You want to build Spearmen? Suboptimal, but you can do it. That option is simply not there in Starcraft 2.
There are a lot of crappy suboptimal builds in DotA, and building items such as Guinsoo's Scythe of Vyse on carries possible.
My point is that if you want to try focusing on the nukes, you can. (And some unorthodox AP builds actually turn out to be pretty good.) In DotA, your nukes are the same no matter what. You can't change that aspect of your character. I am of the opinion that when you play a mage character, with an emphasis on casting spells, the option should be there for you to, y'know, build to enhance the spells. The way an autoattacking character can build to enhance his autoattacks.
There are ways to enhance spell casting in DotA. Skywrath Mage, Obsidian Destroyer, Morphling, and Ethereal Blade all have scaling nukes. Skywrath and OD scale with Int, Morphling with Agi, and EBlade with your primary stat. You can buy Aghanim's Scepter to increase the spell damage of most ultimates. There are Eblade, Veil of Discord and Orchid that all apply debuffs that enhance your spell damage. You can use Dagon or EBlade as an additional damage spell. You can use Refresher Orb to get more spell casts in a fight. You can use Blink Dagger, Sheepstick, Force Staff, or Eul's Scepter to control the flow of the fight and increase the impact that your spells have. There are tools for spellcasters to improve their casting.
The thing is that for both casters and autoattackers, damage is less important than it is in LoL. Control and mobility are focused on more. The autoattack carries that focus primarily on damage are almost universally midgame carries. Sniper and Faceless Void are the only exceptions, Sniper's Range and Void's Chrono allow them to forgo survivability. The true lategame carries in DotA are all heroes with good mobility/survivability. They carry by being hard to lock down, rather than by simply dealing a bunch of damage. DotA casters work in a similar vein.
Another thing to remember is that the lack of Magic Armor is correlated with the lack of Spell Damage. As the game goes on, Heros get more armor but don't get more magic armor. This means that 300 physical damage becomes weaker while 300 spell damage does not.
Now I'm curious though - which heroes did you think had shoddy voice acting?
Off the top of my head: Slark, Bristleback, Enchantress, Death Prophet, and Storm Spirit.
NO ONE DISSES THE SLARK. On a more serious note, Slark and Bristleback's voice is supposed to be rough, somewhat guttural, and uneducated because they are. Slark's raspiness is also explained by the fact that he's a fish out of water. Literally.
On to the gameplay.
I love League's Char Designs. It also tends to fall into a very similar pattern. Riot thinks, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. For example, look at supports. They tend to fall into the same pattern of a CC ability/Heal, a Peel ability/heal, an initiate ability/buff, and a CC ultimate.
Nami, CC ability1, check, Buff, check, heal, check. CC ult, check.
Leona, CC ability Check, Initiate ability check, buff check, CC ult, check.
Thresh, CC ability check, initiate/CC check, initiate/buff, check, CC ult, check.
Alistar, CC, check, peel, check, heal, check. Missing CC ult.
Compared to Dota's supports
Rubick, CC check, Powerful antipush tool, global aura, most versatile spell in game, after Invoke.
Nyx, CC check, antimagic tool, survival tool, assassination tool.
Wisp, no CC, a weird heal, a buff, and OMG TELEPORT
Windrun- I mean Windranger, Huge conditional CC, Long distance nuke, escape tool, amazing push ability.
I just think that dota has more variation. I also love the fact that volvo doesn't enforce meta at all. Rito has been making changes to towers to basically keep the 1 top, 1 mid, 1 jungler, 2 bot permanent. This makes the game easier to get into, but less of a skill ceiling. Thats not a bad thing. I think that lol is a very good game, and I love it. In general, I switch between the two and I always think when switching, Why don't I have X where X is either creep denies, or flash. Dota is just different, not better or worse than lol. Differences in lane control and map size, and ability to traverse the map are the biggest differences.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
There are ways to enhance spell casting in DotA. Skywrath Mage, Obsidian Destroyer, Morphling, and Ethereal Blade all have scaling nukes. Skywrath and OD scale with Int, Morphling with Agi, and EBlade with your primary stat. You can buy Aghanim's Scepter to increase the spell damage of most ultimates. There are Eblade, Veil of Discord and Orchid that all apply debuffs that enhance your spell damage. You can use Dagon or EBlade as an additional damage spell. You can use Refresher Orb to get more spell casts in a fight. You can use Blink Dagger, Sheepstick, Force Staff, or Eul's Scepter to control the flow of the fight and increase the impact that your spells have. There are tools for spellcasters to improve their casting.
All of these are special exceptions, workarounds, and indirect approaches to what LoL handles much more elegantly just by introducing AP and CDR. Again: why have all these fiddly bits, and not just put the direct option on the table as well? The omission is mind-boggling to me. It's like saying you can get proc-on-hit effects and timer resets for your autoattacks, but you can't just scale your damage unless you're a specific hero.
The thing is that for both casters and autoattackers, damage is less important than it is in LoL. Control and mobility are focused on more.
Sure. CC is weaker pretty much across the board in LoL; a 2- or 2.5-second stun is about as extreme as it gets. Even when you chain, you don't have much time to work with, so you want to lay down all the damage you can. Again, I think it's a matter of taste rather than objective design virtue which style of combat you prefer.
All of these are special exceptions, workarounds, and indirect approaches to what LoL handles much more elegantly just by introducing AP and CDR. Again: why have all these fiddly bits, and not just put the direct option on the table as well? The omission is mind-boggling to me. It's like saying you can get proc-on-hit effects and timer resets for your autoattacks, but you can't just scale your damage unless you're a specific hero.
