My early impressions of LoL after a long time Dota player.

I played dota back when it came out for Warcraft 3 (A very early version of it), and got into Dota 2 when it was still in beta, although I haven't played consistently every year for that long, I do have quite a bit of experience and loved following the international as a sporting event with all the team and draft dynamics involved.

I wanted to try LoL for myself after reading about comparisons between the two games. My very first impressions were not good, but the more I got into it the more I found things I liked about it. At this point I am loving LoL, have bought a couple champions with RP, and I intend to buy many more once they go on sale.

I felt I wanted to share my experience as both a new player to LoL yet an experienced moba player. I think they did a lot of things right but there are also areas the devs could improve on. There are some areas that I won't get into commenting on yet because I haven't had enough experience. This post represents my impressions up to level 10. I'll share my impressions of some of the characters, game modes, mechanics, etc. up to this point. I may post more impressions once I get to level 30, or at level 20 if my game experience and impressions/conclusions have changed significantly enough by then to warrant an update.

{{summoner:17}} **The start of the Journey: The newbie starter pool of free characters. ** I think part of why my first impressions were so bad was because they have a separate free champion pool for players under level 6. Meant to help new players, as a longtime dota player this backfired by giving me heroes that I found to be very simplistic and boring. I played Lux , Ryze, Ashe, Lissandra, Jinx , Varus, Garen, Kha'Zix, and Shyvana, in that order. They weren't necessarily bad, but they just didn't strike me as overly interesting, or I found them to be very predictable. Some felt like watered down versions of what I was use to with Dota. I wasn't really seeing anything here that made me want to play LoL over Dota.

At this point I'm thinking that I can see why people say that LoL champions have abilities that feel less powerful. LoL seems more measured and conservative in what they allow you to get away with. In Dota a lot of ultimates can be total game changers if used at the right time and place - moreso than in LoL from what I've seen so far. Sometimes it's good to have a tight balance and focus to what a character does, but sometimes it can be bad because it feels like things have been overbalanced to the point of blandness and predictability. This happens sometimes in MMORPGs where the devs have such a specific idea in mind of what they want to happen with team and class dynamics that the players have very little wiggle room for their own creativity, and there's less to be gained from smart decision making that maximizes your effectiveness. I often feel like Dota's abilities and items give me the freedom to think up crazy combos or tactics, so there's a high probability I can do something the enemy might not expect. Part of why I think people say Dota has more depth is because it takes so much time and experience just to learn how to stop being surprised by all the various possibilities. Even pro players seem to get surprised sometimes. I don't yet know to what extent this is also true in LoL.

8/4/11 http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1703773543/227253136?tab=overview Jinx was the first one I really had fun with because I could harass from long range with rockets, skill-shot stun, decide where to set mines, and use a skill-shot ult to have fun killing enemies from across the map.

5/8/17 http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1705998595/227253136?tab=overview I did have fun playing Garen despite him not being that complex. I liked how he required no mana for his abilities. It's refreshing to be able to spam abilities as much as I want for a change. I enjoyed acting as the meatshield to initiate, letting my team move in behind me to kill off enemies. I probably was responsible for securing more kills than my score suggests, because of all the assists.

16/6/11, with a 10 kill streak. http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1703828819/227253136?tab=overview I dominated with Varus on my first try after I got some items. Despite that, I didn't find him that interesting to play. I think he just had a high damage ranged style that let me really punish the mistakes of my enemies.

Some of these players are shockingly bad at this level. It's expected that at least one person on each team will do nothing but feed the entire game, going 0/15 or something. In many cases the official bots would have been more of a challenge. I'm playing against against newbies with clearly no moba experience, and I can often easily dominate them if I'm playing smart and I choose a character that fits well with my playstyle preferences.

Because this game is so similar to Dota, a lot of the same concepts I learned about how to farm gold, get kills, and push towers while staying alive, all apply to LoL.

It can be frustrating when two people on my team always feed. I imagine it might also be frustrating for new players to be put against those who are skilled players on low level smurf accounts.

