truth
Linux: Able to play DotA… Also a win for Linux

Having played lol for years, I tried so much to enjoy Dota, but honestly it feels like they don’t care to keep the game modern. On league when a champion gets old, they rework it. When visuals are not clear they make them clear. Usually all AOEs you can tell exactly where they end. Dota did not do this, so half the roster feels like all they do is variants of auto attacks.

Also the fact that every hero feels like a disgustingly OP version of a league champion (though in truth it’s probably league champions that are nerfed dota heros). Sniper has like 3x the range of Caitlyn, everyone wants BKB/Blink dagger, CCs last absolutely forever.

Maybe I’m just not used to it, but playing dota tilts me more than league ever has. Honestly even ranked league is chill these days.

Yeah once you have soured on one, I can imagine it would be really hard to enjoy another, since they are so incredibly similar. Dota came first so the game and nearly every hero in league is somehow based on a Dota hero. I’ll grant it’s a more accessible (shorter learning curve) game which is why the player base is higher, but the reason the pro scene is so much bigger and more established in Dota is precisely because it is so meticulously balanced and rebalanced each month.

but the reason the pro scene is so much bigger and more established in Dota is precisely because it is so meticulously balanced and rebalanced each month.

What do mean it’s bigger? League pro play has over 4 times the viewers. It also has more players and more tournaments. League’s final last year had 6.7M viewers, and 6.9M the year before, a figure that has never been beaten by any other esport in history, not even close. Dota’s peak for comparison was only about 2.7M, same for CSGO.

As for balance, well, every game tries their best and you won’t convince me that any is much better balanced than the other. League also has a balance patch every two weeks and I’m sure dota players complain about balance as much as league players do.

My bad I was just looking at the prize pool from those old TI tournaments ($12 million). And my information is outdated. Suffice to say a larger audience doesn’t mean a better game. In my experience, for every big pop culture phenomenon in history, there’s always been a better version of it which goes underappreciated because it appeals to a smaller audience base. Most of the LoL or FPS player base is just a little bit too stupid or impatient for Dota 2, so they can’t handle the two year learning curve

Whether its a better game or not is subjective.

Most of the LoL or FPS player base is just a little bit too stupid or impatient for Dota 2

Crazy statement. Do you seriously think dota players are smarter than any other game in any way?

Definitely. I haven’t done the study but sometimes you don’t have to. Some games just have a more difficult learning curve than others. Like the average IQ of chess players is higher than that of your average checkers player. But more often I think it’s a matter of lack of patience. That’s why Dota games are getting shorter - to appeal to the shorter attention spans of our generation

The only way a dota player would be smarter than a lol one would be if:

  • The game actively reinforces or weakens IQ, an argument I think we both agree is stupid.
  • Smarter people choose dota and dumber people choose lol. A point that sounds plausible on the surface until you realize that nobody “chooses” a multiplayer game like that. They choose a game for it’s asthethics, whether you have friends that play it, its popularity, etc… Not because one has trees and the other doesn’t.

Like the average IQ of chess players is higher than that of your average checkers player.

Stupid argument, there is no concrete proof of that. They are very different types of games with very different goals and a different target audience. That would be like comparing CS vs Dota. Lol-Dota have very few meaningful core differences.

In a competitive game, the energy you don’t put thinking about where your courrier is, you put elsewhere, it does not go unused. The learning curve isn’t important when everyone puts in thousands of hours anyway. It takes you a week max to learn the basics of both games anyway, what does it matter if dota requires an extra day?