Whats the point of doing that? Variance. When every hero scales identically and they all have similar abilities, you might as well just have a roster of 10-15 heroes. Playstyles and build differ very mildly, where in dota, literally every single hero feels unique and different and therefore the meta is more varied and interesting.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Commander Decks G MGC WB Teysa Tokens BR Wortsnort UG 23.5-No Edric URG Noncombo Animar GUB Damia Stax WBR Alesha Hatebear Recursion WBR Daddy Tariel UBR [Je]love-a Your Deck GWU Almost Critterless Enchantress WUB Sydri+Artifacts=WUB WURG Glint-Eye Combo
I started out playing LoL then played Dota 2 for a little while to see how it was, but found myself going back to LoL because of some of the issues I had with Dota:
1. Character kits in Dota seem less interconnecting in Dota than league where almost every champions kit feels very smooth and unique and so that even when you have similar abilities they play out differently on different champs.
2. Skills in Dota feel more akin to Flash than to a standard champions skill. You have only a couple of skills to use and then you are out of mana, where as league most champions are fairly spammable in the skill department which makes them more fun to play in my opinion.
3. I played a lot of characters in Dota, but probably because of one and two, I only found one character I enjoyed playing, Skeleton King (who I wished Riot made into a champion as I really, really enjoyed playing him). But in LoL I have a ton of champions I enjoy playing from Leona to Lee Sin to Nami and a ton of others.
4. The item system felt onerous and provided way too many choices. It reminded me of trying to build a limited deck in magic, except instead of having fifteen minutes to build a deck you had ten seconds or else you were taking too long. Probably a burden of knowledge thing, but it made me appreciate the straightforwardness of LoL's items as even when I was a newb it was easy for me to get a general idea of what to build.
5. I actually missed not being able to unlock champions with Dota. Gaining IP and being able to use it to unlock champions feels good. It reminds of gaining Jobs in old RPGs where as you progressed you would gain a job and the first thing I would always to do is try out that Job and just enjoy how good it felt to earn it. Plus I enjoy that the model isn't pay to win, since I am a frugal man (i.e. one hell of a proud cheap ass), not that Dota is pay to win, but I digress.
6. Lack of pings. Since it's too hard for me to really talk and play a game at the same time the voice chat doesn't do much for me, so pings are a great benefit while I am playing.
I didn't find Dota a bad game I just found League better suited what I wanted from a game.
Whats the point of doing that? Variance. When every hero scales identically and they all have similar abilities, you might as well just have a roster of 10-15 heroes. Playstyles and build differ very mildly, where in dota, literally every single hero feels unique and different and therefore the meta is more varied and interesting.
I neither accept your assumed premises nor follow the logic that gets you from them to what we were talking about. It seems to me like you're being distracted by several of the issues you have with LoL and not responding to my actual question. Focus on this: in the abstract, how is a game where you can directly build AP worse than a game where you can't? Specificity ought to help you avoid more sweeping unsubstantiated inaccuracies.
And because I'm nice, I'll spell out the follow-up question I implied above rather than trying to trap you with it: does your argument imply that a game where you can directly build attack damage (or HP, or any other stat) is also worse than a game where you can't?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Huge difference. Units aren't supposed to become obsolete in RTSes. Civilization has an obsolescence model of advancement because it's, well, the story of civilization. But in WC3 or SC2, every unit is supposed to fill a distinct niche, and if there's a later, higher-tech unit that fills the same niche better, the designers have done something wrong. I'll admit it's been a long time since I paid any attention to WC3 strategy, but I can sure as hell tell you that SC2 players don't stop building marines or zerglings when they need to do what those units do best.
WC3 had a fairly strict food cap, which often meant that the early cheap units would not be able to perform to the required level. There were multiple occasions where killing your own units was preferable, because suiciding them was giving your opponent's heroes free experience.
Let's keep an eye on what we're actually discussing. The only upgrades that affect a unit's ability to survive spells are hp boosts, which are not common. Oh, and the stone giant's skin thing.
What matters is the efficiency of a group of archers against a hero. You're hardly ever going to use these units to fight 1v1 against enemy heroes, after all. A group of archers with a damage upgrade doesn't survive much longer, but is going to deal significantly more damage back. The group can upgrade the health pool by just building more units. 20 archers have more health than 5.
My point is that if you want to try focusing on the nukes, you can. (And some unorthodox AP builds actually turn out to be pretty good.) In DotA, your nukes are the same no matter what. You can't change that aspect of your character. I am of the opinion that when you play a mage character, with an emphasis on casting spells, the option should be there for you to, y'know, build to enhance the spells. The way an autoattacking character can build to enhance his autoattacks.
You can build to enhance your nukes in DotA. Most focused characters have Aghanim's Scepter that improves their ultimate damage. Dagon gives you an extra nuke, and orchid Malevolence has a damage-amplification effect of 30% for a few seconds. Refresher Orb allows you to cast your spells twice in a row. Turning enemies ethereal makes them take 40% more damage from spells. The option is there, even completely disregarding mana, which allows characters to actually cast their spells more often. Of course:
All of these are special exceptions, workarounds, and indirect approaches to what LoL handles much more elegantly just by introducing AP and CDR. Again: why have all these fiddly bits, and not just put the direct option on the table as well? The omission is mind-boggling to me. It's like saying you can get proc-on-hit effects and timer resets for your autoattacks, but you can't just scale your damage unless you're a specific hero.
It boils down to the fact that active items such as EBlade, Guinsoo and Necrocommunicon are harder to use than passive bonuses. It's possible to screw up or get very strong returns on them, based on your execution. The usage of the items becomes a skill-differentiating mechanic in its own right. This seems to be the route Riot is taking lately as well, by trying to implement more active effects on their itemization. There's also higher variance: EBlade works wildly differently from Dagon, even though both of them are built to enhance damage output.
I'm generally a fan of asymmetrical gameplay, but this one is just an arbitrary limitation. And I've already pointed out that what you're touting as desirable in the asymmetry is still present in LoL even without the limitation.
Hardly. When you get ahead as a team in LoL, you'll stay ahead and don't get weak moments. The powerspikes aren't enough to give one team a fighting chance, and usually that means that lopsided games turn into complete turtle-fests. The list of characters that can actually reliably make up for a weak earlygame is incredibly low, and they almost always peak in lategame. DotA heroes tend to have multiple peaks where they reach exponential returns on their investments.
