Dota 2

[Drakerip]

LoL is actually the only DotA mimic I have actually tried, tbh it just annoyed me mainly because the camera is locked onto your hero, they have disabled map awareness which just makes the game stupid imo. They also disabled denying creeps which annoyed me a lot, I played 2 games and have never even thought of playing it again. I can see the appeal to some players though, it takes much less focus (mainly because they have disabled map awareness which is what requires most of your focus in DotA), so therefore it is lots easier for newbies

Imo DotA 2 won't take many players from LoL, the majority of them seem to be in love with that game, and I'm not too worried, from what I have seen the only players there are the ones that completely fail at DotA or the ones that have never tried DotA (and of course there are a few players who play both LoL and DotA). So we don't really want them coming over to DotA 2 anyway, chances are they will sit in game crying about how it's different and putting off new players.

As PotatisFarfar stated, you click an eye-button in the bottom right corner to remove the hero-lock;
which leads to your 90% of your post being invalid.

LoL is just as skillbased as DotA, if not more.
The major things in gameplay would be the leveling-system, the glyph system, the "talent" (or masteries) system, and, what is the biggest change for me; the range on spells.
The range on spells makes positioning a much tougher challenge, as they range is way shorter.

[Spades]

i had played my 1st game today and I think LoL has a punch to give to DotA too.

[BlastTyrant]

I actually signed up just to post on this topic haha, Anyway IMHO LoL may be fun and a great time passer but its Community is what is gonna destroy it, Yes riot has technical issues constantly and some times it dosent even seem like they test there new champs before releasing them, But it all boils down to the fact that Riot's community sucks horrably, i've been playing LoL for awhile now and i can honistly say outta my 900+ games i have only maybe hade 10-20 that have actually been Good Game's, other than that each game is full of leaver's troll's and try hard's who spam there team or the other team and just make it a un-fun game to play and deal with. SImple concepts that a MOD can implament LoL cant such as if someone leaves the remaning team members get Bonus gold and there pick of the leavers items to help them survive the now 4-5 game, Riot and its community will destroy them selfs.

I find it ironic that Riot has the Honor System set up on there forum's when there forums are worse than the actual game, You cant make a serious post without getting flamed trolled or just all around slammed and Riot sits back and does nothing. I've seen many upon many of honiest to god posts Die fast cause everyone is spamming and trolling on different pointless threads.

And when it comes to balancing champs and items they fail hard on that as well, With each new champ they release another one is killed and forgot about never to be seen or nerfed to be up to par again, "we are trying to stray away from the tanky DPS meta game" Great awesome then stop releasing tanky/caster/dps champs the main item builds people use turn any champ into a tanky one Rod of ages and Rylais great caster items now you got 700 HP and have a tanky caster. It dosent seem like they even try.

I know its been discussed on the LoL forums that LoL is gonna be the stepping stone for Dota 2 players, If you wanna get the hang of the game and the gist of what to expect Play LoL, When your ready to put your big boy pants on come to Dota 2 where your not babied cause something dosent seem "unfair" "cough cough DENY Cough cough"

LoL may not completly die out but i got a feeling its gonna be a Everquest WoW situation where LoL plays the diminishing role of Everquest. And sorry for the long rant i know i can post this here and not get flamed and trolled to oblivion

[Drakerip]

its Community is what is gonna destroy it

The community isn't sided around a single game, it's sided around the internet.
If you take a well-made game thats fun, make it free-to-play, and it becomes big, you get this outcome, no matter what game it is; it's part of the internet.

[Myst]

A community doesn't destroy a game.
A community may destroy the vision you had of that game, but that just means you're now on the weak side, the side of the small numbers.

To me, LoL is already destroyed, because it was never good for me, but I still accept the fact my friends enjoy it and let me play alone at dotA.

