DotA vs LoL...which is better?

[Tanakh]

Those aren't really habits LoL "promotes".
-Only a handful of champions get rewarded for spending mana to last-hit, and those few usually make it a mechanic central to their entire kit(Nasus gets stronger, Annie charges up her stun for free, ect.).
-The camera is a setting, and if anything, LoL promotes using the free one by rewarding it with more awareness.
-Pathing is a DotA only issue, because DotA had/has turn speed on characters as a leftover from WC3 engine.

Mana is less of an issue and spells are more spammable. I have seen way more frequent use of last hits with spells on LoL, than on DotA due that, and it's a bad habit because you really shouldn't use it for that most of the time.

No, not really. Last time I played LoL it was set on auto follow by default, it promotes thus this bad habit, and it's a bad habit because as you said free camera gives you more shit to view.

Pathing is a mechanic in any game where you control units, in DotA, WC and SC you could exploit it by scouting stuff without even going there if you knew the engine well enough, then they patched it. It is not an issue in DotA 2 and SC 2, but for some reason it gives trouble to LoL trained players (IMO because it promotes the bad habit of not seeing where the toon is going), and the turn speed is not a leftover, just an extra mechanic that IMO makes the game feel less crisp but more natural and gives extra depth to the engagements.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

We do have a short angry porcupine with an absolutely bitchin australian accent.

Don't forget about his arch-nemesis, a Canadian walrus with bionic arm!

 

[DustyDrB]

I can't comment much on LoL, since all I know about that game is from hearsay and the odd "LoL player switching to Dota" thread on the Dota 2 subreddit. I have heard that it's fairly common to "main" a hero or role in LoL, which I don't suggest doing on Dota. You should really be prepared to fill in any role. While Carry and Mid are the most popular pub roles ("Mid" not really being a proper role, but it's called early very often), I have ended up on all-support teams. I learned Dota by randoming constantly, and I really feel it served me well. I quickly developed a very good understanding of each hero's mechanics, while some of my friends who got into the game at the same time took much longer. And that understanding is just as crucial for playing against those heroes as it is actually playing them yourself.

On turn-rate, which I saw mentioned: Yes, it is an actual mechanic in Dota. Some heroes have very fast turn-rates (like Bristleback, who takes reduced damaged when his side or back is facing the source of damage) and others have slow turn-rates (like Elder Titan). A few heroes have abilities which can affect the turn-rate of enemy heroes (Medusa, Batrider). It's just another thing that adds to the depth of the game.

As for the "Russian" and overall community issue: It's an online community. You should know what to expect by now. Yes, you'll run into a fair share of foreign players. Don't prejudge them, though. I've met many who were actually able of speaking great English and were competent players. And if anyone does bother you, mute them. Simple as that. You can report them as well. On the whole, though, I'd say your best experience will be partying up with friends. I'm usually in Ventrilo with 3-4 friends while I play, so random pubs aren't a problem as often. If you don't have that luxury, then look for opportunities to find people to play with. There are in-game chat channels where you can meet people, there are forums (Giant Bomb comes to mind. The Dota 2 subreddit as well, of course) with robust Dota communities where people are often looking for others to play with. And if you meet someone you enjoyed playing with in a game, send them a friend request. With very little effort, you can improve your experience with the community greatly.

Also, the game is very deep. There are tons of mechanics that aren't readily apparent, and knowing these will make you a better player. However, don't let this overwhelm or discourage you. Remember that you're being queued up with people on a similar skill level as you, and you're not likely to find any newbie players (maybe the odd scrub account, etc) who have a good knowledge of many of the game's mechanics. You can learn these on the fly, and will be perfectly fine doing so.

If you DO want to learn more, then there's a wealth of resources. I love watching Twitch streams (Draskyl, Blitz, Purge, Merlini. The latter two also have Youtube channels that are great for learning, as they explain a good bit while they play). The Dota 2 subreddit does regular hero discussions, which are great for learning nuances of those heroes. Dotafire.com has some awesome guides as well. There's also a series on Youtube for absolute beginners called "Dota for Dummies". Try looking it up. Like I said, you don't NEED all that knowledge at the start. But the resources for learning it is readily available.