In LoL terms, the one that comes closest is Rumble hitting level 6 and getting access to his ultimate. In DotA there are numerous characters that gain a similar boost in power multiple times throughout the game. The effect could never be absent from a game that relies on two teams of different heroes fighting, but it's much more pronounced in DotA. The statistics regarding the amount of comebacks in competitive matches support this, and even in soloqueue turning the game around with a powerspike is very easy.
Because the bundles are always the same. In LoL, you still get what are effectively bundled stats more cost-efficiently, but Riot mixes up the contents of the bundle from item to item.
But there are also bundles of stats in flat numbers. Especially in high-tier autoattacker items. See: Monkey King Bar, Kuriza, Divine Rapier, Abyssal Blade, Butterfly, Manta Style, Radiance, Mjollnir. These items all do strongly different things, and have obvious strengths and weaknesses given the situation.
Though to be fair, part of the issue is that League has a massive hard-on for lifesteal, and every auto-attacker builds it because it's completely undercosted.
I think you're absolutely right that the desirability of "spikiness" is a matter of taste. I personally find it unsatisfying to watch a game where one team is stomping the other because their power spiked. I want to see teams outplay each other. You can say that the team hit its spike first as a reward for outplaying on the strategic level all game long, and you'd be right, but that's not the sort of gameplay I find exciting. I guess my tastes are more tactical than strategic.
A lot of low-level games are decided by the winning team ignoring a incoming enemy power spikes, too. At higher levels it's often about seeing how much advantage you can gather from your power spike before it's over. (Or if it comes in time to be relevant at all.) The earlygame dragon fights in League that used to be popular were similar, where a team with a strong level 6 ultimate could bulldoze that advantage. The powerspikes only end up in complete pubstomps in the case where the enemy team doesn't respect them. In fact, this is where the pubstomp term comes from. Public games had randoms in them that didn't respect powerspikes, making the games end early.
DotA also suffers from the same issue high-level Broodwar did: Many of the more impressive things are not obvious to a casual bystander, or even to most people that play the game themselves. Even with what must be 3000+ games of DotA under my belt, I still came across replays I had to watch multiple times to notice everything.
I didn't play it, but I paid attention to it back in the day. And you're right, of course, that items could be really powerful. I should have been clearer in what I meant: they weren't an integral part of hero design. The designers' assumptions were that heroes functioned without items; items were supposed to be perks on top of the heroes' regular power, not the source of their power. (We're seeing this integral versus extraordinary issue big-time in D&D design, too, if you pay attention to that.) Any broken items were just a poor execution of this idea.
True, and heroes in WC3 were primarily very strong support units, rather than direct combat units. The strongest items often had active abilities that were used by heroes only because they were the ones with inventory slots. The other strong items either applied debuffs like Orb of Corruption or provided auras. The effect was often relatively flat on the hero itself, but allowed the hero to amplify the strength of the units around them.
You probably don't want to get me started on D&D design. Or specifically, how broken it is. (Or Talore or Halinn for that respect.) There are minmax boards completely dedicated to breaking the game in the most hilarious ways, many of which end up dealing infinite damage or taking infinite actions in a single turn, starting from level 1.
The thing is that for both casters and autoattackers, damage is less important than it is in LoL. Control and mobility are focused on more.
Sure. CC is weaker pretty much across the board in LoL; a 2- or 2.5-second stun is about as extreme as it gets. Even when you chain, you don't have much time to work with, so you want to lay down all the damage you can. Again, I think it's a matter of taste rather than objective design virtue which style of combat you prefer.
I don't really think there's that much of a difference here. LoL just plays fights in 2x speed rewind forwards. If you get hit by a hard CC and focused in either of the games, you're probably going to die. Tanks in DotA are more durable than tanks in LoL, but that's about as far as the actual differences go. Rhasta's Shackles do very much the same thing as Fiddle's fear: Screws someone over really hard.
Focus on this: in the abstract, how is a game where you can directly build AP worse than a game where you can't?
Because AP is a flat stat that involves no decisions in using it, and the alternative can be better in that department. If AP was implemented it would on a champion-by-champion basis be: A: Would be underpowered noob-crutch/noob-trap which you shouldn't build. B: It would be overpowered and thus the actual skill-cap of the game would be reduced.
Does your argument imply that a game where you can directly build attack damage (or HP, or any other stat) is also worse than a game where you can't?
Perhaps. I'd rather have defensive options that relied on timing them correctly, such as spell-shields, silences, disarms, ethereality and dodging/evasion rather than flat numbers that just make you tougher. All I know is that I feel better when I block a nuke with spell shield, rather than having extra 500 health to negate the damage. I feel better when I dodge Tibbers with Zhonya than if I could just shrug it off.
This is not necessarily a better paradigm. AP is easier to understand and to communicate to players, which makes the game more accessible. Ultimately it's just a flat number that hardly changes the decisions and actions you make in the game. It allows for character scaling without strong changes in the gameplay patterns throughout, which is desirable for accessibility but not desirable for the skillcap. It emphasizes a different core value, and is therefore mostly a matter of taste. And of course, both games exist somewhere in the middle-ground of the spectrum, rather than absolute edges.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Sage is occupied with the unspoken
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
I neither accept your assumed premises nor follow the logic that gets you from them to what we were talking about. It seems to me like you're being distracted by several of the issues you have with LoL and not responding to my actual question. Focus on this: in the abstract, how is a game where you can directly build AP worse than a game where you can't? Specificity ought to help you avoid more sweeping unsubstantiated inaccuracies.
And because I'm nice, I'll spell out the follow-up question I implied above rather than trying to trap you with it: does your argument imply that a game where you can directly build attack damage (or HP, or any other stat) is also worse than a game where you can't?