LoL has it's own community now and I think keeping on doing unbalanced heroes and crappy looking ones is A GOOD IDEA.
indeed, it's obvious the dota2 arrival will drain out the HoN/LoL competitive players, so what will remains will be the one attracted to its drawbacks (at least to what appears like drawbacks to us).
Of course not everyone will go on dotA2, but it's gonna hurt tho XD

[Matusemco]

i personally play LoL now, i enjoy it and i think its really cool game
but when dota2 will come ill be moving to it, because i know valve wont let people behave in there like they could in original dota-that ruined it for me

[orcishcrusader]

I read a bunch of comments including one that flamed a lot of people who bashed on LoL by saying they probly went 1-15-1... i played teemo on my friends account and got over 15 kills and 0 deaths every game... other than that a lot of the players seem to lack team work in the way they play their rolls obviously this is more present in unorganised teams but lets investigate. in Dota you have the main roles support carry and ganker the gankers and the carrys in the laning stage act similarly both getting lots of creep kills while the support denys... then in the ganking stage the gankers take gold away from the other team and gain more by killing them with the help of the support... in the late game the carry is able to take on the majority of the opposing team ideally. in LoL the fact you cant take gold away from their carry if there was a better defined carry... in LoL everyone gets lots of creep kills... it just seems to break the teamwork in that sense... dont get me started on going into a game not knowing if your opponent has crit or dodge chance just from some mastery and runes crap... that is just ridiculous... at least you can tell if they have ignite...

[Spades]

at least I like the free TP skill-sort of that

[Farkinator]

Hmmm I've played LoL and DotA quite a bit in my day, but LoL has really began to stale on me. The gameplay is boring. Every single hero has abilities that have no "oomph". Why I played DotA in the first place was every single hero was entertaining. Tell me you didn't have fun channeling Sand King's ultimate and blinking on top of some fools. Tell me you didn't giggle to yourself when you time walked onto someone, activated mask of madness and chronosphered as Void and yelled "WELCOME TO THE THUNDERDOME BITCH" in allchat. Every single hero had something that just feels absolutely BROKEN. Has anyone accidentally ran into a Juggernaut when omnislash is up? Jesus that shit hurts! But the thing is, everything is broken. Everything is so broken that it's balanced. This is the "essence" of DotA that every other game in the genre has yet to capture. A lot of the LoL heroes really feel neutered in a way. They started off nice and dandy. Amumu with essentially 2 ults? Wonderful. Twisted Fate with a level 1 global teleport? Hilarious. But those were the beta days, and LoL as a game has fallen victim to its own community (Which, I have to say, is in a decline in of itself. People who were cool like SlyGoat have abandoned it.) They listened just a little too much to all the different forum denizens. This is why I think IceFrog is such a master of game balance and design. He remains isolated so he is really not influenced nearly as much by shitty people in the community. Sorry for the wall of text, those are just my thoughts on the situation between LoL and Dota 2.

It's been a long time since I've tasted IceFrog. I'm salivating already.

EDIT: Oh yeah almost forgot. I can't tell you how wrong people are who say that LoL has just the same skill requirement for it. A lot of people kind of underestimate what exactly DotA is. I've played DotA with my friends, who started off in LoL and jesus christ were they terrible. Spells like flash and ghost (especially the two combined) that give you a get-out-of-jail-free card really injure the game as a means of measuring skill. Teamfights are another area where skill isn't nearly as apparent. You could tell some of the greater support players of all time because they were able to judge their blink dagger's distance perfectly and were able to milk it for those extra units of distance. They'd time their ults perfectly, get every single wall-off as Earthshaker and never miss a beat. These never really come up in LoL. Sadly, the accuracy required isn't exactly there for LoL. Finally, the game mechanics really injure competitive LoL. No denying means that people can just simplay auto-attack and out-level someone trying to get last hits. The turret aggro and minion aggro being goofed also allows players to push with reckless abandon and take down turrets in a matter of minutes. (For those of you who don't know, turret aggro in DotA went Things attacking hero -> Things attacking tower -> things closest. The creeps would stop attacking the tower and begin attacking the next creep wave. If you were hitting the tower, you'd get smacked some when this happened. This isn't the case in LoL. You can have a creep wave and just whack the turret all day.) The ability to push so easily and the lack of a death penalty really injures the metagame, pushing LoL games to very very short, push-focused games. Everyone knows basic game theory; the longer the game goes on, the more decisions must be made. The better decision-makers have small advantages build up over time and eventually win.