Part of the problem is you don't have the ability to match a highly skilled player with other highly skilled players unless they are near the same level. This might be a problem at the lower levels when it comes to someone smurfing. There's really not much way around this, that I see, because you can't put a level 10 against a level 30 with full runes and masteries and expect that to be fair.

I don't know if this problem is going to go away as I win more games, or if I just need to gain more levels to get paired with better players. But I suspect that LoL does not have the same kind of player assessment system as Dota, so you're probably matched based on winrate alone.

Dota has a dynamic calibration system for unranked games where it determines your skill level based on a variety of in-game metrics like gold per minute, last hits per minute, kill/death/assist/ratio, even ward usage on supports, etc. What this means is that you can be losing games but still rising in your rating, so your future games will pair you against others closer to your level of in-game performance.

However, ranked matches don't work this way in Dota. Only the first 10 games use the dynamic calibration system, then you get locked into an Match-Making Rating and can only raise it by winning more games than you lose. This is why we end up with 'MMR hell". Because if you play your 10 ranked calibration matches at below your normal performance level then you will get put in at a below average MMR. Then it will take you a long time to dig yourself out of that pit because now your MMR only raises based on wins. So you have to learn how to carry your team and lead unskilled players to victory.

However, that doesn't mean it's hopeless to win if you're on a team full of newbs. I've learned from rising up in Dota's ranked system that you have to game it by feeding off the enemy's bad players more than the enemy's good players feeds off your bad players, playing high impact heroes. Support and team up with the good players on your team, don't try to save the bad players. Be positive. Ask them nicely to do things. Give feedback on what they do wrong in a nice way, because some might correct their behavior as a result (usually asking them to be more defensive, and not take so many risks). Act as the cat herding general to make sure the team hits the right objectives at the right time (Pushing towers, teamfighting, defending towers, or killing the boss creeps). My win-rate has been increasing as I started applying these concepts to LoL like I do in Dota.

Problem: As I start to unlock more playmodes, I run into a game breaking problem for low levels: Bots. You absolutely cannot play 3vs3 or ARAM without the game being full of bots that are only there to grind out IP.The bots mindlessly charge down a single lane, autoattack and spam abilities, and then are programmed to retreat if their health goes low. I think I came across it once in 5vs5 at the lower levels, but for some reason I don't see it as much in 5vs5. I stopped playing those game modes only because it's horrendous to play against these player run bots that don't even put up a real fight like the official bots, on top of having to deal with half my team being bots that are useless. These games end up being decided based solely on the fact that the team with the most bots will lose. This is a serious game breaking issue for low level play and Riot needs to do something about it.

**ARAM conceptually is flawed in my opinion. **It's not very random if you only choose from a handful of characters. It would make more sense if it were random picks out of the entire champion pool. You don't need to worry about this resulting in reduced incentive to purchase heroes because with a pool of 126 characters the odds of a player getting the one they want are so low that they probably have a better chance of waiting for that character to just come onto the free rotating week. It would, however, possibly increase exposure for certain characters that a player would otherwise never play, forcing them to give it a try, even if they might skip it when it's on the free week rotation. They might get surprised and like it. Part of the whole fun of ARAM is suppose to be the concept of trying to make a dynamic completely random team work somehow. But that's not really going to happen unless you have everyone get picks from the entire cast.

{{summoner:17}} Continuing the Journey: Once I get past level 6 things start to get more interesting with more advanced champions I ran into a lot of characters I didn't like, or that didn't fit my style, even past level 6, but the fact that I was finding some I really liked gave me confidence that there were probably many more out there I would like too.

I find sona to be a clever and fun character to play, with a very unique way of supporting a team. I ended up wishing that I could play a character like this in Dota. As I spammed away abilities one after another to launch one power chord after another, with the sounds going off, it almost felt like furiously playing notes on a piano in order to achieve victory.

Gnar was neat. I liked catching his boomerang and bouncing around on the enemy's heads, making use of positioning while spamming my abilities. However, I didn't really like his ult because it's harder to have control over when and where I use it. I also don't think he's as fun in that mode.