 

[Free Thinker]

I find league to be more fast paced and more big play moments. Also they are constantly changing the game and pushing out a ton of updates. I find the only problem with Dota champs is they are all warcraft based and that limits them to what they can do with them. Also there are some ideas that made it into the game that I don't understand how no one pointed out its problems. One of the characters for example, sniper, can make it so his autoattack passively stun enemies. In early games, its annoying, in mid game, its tough as hell to stop, late game you have no chance of getting away fromt hat guy, he can literally lock down whoever he wants.

Okay, I felt the need to jump in. May the game gods have mercy on me...

Dota prides itself on balance and hero hard counters. Sniper, is a very squishy carry who takes absurd levels of farm to achieve carry status. His major weakness is anyone who can bridge the gap and crush his tiny head in. Pudge, Spirit Breaker, Rkimaru, Bounty Hunter, Storm Spirit, Tusk, Chaos Knight, Phantom Lancer, Phantom Assassin, and Slark salivate upon seeing Sniper on the enemy team.

I played LoL after it left beta for about 3 years before getting into Dota 2. I reached level 30, unlocked most of the champions at the time, and reached high Gold in the old ranked system. I can honestly say, I did enjoy LoL...for a while. But the mechanics I enjoyed ground away the fun and made it a droll slog through games. I found myself bored, and often frustrated due to LoL's nature of comebacks even after stomping one team incredibly hard. I yearned for complexity and subtle nuances, and that was answered in Dota 2. I haven't looked back since.

 

[Nikolaz72]

Dota 2 if you like playing a videogame.
League of Legends if you like not being able to play at all.

Or in a slightly more in depth answer, League servers have problems nearly every, single, day. Whereas Dota 2 runs over Valve servers, known to host official servers on TF2, Counter Strike and various other games all deemed quite stable.

League of Legends has ranked mode, which some use as a way of saying 'We can play against better people' but really people on ranked mode is just as good as the people on normal unless you manage to fight your way to the very top which requires a premade team, you can't get there alone with random people.

Dota 2 'is' one big ranked mode which pits you against people of your skill-level, or at least tries to.

League of Legends is slowly removing its F2P model, every time a new champion appears the initial IP price seems to rise, and their former policy of reducing said price over time as they become older seems to have been proven wrong by the fact that year-old champions still cost the highest price of IP points (You earn by playing) while still lowering in RP (The points you buy)

Dota 2 is created by the company which owns Hatshooter2. They know they can live purely off cosmetics and as such you receive all champions for free.

The two in terms of gameplay are very similar. Except Dota 2 has a higher learning curve and slightly slower response-times, feeling more like you're playing a mod on a stradegy-game than a game in its own right.

Overall I only really play League of Legends, but I and my friends have blown hundreds on it in terms of champions, if you are just entering the Genre. Dota 2 is the way to go. Unless you feel like stabbing your wallet with a knife over and over again. Which league will get even the most stubborn of 'I'm not gonna spend money on this' kind of players to do after a good while.

 

[BunnyKillBot]

Neither.

League is more a business than a game

Dota 2 is more Dota 1.5 - Escape from Warcraft 3 than it is a deserving, succinct sequel.

In short, Leauge has an extremely poorly written game engine but extremely successful 'free to play' money extraction model. It was initially developed with little budget in obscurity, by relatively amateur developers and as a consequence the game engine is clunky and inflexible. Rather than scrapping and rewriting, they continuously try to bring up the engine up to standard, but its still a dog turd neatly wrapped with a pretty bow. The scope of what abilities a hero can actually have is so small, limited by technical implementation, that most new heroes are simply remashups of previous heroes, which makes 'Wouldn't it be cool if....' ideas irrelevant next to 'shut up, here have some AoE splash damage'. Next, to support the free-to-play 'with desirable purcheses' model, they release new heroes so often the pool is completely unbalanceable, and they are released so often at maximum cost the only way to realtisically own all the heroes is to pay. It is not uncommon for strong willed players to put a fortune into Leauge. Riot is the Zynga of MOBA

Dota 2 does better with a proper budget, competent dev team, the backing and support of Valve et al, but its also incontrovertibly retarded in the scope of its project, probably by the insistence of Icefrog. Rather than looking at what made warcraft 3 dota great, and making a worthy sequel, they have literally pulled the game out into their own engine, INCLUDING odd quirks and limitations of the Warcraft engine 3. For example, rather than asking how pathfinding and spawning of neutral creeps should work, they copy the behaviour from the warcraft 3 engine, which only behave that way due to limitations of that particular engine. Its mindboggling.

