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Same rules apply, per usual. Please use the appropriate threads (QQ, Brag, Champion, etc) whenever appropriate. Keep the resident Banling content.
Thanks. Happy Gaming. |
On March 08 2012 17:50 mr_tolkien wrote:
ANY moba is a bad spectator sport, from an outsider point of view.
The only reason why it succeeds is huge playerbase. Not anything else.
I watched the Defense because I played ~100 DotA 2 games in the last months but god knows I would never have watched DotA before that. I tried. Just couldn't.
I loved watching both dota and hon despite not playing them, still do o.O
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The only dota games i ever watched were cast by klazart but he explains things extremely well. It's part of the reason i got into LoL cause i saw it on stream and found out it was "similar to dota but free."
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One huge stride I think DotA2 is taking towards being better for spectators is the graphics(especially the ults). The heroes/map itself are sort of blandish, very 'washed' and natural looking, but the spell effects and animations are extremely showy. I'm not sure if this was a purposeful design direction or if Valve sort of struck gold while attempting to make these exorbitant visuals. It creates a crazy contrast that makes the spells far more obvious, especially with many of the attack animations being toned down(looking at you, CM).
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On March 08 2012 15:18 rob.au wrote:Most dota/hon players have a misconception of LoL because when they play their first few games they win really easily. This is because Riot actually have a good f2p system where as your account levels up, your hidden elo also goes up, however these dota/hon players do not realize this. In hon at least there is no such thing in their matchmaking, rather you just start at a certain elo, and stay there until you win significantly more games than you've lost or vice versa. This system obviously ends up being flawed since you end up with a combination of smurfs, new players, and veteran casuals, which results in terribly imbalanced games as well as disenchanted players. As a competitive game LoL is completely fine, all that really matters for a competitive game is that reaching the skill cap is not really achievable. Obviously the difference in skill between the Flash and some rank 1000 BW player is a lot more than the #1 league player vs some 1900, but there is still a difference. This was actually one of the aspects of a competitive game that ArenaNet commented on with regards to the original Guild Wars vs WoW pvp. Whilst a lot of people agree the pvp in GW1 was actually far superior to WoW, it had a harder learning curve and a wider skill gap between teams which they felt made it less enticing for a lot of players. In regards to LoL the point im making is that there is not much of a skill gap between each level of players, and people tend to like that. In terms of depth, when I play dota or hon it really does feel to me like they do have more depth than LoL. It's hard for me to really give a fair comparison of the two though because there's a lot to do in LoL and it may just feel like there's less depth because I've figured it out more. I am inclined to say they do have more depth than LoL though just because the heroes are more diverse, more risk/reward, objectives are less clear, items are more diverse, and it seems as though this leads to more variety in nearly every aspect of the game. Maybe someone else like Yango can give a better opinion here. Looking at competitive play I do think LoL is less entertaining and I think most people accept at the top level it really isn't as entertaining as we would like. A lot of games are just so passive, and I think people like Southlight as well as Chu have touched on issues such as how the map is constructed, unlimited wards, junglers etc...In my opinion because of these things LoL is basically stuck how it is now unless Riot make relatively major changes like they did with the jungle. Having said that the game is obviously thriving so it's obviously not the be and end all, I've concluded that since I prefer dota/hon I've just gone to play them rather than campaign for major changes to league. Just so people know where my point of view comes from I was 1950 on NA season1, was active in SEA LoL tourneys and I'm 1750 post-compression MMR in hon (if that means anything to anyone  )
your SEA summoner name, please
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On March 08 2012 18:20 Shikyo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2012 17:50 mr_tolkien wrote:
ANY moba is a bad spectator sport, from an outsider point of view.
The only reason why it succeeds is huge playerbase. Not anything else.
I watched the Defense because I played ~100 DotA 2 games in the last months but god knows I would never have watched DotA before that. I tried. Just couldn't. I loved watching both dota and hon despite not playing them, still do o.O
You played them at least a little bit. You can't get interested in watching DotA if you don't know what Vengeful does.
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On March 08 2012 18:55 mr_tolkien wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2012 18:20 Shikyo wrote:On March 08 2012 17:50 mr_tolkien wrote:
ANY moba is a bad spectator sport, from an outsider point of view.
The only reason why it succeeds is huge playerbase. Not anything else.
