Why play Dota 2 over League of Legends?

I've played a ton of both, and I vastly prefer League. Yes you actually have to play to unlock things, hard for some people it seems, but the game feels more responsive. I do love all the trolls of comparing league to some game with no depth or skill involved. Both these games require skill to play and be good at. At the end of the day it's personal preference and good luck getting calm explanation from MOBA fans as this community is hugely toxic and defensive of their game of choice.

Edit: Also League has the numbers in terms of following. Idk if that matters to anyone but the vast majority of people play league over DOTA.

I prefer DOTA 2 of late, but I don't really buy the DOTA 2 is more balance argument. Really at pro level you see the same heroes match up over and over again: LifeStealer, BathRider, DarkSeer, Gyro, KOTL, CW, Natures P etc.. etc.. I mean there is an official competitive tier list for god sake.. There are +100 heroes in dota 2.. at pro matches you see the same 20 heroes over and over again.

Same can be said about LOL, so at the end: Who Cares?.. just play the one that is more fun to you.

It doesn't. There's room in the market for both games to co-exist. DOTA2 is at 120k concurrent players at a given time and that's more than enough of a thriving community. Heck, even at 30-40k, it always felt like there were enough players.

You definitely see some heroes more often than others, but in DotA literally every hero is viable, that simply isn't the case for League. Even now we are seeing teams pick normally less popular heroes such as, Slark, Viper, Treant, Spectre, etc. much more often. Sometimes heroes gain/lose popularity because of minor buffs/nerfs, but usually it is solely based on strategies teams are trying. The meta is very liquid and constantly changing. For example 6 months ago no one was using Clockwerk, then a few teams realize he fits in well in certain aggressive lineups and just like that he is picked all the time now. Nothing changed, he had always been a great initiator, it's just a result of a game where strategies are constantly developing and changing.

In league people will shit on you for troll picking a shitty champion. What Riot does is release a new champion, who is pretty fucking strong, people buy that shit. Then after a few months they they nerf them to just a fairly strong level. Meanwhile half the old champions are just fucking terrible, a relic from the past. So what you have is these groups of strong champions who excel in every way possible to some of the older ones, and thus will never be picked in any scenario.

i have a friend who is in this same situation. dota 2 is obviously a superior game, but they cant get into it because they have played over 9k matches on LoL and have spent over 2000 dollars on items. i can imagine it would be tough to convince yourself to move away from that, even if your friends were on there.. bummer. im glad i waited this long to get into mobas. valve does it right.

i have played a lot of both. Have 2 league accounts level 30. Have over 500 games of dota 2.

I quit playing dota 2 a few months ago. The games are always just to long. Even if youre lucky and the game should end at minute 30, the winning team will just dick around not letting the losing team leave the base and dragging it out.

Until they put in a surrender feature, even with restrictions, i wont be playing it anymore. I dont want to always have 45 minute long games when at minute 20 the enemy lifestealer is 15-0 and they have 5 towers taken down.

On that note, ive been playing a lot of smite. its pretty awesome.

The all heroes free at all times for everyone I think is a big thing. Its more fun and fairer for anyone. Despite that I managed to spend like 80 bucks on it.

I did not play LoL that much. 200 games tops. And at low level one can just win by buying Twitch or so, when he is not available for free.

Also better graphics and all that sincere deep stuff the others mentioned.

1) DOTA2 has higher production values.

2) It uses my Steam account which I already use regularly.

3) People on LOL were complete assholes to me when I tried it.

4) I prefer Valve's business model for F2P even if the game technically isn't done yet.

I'm still new to this genre (it only recently 'clicked' with me and I saw the appeal) but this is my reasoning.

Riot is shit at balancing, half the fucking roster is completely worthless.

Look at Udyr.

LOOK AT HIM.

My favorite part about Dota is I can play pretty much any character I want and do well given decent laning conditions because the cast is so diverse and balanced. I can actually hit the random button and not be afraid of getting fucked by a Fiora or Poppy and being handicapped for the entire game just because I didn't play the right dude.

That's basically what I read.

As someone who does not post on these forums very often (if ever), I felt it was my duty to the Giant Bomb community to reply to this thread. I have around 2500 games of League of Legends played, and 41 'real' games of Dota 2. I own every character in LoL with at least one skin for each character. I have also played LoL once in the past month because I've been playing Dota 2.

For me, the characters being free and accessible from the start in Dota 2 isn't a draw in itself (being that I own all of the LoL characters, including the newest one) but it certainly helped me make the switch, knowing I wouldn't have a limited pool of heroes.

Dota 2 is a harder game than LoL, it is more complex, it has a significant number of design decisions that vastly differentiate it from LoL, which as someone coming from that game, totally threw me off to start with. The differences between LoL and Dota 2 seem small on the surface, but to someone who has played a lot of either game, they make a huge difference.

You cannot spam your spells in Dota 2.