So in short, they both suck in their own way. Dota 2 is (obviously) truer to the original, cheaper and better built. But, tbqfh you might as well be playing dota warcraft 3 style.

 

[PapstJL4U]

Am I the only one who thinks restricting heroes is a good thing? I tried DOTA 2, and I was given an insane amount of heroes to choose from. I asked someone "Whats the good heroes to get used to the game before getting more complex heroes" and they gave me a list of 20 heroes. Never even bothered after that.

With LoL, it gives me like 12, I just got to ask someone who plays a lot what would be a good hero from the list to get used to the game, I get a list of like 2 or 3.

Well, thats your beta experience. Dota2 is out of beta now and it has a 'good' tutorial now, inclusive last hitting and you get out of the tutorial when you play 20 games with a limited hero pool of 20 easy to play heroes.
I play(ed) both games and you should decide for the following reasons:
a) Do any friends of yours play any game? If yes, play that game. Its more fun with friends.
b) If you like server stability play Dota 2 (if you are in EU).
c) Do you have problems with "the rule of exceptions"? If yes, play LoL. LoL is not totally free of it, but has less. I like the bunch of exceptions, that dota2 offers.

If you are new to the genre, than their is no easy way. If you know the genre, pick one or both. :>

 

[PapstJL4U]

On terms of stability, I've never had any problems with the LoL servers. Mainly because I'm Australian, so the big servers are always fairly low on population when I play, and the Australian server (which is the only one that gives me decent ping) is always low due to oceania only being a really small fucking amount of people to actually play. Still enough so I can get games, in the same way Black Ops 1 is a totally playable game on multiplayer, not that I play it much. (Got sick of it in about 3 hours)

Do you browse reddit/r/leagueoflegends ?

Quote of today: "EUW is stable for now, if problems come up check here LINK". Thats special, because the last 1-2 weeks every day the subreddit had notification, that you got problems on EUW or from France, Germany, Britian. Ofcourse its not the mayority, but its a big enough number to matter and if OP wants to start a game and he would play on EUW, i suggest dota2 just to be save.

It was just my checklist for OP. I dont think, that other servers beside Korea (only 1-2 times) had so much trouble as EU(W).


Comparing Dota2 to LoL is just like comparing CS1.6 to UT. Both are games of the same genre, but completley different. UT is much faster, jumpy and spammy (like LoL), where CS1.6 is more careful, more planning ahead (eco-pistol arounds), more sneaky but can explode in an instant. Both a perfectly fine games, but cater to very different people.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

I prefer LoL, simply because it's more casual and easier to get into for players who are not into the genre that much, but still enjoy it occasionally. DoTA is more complicated and requires a bigger investment on the players part to be able to enjoy it.

 

[DazZ.]

People will always associate you with the worst part of whatever group your a part of. Therefore I wouldn't have gone on any subreddit.

Then why are you on the Escapist?

 

[KaosuHamoni]

If I have to listen to Luna or Witch Doctor again I will have to hurt something

Oh my lord Dan, I think I've broken you with my soundboard =D

[HEADING=1]SELEMENE COMMANDS[/HEADING]

Anyway, I like both, but for different reasons. LoL is where all my tryhard goes, because I'm actually reasonably good at it (Gold IV and rising), DOTA is where I go to play stupid-fun heroes with absolutely no regard for people's sanity (Lycan, Slardar, AXE, Sand King, Night Stalker, AXE, Spectre, Windrunner, AXE...)

So yeah, that's my take on it.

Well if you would just put this video on repeat for an hour as my vengeance for all the bullshit Luna lines every two seconds that would be great. Just wait until I find that soundboard, all Anti Mage all the time.


TRUTH COMPELS ME!

I'll be honest, all the one liners are infuriating after a while.

