Access to heroes is power. Saying otherwise is just lying. It's like saying that paying to upgrade the damage on a nuke from 250 to 270 isn't pay2win. Sure it won't matter every match, but it's still buying power. I just don't get why people try to claim it isn't. It's the same pay scheme that Magic uses. Access to a wider pool of choices is power.
Access to heroes is power, but your access to heroes past the first dozen or so is gated by play time, not by champion ownership. Not even professional LoL players make any real effort at having a roster deeper than a dozen or so that they'd even think of playing competitively.
I own the whole LoL roster and there aren't more than a dozen champs I'd feel even vaguely comfortable playing in a ranked game, and I'm never an expert in more than 4-5. And this isn't a "I only play OP champs" thing, as I noted earlier I focus primarily on the ADC role and don't play either of the top two ADC picks very often. Each champion just has too much nuance for anyone to become and remain an expert on more than a handful at a time.
If you could hypothetically master most of the roster, you'd get an advantage, but not even top tier players try to do that, anyone who thinks they have mastered even 1/3 of the roster simply doesn't understand what 'mastery' means in LoL.
Are Lol players angry at the pay2win thing because they want the game taken more seriously (and p2w obviously isn't something you associate with serious play)?
I'm not angry about it, it's just inaccurate and a weird thing to bother bringing up.
Didn't see this before I started writing:
Fair enough. The issue this raises with me is that, if you really don't need to unlock all the champs to play competitively, doesn't that mean that champs are bad/lazy design? (also kinda plays into the stale meta thing above). I compare it to dota again, where counter-picking is incredibly important, and where not having full access to heroes would severely impact your team's competitiveness. Either way, I think that that would be a massive flaw with the game.
It's more that the game is balanced well enough that aside from the bottom ~dozen picks (there are exactly 16 picks out of 118 champions currently below a 47% win rate in LoL), you will gain more of an advantage from playing one of the champions that perfectly suit your own playstyle than you will picking the theoretical optimal pick. In Season 3, my top played ADC was Miss Fortune; she was mostly not the best ADC for solo queue in theory, but she suited me better than the top picks.
And let's be clear about that stale meta discussion. Talking about ADCs over a 1 year span, the best picks at the start of S3 were Graves, Ezreal, Corki early, then top picks rotated through Caitlyn, Draven, Ezreal again, Twitch, Miss Fortune did have a few weeks in the sun, then Corki again, Vayne, Varus. The only ADCs who were never literally the best pick at some point in season 3 were Ashe, Kog'maw who is a very team-dependent pick, and Sivir who received a rework at the end of the season because she had a broken design).
The sense in which the meta is stale in LoL is:
You will put 1 player top, 1 mid, 1 jungle, and 2 bottom. Big caveat: competitive teams (but not solo queuers) sometimes lane swap so that it's actually 2 top 1 mid 1 bot, or 1 top 2 mid 1 bot, so there actually is variety there, albeit not as much as in dota. And, since November we've even seen some teams drop the jungler for a second duo lane (with laners farming jungle camps when there's a break in the action) and we've seen some double jungle action. So, pretty much every configuration you can think of except tri lanes. Solo queue players don't experiment that much; too much coordination required for the 30 seconds you have before you start picking (which is a problem with their model imo).
You will have at least 1 Marksman building for high physical damage output.
You will have at least 1 Assassin or Mage building for high magic damage output.
That's really it. It's not as varied as dota, but it's hardly stale. 1/3 to 1/2 the roster won't see play in the professional scene, but there aren't all that many games played there anyway. Nearly every champion has some representation in the Diamond / Challenger tier. There are always a handful of champs who have been intentionally weakened while they're being reworked into a healthier state, but that's not more than a small handful.
Yeah, I get what you're saying, I just feel like its a huge part of the game that riot cut. I also wish that they'd pull a dota and make everything game-related free, and only charge for cosmetic items. God knows how much they make off of those stupid girl-in-tiny-nurse-outfit skins they keep producing.
Little tone thing - you're pretty condescending. E.g. "stupid girl-in-tiny-nurse-outfit skins" - their last four skins were Void Fizz, Super Galaxy Rumble, Battlecast Vel'Koz, and Arctic Ops Varus. Google em. That's a hideous void monster, a super-hero mech pilot, an alien-ish frost archer and a Matrix sentinel homage. 2 of their last 10 skins could be described even remotely the way you did - their valentine's day special (Heartseeker Ashe) and Popstar Ahri - one of the most fan-requested skins ever. You're picking your words in a way that is (intentionally or not) calculated condescension, and isn't even accurate.
A very high number of top tier players got there by playing 1 thing and 1 thing only. If they are forced into a role that 1 thing can't go, they have another 1 thing for that slot, so ostensibly you can get by with minimum number of champs to get in, which is 16(I got gold on my smurf with 20 champs and 2 rune pages).
Honestly, for starting players, runes(which can't be bought) and rune pages(which can be) are a much bigger seperating factor than champion pool(and people are definitely overstating the difference having the entire champ pool makes and understating how long it takes to get every champ). Because when you first start and are trying to get a decent champion pool that suits you, you are spending that precious IP leveling the playing field with starting stats. The only other thing I disagree with in riot's business model is that certain champions are given a lot more free weeks than others, so sometimes you are buying someone you have never played before but only seen someone else play(twitch was a fantastic example of this, same with the high mechanic champs)
Edit on the skins thing, at one point they did bring out some fan service skins, but honestly that's fallen off quit a bit. Only 2 or so of the last 15 female skins can be described as fan-servicey, so that's incredibly overstated. Dat Bear Calvary Sejuani doe.
Yeah, draemeomg had 3 champs with >10 games played in ranked. I have 5. He mains adc, the least contested role, while mine split between my fave mid, my two fave junglers, and my two favorite tops although my new top is also my jungle if choice, so, whee.
I have Nasus, Wukong, Teeno and Pantheon for top. If were talking counterpicking I think one of these 4 has a favorable match vs any commonly played top. Of these, only teemo has less than 10 rank games this season.
For mid, I roll Morgana. I can pick Morgana against everything in league except LeBlanc and win. She is just nice..
For jungle, I finally lost a second mummy game. Mostly to shenanigans. Between him and Pantheon I always have a good pick.
I also have a variety of supports because synergy matters somewhat bot lane.
None if these champs set me back money. I unlocked them with playtime after I tried them out on free weeks and found that I enjoyed them.
I have been, but you've been ignoring that and cherry picking the stuff you don't agree with to make me look bad
I've been picking the point out of your arguments that I disagree with, you've done the same, and I don't think that's a problem. Anything I don't argue that appears before one of my posts you can just think of as something I agree with until I take issue with it.
Meanwhile, you made a thread asking for opinions and then when they come, you just say "yeah no that's wrong". Looking at your responses to me, I really do see very little arguments backing your claims. I've done that a couple times too, but you're the one who solicited in the first place so it's more jarring.
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Little tone thing - you're pretty condescending. E.g. "stupid girl-in-tiny-nurse-outfit skins" - their last four skins were Void Fizz, Super Galaxy Rumble, Battlecast Vel'Koz, and Arctic Ops Varus. Google em. That's a hideous void monster, a super-hero mech pilot, an alien-ish frost archer and a Matrix sentinel homage. 2 of their last 10 skins could be described even remotely the way you did - their valentine's day special (Heartseeker Ashe) and Popstar Ahri - one of the most fan-requested skins ever. You're picking your words in a way that is (intentionally or not) calculated condescension, and isn't even accurate.
That part WAS meant to be condescending. Not to you, but towards riot. while only a few current skins are fanservice (forecast janna, anyone?), there is a TON of them out there. Even worse, several of their champs are fanservice to begin with - Ahri included (lets not even get into Jynx's reveal) What it really is is a cheese tactic to appeal to the asian market (Which eats that kind of thing up in games), and while it works well, I have little respect for a company that claims its game to be a sport selling it on the merits of "oh look shiny tits,' - its akin to someone trying to jazz up baseball by adding strippers to the stadium, and really makes the entire scene look like crap to an outside observer.
Meanwhile, you made a thread asking for opinions and then when they come, you just say "yeah no that's wrong". Looking at your responses to me, I really do see very little arguments backing your claims. I've done that a couple times too, but you're the one who solicited in the first place so it's more jarring.
Well, the pay-to-win thing has been an ongoing discussion that you freaked out about. The fact that league is far more for casuals can be surmised from stats - Average play time for league players is nearly an order of magnitude lower than for dota players. I've also refuted your claims that the rune and mastery systems add complexity, and you've conceded that riot has removed a ton of complexity and interactivity from the actual gameplay and replaced it with those systems. The only things of mine you've responded to have been the sometimes hyperbolic statements I can make, and ignored the valid points that both I and others (Looking at AG kicking butt with explanations here) have made. Heck, the last half of your points have been complaints about the term pay2win
While I do agree that riot approached those questions, I think what they asked was not "how can we make it better", but "how can we make it more accessible to casuals", and in that regard they succeeded. I don't think that that has made a BETTER game, though - simplification doesn't make for a more rewarding experience for me.
With the possible exception of removing the denial mechanic, nothing I described is "simplification". AP scaling opens up a new world of possibilities for mages. Splitting up the multifunction stats of Str, Agi, and Int makes the stat system more granular and gives players more discrete choices for how to prioritize. And the new armor and MR system completely changes the way you counterplay against physical and magical threats, especially since the stats are readily stackable so you have to ask not just "Should I get MR? yes/no" but "How much?"
Even if you don't like these changes, it is nonsensical to say they are simpler.
