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Despite the title, this is NOT a blog intended to state which is the better game, but rather to compare and contrast my experiences with both. I'm a decently high level player in both games, 1900+ in HoN, 1800+ in LoL (take it for what you will), if that means anything to you when reading my opinions.
If you really want to know which game is better, it's + Show Spoiler + whichever game you have friends in
Next common point of discussion. Which game is more difficult? Which game is more competitive? I'll say it outright. Dota is more competitive, but more so because the game has been out for a long time with a ton of players who have a lot of experience and advanced mechanics. The concepts in LoL are easier to get a hold of, but does that all really matter? You'll always have people equal to your skill level to play with. I hear "LoL is so easy and for casuals" all the time from DotA players, yet they barely scraped 1500 ELO and/or have never played the game. I think it's just that mistakes are less glaring when you start out LoL, but they're still there and very obvious to the trained eye.
Which is more fun? They're both fun, just different.
Things I like about LoL -
4 out of 5 roles are expected to have good farm. All 4 of these roles will be impactful throughout the game, and it really turns into a team effort to win every game. Sure, your AD carry does the most damage, but you couldn't even manage to 1v2 in most games.
Items build faster, and you have more room in your inventory. Don't really care what dota purists have to say about this, but banking 5k gold for buybacks and/or your next item is not fun. Getting items is one of the most consistent satisfying feelings you'll get game to game, and LoL has a great pace at which you get them. If Dota was balanced around this type of method, I'd be all for it.
Easier to end games. Baron is much more important than Rosh. The buff lets you end games when you're ahead and push down towers very quickly. Would I want Rosh to be as important? No, it's just somewhat annoying when you can't really push into the enemy even if you're very far ahead and the game drags on.
Things I like about DotA -
The metagame. Each game can unfold so differently from the last, and team comps are much more varied and so are the objectives each team comp can have. This also leads to comebacks and urgency. Some teams are stronger in the late game, mid game, or early game. Some teams are also better in laning, team fights, or pushing, and you don't really know if you're gonna win or lose until the game unfolds far enough.
The early game. This could vary from person to person, but I love how your team is a team from the getgo. TP support, TP ganks, roaming from lane to lane, runes and ganks all make the game feel like you're not isolated. In LoL it's more like "your lane + jungle, vs their lane + jungle". Sometimes you'll feel pretty hopeless if your lane gets really far ahead of you, and a gank attempt can totally fail because they're so far ahead. You just have to weather it and hope your team comes out better in another lane.
Competitive scene. The games are much more exciting, and even LoL players I know agree heavily on this. There's less passivity, something is always going on such as pushing an objective or ganks, and there's a lot more back and forth action.
Some other notes -
LoL, and this is partly due to game design, has a lot more players who are stifled into specific roles. Knowledge of your lane and matchup (because you're isolated from your team for a long time) is one of the most important aspects to being good. Most heroes are only fit for one lane as well.
DotA is a bit different. You don't really know what heroes are gonna go into what lane, and even if they do, it's not guaranteed they'll stay there. Most people learn heroes over lanes, and have a greater repertoire of heroes. I know this might sound like just one person's isolated occurrences and experience, but it's pretty much true at all levels.
Trilaning in DotA is straight up stupid. To me, it just sounds silly. It's like mutually agreed destruction when both teams decide to trilane and then you'll have 1 person on each team get literally no farm while 1 person from each team gets free farm. Thankfully, jungling and roaming has made these type of games much more exciting than they originally were.
Issues regarding balance? I think both games are similarly balanced. There's useless heroes and OP heroes in both. I think the only difference is is that the balance in dota translates similarly between pub and competitive play while in LoL it doesn't (shaco and ryze come to mind).
Although I said competitive DotA was better, LoL streaming is much better. Sure, SingSing is fucking hilarious, but that's about it. There's a reason these guys get 10k+ viewers day after day, and they honestly deserve it. Streaming is somewhat new to dota, and I'm sure when the game is finally released people will get better at it.
As Demon would say - thoughts?
  
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Hi man nice write up, i also play hon and some LoL(alot of my friends play it). The thing that really gets on my nerves is the meta game in LoL, I find it so boring that the same heroes and strats are used every game basically. I hate the fact that their must be a jungler or its a auto lose. I think they need to stop making new characters and balance the game so that more people can go mid/top. And for the love of god the lack of denying makes me cry every game lol. t.t
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Agreed. Heroes every 2 weeks in LoL is way too fast right now. The excitement fades so quickly it's not even funny, and most of the heroes have had no impact competitively yet. Nautilisk and sejuani? Hell, I feel like those heroes were made back 7 months ago rather than within 2 months.