6/0/5 http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1706558198/227253136?tab=overview By the time I played Azir I was sold on LoL. I kept saying "wow, this is fun. That was cool, this guy is a lot of fun to play". Part of it is that he fits my playstyle that likes a lot of long range damage, able to fight on his terms, but also is dependent on good positioning and decision making. I immediately wanted to buy Azir because he's so unlike anything else in Dota. Part of it also is that his animations and sound effects are just really cool and feel right.

15/10/18 http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1706558198/227253136?tab=overview I bought twisted fate with IP without having played him, just because as a fan of Gambit from the X-men I just knew I'd enjoy playing him. He hasn't disappointed. It was frustrating at first, trying to play him like a ranged carry or mage and failing, but once I played him with more reliance on the yellow card stun, using hit and run tactics unless I was sure I had the kill, I started to have much greater success. He definitely fits my style. I also love mobility skills that let me take enemies by surprise, fighting on my terms.

15/2/8 http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1710966880/227253136?tab=overview I then decided I was enjoying the game enough that I wanted to put down RP for a character I knew I'd like, because I like really long range heroes with high damage, and good concept art as a steampunk sniper- So I got Caitlyn while she was still on sale, because I didn't want to have to waste 4800 IP to unlock her ( I did the math of how long it would take me to get that much IP and decided it wasn't worth the time investment compared with the dollar investment), and I didn't want to miss out on the sale while she was there because I don't have a lot of money to burn right now either. That purchase was well worth it too. I enjoy her a lot more than the dota sniper because she has more utility and requires more decision making. However, her ultimate is underwhelming compared with the dota sniper, but at least it scales which the sniper's doesn't. It's nice that she doesn't need to depend on items for escape mechanisms because they are built into her. This also gives her a lot more teamfight utility.

Which brings me to another major issue I see with the game: The cost. I am willing to pay, but from an economic standpoint I honestly think you're making some mistakes that are actually causing you to have less profit in the long run.

My presumption as a consumer and gamer is that if I were to put down the equivalent of a retail boxed copy of the game, about $50, that I could get access to a great deal of the game's content at least (if not all of it). A lot of games will even bundle older content together in order to sell new content, letting new players just entering the game get access to everything at an affordable price (usually the cost of a single game buys you the latest content plus everything that came before it).

But $50 in LoL will buy me only 7 full priced champions out of a roster of 126. Regardless of whether or not the cheaper champions are effective to play with, they may not be the ones I actually am intrigued by and have a desire to play. The ones I actually want to play may be at least 790 RP or 880 RP. On top of that I get no skins.

From an economics standpoint, as a consumer, this makes no sense. It looks bad. And it is bad.

I have a family and school, so I don't really have the money to spend right now. I like the game enough that I am willing to put down something anyway, but I am forced to really try to get the best value by buying only the ones I really want and only when they are on sale.

Maybe you have enough people with too much money on their hand that paying $25 for a skin seems reasonable. Maybe you can support your business by pricing things that high and expecting the people with a lot of money will buy it anyway, but there are people like me that would be more likely to buy champions or skins in smaller increments if the price was more accessible. I really wanted pulsefire Ezreal when I first saw it, being a megaman fan. It was the first thing I was prepared to put down money for, until I realized just how expensive it was. The cost is just too high for my perception of it's value.

Dota 2 even managed to get money out of me for purely cosmetic items on some heroes that I like to play regularly. Dota 2 seems to be doing well enough without requiring money for characters. I still avoided the items that were too expensive, because I think many Dota items are overpriced too. But they have a player market where I can buy things at a more reasonable price. So the lower price point encourages me to buy steam cash to engage in the marketplace, whereas before I would have just avoided spending anything because the price point was not something I saw as reasonable.