This difference is by far the biggest thing that you have to adjust to coming from LoL. Mana pools in Dota 2 are extremely restrictive at the start of the game for pretty much every character. If you waste your mana on spamming spells, your base mana regen is going to ensure that you will stay OOM for a long, long time. Mana is a resource that can be as important as Attack Speed or any other offensive stat, and if your carry is a low mana pool hero, yet has a way to get mana from his support (Keeper of the Light, Arcane Boots), the carry becomes infinitely more powerful in that they will be getting a mana bar refill constantly. The proper usage of abilities is a lot more important in Dota than in LoL unless you have a way to regain lost mana very quickly. Using a TP scroll even costs you some mana, so if you are a low mana pool hero, and you've used all your mana, you're not TPing anywhere.

The map is bigger in Dota 2, and every single character can teleport for a price.

This change was huge to me. Having to commit to carrying a Teleport Scroll at almost all times and being aware of things that are happening across the other side of the map just isn't something that you have to consider in LoL at all. LoL has the small few characters that can teleport across the map, but otherwise it's restricted to a summoner spell that few people take. Dota 2 map awareness is absolutely huge for this reason and if the other team is taking good advantage of their TP Scrolls at good times, you will constantly feel pressured in your lane. In the early game, 135 gold for a TP scroll can seem like (and is) a lot of money, especially for a support character or someone who is new and cannot last hit very well, but this just emphasises how important good use of a TP scroll is.

The differences in heroes and not knowing what they are capable of.

As someone coming from LoL, do not take the fact that you don't know what an enemy hero does lightly. Mistakes are much more aggressively punished in Dota 2 than they are in LoL. At first, if you do not know what a character can do, it's probably safe to assume they can kill you quite easily if you get out of position if they know what they are doing.

Last hitting and denying.

Last hitting feels very different in Dota 2, although at its core, it is the same concept as in LoL. Denying, however, is not in LoL at all and is quite important in the early game in Dota 2. Denying is where you attack your own creeps, effectively getting a last hit on them. It denies the enemy gold and also experience from that creep, so doing it effectively can give you an early level advantage in lane.

Summoner spells and abilities.

These just straight up don't exist in Dota 2. You have TP scrolls for a teleport (which will take up a slot in your inventory) but that's as far as it goes. Some characters will have abilities mapped to your usual Summoner Spell buttons from LoL, as they will have more than 4 abilities. LoL has the sense of abilities being very active and usable often, whereas in Dota 2, there are characters that only have a couple of abilities that you can activate. Dota 2's more flexible ability set design, leads to a very different playstyle for different characters and allows for greater differentiation in character types.

Flash.

Flash gets its own section because the non-existence of this single summoner spell in Dota 2 is absolutely huge to every single League of Legends player. The fact of the matter is, for better or for worse, LoL is balanced around the existence of Flash. There have been multiple attempts by the LoL community to have it removed or altered, reasoning that it is an unnecessary crutch that allows someone to play poorly and get away with it. In its current form, Flash allows players to mistakes, have poor positioning, be completely out of mana in the middle of their lane, and still have a way to get to safety. Flash is a huge part of LoL balance now and any major alteration (or even removal) of the summoner spell would mean virtually every single character would have to be rebalanced. Riot simply cannot just 'remove Flash' without massive changes to their game, and the very existence of it (and the fact that is isn't in Dota 2) already allows Dota 2 to be in a much stronger position for competitive balance. As someone who plays mostly support in LoL, having no items and no escapes, I know how important Flash is to the balance of the game right now. Unfortunately, it is always going to be a major component in LoL balance until it is drastically changed (along with tons of champion balancing), but there are no real solid ways that they can easily balance it without altering major parts of their game.

Wards.

Wards in Dota 2 are in limited supply in the shop. If you have someone on your team who buys all the wards and they are in the bottom lane, you're not going to have any wards for top lane unless they come to ward for you, or you wait until they are back in stock. I'm still undecided on whether I like this change or not, but it places more importance on having wards (for everybody, not just supports), and makes map vision a limited resource which should (rightfully) be thought of as important by any player of either game. In LoL, by the end game, you can cover the map with wards and be able to see all of the major pathing areas, but limited ward stock ensures that is never going to happen in Dota 2 at any point in the game. Whether I like this change or not, it is definitely something to consider when moving from LoL to Dota 2.

Runes (not those ones).

Runes spawn every 2 minutes in either side of the river in Dota 2. They are randomised and can be such things as Regeneration (which restores all of your HP and MP), Double Damage, or Invisibility. As someone coming from LoL, I found it incredibly hard to come to terms with the fact that anyone could potentially be invisible at any point in the game. Rune control is a big deal in the laning phase in Dota 2, especially for the mid lane. Most mid laners buy a Bottle, which is similar to the Crystalline Flask in LoL. The bottle not only refills 3 charges when you go back to base, it also refills if you pick up a Rune while holding the Bottle. Not only that, but the Rune can be stored in the Bottle and then used at the most opportune time (otherwise they are activated on pickup).