Overall, though, is LoL more accessible to casual players? Yes. That does not make it a worse game; it makes it a better one. You're not going to win any game design prizes for constructing a needlessly opaque system that keeps out all but the most dedicated players. Look at Magic: really accessible, but also really deep. Not mutually exclusive.
On the aesthetic - really!? The voice acting in dota 2 is one of THE highlights of the game for me - with a good hour and a half of dialogue per hero, individual ***** recorded for each item, and inter-hero dialogue on kills and denies, I get random laughs all the time. I dislike the cartoony aesthetic of lol, personally.
While the sheer amount of voice acting is impressive, quantity is no substitute for quality. If an actor is hammy, affecting an accent, overprocessed into a grating screech, and/or mimicking a classic WC3 unit badly, I don't want to listen to them whether it's for an hour and a half or five minutes. Not every hero in DotA is obnoxious, of course, and a couple of LoL champs are, but I've found the proportions of good to bad to be very different.
It's cool that DotA got the Bastion guy as an announcer, though.
With the possible exception of removing the denial mechanic, nothing I described is "simplification". AP scaling opens up a new world of possibilities for mages. Splitting up the multifunction stats of Str, Agi, and Int makes the stat system more granular and gives players more discrete choices for how to prioritize. And the new armor and MR system completely changes the way you counterplay against physical and magical threats, especially since the stats are readily stackable so you have to ask not just "Should I get MR? yes/no" but "How much?"
Even if you don't like these changes, it is nonsensical to say they are simpler.
Overall, though, is LoL more accessible to casual players? Yes. That does not make it a worse game; it makes it a better one. You're not going to win any game design prizes for constructing a needlessly opaque system that keeps out all but the most dedicated players. Look at Magic: really accessible, but also really deep. Not mutually exclusive.
The base systems are SIMILAR, granted, but the changes I'm talking about are more along the lines of 1) no interaction with the environment; juking, pathing, killing trees doesn't exist 2) no denies on both creeps and (more importantly) heroes 3) a mass simplification of how items work (few activted items in LOL) 4) No micromanagement. Basically, they've removed many of the nuanced and complicated parts of the game that make it deep, and failed to replace them with something else that is sufficiently complex and rewarding - that is a simplification, no matter how you slice it. I'm not saying that the rework of str/agi/int is simple. I'm saying that the accompanying game design choices they made, in an effort to gather wider appeal, have negatively impacted the game (at least from a veteran player's standpoint).
Magic is an apt comparison, though I'd turn it around: DotA is like magic; A simple base with incredibly deep, nuanced and sometimes nonsensical interactions that make the game very rewarding for experienced players. LoL is more like Yu-gi-oh; A lot of the nuance is removed, but it has broader appeal. This is actually why I'm so confused with magic players liking league more - as a magic player myself, i see a LOT more of the things I love about magic in dota than I do in league.
While the sheer amount of voice acting is impressive, quantity is no substitute for quality. If an actor is hammy, affecting an accent, overprocessed into a grating screech, and/or mimicking a classic WC3 unit badly, I don't want to listen to them whether it's for an hour and a half or five minutes. Not every hero in DotA is obnoxious, of course, and a couple of LoL champs are, but I've found the proportions of good to bad to be very different.
It's cool that DotA got the Bastion guy as an announcer, though.
Hell yes Bastion announcer.
Now I'm curious though - which heroes did you think had shoddy voice acting? I really can't think of a single one off the top of my head that I hate, and there are absolute gems like windrunner, enchantress, weaver and storm spirit that I play just to hear them quip randomly.
On the flipside, LoL has things like Amumu, annie, blitzcrank,caitlyn that are absolute travesties - either painfully cheesy, overprocessed, or just bad.
Access to heroes is power. Saying otherwise is just lying. It's like saying that paying to upgrade the damage on a nuke from 250 to 270 isn't pay2win. Sure it won't matter every match, but it's still buying power. I just don't get why people try to claim it isn't. It's the same pay scheme that Magic uses. Access to a wider pool of choices is power.
Access to heroes is power, but your access to heroes past the first dozen or so is gated by play time, not by champion ownership. Not even professional LoL players make any real effort at having a roster deeper than a dozen or so that they'd even think of playing competitively.
I own the whole LoL roster and there aren't more than a dozen champs I'd feel even vaguely comfortable playing in a ranked game, and I'm never an expert in more than 4-5. And this isn't a "I only play OP champs" thing, as I noted earlier I focus primarily on the ADC role and don't play either of the top two ADC picks very often. Each champion just has too much nuance for anyone to become and remain an expert on more than a handful at a time.
If you could hypothetically master most of the roster, you'd get an advantage, but not even top tier players try to do that, anyone who thinks they have mastered even 1/3 of the roster simply doesn't understand what 'mastery' means in LoL.
Are Lol players angry at the pay2win thing because they want the game taken more seriously (and p2w obviously isn't something you associate with serious play)?
I'm not angry about it, it's just inaccurate and a weird thing to bother bringing up.
Didn't see this before I started writing:
Fair enough. The issue this raises with me is that, if you really don't need to unlock all the champs to play competitively, doesn't that mean that champs are bad/lazy design? (also kinda plays into the stale meta thing above). I compare it to dota again, where counter-picking is incredibly important, and where not having full access to heroes would severely impact your team's competitiveness. Either way, I think that that would be a massive flaw with the game.
It's more that the game is balanced well enough that aside from the bottom ~dozen picks (there are exactly 16 picks out of 118 champions currently below a 47% win rate in LoL), you will gain more of an advantage from playing one of the champions that perfectly suit your own playstyle than you will picking the theoretical optimal pick. In Season 3, my top played ADC was Miss Fortune; she was mostly not the best ADC for solo queue in theory, but she suited me better than the top picks.
And let's be clear about that stale meta discussion. Talking about ADCs over a 1 year span, the best picks at the start of S3 were Graves, Ezreal, Corki early, then top picks rotated through Caitlyn, Draven, Ezreal again, Twitch, Miss Fortune did have a few weeks in the sun, then Corki again, Vayne, Varus. The only ADCs who were never literally the best pick at some point in season 3 were Ashe, Kog'maw who is a very team-dependent pick, and Sivir who received a rework at the end of the season because she had a broken design).
The sense in which the meta is stale in LoL is:
You will put 1 player top, 1 mid, 1 jungle, and 2 bottom. Big caveat: competitive teams (but not solo queuers) sometimes lane swap so that it's actually 2 top 1 mid 1 bot, or 1 top 2 mid 1 bot, so there actually is variety there, albeit not as much as in dota. And, since November we've even seen some teams drop the jungler for a second duo lane (with laners farming jungle camps when there's a break in the action) and we've seen some double jungle action. So, pretty much every configuration you can think of except tri lanes. Solo queue players don't experiment that much; too much coordination required for the 30 seconds you have before you start picking (which is a problem with their model imo).
You will have at least 1 Marksman building for high physical damage output.
You will have at least 1 Assassin or Mage building for high magic damage output.
That's really it. It's not as varied as dota, but it's hardly stale. 1/3 to 1/2 the roster won't see play in the professional scene, but there aren't all that many games played there anyway. Nearly every champion has some representation in the Diamond / Challenger tier. There are always a handful of champs who have been intentionally weakened while they're being reworked into a healthier state, but that's not more than a small handful.
Yeah, I get what you're saying, I just feel like its a huge part of the game that riot cut. I also wish that they'd pull a dota and make everything game-related free, and only charge for cosmetic items. God knows how much they make off of those stupid girl-in-tiny-nurse-outfit skins they keep producing.
Little tone thing - you're pretty condescending. E.g. "stupid girl-in-tiny-nurse-outfit skins" - their last four skins were Void Fizz, Super Galaxy Rumble, Battlecast Vel'Koz, and Arctic Ops Varus. Google em. That's a hideous void monster, a super-hero mech pilot, an alien-ish frost archer and a Matrix sentinel homage. 2 of their last 10 skins could be described even remotely the way you did - their valentine's day special (Heartseeker Ashe) and Popstar Ahri - one of the most fan-requested skins ever. You're picking your words in a way that is (intentionally or not) calculated condescension, and isn't even accurate.
So, speaking of season 3 meta, don't forget the C9, the most dominant team in NA, used Ashe, one of the weakest ADC's at the time, to amazing effect. This season, something like 90 champs saw play in the LCS, and it could quite easily be higher, as I missed a few weeks due to school/work related things. There's really only one or two champs that aren't that viable right now, and they are mostly due to being older design that just doesn't stand up to the new design philosophy.
The fact that league is far more for casuals can be surmised from stats - Average play time for league players is nearly an order of magnitude lower than for dota players.
This doesn't prove that league is for casuals. This proves that casuals play league. Which again, I believe is more explained by the game's popularity than anything else.
I've also refuted your claims that the rune and mastery systems add complexity, and you've conceded that riot has removed a ton of complexity and interactivity from the actual gameplay and replaced it with those systems.
You didn't refute, you challenged, and I never conceded that either (though I didn't directly challenge it I think). I do agree that LoL has removed some things from DotA that give it some depth, namely I've mentioned denying, but I do not think LoL is a less complex game for it. First of all, LoL has added some things that give depth, and second of all, the amount of depth granted by something like denial is a drop in the bucket of all that both games have.