I wasn't distracted, and my answer remains the same. In a game where champions are functionally very similar, and everything has the ability to scale, your choices become significantly less meaningful because regardless of your initial choice of champ, you end up following the same path (All AD carries take the left side of off. mastery, for example, and buying largely the same core items). By limiting your ability to directly scale whatever you want, you change the functionality of individual heroes - now some scale to be nukers in the late game, while others have stronger disables or even become auto attackers. Restrictions on certain elements can generate more meaningful choices if applied correctly, and I do believe that limiting scaling on magic makes spellcasting something entirely different from a condensed auto-attack.
On the follow-up: Like I said before, if correctly implemented, restrictions can have a positive impact on choice in a game. While I can't think of a game where no HP scaling would work (I"m sure you can, though) - were dota the opposite, where spell damage scaled (as well as magic resistance, which doesnt in current dota), and autoattacks scaled significantly less, having combat rely on modifications you make to your attacks (Maybe more orb effects, more interesting activated abilities, ect) could make for an interesting game as well.
Its all about how the environment supports the restriction - Imagine magic without the 4-cards-per rule. That restrictions actually EXPANDS the choices you have to play, whereas removing the rule would make the game boring and repetitive. I guess I'm just not a fan of buying the same items regardless of what AD carry I choose to play
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Commander Decks G MGC WB Teysa Tokens BR Wortsnort UG 23.5-No Edric URG Noncombo Animar GUB Damia Stax WBR Alesha Hatebear Recursion WBR Daddy Tariel UBR [Je]love-a Your Deck GWU Almost Critterless Enchantress WUB Sydri+Artifacts=WUB WURG Glint-Eye Combo
Assume that the game designers have control over the scaling, it isn't done algorithmically (for example, they can choose to create a particular hero whose spells don't scale with that gear). How does this change your response?
Riot doesn't go that far, but they go pretty far; they have some virtually non-scaling champions like Urgot and Yorick, and they have some highly scaling dependent champions like Karthus and Brand. And they have some champions that scale reasonably well, but primarily build utility and defensive gear rather than offense items; they just do this with the Bruiser class instead of the Mage class, unlike DotA.
I love League's Char Designs. It also tends to fall into a very similar pattern. Riot thinks, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. For example, look at supports. They tend to fall into the same pattern of a CC ability/Heal, a Peel ability/heal, an initiate ability/buff, and a CC ultimate.
Nami, CC ability1, check, Buff, check, heal, check. CC ult, check.
Leona, CC ability Check, Initiate ability check, buff check, CC ult, check.
Thresh, CC ability check, initiate/CC check, initiate/buff, check, CC ult, check.
Alistar, CC, check, peel, check, heal, check. Missing CC ult.
Compared to Dota's supports
Rubick, CC check, Powerful antipush tool, global aura, most versatile spell in game, after Invoke.
Nyx, CC check, antimagic tool, survival tool, assassination tool.
Wisp, no CC, a weird heal, a buff, and OMG TELEPORT
Windrun- I mean Windranger, Huge conditional CC, Long distance nuke, escape tool, amazing push ability.
I mostly agree with you, but just to call out a bias here. You have "OMG TELEPORT" listed for Wisp, but you barely even talk about Thresh's Lantern. I'm virtually certain that if Thresh was a DotA hero instead of a LoL Champ, his lantern would be on your list called as an omg special move.
As I've said, I think LoL champs are designed for an integrated kit play experience, whereas DotAs are designed around particular concept moves that are individually cooler but less kit-supported (this is a by necessity thing for design reasons that I don't feel like getting into). The upshot of this is that LoL champions tend to have a more finely tuned consistent game experience while DotA heroes tend to have bigger, flashier moments.
But the variance here is not that great. Both games have the more tightly defined kits, and both games have the flashy, spectacular, and totally unconventional moves; it's more of a rate thing that separates them.
There has been a lot said either way, and I don't necessarily disagree with anything said on my side, so I'll just mention things that come to mind as I type this post.
What you (B_S) say is true, that LoL is more accessible than DotA because a lot of the game has been streamlined and makes sense in a simple way. However, that is why I dislike LoL: the way they've streamlined the game makes it stale, boring and repetitive to me. I like that in DotA, I can play a hero in several unique ways that have the hero fill a different role in and against teams. I loved the ideas of Blue Ez, Soraka mid, Lulu mid, etc., because they offered different payouts for playing a hero a certain way. Soraka mid was a great hero because she could win almost any lane, but if her team didn't capitalize on that period of advantage, she'd fall off really hard. To me, this is part of what is great about Magic: that players can opt for strategies that are stronger during certain periods of the game, and that those strategies can change purely based on matchup and cards drawn. As I stated earlier, I wouldn't be opposed to DotA becoming streamlined in the same respect that Magic has (and I wouldn't be surprised if Valve aims in that direction), but I just won't agree with you that LoL, at least in its current incarnation, has achieved anything close to what Magic has achieved, popularity aside.
And as far as my disposition towards auto attacking goes, it's not there. Auto attacking is a core part of DotA and involves drawing aggro and adding on damage between spells and items. My disposition is towards a game whose itemization makes your character do the same thing harder or faster. The company weeds out things like Blue Ez because they're "not fun," or something. I honestly don't know why they take these builds out of the game, because they make LoL a lot more fun for me.
And as a side note, Wisp's Tether used to stun and now is a slow. So he has cc. And Thresh is an awesome hero
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Aside: solo lane Soraka is alive and well, and Blue Ez remained popular following the nerfs, and didn't really fall out of favor until some rival builds cropped up due to new releases/buffs.
Blue Ezreal was grotesquely overpowered. It's been toned down. But it remained popular even after the nerfs until two separate things happened:
First, Trinity Force was buffed. A LOT. Enough that it's stronger on Ezreal in most cases than Iceborn Gauntlet, which is the key item in the 'blue' build. I know, the storyline here is supposed to be about nerfs, but the nerfs aren't why this happened, buffs to something else are. So if you're picking Ezreal, you only play blue build if your team isn't going to be able to help you take care of yourself and you expect to do an inordinate amount of kiting - which it's still clearly better at than more conventional Ezreal.
