here's my take on lol, and i say this everytime i go into a lol related thread. former lol player, still love the game to death.
Also this was my opinion from like 2-3 months ago, not sure if it's still valid.
A little introduction about my past dota background
In 2009 LoL was seen as a dying game. HoN was going to crush it. It was seen as a cartoonish mockery of the real game. No denies and casual were the main complaints, and as a former DotA player during 2009 I was mocking it too. Free to play and microtransfers? Seemed like shit to me. Anyways during early 2010 I was at this internet cafe and LoL was on it. HoN was down, there was no DotA. Me and my friend tried LoL for shits and giggles, but it was kind of fun. Every since then I played it almost religiously.
The reason why it's got a huge playerbase is the same reason why I started playing, it's addictive as fuck. Here are some reasons why it's got a huge playerbase. I just want to emphasize how important playerbase is. If you have a ton of players, esports comes easier the game is more successful etc. The games success is based on the players, and the players dictate the competitive scene.
1. The learning curve was SO MUCH easier then DotA. You went to pub games learned the hard way and get cursed at for 30 straight games in DotA, you didn't learn efficiently. LoL changed that by introducing matchmaking which started at such a low level. You played people the same level as you. This was such a huge improvement, in DotA you only got into the game by friends introducing you and teaching you.
2. Design philosophy. You can read a lot of posts by Zileas, they emphasize the forgiving and fighting features of the game. In DotA you lose in lane you're down 400 gold, in LoL you die you don't lose gold. In DotA you get less gold for kills, LoL you get way more. The design philosophy of LoL is that dying in dota creates negative fun, killing creates some fun. I emphasize some fun because you don't feel as good making people lose gold, you feel better when you get gold and see your own progression. So in low levels of LoL where people constantly kill eachother and die, they can only see progression.
A BIG BIG one is mana management. It's tedious thinking to yourself "i only have 2 fissures left". In LoL they nerfed all the mana costs and you can have mana regen runes giving yourself a TON of mana early. This allows players to be less meticulous.
There are many more examples, but I'm going to focus on hero design. The heroes are designed to be so much more well rounded and more full then their DotA counterparts. Look at a hero like Tristana. There is no way in hell you're getting that into DotA. A blink, a damaging nuke, attack speed increase, massive range. This kind of follows the broodwar design of make everything fucking imbalanced and don't look back (swarm/storm)
3. It's free. You got an addictive game design, you got an early learning curve and you've got a pretty good designed game. And it's the DotA genre(some call it MOBA) which has proven to be a good genre. Obviously it's going to be somewhat successful.
Some people criticize the game for having microtransfers, well to be honest it doesn't make that big of a difference. You don't need to buy every hero in the game. You can also earn the heroes through playing. It's actually so much less of an impact on the game then you would think. It's like 95% skill, 5 % runes/heroes and at the same time you can spend a ton of money on the game and feel satisfied. I really want to emphasize how little buying riot points actually improves your game play, but at the same time it creates more fun. It's a win win situation
Now that's how LoL got popular. The problem with LoL is that it was never meant to be played at a high level. Games like fighting games/sc2/sc1 were balanced at the high level, LoL can't do that. Somewhere like 20% of fighting game players are hardcore, maybe 5% of sc2 players and 40% of broodwar players. These are made up numbers, but it's somewhat accurate. In LoL like 50% of players are hella bad. The hella bad players in LoL can't improve either. Improving in DotA genres is a different topic lol.
Anyways LoL is a great game for playing. For esports there is a big problem. It's incredibly hard to cater to both populations, the hardcore and the bad. In WoW they had to completely divide PVP and PVE in order to balance it. There were so many problems in WoW for PVP, for example ret pallies were tearing shit up in wotlk. They were the ultimate dueling character, battleground character, BUT they were never super overpowered in arena. Blizzard nerfed ret to the ground. Obviously ret pallies were mad. For example in high level play twitch was way less intimidating then in mid level player where wards and oracles aren't bought. They still nerfed the bejeesus outa him. I guess what I'm trying to say is balancing is hard, it's hard when you balance to one group of people, it's hard to balance 3 races, and it's hella fucking hard to balance 70 heroes.