[Argint Wolf]

League of legends isnt too bad, and they state on their website that they tried to make their game differ from DotA. the main problem imo is first their unbalance in terms of heros, as well as the leaver problem.

certain heros in the game require very little skill to play. sometimes one champion can eliminate the entire enemy team, even if every other member of their own team has been feeding and dying te entire game. the worst part is, these "high tier" champions are painfully present in nearly every game. On the other hand, there are champions that are so terrible and unbalanced, that they are never played. period. it is true that there are around 77 champions to play, but in all honesty, i only see about 20 daily.

as for the leavers, the punishment for leaving is minimal at best. in order for a level 30 acct (max level) to be banned, they must leave several games in a week. so yeah, some idiot just rage quitted? u can report him all u want, unless he has left several games so far, its almost assured that he wont even get warned. it really gets frustrating when the game becomes 4v5, and your team is doomed. i have once had every player on my team rage quit, to the point it became 1v5. i just got up, and left my computer until the timer reached 20 mins, because u cant surrender before then.

all in all, i still think that league of legends is an ok game, althought riot could certainly fix a few things. personally, i havent played DotA, but my friends have recommended the game to me, and DotA 2 looks like its going to be AMAZING, so im excited :p hopefully they wont make the same mistakes as riot did, especially with the leaving

[Snapmaster]

I registered for these forums for the sole purpose of commending the people in this thread for being so mature. I'm very tired of seeing fanboys who've never even played their game-of-choice's competition spew nonsensical garbage.

That said, more on topic, I enjoy LoL very much. I feel they tried to do something different, and I think they did a good job and produced a fun game.

I only dabbled in DotA before, so I'm probably not quite as excited as the rest of you for DotA 2, but I am anxious to see how well Valve does with it. I can't see them making a bad game, and honestly, a little competition is good for the genre as a whole.

[MeVe]

I registered for these forums for the sole purpose of commending the people in this thread for being so mature. I'm very tired of seeing fanboys who've never even played their game-of-choice's competition spew nonsensical garbage.

That said, more on topic, I enjoy LoL very much. I feel they tried to do something different, and I think they did a good job and produced a fun game.

I only dabbled in DotA before, so I'm probably not quite as excited as the rest of you for DotA 2, but I am anxious to see how well Valve does with it. I can't see them making a bad game, and honestly, a little competition is good for the genre as a whole.

Cool story bro. Competition? QQ more

I'm mature enough for you?

[KweeZy]

Hmmm I've played LoL and DotA quite a bit in my day, but LoL has really began to stale on me. The gameplay is boring. Every single hero has abilities that have no "oomph". Why I played DotA in the first place was every single hero was entertaining. Tell me you didn't have fun channeling Sand King's ultimate and blinking on top of some fools. Tell me you didn't giggle to yourself when you time walked onto someone, activated mask of madness and chronosphered as Void and yelled "WELCOME TO THE THUNDERDOME BITCH" in allchat. Every single hero had something that just feels absolutely BROKEN. Has anyone accidentally ran into a Juggernaut when omnislash is up? Jesus that shit hurts! But the thing is, everything is broken. Everything is so broken that it's balanced. This is the "essence" of DotA that every other game in the genre has yet to capture. A lot of the LoL heroes really feel neutered in a way. They started off nice and dandy. Amumu with essentially 2 ults? Wonderful. Twisted Fate with a level 1 global teleport? Hilarious. But those were the beta days, and LoL as a game has fallen victim to its own community (Which, I have to say, is in a decline in of itself. People who were cool like SlyGoat have abandoned it.) They listened just a little too much to all the different forum denizens. This is why I think IceFrog is such a master of game balance and design. He remains isolated so he is really not influenced nearly as much by shitty people in the community. Sorry for the wall of text, those are just my thoughts on the situation between LoL and Dota 2.

It's been a long time since I've tasted IceFrog. I'm salivating already.