Second, Jinx and Lucian happened. Both are lane bullies who put a lot more pressure early than most other ADCs do except maybe Draven and Caitlyn - they have created a very up-tempo bot lane metagame that requires you to be able to fight well early. Ezreal can function in those lanes, but can't afford to sit there and build passive items like a Tear of the Goddess and a Spirit Stone that will pay off later in the game, just because the downside (being more vulnerable in a fight right now) matters so much more. Tear of the Goddess -> Manamune is actually a stronger build path than it was during the height of blue ez, but the metagame makes it tend to be even more dangerous than it was. I know, this bucks the storyline as well, since it's supposed to be about nerfs, and again, that's not really what happened.
Solo lane Soraka (both top and mid) is kind of overpowered right now, though she's flying under the radar.
Got current with the thread, and I just have one burning curiosity now, as the rest of this doesn't seem like it will be resolved:
Would DotA be improved by streamlining the shopping experience to be closer to the LoL system? Right now that shop is intimidating as hell, and if you're new to the game, you might not even know where to buy everything. Would making it easier to know where to get things depreciate the value you get from playing? I suppose they could even leave the secret shops in, but a menu like the LoL shop would be nice, with the unavailable items grayed out. Mousing over them would highlight where on the map you could buy them. It's a change that I think could considerably lower the barrier to entry.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
L1 judge since 1/30/12 (lapsed as of 1/30/13)
My Friend Code is: 0146-9645-8893
Got current with the thread, and I just have one burning curiosity now, as the rest of this doesn't seem like it will be resolved:
Would DotA be improved by streamlining the shopping experience to be closer to the LoL system? Right now that shop is intimidating as hell, and if you're new to the game, you might not even know where to buy everything. Would making it easier to know where to get things depreciate the value you get from playing? I suppose they could even leave the secret shops in, but a menu like the LoL shop would be nice, with the unavailable items grayed out. Mousing over them would highlight where on the map you could buy them. It's a change that I think could considerably lower the barrier to entry.
You already can. Just click on a full recipe then try to buy the ingredients from any of the shops, and if you can't the game gives you a personal ping to the appropriate shops.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Got current with the thread, and I just have one burning curiosity now, as the rest of this doesn't seem like it will be resolved:
Would DotA be improved by streamlining the shopping experience to be closer to the LoL system? Right now that shop is intimidating as hell, and if you're new to the game, you might not even know where to buy everything. Would making it easier to know where to get things depreciate the value you get from playing? I suppose they could even leave the secret shops in, but a menu like the LoL shop would be nice, with the unavailable items grayed out. Mousing over them would highlight where on the map you could buy them. It's a change that I think could considerably lower the barrier to entry.
Yes, DotA 2's shop is something I've argued against, it's not organized that well. There are lots of possibilities that would improve it, but as it stands, it's hard to use. DotA 1's shops were incredibly clunky but they were still better than what DotA 2 has.
The problem with AP is primarily that Riot seems obsessed with it. AP isn't bad, it's that every nearly every champion in LoL is given 2+ nukes just so they can use it. I don't know of any champion in LoL that doesn't have a nuke and the vast majority have 2 or 3 or even 4. Stapling damage to everything means that you have fewer strong/unique effects because strong effect + damage is too powerful. This means you get a ton of watered down abilities with damage stapled onto them. You end up where most abilities are primarily sources of easy damage and the differences between champions and abilities is blurred too much.
Annie vs lux vs agri vs morg. Each has at least 3 damaging abilities, but play vastly different. Moving into melee APC it gets even crazier. Then you've got champs Luke Orianna, Cassiopeia, and heimerdinger that play like nobody else.
In many ways, APC champs are the most versatile champs in the game
Plus not every nuke scales from ap or solely ap. Ryze is a good example.
The problem with AP is primarily that Riot seems obsessed with it. AP isn't bad, it's that every nearly every champion in LoL is given 2+ nukes just so they can use it. I don't know of any champion in LoL that doesn't have a nuke and the vast majority have 2 or 3 or even 4.
I suppose that depends on your precise definition of "nuke", but Udyr, Rammus, and Yorick probably qualify. And some nukes scale off of different stats than AP. There are a lot more nukes, though; heck, there are more activated abilities in general, since passives have mostly been moved off the QWER bar.
Stapling damage to everything means that you have fewer strong/unique effects because strong effect + damage is too powerful. This means you get a ton of watered down abilities with damage stapled onto them. You end up where most abilities are primarily sources of easy damage and the differences between champions and abilities is blurred too much.
I'd say it's a difference in design style, and I think you got the cause and effect backwards. I suspect LoL has watered-down abilities because LoL design philosophy is not fond of strong crowd control, and the nukes were turned up to compensate. There seems to be more emphasis on the different speeds, ranges, and behaviors of damaging abilities, leading to more positional play and the zoning game. Certainly laning against a Zyra is wayyy different than laning against a LeBlanc, even though they're both high-AP nukey mages, because their damage output comes at you in very different ways.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I came from Starcraft 2 to LOL. It's a lot easier to control 1 thing than several interdependent parts. Never did DOTA/2. LOL is a decent distraction and it's got a large player base.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
That which nourishes me, destroys me
10th at SCG: Syracuse (2014), GP:NJ Last-Chance Grinder Winner (2014):: Former Legacy Mod
I mean, hell, we're all on a forum for something that most people would describe as a "children's card game"...do what makes you happy. You are never too old to enjoy yourself.
there are also a lot of things in LoL that looking purely at damage, you might call a nuke, but you'd pretty much be wrong. e.g. morg Q is almost never used as a nuke. When you look more at the champions than the abilities, I'd say there are a lot of mages (or ability-centric champs which is arguably different) with no real nukes.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Virtue, Jacques, is an excellent thing. Both good people and wicked people speak highly of it..."
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Lol has Draven.