Also there is another problem with LoL esports, how boring it is. I want to end off my rant/essay whatever because it's getting fucking long, so i'll make it short.
heroes getting ton of gold from kills -> the game becomes a snowball effect at high levels.
getting fed is a bad problem at high levels because a good player will keep the advantage
objectives that are supposed to create battle and excitement (dragon/baron) cause the game to snowball in victors favour.
wards are too strong, counterwarding is harder
losing map control leads to massive repercussions
once you're down that hard you rely on opponent to fuck up
all this is a non factor at low levels because they can't manipulate the game well enough.
oh and i gotta put in how riot didn't have replays and observers for about 2 years up here somewhere, disregard for esports until recently
Thanks for reading, in conclusion I love the game to death but it's got some problems when it comes to esports.
On July 27 2011 03:41 LoLAdriankat wrote: I play the shit out of League of Legends and I think it's a fun game (with friends), but I think Riot does a lot of things that make them the laughing stock of the esports community. When they finally add replay viewing and spectator mode, the growth of the game and it's competitive scene will increase. A bunch of new casters will arise and we (hopefully) don't have to deal with the terrible casters we currently have.
It'll take a lot more than just replay viewing and better casters to make LoL and other MOBA games more appealing to the pure spectator.
To enjoy the game you need to understand what's going on. The sheer amount of items and champions makes for a very difficult viewing experience if you don't know what the items and champions are capable of, and there's only so much a caster can do.
All of this can be overcome, but it'll take time and commitment from Riot.
Honestly, I think Starcraft is harder to understand. New players don't even understand the benefits of expanding and constant worker production, and they actually play the game. Unless the game in a early rush, someone with not experience whatsoever playing an RTS will probally not understand it at all. Have you seen those videos were they are trying to teach someone and they don't even know how to mine minerals?
They don't need to understand how each item or hero works, noone with zero experience will understand things like that about any game. You won't know the moves of a figthing game either, even if they are lot fewer than the items on a MOBA. An FPS is probally the only genre I can think off where someone clueless about the game can ussually see what the weapons do very easily. As long it's not a weird futuristic game.
The problem with MOBAs is that there is too much action going on in diferent places, it's hard to show the right lane in the beggining if you haven't seen the game before. It's also too long, most of the time, with small peaks with a lot of action surrounded by a lot of passivity. I can't point out what's the exact problem, but it definatelly is not one of the most viewer friendly genres.
I do think, though, that games to be sucessfull don't need to attract people to watch if they don't play them. They should attract people to play it, and then watch it. If the game looks fun enough for a viewer to try it, even if he is not actually understanding much, and it's free on top of it, that's probally the best way for it to grow. I'm not sure we will ever reach a point where a significant margin of viewers have never played the game at all.
The level of success of BW in Korea proves that you don't need to play the game in order to understand it(to an enjoyable extent). It's easy to know what unit does what, and when workers die or an entire army dies it's easy to know the implications.
The game is pretty bad to watch in tournaments. Low levels of action early usually, very poor observer interface, and massive failures to accommodate tournaments with pause functions. SC2 has an appeal to even non RTS players, but LoL is pretty bad to watch unless you already very invested in the teams/game. I'm not sure if LoL being popular will help ESPORTS in any way. It isn't a title that I see having a long life in the arena.
On July 27 2011 04:58 shawster wrote: There are many more examples, but I'm going to focus on hero design. The heroes are designed to be so much more well rounded and more full then their DotA counterparts. Look at a hero like Tristana. There is no way in hell you're getting that into DotA. A blink, a damaging nuke, attack speed increase, massive range. This kind of follows the broodwar design of make everything fucking imbalanced and don't look back (swarm/storm)
As much as I like LoL, this is absolutely not true. DotA has absolutely better hero designs, and without question the higher power level. If you want to talk about the BW design of "everything is imba", DotA adheres to this way better than LoL.
On July 27 2011 05:06 dacthehork wrote: not sure how this is good for ESPORTS
The game is pretty bad to watch in tournaments. Low levels of action early usually, very poor observer interface, and massive failures to accommodate tournaments with pause functions. SC2 has an appeal to even non RTS players, but LoL is pretty bad to watch unless you already very invested in the teams/game. I'm not sure if LoL being popular will help ESPORTS in any way. It isn't a title that I see having a long life in the arena.
It gets more people interested in eSports, so even if the game is bad to watch the new fans might start watching other games like SC2.
