League of Legends

[Ashe]

DotA 2 has yet to give me any reason to be interested in it. It seems to me like the philosophy behind LoL was "now that we have the opportunity to start from scratch, how can we build a game like DotA that's even better?" and the philosophy behind DotA 2 is "let's make DotA 2". What are people actually excited about, besides the name? For LoL I can cite that there are new gameplay elements, like brush, and a brand new game mode coming out.

On that same view, DotA 2 (and HoN) has elevation advantages as well as destructible terrain. Some players feel that those offer better balance than brush. Also, there are a decent number of players out there that firmly believe that LoL is full of hand holding and requires no skill, largely due to no denying, which they really think is a core requirement to the genre.

Neither side has to be correct. The great thing is that there will be a game out there for each different viewpoint. They don't have to necessarily compete because the customers will go to the game that best fits their play preference.

I agree about your philosophy comment, though I'd like to point out that "game that is EXACTLY like the original DotA, down to even the stat numbers and items", a 1:1 port, IS what a lot of people want. I don't personally want that, but I shit you not, I've even seen people on reddit (on the DotA 2 subreddit) bitching after the streams that "I am not as excited now... I mean, I was excited to finally drop HoN for the real thing, but why did they have to go with LoL cartoon graphics? These graphics look like shit, Valve!" (paraphrased) I was reading that with my palm deep in my forehead. Additionally, people were throwing a shitstorm before the tournament because the expectation was that it needed to be so exactly carbon copy that if there were ANY balance changes or mechanics changes to be made, they wanted a full set of patch notes showing changes from the most recent DotA, in which Icefrog announced that it was as congruent and possible.

I really like that LoL is going a different direction, and I'm pleased that the other games will help draw out the players who play the game for lack of an alternative with a tendency to show their malcontent.