LoL is certainly not in financial trouble with nearly 70 million players around the globe. Granted most of those may not be payers, but I believe you're actually discouraging a lot of them from paying by having such a high price point. I know that I would be buying a lot more characters and possibly even skins if they were 1/2 or 1/3 of the price, because I feel that is more in line with my perception of their value. I feel $7 for a single champion is just too much. Half-price starts to be tolerable, if its something I really want to play and don't have time to grind the IP. But even half-price is a lot once you consider that I could easily find 1/3 of the champions desirable to play. I would be more likely to buy characters that I want to play, but haven't tried, on impulse, if they were a 1/3 of the full price cost. The cost discourages me from doing this. I also believe it discourages people from buying any characters because they realize how much money it will cost them to actually pay for everything they want. They might get in a mentality where it only seems reasonable to grind IP for it. The likelyhood of me buying a skin is based on how much I play that character, how much I like the skin, and how much it costs. If I play long enough, and I really get attached to a few characters, I might buy skins - But you're creating a very high barrier of entry for me to purchase skins at that point. If the cost were like 1/3, then I'd be far more likely to buy skins sooner, and for characters I like but don't absolutely play all the time. The likelyhood of me ever playing Ezreal enough to justify $25 for the pulsefire skin, even though I think it's awesome, is probably very low, unfortunately. Even though I do suspect that he's a champion whose playstyle I would enjoy.

**Why don't I just farm up the IP for stuff then? **Well, that's what most people feel they are forced to do, I bet, because the monetary cost is outrageous. However, there are a lot of people like me who have work, school, and families, so they really only have enough time to play LoL occasionally. I don't have the luxury of playing 12 hours a day for 3 months strait to farm up several champions I really like, on top of the cost of all the runes I will need.

I actually did the math, and the reason I bought Caitlyn on sale is because even at a minimum wage job you're only giving up around 20 minutes of work to get it (over $3 for caitlyn on sale) - Whereas if were to try to buy her with IP, the time it takes you to get that IP could be anywhere from 30-50 hours. Even if you were to assume you had the daily XP bonus for every single game you played, you're still talking about 20 games over 20 days, which could be anywhere from 10-20 hours depending on their length.

I'd rather have more time for other things in life, playing the game only when I want to have fun, and not just because I feel obligated to grind out as much as I can.

Which brings me to another issue, which is more an issue with the online game industry in general: I don't like games that force me to grind to unlock more tactical options. I can't play around with different mastery sets to change up the way I play my character without being level 30. I have to grind for runes to change the way my character plays. On top of not having access to all the characters to try different playstyles. That's one good thing about Dota, is that I can pursue whatever strategy I want, and I don't need to grind 300 games before I unlock certain game modes, characters, or items. I don't think LoL is too bad in the sense that the runes and masteries don't seem to change the way you play in a major way, but only enhance the way you already like to play, but I still think it takes away from the game rather than adds to it. It's arbitrary, and doesn't really add to my game experience to force me to grind to unlock all my tactical options.At least with the character grind it makes sense because we understand you want to motivate us to pay you money. But with the rune and mastery (level) grind, I don't believe it serves any benefit to the player other than serve as a scheme to make them play more in order to experience more.

I can speak from experience that I have been driven out of free to play games because I felt like they did not respect me as a human being whose time is valuable. I felt like they wanted to manipulate me into being in game as much as possible. I hated the trend Battlefield 2142 and Modern Warfare started with unlocks because the time required to unlock attachments and weapons was so huge. I felt like my ability to enjoy the game to it's fullest was being restricted because I couldn't play it as a full time job. I was restricted in what I could do and punished for not having endless free time. Planetside 2 was great fun, I liked it, I wanted to play it, but I didn't want to spend months grinding out the equipment and certs I really wanted to have fun with. Even paying money would have only sped up the grind, not remove it. So this actually discouraged me and I left the game because I didn't feel I had the time to invest in getting to where I actually wanted to be in terms of certs and upgrades that made the game fun. Warthunder is a game I greatly enjoyed as well, and I almost considered putting down real money to unlock planes in order to save from investing excessive time into it. But it just wasn't cost effective when I considered it. I would have gotten very little for $10, especially when I could pay for a boxed copy of a flight sim like IL-2 that comes with years of expansion content bundled together.

{{summoner:17}} A new week begins. New characters rotate in at this point:

17/4/13 http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1711754257/227253136?tab=overview I have a blast on Volibear. I knew I'd like him when I saw him in game played by the enemy. He just looks and sounds cool (which I think is a big factor in making a character fun to play, to be honest). Dominated my first game. His speed buff and speed debuff are powerful gap closers and escape mechanisms at this level of play. It was a lot of fun late game when I had the full recommended item build and was able to take massive amounts of damage while returning it back on the enemy team.