Whichever one is better in your opinion is your opinion about which of these games is the best
Thanks Argentleman;)
WB Teysa token aggroBW (retired)
MAKING (Onmath, Numot, maybe something in Esper)
There are ways to enhance spell casting in DotA. Skywrath Mage, Obsidian Destroyer, Morphling, and Ethereal Blade all have scaling nukes. Skywrath and OD scale with Int, Morphling with Agi, and EBlade with your primary stat. You can buy Aghanim's Scepter to increase the spell damage of most ultimates. There are Eblade, Veil of Discord and Orchid that all apply debuffs that enhance your spell damage. You can use Dagon or EBlade as an additional damage spell. You can use Refresher Orb to get more spell casts in a fight. You can use Blink Dagger, Sheepstick, Force Staff, or Eul's Scepter to control the flow of the fight and increase the impact that your spells have. There are tools for spellcasters to improve their casting.
The thing is that for both casters and autoattackers, damage is less important than it is in LoL. Control and mobility are focused on more. The autoattack carries that focus primarily on damage are almost universally midgame carries. Sniper and Faceless Void are the only exceptions, Sniper's Range and Void's Chrono allow them to forgo survivability. The true lategame carries in DotA are all heroes with good mobility/survivability. They carry by being hard to lock down, rather than by simply dealing a bunch of damage. DotA casters work in a similar vein.
Another thing to remember is that the lack of Magic Armor is correlated with the lack of Spell Damage. As the game goes on, Heros get more armor but don't get more magic armor. This means that 300 physical damage becomes weaker while 300 spell damage does not.
NO ONE DISSES THE SLARK. On a more serious note, Slark and Bristleback's voice is supposed to be rough, somewhat guttural, and uneducated because they are. Slark's raspiness is also explained by the fact that he's a fish out of water. Literally.
On to the gameplay.
I love League's Char Designs. It also tends to fall into a very similar pattern. Riot thinks, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. For example, look at supports. They tend to fall into the same pattern of a CC ability/Heal, a Peel ability/heal, an initiate ability/buff, and a CC ultimate.
Compared to Dota's supports
I just think that dota has more variation. I also love the fact that volvo doesn't enforce meta at all. Rito has been making changes to towers to basically keep the 1 top, 1 mid, 1 jungler, 2 bot permanent. This makes the game easier to get into, but less of a skill ceiling. Thats not a bad thing. I think that lol is a very good game, and I love it. In general, I switch between the two and I always think when switching, Why don't I have X where X is either creep denies, or flash. Dota is just different, not better or worse than lol. Differences in lane control and map size, and ability to traverse the map are the biggest differences.
"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
Sure. CC is weaker pretty much across the board in LoL; a 2- or 2.5-second stun is about as extreme as it gets. Even when you chain, you don't have much time to work with, so you want to lay down all the damage you can. Again, I think it's a matter of taste rather than objective design virtue which style of combat you prefer.
Aaand they chose to indicate that by giving them ridiculously over-the-top stereotypical Cockney and Aussie accents.
Not a great choice.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Whats the point of doing that? Variance. When every hero scales identically and they all have similar abilities, you might as well just have a roster of 10-15 heroes. Playstyles and build differ very mildly, where in dota, literally every single hero feels unique and different and therefore the meta is more varied and interesting.
G MGC
WB Teysa Tokens
BR Wortsnort
UG 23.5-No Edric
URG Noncombo Animar
GUB Damia Stax
WBR Alesha Hatebear Recursion
WBR Daddy Tariel
UBR [Je]love-a Your Deck
GWU Almost Critterless Enchantress
WUB Sydri+Artifacts=WUB
WURG Glint-Eye Combo
1. Character kits in Dota seem less interconnecting in Dota than league where almost every champions kit feels very smooth and unique and so that even when you have similar abilities they play out differently on different champs.
2. Skills in Dota feel more akin to Flash than to a standard champions skill. You have only a couple of skills to use and then you are out of mana, where as league most champions are fairly spammable in the skill department which makes them more fun to play in my opinion.
3. I played a lot of characters in Dota, but probably because of one and two, I only found one character I enjoyed playing, Skeleton King (who I wished Riot made into a champion as I really, really enjoyed playing him). But in LoL I have a ton of champions I enjoy playing from Leona to Lee Sin to Nami and a ton of others.
4. The item system felt onerous and provided way too many choices. It reminded me of trying to build a limited deck in magic, except instead of having fifteen minutes to build a deck you had ten seconds or else you were taking too long. Probably a burden of knowledge thing, but it made me appreciate the straightforwardness of LoL's items as even when I was a newb it was easy for me to get a general idea of what to build.
5. I actually missed not being able to unlock champions with Dota. Gaining IP and being able to use it to unlock champions feels good. It reminds of gaining Jobs in old RPGs where as you progressed you would gain a job and the first thing I would always to do is try out that Job and just enjoy how good it felt to earn it. Plus I enjoy that the model isn't pay to win, since I am a frugal man (i.e. one hell of a proud cheap ass), not that Dota is pay to win, but I digress.
6. Lack of pings. Since it's too hard for me to really talk and play a game at the same time the voice chat doesn't do much for me, so pings are a great benefit while I am playing.
I didn't find Dota a bad game I just found League better suited what I wanted from a game.
And because I'm nice, I'll spell out the follow-up question I implied above rather than trying to trap you with it: does your argument imply that a game where you can directly build attack damage (or HP, or any other stat) is also worse than a game where you can't?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
WC3 had a fairly strict food cap, which often meant that the early cheap units would not be able to perform to the required level. There were multiple occasions where killing your own units was preferable, because suiciding them was giving your opponent's heroes free experience.
What matters is the efficiency of a group of archers against a hero. You're hardly ever going to use these units to fight 1v1 against enemy heroes, after all. A group of archers with a damage upgrade doesn't survive much longer, but is going to deal significantly more damage back. The group can upgrade the health pool by just building more units. 20 archers have more health than 5.
Nevertheless, it's a pretty important one. Lategame Necrolyte and Visage are good examples of Int-based characters that autoattack a lot.
