League of Legends and DOTA should not be called strategy games

Lilikins

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not specifically putting them under the term 'strategy' games but there is...a crap load of strategy involved in them. Ive only played Dota 2 a few times, played dota 1 for WC3 battlenet more often then not but all I can say to that is that theres quite a bit involved.

Most easily noted is that if a team that always plays as a team goes against a team thats completely random, you can see the outcome of it. Ill say 9/10 times that team of 'always playing' will win. One can chalk it up to be 'they are used to eachother and eachothers playstyles'. But nevertheless, that in itself is a fundamental part of strategy, knowing your teammates streanghts and weaknesses.
 

Vrach

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kingthrall said:
Before people start writing a wall of rant text, this is not a flame thread its a serious discussion as its something that itches at my skin when people call these games stratergy.
They don't. Not in general anyway, the genre of these games is MOBA - Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.
 

Ferisar

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The only reason I even went in this thread is for the potential DotA/LoL fan-fight, because the premise of the thread is utterly goddamn silly, only helped by not having played either of the games before. Sheesh.
 

NuclearPenguin

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Do you have trouble forming a coherent thought?
kingthrall said:
The second point is that you have a single unit, there are no armies in which you control, only what are called "lanes" which suggest grinding a process that should never be associated with any strategy game as strategy is all about thinking ahead and proceeding with a plan, if armies are clashing in three predetermined lanes, there is no thought process of reducing casualties ect, they are merely fodder for hero's similar to any rpg.
Watch a Dota game. If you give the enemy a few hero kills early, it will snowball and chances are, you will lose.

Thirdly there is no serious long term consequences in these games
If you destroy towers in Dota, they can no longer be used to teleport to. This places a serious strain on both defense and offense from the team missing towers. Again, have you actually played Dota?

Finally, there is no Macro in LOL/DOTA. argue as you might, you are using one unit
I assume you mean Micro, because macro would not have to do with controlling an army, but either way, again, have you even played Dota? Lone Druid for example is controlling two characters at once, both with seperate inventorys and the ability to move independently. Naga Siren, Natures Prophet, Lycan, so on and so forth, all of these heroes have some form of micro. Not only that, but on every hero you have the ability to buy items that give you some form of micromanagement. Managing items in itself is micromanagement. Oh, and then you forgot the hero Meepo, you know, the hero that controls five characters at once throughout the entire game that move, attack and cast seperately?

EDIT: This was a bit one sided on the side of Dota, but there are micro managing characters in League of Legends. Malzahar for example summons a bug that needs to be controlled, albeit to a lesser extent than Dota.

I am 100% certain you haven't spent enough time to give your opinion on either of these games


EDIT:
not going to lie, spent like 30 min each game and thought they were some of the cheapest trashiest games ive ever played.
Oh. Do you want me to hire someone to clean the drool off your shirt? Because you must have some form of mental handicap.
 

MrSchmeiser

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hazabaza1 said:
Oh look.
Someone who didn't play the games he's talking about and wants to feel superior.

Have fun with that, hope this made you feel better.
Pretty much, i did the same shit about LOL until i played for half a year and realized what the game is about and now i know it's a fine game. Nowhere near dota 2 but still a decent game.

I don't understand why people pick on ARTS games all the time. Stopped caring what they call it a long time ago, people with no clue or newer players call em MOBA, some call em ARTS i just call them dota-like games since dota was the one that pushed all of these games into what they are now
 

EyeReaper

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TheKasp said:
delta4062 said:
...who calls them that? They're MOBA games.
Are they? MOBA is a term only accepted by Riot and their fanbase. I frankly don't like it because it is generic as fuck and describes jack shit. Every multiplayer game is a MOBA. Other communities use the ARTS genretitle which I personally don't like as well because it leads to discussions like this.

Also, fuck genre descriptions invented by Riot after their anti DOTA campaign.

To quote wiki:

Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), also known as action real-time strategy (ARTS) or DOTA-like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplayer_online_battle_arena

DOTA-like would be the best description. It is the defense of the ancient just with different titles (and less mechanics).
You know, to be fair here, most genre names are utterly generic. Like the "Adventure/Action-Adventure" genre, or "Role Playing Game" A good 90% of all games will probably contain either Action, an Adventure, or some role to play as. Not to mention certain genres that are completely subjective, like Horror, or Comedy.