Runes (yes, those ones) and Masteries.

The lack of runes and masteries allows for a fair balanced game in my opinion. There is no hidden power, what you see is what you get in Dota 2 and quickly checking a character's items tells you what they can do. You don't have to worry about whether the enemy has hidden lifesteal from their masteries, or straight Attack Damage runes. It theoretically allows a new player to be on the same balance level as someone who has played thousands of games. If you are Summoner Level 30 against a level 1 in LoL, you have 29 Mastery points over the Level 1 guy, and most likely a full rune page, making the game unfair right from champion spawning.

Items.

The fact that items are different in Dota 2 should come as no surprise. What might be a surrpise, though, is what some of these items can do. There are items that make your character invisible, silence, stun, none of which you would ever find in LoL. These items are always a major investment for the character that buys them, but they can be incredible useful for rounding out a character and giving them much needed escapes or CC or ganking potential. For me, it's a really refreshing change from the items in LoL, and although it is hard to get used to at first, I do enjoy the more varied itemisation.

No surrender!

For better or for worse, there is no option to surrender in Dota 2.

I think I've covered most of the major points that differentiate the two games, but I cannot emphasise enough that after playing so many games of LoL small changes make a big difference. The differences, big or small, between the two games allow for very different playstyles within the same genre of videogame, both of which I believe are good games worth playing.

For me, the main difference between LoL and Dota 2 is one that cannot really be quantified for anybody else who hasn't been so invested in LoL. I feel like I'm learning new things all the time in every game of Dota 2 I play, which just simply is not the case in LoL anymore. Dota 2 is a refreshing change from the constant meta of LoL, with the same old characters, played in the same roles all the time. The versatility of characters and roles in Dota 2 cannot be understated as someone who is sick of the same old meta in LoL. The greater number of tools at any character's disposal in Dota 2 means that unexpected things can be achieved and that keeps me thinking about the possibilities in each new game I play- something that LoL hasn't done for me for a long, long time

For me, in Dota 2 every game is the same and every player has as much chance to win. The only difference is experience and team coördination. Now LoL actually has things like runes behind levels which means higher level players have access to more abilities than me. Sure it is supposed to be balanced but this is still 'unfair' in my eyes. Also for some reason I find Dota 2 more enjoyable but that's totally personal.

yep

The best thing about DotA, compared to LoL, in my opinion, is the fact that you can roll with virtually any lane-setup you want thanks to the presence of lane-control mechanics like stacking/pulling and denying. You can roll with the regular pub 2-1-2, you can go with a tri-lane: 3-1-1, you can roll with a jungler and 2-1-1, you can even abandon a lane entirely. The baseline strategy of LoL doesn't even come close to comparing to that of DotA.

No surrender is a feature.

Seriously, fuck that thing. For ever 1 game ruinied by shitty teammates or dominating opposite team, you have 10 games lost to surrenders/concedes.

If you want to concede in dota, get your team to buy hatchets and go sit in the forest. the other team will get bored and push to win.

The answer is simple for me. I've played a bunch of League without paying a cent and only played the tutorial of DOTA 2. DOTA runs like dog shit on my PC (which is fairly old) even on the lowest settings and League of Legends runs okay. So whenever I see DOTA I feel like the PC elite are spitting in my eye for not being able to afford a new computer. Also equipment and item allocation seems slightly simpler in LoL. I'm sure DOTA is a ton of fun for people with great hardware but I'm in the demographic of poor people whose eyes bleed just trying to play it.

A lot of the comments feel like the Football vs Football arguments where one side claims one is too slow and the other claims there is no tactics because it moves way to fast. *shrug*

I have played about 1000 games of League and 400 games of Dota2 and I can't see myself ever returning to League.

There are alot of mechanical changes to overcome when starting to play but with time those are things that you will become less of a problem the more you play. For example before I started playing Dota I thought last hitting was incredibly dumb but now I have started appreciating why it may be interesting.

There are really two big reasons for me why I now believe Dota2 to be superior to LoL.

#1 Monetization. Dota does not have a scumbag monetization policy. Every hero is free, and new heroes don't have to be released every two weeks to bring in more money. This means that more time can be spent by the developers on the heroes that are already in the game instead of always chasing the next big thing. Dota also does not have a rune-page system, a system that when you think about it is only useful for stifling player flexibility unless they hand out large sums of money.

In Dota2, you only play for cosmetics and frankly it would be easy for LoL to behave in the same way, there are plenty of skins for each champion to purchase but they are to greedy and want more money so it will never happen.

I am not bitter about the several hundred dollars I have spent on LoL, I enjoyed my time when I played it but I feel much better about spending money on Dota when I know I don't have to in order to stay competetive.