You can build to enhance your nukes in DotA. Most focused characters have Aghanim's Scepter that improves their ultimate damage. Dagon gives you an extra nuke, and orchid Malevolence has a damage-amplification effect of 30% for a few seconds. Refresher Orb allows you to cast your spells twice in a row. Turning enemies ethereal makes them take 40% more damage from spells. The option is there, even completely disregarding mana, which allows characters to actually cast their spells more often. Of course:
It boils down to the fact that active items such as EBlade, Guinsoo and Necrocommunicon are harder to use than passive bonuses. It's possible to screw up or get very strong returns on them, based on your execution. The usage of the items becomes a skill-differentiating mechanic in its own right. This seems to be the route Riot is taking lately as well, by trying to implement more active effects on their itemization. There's also higher variance: EBlade works wildly differently from Dagon, even though both of them are built to enhance damage output.
Hardly. When you get ahead as a team in LoL, you'll stay ahead and don't get weak moments. The powerspikes aren't enough to give one team a fighting chance, and usually that means that lopsided games turn into complete turtle-fests. The list of characters that can actually reliably make up for a weak earlygame is incredibly low, and they almost always peak in lategame. DotA heroes tend to have multiple peaks where they reach exponential returns on their investments.
In LoL terms, the one that comes closest is Rumble hitting level 6 and getting access to his ultimate. In DotA there are numerous characters that gain a similar boost in power multiple times throughout the game. The effect could never be absent from a game that relies on two teams of different heroes fighting, but it's much more pronounced in DotA. The statistics regarding the amount of comebacks in competitive matches support this, and even in soloqueue turning the game around with a powerspike is very easy.
But there are also bundles of stats in flat numbers. Especially in high-tier autoattacker items. See: Monkey King Bar, Kuriza, Divine Rapier, Abyssal Blade, Butterfly, Manta Style, Radiance, Mjollnir. These items all do strongly different things, and have obvious strengths and weaknesses given the situation.
Though to be fair, part of the issue is that League has a massive hard-on for lifesteal, and every auto-attacker builds it because it's completely undercosted.
A lot of low-level games are decided by the winning team ignoring a incoming enemy power spikes, too. At higher levels it's often about seeing how much advantage you can gather from your power spike before it's over. (Or if it comes in time to be relevant at all.) The earlygame dragon fights in League that used to be popular were similar, where a team with a strong level 6 ultimate could bulldoze that advantage. The powerspikes only end up in complete pubstomps in the case where the enemy team doesn't respect them. In fact, this is where the pubstomp term comes from. Public games had randoms in them that didn't respect powerspikes, making the games end early.
DotA also suffers from the same issue high-level Broodwar did: Many of the more impressive things are not obvious to a casual bystander, or even to most people that play the game themselves. Even with what must be 3000+ games of DotA under my belt, I still came across replays I had to watch multiple times to notice everything.
True, and heroes in WC3 were primarily very strong support units, rather than direct combat units. The strongest items often had active abilities that were used by heroes only because they were the ones with inventory slots. The other strong items either applied debuffs like Orb of Corruption or provided auras. The effect was often relatively flat on the hero itself, but allowed the hero to amplify the strength of the units around them.
You probably don't want to get me started on D&D design. Or specifically, how broken it is. (Or Talore or Halinn for that respect.) There are minmax boards completely dedicated to breaking the game in the most hilarious ways, many of which end up dealing infinite damage or taking infinite actions in a single turn, starting from level 1.
I don't really think there's that much of a difference here. LoL just plays fights in 2x speed rewind forwards. If you get hit by a hard CC and focused in either of the games, you're probably going to die. Tanks in DotA are more durable than tanks in LoL, but that's about as far as the actual differences go. Rhasta's Shackles do very much the same thing as Fiddle's fear: Screws someone over really hard.
Because AP is a flat stat that involves no decisions in using it, and the alternative can be better in that department. If AP was implemented it would on a champion-by-champion basis be:
A: Would be underpowered noob-crutch/noob-trap which you shouldn't build.
B: It would be overpowered and thus the actual skill-cap of the game would be reduced.
Perhaps. I'd rather have defensive options that relied on timing them correctly, such as spell-shields, silences, disarms, ethereality and dodging/evasion rather than flat numbers that just make you tougher. All I know is that I feel better when I block a nuke with spell shield, rather than having extra 500 health to negate the damage. I feel better when I dodge Tibbers with Zhonya than if I could just shrug it off.
This is not necessarily a better paradigm. AP is easier to understand and to communicate to players, which makes the game more accessible. Ultimately it's just a flat number that hardly changes the decisions and actions you make in the game. It allows for character scaling without strong changes in the gameplay patterns throughout, which is desirable for accessibility but not desirable for the skillcap. It emphasizes a different core value, and is therefore mostly a matter of taste. And of course, both games exist somewhere in the middle-ground of the spectrum, rather than absolute edges.
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
I wasn't distracted, and my answer remains the same. In a game where champions are functionally very similar, and everything has the ability to scale, your choices become significantly less meaningful because regardless of your initial choice of champ, you end up following the same path (All AD carries take the left side of off. mastery, for example, and buying largely the same core items). By limiting your ability to directly scale whatever you want, you change the functionality of individual heroes - now some scale to be nukers in the late game, while others have stronger disables or even become auto attackers. Restrictions on certain elements can generate more meaningful choices if applied correctly, and I do believe that limiting scaling on magic makes spellcasting something entirely different from a condensed auto-attack.
On the follow-up: Like I said before, if correctly implemented, restrictions can have a positive impact on choice in a game. While I can't think of a game where no HP scaling would work (I"m sure you can, though) - were dota the opposite, where spell damage scaled (as well as magic resistance, which doesnt in current dota), and autoattacks scaled significantly less, having combat rely on modifications you make to your attacks (Maybe more orb effects, more interesting activated abilities, ect) could make for an interesting game as well.
