Comparative Review: Defense of the Nexus

Hello rdrama. Today I am writing a review of two very similar games, those being League of Legends (2009-present) and DOTA 2(2013-present). I'm doing this for my own straggy reasons, partly because I'd like to think I've gained something from all the time I've spent playing these games. To start with, let's roll the clock back about eight years. I was in high school, and being an even more isolated loner then than I am now, I had very little to do with my time besides reading and playing flash games. Why was I playing flash games in high school when all the fetch kids were playing Bethesdaslop and Black Ops 2 ? Simply put, the only computer I had was a macbook, and there were very few games which fit into my limited budget ($0) and could also run on a mac. In search of further exciting experiences, I discovered that both Dwarf Fortress (2006-present) and League were capable of running on my machine (thus sealing my fate as a complete neurodivergent). Perhaps I'll talk about Dwarf Fortress at a later date, but today's subject is League of Legends. I was terrible at it, worse than I am now. I didn't have a mouse , so I used a touchpad, which is not what I would recommend as in input device for click intensive high apm games.

Anyways, being that I was a friendless loser, I would forgo lunch in the cafeteria, bringing my own lunch from home, and I discovered that one could generally fit a game of League into my limited lunch break. One day, as I was sitting in a corner of the school, one kid, an acquaintance, noticed what I was doing, informed me what I was doing was incredibly straggy (true) and told me that I should instead play DOTA, which wasn't as straggy ( ). And so I got into DOTA. I read guides, searched the web for any suggestion of how to play the game. Unlike League, which has very defined patterns of gameplay, DOTA is much more flexible in how you approach it. Therefore, I was totally lost on how you're supposed to approach things. To this day, I'm still confused on how you're actually supposed to play DOTA in terms of macro. League is much simpler, in this respect. You have your laning phase, and then the ARAM/objectives phase, transitioning into the base defense/enemy team farming phase, before you inevitably lose.

The first thing that comes to mind when I compare these games is their intensities. I was reading an interview with one of the designers at Respawn (Titanfall 1(2014)/2(2016), Apex Legends(2019-present)) who pointed out that Titanfall's multiplayer is much more intense than Apex's. It's much harder to play Titanfall for multiple hours without burning out a little, whereas you can queue up for Apex more or less endlessly. I find there to be a similar relationship between DOTA and League. I can play League at the end of the day to relax and destress a little, whereas I need to be in great condition to play DOTA. I have no trouble playing eight games of League in one evening, but queuing up for a second match of DOTA feels similar to pulling the trigger on the shotgun in your mouth This is not only due to the pace of both games, in fact, DOTA is usually slower paced, but because of the mental load (as discussed above, even after ~1000 hours, I'm still lost on what should be going on) and the aesthetics of the game. Truth be told, DOTA's intensity in terms of aesthetics is totally a positive for me. While League gets rightfully clowned on for having champions with approximately 10 lines, DOTA's heroes have veritable novels worth of speech. DOTA is one of the few games who's sound effects and voicelines live rent free in my head: Pheonix's ult, "Mere coin?," "Come to Pudge!" It's pure auditory kino. League has far more muted and less interesting sound design. There's literally not a single sound effect which I can recall from memory, even for champions who I've spent hours upon hours playing.

Another factor in terms of mental load are the games respective control schemes. League only allows you to control your one character, everything else is a second class entity. While some characters do technically feature "micro," it is somewhat insulting to the proud history of that term to suggest that controlling any of the various pets or clones in the game is micro. Sure, you can move them around, they might have some limited abilities, but there's no active abilities or anything like that. DOTA is very different. While there certainly are characters who don't have any micro built into their kits, not controlling the courier (note for Leaguecels: the courier is a unit that can carry items from the shops to you) manually from time to time is a great way to feed gold directly to your enemies. DOTA remembers, properly, that MOBAs descend from RTS games, and respects those origins, by remaining an RTS game. Of course, this is all another layer to master, which makes the game that much more taxing to play.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't touch on the touchiest subject of all: (im)balance. I am actually quite sympathetic towards the League devs in their approach to balancing the game. It seems like they have a hard job, and there is (almost (fricking stormsurge)) always a reason for them to make the changes they do. However, it is empirically obvious that DOTA is almost always better balanced than League, and it is equally obvious that this reflects very poorly on the League Dev team.