EDIT: Oh yeah almost forgot. I can't tell you how wrong people are who say that LoL has just the same skill requirement for it. A lot of people kind of underestimate what exactly DotA is. I've played DotA with my friends, who started off in LoL and jesus christ were they terrible. Spells like flash and ghost (especially the two combined) that give you a get-out-of-jail-free card really injure the game as a means of measuring skill. Teamfights are another area where skill isn't nearly as apparent. You could tell some of the greater support players of all time because they were able to judge their blink dagger's distance perfectly and were able to milk it for those extra units of distance. They'd time their ults perfectly, get every single wall-off as Earthshaker and never miss a beat. These never really come up in LoL. Sadly, the accuracy required isn't exactly there for LoL. Finally, the game mechanics really injure competitive LoL. No denying means that people can just simplay auto-attack and out-level someone trying to get last hits. The turret aggro and minion aggro being goofed also allows players to push with reckless abandon and take down turrets in a matter of minutes. (For those of you who don't know, turret aggro in DotA went Things attacking hero -> Things attacking tower -> things closest. The creeps would stop attacking the tower and begin attacking the next creep wave. If you were hitting the tower, you'd get smacked some when this happened. This isn't the case in LoL. You can have a creep wave and just whack the turret all day.) The ability to push so easily and the lack of a death penalty really injures the metagame, pushing LoL games to very very short, push-focused games. Everyone knows basic game theory; the longer the game goes on, the more decisions must be made. The better decision-makers have small advantages build up over time and eventually win.

You couldn't be more right and more wrong at the same time.

Your response on the "Dota had that OOMPH!" was pretty darn accurate. Dota always gave you that special feeling, no matter the hero that you were playing. Whether it be, OHKO'ing people with Lion's ulti, or feeling 'like a boss' when blink-ulti'ing with Techies. The play style was just beautiful in every sense of the word.

Though you mention that LoL doesn't possess that quality which Dota had. You seem to be a little bit confused with that remark. LoL is not a copy of Dota. LoL was meant to bring something different to the MOBA table, and succeeded in what it intended to do.

[Drakerip]

Wasn't DotA who had "Oomph", It was Warcraft III.

[Kaemon]

Personally, even without it being released yet, I know I prefer DotA 2 over LoL.
I played a lot of DotA back in the day (up to quite recently); and I still love/prefer it over LoL.

However... I find myself playing LoL instead of original DotA.
As many mentioned, the game is "different", not a failed copy-paste or anything like that; just a different game (even if of the same genre) with different things...

Why I prefer DotA? First of all, no Summoner Skills, no Back-to-Base Skill, no Runes, no Masteries...
I allways picked -random (on -AP/-AR games) and had no problem joining -SD or -RD. On LoL... I still haven't got Tank Runes; nor even 1/4 of the available characters (taking into account the 10 weekly ones).
I also don't like the items overall... No courrier/scrolls; no chances of buying wards/gems/tangoes/sharing-regen-items for your team mates... And way too many tanky items... 200-300 Armor/MagicResist tanks? You know the game is completly broken when a little over feeded tank can't be killed at all... And there are too many items that force you to get a silly counter against them (High Tank with Thormail, and you are AD? You need Magic Resist to reduce the reflected damage, armor penetration (since it reflects the damage BEFORE armor mitigation!) so you don't get reflected a higher damage than the one you are actually doing, and lifestealing... And you still can get hurt for as much as damage you are doing to him... I know you don't have to focus the tanks on the teambattles; but it's ridiculous when they can drop your entire team at 50% HP by themselves...

Since the first day playing LoL until now, I still have prefered DotA over it at any time. I REALLY loved playing all the heroes (maybe only exception being Akasha, Ezalor and Chen, but played them aswell) and I have played God knows how many games with each of them (wich brings me to think I played at least 100x30 DotA games as a minimum) and still loved playing them.
On LoL... 90% of my games had been with the 4 same heroes... Because lack of Runes/Masteries/PurchasedHeroes, and also because most of them (tested on weekly rotations) seem really boring to play to me...

However as mentioned I'm currently playing LoL and not DotA.... Reasons?
First of all, the friends... All my friends are playing LoL right now; and most of them never played a single DotA game... So I play with them.
For a time I kept playing DotA while also playing LoL, but to be honest, the War3 engine lacks some nice UI aditions that LoL made that you get used to really fast and become annoying while playing DotA (like pressing space trying to center your hero) and.... Even if the AFKers/Feeders/Leavers situation is bad in LoL, it's probably worse on DotA. No reconecting available, people leaving and just joining a new game (instead of being forced to stay in that game until the end)... How many times I have seen someone getting first blooded on DotA and then just leaving the game... In LoL, with the no-dead-penalty, and forcing the players to stay in the battle, and granting them IP points for doing so; this situation is sightly better than in DotA imo.
Also, a big reason, is the Play > Wait 10 secs > Play situation on LoL, compared to the "Look for a game" > "Wait for people to join" > "Pray to don't get kicked because the host thinks your 82 latency is too high even if you never had problems with that" > "Wait for game to start after RUS/Laggers/Banned had been kicked" > "Pray for no idiots just leaving as soon as the countdown starts forcing you to start over again".
And all this is 10 times worse if you are with a friend and none of you can Host a game... Trying to type down the game name and type it fast before all slots are full; etc...