On July 27 2011 03:41 LoLAdriankat wrote: I play the shit out of League of Legends and I think it's a fun game (with friends), but I think Riot does a lot of things that make them the laughing stock of the esports community. When they finally add replay viewing and spectator mode, the growth of the game and it's competitive scene will increase. A bunch of new casters will arise and we (hopefully) don't have to deal with the terrible casters we currently have.
It'll take a lot more than just replay viewing and better casters to make LoL and other MOBA games more appealing to the pure spectator.
To enjoy the game you need to understand what's going on. The sheer amount of items and champions makes for a very difficult viewing experience if you don't know what the items and champions are capable of, and there's only so much a caster can do.
All of this can be overcome, but it'll take time and commitment from Riot.
Honestly, I think Starcraft is harder to understand. New players don't even understand the benefits of expanding and constant worker production, and they actually play the game. Unless the game in a early rush, someone with not experience whatsoever playing an RTS will probally not understand it at all. Have you seen those videos were they are trying to teach someone and they don't even know how to mine minerals?
They don't need to understand how each item or hero works, noone with zero experience will understand things like that about any game. You won't know the moves of a figthing game either, even if they are lot fewer than the items on a MOBA. An FPS is probally the only genre I can think off where someone clueless about the game can ussually see what the weapons do very easily. As long it's not a weird futuristic game.
The problem with MOBAs is that there is too much action going on in diferent places, it's hard to show the right lane in the beggining if you haven't seen the game before. It's also too long, most of the time, with small peaks with a lot of action surrounded by a lot of passivity. I can't point out what's the exact problem, but it definatelly is not one of the most viewer friendly genres.
I do think, though, that games to be sucessfull don't need to attract people to watch if they don't play them. They should attract people to play it, and then watch it. If the game looks fun enough for a viewer to try it, even if he is not actually understanding much, and it's free on top of it, that's probally the best way for it to grow. I'm not sure we will ever reach a point where a significant margin of viewers have never played the game at all.
Apart from playing the campaign casually (thus having a general idea of what units do, but not all of them), I got into starcraft by watching tastless & superdanielman cast on gomtv two years ago. I watched nearly all of the VOD's in three months. The game was pretty easy to understand (thanks to the casters who explained pretty much everything crystal-clear), but I had also acquired an understanding of each matchup on a pretty advanced level.
Starcraft (and SC2) is easy to understand if the casters are good. Spells get cast and stuff dies. Doesn't take a genious to see that said spell is rather deadly. It also doesn't take a genious to realize that taking a second base early means that you'll have an economic advantage over your opponent early on if he doesn't do it as well but that your opponent will have more units to throw at you because you just spent a lot of resources on building that CC, Nexus or Hatch. The basic principles in Starcraft are rather easy to understand, and discern on screen. LoL or DOTA (or even WC3) less so. It's a clusterfuck of things happening at once without having clear indicators about what is happening why. SC2 is built from the ground up as a spectator e-sport. LoL is not.
@Shawster: most of the things in your post are arguments why it sucks as e-sport. The main thing is that it's way too forgiving. The more forgiving a game is, the less good the player must be to actually make a comeback, or to just stay in the game. Unforgiving games require a whole different level of perseverance.
On July 27 2011 04:58 shawster wrote: There are many more examples, but I'm going to focus on hero design. The heroes are designed to be so much more well rounded and more full then their DotA counterparts. Look at a hero like Tristana. There is no way in hell you're getting that into DotA. A blink, a damaging nuke, attack speed increase, massive range. This kind of follows the broodwar design of make everything fucking imbalanced and don't look back (swarm/storm)
As much as I like LoL, this is absolutely not true. DotA has absolutely better hero designs, and without question the higher power level. If you want to talk about the BW design of "everything is imba", DotA adheres to this way better than LoL.
troll and clinkz vs trist and twitch?
i think the new heroes are better, but this was like 2008 dota so maybe it wasn't the best comparison. stuff like medusa where they just took all the skills from wc3 heroes. the new heroes like after spectre have all been good i guess
i guess original lol vs dota lol wins
added dota vs added lol dota wins slightly with some good ones like storm spirit
500% growth in a year? that's incredible, I played LoL in beta, but as a Dota player i couldn't really get into it, a lot of my friends transferred over to HoN too.
Riot is doing it right, it's a shame that Blizzard is being run by Activision now, or atleast they aren't thinking about the changing their business model.
Didn't valve say that they wouldn't be making you pay upfront for games anymore? they know what's up.