#2 Metagame. The Metagame in LoL is really, really stale and boring. The lanes always look the same (yes in high level play you can switch the top and bottom lane composition in early game but as soon as it starts getting time for taking dragon you have to switch it back to the stock standard). In LoL you always play the Bruiser, Jungler, AP carry, AD Carry and support combination, every single game.

In Dota there is much more flexibility in what types of heroes you can pick up and where you can lane them. It is not uncommon to have professional games with no Carries that are completely focused on winning in the midgame. On the other side of the spectrum there are teams that pick up 2-3 right click carries in their games. You also don't have to jungle, in fact in most games there is no dedicated jungler and this impacts the lanes.

There are so many variations in laning setups, you can run defensive trilanes, offensive trilanes, duo lanes, solo offlanes, solo safelanes, sacked offlanes and so on.

What all of this means is that playing and watching Dota does not get stale in the way that LoL does because there is always something different going on.

Because its the new hotness, duh!

I have over 2000 games of LoL under my belt, and just under 500 games of Dota2.

When I got my dota2 invite, I tried it out and ended up never turning back. I have huge complaints with the asinine map location, massive ui, super zoomed in camera, and a lack of "aimed" abilities, but other than that everything about Dota2 is better.

One of the biggest contributing factors to my getting attached to dota was the heroes. In LoL they release new heroes all the time but the are always so boring and bland with predictable abilities. Another infuriating thing about LoL is that the developers are CONSTANTLY trying to change the way the game is played and do everything in their power to force players into the metagame that they designed.

There are many things I could talk about that I don't really feel like getting into, so I will just say that Dota 2 feels dynamic and open while LoL feels forced and limited. I don't know about you, but when I play games and run into a challenge, I do not enjoy having only one way to solve it. Hell, in Dota2 you need to come up with a different solution every time because your hero lineup alters the game so much.

EDIT: I forgot to mention how freaking terrible the LoL community is compared to the Dota2 community. Unless you do something EXCEEDINGLY stupid, nobody bothers saying anything. People don't ragequit often, and people are actually pretty nice. One of the most memorable things about LoL is how terrible the players were. Feeding intentionally happened almost every other game and chat abuse happened even more often than that.

I agree, but league does have the vast amount of players. League is also a 'secure' game. So many people spent so long playing it, it will take quite a while for it to die off. DOTA however, has yet to take off in the competitive market due to it not actually being out yet. When it does come out it will be seen if it rivals the numbers a major league turny gets. And yes, there is absolutely room for them both to exist, but one will always be more popular then the other.

@wolfieselkie: Great post. As someone who only plays Dota 2 it was interesting to hear the differences

I forgot to consider the effect of the random runes/bottles or wards. The tradeoff for those is that they take 1 inventory slot where playing support in the late game means one less item. There are several items that can give invisibility along some characters having it part of their skills along with randomly getting one on the map so having observer wards (map visibility) and sentry wards (see invisible) does carry a cost.

Who have they released that has been strong and then nerfed?

Aatrox is really weak, Lissandra is a bit weak, Zac's hp regen was nerfed and he's pretty balanced now, Quinn is really weak, Thresh is an exception, Vi is weak, Nami is weak, Zed was really weak when they released him, Elise and Kha'Zix are an exception, Syndra, Rengar, Diana is an exception.

There are like 7 champions who are considered under-powered right now, Karma, Skarner, Heimerdinger, Gangplank, Fiora, Malzahar, Sion, and Poppy . 2 of those have confirmed reworks in the process, Poppy, Sion, and Heimerdinger are really strong at low elo, and Karma just got a rework.

I've played about ~50 games of Dota 2 and ~1500 of league. Runes, Masteries, are dumb, having every champion not unlocked is dumb, and Dota 2's F2P system is much better in every way. League is just much, much more fun _for me_, it's always going to be preference.

People talking about the meta and competitive scenes seem to have no idea of the Korean/Chinese scene of LoL, NA scene IS stagnant (Mostly due to the horrid amateur scene), and I don't have enough knowledge on the Dota 2 scene to know if it's the same, but that by no means is the case for others.

Balance and meta-game arguments really don't make sense to me, people saying support in LoL is boring, are probably not good enough to make the judgement, AD's and brusiers mid has become popular in the last few months, and in the competitive scene crazy stuff like the slow minion push is coming out.

I still don't completely understand the high level Dota 2 tournament meta-game picks but I can eyeball any particular team and recognize what a team's strengths and weakness will be. So let me ask this: What is the "open match" picking meta-game/strategy in LoL? Is it possible to pick and counter pick or should one going to be just as successful picking a random one or even "the cute one"?

@extomar: What do you mean by open match? If you mean blind pick games, it's pretty much a draw of the hat, at low-elo just pick a strong early game, with decent cc and you'll most likely do fine.