Further, the removal of the denial mechanic actually doesn't remove the depth surrounding DotA's denial mechanic. Now I know that sounds impossible but wait: like I hinted at before, the fact that you can't directly deny in LoL simply shifts the way you abuse your lane pressure. You can't directly steal the last hit anymore, but you can still prevent the last hit. You could argue that because this is also possible in DotA, it has more options and is therefore more complex. And I would probably agree if it weren't for the presence of junglers in LoL. Preventing or punishing enemy last hits (or denying them in DotA) restricts your positioning and action, at least for an instant. This can make your play more predictable, pull you farther from tower - do a whole lot of things that give the enemies a chance to capitalize. But in LoL, it's particularly deep because of the threat of junglers. It is essentially comparable to, in DotA, making these risky moves while the enemy mid has been missing for a long enough time. Assuming the jungler hasn't shown recently... the point is, that threat of an outside enemy hero becoming a factor is present most of the time instead of rarely. This is the kind of thing that makes me take issue when you say lol positioning is twitch oriented, not awareness oriented. Literally every time your lane opponent in LoL goes to take a last hit or do pretty much anything, your options are more limited if you aren't on the ball thinking about the enemy jungler, let alone other MIAs. If their jungler comes in, can mine help, is he near enough, can he jump in the fight before I take very much damage from these specific 2 enemy champs with the builds they have right now? Can we win that 2v2 fight? If so, I'm free to be a little more aggressive, but exactly how much? Depends on the extent of all these factors. It's incredibly complex. Mind you I'm not saying there aren't things like this in DotA... but the impact that a deny mechanic versus pure zoning has on this situation? It's tiny. So tiny. Negligible.
This whole thing is also while I tell anyone who plays LoL that even if they hate jungling, they need to understand jungle pathing, camp timers, etc. The knowledge this gives you empowers your play immensely.
The only things of mine you've responded to have been the sometimes hyperbolic statements I can make, and ignored the valid points that both I and others (Looking at AG kicking butt with explanations here) have made. Heck, the last half of your points have been complaints about the term pay2win
I will say right now that I agree completely with every single thing AG has said except the one thing I already responded to him about: the power provided to you by buying additional champs in LoL. He very much overstates that.
I've been talking a lot about pay2win because it's one of the most absurd of your points. I don't think I'll say anything more about it because AudioTsunami already recently said about all there is to say on it.
Also I support pretty much everything Drawmeong just said about the meta, but he also kinda messed one thing up. For significant portions of time in s3, it was very common to not have any AP damage. Even that isn't static. Even now, having all AD isn't a terrible thing - a disadvantage but not composition breaking. Moreso the reason you don't see it often anymore is that a lot of the strong AD mid options have been nerfed, and also a lot of the strong top-laners ***** out some aoe magic damage.
With the possible exception of removing the denial mechanic, nothing I described is "simplification". AP scaling opens up a new world of possibilities for mages. Splitting up the multifunction stats of Str, Agi, and Int makes the stat system more granular and gives players more discrete choices for how to prioritize. And the new armor and MR system completely changes the way you counterplay against physical and magical threats, especially since the stats are readily stackable so you have to ask not just "Should I get MR? yes/no" but "How much?"
How does stacking more damage on nukes open up an entire world of possibilities? To me, it just adds one general possibility (damage), and possibly it's reverse, damage prevention and healing.
So now we have mages that are exaggerated subroles in DotA.
The way stats stack in DotA combines multiple stats. Let's say your opponents are all using heavy magic damage, and you want to build to counteract it. You have several options at your fingertips, and the difference in actual stats gained between them makes mix and matching important. So I, as some random semicarry or offcarry, decide to build the magic resistant item, Hood of Defiance, to gain hp regen and magic resist, making me more durable against their team. Now I can stack stats or hp since ehp is now higher than a 1:1 ratio with actual hp. So now I could build Drums in order to gain some hp, mana, damage, move speed, and attack speed and take both of the auras those items give to my team into a fight.
League's system is similar, but the reduction of stats that have multiple effects means the item decision trees are suddenly a lot more shallow. The itemization for most carries (which 3, and sometimes 4, of the roles are generally in some way) is so streamlined it's almost like you're playing the same character every game. And since Riot doesn't believe in micro and too many activated items, there is now an element of combat that no longer exists; the decision tree of using and play around items, in addition to the aforementioned. A hero in DotA has its ability set plus any possible activated items (of which there are many, each with there own ups and downs). Most league heroes just stack stats so they can either spam their abilities more/harder or just auto attack.
DotA involves players by giving them team roles with a sizeable selection of unique items to choose from, and has them built into the game so that even if there are periods of stale meta, the timing of using and building said items keeps games interesting and unique. I don't see this when I itemize in League.
Even if you don't like these changes, it is nonsensical to say they are simpler.
I dislike them because they are simpler
Overall, though, is LoL more accessible to casual players? Yes. That does not make it a worse game; it makes it a better one. You're not going to win any game design prizes for constructing a needlessly opaque system that keeps out all but the most dedicated players. Look at Magic: really accessible, but also really deep. Not mutually exclusive.
Wait a second. The mod for the debate thread who is very keen on fallacies is defending the quality of a game with its popularity? I will agree with you that Magic has successfully become an accessible game while also maintaining most of its depth (and perhaps gaining more), but I've yet to be convinced that League is in the same category as Magic. Farmville and browser based games are growing in popularity exponentially: should I conclude that I should be playing Bejewled and Mafia Wars because they're better by popular demand?
DotA has an extremely daunting learning curve to new players, and to Riot's credit, they've made a very deep format accessible to anyone familiar with a computer. I wouldn't mind if a lot of DotA's inner mechanics and concepts were streamlined if it meant that I could still have a deep hero and item pool. It would make it easier for me to get more friends to play, at the very least.
Off the top of my head: Slark, Bristleback, Enchantress, Death Prophet, and Storm Spirit.
A lot of the heroes were voiced using a small cast; Valve has been slowly releasing remakes, SS among them, actually. They utterly ruined Necrolyte, but hopefully they will realize their mistake.
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How does stacking more damage on nukes open up an entire world of possibilities? To me, it just adds one general possibility (damage), and possibly it's reverse, damage prevention and healing.
So now we have mages that are exaggerated subroles in DotA.
You can downplay it if you wish, but you still acknowledge that it's adding possibilities. It just seems crazy and frustrating to me that for all the ways you can get stronger from items in WC3 and by extension DotA, the numbers on your spells are fixed and will effectively get lower as the game goes on and the other team builds HP and MR. It's a hole in item design space that Riot saw and filled.
League's system is similar, but the reduction of stats that have multiple effects means the item decision trees are suddenly a lot more shallow.
This is illusory. +X Agi in DotA is just a bundled +Y damage, +Z attack speed, and so on. There can just as easily be items that give those stats in LoL; they'd just be more transparent about it. The real difference is that splitting the stats out of the bundles lets Riot isolate the stats if they choose, or recombine them in different ways. So you may face the decision whether you want attack damage or speed for your next item. Or maybe you decide that an item that gives you attack speed and AP suits your build better.
And since Riot doesn't believe in micro and too many activated items, there is now an element of combat that no longer exists; the decision tree of using and play around items, in addition to the aforementioned. A hero in DotA has its ability set plus any possible activated items (of which there are many, each with there own ups and downs).
Riot did trim down the number of activated items, yes. But they also added the summoner spells. If a LoL champ has an average of one activated item and two summoners, and a DotA hero has an average of three activated items, it looks to me like Riot wasn't trimming an element of combat complexity so much as shifting it onto a different mechanic. Now, if you want to criticize the summoner meta for being somewhat lacking in diversity, I'm with you; unless you're playing an unusual champion like Singed, you don't so much have two summoner slots as you have one slot and Flash. But I understand Blink Dagger is quite popular in DotA too - surprise, surprise, instantaneous movement is good. And notwithstanding this mistake of overpowering Flash, I do not believe you have read Riot's underlying design philosophy regarding complexity completely accurately.
DotA involves players by giving them team roles with a sizeable selection of unique items to choose from, and has them built into the game so that even if there are periods of stale meta, the timing of using and building said items keeps games interesting and unique. I don't see this when I itemize in League.
If there is any role in LoL of which this can be said, it is the ADC. Conventional wisdom is that the ADC build is very straightforward. But watching the LCS, the pros actually switch up their ADC builds quite a bit. There is of course the off-the-wall Blue Ezreal build from last season. And this split, we saw a huge shift towards Statikk Shiv, then away from it again. Thus the evolving metagame. And within the individual game, timing is hugely important. Do you build more attack damage or speed first? How long can you go before building armor penetration? How long can you go before you have to get defensive?
Wait a second. The mod for the debate thread who is very keen on fallacies is defending the quality of a game with its popularity?
That's not what I said. And I'm pretty keen on pointing out strawmen, too.
Accessibility is not the same thing as popularity. Accessibility is a design feature we can appraise and credit; popularity is the whim of fate (with perhaps some help from good marketing). I can name lots of really obscure games that are, in my opinion, hidden jewels of accessible design. And I can also name several very popular games that are pretty darn inaccessible. Among these would be numbered both LoL and DotA - because let's be clear here, in the grand scheme of things, LoL is sure as hell not an ideally beginner-friendly game. It's just more beginner-friendly than its competition.
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And another edit: I think I just blew an hour running through tons of audio. I now have 95 instances of heroes saying "*****ty Wizard" stored on my hard drive.
You can downplay it if you wish, but you still acknowledge that it's adding possibilities. It just seems crazy and frustrating to me that for all the ways you can get stronger from items in WC3 and by extension DotA, the numbers on your spells are fixed and will effectively get lower as the game goes on and the other team builds HP and MR. It's a hole in item design space that Riot saw and filled.
I'm acknowledging that adding damage scaling opens up the possibilities of scaling as a caster. What an incredible window of possibility I have opened... not.
