DOTO AND LOL

irst off, this post is really long. I apologize; apparently brevity is not my strong suit. I want to explain what position I'm in though. I played Dota 1 for a while, then moved to League and enjoyed myself. I played League a lot, and have now all-but-quit the game in favor of playing Dota 2. My post is an attempt to be constructive and to quantify why I am doing that, because I would like to give constructive feedback. There's no reason for me to fanboy either way, and I'm hoping that my feedback can help make the game better for everyone. Perhaps we just disagree too much on game design and League simply is not the game for me. It's obviously the game for a lot of people, so what you're doing must be working. I digress, however.

I find your line of reasoning to be contradictory. Your view of what constitutes fun at the expense of others seems to change with every thread I've read, and you seem to simultaneously hold the idea that players should have "fun" but "not at the expense of others." In a game where you compete against others, it seems like it's virtually impossible for you to have fun without it being at the expense of others.

You removed dodge (which I agree with) because it's no fun to have kills "stolen" from you because RNG made them completely negate an attack. That's "anti-fun." Ok, fair enough. The problem then exists because you leave crit in (specifically, the 4% crit mastery) because of the idea that it's "fun" to see crits. Is it fun for others to be at the receiving end of back to back 4% crits? Is it fun when you lose to a player who you had dead-to-rights because he gets that miraculous streak of crits, and now suddenly you can not win the lane at all? Because I can tell you this, and I'm sure you know it, but dying once in Dota/Dota 2 does not mean you pretty much can't win your lane afterward.

Mana is an infinitely more available resource in LoL than Dota, and the reasoning we were given is that it's "fun" to use abilities rather than to just sit there last hitting. However, is it fun for others to be on the receiving end of that? Is it fun for players to suffer near-endless Q spam from Gangplank? Is it fun for players to be harassed from long range by Xerath, knowing that if they try to fight him that creep damage will skew the fight in his favor further? Is it fun to deal with champions who have, effectively, no mana cost? Is it fun to deal with Nidalee constantly harassing you and then pouncing away if anyone comes to try to stop her? Is it fun to be constantly Q spammed by Vladimir?

The issue here is that your philosophy on game design seems, to me, to be contradictory: you want players to have fun, but at the same time you want players to not have to be on the receiving end of that fun. I would posit that these two things are one and the same: if both players are designed to be able to "have fun," then who cares if they're both "unfairly" on the receiving end of said fun? It's the Diablo theory: everything is overpowered. When you try to be all things to everyone (such as is your philosophy regarding the push and pull in League), you just end up miss-stepping. A lot.

You're a smart guy. There is no doubt to that, however I think that you're fundamentally misunderstanding a problem that League has always had.The problem is this: you can not release new champions every two weeks and keep every single possible match-up balanced if you're constantly trying to measure the fun one champion can have against every single other champion in the entire game. Trying to do this is what has led League to having a static (and what most have seemed to call "boring") meta, match-ups where one champion is virtually incapable of winning, and very passive play at later Elos because a single death can mean that you can not win back your lane.

I would posit that these design choices have had the exact counter-effect to what you've intended: rather than reaching a near-balance where match-ups are fun, you have limited options and reduced creativity (which leads to players being more frustrated than they would otherwise be). Turret diving is far too painful in League for true roaming to happen. Deaths are far too punishing (since everyone scales with items and levels) and that leads to virtually every lane passively farming for 15-20 minutes (whereas the action in Dota/HoN starts much earlier), because any sort of aggressive play will be simply met with a Flash and you potentially dying. The strat for top and bottom lane is "just farm, don't risk dying since you'll lose your lane." Top streamers who get aggressive early on and die constantly make comments like "I don't know why I played aggressive, I should have just kept farming." I feel like there's a serious problem when even top players feel that the ultimate strategy at almost any given time is "just kill creeps." Jungling has been reduced to a state where the only ganks you should go for are virtually guaranteed kills, and otherwise it's almost always better to clear your jungle. The top junglers have turned into AOE farming junglers, and Skarner rose to the top of the pack because he can do that while having Batrider's pull. Even if your team is far ahead, a single misstep by one player can lose you the game. Your jungler wrongly smiting Baron can lose you a game even if your team is far ahead. A player in bottom lane making a mistake and dying can snowball into you losing the game, because they just can not catch up. You can't react to bottom snowballing by ganking him with 4-5 people because you will lose your lane, since you do not have the utility to town portal scroll back up to your lane. You do not have as many choices in dealing with situations.

Every single role has become extremely static. There are a few top laners which are considered far ahead of the pack. There are a few mid laners which are considered far ahead of the pack. There are a few bottom laners which are considered to be the top choices. The rest have your teammates groaning if you pick them. I don't notice this happening in Dota 1/2, because people don't seem to care. In pub games the "meta" is virtually irrelevant - you can tri lane top and have two solo lanes, or have a jungler and two solo lanes, or have bot and top duo lane and mid solo. Five carries can work (though it's clearly not optimal). You can have an entire pushing team designed at winning early. You can have a team based around delaying to late game and protecting one super-farmed carry.

Basically? I can pick whatever champion I want to play, not whatever fits into the current stagnant meta. It will work if my team works together and understands what we can and can't get away with. I really do not think that this is possible in LoL. I'm not trying to flame your game here (as I played it for a long time), but I find myself alienated by your design process because all I see is that you guys play it safe in every aspect. Every new release champion seems to follow the same ideology: mid laners have a stun, bruisers have a gap closer and on-next-hit attack, AD carries have a steroid, no CC, and some kind of AOE attack.

I understand that making heroes/champions that are too complex and have the "burden of knowledge" can alienate newcomers, but I completely disagree that it's "anti-fun" for anyone. Invoker is an extremely fun hero. Nobody that I know of has been whining because he exists, because the majority of people who try him are simply not good enough to be that effective. However, like Puck, an Invoker player who has spent his time and really learned the hero is capable of doing so many things that he can really force you to respect him. When you give a wider variety of options in design, you allow players to fill in gaps and make things work for THEM.

When you constantly reduce options then you stagnate gameplay and make it so all players are stuck using one or two static item builds, lest they choose a worse one and become virtually useless all game. You make people play safe rather than encourage them to innovate and create new ways to do things. We see this in games like World of WarCraft, where every spec uses the exact same talent tree and every spec wants the exact same items. The things which have kept people playing these types of games are not that it has innovative gameplay which lets you do fun and new things, but the "carrot-on-a-stick" philosophy which essentially reduces players to putting in more time for a predictable reward. It turns the game into a job rather than fun.

The reason that I am moving over to a game like Dota 2 is because I see none of the carrot-on-a-stick gameplay. I see design which encourages you to experiment and try new things. I see heroes which would pretty much all be considered "overpowered" using your design philosophy, but somehow seem to work perfectly fine in the game. I see a system that doesn't force you to farm IP or purchase RP in order to play the latest and greatest champion - you just get in the game and play it (I fully well know that Riot wouldn't make any money if they did this). I see choice. I see games which are constantly markedly different from the last because they don't follow a rigid meta. I have more fun, and I feel like less it's a job which I have to perform to have any level of fun.

I think that safe gameplay design is going to leave many of your players wanting more. You'd be surprised at how innovative the community can be if you give them the option to do so, and how much fun they'll have with that ability.