DotA 2 Vs League of Legends
The long sought battle between the two.. Who shall prevail as the king of Moba e-sports.. DotA 2 Or LoL ?
Both games are excellent in their own rights, but the developers behind them have each taken different approaches to the focal points of each game, and we can make some educated guesses about where each of these games are headed to ensure that you, the player, choose the game most suited to your tastes.
The Game :-
Dota 2 consists of session-based online multiplayer activity, with the primary objective of each match being for teams to destroy their opposing team's fortified stronghold. Each player controls a player character called a "hero", who is given the responsibility of participating in team combat, which generally takes place along a series of lanes that connect their opposing bases, lined with defensive towers. The gameplay elements are largely incorporated from Defense of the Ancients, with the game's lead designer, IceFrog, being the longest-serving and current developer of the Warcraft III mod
League of legends on the other hand has a very comprehensive gameplay, that includes..
General
Players are formed into 2 even teams of Champions, 3v3 or 5v5. As of November 13, 2012, there are 107 different champions from which to choose. Each player begins at opposing sides of a map in an area called the Spawning Pool, near what is called a Nexus. A match is won when either team's nexus is destroyed. To destroy a Nexus, each team must work through a series of Turrets placed along a path to each base referred to as a Lane. Along the way, each player gains levels from killing the opposing team's champions and Minions (NPCs that constantly spawn and attack the other team) and defeating neutral monsters. Completing objectives rewards players with gold which is used to purchase items.Game modes and matchmaking
League of Legends is a session-based game. Matchmaking occurs based on the average Elo ratings of each individual players, with slight proprietary adjustments.The game can currently be played in five different modes: Tutorial, Custom, Co-Op vs. AI, Normal and Ranked. Custom mode allows players to manually create custom game sessions that other players can find on a game list and join. Co-op vs. AI is a mode where players are matched either alone or as part of a group against a team of bots.
The Ranked mode originally became available to players of level 20 and higher, but was later changed to only be available to players of level 30 (players can still queue for Ranked games if they are over level 20, but only if they are in an arranged team). Ranked uses Draft Mode where each team can ban up to 3 champions from the game, and the two teams cannot play the same champion. In addition, opponent Champions picks are visible before the loading of the actual game. Second, an exclusive, visible rating is calculated based on the player's performance in Ranked games. The player is placed on the ladder according to their rating, and top teams on the ladder have a chance to compete in the "$100,000 Global Finals" at the end of the season. Season Two, launched in November 2011, introduced the addition of six-ban games, ranked teams and a complete change of the masteries.
Fields of Justice
Maps in League of Legends are called Fields of Justice. There are currently four Fields of Justice that the players can choose from, three 5-vs-5 maps and one 3-vs-3 map.A match puts two teams with a fixed number of players against each other. Each team has its base, which contains the re-spawn point, item shop and nexus. The two bases are connected by lanes. Periodically, waves of minions spawn from the nexus, AI-controlled troops that walk down the lanes, engaging any enemies they encounter. The lanes are lined with turrets that engage enemies within range. Once a turret is destroyed, it cannot be rebuilt. Each lane has an inhibitor on both ends. If a team destroys the enemy inhibitor, more powerful "super minions" will spawn for that side. Unlike turrets, inhibitors respawn after a fixed amount of time.
Besides the lanes, the maps also contain "jungle" areas, which contain neutral monsters to be killed for bonus gold and experience. Some powerful neutral monsters grant the killer a temporary buff that will help them in battle. Another special terrain feature is the brush. Brush blocks the line of sight of units, allowing champions to hide and set up an ambush.
The goal of each team is to destroy the enemy Nexus. The first team to achieve this is the victor. Victory is also attained if the opponent surrenders, using a voting system where 4 out of 5 must agree, but only after enough time has passed.
Dominion
Dominion is the latest game mode released by Riot Games. Dominion brings faster action and tactical gameplay played on a new map, The Crystal Scar, and features a new Capture-and-Hold playstyle. The Inhibitors and Turrets have been removed - instead, the map has five Capture Points. Capturing one of these points will turn it into a Turret and allow it to start spawning minions. Item availability is also different in Dominion,. Two new summoner spells, called Garrison and Promote were released with the new game mode, with the latter also being available in Summoner's Rift. The summoner spell Teleport is the only summoner spell that is not available in this mode. The new game type is aimed to be much shorter than conventional 30-45-minute classic games: most Dominion games average about 15–25 minutes in duration.Persistence and meta-game
The Summoner acts as the persistent element in the game, to be used to track statistics and scores for each player. Summoners gain experience points and "Influence Points" (in-game currency) for each battle they participate in. They level up by getting enough experience. The Summoner can also choose two summoner spells.These spells significantly impact gameplay, and have a high cooldown while costing no mana. All spells can be improved by masteries, which are developed in a skill tree. Masteries are perks that affect gameplay, structured in a skill tree. All of the masteries are passive effects, although some augment summoner spells, which can be activated. They are grouped into Offensive, Defensive, and Utility categories. Masteries can be re-distributed at will between battles.Similar to masteries, runes affect gameplay in minor ways. Runes are categorized into Marks (offensive), Seals (defensive), Glyphs (magic) and Quintessences (utility). Runes must be unlocked in the Store and it is possible to have more than one copy of a rune. Summoners must arrange their runes in the Runebook to benefit from them. The Runebook has limited number of slots for each rune type, but more rune pages can be purchased from either Influence Points or Riot Points. Combining two equal-tier runes produces a random rune of the same tier, while combining 5 equal-tier runes produces a higher-tier rune.