LoL is bigger than SC2 right now, I don't know if it can be played competitively on the same level as SC2 or DOTA, but when you have a fanbase THAT big, anything can happen
On July 27 2011 03:41 LoLAdriankat wrote: I play the shit out of League of Legends and I think it's a fun game (with friends), but I think Riot does a lot of things that make them the laughing stock of the esports community. When they finally add replay viewing and spectator mode, the growth of the game and it's competitive scene will increase. A bunch of new casters will arise and we (hopefully) don't have to deal with the terrible casters we currently have.
It'll take a lot more than just replay viewing and better casters to make LoL and other MOBA games more appealing to the pure spectator.
To enjoy the game you need to understand what's going on. The sheer amount of items and champions makes for a very difficult viewing experience if you don't know what the items and champions are capable of, and there's only so much a caster can do.
All of this can be overcome, but it'll take time and commitment from Riot.
Honestly, I think Starcraft is harder to understand. New players don't even understand the benefits of expanding and constant worker production, and they actually play the game. Unless the game in a early rush, someone with not experience whatsoever playing an RTS will probally not understand it at all. Have you seen those videos were they are trying to teach someone and they don't even know how to mine minerals?
They don't need to understand how each item or hero works, noone with zero experience will understand things like that about any game. You won't know the moves of a figthing game either, even if they are lot fewer than the items on a MOBA. An FPS is probally the only genre I can think off where someone clueless about the game can ussually see what the weapons do very easily. As long it's not a weird futuristic game.
The problem with MOBAs is that there is too much action going on in diferent places, it's hard to show the right lane in the beggining if you haven't seen the game before. It's also too long, most of the time, with small peaks with a lot of action surrounded by a lot of passivity. I can't point out what's the exact problem, but it definatelly is not one of the most viewer friendly genres.
I do think, though, that games to be sucessfull don't need to attract people to watch if they don't play them. They should attract people to play it, and then watch it. If the game looks fun enough for a viewer to try it, even if he is not actually understanding much, and it's free on top of it, that's probally the best way for it to grow. I'm not sure we will ever reach a point where a significant margin of viewers have never played the game at all.
The level of success of BW in Korea proves that you don't need to play the game in order to understand it. It's easy to know what unit does what, and when workers die or an entire army dies it's easy to know the implications.
That's waaaaayyyy diferent than a model any game on the west can hope to follow. How many people do you know that watch games constantly but are not gamers at all? It does not matter if it is SC or not, that will never happen in the west. People won't stop stop watching football to watch FIFA, Street Fighter or Starcraft. It worked in Korean because there wasn't "football" over there, there werent real dominant sports that people watched, but stopped doing so to watch BW, it filled a gap that does not exist in the rest of the world, where people already have way too much stuff to watch.
It's not that easy to know what each unit does. Show a dark swarm and ask someone to explain it. It's also easy to see that if a hero kills another hero, if a hero is farming a lot of gold, etc, he has an advantage. You can't just simplify things that much. How would you know how hard it is to blanket stom in BW without any contact with the game? In SC2 it is much easier, how would you know how it works? You could put a hero with a insane killing spree and a lot of jukes in a very hard situation in that video, the same audio, and showed to someone that has no idea what is going on in both games, they would probally understand the hero killing everything easier than some ligthing bolts in a screen and a slow push. Hell, I'm not sure they would even understand the dragoons were the same faction as the storms.
ESPORTS need to first attract gamers, there are much more people playing games than watching them. Even inside gaming communities some people think watching other people play kinda silly, it maybe be retarded to have written that article, but you can be sure that there are more people that have the same view as the woman from Kotaku.
LoL is doing a great job in that regard, showing them the game, making it easy for them to understand it, and maybe getting them into actual viewing games. That model look much more promissing than anything else I've seen, and the speed LoL has grown only supports that theory.
Apart from playing the campaign casually (thus having a general idea of what units do, but not all of them), I got into starcraft by watching tastless & superdanielman cast on gomtv two years ago. I watched nearly all of the VOD's in three months. The game was pretty easy to understand (thanks to the casters who explained pretty much everything crystal-clear), but I had also acquired an understanding of each matchup on a pretty advanced level.
Key point, you had a previous experience with the units and the game. You probally also had a previous RTS experience in another game, a lot of people have played something like Age of Empires. How many MOBAs existed before Dota?