8/3/15 http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1712402786/227253136?tab=overview When I tried Viktor I immediately knew I had found my next desired purchase. He totally fits my playstyle, looks awesome, and his abilities are a lot of fun. He's also unique in the sense that I love being able to autoattack while firing off my laser in another direction, or running one way while firing another, and being able to dictate the path my laser takes. He's got some excellent teamfight power, and his abilities let him dictate the fight on his terms to a good extent, as long as he uses smart positioning. Part of the reason I like him so much may also be because he reminds me of the Techpriest Enginseer from warhammer 40k, which I always thought looked awesome. I'm hoping Viktor goes on sale real soon. I looked up the stats for most played, and the fact that he is one of the least played only increases my desire to get him and master him, because I love dominating on a cool looking character that most people dismiss as not useful.

**Character models/sounds/etc. ** Some of the characters are so awesome to see in action they make it a lot funner to play them. Some are so bad that my initial interest in the character is lost. Some of the models and effects are atrocious, and I can only assume they are left over from early on. Example: Taric. He looks nothing like his concept art. His concept art made me think "hey, he looks cool, I want to try him, I'll probably like him". Well, I did like his ability set, but he looks like a joke in-game, so I have no desire to play him let alone pay for him. Pantheon is another character I was convinced I wanted to get, but after seeing him in game I realized that he has a very poor model that doesn't live up to how awesome his concept art is.

Overall I think bright style is good, and the more technology based graphics for the creeps and towers on summoners rift, but I find myself often wishing that the characters were higher quality models, with greater detail, and had more impressive spell effects. There are some characters in Dota where half the fun of playing them is just seeing all the cool spell effects that make your character feel awesome. A good example for me would be Phoenix - The sound and visuals of his sunray make it fun to use. On top of his ultimate, which is also quite impressive. In contrast, I find Leona's solar flare to be underwhelming in visuals compared with it's concept.

I have heard people say that they think it's easier to tell what's going on in a battle in LoL because things are more clear. I haven't found that to be the case. I think it's just an issue of experience playing the game. When I first watched pro team battles of LoL on youtube, they made very little sense to me. Dota battles only make more sense because I have experience with the characters to know what I'm seeing.

I love the 2D art, music, and videos I must say though that I really appreciate all the effort they've put into the 2D concept art for the characters and skins. Although, to some extent I think they need it. Because the dota in-game models are much higher quality, so you don't really need a 2D masterpiece to make a new skin or itemset look awesome, because it already looks good on the model

I love that they put resources into creating fun animated videos. It gives a lot of life and fun to the game when they do stuff like that just because they can. It makes it fun and unique that they compiled the music for the game, and even made a metal album with a metal themed skin set! That's just awesome. I kept listening to "Deathfire's Grasp" over and over, along with other great songs like "Demacia Rising" or "Quinn and Valor" I was disappointed to find out though that they don't have custom sounds for in game. A skin like that is really in need of some electric guitar shreds when they hit someone, or gothic metal piano sounds for sona.

10/4/15 http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1713372518/227253136?tab=overview Leona is also one I had been wanting to try because I was drawn to the concept art style. I enjoyed playing as her, and will try again, but I think my playstyle seems to fit more naturally with the mage, marksman, or ganker types.

4/2/7 http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1713388789/227253136?tab=overview Nautilus was fun too. I think seeing the cinematic trailer of him made me want to play him. He looks cool in action, along with his sounds and spell effects.

I find the tanks fun, but I find it more difficult to secure kills in many solo circumstances because they don't output as much damage. However, I enjoy the fact that LoL seems to have a stronger role for tanks as a concept of someone that can take hits and disrupt the enemy team. I enjoy pairing with a marksman or mage type. Dota doesn't really have tanks in that sense. They have initiators, which may or may not be highly durable. You don't usually see people trying to fill a defined role of a tank in dota.

Things I've noticed about how heroes are different in LoL, at least based on what I've seen so far...