However; I had no problems (and even got used to it) to play 4v5 or 5v4 on DotA and still have really nice games; and many times the 4-players team would win.
In LoL, however, if someone leaves/afks/feeds, you are quaranteed 1-3 of the remaining teamates will stop playing aswell and try to surrender at the 20 minutes mark... Dude... I hate that surrending option. It's ok to have it (since you can't join new games without finishing that one) specially if the other team just doesn't want to end a 0-60 game; but they just abuse it... I can't keep track of how many times my mates (even my IRL friends) force a surrender on games that can still be won...

Anyway; I didn't know until recently that DotA 2 was going to be a completly copy-paste of DotA; and I couldn't be happier.
They just need to make cool grapihcs/effects (done perfect so far), and a nice UI and simple joining system; and they seem to be promising all that and more (including new systems to reward people for doing what all players should do for starters).

Waiting for DotA 2!
I don't care if it's F2P or P2P; but I really want to be abble to -random over the 105 heroes poll; and not the 10 weekly heroes + purchased ones.
Also, not big fan of the skins. They are cool on LoL and fit it; but I would rather prefer if DotA didn't contain custom/purchasable heroes skins.

About LoL suffering from DotA 2 or not... Will depend on many things.
If DotA 2 was to be a F2P game with microtransactions like LoL; I would kinda worry a little about LoL losing lots of players, since I personally see no point on playing it over a newer, cooler looking, more balanced game.
But to be honest, once DotA 2 is out; I couldn't care less about LoL; even if all my friends remain on LoL, I will probably stop playing it forever, and never regreting it nor missing that retarded Masteries/Runes/SummonerSpells system.

[K0I]

I won't approach this from a mechanical argument since it's been discussed pretty well.

However, the main reason I think LoL will not suffer a loss from their community is because of the fanbase itself. While DoTA players are renowned for their elitism against newbies, I've yet to see a thread, replay or participated in a game myself where the majority of players were openly racist. I recall a reply in a topic I made about the quality of the community on the LoL forums, "C'est la vie" (I'm not French myself, but the more literate among you know what it means) which instantly earned me a bashing despite the fact I typed in English beforehand. That's like flipping out whenever someone tells you "Mi casa es su casa".

These weren't isolated incidents (each board section would have 1-2 threads complaining about people of another race) so I sent an email to Riot earlier at the start of this year back when I was still playing LoL (some links may be broken due to removed threads):

Spoiler for 07/01/2011:

Greetings,

Not that long ago I began browsing/posting on the EU forums to further improve in League of Legends. Early on I noticed that you employed a Laissez Faire (i.e. a withdrawn/less interfering) approach to moderating the forums, mainly to leave the moderation to the community (http://eu.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=50298). The idea behind this is that, obviously the majority should be reasonable people who know what's a good topic/post and what's a bad one. This is true... if the community is a well established and prestigious one.

However, it's widely held that the League of Legends community is one of the most appalling of any online game (http://eu.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=91672, http://eu.leagueoflegends.com/board/sho ... hp?t=95523, http://eu.leagueoflegends.com/board/sho ... 95451), with exception to Heroes of Newneth (having never tried it myself I'm going on the word of those who posted). The result is utter chaos. Pointless bickering among posters (http://eu.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=95470) and blatant xenophobic comments (http://eu.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=94445, http://eu.leagueoflegends.com/board/sho ... hp?t=95770, http://eu.leagueoflegends.com/board/sho ... 95851) are rampant and even encouraged by this appalling community. There is also a sense on the EU forums that they are neglected in favour of the US forums in terms of developer attention. Bearing in mind that the EU forums are in English this shouldn't be the case.