I was talking about someone with not RTS experience at all, and how RTS concepts are not as simple to grasp, and the game not that attractive to watch, if you have no experience at all. You don't even know that there are minerals and gas to harvest.
Also, you are probally not the norm, anyone that watched BW in the west can ussually be called more hardcore than most casual gamers, just by the sheer dificultty to even watch the games.
The IP/RP system and the weekly rotating champions work so well. As people have mentioned, it lets you really learn certain champions, and get a sense of achievement as you go.
Even more importantly, it lets you learn about facing champions. At low levels, you will spend a week only playing against the same 10 champions, with maybe a few very cheap ones thrown in, all of which you can try yourself. This makes these games about 100 times more fun, and is really attractive to new players. If a new player was plunged into the entire pool of champions it would be horrible for them.
Also congratulations Riot - now I get some idea why your servers have been so godawful over the summer.
On July 27 2011 03:41 LoLAdriankat wrote: I play the shit out of League of Legends and I think it's a fun game (with friends), but I think Riot does a lot of things that make them the laughing stock of the esports community. When they finally add replay viewing and spectator mode, the growth of the game and it's competitive scene will increase. A bunch of new casters will arise and we (hopefully) don't have to deal with the terrible casters we currently have.
It'll take a lot more than just replay viewing and better casters to make LoL and other MOBA games more appealing to the pure spectator.
To enjoy the game you need to understand what's going on. The sheer amount of items and champions makes for a very difficult viewing experience if you don't know what the items and champions are capable of, and there's only so much a caster can do.
All of this can be overcome, but it'll take time and commitment from Riot.
Honestly, I think Starcraft is harder to understand. New players don't even understand the benefits of expanding and constant worker production, and they actually play the game. Unless the game in a early rush, someone with not experience whatsoever playing an RTS will probally not understand it at all. Have you seen those videos were they are trying to teach someone and they don't even know how to mine minerals?
They don't need to understand how each item or hero works, noone with zero experience will understand things like that about any game. You won't know the moves of a figthing game either, even if they are lot fewer than the items on a MOBA. An FPS is probally the only genre I can think off where someone clueless about the game can ussually see what the weapons do very easily. As long it's not a weird futuristic game.
The problem with MOBAs is that there is too much action going on in diferent places, it's hard to show the right lane in the beggining if you haven't seen the game before. It's also too long, most of the time, with small peaks with a lot of action surrounded by a lot of passivity. I can't point out what's the exact problem, but it definatelly is not one of the most viewer friendly genres.
I do think, though, that games to be sucessfull don't need to attract people to watch if they don't play them. They should attract people to play it, and then watch it. If the game looks fun enough for a viewer to try it, even if he is not actually understanding much, and it's free on top of it, that's probally the best way for it to grow. I'm not sure we will ever reach a point where a significant margin of viewers have never played the game at all.
The level of success of BW in Korea proves that you don't need to play the game in order to understand it. It's easy to know what unit does what, and when workers die or an entire army dies it's easy to know the implications.
That's waaaaayyyy diferent than a model any game on the west can hope to follow. How many people do you know that watch games constantly but are not gamers at all? It does not matter if it is SC or not, that will never happen in the west. People won't stop stop watching football to watch FIFA, Street Fighter or Starcraft. It worked in Korean because there wasn't "football" over there, there werent real dominant sports that people watched, but stopped doing so to watch BW, it filled a gap that does not exist in the rest of the world, where people already have way too much stuff to watch.
It's not that easy to know what each unit does. Show a dark swarm and ask someone to explain it. It's also easy to see that if a hero kills another hero, if a hero is farming a lot of gold, etc, he has an advantage. You can't just simplify things that much. How would you know how hard it is to blanket stom in BW without any contact with the game? In SC2 it is much easier, how would you know how it works? You could put a hero with a insane killing spree and a lot of jukes in a very hard situation in that video, the same audio, and showed to someone that has no idea what is going on in both games, they would probally understand the hero killing everything easier than some ligthing bolts in a screen and a slow push. Hell, I'm not sure they would even understand the dragoons were the same faction as the storms.
ESPORTS need to first attract gamers, there are much more people playing games than watching them. Even inside gaming communities some people think watching other people play kinda silly, it maybe be retarded to have written that article, but you can be sure that there are more people that have the same view as the woman from Kotaku.
