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[Putnam]

I play borderless window, so yeah, might just be windowed.

[xaritscin]

Seriously we need our own clash of mobas thread where we can all discuss why our favorite moba is bad

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the game is becoming stagnant due to many factors. LoL maps are quite bland in design if you compare it to Dota2 for example, because Dota is more about strategy than plain rushing.

I think dota is more spreadsheet the game its complex but that complexity doesnt really add more to it. heroes doesnt really matter that much its more of getting right items to right settings of match up.
lol isnt stagnant it has done some mistakes however that has let to more boring gameplay, its becoming more like dota they are starting to balance things out using binary solutions.
For example you can no longer carry ppl with use of superior vision that has been gotten with shitloads of wards. now everyone can only place 3 wards ... and thats horrible balance design that balances things out but is bad for fun factor.
Homever there has been lot of changes in balance wise useless champs are almost op tier now
jungle is more intresting than jungle of dota now its also lot harder than dota jungle. Dota jungle still has that asine jungle stackking that some like but thats the complexity of dota jungle.

towers are more challenging to take down, last hit is a must, deny kills, warding, the jungle is quite hard, the map has a geography that can be exploited.

in which game is this? as everything expect geography is done betterly in lol than dota
deny is harder in lol cause you have to wait for 11 seconds before suiciding to turret.
warding is harder in lol cause you can only place 3 wards that can be killed more easily cause of sweepers and pinks.
and quite lot of deaths are cause by fights over pink wards...
i like that miss chance of dota due to elevation it gives melee's more chances, but if you implemented that in lol it just wouldnt work.

whereas Summoner's rift is practically a plain, the only elevation being walls which only serve to block players and nothing more. in Dota you can even take down trees for setting traps or avoiding enemies.

i think this quite much tie between lol and dota.
in lol the complexity of map usage is to use it to extend your skills, hop over some walls that enemies cant follow trough, using terrain with skills to stun them  (gnar, vayne, poppy,alistar), using chokepoints to trap enemies or divide em.

the engine of LoL is pretty dated and is understandable because Riot started indie, while Valve used tons of money for the making of Dota2's engine. so its expected to have more quality in what hero's models and textures respect...along with the workshop customization.

they did a nice update to summoners rift that pretty much upped it to level of dota map while maintaining readability,
however like it was said before dota does beat lol in graphics

you forgot also that Dota2 has more item and summon focus. LoL doesnt allows you to share items nor drop them, or use more than 1 summon and its for a limited time. Dota2 has even champions focused into using multiple units(Meepo, Broodmother, Brewmaster, Warlock,etcetera). in LoL you have a handful of summons and its not the focus of the campion, just a sidepower.

I think these are bad examples i hate those champs cause playing em is hard. While when played good they are just menace to play against.
and lol does have summons and lots of em but they aint similar to dota at all.
heimerdinger and his turrets.
azir and his triple soldiers you cant attack.
zyra and his immobile plants that have high skillcap to use profiently.
etc..

LoL wins against dota mostly on the worldbuilding side, the Lore is quite powerfull compared to Dota2. but Dota wins on the gameplay side. and some people even say that the large amount of broken/overpowered champions is what keeps it balanced. since you can pretty much use any hero and not get laughed by your teammates.

In my opinion dota is more strategic strategy game. thats keypoints is to outmaneuver enemy using wiser itempicks. selecting correct strategy (trilane or having jungler) and then doing it without fuckking up. But its not that fast paced compared to lol games.
while lol is more real time strategy making quick decisions based on action of your teammates.

and both are games where everyone complains about your pick even if the pick was good. only bad players wouldnt question the importance of your pick like picking lion mid over sniper. Would you question that pick?

what i was saying about summons is because you cannot control them. with Dota you can spam spiders and you can order them to attack or similar stuff. you can control squads of creeps if im not mistaken.

you dont do that in LoL, its all Automatic, the only controlable summons are those used in ultimates. not the common ones. you dont say heimer's turrets or zyra's plants to attack an specific enemy, they just focus whatever is present. and i think that's a lame part of gameplay.

Azir seems the only summoning champion that actually makes use of his summons directly, and he seems bugged atm.

im sorry but Dota wins in the summoning department. in dont want temporal summons that i cant control, the focus of a summoning champion/hero must be to use them as their main focus, not as  sidekicks. and they should be permanent.

also, Dota has Aganhim Scepter, you dont have something like that in LoL, it would be a good adition, same for refresher.

and the camera modes. well, it wouldnt work in LoL, the map is tu small and the champions are too clunky.