I watched the Defense because I played ~100 DotA 2 games in the last months but god knows I would never have watched DotA before that. I tried. Just couldn't. I loved watching both dota and hon despite not playing them, still do o.O You played them at least a little bit. You can't get interested in watching DotA if you don't know what Vengeful does.
You can't get interested in any sport if you have no clue what's going on. People wouldn't enjoy watching football if it had like 70 random rules.
I know plenty of people who enjoy watching sc2/lol as long as you explain a few things to them.
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On March 08 2012 19:03 JackDino wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2012 18:55 mr_tolkien wrote:On March 08 2012 18:20 Shikyo wrote:On March 08 2012 17:50 mr_tolkien wrote:
ANY moba is a bad spectator sport, from an outsider point of view.
The only reason why it succeeds is huge playerbase. Not anything else.
I watched the Defense because I played ~100 DotA 2 games in the last months but god knows I would never have watched DotA before that. I tried. Just couldn't. I loved watching both dota and hon despite not playing them, still do o.O You played them at least a little bit. You can't get interested in watching DotA if you don't know what Vengeful does. You can't get interested in any sport if you have no clue what's going on. People wouldn't enjoy watching football if it had like 70 random rules. I know plenty of people who enjoy watching sc2/lol as long as you explain a few things to them.
You can explain the basics of football in 20 minutes or so, and more importantly, you most likely have PLAYED it at some point in your life.
You can't explain the basic interactions between the 100 heroes of LoL in less than many hours and even after that the teamfights still won't be that easy to watch.
I'm talking about this as a video games caster, having switched partially from SC2 to LoL. My SC2 viewerbase watching my LoL ramblings don't get shit if they didn't play LoL by themselves.
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On March 08 2012 15:18 rob.au wrote:Most dota/hon players have a misconception of LoL because when they play their first few games they win really easily. This is because Riot actually have a good f2p system where as your account levels up, your hidden elo also goes up, however these dota/hon players do not realize this. In hon at least there is no such thing in their matchmaking, rather you just start at a certain elo, and stay there until you win significantly more games than you've lost or vice versa. This system obviously ends up being flawed since you end up with a combination of smurfs, new players, and veteran casuals, which results in terribly imbalanced games as well as disenchanted players. As a competitive game LoL is completely fine, all that really matters for a competitive game is that reaching the skill cap is not really achievable. Obviously the difference in skill between the Flash and some rank 1000 BW player is a lot more than the #1 league player vs some 1900, but there is still a difference. This was actually one of the aspects of a competitive game that ArenaNet commented on with regards to the original Guild Wars vs WoW pvp. Whilst a lot of people agree the pvp in GW1 was actually far superior to WoW, it had a harder learning curve and a wider skill gap between teams which they felt made it less enticing for a lot of players. In regards to LoL the point im making is that there is not much of a skill gap between each level of players, and people tend to like that. In terms of depth, when I play dota or hon it really does feel to me like they do have more depth than LoL. It's hard for me to really give a fair comparison of the two though because there's a lot to do in LoL and it may just feel like there's less depth because I've figured it out more. I am inclined to say they do have more depth than LoL though just because the heroes are more diverse, more risk/reward, objectives are less clear, items are more diverse, and it seems as though this leads to more variety in nearly every aspect of the game. Maybe someone else like Yango can give a better opinion here. Looking at competitive play I do think LoL is less entertaining and I think most people accept at the top level it really isn't as entertaining as we would like. A lot of games are just so passive, and I think people like Southlight as well as Chu have touched on issues such as how the map is constructed, unlimited wards, junglers etc...In my opinion because of these things LoL is basically stuck how it is now unless Riot make relatively major changes like they did with the jungle. Having said that the game is obviously thriving so it's obviously not the be and end all, I've concluded that since I prefer dota/hon I've just gone to play them rather than campaign for major changes to league. Just so people know where my point of view comes from I was 1950 on NA season1, was active in SEA LoL tourneys and I'm 1750 post-compression MMR in hon (if that means anything to anyone )
I've never played guild wars but I'm interested in knowing how is it harder? Does the game have same kinda crowd control like wow and diminishing returns?