In the ranked/draft/tournaments, it's always tournament draft, picking your composition around what you want to to in the game I.E. Strong CC, and high-scaling champs if you want to succeed in the late game, long-range poke champs with disengage, etc. And counter-picking lanes by heroes weaknesses and strengths, which you can circumvent by attempting to swap lanes, or 2v1ing the enemy top/mid, if you think you have the stronger 2v1. Picking top heroes who spike in the mid-game is useful for late-game comps. There's a ton of stuff

I'm not super deep in either game, but I always like DOTA more because there are no locked characters.

I think it's honestly just preference, people can talk for days about the depth of Dota 2 and it's superior f2p model but at the end of the day when I play Dota 2 I just don't have the same kind of gratifying fun feeling I get when playing League of Legends and that's down to my preference.

What league focuses on (the head on champion vs champion duel in lane leading to mid/late team fights) just leaves me feeling more excited about a match up when going in and provides a more immediately satisfying experience to my palette over dota's focus on deeper metagame / mechanics.

A dota 2 match leaves me wondering why I'm not just playing league instead in the same way a dota 2 player would question why he's on league when dota 2 exists.

Also the dota 2 art style screams uninspired blandness at me.

There are reasons, but it's going to come down to preference like some people listed here.

I actually made the switch the opposite way, moving TO League from Dota. I had played Dota 1 for ages, dabbled briefly in Dota 2 (though the name still irks me a bit), but eventually made the full on switch to League. I could give a lot of reasons, but it boils down to it being more fun for me and a generally WAY better designed game. Heck, I actually think League is more challenging than Dota as well. If you're having more fun with League, don't switch. It's not like there is some progression of mobas that has to end up at Dota 2.

That said, if you really want to switch to dota, because of people you know, there are certainly things you might like. Playing with friends always makes things better, so if that's your main reason, it's a pretty good one. I find that for my friends who know nothing about Mobas, Dota is also easier to learn, so it may be better for getting other friends of yours to play. There's less mechanics and resources in effect, which makes the huge learning curve of the genre faster as a whole. There's a lot more consistency between champions, so learning new ones is going to take a lot less time.

If your friends are willing to try either though, and you are having more fun with League, there's nothing that says you have to switch.

Thanks for all the replies everybody! Really interesting opinions here from everyone. This was just the kind of things I was after.

*Continues reading*

Agreed, visually LOL its more inspired and fun. DOTA 2 heroes are either Blizzard Art RipOffs (Gyro, Sniper, Drow) or weirdly awkward "dark" characters: Sven, shadow demond, razor.. uuuggh isn't Faceless Void head a penis anyway!? who though that was a good idea?

As I said I prefer DOTA 2 lately, but art wise heee dunno, not loving it.

I think it's a much more interesting game. You'd be hard pressed to find unique heroes such as Invoker, Rubick, and Meepo. Riot is way too concerned (IMO) with trying to "balance" everything -- which ends up with them just neutering every character into a bland pile of un-originality. In Dota I feel like every hero is unique in their own way and that (to me) makes the game much more exciting.

Mechanically speaking, Dota does sometime have strange mechanics interactions that you'll only really learn after years of playing. Typically these aren't game changing things, but they are there. (Denying is a relatively simple mechanic, honestly. I'm not sure why people complain about such a vital piece of Dota).

You mention "responsiveness", and the reason why Dota heroes feel "sluggish" is because there is a very deliberate turn rate to each hero. Some heroes are balanced completely around this fact (Batrider has a napalm that slows your turn rate) and in general it's a pretty integral part of Dota. Also, you pretty much get used to it really quick.

Beyond all of that I feel like Dota is just a massively more polished and "complete" game -- even in it's beta state. Heroes all have large amounts of voice work, and there are a lot of really cool interactions between heroes (both friendly and unfriendly). For example, if Timbersaw meets Treant Protector he kind of freaks out. Announcers, as well, have all kind of really cool voice work that pops up in specific situations. (Start drawing on the map with the Bastion announcer? "What's with all this scribblin'?")

Stylistically I really like how the game looks. Obviously there is a lot of inspiration from the WC3 models of the original DOTA, but I really feel like Valve just knocks it out of the park with most of their hero designs.

In all honesty though, it really is just about the hero diversity to me. Seriously, in comparison League characters just seem downright boring.

@f00:

People talking about the meta and competitive scenes seem to have no idea of the Korean/Chinese scene of LoL, NA scene IS stagnant (Mostly due to the horrid amateur scene), and I don't have enough knowledge on the Dota 2 scene to know if it's the same, but that by no means is the case for others.

Funny enough, in many ways the NA/EU scene is much more innovative than the Chinese scene in Dota.