The design philosophy of many mages is to be strong early and mid game and have utility in the late game. There are mages that, based on the ability set, do actually scale with items. Storm Spirit, for example. There are characters and roles that are meant to scale with items, and mages tend not to be them. As far as the design space of the game is concerned, I don't see how this is a problem.
This is illusory. +X Agi in DotA is just a bundled +Y damage, +Z attack speed, and so on. There can just as easily be items that give those stats in LoL; they'd just be more transparent about it. The real difference is that splitting the stats out of the bundles lets Riot isolate the stats if they choose, or recombine them in different ways. So you may face the decision whether you want attack damage or speed for your next item. Or maybe you decide that an item that gives you attack speed and AP suits your build better.
But what you don't realize is that DotA already can separate these stats. It's not like there are no items in dota that give just hp, mana, damage, attack speed, health regen, mana regen, magic resist, or armor. The stat system allows design space to create a hero that is unique and scales differently. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's better than Riot's vanilla stat system by a mile. Blizzard was really on to something, there.
Riot did trim down the number of activated items, yes. But they also added the summoner spells. If a LoL champ has an average of one activated item and two summoners, and a DotA hero has an average of three activated items, it looks to me like Riot wasn't trimming an element of combat complexity so much as shifting it onto a different mechanic. Now, if you want to criticize the summoner meta for being somewhat lacking in diversity, I'm with you; unless you're playing an unusual champion like Singed, you don't so much have two summoner slots as you have one slot and Flash. But I understand Blink Dagger is quite popular in DotA too - surprise, surprise, instantaneous movement is good. And notwithstanding this mistake of overpowering Flash, I do not believe you have read Riot's underlying design philosophy regarding complexity completely accurately.
You mean they added Flash and one other summoner spell. Sure, there are times where you run other combos, but the abilities are all readable and have extremely long cool downs. It was definitely a cool idea, but all it's boiled down to is baiting flash or flash engaging 90% of the time.
This simply is not true, and I think you know it.
It simply is. I guess I should have added that you build tankiness, too.
If there is any role in LoL of which this can be said, it is the ADC. Conventional wisdom is that the ADC build is very straightforward. But watching the LCS, the pros actually switch up their ADC builds quite a bit. There is of course the off-the-wall Blue Ezreal build from last season. And this split, we saw a huge shift towards Statikk Shiv, then away from it again. Thus the evolving metagame. And within the individual game, timing is hugely important. Do you build more attack damage or speed first? How long can you go before building armor penetration? How long can you go before you have to get defensive?
Blue Ez was pretty awesome, but Riot is making it clear by all their nerfs and remakes that they want heroes to fill specific roles. Statikk Shiv, woo, we get to auto more. If you call that "evolving metagame", you and I just aren't on the same page on what's an interesting meta evolution. If you compare that to team comp, hero laning, item builds, team rotations, of dota, a game that has a meta game that evolves without patches: DotA is just better to me in this regard.
That's not what I said. And I'm pretty keen on pointing out strawmen, too.
You mentioning winning a game design award, and accessibility to casuals makes me think it was leaning very much towards popular appeal.
Accessibility is not the same thing as popularity. Accessibility is a design feature we can appraise and credit; popularity is the whim of fate (with perhaps some help from good marketing). I can name lots of really obscure games that are, in my opinion, hidden jewels of accessible design. And I can also name several very popular games that are pretty darn inaccessible. Among these would be numbered both LoL and DotA - because let's be clear here, in the grand scheme of things, LoL is sure as hell not an ideally beginner-friendly game. It's just more beginner-friendly than its competition.
I'm not in disagreement with anything said here.
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How does stacking more damage on nukes open up an entire world of possibilities? To me, it just adds one general possibility (damage), and possibly it's reverse, damage prevention and healing.
So now we have mages that are exaggerated subroles in DotA.
You can downplay it if you wish, but you still acknowledge that it's adding possibilities. It just seems crazy and frustrating to me that for all the ways you can get stronger from items in WC3 and by extension DotA, the numbers on your spells are fixed and will effectively get lower as the game goes on and the other team builds HP and MR. It's a hole in item design space that Riot saw and filled.
League's system is similar, but the reduction of stats that have multiple effects means the item decision trees are suddenly a lot more shallow.
This is illusory. +X Agi in DotA is just a bundled +Y damage, +Z attack speed, and so on. There can just as easily be items that give those stats in LoL; they'd just be more transparent about it. The real difference is that splitting the stats out of the bundles lets Riot isolate the stats if they choose, or recombine them in different ways. So you may face the decision whether you want attack damage or speed for your next item. Or maybe you decide that an item that gives you attack speed and AP suits your build better.
While LoL has the capability to add granularity by removing Str/Agi/Int, the items themselves didn't really deliver on that. DotA has more granularity when it comes to choosing how much max HP or Mana you want, even though they are often tied to Damage, HP Regen, and Mana Regen. You have more ability to customize just how much health you want in DotA. Something like Morphling, where you have a carry with 4-5 items granting HP, doesn't work in LoL since there aren't many items that allow you to get small increments of HP. In the <2k gold bracket this is even more true as LoL tends to have primarily item components at that price range.
And since Riot doesn't believe in micro and too many activated items, there is now an element of combat that no longer exists; the decision tree of using and play around items, in addition to the aforementioned. A hero in DotA has its ability set plus any possible activated items (of which there are many, each with there own ups and downs).
Riot did trim down the number of activated items, yes. But they also added the summoner spells. If a LoL champ has an average of one activated item and two summoners, and a DotA hero has an average of three activated items, it looks to me like Riot wasn't trimming an element of combat complexity so much as shifting it onto a different mechanic. Now, if you want to criticize the summoner meta for being somewhat lacking in diversity, I'm with you; unless you're playing an unusual champion like Singed, you don't so much have two summoner slots as you have one slot and Flash. But I understand Blink Dagger is quite popular in DotA too - surprise, surprise, instantaneous movement is good. And notwithstanding this mistake of overpowering Flash, I do not believe you have read Riot's underlying design philosophy regarding complexity completely accurately.
There is a world of difference between a 12 second cooldown and a 300 second cooldown. One of those is a defining part of your playstyle while the other is for emergencies only. It's not simply the number of buttons you have but how integral they are to your hero/champion. Summoner spells aren't worth nearly as much as hero spells and activated items.
Further, the removal of the denial mechanic actually doesn't remove the depth surrounding DotA's denial mechanic. Now I know that sounds impossible but wait: like I hinted at before, the fact that you can't directly deny in LoL simply shifts the way you abuse your lane pressure. You can't directly steal the last hit anymore, but you can still prevent the last hit. You could argue that because this is also possible in DotA, it has more options and is therefore more complex. And I would probably agree if it weren't for the presence of junglers in LoL. Preventing or punishing enemy last hits (or denying them in DotA) restricts your positioning and action, at least for an instant. This can make your play more predictable, pull you farther from tower - do a whole lot of things that give the enemies a chance to capitalize. But in LoL, it's particularly deep because of the threat of junglers. It is essentially comparable to, in DotA, making these risky moves while the enemy mid has been missing for a long enough time. Assuming the jungler hasn't shown recently... the point is, that threat of an outside enemy hero becoming a factor is present most of the time instead of rarely. This is the kind of thing that makes me take issue when you say lol positioning is twitch oriented, not awareness oriented. Literally every time your lane opponent in LoL goes to take a last hit or do pretty much anything, your options are more limited if you aren't on the ball thinking about the enemy jungler, let alone other MIAs. If their jungler comes in, can mine help, is he near enough, can he jump in the fight before I take very much damage from these specific 2 enemy champs with the builds they have right now? Can we win that 2v2 fight? If so, I'm free to be a little more aggressive, but exactly how much? Depends on the extent of all these factors. It's incredibly complex. Mind you I'm not saying there aren't things like this in DotA... but the impact that a deny mechanic versus pure zoning has on this situation? It's tiny. So tiny. Negligible.
The removal of denying has a bigger impact than you might realize. The biggest thing it does is severely weaken one's ability to control the lane position. It's very possible in DotA to have the creep wave stay just outside of your tower range for the entire laning phase. If one team stays under the safety of their tower, this WILL happen. The threat of this forces them to come out from the tower and engage the enemy directly. LoL allows much more passive gameplay in the laning phase because you know that the creepwave is going to come to you, even if you don't contest it. This shows up later in the game as well. I have won multiple games where my team has fed someone to 18-0 or worse by parking a creepwave next to my t2 tower from minute 12 to minute 25. This level of farming means that the other team has to be more active when trying to snowball. You need control of the enemy t2s to maintain your advantage. Riot would say that this just leads to everyone farming, but the reality is that it doesn't. Usually one team is going to be favored in a farm war. The other team knows that mutual farming is bad for them and so they end up forcing teamfights. Games of DotA where the team with a fighting advantage also has the farming advantage is very rare and this difference in advantages leads to engagements.
All of this comes under what I found problems with when I tried out LoL. Riot's stated goals were good, but in many cases they actually did the opposite of what they wanted. More item variety is good, but they didn't really accomplish that. More fighting and action is good, but they didn't accomplish that either.
On the topic of laning and creep control, In DotA, you can deny creeps, pull creep waves by attacking enemy champions, control lane position by auto attacking and prematurely denying creeps, pull a jungle camp to stall/kill/move the wave (in side lanes). To me, these options greatly impact the way the laning phase plays out, and make laning compositions where a player is going into a bad lane (often called a throw-away lane) viable.
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I'm acknowledging that adding damage scaling opens up the possibilities of scaling as a caster. What an incredible window of possibility I have opened... not.