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On March 08 2012 15:31 Ryuu314 wrote:
To be completely honest, I feel that DotA has more depth than LoL at the moment. It's probably because DotA has more unforgiving mechanics such as comparatively OP skills, larger map, easier access to ganks, gold loss on death, denying, etc... LoL is a very "safe" game. It's generally harder to make plays or make shit happen and even then the penalty/risk of making plays is often vastly outweighed by the benefits of playing a safe, tight game. It's partially due to Riot not wanting to introduce "unfun" mechanics and to cater to casuals. It's can also (I hope) be a product of the current metagame, but the way things are right now, DotA just feels like it has more depth and variability. It's kinda like comparing BW to SC2 imo.
On the issue of games requiring "skill," there's almost no argument that mechanically, RTS>MOBA. In terms of mechanical skill BW>SC2>DotA>LoL. But honestly, mechanics isn't everything; it's a very small part (except in BW lololol). When it comes down to it, the fact that MOBAs are team games make it so that the complexity/strategic depth is easily on-par or can even surpass that of RTS simply because there are more variables in the game.
I am not sure where you get the "less forgiving" => "more depth" thing from.
Especially because it can be hard to make plays in LoL (compared to just hitting one of these OP DotA skills while your enemy messes up for a split second), it requires a lot of planning and coordination to consistenly dominate. That does fit the "depth" thing, doesn't it?
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I actually like how LOL is more forgiving at the pro level because it leads to comebacks. In SC2 you have games where someone has made a mistake and the game lasts for awhile longer before the person person with the advantage facerolls the opponents army (I am not saying someone cannot come back in SC2 and those games are usually very exciting). In LOL there are much more ways to come back (baron, drag, one bad teamfight, catching the carry, etc.). I am not saying these games don't happen in LOL but they are certainly less common.
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United States47024 Posts
Quoting myself from Smash's blog thread because it's relevant to this "difficulty" discussion:
Show nested quote +And frankly, I don’t see how these higher level facets of the MOBA genre are so much easier in LoL than they are in DotA. I think that as LoL is right now, the general understanding of these concepts of team composition and general game-flow are much less fleshed-out than in the DotA--but that's almost entirely a product of the fact that LoL is a young game right now. The teams that are good right now don't need to be good at a lot of those things yet, because the level of play *currently* isn't that high. It's like Two_Down mentioned in another thread--drafting as a skill is barely necessary in competitive play because teams often just pick 5 heroes that their team is capable of playing well. Whether the game is inherently less skillful remains to be seen, but right now the demand on an individual competitive player to, for example, know all the heroes, or even all the heroes in their role exhaustively, is not there. Put simply, it's hard to disjoin the difficulty of the inherent qualities of the game from the difficulty of the competition. To use a Starcraft example--is SC2 easy because the game is inherently easier, or because Flash isn't playing yet?
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I think TheYango is pretty right about this, just look how teams like M5 or CLG.eu with a decent teamwork can just stomp everybody.
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United States47024 Posts
As far as spectating goes, I'd say the absolute worst thing for LoL is that phase of the game where regardless of everything else, Baron pressure becomes enormous, and both teams start posturing mid like it's an ARAM. Then both teams just posture for about 2 minutes until someone derps and gets hit by a Morgana binding or something and his team gets fucked because of it. As a spectator experience, that's absolutely terrible. The buildup is boring as fuck, and the resolution is anticlimactic.