I'm not sure how you can say that Dota 2 hasn't "taken off" in the competitive market yet with a straight face. Have you actually seen the number of tournaments going on recently? Right now we have (or have just finished):

• American Dota League
• RaidCall Dota 2 League Season 3
• Corsair Summer 2013
• Raidcall EMS One
• Alienware Cup 2013 Season 1
• Premeire League Season 5
• The Defense Season 4
• Dota 2 Super League
• G1 Season 5 (just finished)
• The International 3 (Qualifiers happened couple of months ago, big tournament up in a bit over a month)

This isn't even everything either (I left out smaller leagues, and I didn't even count the last Dreamhack). Dota 2 is blossoming in the competitive scene.

Maybe it's not going to get as many viewers as one, Riot sanctioned tournament will.. but there is a lot more of it to go around and TI3 should pull in some massive numbers. (With the largest E-sports prize pool in history)

@nadril: While those tournaments are plentiful, few of them pass the same viewer count as anyone from TSM streaming even outside of a tournament. Until MLG has DOTA in it's roaster, which wont happen until Valve 'releases' it, it really hasn't taken off. Planetside 2 pro tournaments are starting to be more prevalent, I won't say PS2 is a launched competitive market yet. And this arms race of prize pool is incredibly stupid, Valve and Riot are basically having a dick measuring contest with the amounts of money they are throwing into a single tournament. My original comment was to the size of the fanbase behind the two games, if you want to go pro, and have the magical ability to pick which game to be a pro at, League has pros on salary as Riot employees, League has garenteed tournaments, in the same place so teams dont need to constantly travel, every weekend for 10 weeks straight, League has a World Final which brings the best players in the world to fight eachother, showing a mix of the styles and metas, League has more players playing and more fans watching, with League you can make a living off streaming and live quite well, with streams getting 20 thousand views regularly.

@slyspider: MLG will never have Dota 2 because MLG wants companies to pay it to run their games which Valve refuses to do. Riot throws money at anyone and everyone all the time. Good for them, but it doesn't grow the scene as a whole. It simply increases everyone's dependence on Riot's money. What if Riot were to make another game (lol not gonna happen) or go bankrupt (even more laughable)? But the point stands that without Riot's money, "professional" LoL would be dead instantly. The only people making LoL content that matters are dependent on Riot's checks.

Contrast this with Dota 2, all of those tournaments are being funded without Valve's help (except TI3, ofc). If Valve ignored Dota 2 from now until HL3 as long as the servers were up there could be tournaments and the scene would be able to continue. Granted losing the International would suck really bad, but at least there would be something.

Call me crazy, but I don't like it when one company is the only reason for the scene existing.

@bisonhero said:

Technically, everything in League is free as well. You just have to earn the IP in order to buy it, which means playing matches. In turn, all you are really saying is "DOTA 2 offers everything up front, while League has you working your way towards something." In turn, I just don't really understand your argument.

Moreover, there are a lot of people saying "it's free-to-play." Currently, it's in Early Access, which means it costs $10. This is not free. That is a dollar sign with a number after it. Once it full launches (supposedly in the summer, but that's been pushed back once before IIRC), then it will be free-to-play. Therefore, please do not incorrectly advertise it.

I also disagree with the notion that "denying is fun." The problem with denying is that it is an artificial way of lengthening game times. This is never a fun mechanic. This was something that I experienced in my time with Heroes of Newerth as well as the original DOTA.

Here's the problem: I cannot honestly comment on DOTA 2's gameplay because I do not watch Daily DOTA, check out any streams for the game, and have not played it myself. I can only comment on the things

The things that I like about DOTA (and I presume DOTA 2) are few and far between:

• Their idea of balance is that there is no balance, that everyone is OP as hell. This is a good way to handle it all.
• The map design is way more intricate, which means the map is another massive part of strategy.

Beyond that, I really can't enjoy the game. Between the generic names of characters, the acceptance that denying is a solid mechanic when it feels more like a lazy mechanic, and overall responsiveness (this is a complaint I've heard from multiple friends that play the game regularly and still prefer League over DOTA 2...and now OP has stated it as well)...

I don't know. Maybe I just love the lore of League a lot. The characters have a personality. They are identifiable. That goes a long way with me.

To each their own, though.

As someone who doesn't know all the differences because I've only ever played like 6 games of league:

1. I don't like the persistence and the grinding. The whole point of this kind of game to me is starting from nothing. I don't want to grind out shit like an mmo in this particular instance. I get in with a level 1 hero with the same amount of gold as everyone else(random pick bonus possibility) and get to work.

2. Hero selection. You can spend a lot of money in both games but spending a few hundred dollars in dota 2 doesn't get you anything more or different than any other player of the game when it comes down to actually playing the game.

3. Familiarity. I started on original dota in WC3, though late into the cycle. I then moved to HoN and then back to dota 2. Basically every mechanic and gameplay difference I hear between dota2/league, I defer to liking what dota does and not what league does. This part of the conversation could easily be switched if league were to have come out first.

@jakob187: Maybe you should play the game before criticizing it?

