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My take on why league is more popular than dota

several lbs lean·2/20/2015, 11:44:38 PM·1 votes·6,050 views

Hey guys, Feathand here.

Recently I've played a lot of both dota 2 and league. Having played league longer, this analysis may be a tad biased. Hopefully not.

Why is league more popular? Is it the LCS? The interface? Marketing? Champ balance?

In my opinion league is more popular for a few key reasons; Strategy and LC$ bigplayz. Both dota 2 and league are considered strategy games, but each game employs a different kind of strategy. As the years continued on, league became less about overall team strategy and more about outplaying your opponent in a flashy spectacular way. There's nothing against this, in my opinion this is in a genre of it's own. Dota is less popular to watch and play as whole because the strategy used in dota cannot be seen by the same eye that enjoys LCS big plays. Dota is less flashy, and more 'big picture' strategic. Less people would want to watch a match of risk over a flashy boxing spectacle as an example. Many of DoTa's heroes have more 'op' and 'flashy' abilities and kits than most league champs but the game is played and viewed differently, so it's not an issue. When all the league casters do is focus around how 'strong' or how 'big that play was' or how spectacular the players are it becomes an issue.

All of this obviously is based on my opinion and is in no way concrete evidence as to why. Thanks for reading! Feedback and discussions is welcome as always!

11 Comments

Maximum Zilean2/20/2015, 11:50:18 PM3 votes

My guess is Dota 2 is not as new player friendly as LoL.

Dota 2 has alot of weird mechanics to learn, not just the character abilities.

LoL is easier to just install and play right off the bat.

Leti the Yeti2/20/2015, 11:50:39 PM2 votes

~~i thought it was more popular cuz riot has a kickass marketing team~~ ~~kinda like beats~~

SLangedEdge2/21/2015, 1:00:49 AM2 votes

I believe League is more popular because...

Was first to hit "Free" 2 play.

Dota 1 was only available in the War3 engine with its harder to manage / non existent matchmaking system. HoN represented the only other standalone but wanted money for their rendition. LoL was the only real option, with its vastly superior (to dota1 and HoN) business model...nothing beats free.

Low System requirements.

Many of the people playing LoL today have systems that still can't run dota2 and the source engine with decent enough frame rates.

Ability to capture the Korean market.

No one loves their competitive video games more than the Koreans. If you can get them committed to the game you'll have instant business.

With dota 2 in full swing and very available to the world, there are different reasons of why LoL is still more popular.

Sunk cost fallacy.

People believed they've already "invested" into this game and leaving it would just be losing time/money/etc.

Mechanics "Suck". (Game is too hard)

Really, i believe dota is the better designed game on so many lvls. But the vast majority of LoL players don't understand why it might be better and they settle on arguments like "anti fun/archaic/dumb". I've attempted to on board many lol ppl to dota, and it usually ends around this game is good too, but omg its too hard. I dont' like getting owned, i'll just go play LoL casually for a few hours and do ok in it.

tldr; Dota 2 is too hard, LoL hit the market free first. I've committed to LoL its too much to switch to Dota for seemingly the same game, just making me feel worse.

Retillin2/21/2015, 12:15:39 AM1 votes

I would argue the main reasons are these:

Dota doesn't LOOK as good. The dark map doesn't help. But it still kind of looks like an old Warcraft 3 Mod. The game doesn't have the same "splash" that League has. (Im not saying Riot has better graphics, just like WoW didn't have the best MMO graphics but looked clearer)

God damn do I hate the turn time on champions. This is 99% of the reason I walked away from Dota 2. It makes the champions feel unresponsive.

But again, these are opinions so there isn't any "fact" in it.

SmokingPuffin2/21/2015, 12:21:40 AM1 votes

I think DotA is just way too hard.

The learning curve is huge. Everything has a dozen exceptions to learn, and then even the exceptions have exceptions. Learning how to build your hero is 10-100x harder than learning to build your champion.

When you die in DotA as a new player, often you feel like you had no way out. Also, losing is really punishing in DotA - gold loss, tp costs money, denies, snowballing is harder. Really intimidating to be a new player in DotA games.

I also think DotA's hero select phase is quite difficult. League design says a marksman is pretty much a marksman. If you play Corki every game, that's fine. Try doing that with Gyrocopter in DotA and you're in for a bad time.