Its all about how the environment supports the restriction - Imagine magic without the 4-cards-per rule. That restrictions actually EXPANDS the choices you have to play, whereas removing the rule would make the game boring and repetitive. I guess I'm just not a fan of buying the same items regardless of what AD carry I choose to play
G MGC
WB Teysa Tokens
BR Wortsnort
UG 23.5-No Edric
URG Noncombo Animar
GUB Damia Stax
WBR Alesha Hatebear Recursion
WBR Daddy Tariel
UBR [Je]love-a Your Deck
GWU Almost Critterless Enchantress
WUB Sydri+Artifacts=WUB
WURG Glint-Eye Combo
Riot doesn't go that far, but they go pretty far; they have some virtually non-scaling champions like Urgot and Yorick, and they have some highly scaling dependent champions like Karthus and Brand. And they have some champions that scale reasonably well, but primarily build utility and defensive gear rather than offense items; they just do this with the Bruiser class instead of the Mage class, unlike DotA.
I mostly agree with you, but just to call out a bias here. You have "OMG TELEPORT" listed for Wisp, but you barely even talk about Thresh's Lantern. I'm virtually certain that if Thresh was a DotA hero instead of a LoL Champ, his lantern would be on your list called as an omg special move.
As I've said, I think LoL champs are designed for an integrated kit play experience, whereas DotAs are designed around particular concept moves that are individually cooler but less kit-supported (this is a by necessity thing for design reasons that I don't feel like getting into). The upshot of this is that LoL champions tend to have a more finely tuned consistent game experience while DotA heroes tend to have bigger, flashier moments.
But the variance here is not that great. Both games have the more tightly defined kits, and both games have the flashy, spectacular, and totally unconventional moves; it's more of a rate thing that separates them.
What you (B_S) say is true, that LoL is more accessible than DotA because a lot of the game has been streamlined and makes sense in a simple way. However, that is why I dislike LoL: the way they've streamlined the game makes it stale, boring and repetitive to me. I like that in DotA, I can play a hero in several unique ways that have the hero fill a different role in and against teams. I loved the ideas of Blue Ez, Soraka mid, Lulu mid, etc., because they offered different payouts for playing a hero a certain way. Soraka mid was a great hero because she could win almost any lane, but if her team didn't capitalize on that period of advantage, she'd fall off really hard. To me, this is part of what is great about Magic: that players can opt for strategies that are stronger during certain periods of the game, and that those strategies can change purely based on matchup and cards drawn. As I stated earlier, I wouldn't be opposed to DotA becoming streamlined in the same respect that Magic has (and I wouldn't be surprised if Valve aims in that direction), but I just won't agree with you that LoL, at least in its current incarnation, has achieved anything close to what Magic has achieved, popularity aside.
And as far as my disposition towards auto attacking goes, it's not there. Auto attacking is a core part of DotA and involves drawing aggro and adding on damage between spells and items. My disposition is towards a game whose itemization makes your character do the same thing harder or faster. The company weeds out things like Blue Ez because they're "not fun," or something. I honestly don't know why they take these builds out of the game, because they make LoL a lot more fun for me.
And as a side note, Wisp's Tether used to stun and now is a slow. So he has cc. And Thresh is an awesome hero
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
Blue Ezreal was grotesquely overpowered. It's been toned down. But it remained popular even after the nerfs until two separate things happened:
First, Trinity Force was buffed. A LOT. Enough that it's stronger on Ezreal in most cases than Iceborn Gauntlet, which is the key item in the 'blue' build. I know, the storyline here is supposed to be about nerfs, but the nerfs aren't why this happened, buffs to something else are. So if you're picking Ezreal, you only play blue build if your team isn't going to be able to help you take care of yourself and you expect to do an inordinate amount of kiting - which it's still clearly better at than more conventional Ezreal.
Second, Jinx and Lucian happened. Both are lane bullies who put a lot more pressure early than most other ADCs do except maybe Draven and Caitlyn - they have created a very up-tempo bot lane metagame that requires you to be able to fight well early. Ezreal can function in those lanes, but can't afford to sit there and build passive items like a Tear of the Goddess and a Spirit Stone that will pay off later in the game, just because the downside (being more vulnerable in a fight right now) matters so much more. Tear of the Goddess -> Manamune is actually a stronger build path than it was during the height of blue ez, but the metagame makes it tend to be even more dangerous than it was. I know, this bucks the storyline as well, since it's supposed to be about nerfs, and again, that's not really what happened.
Solo lane Soraka (both top and mid) is kind of overpowered right now, though she's flying under the radar.
Would DotA be improved by streamlining the shopping experience to be closer to the LoL system? Right now that shop is intimidating as hell, and if you're new to the game, you might not even know where to buy everything. Would making it easier to know where to get things depreciate the value you get from playing? I suppose they could even leave the secret shops in, but a menu like the LoL shop would be nice, with the unavailable items grayed out. Mousing over them would highlight where on the map you could buy them. It's a change that I think could considerably lower the barrier to entry.
My Friend Code is: 0146-9645-8893
You already can. Just click on a full recipe then try to buy the ingredients from any of the shops, and if you can't the game gives you a personal ping to the appropriate shops.
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
Yes, DotA 2's shop is something I've argued against, it's not organized that well. There are lots of possibilities that would improve it, but as it stands, it's hard to use. DotA 1's shops were incredibly clunky but they were still better than what DotA 2 has.
Annie vs lux vs agri vs morg. Each has at least 3 damaging abilities, but play vastly different. Moving into melee APC it gets even crazier. Then you've got champs Luke Orianna, Cassiopeia, and heimerdinger that play like nobody else.
In many ways, APC champs are the most versatile champs in the game
Plus not every nuke scales from ap or solely ap. Ryze is a good example.
I'd say it's a difference in design style, and I think you got the cause and effect backwards. I suspect LoL has watered-down abilities because LoL design philosophy is not fond of strong crowd control, and the nukes were turned up to compensate. There seems to be more emphasis on the different speeds, ranges, and behaviors of damaging abilities, leading to more positional play and the zoning game. Certainly laning against a Zyra is wayyy different than laning against a LeBlanc, even though they're both high-AP nukey mages, because their damage output comes at you in very different ways.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
10th at SCG: Syracuse (2014), GP:NJ Last-Chance Grinder Winner (2014):: Former Legacy Mod