DoA's Post about SC2 vs LoL blah blah blah - Page 10

still love you doa, even if you're a sellout </3

Riot games has bought ipl, mlg, and iem into "exclusivity contracts" that say they are not allowed to feature any other games of the "moba genre". By riots definition (since they invented the term) this means Dota2. If i love dota2, which according to the people making arguments for LoL it should be our right to love whichever game we do, then this is really bad for me. The three biggest and best western esports organizers can't feature the game i love, because riot has more money and deems it necessary to employ such a shady business tactic that inargubaly serves only to make them more money at the expense of other games AKA esports as a whole. "yeah lol well its a business lol get over it". Ok, well if its just a business and we should all sabotage "esports" at every chance we get if it means helping our game get bigger, then why the fuck are you telling me not to bash lol and that i should band together to support all esports? There are numerous other examples of riot doing things like this, some of which have been mentioned in this thread. Riot Pendragon abruptly shut down DotA-allstars.com without warning. A site which had hours and hours of community discussion, guides, etc centered around DotA. Now every page of it redirects to an advertisement for pendragons new game, which is a free to play clone of DotA. LoL didn't have a fraction of even DotA's playerbase yet, but that alone was already enough for people who loved DotA to hate riot games. As someone else pointed out in this thread, think if nazgul without warning tommorow made every page of teamliquid redirect to an ad for his new game, a ripoff of sc2. Without warning, all your guides and resources and discussion down the toilet, for his profit. Awhile after this, riot tried to claim that they owned DotA. A number of people who uploaded wc3 DotA content to youtube were warned by youtube to take it down, because Riot Games Inc had claimed copyright. Morello and Zileas like to post on their forums bashing DotA's design in a completely matter-of-fact tone, explaining why their game is better (aka easier aka "more fun"). The reasons we have to hate riot games go on and on and on.

LoL and DotA(2) are very different games. One of them came first, the other one copied and heavily modified it using a design philosophy that has been admitted to be aimed at the most massive audience possible (anti-fun, burden of knowledge, etc) ie, the lowest common denominator. As a game, this is a logical business practice especially for a minimum system requirements free game. For a spectator (e)sport this is counter intuitive. A fundamental ingredient in creating an exciting viewer experience for highly competitive sports is the distance between the average players ability and the elite professional players ability. The "wow holy shit i could never do that that's amazing" moments during spectating, as hotbid called it in an interview. However, it's also important for your game as a spectator sport to have this be readable. It needs to be demonstrable by the players during the match in an intuitive and readable way that they are much better then you, in order to have that "wow" moment and for you to admire those players. In dota's terms, they need to be able to make "big plays". LoL progamers are better then the majority audience of the game, however, LoL's design philosophies (the same ones that have made that audience so big) prevent it from being regularly made clear how much better they are during professional matches. This leads to the game being a bad spectator sport (relatively) but a good game (for the people who are into that kind of thing, people often dubbed "casuals" etc). Their can't be ONE best player in the world, their cant even be one player who can make a significant impact on the game through only his own skill (except in a few cases). This is because of the way the game is designed, the kind of player that riot wants, DOESN'T want one player during his match to be able to walk all over him by being better, because being worse then someone ISN'T FUN. Are you starting to see why trying to design a game with everyone having the most fun possible all the time doesn't lend itself well to it also being a competitive spectator sport?

Lets look at annies ultimate, Tibbers. Tibbers is one of many semiports of a dota ability, in this case warlocks ultimate, Chaotic Offering. Both of these ultimates summon a temporary extra unit under the players control after a short cast time. On arrival in a small radius there is a stun affect. After the initial cast and stun, the unit remains alive until killed for a short period of time and can be controlled independently from the players primary hero or champion.
In LoL, multiple unit control is nearly non existent. Therefore the game doesn't stress micro, multitasking etc, things rts fans recognize as very high skillcap mechanical devices. Annie's ultimate can only be controlled by holding down a modifier key (default ALT) and clicking locations for it to move and attack while holding down this key. LoL doesn't use the tried tested and proven rts mechanics such as mouse boxing and control groups. Annies ultimate cant move too far away from her without being teleported back. The multitasking potential here is strangled to near non existence. at least 80% of the power of the spell is in the initial damage and stun during tibber's arrival, its basically just a novelty that she summons an external unit at all. DotA was built in the warcraft 3 engine, so you can assign control groups and select different units by making boxes with the mouse. Warlock can use his golem to walk in front of enemies and spam stop, blocking their path and slowing them down (all the while also controlling his main hero) as in this example with another multiple unit control hero, Chen he can split himself and the golem to farm multiple locations, requiring him to last hit at two different locations on the map, etc etc.

(if you are such a fanboy that you dont believe the kind of difference between the two games I have just demonstrated translates into a mechanical skillcap disparity between the two games, just stop reading here, you are hopeless).

Really? Can you list a single difference between the two games that contributes to LoL even possibly having a higher skillcap then dota? Everything LoL has that dota doesn't is there for the convenience, for the simplicity, for the ease of use and overall fun gameplay for the casual player. Everything DotA has that LoL doesnt was removed because it was too hard (either to understand, to use, etc). Riot designs its game towards people that think abilities like bloodseekers rupture are too difficult to understand, as admitted by zileas.
No. The reason the game is so popular is because its aimed at a mass (casual) audience that doesn't want to be confronted with champions equivalent to meepo or chen that the majority of the playerbase just downright wont be able to play without tons of hours of practice or extensive rts background. Its an audience that just wants to sit down and have a good time with friends playing a free game, not one that wants to come together on a site like teamliquid and discuss the best ways to work hard for hundreds of hours mastering the game, or how amazing x player's control is..