Indeed they are. As Witch Doctor would say:

Spoiler

[HEADING=1]LOOK AT IT GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/HEADING]

DID SOMEONE SAY WITCH DOCTOR?

 

[Vigormortis]

Dota 2 does better with a proper budget, competent dev team, the backing and support of Valve et al, but its also incontrovertibly retarded in the scope of its project, probably by the insistence of Icefrog. Rather than looking at what made warcraft 3 dota great, and making a worthy sequel, they have literally pulled the game out into their own engine, INCLUDING odd quirks and limitations of the Warcraft engine 3. For example, rather than asking how pathfinding and spawning of neutral creeps should work, they copy the behaviour from the warcraft 3 engine, which only behave that way due to limitations of that particular engine. Its mindboggling.

If you're referring to things like jungle camp stacking, denying, or aggro-passing, you need to understand those were left in intentionally. Not because they didn't want to bother finding "solutions" to them, but because those particular "bugs" ended up creating compelling gameplay mechanics and strategies.

You'd be surprised how often this happens in even the highest levels of game design. in fact, just as a quick example (an oddly apropos one at that), a similar kind of "bug" wound up becoming part of the core experience in certain segments of Half-Life 2.

Recall having to shoot down the gunships with the rocket launcher, only to have the gunships shoot down your rocket? Believe it or not, that was a bug during the early stages of the game's design. The gunship AI would attempt to prioritize the highest threat target, but wasn't entirely picky about what that target was. As a result, it would target the rocket and attempt to shoot it out of the air.

The dev team noticed this error and thought about fixing it. However, they quickly saw the impromptu game of cat-and-mouse it created, so they fleshed it out and left it in.

This is similar to many of the "bugs" people still associate with Dota.

 

[Vigormortis]

For example i know some people see it as a complete gamebreaker that Dota has such a thing as denying while LoL does not and therefore is more accessible to newcomers.

That's one assertion I've never understood from the LoL players.

Firstly: denying, while a decently powerful tool to the right team, isn't exactly crucial to gameplay. In fact, even within competitive play you don't see it that often.

It's one of the more common, and overly petty, complaints you hear.

Secondly: I would hardly call League of Legends more "accessible" to new players. Besides actively locking 90% of the heroes and other content from new players unless they pony-up the cash or grind for hours and hours, it also blocks new players from being able to jump right in and play as they please.

That's the very definition of inaccessible.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Secondly: I would hardly call League of Legends more "accessible" to new players. Besides actively locking 90% of the heroes and other content from new players unless they pony-up the cash or grind for hours and hours, it also blocks new players from being able to jump right in and play as they please.

That's the very definition of inaccessible.

LoL has more accessible game mechanics, in that they are streamlined and thus feature a shorter initial learning curve in terms of simply understanding how to play the game. The business model is "less accessible". You don't really hear many people defending the business model, because it's an example of a fairly predatory fee-to-play model.

 

[Vigormortis]

LoL has more accessible game mechanics, in that they are streamlined and thus feature a shorter initial learning curve in terms of simply understanding how to play the game. The business model is "less accessible". You don't really hear many people defending the business model, because it's an example of a fairly predatory fee-to-play model.

Except that I wouldn't agree with that assertion either.

At their core, Dota and LoL are very similar. The core play mechanics of one will, despite some fans assertions, translate to the other. Learning to play one will give a player a huge step up in learning the other.

Admittedly, Dota has more complex play mechanics at higher levels of play. Many of them being ones that LoL does not have. However, one doesn't necessarily need to learn those mechanics in order to play successfully. You don't need to learn how to deny. You don't need to learn how to lane pull or camp stack. You can do just fine with many of the same core mechanics you'd learn in LoL.

Baring this in mind, when I consider that LoL locks well over half of its heroes/champions, as well as other content and options, from being accessed by the player, whereas Dota does not, it becomes pretty apparent to me that Dota is the more accessible. Both games present similar initial learning curves, yet Dota allows new players more freedom in learning and discovering the disparate play styles and interactions of all the heroes.

LoL basically dictates how you learn the game. Dota gives the player free reign and let's them determine how they learn.

To me, it's pretty clear cut.