The Idle Thumbs Lords Management Consortium - Dota 2, LoL, other Lords Managers unite

[Sully907]

Let's just stick to dota 2. We know it's going to end up taking over the genre eventually anyways

[bakka bakka bakka]

Had a Dota LAN party last weekend and had a sweet basshunter moment. I'm screaming at a friend for not using Nyx's stun at full range at the same time his mom walks into the room bewildered at the scene in front of her. The only thing I could think to say to excuse my behavior was "you know, dota". When did this song get 30 million views?!

[Orv]

I haven't the slightest clue why I don't solo top Lone Druid more. What a wonderful(ly bullshit) hero.

[TheLastBaron]

Let's just stick to dota 2. We know it's going to end up taking over the genre eventually anyways

I doubt dota 2 will ever top League in terms of popularity, League is just way more accessible.

[Twig]

But Dota is way more competitive so it'll win. RIGHT??

In terms of mechanics, LoL is more accessible (although not really by much - the big hurdles are still there, it's just the little stuff that makes Dota less accessible), but in terms of the bullshit hoops you have to leap through to unlock everything, it's godawful. But I guess some people like that sort of thing. One of my classmates said to me, "I prefer having to unlock champions because it means I don't have to choose between all of them at once." I guess I can understand the reasoning behind that... it is less intimidating. But ew! I hated it when I played LoL and I hate it now.

[TheLastBaron]

Well when you unlock something new it gives you a sense of accomplishment, so there's always incentive to play, vs. dota where it's basically a chance at a cosmetic item drop and battle points which eventually give you a cosmetic item. To a lot of people earning a new champion is a lot more rewarding than getting a chest or a hat. Also there's the whole ELO system where you can feel like your getting better by raising your ELO. One of my friends always tells me when he gets to some milestone ELO, he actually Skype called me to tell me he got to 1800 even though he knows I don't care. I know among my friends a lot of them played way more than they normally would because the elo system was addictive. A lot of the meta game stuff is probably what makes LoL so popular and I don't see Dota drawing the people that are super into that away. There's also the people that just play every once in a while with friends and for them what game they're playing isn't a big deal since the enjoyment they're getting just comes from playing with real life friends. Also, similar to how there are tons of people who play WoW, but aren't gamers in any way and don't play a single other video game, there are the same sorts of people who play League. There are kids I go to high school with that are the types of people who spend all their time going to parties/raves and doing drugs, but they still play LoL. I don't see them finding Dota 2 more fun.

There are also just people that prefer LoL, I hope I didn't come off as a condescending Dota douche who hates on LoL all the time because it's not a bad game at all, and there are people that just like it more. I have a friend who played tons of DotA on WC3 and was really good, and plays SC2 and is in master's league so he's clearly good at video games. He just prefers League, and he's pretty good at it (2100 elo last I checked which was a while ago). He even has Dota 2 (he's actually who gave me my key), but he just doesn't feel like playing it over LoL, and that's cool.

[Sully907]

LoL is a good game and achieved massive popularity due to being free to play. It will take some time, but i bet Dota 2 surpasses it within a couple of years, just because it's more aesthetically pleasing, but still offers a similar experience. At least, that's my hope, because Dota 2 is my first Lords Management, and i love how it's interface continues to evolve

[Sully907]

also, the board just correcting me typing m o b a into lords management, and that's the best thing

[Twig]

and that's cool.

No it's not! You should be ashamed for him!

I mean I am just joking around. I think Dota 2 is superior in nearly every way, but I don't really care if someone likes one or the other. Key phrase in the previous statement is "I think". If I really gave a shit, I would write a goddamn essay about why I think LoL is the inferior experience. (I actually might, anyway, because I recently had a friend ask me about this, and after I explained a bit, he asked me to write it out in more detail. Hee.)

U:!

[njoos]

When did this song get 30 million views?!

This song is the top hit when you search for "dota" on youtubez. and there are ~20 million dota player (most likely more).

LoL is a good game and achieved massive popularity due to being free to play. It will take some time, but i bet Dota 2 surpasses it within a couple of years, just because it's more aesthetically pleasing, but still offers a similar experience. At least, that's my hope, because Dota 2 is my first Lords Management, and i love how it's interface continues to evolve

The interface and valve infrastructure alone makes dota2 the better game, and also more accessible? Once it's open to all and they make some more learn features it would be really easy to get into dota2. Just download it on steam, click the learn tab, they show you some videos and place you in a practice game or tutorial.

[Brannigan]

16/2/14 lich, ridiculous. Makes up for our crappy game earlier where I was dc'd most of the match!

[Patters]

I doubt dota 2 will ever top League in terms of popularity, League is just way more accessible.

I'd agree, particularly as the Korean teams such as IM, MVP, Startale and CJ FUCKING ENTUS chose LoL.

[Brannigan]

While I'm sure the pros will have some influence, it's not really a factor for me. I played the crap out of LoL and love dota, but I could not care less about the pro-gaming scene.

[Orv]

I maintain that the League competitive scene is a joke because of the way League works.

(In short, because of AP allowing more or less any character to snowball out of control, most pro LoL games are decided in a matter of a few minutes.)

[TheLastBaron]

I maintain that the League competitive scene is a joke because of the way League works.

(In short, because of AP allowing more or less any character to snowball out of control, most pro LoL games are decided in a matter of a few minutes.)

What do you mean, what happens in a matter of minutes that decides the game? Also ad carries do way better late game than ap champs.