The design philosophy of many mages is to be strong early and mid game and have utility in the late game. There are mages that, based on the ability set, do actually scale with items. Storm Spirit, for example. There are characters and roles that are meant to scale with items, and mages tend not to be them. As far as the design space of the game is concerned, I don't see how this is a problem.
Okay. Let's go back to WC3. In WC3, your hero spells have flat damage because you're mostly interacting with ordinary units that do not scale much or at all - an archer is an archer at minute 3 or minute 30. Non-scaling spells in DotA are an artifact of a different game in a different genre with different design requirements. And in this new genre, they create the phenomenon of diminishing returns. Now, you can argue that this is an interesting dynamic. Riot would agree with you; there are definitely champions that scale better and worse in LoL. But you don't hit a brick wall where X damage is the most you will ever do; the falloff is more gradual and emergent. And putting AP ratios on champions makes them more flexible. You want to run AP Leona or Ezreal? It's sub-optimal in the metagame, but you can do it. And that option is simply not there in DotA.
Imagine if it wasn't spell damage that WC3 had kept flat but some other stat, like HP or attack damage. Everything but that stat could scale in DotA. Wouldn't that be weird? Wouldn't that seem like an obvious gap in design possibilities? You're really stretching to dismiss LoL's addition of the AP scaling mechanic as unimportant, but it really is one of the clearest and most unambiguous improvements the game made to the DotA formula. Beyond the original WC3, there's no reason not to do it.
But what you don't realize is that DotA already can separate these stats. It's not like there are no items in dota that give just hp, mana, damage, attack speed, health regen, mana regen, magic resist, or armor. The stat system allows design space to create a hero that is unique and scales differently.
How do you figure "scales differently"? When you scale based on a combination stat like Str, that reduces the uniqueness of your scaling, since you're going to be getting the same bundle of benefits that other Str heroes do. And if you're going to buy the stats separately, you're using the same model LoL does, so good luck criticizing LoL for it.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's better than Riot's vanilla stat system by a mile. Blizzard was really on to something, there.
Blizzard didn't use the stat system in anything resembling DotA's style. Items were relatively unimportant; what was important were the ratios your heroes got when they leveled up. It was a simple way of presenting the information that Tauren Chieftains got generally tankier, Blademasters got generally dodgier, and Far Seers got generally magickier. In short, it was to do exactly the opposite of the diversification you tout. Which was appropriate in an RTS where there was only a small number of heroes and building them played a comparatively minor role, but not necessarily appropriate for a MOBA where there are dozens of heroes and their builds are foremost in your concern.
And if anything, the Str/Agi/Int system is more "vanilla", since it's been omnipresent in RPGs since the original Dungeons & Dragons. (But in D&D - not to belabor this point - your wizard's spell power scales with your Int.)
Okay. Let's go back to WC3. In WC3, your hero spells have flat damage because you're mostly interacting with ordinary units that do not scale much or at all - an archer is an archer at minute 3 or minute 30.
If your opponent is still primarily making archers at 30 minutes, yes. The average strength of units increases as players acquire higher tech levels and build better units. This argument is like saying that a Civilization 2 Spearman is still a Spearman in 1995. True, but completely irrelevant because the units have become redundant. And then there's the whole deal of upgrades, which actually matter a fair bit. It might not matter that much for archers, but a banshee with possession is quite wildly different beast from one that doesn't.
But you don't hit a brick wall where X damage is the most you will ever do; the falloff is more gradual and emergent.
Nor do you in DotA. Most items provide intelligence, which increases your attack damage. And there are items that have active effects that increase damage as well.
And putting AP ratios on champions makes them more flexible. You want to run AP Leona or Ezreal? It's sub-optimal in the metagame, but you can do it. And that option is simply not there in DotA.
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.
You're really stretching to dismiss LoL's addition of the AP scaling mechanic as unimportant, but it really is one of the clearest and most unambiguous improvements the game made to the DotA formula. Beyond the original WC3, there's no reason not to do it.
From what viewpoint? The DotA itemization system creates more polarizing situations with much stronger gaps in strength between different champions. This allows for strategies that exploit that gap, and emphasizes good team coordination with timing the strategies. It also emphasizes reading your opponents to know when they are going to group up to execute their strategy, and planning ahead to buy items that are stronger early to pressure enemies into decisions too early.
Lack of scaling in one stat causes asymmetry. Getting rid of this asymmetry reduces the amount of strategies that aim to capitalize on it, without creating other strategies back. This is especially true in team level, where the vast majority of niche-builds become completely redundant.
How do you figure "scales differently"? When you scale based on a combination stat like Str, that reduces the uniqueness of your scaling, since you're going to be getting the same bundle of benefits that other Str heroes do. And if you're going to buy the stats separately, you're using the same model LoL does, so good luck criticizing LoL for it.
You can do either Strength/Agi/Int or the individual stats, and the three have slightly more efficiency in return for being lumped together. I fail to see how this reduces variety.
Further, vast majority of the powerful items in DotA do not actually rely on their raw stats. They confer benefits such as auras (Hidden power! Antifun!) or actives. Some characters also have spells that scale off of particular stats, and other characters abilities that synergize particularly well with certain abilities. Antimage with Manta Style, Weaver with Radiance, Sylla with Bashers, et cetera. These more specific abilities interact with the characters, giving them more than just raw stats and often create wild power spikes, which can be capitalized on. The difference between Ashe with BF+Pickaxe+Cloak to Ashe with IE is large, but it's nowhere near the power spike Weaver gets when she finishes her Radiance.
Whether or not this is a good thing is up for debate. It certainly rewards coordination and good coherent team strategy. It also increases the burden of knowledge, and causes situations where new players simply cannot stop certain characters from overpowering them. I would personally argue that it's better for the 5v5 team play, but worse for soloqueue.
Items were relatively unimportant; what was important were the ratios your heroes got when they leveled up.
Just out of curiosity: Have you actually played high-level Warcraft 3? One of the more frequent complaints about it from higher-tier players was that certain items were completely unfair. Book of "I win", anyone? How comes nearly all Undead players bought the relatively unimportant Rod of Necromancy in every single game? The various items that granted auras were enough to swing the tide of a game in their own right, and strong support items such as Orb of Corruption were very much worth their cost.
The items that only granted raw stats weren't as important as they are in MobAs, but even they were quite powerful. Especially the ones that allowed you to cast your spells more often, because mana was actually limited throughout the game if you used your heroes efficiently.
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In the long you are right. DotA borrowed a lot from WC3, but I would disagree this is necessarily a bad thing. Yes, the game is less accessible to new players, but it's also more strategically diverse. The strategies in DotA are also way more radical than in LoL. Sending four heroes to the enemy jungle to pull minions from lanes and AoE them is an actual thing, and fast-push strategies, denial strategies and strongly timed pushes are all viable. Taking traits from a Real-Time Strategy game certainly has benefits. At the same time, I'm not particularly surprised it causes the game to be a difficult one to get into. Starcraft 2's relatively low success indicates that expecting people to think during their relaxation-time isn't a selling concept. Having a set of four friends to do it with is even more of a challenge.
LoL is more or less a sport, rather than a strategy game. While strategic depth is of importance, the developers themselves have stated that many things come before it. DotA's approach is to maximize on that single thing at the top level and screw everyone and -thing else. It never tried to be a fast-paced action game like LoL did, and it never tried to be accessible. And yes, I would agree that for casual playing, LoL is more fun as a result. Making blind assumptions about the flow of a strategic team-based game based on what appears to be 15 soloqueue games is still not acceptable. It's akin to criticizing MtG for lack of depth after playing a intro pack match, or claiming fighting games take no skill after playing 20 games against your brother and smashing random buttons.
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Okay. Let's go back to WC3. In WC3, your hero spells have flat damage because you're mostly interacting with ordinary units that do not scale much or at all - an archer is an archer at minute 3 or minute 30. Non-scaling spells in DotA are an artifact of a different game in a different genre with different design requirements. And in this new genre, they create the phenomenon of diminishing returns. Now, you can argue that this is an interesting dynamic. Riot would agree with you; there are definitely champions that scale better and worse in LoL. But you don't hit a brick wall where X damage is the most you will ever do; the falloff is more gradual and emergent. And putting AP ratios on champions makes them more flexible. You want to run AP Leona or Ezreal? It's sub-optimal in the metagame, but you can do it. And that option is simply not there in DotA.
Imagine if it wasn't spell damage that WC3 had kept flat but some other stat, like HP or attack damage. Everything but that stat could scale in DotA. Wouldn't that be weird? Wouldn't that seem like an obvious gap in design possibilities? You're really stretching to dismiss LoL's addition of the AP scaling mechanic as unimportant, but it really is one of the clearest and most unambiguous improvements the game made to the DotA formula. Beyond the original WC3, there's no reason not to do it.
I think what youre missing here is that dota's skill damage is designed to scale with the game. Whereas everything gets to scale the same way in league, by having fixed damage on spells you can create more variable scaling on skills to make different heroes better at different things. This isn't a limit on the system or on the functionality of mages, but an expansion on what roles they can have. Furthermore, while we don't have direct damage scaling, we do have items that reduce resistance to magic, spells that are stat-dependent (skywrath's, for example) and many spells upgrade with aghanims. Once again, more varied and interesting strategies develop instead of going straight AP buffs.
Then can we agree that, whatever else, the increased accessibility in LoL's design is grounds for praise rather than scorn?
They increased accessibility for casuals, but at a severe cost to competitive and hardcore players. I wouldn't praise dota 2 if it did the same.