People who hate fun generally play DOTA 2. That's why not a lot of people play it. Don't worry about it, stick with LoL. You made the right choice.

And I've noticed that people who play DOTA 2 have literally no idea how any of the mechanics work in LoL, as evidence by this thread, so generally opinions have to be taken with a grain of salt.

I personally, cannot wait to see brad play LoL, just so I can see how many of his "skills" transfer, when he spends the first 10-15 minutes of every game at base figuring out how anything works.

It requires 424,950 IP to buy every single character in League of Legends. Assuming a game takes an average of 30 minutes (being generous) and a person has a 50% win rate, a person can expect to average maybe 120 IP per game (after factoring in win of the day bonus)? So if you played League 8 hours a day, five days a week and spent your IP on NOTHING but Champions (meaning you have no runes, putting yourself at a massive disadvantage in any game you enter in to) you would make 1,920 IP a day. A week you would collect 9,600 IP. Therefore, it would require just over 44 weeks of playing League as a full time job to buy every champion that is currently available. However, Riot releases a new hero every 1-3 weeks, but let's ignore that and not factor it in. It's not reasonable in the slightest for any person to ever have the full champion pool available to them without ponying up real money. Add to this that LoLs cosmetics can only be obtained through real money and never earned or dropped shows why LoL makes so much money.

Yeah, DotA 2 is not "technically" free to play right now, but if you wanted to play it today you could go to any forum, steam group, or webpage that is related to gaming and ask for a DotA 2 key and you will find 10+ people like myself who have over 5 keys a piece.

Also, denying is not an arbitrary way of lengthening the game. In fact, it is far from that. Denying is a tool to keep control over a lane so it doesn't push into the opponents tower. It makes it so a 2v1 lane has an ACTUAL advantage for the lane of 2 because they can zone the solo laner away from XP range and keep their creeps from suiciding into tower and giving the solo laner free experience. It actually makes uneven lanes uneven. if you've ever played LoL in the early levels (which you have to to grind to reach lvl 30 so you can play ranked matches [once you buy 10 champions that is, ...] you have probably been in a top lane where the other team doesn't jungle and they have two people up there. You end up vastly overlevelling them because you don't have to split experience and League's towers are so strong that its very dangerous to dive, so the solo laner gets to leech free xp under tower.

But you've never played DotA so I guess you're an expert, right?

because thats what brad played first. Also I would probably get into to dota it scaled as well as league in the visual department.

For me at least, I think there's 4 reasons I can't come to really enjoy dota 2 as much as lol:

1) System requirements. My pc is 4 years old, but it still plays lol and sc2 just fine on mid settings. dota 2 to me doesn't feel like it should be a horribly graphically intensive game (and it isn't), but if feels unoptimised for people with older pc's.

2) Controls. I get that people like the whole turning mechanic thing but... I like snappy movement. Kind of the difference between arkham asylum and dark souls: I prefer to do a move and have it come out instantly, and not wait for the move to slowly animate; in practice it feels like input lag.

3) Champion design. Dota 2's champion pool reaaaallllyyy shows its WC3 backround, many of them feel pulled straight out of WC3. When I look at the champions I see a bunch of monsters, a bunch of dudes, a bunch of dudettes. I feel there's a better visual flair with the individual champions in LoL, each champion feels more unique.

4) Accessibility. There's a reason LoL is meant to be more streamlined. The original idea was to take the more enjoyable parts of dota and minimise on superfluous mechanics that are not explained by the game at all. Last-hitting is pretty simple to figure out. Denying is not; why would you hit your own minion? The secret shop is something I randomly found at some point, would've been useful if it was a little less "secret." The courier was not explained at all. Hell, it took me a little bit to figure out which things were players, I missed having text above their heads!

Kinda a brief look but those are my current problems with dota 2. I think it really comes down to preference; much as I try to get into dota 2 to know what it's about, it just doesn't feel as fun as LoL.

@davidwitten22: Have you played every champion in DOTA? Do you like every champion in DOTA? Having the full roster accessible is entirely irrelevant, when you only play about 10-20 champions in it anyway. You buy the champions you like in league, and most people specialise in a role, so having every champion wouldn't benefit you in any way.

For some reason DOTA players seem to think there is no control of the lane in LoL. There is, it works fine, it just isn't as fucking pointlessly overcomplicated the way DOTA's lane control is.

Also, there is denying in league. It's called zoning. Sound familiar?

@war4ha: Well yes i do play all of the dota heroes.

@jakob187: Hey you know the thing where you freeze a lane in league? What if that wasn't obnoxious and hard to control for no reason? *cough* denying *cough*

@cheappoison: And you're proficient with them all, and enjoy them all equally? Ok then.

Just had 100k viewers last night for Na'Vi vs iG, at a really off time for people as well. As far as the prize pool goes, Valve originally started it at 1.6 million and the rest of it has come from the community supporting the game with compendiums. It's not them "dick waving" at all.