The League of Legends Store allows Summoners to purchase additional options through Riot Points (RP) and Influence Points (IP). Riot Points must be bought using real money, while Influence Points are earned by playing the game.
Moderation is conducted through a democratic system known as The Tribunal. In this system, player-submitted reports are reviewed by other players on a case-by-case basis. The reviewing players then submit their opinions on the legality of the behavior demonstrated. A consensus renders the decision official. It is notable that players are unable to be permanently banned through this system, since "all permanent bans are distributed manually." Reviewers receive a Justice Rating based on their accuracy to encourage thorough analysis of cases.
Competitive play
League of Legends has experienced success in the competitive video game field. The 2010 World Cyber Games Grand Finals at Los Angeles hosted a competitive tournament for League of Legends. The competitors came from around the world to compete, coming from China, Europe and the Americas. The victors were the Counter Logic Gaming team from North America and won a $7,000 prize.Competitive play for League of Legends reached a new level during the Season 1 World Championships at Dreamhack held in Sweden during June 2011. The European team Fnatic defeated teams from Europe, the USA and Asia to win the tournament which featured US$100,000 in prizes and won a US$50,000 prize.Over 1.6 million viewers watched the streaming broadcast over the course of the event with a peak of over 210,000 viewers watching a single semi-final match.
The success of League of Legends since Season 1 has led Riot to announce a total of $5,000,000 USD to be paid out over Season 2. Of this 5 million, 2 million will go to Riot's partners including the IPL and other major eSports associations. Another 2 million goes to Riot's Season 2 qualifiers and championship. The final one million goes to small organizers who apply to Riot to host League of Legends tournaments.
After a series of network issues during the Season 2 World Playoffs that led to several matches being delayed, Riot revealed on October 13, 2012, that a special LAN-based client had been quickly developed, designed for use in tournament environments where the effects of lag and other network issues can be detrimental to the proper organization of an event. The LAN client was deployed for the first time during the first quarter-final and semi-final matches played following the re-scheduled matches, and will be in use during the finals.
On October 13, 2012, Taiwan's professional team Taipei Assassins (TPA) triumphed over South Korea's Azubu Frost 3-to-1 in the Finals of Season 2 World Championship, and claimed the $1 million in prize money.
Development
Steve "Guinsoo" Feak, the previous designer of the popular Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne custom map, Defense of the Ancients, and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon, the administrator of the former official support base for the map (www.dota-allstars.com), were involved with Riot Games in the development of League Of Legends.Using the original DotA created by Eul (the original Defence of The Ancients map for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos) as a base, Guinsoo made DotA Allstars by inserting his own mix of content, largely expanding the number of the heroes, and adding recipes, numerous items and various gameplay changes. Guinsoo then passed version 6 of the map on to its current developer, IceFrog.The idea of a spiritual successor to Defense of the Ancients that would be its own stand-alone game with its own engine, rather than another Mod of Warcraft III began to materialize at the end of 2005. League of Legends was born "when a couple of very active DotA community members believed that the gameplay was so much fun and so innovative that it represented the spawning of a new genre and deserved to be its own professional game with significantly enhanced features and around-game services."
Riot Games was co-founded by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill. They partnered with some of the key creative minds behind the creation of DotA-Allstars, Steve "Guinsoo" Feak and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon. Riot Games officially opened its office in September 2006, and currently has about 100 people working on League of Legends, "including their robust technology platform to service and operate the game as well as a team dedicated to community relations."
According to Marc Merrill, when creating the various champions in the game, instead of leaving the champion creation to just a few people, they decided to open up the champion creation process to everyone in the company based upon a template where they could vote on which champions made it into the game.
Value
Like TF2, play enough Dota 2 and you'll eventually collect some cosmetic loot, designed to augment the appearance of one of your heroes. Sometimes, you'll instead receive a chest, which can only be cracked open with purchasable keys. If you really want to personalize your Dota 2 experience, voice-over announcers (including Half-Life 2's Dr. Kleiner), couriers and complete armour bundles are also available. Interestingly enough, if you want to watch one of the regularly-held tournaments from your game browser, you'll need to pony up a little dough.
By comparison, and at least at a glance, more than 90% of League is locked away. In actual fact, most of the important stuff, like new champions, can be picked up with currency earned in-game, though at a pretty slow rate. While it's a bit of a bummer that League tends to prevent players from checking out new characters the way you might be able to in Dota 2, it makes the initial learning curve much less steep. Most new players will, like yourself, be limited to the ten champions available in the weekly free champion rotation.
In the store, only purely-cosmetic items have to be purchased with real money. The rest can also optionally be bought with the earned currency, and in fact, the more important items capable of augmenting your champions can only be bought with earned currency.
The Future
Riot's interests with League have always been to provide new, novel and highly polished experiences. To that extent, eSports staples such as the ability to record games have languished. Riot also has a history of revisiting failed ideas and finding a way to make them work. Canceled champions have found themselves un-canceled, and spectator mode finally made it to wide release (though after a very long delay). Perhaps even the elusive Magma Chamber will one day hit your hard-drive. At some point, however, the volume of playable champions will become unreasonably large, and I suspect Riot will look to other information-heavy games such as Magic: The Gathering for a solution. League of Legends is already divided into seasons, it's reasonable to expect older champions to rotate out, giving Riot room to shape and change the meta-game.
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