I'm starting to notice something others had commented on in forums... Heroes in LoL seem to often be engineered around filling a predetermined role, much like classes in a typical MMORPG. I first noticed this when I realized that Nautilus, Leona, and Jarvan all seem to follow a basic tank template. You've got a shield, a gap closer, a way of outputting more right click damage in bursts, and a damage ult that is AoE.

This can be good for balance, but it can also make the characters potentially feel bland and overbalanced to the point where they either aren't very unique or they are unique but limit the player's creativity in what they can achieve.

In Dota, most heroes are completely different and unique playstyles. I think Dota's heroes are based around realizing a particular concept rather than being engineered to plug into a predetermined role. Because of this, a great majority of the heroes can end up feeling like you are playing a whole new game in a sense that the things you learned about how to play one character don't transfer over to another character. There's some overlap between some heroes, but generally not much. Some heroes like tidehunter do have the feel of being kind of generic with a balanced mix of abilities. However, most Dota heroes seem to be designed around having a strong concept that is realized through very synergistic and unique ability sets. The benefit of this is that you can end up with some things like techies that are so unique in their playstyle that they don't even fit into the meta and there's nothing else remotely (no pun intended) like them.

Dota has more of a mod feel to it, in the sense that a mod is willing to take risks with it's design and do crazy stupidly powerful things and then later reign it in only if it is so out of control that it ruins the game for everything else. That may also be why the spells and powers of dota heroes seem to be more powerful in general. This is only natural considering that Dota started out as a mod, and Dota 2 is basically just a port of what was already developed in a mod environment. I think part of the reason it still has that feel is because they haven't done much to alter the game as it existed during the mod days.

I get the sense when playing Dota that the creators were often dreaming like: "Wouldn't it be cool if...", and then made it happen. So you end up with crazy powerful abilities, or characters that just do things in a completely new way, or characters that have very strong synergy in their abilities focused towards a single goal (as opposed to many LoL champs that seem to be more generalist rather than specialized). It would be nice to see more of that in LoL, at least with future champions.

Also, because of Dota's complexity, I believe that the devs are slow to nerf things because they recognize that most things, although situationally powerful, have weaknesses that can be exploited by the smart and knowledgeable enough players. A lot of times the meta has shifted in response to players finding counters with tactics, heroes, or item combinations that weren't previously used. I don't have experience with what the nerfing is like in LoL, but I have come to generally trust that Dota only gets nerfs when it is really necessary, in a measured way, after time has passed to show that the problem is really with the design and not just the players failing to counter it with new tactics. I believe that Dota is well balanced in the sense that most heroes have a role to be played situationally. Some situations are more common than others though, so some heroes end up being picked more often as safer picks.

I actually wonder if people take nerfs harder in LoL because they get invested in a handful of champions they paid for, instead of in Dota where you kind of just shrug your shoulders and find something else to play as. I think that also makes it easier to have some heroes be regarded as situational picks, with no expectation that they all have to be picked often in order to be considered viable.

Skillshots I read about how LoL was full of skillshot abilities while dota only had a few, and therefore that was one reason it required more skill. Although I don't think that's entirely accurate because Dota has plenty of location targeted spells which function as skillshots, or spells that require other kinds of mechanical skills like managing multiple heroes, or skills that are positionally based on your character (like Io's rotating and shifting orbs).

Regardless, LoL does have a lot of directional skillshots, and I find it a lot of fun to lead targets and dodge. I think it adds good elements that you can use the creeps to block so many spells and abilities. You can even skillshot into the fog of war for kills, which is nice. It also adds a great element in the sense of letting players physically block shots for others. which I learned the hard way when trying to land kills. I don't think it has taken me long to learn to lead targets and position accordingly, so I don't consider it a particularly difficult skill to achieve. Although it does increase the tactical factors I have to consider when using an ability. I actually think that it could be fun to take many of the dota spells with slower travel times and turn them into skillshots. It just makes sense to do things that way in hindsight, after seeing it done in LoL.