LoL is doing a great job in that regard, showing them the game, making it easy for them to understand it, and maybe getting them into actual viewing games. That model look much more promissing than anything else I've seen, and the speed LoL has grown only supports that theory.
You're not getting it. It's easy to know what unit does what because there's not much to learn. Once you see Psi Storm in action it's easy to know what it does, same as you would with Ashe Arrow. That's not the issue. The issue is that once you've learned what Ashe Arrow does, you still have hundreds upon hundreds of different abilities and almost as many items to learn. Unlike in BW when you only had to learn several more abilities.
I really like how accepting TL's mods are of LoL. Gives us our own forum, defends us from unnecessary flaming and believes it's good for the growth of ESPORTS.
This might be slightly off topic, but am I the only one who finds the term "ESPOOARRTTSSS" downright retarded? And why is it always capitalized? Where did this come from?
Statements like "YOU"RE HURTING ESPORTS" just confuse me and usually elicit a giggle or two.
On July 27 2011 04:58 shawster wrote: There are many more examples, but I'm going to focus on hero design. The heroes are designed to be so much more well rounded and more full then their DotA counterparts. Look at a hero like Tristana. There is no way in hell you're getting that into DotA. A blink, a damaging nuke, attack speed increase, massive range. This kind of follows the broodwar design of make everything fucking imbalanced and don't look back (swarm/storm)
As much as I like LoL, this is absolutely not true. DotA has absolutely better hero designs, and without question the higher power level. If you want to talk about the BW design of "everything is imba", DotA adheres to this way better than LoL.
I don't think hes necessarily trying to say its a good thing. I agree with him LoL heroes are incredibly well rounded, where as DotA heroes are not, yet DotA is more fun to play imo. Supports are actual support, carries are hard carries etc. I'm not sure which is the more overpowered concept, I think it just depends.
I hit a pretty big spat on LoL and it was a lot of fun. imho the game design is a little flawed with game length and such but maybe that's because i wasn't playing on the super competitive level. I don't mind going back every now and then for a game but its hard to really get into it again. One thing I do want to say is that starcraft is a much more beautiful game (game design-wise but aesthetically as well :D)
On July 27 2011 04:58 shawster wrote: here's my take on lol, and i say this everytime i go into a lol related thread. former lol player, still love the game to death.
Also this was my opinion from like 2-3 months ago, not sure if it's still valid.
A little introduction about my past dota background
In 2009 LoL was seen as a dying game. HoN was going to crush it. It was seen as a cartoonish mockery of the real game. No denies and casual were the main complaints, and as a former DotA player during 2009 I was mocking it too. Free to play and microtransfers? Seemed like shit to me. Anyways during early 2010 I was at this internet cafe and LoL was on it. HoN was down, there was no DotA. Me and my friend tried LoL for shits and giggles, but it was kind of fun. Every since then I played it almost religiously.
The reason why it's got a huge playerbase is the same reason why I started playing, it's addictive as fuck. Here are some reasons why it's got a huge playerbase. I just want to emphasize how important playerbase is. If you have a ton of players, esports comes easier the game is more successful etc. The games success is based on the players, and the players dictate the competitive scene.
1. The learning curve was SO MUCH easier then DotA. You went to pub games learned the hard way and get cursed at for 30 straight games in DotA, you didn't learn efficiently. LoL changed that by introducing matchmaking which started at such a low level. You played people the same level as you. This was such a huge improvement, in DotA you only got into the game by friends introducing you and teaching you.
2. Design philosophy. You can read a lot of posts by Zileas, they emphasize the forgiving and fighting features of the game. In DotA you lose in lane you're down 400 gold, in LoL you die you don't lose gold. In DotA you get less gold for kills, LoL you get way more. The design philosophy of LoL is that dying in dota creates negative fun, killing creates some fun. I emphasize some fun because you don't feel as good making people lose gold, you feel better when you get gold and see your own progression. So in low levels of LoL where people constantly kill eachother and die, they can only see progression.
A BIG BIG one is mana management. It's tedious thinking to yourself "i only have 2 fissures left". In LoL they nerfed all the mana costs and you can have mana regen runes giving yourself a TON of mana early. This allows players to be less meticulous.