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LoL you have to buy heroes ;_;
so i'm stuck with the same heroes / can't just pick whoever i want based on who was ownage last game / copying builds
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In DotA I feel like the heroes are much better, and you aren't stuck in roles as much. You can almost be anything with any hero provided you put in the time to practise the builds in that particular way. Its also more solo oriented, you can carry a whole team on your back with one good player (in pubs at least). I feel this brings more uniqueness and spectacular moments.
However, I watched the dota 2 tournament last night and saw hour long games with none of the awesome moments I normally see in dota. Hopefully that will change, but at the moment it seems like there are certain things that need to be fixed, either change tournament rules to make the games progress faster or something. Maybe extra gold on kills? sounds blasphemous but right now there is simply too much farming and not enough action. It was just a disgusting turtle fest.
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LoL would be a fantastic game if it didnt have runes/masteries/summoner abilites and replaced those with a teleport scroll and fortify.
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I will agree that the thing that makes the games great is playing them with friends, and they're both great games in their own right. although I've outgrown LoL and moved to Dota, I was still a fanatical player at one time, and really loved the game. 2 things I want to point out about your post though....
Easier to end games. Baron is much more important than Rosh. The buff lets you end games when you're ahead and push down towers very quickly. Would I want Rosh to be as important? No, it's just somewhat annoying when you can't really push into the enemy even if you're very far ahead and the game drags on.
If you're at the point where your ahead so you can just go and get Baron and then finish the game, you could probably just face smash your way into the base no problem. This is a major problem in LoL for me. After the "laning phase" the game just revolves around 2 things... Teams stalemating around dragon, and teams stalemating around Baron.. Any competitive league game that isn't already extremely in favor of one team ends up with a 10 min stand around Baron phase, with one team constantly dewarding it from the bottom, and the other team just dropping wards in from the top, waiting for someone to engage... It's really boring.
Trilaning in DotA is straight up stupid. To me, it just sounds silly. It's like mutually agreed destruction when both teams decide to trilane and then you'll have 1 person on each team get literally no farm while 1 person from each team gets free farm. Thankfully, jungling and roaming has made these type of games much more exciting than they originally were.
Trilaning is a lot less common than it used to be, and when it is done its almost always a "pseudo" tri lane(i.e. dual long lane with an offensive jungler or dual short lane with a jungler in your own forest), Also you almost never see both teams tri-lane anymore, and especially not in the same lane.
Nice post though, good to see your insight.
Edit:
However, I watched the dota 2 tournament last night and saw hour long games with none of the awesome moments I normally see in dota. Hopefully that will change, but at the moment it seems like there are certain things that need to be fixed, either change tournament rules to make the games progress faster or something. Maybe extra gold on kills? sounds blasphemous but right now there is simply too much farming and not enough action. It was just a disgusting turtle fest.
If you're referring to the JoinDota Masters cup or w/e its called, I wouldn't judge everything by last nights games considering some of those teams don't really play Dota2 at all, and aren't used to the game(see DK vs Mith)
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Dota can have long farmfests in the midgame, while LoL has the stalemates at baron. Overall dota has more action, but you can definitely go long periods without anything being done when both teams don't really know who's ahead or if they're evenly matched into the late game. In league the stalemates typically end in like 5 minutes at least. I think teamfights in dota are easier to follow and look better because of important cds and such.
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I play LoL waaay more than I do DotA2 (or ever played DotA, even). I think LoL is fun and easy to get into, but I think DotA is the better game to go forward in esports. I'm not as great a player in either game as the OP is, but I find competitive DotA to be both much more interesting and exciting.
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Korea (South)1897 Posts
Very insightful post, I've only played dota and dota2 and downloaded LOL once, but just couldn't get into it and bought and played Hon, but since they made my favorite character into an Ant Queen (luna) I couldn't get into it either (although I've heard now it is free and you can buy a new skin for her), but very insightful, thanks.
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Noob goes to play Dota/2 - he will be told all the time to go play LoL... Then wonder why LoL gets the wider player base with better prospects for the future.
In essence, LoL is much much newer game, so it is more patient towards noobs, whereas people in Dota/2 have been with Dota for so long that they have lost patience for noobs long ago. I hope they don't end up just playing with themselves in a small never-growing bubble and sending all new people to LoL.
edit: I know it shouldn't matter, but the graphics of LoL just seem "incorrect" to me, because I've been so involved with the way Blizzard does them (now well followed by Valve). They have tall thin heroes that are showed too much from above rather than from aside, which looks so weird. In Dota/2 you see the hero much better, which I find quite important for spectating.
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I can't watch LoL for more than a few minutes whiteout getting bored as hell.
I can watch a Dota 2 tournament for hours.. Or at least a full series whiteout feeling any boredom.
