As a Starcraft II player... my thoughts on League
Introduction I am a high diamond level SC2 player. That translates roughly to platinum in league. Recently, I've began playing LoL on the advice of some friends, and I love the game. The gameplay is completely different, and often frustrating for me. I'm about Bronze VI level, and the only thing I do right is last hitting. Even when I'm over 100 cs and 2 levels ahead of another player, I still manage to get killed in 1v1 duels, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Feel free to correct me if what I've said is wrong.
Before playing league: my misconceptions In StarCraft, players have a superiority complex over league players. Make any thread comparing league to sc2 in official forums, and you will get instantly downvoted to oblivion. Players would constantly call league a no-skill game and I bought into that mentality. After all, how hard can it be to press QWER and click?
StarCraft players also believed SC2 was a "harder" game than LoL. Everyone thought the reason League was more popular is due to the high skill floor in SC2. And, to some extent, that's true. Basic skills like not being supply blocked and not floating excessive resources are difficult to master. Even master league players would fail to hit simple benchmarks (120 supply at 11:30, 200 supply at 14:30). As a result, SC2 is very discouraging game for casual gamers simply because there's so much to do and not enough time to do it.
Here are some excerpts to give you a basic gist of SC2 players' opinion of LoL:
League has a tremendous audience that completely eclipses SC2's audience by such an extreme margin, that the fact that SC2 is technically a superior game, is irrelevant.
I get why [League] has a larger playerbase: it's free, appeals to casuals/unintelligent/lazy people, etc.
There is very little strategy involved [in League], it's so boring to watch!
Starcraft 2 has a vastly superior skillcap. The amount of multitasking it demands utterly destroys the simple ''control one unit'' aspect of LoL ... its just full of people who like EASY gameplay and EASY mechanics.
There are thousands more examples, my point is that this "LoL is easy lololol" attitude is so prevalent in the SC2 community that it's rare for someone to not buy into that idea. I'll admit, I did too until I began playing League.
Dispelling the Misconceptions
- League is a more strategic game than StarCraft Yes, I said that right. League of Legends, a MOBA, is a more strategic game than StarCraft, a real-time "strategy". Solid mechanics are what reign supreme. In SC2, you would often hear casters say "Look at the instant reaction and marine splits! TaeJa's mechanics are so solid that he never misses a baneling snipe." or "You have to be impressed JaeDong's multitasking, his APM spiking over 1000." Rarely, you see "ForGG's build is powerful because it metagames gas first banshee. The transition is made versatile by the delayed reaper and hellions give the map control necessary to continue his greed". These are the exception rather than the norm. It's even possible to make it to high masters level with no strategic sense whatsoever by simply having good mechanics. At one time the top Korean in the world, INnoVation almost invariably uses a single build for each matchup. He relies on his perfect micromanagement to win games.
League, however, is completely different. Watching several professional level streams, I've noticed that none of these players are very fast. Most of the clicks come from orb walking or pressing tab. However, what separates the bad from the good is decision making. League players know how to use champions, where to position them, when to push, when to disengage, all from intuition rather than memorization. I asked my friend, "Why do I suck at League?". He replied that "You just have to play more to understand each champions strengths and weaknesses". If he had asked me the same question about StarCraft (he sucks a lot at it), I would have told him that he needed to practice multitasking and maintaining production. Simply put, mechanics in League are secondary to decision making.
- The StarCraft community is much more toxic than league A favorite complaint about League is that the community is so toxic. Images like this would crop up every now and then, and subsequently become part of the SC2 > League canon. These claims are completely untrue. There is no fundamental difference between the League community and the SC2 community other than a higher average age.
A higher age apparently doesn't come with higher maturity. Virtually everyone says "gg" when they win, and less than half do when they lose. Every five team games, my teammate would call me an idiot. Professional players have gotten away with telling others to "get cancer and die". Some players [NaNiwa, avilo, idra] even thrive on the infamy that bad manners bring and become more popular because of it.
In all my time playing solo queue, I have never been raged at once, no matter how badly I played. I've seen heated arguments develop, but all of them are entirely preventable. If you don't take every criticism as a personal attack, you can avoid flame wars entirely. Nobody ever goes out and cries "omg noob annie why'd you buy infinity edge"; they instead give you tips and teach you what to do right. Whether you take that as an insult is your own choice. In direct contrast, StarCraft players preemptively blame others for some perceived fault.
jungle that was going full damage on our team, even though he was feeding and there was a fed
on the enemy team. I told him that he needs some armor
, otherwise well you know... He responded with a "well maybe if you guys didn't feed" blah blah blah, even though he was the one that had given about 13 kills to the enemy team.
on
, not saying I would but most people yes.