However, it doesn't really feel different from Dota in the sense that I believe superior decision making and positioning will do far more to determine the outcome of a fight than who has the best skill at aiming directional skillshots. That's probably why I don't even notice that I'm using skillshots most of the time, but just do it reflexively, because for me my focus is on the decision making process of what abilities to use, when, and where. The skillshots do add some complication to the mix based on the extra factors involved, but not so much that I feel like it's that different from Dota in terms of the level of tactics or mechanical skill required to do well in a battle.

Sustainability and spamming. I've read that LoL makes it easier to spam spells, you're more sustainable, so there's less decision making about when to use your abilities, and less disadvantages to downtime in terms of missed gold and exp. I can see how that may be the case.

I can see how that may be the case, but I can't at this point say one is necessarily better than the other. To some extent I like being able to use my spells more indiscriminately, and I can see how it might make the early game more action oriented instead of everything being focused on just fighting over last hits. However, sometimes it's satisifying in dota to know that you can make the enemy waste their mana and abilities so that then they are more vulnerable to being ganked. It makes you be more strategic about the use of your skills, where you are forced to conserve mana in case a teamfight breaks out. So it can be more complex and less forgiving in that sense.

I do think that Dota is probably smarter for making mana and health potions disable once you are hit. It forces you to pull back, so you can't be as gung ho about wasting your health and mana fruitlessly. You need to be more calculated with the risks you take.
I do like the sense I get in dota that I'm rewarded more for forcing my opponent out of the lane or causing them to go back to base to heal. It doesn't seem to hurt as much in LoL.

**In some ways I like what LoL has done to streamline things. ** I really don't think the creep pulling, stacking, and denying mechanics of dota really add much value in terms of tactics. I think it's largely just a matter of requiring more game mechanics knowledge and having more practice in pulling it off and multi-tasking. Which doesn't necessarily enhance the tactical decision making or fun involved in the game. The jungle buffs are a nice idea. The baron and dragon concepts are great, and I think more fun than just one guy on the team getting to use the aegis from Roshan. The dragon buffs stay with you which gives you more incentive to do it, and the baron buff really helps you close the deal on what might be a stalemate defensively. I think it's funner to fight over those things because they are more tangible to the whole team.

I think it is better to have a gold penalty loss on death because players need to feel the personal cost of their stupidity in order to learn from it. I sometimes wonder if these low level newbies I'm teamed with even care that they are giving the enemy team massive amounts of gold, or understand how that helps them. I believe there would be a lot less feeding and smarter risk taking if they were putting something of theirs on the line. If you could buy things away from the store, but pick them up when you return to the store, this would allow you to limit gold lost as in Dota.

It might also solve some of the issues LoL has with gold being too plentiful in the late game so you don't know what to do with it. I actually like the fact that in Dota you can dream of impossible to achieve builds that you would ideally like to have in the late game but probably never will because everything is so expensive. It's a big of a let down to me in LoL when I get to the end of a long game and I'm awash in gold with nothing to spend it on. Dota even has ridiculous stuff like the divine rapier, which is almost never practical to buy but at least you've always something more powerful you could potentially buy to help turn the tide of battle or secure victory. The buyback system in dota is fun for that reason. It adds a great element of decision making as you either save up for a buyback, or you choose to sacrifice a late item in order to save a barracks.

Speaking of which, I like the suppression system in LoL over the barracks system in Dota. I think it's a more elegant way of achieving the same effect.

That's another area that LoL has dota beat by a long shot: Magic effectiveness scaling. Dota is handicapped IMO by an item system that makes it too easy for defense to outstrip magic offense. Also, the stat based system (both from leveling and from items) allows auto attack based heroes to continue to scale in effectiveness, but magic based heroes have no room to grow unless their skills are designed to scale in some way. This isn't very fun to then play a hero like zeus who can rock early and mid game, but then just becomes completely useless late game.

This does add some elements of strategy as you have certain windows of effectiveness of different heroes. This, in turn, adds to the complexity of the game and the amount of game knowledge you need to understand in order to win. You need to know when your hero is strongest and make the biggest impact at that phase of the game, before other heroes overtake you. Or, if you are strong late game, you need to stall against the strong early game heroes and try not to get overrun while you farm up.