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On March 26 2012 19:26 Velr wrote:
I can't watch LoL for more than a few minutes whiteout getting bored as hell.
I can watch a Dota 2 tournament for hours.. Or at least a full series whiteout feeling any boredom.
Do you play both? I've never played either, and purely as a spectator, I agree -- I got into Dota2 during the international and have been watching a lot lately; I tried watching LoL during IEM and couldn't get into it.
Part of it is just the layout of the screen. In Dota2, I can generally see the heroes' names and item names clearly enough to look stuff up on the Dota Wiki if I don't understand something. When I watched LoL, I couldn't see anything like that to help me start getting an idea of what was going on. Don't know if it was stream quality, layout, casting, or what, but I tried watching it, had the LoL wiki open, but just had no idea where to even start. To be fair, though, since it's free to play I imagine most people watching LoL tournaments have enough experience in the game to have an idea what's going on.
Also, Tobi.
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I played LoL for some time but way more Dota (and Dota 2 atm). So i'm a little biased... But when it comes to watching Dota 2 seems just to be several years ahead of LoL, there is actually something happening from the get go, not like LoL where there seems to be a "No Rush 15 minutes" rule in place ^^.
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On March 26 2012 19:21 figq wrote:
Noob goes to play Dota/2 - he will be told all the time to go play LoL... Then wonder why LoL gets the wider player base with better prospects for the future.
In essence, LoL is much much newer game, so it is more patient towards noobs, whereas people in Dota/2 have been with Dota for so long that they have lost patience for noobs long ago. I hope they don't end up just playing with themselves in a small never-growing bubble and sending all new people to LoL.
edit: I know it shouldn't matter, but the graphics of LoL just seem "incorrect" to me, because I've been so involved with the way Blizzard does them (now well followed by Valve). They have tall thin heroes that are showed too much from above rather than from aside, which looks so weird. In Dota/2 you see the hero much better, which I find quite important for spectating.
The matchmaking for dota2 just needs to be better. As long as you play against players of equal skill level, you're okay. LoL has a system where you have to get 30 levels to be able to finally play ranked so you're gonna be against noobs for a long ass time, but then you fuck over people who are actually good if you do that in dota. There's also the fact that it's a lot easier to get stomped in dota than it is in LoL by 1 good player/smurf.
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I just got the beta of Dota 2, and holy shit I can't believe I never played Dota before this it's pretty addicting, last game I found this addicting was BW. I had Warcraft 3 for years and all I played were Angel Arena and TD, all my friends played dota but I never got into it then.
In regards to LoL I could never get into it, which is a shame because I would like to experience what makes the game so popular. Maybe I'll try it again like I did with Dota in the future.
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I think the one misconception in regards to LoL is when people watch it they think it's really boring and wonder why people play it, but you need to realize that the competitive play and pub play are MUCH different. You'll always have a combined 40+ kills before the game ends, even at high levels.
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I can only talk from a limited playing experience, but here's my take on things (other note: admittedly I'm not that competitive of a player; I find most joy from playing with friends, but that may be due to the MOBA community I've been exposed to):
HoN - the one game I can't say much, I played one game and have never seen a competitive match. Admittedly the computer I was running it on was shit and the internet was laggy, but I still had no idea what was going on because I felt it was too 'flashy'.
LoL - I just started a couple of weeks ago, have about 20 or so games under my belt and I'm enjoying it when I have time. The matchmaking system does make it comfortable to play and get to know the game. I'll definitely keep playing it.
DotA - quite a few of my friends have DotA 2, but I've spent quite a few years playing DotA1 and it is a completely different beast from LoL. I don't know, but it's probably the Malaysian internet cafe experience that smothers my enjoyment of it somewhat. I mean, when I get together with enough friends to play 4v4, 5v5 for fun it is really, really fun and there's great memories there, but when I play pubs it's either a complete steamroll followed by leavers/ragers/maphack accusations etc. So far I've had a much better experience in that regard with LoL.
When it comes to watching... The first serious game of LoL I watched was the tournament run by OGN and I'm told that the teams are pretty crap compared to the top EU/NA teams, not like I could tell much except for which team is currently steamrolling. Maybe because of OGN and their production value though my initial viewing experience was quite positive. With DotA2, I watched the International with my friends, and didn't see anything until the JoinDotA tournament last night. THe one thing I can say is that DotA2 has a lot going for it in regards to visuals (compared to LoL), and probably because of better-developed meta-game things were much more interesting. Either that or I was busy laughing my ass off at hyhy AM semi-trolling and wondering with BurNing was up to with Viper.
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Lalalaland34490 Posts
Yeah I still have no idea wtf burning was doing lol
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EPT