Hell, even "Point-and-click" is a generic name for a genre now that I think about it, considering pointing and clicking is what you're going to do in any game that requires a mouse to play. Pretty sure I pointed and clicked more in Torchlight 2 than I did playing King's Quest or Sam and Max.
 

hazabaza1

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MrSchmeiser said:
hazabaza1 said:
Oh look.
Someone who didn't play the games he's talking about and wants to feel superior.

Have fun with that, hope this made you feel better.
Pretty much, i did the same shit about LOL until i played for half a year and realized what the game is about and now i know it's a fine game. Nowhere near dota 2 but still a decent game.

I don't understand why people pick on ARTS games all the time
Considering he said he played about 30 minutes of both I'm guessing he went into a game, got stomped because he didn't understand the (admittedly hidden) important factors, got fountain camped and went on to complain.
Wouldn't be the first time.
 

Ferisar

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TheKasp said:
AmberSword said:
Well we can't change what the majority identifies with, I use the term moba only to be sure everyone understands what I mean.
I have no problem with people using the term. I have a problem with people stating that, and I quote, "Nobody ever called them strategy games. They're MOBA's.".

They are MOBAs alright. In the same sense that Mortal Kombat games are MOBAs, multiplayer FPS are MOBAS, everything is a MOBA.
YER MOM IS A MOBALOL /s

But seriously. What's a real-time strategy game? I know a lot of games that are realtime and have strategy in them.

I think the only term(s) that I would call as very self-defining are FPS/TPS. Because that's literally what they are. x)
 

AmberSword

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Ferisar said:
The only reason I even went in this thread is for the potential DotA/LoL fan-fight, because the premise of the thread is utterly goddamn silly, only helped by not having played either of the games before. Sheesh.
I'm glad your wish didn't come true then :), and I certainly hope it doesn't in a few pages, please guys, I don't care which army you're from, sometimes we have to unite when we have a common cause.
 

Ferisar

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AmberSword said:
Ferisar said:
The only reason I even went in this thread is for the potential DotA/LoL fan-fight, because the premise of the thread is utterly goddamn silly, only helped by not having played either of the games before. Sheesh.
I'm glad your wish didn't come true then :), and I certainly hope it doesn't in a few pages, please guys, I don't care which army you're from, sometimes we have to unite when we have a common cause.
NO, LIKING A GAME AND GETTING ALONG WITH ANOTHER OF THE SAME GENRE IS A SIN. Besides, all the "real" gamorz are playing SC2 for the 1337 APM (that's the actual number obviously bro, do you even click?).

-is totally not trying to incite anything-
 

Elijin

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kingthrall said:
Anyway have fun picking the pieces out of my post about how you all adore these two highly over-rated games in my opinion. Look forward to the replies!
So to start the tone, you're implying that anyone who disagrees with you is just picking apart points in some scarce defense of their beloved game. Thats a great start.

With that in mind, I absolutely loathe MOBA/DOTA/ARTS games.

But even as someone who hates them, lets do a quick little checklist...

Finite resources that need to earnt and managed on the fly? Check.
A top down map, which fog of war leading to situations where map control and knowledge are essential? Check.
Various unit roles and abilities which need to be micromanaged at an intense level for success over their counterparts? Check.
RPS unit line ups? ...Maybe check? I dont play them much but I understand there are unit types that match up poorly.
Macro on a map scale, being able to keep track of and adjust plays on the fly relevant to the game state? Check.
Intense and varying strategies for different units and player counts, as well as game states? Check.



Well, sounds like strategy games to me. Awful ones, but still, strategy ones.

Its cool though, you already demonstrated you're going to accredit anyone who disagrees with you to be a fan trying to justify themselves, so I dont expect anything from my post.
 

