LoL doesn't work for me because it's trying to be DotA while trying to be different. Heroes of Newerth is a much better DotA based game because it basically IS DotA but with a hell of a lot more polish. I mean I never thought me or my friends would stop playing DotA but it's hard to go back to now. HoN just kept it as close to how it was and simply improved it. It feels and plays like the DotA I know and love but it also feels like its own game now, freed from the trappings and limitations of Warcraft III.
Oh and HoN doesn't have a bullshit microtransaction system so that's always a plus.
@kryorage:
Both LoL and DotA are defined in the article as League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients respectively. HoN I define in my second sentence as Heroes of Newerth.
After giving LoL a fair chance, I just don't like it. With the removal of denial and other little changes, the depth and skill level of LoL doesn't match up to DotA quite like how HoN does. HoN sticks closer to DotA as of now but we'll be seeing that change in the coming months #leagueoflegends
Red flag goes up at this whole meta-game summoner points thing. If that's too powerful it ruins the idea of competition - i.e. if someone's knight could move an extra square in chess.
DotA is complex and play styles and skill levels can vary widely, but the playing field itself is level at the beginning of every game. Hopefully I've made my point here. #leagueoflegends
I've been playing DotA for years now, and the core map hasn't really changed. They've had some tweaks to it, in terms of very slight layout changes and aesthetic improvements, but overall, it's still the same map we started playing on. I never got sick of it. And judging from the hordes of DotA games you could play in the public channel and TDA on Battle.net every night, no one else did either! You hardly pay attention to what the scenery looks like when you're busy grinding and ganking! Most addictive game I've ever played. Only reason I bought War3! #leagueoflegends
Fahey's little MW2 song is pretty insidious. On the surface it shouldn't be catchy, but I just found myself humming it in the kitchen. Disturbing... most disturbing. #kotakutalkradio
I have been addicted to this game ever since they started the open beta. Luckily my DotA skills made me feel right at home and I picked up on much of the mechanics quickly. I will be picking up a copy of the collectors edition once I buy the last few parts to build my new PC. Im still trying to get used to the cell shade though, and maybe I should learn other characters besides Master Yi. If anyone is a fan of DotA, get this now. #leagueoflegends
I've never been such a DotA player. I liked the concept, and I played it sometimes when friends asked me to, but I couldn't play it for long periods. When I got into LoL's beta in August I was immediatly hooked to the game. I actually stopped playing WoW.
The gameplay in LoL is great & really addictive. There's something really rewarding about being limited to only having 4 abilities (and 2 summoner spells) in contrast to the 20 or so keybinds I used in WoW PvP. The feeling of punishment is also greater when you make a mistake however. "less is more" is really suitable phrase for this game.
What initially drew me to LoL was the variation & design of the champions, I love them. Because of the wide variety of champions and people who play them, it really makes every game feel very different. This made me feel that the lack of maps really isn't such an issue, although I'd love to see more maps.
I am playing LoL less than before because of the matchmaking. It seems that since release more than before good players get matched with new players to balance a team and I've had more matches versus (full) premade teams that would stomp the other team. I will probably play more once ranked games are available, which will have a seperate solo + 2man premade bracket and a 5man bracket.
I'm not a fan of Riot's microtransaction plan, I'd rather just buy the game and get a complete package, but that won't stop me from enjoying & playing this game.
To anyone that is interested in this game, it might be good to know that the ingame Store is down untill the 17th of November. This means that all 40 champions are "unlocked" untill then, as was in the beta. So it's a good oppertunity to try out every champ before they restrict them. #leagueoflegends
The problem with LoL is that they're editing the source material (DOTA) so much that it's almost a different game.
Add in the insane microtransactions and you have something that is really imbalanced and shallow.
HoN, on the other hand, sticks close to DOTA's ideas while adding their own. I haven't had a single issue with the changes made or any hero added in HoN. Everything seems warranted and S2 Games are out to make a competitive game that also is able to be learned by those who didn't play DOTA for years. #leagueoflegends
Edited by SpishackCola is your Brodie, Brotron, and Brodington! at 11/04/09 1:56 PM
SpishackCola is your Brodie, Brotron, and Brodington! was starred
SpishackCola is your Brodie, Brotron, and Brodington! was unstarred
I think i played with and against you on monday. Your name was just crecente? I played with you when you used veigar, and against you when you played as the time mage. I asked if you were from kotaku but you must not have seen the chat as it disappears so quickly. Fun times :)
@geogaither001: AH! Probably, I always missed those comments. Probably good since I rarely played the same champion twice, and so sucked!
:D #leagueoflegends
To everyone saying, "Omg HoN is way better ahjdhjahjhda", I have to say, this game isn't for you.
Before you go nuts and flame, I agree with you, to an extent. I was in betas for both, played both a lot, and still play HoN a lot. HoN is much closer to the source material, has much more depth, and much less weird things like runes/unlockable heroes.
LoL isn't for the hardcore DotA community, it's for people who want a F2P game that's probably pretty good if you're into this sort of game but are afraid of the even steeper learning curve and initial cost of HoN or War3/etc...