[Frumple]

what i was saying about summons is because you cannot control them. with Dota you can spam spiders and you can order them to attack or similar stuff. you can control squads of creeps if im not mistaken.

you dont do that in LoL, its all Automatic, the only controlable summons are those used in ultimates. not the common ones. you dont say heimer's turrets or zyra's plants to attack an specific enemy, they just focus whatever is present. and i think that's a lame part of gameplay.

Less micromanagement is not a bad thing. It's not necessarily a good thing, either, but it's not "lame". Just different. Personally, while I respect the amount of twitch/skill needed to micromanage minions in DotA, I find it basically abhorrent from a gameplay perspective re: AoS knockoffs -- the focus is better put, imo, on the character itself and how it influences the forces around it, not on how well the player can control a half-dozen different units via a barely tolerable UI. The computer managing any summons or mindcontrolled critters or whatnot is an incredibly good thing, to me. The less I'm dicking around with the controls, the more I get to actually play the bloody game. LoL's definitely superior in terms of control and whatnot, t'me, specifically because it has less fiddly bits. Mind you, I still think it's kinda' bad, but I've noted elsewhere that I think most modern AoS knockoffs have gone in the entire wrong direction in regards to basically everything so :V

Permanent vs. temporary summons, on the other hand, are a thing of neutral character. Either's fine, it just depends on how it's used in the game. Hell, DotA itself actually has very few permanent summons -- I think the only ones I'm recalling off the top of my head is chen's stuff, visage, and syllabear. Most things are on some sort of timer. Longer timer than most of LoL's stuff, but as you noted LoL's got a larger map.

And... I'm pretty sure you actually can focus some (most?) LoL summons. Either via alt-right click or something built into the character's kit. It's not direct, select the unit and order it around, control... but that's kind of a good thing, or at least not necessarily a bad one. Less micromanagement is usually better, imo, or at least allows more focus to be put on other aspects of gameplay (like positioning, long term planning, etc.).

also, Dota has Aganhim Scepter, you dont have something like that in LoL, it would be a good adition, same for refresher.

I'd kinda' disagree on both, m'self. Aghs effects are kinda' interesting, but I personally find sticking it behind an item is kinda' cruddy. Either time or level lock additional effects, or have something along the lines HotS does -- don't hide character specific tools behind an item wall. It makes things less interesting one way or another, by either mandating the character has to get the item to perform to spec or making it so they rarely see something neat because they can't afford to get the item in question. Refreshers is kinda' the same -- if you're going to let something reset cooldowns, build it into the bloody character.

Itemization design is very much not something that's optimized from a design perspective -- it's less a matter of what's there than it is how it's used, and (as stuff like HotS shows) it's entirely possible to discard it entirely. There's not really a "best" when it comes to character progression, just several different "good"s.

[Putnam]

No, I definitely disagree about that Aghs thing there. Having a farm wall to overcome to get certain abilities is completely necessary to keep certain heroes from being OP as shit. Treant Protector, for example, who can place wards on any of the trees on the map when he has Aghs. A similar concept is Tinker and Boots of Travel; if he simply had the ability to teleport anywhere on the map with a 3-second cooldown, rather than having to spend the 2450 gold required to get Boots of Travel, he'd be a horrific juggernaut the instant he hit level 6.

Also, "if you're going to let something reset cooldowns, build it into the bloody character" suggests that they design heroes with itemizations in mind. They don't. They design heroes with unique features that are fun to play. Any itemization comes after the fact. No heroes are designed to work with Refresher Orb.

[Frumple]

... uh, to the first bit, it isn't necessary. At all. You can just have the ability activate later. Or have to choose between it and some other ability. Key it to a map objective.* Whatever, really. This is... not complicated. DotA's design conceits are not game design written in stone. You can design a game around a character that can teleport around the map on a low cooldown timer, or has powerful vision capabilities, or whatever. Obviously, since DotA tries to do just that. Just through a means I'd call less fun than it could be.

To the second, that doesn't mean heroes can't be. Or shouldn't. Itemization is just another means of character progression -- using a different means (time, XP, map objectives, etc.) is perfectly acceptable. If you want cooldown resets, it's entirely possible to go about it through a means that isn't an item you have to farm for. Personally, I would suggest it. It makes more sense to have something that powerful gated by something more controlled, t'me, and also opens up the possibility of a lot more people actually getting to use it. Which would probably be nice.