SomeLameStuff

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TheKasp said:
Alliance, the current world champions (winner of the International 2013) vs Cloud 9. The first game in a best of 5. Alliane drafted for global presence and mobility, C9 drafted for teamfight. How I expected the game to go based off the draft: A close match if both teams don't make glaring mistakes. C9 hat both scary midgame and lategame, Alliance hat better pickoff potential and initiation. If I'd hat to place a bet I'd said that C9 would win but very close.

What actually happened: Because of some early aggressive skill uses by Alliance they managed to get a kill and tower lead which looked scary in the score but it was expected. Then, around minute ~15 (end of laning phase, early game / early midgame) C9 decided to take Roshan. Roshan is a valueable objective. Aside from a big exp boost the whole team gets gold and one player, usually the carry, gets the Aegis of Immortals, an item that revives a player once when he dies (it stays for 6 min and disappears after that if not consumed). The idea was that they felt like they could fight better in close spaces at that time (which is technically true) and that they would scare Alliance into a position where they would fear an engagement on the player holding the aegis (because it gives the whole enemy team enough time to react).

What happened was that they simply underestimated Alliances power to fight them when initiated. A perfect initiation of Alliance.S4 made 4 players of C9 unable to do anything for 3 seconds + they were confined to a close space for another ~4 seconds after. This gave their global heroes (they had three heroes that were able to come into a teamfight anywhere on the map at any given time) the time to come into a position where they would pick off the one hero not caught by S4 and setting up the kills of three other members of C9.

This was a big hit for their economy. Alliance, while blowing all their cooldowns (and C9 not using half of theirs), could not follow up with any objectives like towers because it was still early in the game and the fight took their toll on their HP as well. It was nothing that C9 would not have been able to recover from. But because Alliance used all their CDs C9 decided to go into the pit again, thinking that Alliance was in no shape to react. They were wrong. Combined with the previous Rosh attempt they fed 11 kills and the Aegis to Alliance before minute 18. Aside that it were ~4 minutes where the core heroes of C9 did literally nothing except losing gold through two deaths.

The game took another 10 minutes to finish with C9 looking quite strong at some occasions, taking a teamfight and even some more towers. But due to bad positioning and early game execution they gave Alliance such a big lead that they were not able to recover quick enough, resulting in C9 first loss in the series.
That was seriously all on Envy. He loves going for the super-greed drafts and plays and it completely backfired on him and his team that game. It was less Alliance making big plays and more C9 throwing the whole thing in the toilet. EE-Sama better straighten up before the International if he wants to be in the money.

OT: But yeah, a LARGE amount of strategy goes into a game of Dota, and most of it is even before the game starts. I've drafted for a competitive team before, and I'm telling you, it's no walk in the park. Who do you ban? When do you ban them? What heroes are the enemy team comfortable with? Can you counter their heroes? What are your team's strengths? What are your team's weaknesses? What about the enemy? You can spend ten minutes alone on the drafting stage, and more often than not, it can decide the entire game.

And even after that, how do you set the lanes? Safe trilane with a solo mid and offlaner? Or maybe offensive trilane? You can have a dual mid, or you can go for a 2-1-2, or 1-1-2 with a dedicated jungler. And after the first ten minutes or so, what do you want to do? Group up and take towers? Just back off and static farm? Smoke up and gank someone? Play a "Rat" strat? How about the enemies? Are THEY smoking to gank? Maybe they're trying to take Roshan. Maybe they're looking to push down towers and break high ground. Did they place wards? Do they have vision? Do YOU have vision? How much gold does the enemy team have? Should you buy your big item now, or wait in case you die and need to buy out of death? All these are questions that run through a competitive player's head.

Maybe from first glance there doesn't seem much strategy besides "kill stuff, get gold, buy better stuff to kill stuff faster" and granted, that's probably how most pub games turn out, but the competitive scene is something else entirely. As someone with competitive experience with Dota, I can tell you from personal experience that competitive Dota is completely strategy heavy.
 

Easton Dark

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TheKasp said:
They are MOBAs alright. In the same sense that Mortal Kombat games are MOBAs, multiplayer FPS are MOBAS, everything is a MOBA.
In what game is there no action. In what game do you not use strategy. In what game do you not play a role.

Genres are meaningless. Come up with more descriptive and specific terms or throw them out.