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On March 08 2012 18:50 nyxnyxnyx wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2012 15:18 rob.au wrote:Most dota/hon players have a misconception of LoL because when they play their first few games they win really easily. This is because Riot actually have a good f2p system where as your account levels up, your hidden elo also goes up, however these dota/hon players do not realize this. In hon at least there is no such thing in their matchmaking, rather you just start at a certain elo, and stay there until you win significantly more games than you've lost or vice versa. This system obviously ends up being flawed since you end up with a combination of smurfs, new players, and veteran casuals, which results in terribly imbalanced games as well as disenchanted players. As a competitive game LoL is completely fine, all that really matters for a competitive game is that reaching the skill cap is not really achievable. Obviously the difference in skill between the Flash and some rank 1000 BW player is a lot more than the #1 league player vs some 1900, but there is still a difference. This was actually one of the aspects of a competitive game that ArenaNet commented on with regards to the original Guild Wars vs WoW pvp. Whilst a lot of people agree the pvp in GW1 was actually far superior to WoW, it had a harder learning curve and a wider skill gap between teams which they felt made it less enticing for a lot of players. In regards to LoL the point im making is that there is not much of a skill gap between each level of players, and people tend to like that. In terms of depth, when I play dota or hon it really does feel to me like they do have more depth than LoL. It's hard for me to really give a fair comparison of the two though because there's a lot to do in LoL and it may just feel like there's less depth because I've figured it out more. I am inclined to say they do have more depth than LoL though just because the heroes are more diverse, more risk/reward, objectives are less clear, items are more diverse, and it seems as though this leads to more variety in nearly every aspect of the game. Maybe someone else like Yango can give a better opinion here. Looking at competitive play I do think LoL is less entertaining and I think most people accept at the top level it really isn't as entertaining as we would like. A lot of games are just so passive, and I think people like Southlight as well as Chu have touched on issues such as how the map is constructed, unlimited wards, junglers etc...In my opinion because of these things LoL is basically stuck how it is now unless Riot make relatively major changes like they did with the jungle. Having said that the game is obviously thriving so it's obviously not the be and end all, I've concluded that since I prefer dota/hon I've just gone to play them rather than campaign for major changes to league. Just so people know where my point of view comes from I was 1950 on NA season1, was active in SEA LoL tourneys and I'm 1750 post-compression MMR in hon (if that means anything to anyone ) your SEA summoner name, please
Didn't play on SEA server, was on various aussie teams playing in sea esl comps.
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On March 08 2012 22:00 TheYango wrote:
As far as spectating goes, I'd say the absolute worst thing for LoL is that phase of the game where regardless of everything else, Baron pressure becomes enormous, and both teams start posturing mid like it's an ARAM. Then both teams just posture for about 2 minutes until someone derps and gets hit by a Morgana binding or something and his team gets fucked because of it. As a spectator experience, that's absolutely terrible. The buildup is boring as fuck, and the resolution is anticlimactic.
I blame a couple things.
First: Not enough high/low ground alternation and vision block
Second: The area around baron is too clumped up
Third: No 1200 range blink
Fourth: Not enough hard initiates
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On March 08 2012 22:00 TheYango wrote:
As far as spectating goes, I'd say the absolute worst thing for LoL is that phase of the game where regardless of everything else, Baron pressure becomes enormous, and both teams start posturing mid like it's an ARAM. Then both teams just posture for about 2 minutes until someone derps and gets hit by a Morgana binding or something and his team gets fucked because of it. As a spectator experience, that's absolutely terrible. The buildup is boring as fuck, and the resolution is anticlimactic.
I think the spectator issue comes mostly from a major difference in the design concepts of LoL and DotA. Riot made their champions more spammy, their abilities are relatively less strong but are used more often than dota abilities. DotA abilities are much stronger, which results in an unforgiving gunfight-type gameplay. Just as a side note for non dota players: malzahars and old TF's ults are basic abilities in dota, and basicly every 'nuker'/mage-type hero comes with a free deathcap if you compare the numbers. Also if you compare the equivalents such as pudge vs blitzcrank, you'll notice that pudges hook combo is much more of a threat than blitz' grab combo not only because you cannot flash out of it but also because it has like double the range. That said, for individual gameplay LoL really feels more active and most champions are well balanced mechanics wise. In dota alot of the heroes have some sort of OMFG skill that can completely turn around a situation but if you miss them you prolly lose a fight there. This creates alot of tension in a dota game and especially on a high level.
Another issue is the generally low mobility we have in LoL. TP scrolls, runes+bottle and boots of travel give dota heroes the option to travel around the map faster and more consistently. This and the much more developed lategame experience dota players have make this game more action packed in the phase where LoL teams would posture and reposition alot.
LoL has the goal to be accessible and more active in the laneing phase. This is good gamedesign. I think they have to work on lategame mobility and mb create more options than camping baron so we can see more strategic variety.
On a side note: DotA had long phases of dull gameplay in some of their patch eras and icefrog/the community had to resolve them as well, so its not a thing that will stay forever if our designers and top players will put work into this.