[njoos]

LoL didn't have observer mode for the longest time. Riot gave LoL spectator mode by adding a 6th player to each team, in the beginning this player kept getting killed by global ults. The fact that LoL is an "e-sports" at all is not only ridiculous, it is just sad.

What do you mean, what happens in a matter of minutes that decides the game? Also ad carries do way better late game than ap champs.

If you get a tiny advantage in the first few minutes there is no way to turn it around since the game is just a huge farm fest, where nothing but amount of gold decides who wins.

[TheLastBaron]

The fact that LoL is an "e-sports" at all is not only ridiculous, it is just sad.

What? This doesn't make any sense, why would it be ridiculous. It's a competitive video game that has a large player base that can support a tournament scene, why would it not be an e-sport?

Edit: BTW the thing about spectator mode being a 6th teammate is true, but the thing about global ults killing them is false.

[njoos]

What? This doesn't make any sense, why would it be ridiculous. It's a competitive video game that has a large player base that can support a tournament scene, why would it not be an e-sport?

It's not balanced to be an e-sports. They either don't give a shit, or they have no idea what they are doing. Watching LoL is like watching someone use a chess board and chess pieces to play checkers.

[Brannigan]

Depends on the ap champ. Unrelated, I love phantom lancer, 21/0/11

[TheLastBaron]

It's not balanced to be an e-sports. They either don't give a shit, or they have no idea what they are doing. Watching LoL is like watching someone use a chess board and chess pieces to play checkers.

Obviously I think Dota 2 is a better game, more fun to watch, and a higher skilled game (positioning is much more important, lanes aren't set in stone, there are a lot of heros with skill caps that allow for incredible levels of individual skill, ect.) but I still think League is a good, competitive game and I don't get your analogy. The top teams are better than other teams, and who wins games isn't just luck, it takes skill at the game. It's not like every single player is at the skill cap, even at the highest level some players out-play other players. The fact that so many people watch streams means there is a huge player base that is willing to watch it means a lot for something trying to be a sport. It's gotten to the point that the prize pool for the Season 2 finals is 3 million dollars. I just find the idea that it wouldn't be an "e-sport" ludicrous. I'd imagine that it has more followers and funding than some real sports.

I guess well just have to have this be an "agree to disagree" thing.

Regarding PL: I hate playing against him, if you can't shut him down early and he makes it into mid/late-game farming and pushing mode it's just no fun. I want Medusa asap, one of the best PL counters.

[Twig]

I think what nj00s might be getting at is that the game is an unbalanced wreck. Sure, skill still comes into it, but part of that "skill" is knowing what's overpowered and what isn't.* Moreover, in the time I played, some heroes went from the most powerful beings on the face of the earth to the trashiest trash and back again. It's like the developers respond to people's bitching without actually giving it any thought.

And speaking personally, I just find LoL comp play completely boring to watch. It's just so dulllllllllllllll.

*The same can sort of be said for Dota. There are a few heroes that are complete shit. But MOST heroes have their place on the proper team, and more importantly, there's much more diversity in team makeup.

[Sully907]

I would like to state for the record that gyrocoptor is underrated. awesome, and super fun to play as

[dibs]

I didn't realise how boring I found the lol meta to be until I saw the options in dota.

I've only played gyro once, but it was awesome.

[TheLastBaron]

Oh, okay I can definitely see what you're saying. It's definitely true, and that was always something that I found kind of dumb, how ping pong riot were with nerfs and buffs. For me personally I guess it wasn't as big of a deal, coming from a fighting game background (I haven't played anything in MANY years but 7-8 years ago was very into the scene and went to Evo every year, ect.) I don't follow the scene anymore so I don't know how SSF4 or MvC3 are, but most of the fighting games 8ish years ago only had a few characters that were played at the highest level (though some people were known for using non standard teams, an example being Clockw0rk). Some games even basically had one character. In Guilty Gear XX, EVERY top player played Sol. In Tekken 4, EVERY player played Jin. 3rd strike was basically only Chun-li and Yun. This is of course only at the tournament level and everyone still knew all the characters inside and out, and at arcades people would play non top-tier characters as a means of handicap, or just play fun lineups that were good, but not broken like the couple of top characters. Obviously this is basically irrelevant because they're completely different genres and fighting games aren't balanced after release (you can't patch a cab), plus fighting games are always going to have top tier characters because when you analyze every move literally to the level of individual frames, which is what happens, things will never be balanced.

That was a stupid and long way of explaining it, but my point was that even if the game is incredibly unbalanced, it can still be super competitive and interesting. The constant nerfs and buffs in annoying/stupid and I totally understand where you guys are coming from, I hope Valve doesn't do anything like that once everything is done, which I am positive they won't. One thing to keep in mind is that a LARGE factor is also just players learning to adapt to the flavor of the month champs and that ends up making a bigger difference than the actual patches, which are usually pretty minor, but very frequent. This already kind of happens in Dota 2 when new heroes are added and people do well with them for the week and some people complain they're imba, but then they learn how to deal with them and move on.

TLDR; You guys have valid points.

[Orv]

I don't know if the meta has changed enough to stop it from happening (I doubt it), but when the first LoL tournaments started up, you'd get a really slow early laning phase for 7-10 minutes, and then a dragon fight, and with maybe two exceptions in forty games, whoever won lanes + dragon won the game, even if, because of the way League is made, the game went for another thirty minutes.