I am unsure what I think about the differences in items between the two games. In Dota item choices are more complex I think because you have to calculate if it's better to get flat bonuses or increase base stats. Also, there are a lot of active abilities in items which can be totally game changing. To some extent this is fun because it expands the team strategies and tactics you have available. It also requires a lot more game knowledge because you won't survive unless you know what all these items do on various different characters. This does add depth, which I like. It also adds tactical variety, the ability to dream up crazy new ideas and try it out, which I also like. It's also really satisfying to have a plan for your character in mind and work towards farming it, waiting for the time where you come online and start to own with those items.

However, there's one thing about the dota system I don't really like: Which is that the game ends up feeling overly item dependent and the game play starts to be warped by some items being so common (Blink and BKB on so many players in a single game). BKB gives the enemy magic immunity for 5-10 seconds, and blink is flash you can activate every 12 seconds (unless you've been hit recently, so it's more for gap closing or chasing rather than escaping). This totally alters the dynamics of how a character plays beyond what it was designed to do. Which is a good thing in the sense that it's fun to totally change what a hero is capable of. But it's bad in the sense that it can be unfun to be a magic user who is rendered obsolete by a carry with a BKB, or to find that your superior positioning doesn't mean much because the enemy just blinks over to you anyway. In this sense, the items can have a homogenizing effect by doing too much to smooth over the weak points of heroes. It's not just some heroes you have to worry about closing the gap on you, it's now every hero that gets a BKB or force staff.

This can also be good because you can alter your item build choices to respond to what the enemy is doing. This makes for very dynamic strategies in response to the enemy, where there are many different ways to build and alter your hero.

Many times, though, I have found myself yearning for a more baseline game mode where heroes just fought with what they had, using only basic item upgrades, because then we could have fun trying to make the most out of what we had as a natural part of our character abilities.

So I can't say one is really better than the other, it's just different.

Suggestions for the game:

1. The game could greatly benefit from a replay system like Dota.

2. It would also greatly benefit from an in-browser way to view models of champions and skins before buying them, like the lolking website has. But it should be something official, not something you accidently stumble across like I did.

3. In-game descriptions of what the various class types are, and what they mean. So we don't have to go look it up online. Better for newer players.

4. An in-game way to see the masteries and runes a player has active. This would be more important the more competitive the play is, so you know what you can expect from you opponent.

5. (Edit: Others have pointed out that this is already in-game. It just wasn't obvious to me where it was in-game.) An in-game way to see in-game what our champion's current level of cooldown reduction, crit chance, and other things are. To see at a glance how your runes/masteries/items are all interacting together.

6. Make it more clear in-game when certain items are stacking or not, by coloring the text of that ability on an item in red to show that it is conflicting with another item you already have. Some of these unique passives have the same passive name but different numbers and effects attached to that name, so I'm not sure if they are suppose to stack or not.

7. Some kind of system that lets us trial champions on a limited basis without having to wait for the free rotation to come around.

8. Some skins are not available in the store. It would help to explain why that is to players. I still don't know why after googling it.

9. One way to increase champion type variety, is to look at the champion types mixes you don't yet have and try to find a way to make it work. That kind of creative process could have some unexpectedly good results. The types that don't exist yet: assassin/marksman, assassin/support, assassin/tank, fighter (pure fighter), marksman/tank, support (pure support), support/assassin, support/marksman, support/tank, tank/assassin, tank/marksman.

10. Prioritize model/art/sound updates for various champions.

11. Cut the RP cost of heroes in half across the board. Continue sales. You'll probably get more people hooked into paying real money and serve the customers better this way by making it affordable to actually buy characters instead of being forced to grind them. Create more calculated bundles that mix popular heroes with less popular ones.

12. Don't have a separate rotation of heroes for new players. Give them more credit as gamers. Not all of them are going to be completely new. At least tell them in-game that they will have a new rotation after level 6, so they can either expect something more interesting or take advantage of trying out different heroes while they are still level 6 (instead of playing the same few over and over).

13. Crack down hard on the use of bots in-game.

14. Change ARAM so that it picks a random hero for everyone from the entire pool, whether they own it or not. Or, perhaps by choosing heroes randomly from the pool of what everyone in the game owns.