You keep talking about all of these guaranteed tournaments for League like Dota doesn't have anything guaranteed. I mean, if anything I would put my eggs into the Dota basket because the competitive scene will still thrive even if Valve decided to fuck off with supporting any tournaments. If Riot decides to stop supporting tournaments the entire scene would crash.

There's just something really grating about thinking that only the top viewed game in the world can be "competitively viable". I mean, for fucks sake man Dota has been "competitively viable" before League was even a twinkle in Guinsoo's eyes.

You should maybe actually play the game before judging it. There is a lot of really dumb misinformation here.

Moreover, there are a lot of people saying "it's free-to-play." Currently, it's in Early Access, which means it costs $10. This is not free. That is a dollar sign with a number after it. Once it full launches (supposedly in the summer, but that's been pushed back once before IIRC), then it will be free-to-play. Therefore, please do not incorrectly advertise it.

There are literally bots that will give you a key for free. The early access package gets you cosmetic items that also comes with a key. The game is free.

I also disagree with the notion that "denying is fun." The problem with denying is that it is an artificial way of lengthening game times. This is never a fun mechanic. This was something that I experienced in my time with Heroes of Newerth as well as the original DOTA.

It doesn't "slow down" the game. If anything denying makes the laning phase a lot more interesting because it becomes an actual battle of last hits and not just 2 dudes standing opposite sides of each other last hitting stuff and occasionally throwing a spell out. If you compare mid lane in League to Dota it is a massive difference in what you have to do.

Denying is also a balancing thing.

Beyond that, I really can't enjoy the game. Between the generic names of characters, the acceptance that denying is a solid mechanic when it feels more like a lazy mechanic, and overall responsiveness (this is a complaint I've heard from multiple friends that play the game regularly and still prefer League over DOTA 2...and now OP has stated it as well)...

I don't know. Maybe I just love the lore of League a lot. The characters have a personality. They are identifiable. That goes a long way with me.

Again, the game has an actual weight to it. Characters have turn rates which is a large part of the balance. Any sort of feeling of "oh this game is slow" goes away after like 20 games.

And I can't see how you don't think the Dota characters have personality. Maybe if you actually played the game you would notice just how much personality they have. They aren't just static units with a few static responses, they respond to their environment around them and the characters/situations around them. Characters have lines for when they meet other friends or enemies, and they have lines for specific situations as well. The game is filled to the brim with personality.

Yeah I've played every hero in DotA 2. I don't like all of them, but I like a lot of them. Most of them can be useful in any situation. Having the full roster accessible is never irrelevant, especially in a game with drafting. In a ranked LoL game I feel like a bad teammate because I can't lock in Shen or Thresh for a teammate if they make it through the ban phase. Having the whole pool available allows you to draft with that in mind, instead of not being able to draft into many lineups because you don't own the ADC or the Support necessary to do so.

I like to play many roles, and when I played League I didn't stick with just one role because 1. That's boring and 2. You're missing 80% of the game by doing that. I don't see how anyone can say that not having every hero available to every player is a feature instead of a hindrance.

I played LoL, I know how the lanes work. Zoning is not the same as denying. in DotA you use both zoning and denying in order to get advantage over a lane. Zoning and harassing are the two tools available in LoL, DotA just has a third tool that has a very large impact. Playing support in DotA and then playing support in a game of LoL (at least when I have done it) makes you feel much more useless and helpless as a Support because you can't do as much. At the early levels a 2v1 lane can prevent the 1 laner from getting last hits, but they can't effectively stop them from getting experience because experience range is long, a laner who overextends can flash away, and since they can't deny creeps they will inevitably push the lane into the towers that can't be dove realistically until the heroes are much higher level.

I played League, I don't hate on it to be a dick. I just understand after playing both games how simplistic LoL is, and how unfair it is that one team can be at an advantage before the drafting stage even starts due to the rune and mastery mechanic.

nobody seems to bring up heroes of newerth at all in this conversation. lol

having played all 3 though dota2 is better for a new player for sure, being one myself. earlier in beta it was just as bad as the rest, but the in game guide feature really makes it so you can pick anyone and still somewhat contribute even if you've never played them before. if they had something like that in league of legends it wouldn't be so bad to get screwed out of the guy you wanted to pick but can't afford thanks to the free rotation. that's not even a problem in dota, but they solved it anyways.

i mean even aside from just learning a hero/their build/what items to buy and when, it's more complicated out of the gate because there's the 2 extra skills everyone gets to pick from, and then eventually runes and masteries. it's a lot of shit to learn just for one dude, and it all has to be done outside of the game, it's just kind of daunting and just thinking about it, on top of the stress of actually playing, makes me not want to play it.

i have played more dota but i don't really feel biased towards either because i basically only play when dota playing friends want me to, and would play league of legends if that's what they asked me to play anyways, i just feel like dota is more polished and provides a better experience for the new user.