There are many more examples, but I'm going to focus on hero design. The heroes are designed to be so much more well rounded and more full then their DotA counterparts. Look at a hero like Tristana. There is no way in hell you're getting that into DotA. A blink, a damaging nuke, attack speed increase, massive range. This kind of follows the broodwar design of make everything fucking imbalanced and don't look back (swarm/storm)
3. It's free. You got an addictive game design, you got an early learning curve and you've got a pretty good designed game. And it's the DotA genre(some call it MOBA) which has proven to be a good genre. Obviously it's going to be somewhat successful.
Some people criticize the game for having microtransfers, well to be honest it doesn't make that big of a difference. You don't need to buy every hero in the game. You can also earn the heroes through playing. It's actually so much less of an impact on the game then you would think. It's like 95% skill, 5 % runes/heroes and at the same time you can spend a ton of money on the game and feel satisfied. I really want to emphasize how little buying riot points actually improves your game play, but at the same time it creates more fun. It's a win win situation
Now that's how LoL got popular. The problem with LoL is that it was never meant to be played at a high level. Games like fighting games/sc2/sc1 were balanced at the high level, LoL can't do that. Somewhere like 20% of fighting game players are hardcore, maybe 5% of sc2 players and 40% of broodwar players. These are made up numbers, but it's somewhat accurate. In LoL like 50% of players are hella bad. The hella bad players in LoL can't improve either. Improving in DotA genres is a different topic lol.
Anyways LoL is a great game for playing. For esports there is a big problem. It's incredibly hard to cater to both populations, the hardcore and the bad. In WoW they had to completely divide PVP and PVE in order to balance it. There were so many problems in WoW for PVP, for example ret pallies were tearing shit up in wotlk. They were the ultimate dueling character, battleground character, BUT they were never super overpowered in arena. Blizzard nerfed ret to the ground. Obviously ret pallies were mad. For example in high level play twitch was way less intimidating then in mid level player where wards and oracles aren't bought. They still nerfed the bejeesus outa him. I guess what I'm trying to say is balancing is hard, it's hard when you balance to one group of people, it's hard to balance 3 races, and it's hella fucking hard to balance 70 heroes.
Also there is another problem with LoL esports, how boring it is. I want to end off my rant/essay whatever because it's getting fucking long, so i'll make it short.
heroes getting ton of gold from kills -> the game becomes a snowball effect at high levels.
getting fed is a bad problem at high levels because a good player will keep the advantage
objectives that are supposed to create battle and excitement (dragon/baron) cause the game to snowball in victors favour.
wards are too strong, counterwarding is harder
losing map control leads to massive repercussions
once you're down that hard you rely on opponent to fuck up
all this is a non factor at low levels because they can't manipulate the game well enough.
oh and i gotta put in how riot didn't have replays and observers for about 2 years up here somewhere, disregard for esports until recently
Thanks for reading, in conclusion I love the game to death but it's got some problems when it comes to esports.
This is probably the best post in this thread.I feel exactly the same way about LoL,but to add something to it the same problems LoL has are pretty much the same problems with Sc2 when it comes to Esports. But yea,congratulations to Riot for this success i just hope that it will be sustained.
On July 27 2011 04:58 shawster wrote: There are many more examples, but I'm going to focus on hero design. The heroes are designed to be so much more well rounded and more full then their DotA counterparts. Look at a hero like Tristana. There is no way in hell you're getting that into DotA. A blink, a damaging nuke, attack speed increase, massive range. This kind of follows the broodwar design of make everything fucking imbalanced and don't look back (swarm/storm)
As much as I like LoL, this is absolutely not true. DotA has absolutely better hero designs, and without question the higher power level. If you want to talk about the BW design of "everything is imba", DotA adheres to this way better than LoL.
I don't think hes necessarily trying to say its a good thing. I agree with him LoL heroes are incredibly well rounded, where as DotA heroes are not, yet DotA is more fun to play imo. Supports are actual support, carries are hard carries etc. I'm not sure which is the more overpowered concept, I think it just depends.
i try to be somewhat neutral. i think carries in LoL were supposed to be mid-early game dpsers with small roles, and blossom late game.whereas the dota counterpart is about being just hardass carry late game. thats why a lot of carries have nukes/slows that traditional dota hard carries don't have.
I opened an account and played for 1 day and never opened the client again, i wonder how many of those accounts are inactive. The game just doesn't feel fluid and the genre is probably not for me anyways... after playing a lot of fast paced games like quake and sc2 the game just feels boring to me
EPT