*HotS has been playing with all of those, which is pretty neat. For all it's still pretty hardlining that AoS knockoff formula, it's trying some fairly interesting things design wise. And it gets a hell of a lot right, from what I've been seeing.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, just sayin', but claiming that summons/clones/&c. in LoL aren't controllable is an outright falsehood (as is the idea that there's no such thing as summons in LoL). Let's list them off:

1. Annie's Tibbers: Alt-controlled.

2. Le Blanc's passive clones: Alt-controlled.

3. Shaco's ult clone: Alt-controlled.

4. Malzahar's voidlings: Controlled by a surprisingly complex priority-order, from lowest to highest:
     i. Nearest enemy.
     ii. Enemy Malzahar is currently attacking.
     iii. Nearest non-champion affected by E (Malefic Visions).
     iv. Nearest champion affected by E (Malefic Visions).
     v. Target of R (Nether Grasp).

That, combined with their scalings and the mechanic you use to summon them makes his voidlings arguably more complex than the minions of any Hero in DotA2. Which, ultimately, is a good thing, as it (plus his excessively high mana costs) help skillcap AD Malzahar, who is utterly terrifying when well-played.

5. Azir's sand soldiers: controlled both with his autoattacks and abilities.

6. Elise's spiderlings: no direct control, attack nearby targets (I don't play her and don't know exactly how they work).

7. Heimerdinger's turrets: Attack nearby targets, prioritize champions.

8. Mordekaiser's ult victim ghosts: Alt-controlled.

9. Yorick's ghouls: Attack his targets? I don't play him, IDK. I think he works by summoning ghouls onto specific enemies and they prioritize those, then others nearby if the target dies or leaves their range. But I'd have to play Yorick to find out and ahahahaha.

10. Zyra's plants: Attack nearby targets, prioritize champions.

Of those ten, eight are controllable in some manner, with the other two having predictable behavior. Of those eight, six can be directly controlled while two simply attack the player's target.

[UXLZ]

And do you know what aaaaaaaaall of them (basically) have in common?

You need the champ nearby. They aren't autonomous like DotA's summons.

[Flying Dice]

Not entirely true, unless you're counting some of those leash ranges as "nearby".

Though in all honesty I think that things like Visage's minions are idiotic; if you screw up and die you shouldn't get a free chance to kill the guy that nailed you, or to take a tower, or to farm. It's like Sion's passive except it's dangerous to people who aren't braindead.

[IronyOwl]

Also, "if you're going to let something reset cooldowns, build it into the bloody character" suggests that they design heroes with itemizations in mind. They don't. They design heroes with unique features that are fun to play. Any itemization comes after the fact. No heroes are designed to work with Refresher Orb.

All heroes have to be designed with it in mind, though, which means there's some concepts that just can't work in Dota because it's there (or wouldn't be able to work without it). That's one reason LoL fiddles with its items so often, even when they're not actives that totally change what the character can do.

Though in all honesty I think that things like Visage's minions are idiotic; if you screw up and die you shouldn't get a free chance to kill the guy that nailed you, or to take a tower, or to farm. It's like Sion's passive except it's dangerous to people who aren't braindead.

Everybody loves Teemo!

[Putnam]

I'm not exactly saying that itemization never comes into play, I mean that they consider item/hero combinations rather than entire item builds to go with certain heroes.

[Flying Dice]

Though in all honesty I think that things like Visage's minions are idiotic; if you screw up and die you shouldn't get a free chance to kill the guy that nailed you, or to take a tower, or to farm. It's like Sion's passive except it's dangerous to people who aren't braindead.

Everybody loves Teemo!

The sole good thing about shrooms is that the Teemo player can't move them around after they're placed.

Well, that and the massive nerf to their ratio.

I'm not exactly saying that itemization never comes into play, I mean that they consider item/hero combinations rather than entire item builds to go with certain heroes.

The difference in itemization seems to be one of the largest real differences between the two. By my understanding, DotA2 has a much more limited list of items, but they're also more expensive (and gold gain is generally slower), making them more impactful, and the simple three-stat system tends to make them more about focusing your Hero into a role or gaining a useful active. League, on the other hand, sets up Champion kits such that they're already specialized for 1-3 roles, and itemization is both more in-depth/less broadly impactful in the case of any single item, and is more focused on responding to the enemy team's comp and item choices and the way the game is going rather than what role you want to fill.

[UXLZ]

OR getting the exact same items every game.

[Putnam]

I'm pretty sure that's only true for scrubs (such as me) in both games

[UXLZ]

Nah, it's just that in League most champions aren't 'stand alone' (or can't really do so) which makes them super reliant on certain items. Because the abilities scale with stats, they have to make the base power of them lower.

Also, some things truly are pretty much mandatory. It's not as bad as it used to be, but at one point the only ADCs who didn't have to rush an Infinity Edge were Ezreal and Corki.

[Astral]

In other news, you now get a somewhat freemium-esque IP boost from playing with people on your friends list. The multiplier increases up to having a team of 5 granting a 16x multiplier.