As the site currently stands I cannot consider calling it a 'forum' as that implies that some sort of discussion can actually come across. Currently it serves as a vent 'blog' with few repercussions. Only recently I have seen the following Terms of Use broken on your official site:
A. Impersonating an employee of Riot Games or communicating in any way that makes it appear that the communication originates from Riot Games. (http://eu.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=95890 post 4 potentially)
B. Posting identifying information about any other user in the Game. (various name & shame threads which are fairly common)
C. Harassing, stalking, or threatening any other users in the Game. (see earlier links to squabbles)
D. Transmitting or communicating any content which, in the sole and exclusive discretion of Riot Games, is deemed offensive, including, but not limited to, language that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, sexually explicit, or racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable. (again, see earlier links of racist qualities)

I understand that your initial stance was probably with good intentions rather than laziness, but I hope you reconsider and realize that all good forums have a moderation team for a reason and they contribute to making it 'good'. Don't attempt to fix what isn't broken.

Kind yet frustrated regards,
K0I

And the response:

Spoiler for 08/01/2011:

Hi K0I,

Thank you very much for this well written message, it's a welcome change from the usual ticket I get

This is a constant source of debate here, and I'm sure we'll have some changes coming up sooner or later, especially since we've just hit 0 unassigned tickets yesterday! (Down from 8000 back in September).

Don't hold me to it and don't expect an immediate change but I'm sure we'll come up with something. Sorry if this is probably a too vague of an answer compared to your message but I unfortunately can't really go into detail. I just want you to know that we're not turning a dear ear (or a blind eye) to our more positive community members.

Thanks a lot,

Sincerely,

Marc // Lignarius

Client Support
RIOT GAMES

Although Riot have finally implemented some quality control the fact that it was as late as this June before Riot implemented some rules over their community is a bit disconcerting. Back on topic, considering that Steam is international (I often meet Americans in Team Fortress 2 and the only good Counter Strike Source servers tend to be French or German) I find it hard to believe that the average LoL player would like DoTA 2, on top of other reasons given in previous posts - that's not to say some players won't leave.

[Captain Planet]

^The LoL forums didn't have mods until June this year? O_O Holy fuckballs that's beyond incredible...

[Xcaliber]

I've said this before on this forums and I feel like this is a more appropriate place to say it... again.

Comparing LoL and DotA is EXACTLY the same as comparing Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty... it's like saying that with the release of CoD will all the TF2 players stop playing it and move to CoD (and for the sake of unbiase) or vice versa?

No... that never happened and nothing like that ever will, they're both FPS games... like LoL and DotA are both ARTS(MOBA) games... but the player bases are entirely different/the same and people consider them very different playing experiences I don't see why this is suddenly a valid discussion except for an excuse for a large number of people to passive aggressively flame about which is better, why saying which is better is pointless, saying neither's better etc etc (I'm fully aware I sit in one/more of those categories).

There isn't only room for one of each genre in the world, each game in a genre offers a variation of gameplay, and genres are only there for people to determine what other games out there they may enjoy, same as films, you don't like Transformers OR The Dark Knight... you can enjoy both and certainly people don't choose to watch one or the other (unless they're released in the same weekend which is considered catastrophic in the film industry and deliberately never happens).

If the question is really out there, I[am convinced I] prefer DotA2 to LoL, I'm playing LoL so that I can play some form of the game before DotA comes out, it's free so sue me.

Also, to validate my point, I prefer TF2... I don't mind CoD but TF2's a bit more wild and fun, I do however SUCK at FPS games in general, and am worse at CoD than TF2. Oh and I prefer the Dark Knight by a looong way, but srsly, Optimums prime with a BF Axe!? c'mon!

EDIT: If this seems a bit ranty, it kinda is but usually because I'm tired and I type a whole FUCK TON when I'm tired, this is also why I didn't read everybody's post, they are very long after all. Apologies.

[Strxex]

LoL trying too hard to earn money from players, all the new 6300ip heroes is getting on a lot of people's nerves.

[Douknoukem423]

For me, LoL is more of a spacer until I can get into the beta or the game actually releases. I find it almost impossible to take the game seriously anymore.