If your opponent is still primarily making archers at 30 minutes, yes. The average strength of units increases as players acquire higher tech levels and build better units. This argument is like saying that a Civilization 2 Spearman is still a Spearman in 1995. True, but completely irrelevant because the units have become redundant.
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.
And then there's the whole deal of upgrades, which actually matter a fair bit. It might not matter that much for archers, but a banshee with possession is quite wildly different beast from one that doesn't.
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.
Nor do you in DotA. Most items provide intelligence, which increases your attack damage. And there are items that have active effects that increase damage as well.
We were talking about spells. And since Ulfsaar has expressed a certain disdain for autoattacking, I don't think he'd be fond of this line of argument anyway.
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.
Lack of scaling in one stat causes asymmetry. Getting rid of this asymmetry reduces the amount of strategies that aim to capitalize on it, without creating other strategies back. This is especially true in team level, where the vast majority of niche-builds become completely redundant.
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.
You can do either Strength/Agi/Int or the individual stats, and the three have slightly more efficiency in return for being lumped together. I fail to see how this reduces variety.
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.
The difference between Ashe with BF+Pickaxe+Cloak to Ashe with IE is large, but it's nowhere near the power spike Weaver gets when she finishes her Radiance.
Whether or not this is a good thing is up for debate. It certainly rewards coordination and good coherent team strategy. It also increases the burden of knowledge, and causes situations where new players simply cannot stop certain characters from overpowering them. I would personally argue that it's better for the 5v5 team play, but worse for soloqueue.
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.
Just out of curiosity: Have you actually played high-level Warcraft 3? One of the more frequent complaints about it from higher-tier players was that certain items were completely unfair. Book of "I win", anyone? How comes nearly all Undead players bought the relatively unimportant Rod of Necromancy in every single game? The various items that granted auras were enough to swing the tide of a game in their own right, and strong support items such as Orb of Corruption were very much worth their cost.
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.
In the long you are right. DotA borrowed a lot from WC3, but I would disagree this is necessarily a bad thing.
Of course it's not necessarily a bad thing. LoL and every other MOBA borrowed a lot from WC3, too. I'm just pointing out a couple of the artifacts that stick out to me like sore thumbs.
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Access to heroes is power, but your access to heroes past the first dozen or so is gated by play time, not by champion ownership. Not even professional LoL players make any real effort at having a roster deeper than a dozen or so that they'd even think of playing competitively.
I own the whole LoL roster and there aren't more than a dozen champs I'd feel even vaguely comfortable playing in a ranked game, and I'm never an expert in more than 4-5. And this isn't a "I only play OP champs" thing, as I noted earlier I focus primarily on the ADC role and don't play either of the top two ADC picks very often. Each champion just has too much nuance for anyone to become and remain an expert on more than a handful at a time.
If you could hypothetically master most of the roster, you'd get an advantage, but not even top tier players try to do that, anyone who thinks they have mastered even 1/3 of the roster simply doesn't understand what 'mastery' means in LoL.
I'm not angry about it, it's just inaccurate and a weird thing to bother bringing up.
Didn't see this before I started writing:
It's more that the game is balanced well enough that aside from the bottom ~dozen picks (there are exactly 16 picks out of 118 champions currently below a 47% win rate in LoL), you will gain more of an advantage from playing one of the champions that perfectly suit your own playstyle than you will picking the theoretical optimal pick. In Season 3, my top played ADC was Miss Fortune; she was mostly not the best ADC for solo queue in theory, but she suited me better than the top picks.
And let's be clear about that stale meta discussion. Talking about ADCs over a 1 year span, the best picks at the start of S3 were Graves, Ezreal, Corki early, then top picks rotated through Caitlyn, Draven, Ezreal again, Twitch, Miss Fortune did have a few weeks in the sun, then Corki again, Vayne, Varus. The only ADCs who were never literally the best pick at some point in season 3 were Ashe, Kog'maw who is a very team-dependent pick, and Sivir who received a rework at the end of the season because she had a broken design).
The sense in which the meta is stale in LoL is:
You will put 1 player top, 1 mid, 1 jungle, and 2 bottom. Big caveat: competitive teams (but not solo queuers) sometimes lane swap so that it's actually 2 top 1 mid 1 bot, or 1 top 2 mid 1 bot, so there actually is variety there, albeit not as much as in dota. And, since November we've even seen some teams drop the jungler for a second duo lane (with laners farming jungle camps when there's a break in the action) and we've seen some double jungle action. So, pretty much every configuration you can think of except tri lanes. Solo queue players don't experiment that much; too much coordination required for the 30 seconds you have before you start picking (which is a problem with their model imo).
You will have at least 1 Marksman building for high physical damage output.
You will have at least 1 Assassin or Mage building for high magic damage output.
That's really it. It's not as varied as dota, but it's hardly stale. 1/3 to 1/2 the roster won't see play in the professional scene, but there aren't all that many games played there anyway. Nearly every champion has some representation in the Diamond / Challenger tier. There are always a handful of champs who have been intentionally weakened while they're being reworked into a healthier state, but that's not more than a small handful.
Little tone thing - you're pretty condescending. E.g. "stupid girl-in-tiny-nurse-outfit skins" - their last four skins were Void Fizz, Super Galaxy Rumble, Battlecast Vel'Koz, and Arctic Ops Varus. Google em. That's a hideous void monster, a super-hero mech pilot, an alien-ish frost archer and a Matrix sentinel homage. 2 of their last 10 skins could be described even remotely the way you did - their valentine's day special (Heartseeker Ashe) and Popstar Ahri - one of the most fan-requested skins ever. You're picking your words in a way that is (intentionally or not) calculated condescension, and isn't even accurate.
Honestly, for starting players, runes(which can't be bought) and rune pages(which can be) are a much bigger seperating factor than champion pool(and people are definitely overstating the difference having the entire champ pool makes and understating how long it takes to get every champ). Because when you first start and are trying to get a decent champion pool that suits you, you are spending that precious IP leveling the playing field with starting stats. The only other thing I disagree with in riot's business model is that certain champions are given a lot more free weeks than others, so sometimes you are buying someone you have never played before but only seen someone else play(twitch was a fantastic example of this, same with the high mechanic champs)
Edit on the skins thing, at one point they did bring out some fan service skins, but honestly that's fallen off quit a bit. Only 2 or so of the last 15 female skins can be described as fan-servicey, so that's incredibly overstated. Dat Bear Calvary Sejuani doe.
I have Nasus, Wukong, Teeno and Pantheon for top. If were talking counterpicking I think one of these 4 has a favorable match vs any commonly played top. Of these, only teemo has less than 10 rank games this season.
For mid, I roll Morgana. I can pick Morgana against everything in league except LeBlanc and win. She is just nice..
For jungle, I finally lost a second mummy game. Mostly to shenanigans. Between him and Pantheon I always have a good pick.
I also have a variety of supports because synergy matters somewhat bot lane.
None if these champs set me back money. I unlocked them with playtime after I tried them out on free weeks and found that I enjoyed them.
Meanwhile, you made a thread asking for opinions and then when they come, you just say "yeah no that's wrong". Looking at your responses to me, I really do see very little arguments backing your claims. I've done that a couple times too, but you're the one who solicited in the first place so it's more jarring.
That part WAS meant to be condescending. Not to you, but towards riot. while only a few current skins are fanservice (forecast janna, anyone?), there is a TON of them out there. Even worse, several of their champs are fanservice to begin with - Ahri included (lets not even get into Jynx's reveal) What it really is is a cheese tactic to appeal to the asian market (Which eats that kind of thing up in games), and while it works well, I have little respect for a company that claims its game to be a sport selling it on the merits of "oh look shiny tits,' - its akin to someone trying to jazz up baseball by adding strippers to the stadium, and really makes the entire scene look like crap to an outside observer.
edit:
Well, the pay-to-win thing has been an ongoing discussion that you freaked out about. The fact that league is far more for casuals can be surmised from stats - Average play time for league players is nearly an order of magnitude lower than for dota players. I've also refuted your claims that the rune and mastery systems add complexity, and you've conceded that riot has removed a ton of complexity and interactivity from the actual gameplay and replaced it with those systems. The only things of mine you've responded to have been the sometimes hyperbolic statements I can make, and ignored the valid points that both I and others (Looking at AG kicking butt with explanations here) have made. Heck, the last half of your points have been complaints about the term pay2win
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Even if you don't like these changes, it is nonsensical to say they are simpler.
Overall, though, is LoL more accessible to casual players? Yes. That does not make it a worse game; it makes it a better one. You're not going to win any game design prizes for constructing a needlessly opaque system that keeps out all but the most dedicated players. Look at Magic: really accessible, but also really deep. Not mutually exclusive.
While the sheer amount of voice acting is impressive, quantity is no substitute for quality. If an actor is hammy, affecting an accent, overprocessed into a grating screech, and/or mimicking a classic WC3 unit badly, I don't want to listen to them whether it's for an hour and a half or five minutes. Not every hero in DotA is obnoxious, of course, and a couple of LoL champs are, but I've found the proportions of good to bad to be very different.
It's cool that DotA got the Bastion guy as an announcer, though.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
The base systems are SIMILAR, granted, but the changes I'm talking about are more along the lines of 1) no interaction with the environment; juking, pathing, killing trees doesn't exist 2) no denies on both creeps and (more importantly) heroes 3) a mass simplification of how items work (few activted items in LOL) 4) No micromanagement. Basically, they've removed many of the nuanced and complicated parts of the game that make it deep, and failed to replace them with something else that is sufficiently complex and rewarding - that is a simplification, no matter how you slice it. I'm not saying that the rework of str/agi/int is simple. I'm saying that the accompanying game design choices they made, in an effort to gather wider appeal, have negatively impacted the game (at least from a veteran player's standpoint).
