever stop to question, like league did, if a certain part of DoTA made sense or needed updating. Their attitude throughout seemed to be 'if it was in the original DoTA, then it needs to be in DoTA 2'. That's not a bad thing, but anyone who didn't like the original DoTA won't have that many reasons to like DoTA 2, since they feel in many respects like the same game. There are some parts of the original DoTA that I feel have a very low complexity / depth ratio, and other parts that just aren't fun (like denying). Those are my opinions, but I think it's fair to say that I'm not alone in having them either (just look at League vs DOTA 2 playerbase numbers)
League did enough different to where it felt like an evolution to the formula, and because of that attention to the complexity/depth ratio, it didn't seem like such a daunting task for new players to get into the game.
When they went to make League, they took a look at DoTA (and talked to some of the devs for DoTA Allstars now working for Riot) and took a comprehensive look at the various parts of DoTA. They kept some parts, but threw out other ones that didn't make sense to them, or made had a less efficient complexity / depth ratio. They seemed very aware at the beginning that complexity was a currency you use to 'buy' depth, and wanted to be as efficient as possible.
DOTA 2 just feels like they took DoTA, and copied it wholesale while updating the graphics engine. At no point (that I am aware of) did they ever stop to question, like league did, if a certain part of DoTA made sense or needed updating. Their attitude throughout seemed to be 'if it was in the original DoTA, then it needs to be in DoTA 2'. That's not a bad thing, but anyone who didn't like the original DoTA won't have that many reasons to like DoTA 2, since they feel in many respects like the same game. There are some parts of the original DoTA that I feel have a very low complexity / depth ratio, and other parts that just aren't fun (like denying). Those are my opinions, but I think it's fair to say that I'm not alone in having them either (just look at League vs DOTA 2 playerbase numbers)
League did enough different to where it felt like an evolution to the formula, and because of that attention to the complexity/depth ratio, it didn't seem like such a daunting task for new players to get into the game.
Gully State
Member
Nope it's mainly being first to the market and being marketed better. Let's not get into this fanwank about which one is subjectively better because DOTA 2 has its benefits in accessibility over LOL and it has gone through many many different changes over the years to the point that it's a different game if you stopped playing for a year.
Purple Cheeto
Member
What is interesting to me, anecdotally, is the number of female League players I've met versus the number of female DotA2 players I've met. For all the talk of Waifus and skimpy outfits, I've met a ridiculously larger number of women who actually play (and all of them were way the fuck better than I am) League than play DotA2.
I don't have any real insight on why that is, and again it is anecdotal.
I don't have any real insight on why that is, and again it is anecdotal.
If by 'install the mod' you mean 'go online and browse the custom games'
We're not talking about having to visit nexusmods or anything crazy, this shit is built into the war3 custom game system, you just click any of the popular rooms and the map downloads itself.
Anyone that played war3 online AT ALL was exposed to this stuff.