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On March 08 2012 21:40 TheYango wrote:Quoting myself from Smash's blog thread because it's relevant to this "difficulty" discussion: Show nested quote +And frankly, I don’t see how these higher level facets of the MOBA genre are so much easier in LoL than they are in DotA. I think that as LoL is right now, the general understanding of these concepts of team composition and general game-flow are much less fleshed-out than in the DotA--but that's almost entirely a product of the fact that LoL is a young game right now. The teams that are good right now don't need to be good at a lot of those things yet, because the level of play *currently* isn't that high. It's like Two_Down mentioned in another thread--drafting as a skill is barely necessary in competitive play because teams often just pick 5 heroes that their team is capable of playing well. Whether the game is inherently less skillful remains to be seen, but right now the demand on an individual competitive player to, for example, know all the heroes, or even all the heroes in their role exhaustively, is not there. Put simply, it's hard to disjoin the difficulty of the inherent qualities of the game from the difficulty of the competition. To use a Starcraft example--is SC2 easy because the game is inherently easier, or because Flash isn't playing yet?
I think the entire difficulty discussion between LoL and Dota is hilarious if you think about it in terms of early ganking. It is actually more difficult to dive and gank in LoL then in Dota because towers are so powerful. And that is not even relevant because it has nothing to do with the skills of the players that are involved. LoL is made in a way that towers are more powerful and therefore you can't dive as effectively at low lvl. It's a simple design choice and has nothing to do with the "general skill levels" of the players.
But the I meet the sentiment everywhere that Dota is more skillful then LoL because you can gank better in early laning phase or better dominate your opponent. It's like saying that soccer is an easier sport then basketball, because the teams score less points in soccer.
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Everyone and their mother has a dissable in dota.
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United States47024 Posts
On March 08 2012 22:50 Shikyo wrote:
Third: No 1200 range blink
As much as Riot might call it un-fun gameplay, I think there's something that having off-screen or invisible threats adds to the experience. In LoL, most threats are on your screen for a good 2-3 seconds before you absolutely cannot do anything about it (more so when you consider infinite wards). There's a certain amount of foresight that needs to go into predicting threats that can instantly jump you from out of your vision, and a certain amount of intelligent risk-taking that's required to maximize your gains while accounting for those threats. It creates tension, excitement, and action that really just aren't the same with most heroes in LoL (though there are a few that do present this kind of threat--it's often on a long cooldown).
On March 08 2012 23:06 BlueSpace wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2012 21:40 TheYango wrote:Quoting myself from Smash's blog thread because it's relevant to this "difficulty" discussion: And frankly, I don’t see how these higher level facets of the MOBA genre are so much easier in LoL than they are in DotA. I think that as LoL is right now, the general understanding of these concepts of team composition and general game-flow are much less fleshed-out than in the DotA--but that's almost entirely a product of the fact that LoL is a young game right now. The teams that are good right now don't need to be good at a lot of those things yet, because the level of play *currently* isn't that high. It's like Two_Down mentioned in another thread--drafting as a skill is barely necessary in competitive play because teams often just pick 5 heroes that their team is capable of playing well. Whether the game is inherently less skillful remains to be seen, but right now the demand on an individual competitive player to, for example, know all the heroes, or even all the heroes in their role exhaustively, is not there. Put simply, it's hard to disjoin the difficulty of the inherent qualities of the game from the difficulty of the competition. To use a Starcraft example--is SC2 easy because the game is inherently easier, or because Flash isn't playing yet? I think the entire difficulty discussion between LoL and Dota is hilarious if you think about it in terms of early ganking. It is actually more difficult to dive and gank in LoL then in Dota because towers are so powerful. And that is not even relevant because it has nothing to do with the skills of the players that are involved. LoL is made in a way that towers are more powerful and therefore you can't dive as effectively at low lvl. It's a simple design choice and has nothing to do with the "general skill levels" of the players. But the I meet the sentiment everywhere that Dota is more skillful then LoL because you can gank better in early laning phase or better dominate your opponent. It's like saying that soccer is an easier sport then basketball, because the teams score less points in soccer.
Diving is actually just as dangerous, if not more so in DotA than in LoL. If someone's teammates aren't retarded, you will have 1-4 TPs to that tower if that person is rescuable. Towers do more damage in LoL, sure, but towers can't stun you--heroes that TP in can. In that respect, I do think that it's better that the risk of tower-diving comes from the coordination of the enemy team rather than from the fact that towers just happen to do a lot of damage.
If ganking is easier in DotA, it is a product of:
- Less map vision, due to limited wards, Smoke of Deceit, and day/night vision.
- Less escapes
- More, and longer CC (by level 6-7, many heroes already have access to 3-4 second stuns).
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EPT