Magic is an apt comparison, though I'd turn it around: DotA is like magic; A simple base with incredibly deep, nuanced and sometimes nonsensical interactions that make the game very rewarding for experienced players. LoL is more like Yu-gi-oh; A lot of the nuance is removed, but it has broader appeal. This is actually why I'm so confused with magic players liking league more - as a magic player myself, i see a LOT more of the things I love about magic in dota than I do in league.
Hell yes Bastion announcer.
Now I'm curious though - which heroes did you think had shoddy voice acting? I really can't think of a single one off the top of my head that I hate, and there are absolute gems like windrunner, enchantress, weaver and storm spirit that I play just to hear them quip randomly.
On the flipside, LoL has things like Amumu, annie, blitzcrank,caitlyn that are absolute travesties - either painfully cheesy, overprocessed, or just bad.
Edit: Forgot, I also love tinker's voice acting.
EDIT EDIT: Enigma is duke nukem. Win!
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So, speaking of season 3 meta, don't forget the C9, the most dominant team in NA, used Ashe, one of the weakest ADC's at the time, to amazing effect. This season, something like 90 champs saw play in the LCS, and it could quite easily be higher, as I missed a few weeks due to school/work related things. There's really only one or two champs that aren't that viable right now, and they are mostly due to being older design that just doesn't stand up to the new design philosophy.
Further, the removal of the denial mechanic actually doesn't remove the depth surrounding DotA's denial mechanic. Now I know that sounds impossible but wait: like I hinted at before, the fact that you can't directly deny in LoL simply shifts the way you abuse your lane pressure. You can't directly steal the last hit anymore, but you can still prevent the last hit. You could argue that because this is also possible in DotA, it has more options and is therefore more complex. And I would probably agree if it weren't for the presence of junglers in LoL. Preventing or punishing enemy last hits (or denying them in DotA) restricts your positioning and action, at least for an instant. This can make your play more predictable, pull you farther from tower - do a whole lot of things that give the enemies a chance to capitalize. But in LoL, it's particularly deep because of the threat of junglers. It is essentially comparable to, in DotA, making these risky moves while the enemy mid has been missing for a long enough time. Assuming the jungler hasn't shown recently... the point is, that threat of an outside enemy hero becoming a factor is present most of the time instead of rarely. This is the kind of thing that makes me take issue when you say lol positioning is twitch oriented, not awareness oriented. Literally every time your lane opponent in LoL goes to take a last hit or do pretty much anything, your options are more limited if you aren't on the ball thinking about the enemy jungler, let alone other MIAs. If their jungler comes in, can mine help, is he near enough, can he jump in the fight before I take very much damage from these specific 2 enemy champs with the builds they have right now? Can we win that 2v2 fight? If so, I'm free to be a little more aggressive, but exactly how much? Depends on the extent of all these factors. It's incredibly complex. Mind you I'm not saying there aren't things like this in DotA... but the impact that a deny mechanic versus pure zoning has on this situation? It's tiny. So tiny. Negligible.
This whole thing is also while I tell anyone who plays LoL that even if they hate jungling, they need to understand jungle pathing, camp timers, etc. The knowledge this gives you empowers your play immensely. I will say right now that I agree completely with every single thing AG has said except the one thing I already responded to him about: the power provided to you by buying additional champs in LoL. He very much overstates that.
I've been talking a lot about pay2win because it's one of the most absurd of your points. I don't think I'll say anything more about it because AudioTsunami already recently said about all there is to say on it.
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Also I support pretty much everything Drawmeong just said about the meta, but he also kinda messed one thing up. For significant portions of time in s3, it was very common to not have any AP damage. Even that isn't static. Even now, having all AD isn't a terrible thing - a disadvantage but not composition breaking. Moreso the reason you don't see it often anymore is that a lot of the strong AD mid options have been nerfed, and also a lot of the strong top-laners ***** out some aoe magic damage.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
How does stacking more damage on nukes open up an entire world of possibilities? To me, it just adds one general possibility (damage), and possibly it's reverse, damage prevention and healing.
So now we have mages that are exaggerated subroles in DotA.
The way stats stack in DotA combines multiple stats. Let's say your opponents are all using heavy magic damage, and you want to build to counteract it. You have several options at your fingertips, and the difference in actual stats gained between them makes mix and matching important. So I, as some random semicarry or offcarry, decide to build the magic resistant item, Hood of Defiance, to gain hp regen and magic resist, making me more durable against their team. Now I can stack stats or hp since ehp is now higher than a 1:1 ratio with actual hp. So now I could build Drums in order to gain some hp, mana, damage, move speed, and attack speed and take both of the auras those items give to my team into a fight.
League's system is similar, but the reduction of stats that have multiple effects means the item decision trees are suddenly a lot more shallow. The itemization for most carries (which 3, and sometimes 4, of the roles are generally in some way) is so streamlined it's almost like you're playing the same character every game. And since Riot doesn't believe in micro and too many activated items, there is now an element of combat that no longer exists; the decision tree of using and play around items, in addition to the aforementioned. A hero in DotA has its ability set plus any possible activated items (of which there are many, each with there own ups and downs). Most league heroes just stack stats so they can either spam their abilities more/harder or just auto attack.
DotA involves players by giving them team roles with a sizeable selection of unique items to choose from, and has them built into the game so that even if there are periods of stale meta, the timing of using and building said items keeps games interesting and unique. I don't see this when I itemize in League.
I dislike them because they are simpler
Wait a second. The mod for the debate thread who is very keen on fallacies is defending the quality of a game with its popularity? I will agree with you that Magic has successfully become an accessible game while also maintaining most of its depth (and perhaps gaining more), but I've yet to be convinced that League is in the same category as Magic. Farmville and browser based games are growing in popularity exponentially: should I conclude that I should be playing Bejewled and Mafia Wars because they're better by popular demand?
DotA has an extremely daunting learning curve to new players, and to Riot's credit, they've made a very deep format accessible to anyone familiar with a computer. I wouldn't mind if a lot of DotA's inner mechanics and concepts were streamlined if it meant that I could still have a deep hero and item pool. It would make it easier for me to get more friends to play, at the very least.
A lot of the heroes were voiced using a small cast; Valve has been slowly releasing remakes, SS among them, actually. They utterly ruined Necrolyte, but hopefully they will realize their mistake.
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This is illusory. +X Agi in DotA is just a bundled +Y damage, +Z attack speed, and so on. There can just as easily be items that give those stats in LoL; they'd just be more transparent about it. The real difference is that splitting the stats out of the bundles lets Riot isolate the stats if they choose, or recombine them in different ways. So you may face the decision whether you want attack damage or speed for your next item. Or maybe you decide that an item that gives you attack speed and AP suits your build better.
Riot did trim down the number of activated items, yes. But they also added the summoner spells. If a LoL champ has an average of one activated item and two summoners, and a DotA hero has an average of three activated items, it looks to me like Riot wasn't trimming an element of combat complexity so much as shifting it onto a different mechanic. Now, if you want to criticize the summoner meta for being somewhat lacking in diversity, I'm with you; unless you're playing an unusual champion like Singed, you don't so much have two summoner slots as you have one slot and Flash. But I understand Blink Dagger is quite popular in DotA too - surprise, surprise, instantaneous movement is good. And notwithstanding this mistake of overpowering Flash, I do not believe you have read Riot's underlying design philosophy regarding complexity completely accurately.
This simply is not true, and I think you know it.
If there is any role in LoL of which this can be said, it is the ADC. Conventional wisdom is that the ADC build is very straightforward. But watching the LCS, the pros actually switch up their ADC builds quite a bit. There is of course the off-the-wall Blue Ezreal build from last season. And this split, we saw a huge shift towards Statikk Shiv, then away from it again. Thus the evolving metagame. And within the individual game, timing is hugely important. Do you build more attack damage or speed first? How long can you go before building armor penetration? How long can you go before you have to get defensive?
That's not what I said. And I'm pretty keen on pointing out strawmen, too.
Accessibility is not the same thing as popularity. Accessibility is a design feature we can appraise and credit; popularity is the whim of fate (with perhaps some help from good marketing). I can name lots of really obscure games that are, in my opinion, hidden jewels of accessible design. And I can also name several very popular games that are pretty darn inaccessible. Among these would be numbered both LoL and DotA - because let's be clear here, in the grand scheme of things, LoL is sure as hell not an ideally beginner-friendly game. It's just more beginner-friendly than its competition.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Wait wait wait.. Enchant, storm?! Sir, we have... creative differences. Those two are community favorites and absolutely awesome =/
Ulf... I reallllly hope they fix necro. He's my most played hero
However: http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/8/85/Necr_*****wiz_01.mp3
EDIT: To anyone that wants to go through it, http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Template:VoiceNavSidebar
There are some super hilarious ones - did you know bloodseeker has a line for when you buy a bloodstone?
And another edit: I think I just blew an hour running through tons of audio. I now have 95 instances of heroes saying "*****ty Wizard" stored on my hard drive.
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I'm acknowledging that adding damage scaling opens up the possibilities of scaling as a caster. What an incredible window of possibility I have opened... not.
The design philosophy of many mages is to be strong early and mid game and have utility in the late game. There are mages that, based on the ability set, do actually scale with items. Storm Spirit, for example. There are characters and roles that are meant to scale with items, and mages tend not to be them. As far as the design space of the game is concerned, I don't see how this is a problem.
But what you don't realize is that DotA already can separate these stats. It's not like there are no items in dota that give just hp, mana, damage, attack speed, health regen, mana regen, magic resist, or armor. The stat system allows design space to create a hero that is unique and scales differently. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's better than Riot's vanilla stat system by a mile. Blizzard was really on to something, there.
You mean they added Flash and one other summoner spell. Sure, there are times where you run other combos, but the abilities are all readable and have extremely long cool downs. It was definitely a cool idea, but all it's boiled down to is baiting flash or flash engaging 90% of the time.
It simply is. I guess I should have added that you build tankiness, too.
Blue Ez was pretty awesome, but Riot is making it clear by all their nerfs and remakes that they want heroes to fill specific roles. Statikk Shiv, woo, we get to auto more. If you call that "evolving metagame", you and I just aren't on the same page on what's an interesting meta evolution. If you compare that to team comp, hero laning, item builds, team rotations, of dota, a game that has a meta game that evolves without patches: DotA is just better to me in this regard.
You mentioning winning a game design award, and accessibility to casuals makes me think it was leaning very much towards popular appeal.
I'm not in disagreement with anything said here.
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While LoL has the capability to add granularity by removing Str/Agi/Int, the items themselves didn't really deliver on that. DotA has more granularity when it comes to choosing how much max HP or Mana you want, even though they are often tied to Damage, HP Regen, and Mana Regen. You have more ability to customize just how much health you want in DotA. Something like Morphling, where you have a carry with 4-5 items granting HP, doesn't work in LoL since there aren't many items that allow you to get small increments of HP. In the <2k gold bracket this is even more true as LoL tends to have primarily item components at that price range.
There is a world of difference between a 12 second cooldown and a 300 second cooldown. One of those is a defining part of your playstyle while the other is for emergencies only. It's not simply the number of buttons you have but how integral they are to your hero/champion. Summoner spells aren't worth nearly as much as hero spells and activated items.
The removal of denying has a bigger impact than you might realize. The biggest thing it does is severely weaken one's ability to control the lane position. It's very possible in DotA to have the creep wave stay just outside of your tower range for the entire laning phase. If one team stays under the safety of their tower, this WILL happen. The threat of this forces them to come out from the tower and engage the enemy directly. LoL allows much more passive gameplay in the laning phase because you know that the creepwave is going to come to you, even if you don't contest it. This shows up later in the game as well. I have won multiple games where my team has fed someone to 18-0 or worse by parking a creepwave next to my t2 tower from minute 12 to minute 25. This level of farming means that the other team has to be more active when trying to snowball. You need control of the enemy t2s to maintain your advantage. Riot would say that this just leads to everyone farming, but the reality is that it doesn't. Usually one team is going to be favored in a farm war. The other team knows that mutual farming is bad for them and so they end up forcing teamfights. Games of DotA where the team with a fighting advantage also has the farming advantage is very rare and this difference in advantages leads to engagements.
All of this comes under what I found problems with when I tried out LoL. Riot's stated goals were good, but in many cases they actually did the opposite of what they wanted. More item variety is good, but they didn't really accomplish that. More fighting and action is good, but they didn't accomplish that either.
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Imagine if it wasn't spell damage that WC3 had kept flat but some other stat, like HP or attack damage. Everything but that stat could scale in DotA. Wouldn't that be weird? Wouldn't that seem like an obvious gap in design possibilities? You're really stretching to dismiss LoL's addition of the AP scaling mechanic as unimportant, but it really is one of the clearest and most unambiguous improvements the game made to the DotA formula. Beyond the original WC3, there's no reason not to do it.
How do you figure "scales differently"? When you scale based on a combination stat like Str, that reduces the uniqueness of your scaling, since you're going to be getting the same bundle of benefits that other Str heroes do. And if you're going to buy the stats separately, you're using the same model LoL does, so good luck criticizing LoL for it.
Blizzard didn't use the stat system in anything resembling DotA's style. Items were relatively unimportant; what was important were the ratios your heroes got when they leveled up. It was a simple way of presenting the information that Tauren Chieftains got generally tankier, Blademasters got generally dodgier, and Far Seers got generally magickier. In short, it was to do exactly the opposite of the diversification you tout. Which was appropriate in an RTS where there was only a small number of heroes and building them played a comparatively minor role, but not necessarily appropriate for a MOBA where there are dozens of heroes and their builds are foremost in your concern.
And if anything, the Str/Agi/Int system is more "vanilla", since it's been omnipresent in RPGs since the original Dungeons & Dragons. (But in D&D - not to belabor this point - your wizard's spell power scales with your Int.)
And if you think that's a clever retort, you clearly stopped reading the paragraph after the second sentence.
And what was it were you saying at the top of this post about the role of mages in DotA?
Then can we agree that, whatever else, the increased accessibility in LoL's design is grounds for praise rather than scorn?
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If your opponent is still primarily making archers at 30 minutes, yes. The average strength of units increases as players acquire higher tech levels and build better units. This argument is like saying that a Civilization 2 Spearman is still a Spearman in 1995. True, but completely irrelevant because the units have become redundant. And then there's the whole deal of upgrades, which actually matter a fair bit. It might not matter that much for archers, but a banshee with possession is quite wildly different beast from one that doesn't.
Nor do you in DotA. Most items provide intelligence, which increases your attack damage. And there are items that have active effects that increase damage as well.
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.
From what viewpoint? The DotA itemization system creates more polarizing situations with much stronger gaps in strength between different champions. This allows for strategies that exploit that gap, and emphasizes good team coordination with timing the strategies. It also emphasizes reading your opponents to know when they are going to group up to execute their strategy, and planning ahead to buy items that are stronger early to pressure enemies into decisions too early.
Lack of scaling in one stat causes asymmetry. Getting rid of this asymmetry reduces the amount of strategies that aim to capitalize on it, without creating other strategies back. This is especially true in team level, where the vast majority of niche-builds become completely redundant.
You can do either Strength/Agi/Int or the individual stats, and the three have slightly more efficiency in return for being lumped together. I fail to see how this reduces variety.
Further, vast majority of the powerful items in DotA do not actually rely on their raw stats. They confer benefits such as auras (Hidden power! Antifun!) or actives. Some characters also have spells that scale off of particular stats, and other characters abilities that synergize particularly well with certain abilities. Antimage with Manta Style, Weaver with Radiance, Sylla with Bashers, et cetera. These more specific abilities interact with the characters, giving them more than just raw stats and often create wild power spikes, which can be capitalized on. The difference between Ashe with BF+Pickaxe+Cloak to Ashe with IE is large, but it's nowhere near the power spike Weaver gets when she finishes her Radiance.
Whether or not this is a good thing is up for debate. It certainly rewards coordination and good coherent team strategy. It also increases the burden of knowledge, and causes situations where new players simply cannot stop certain characters from overpowering them. I would personally argue that it's better for the 5v5 team play, but worse for soloqueue.
Just out of curiosity: Have you actually played high-level Warcraft 3? One of the more frequent complaints about it from higher-tier players was that certain items were completely unfair. Book of "I win", anyone? How comes nearly all Undead players bought the relatively unimportant Rod of Necromancy in every single game? The various items that granted auras were enough to swing the tide of a game in their own right, and strong support items such as Orb of Corruption were very much worth their cost.
The items that only granted raw stats weren't as important as they are in MobAs, but even they were quite powerful. Especially the ones that allowed you to cast your spells more often, because mana was actually limited throughout the game if you used your heroes efficiently.
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In the long you are right. DotA borrowed a lot from WC3, but I would disagree this is necessarily a bad thing. Yes, the game is less accessible to new players, but it's also more strategically diverse. The strategies in DotA are also way more radical than in LoL. Sending four heroes to the enemy jungle to pull minions from lanes and AoE them is an actual thing, and fast-push strategies, denial strategies and strongly timed pushes are all viable. Taking traits from a Real-Time Strategy game certainly has benefits. At the same time, I'm not particularly surprised it causes the game to be a difficult one to get into. Starcraft 2's relatively low success indicates that expecting people to think during their relaxation-time isn't a selling concept. Having a set of four friends to do it with is even more of a challenge.
LoL is more or less a sport, rather than a strategy game. While strategic depth is of importance, the developers themselves have stated that many things come before it. DotA's approach is to maximize on that single thing at the top level and screw everyone and -thing else. It never tried to be a fast-paced action game like LoL did, and it never tried to be accessible. And yes, I would agree that for casual playing, LoL is more fun as a result. Making blind assumptions about the flow of a strategic team-based game based on what appears to be 15 soloqueue games is still not acceptable. It's akin to criticizing MtG for lack of depth after playing a intro pack match, or claiming fighting games take no skill after playing 20 games against your brother and smashing random buttons.
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
I think what youre missing here is that dota's skill damage is designed to scale with the game. Whereas everything gets to scale the same way in league, by having fixed damage on spells you can create more variable scaling on skills to make different heroes better at different things. This isn't a limit on the system or on the functionality of mages, but an expansion on what roles they can have. Furthermore, while we don't have direct damage scaling, we do have items that reduce resistance to magic, spells that are stat-dependent (skywrath's, for example) and many spells upgrade with aghanims. Once again, more varied and interesting strategies develop instead of going straight AP buffs.
They increased accessibility for casuals, but at a severe cost to competitive and hardcore players. I wouldn't praise dota 2 if it did the same.
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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.
We were talking about spells. And since Ulfsaar has expressed a certain disdain for autoattacking, I don't think he'd be fond of this line of argument anyway.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Of course it's not necessarily a bad thing. LoL and every other MOBA borrowed a lot from WC3, too. I'm just pointing out a couple of the artifacts that stick out to me like sore thumbs.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.