So, good review. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Crecente has a strong history of DotA. If this is true, the game serves its purpose wonderfully. It is a more acessable DotA-lite game where people can more easily jump into and enjoy themselves. The game will probably do well for it's targeted audience. HoN will probably do well to a more hardcore/crazy competitive/ex-DotA audence. #leagueoflegends
@magnakaiser: Really? I don't think HON has a steeper learning curve at all. It's basically just a direct copy + paste of DOTA with a new graphics engine. I was a big fan of Savage but I'm dissapointed in HON.
League of Legends actually improved upon DOTA by making casters more useful (Spell power allows them to scale, where as in HON they just become crowd control or support characters at best late game). They've also simplified the store and item upgrade system while HON is still a bit of a mess in this regard.
The community for HON is also seriously lame - it hasn't improved from DOTA it's gotten worse - if your team isn't dominating within the first 10 minutes everyone wants to leave.
@Roland25: If you play DotA at all HoN has nearly no learning curve. Coming to both without any history of DotA, and LoL will probably be easier to pick up. It lacks a lot of crazy mechanics that DotA had and HoN has that made gameplay a bit more deep. (Denies, active items, etc...)
As far as casters not scaling in DotA/HoN, I agree it's a neat concept with LoL... but DotA was balanced around this fact. In DotA/HoN a caster like Zeus/TB or Lina/Pyro will be phenoms early-mid game. They do much more damage than their LoL counterparts at this point. They do taper off late game, but any well balanced team will try to have a couple nukers because the early game benefits are so huge. They can get more support-based items, like Shivas/Sheepstick to which LoL has nothing close to.
And I played plenty of LoL games with leavers in the first 15-20 minutes too, if the game was going bad. It wasn't the majority of the time, but it happened. I have to say it actually happens LESS in HoN, but I have a pretty high PSR and it's probably skewed due to that. From my experience LoL's community is no better than HoN's, which in turn is no better than DotA's... they're all pretty terrible. #leagueoflegends
@Roland25:
Welcome to online play. I've played hardly any game online that doesn't have some kind of elitism. No matter what the game is, the new people and the terrible people will get blamed and attacked for letting your team down. It's the same everywhere. In FPS's, in MMO's et al. LoL is not going to be that different, you're always going to get people that think they're better than everyone else.
Also I wouldn't say that LoL's change to casters is an improvement. A big part of DotA is the early, mid, late game balance. Casters generally carry the early game while late game carries are too weak to do much. Then late game they use the items they've built up to act as team support/disabling.
Changing that just makes it different from DotA, not improved. #leagueoflegends
@Odin: Let's be honest - the lack of spell power in DOTA was a limitation of the WC3 engine not because of the early/late game balance. I always felt that was a cop out for the real reasoning. Aghanim's Scepter was basically the furthest they could take the "spell power" concept in DOTA.
Also keep in mind that this is the route blizzard went with WoW - while not the same glameplay style, all the casters at 60 didn't have any means to improve upon their spells damage until blizzard introduced spell power. Sure the casters had crowd control and other utility spells but it doesn't matter when melee/ranged heros are 1-2 shotting their opponents. This is still true for DOTA / HON in many ways.
Crecente's "hated" remarks are right on the money. When I was playing this in Beta and now out, matchmaking always takes forever and people bitch bitch bitch making them a friend of no ones. #leagueoflegends
This is a really great game, especially for people who were intrigued by DotA but never got around to playing it. The balance is fantastic so far, can't wait to see where they go. #leagueoflegends
The matchmaking system is nothing short of horrible. It's so bad that I just end up quitting the game in frustration. I've played Dota for about a year before moving on to the clones, and I've definitely found Heroes of Newerth (HoN) to be the best choice out there. Bring on the review! #leagueoflegends
@Dingler: I'm just a bit confused here. It's been a while since I played HoN, but I don't think they have a matchmaking system in place, do they? They just have private rooms, like on Battlenet and the LoL Practice games. #leagueoflegends
11/05/09
Oh and HoN doesn't have a bullshit microtransaction system so that's always a plus.
11/05/09
11/06/09
Both LoL and DotA are defined in the article as League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients respectively. HoN I define in my second sentence as Heroes of Newerth.
Easier to understand now? #leagueoflegends
11/04/09
11/04/09
DotA is complex and play styles and skill levels can vary widely, but the playing field itself is level at the beginning of every game. Hopefully I've made my point here. #leagueoflegends
11/04/09
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11/05/09
Go try Heroes of Newerth and you might rethink buying this. Might be tricky to track down a beta key though. #leagueoflegends
11/05/09
11/04/09
The gameplay in LoL is great & really addictive. There's something really rewarding about being limited to only having 4 abilities (and 2 summoner spells) in contrast to the 20 or so keybinds I used in WoW PvP. The feeling of punishment is also greater when you make a mistake however. "less is more" is really suitable phrase for this game.
What initially drew me to LoL was the variation & design of the champions, I love them. Because of the wide variety of champions and people who play them, it really makes every game feel very different. This made me feel that the lack of maps really isn't such an issue, although I'd love to see more maps.
I am playing LoL less than before because of the matchmaking. It seems that since release more than before good players get matched with new players to balance a team and I've had more matches versus (full) premade teams that would stomp the other team. I will probably play more once ranked games are available, which will have a seperate solo + 2man premade bracket and a 5man bracket.
I'm not a fan of Riot's microtransaction plan, I'd rather just buy the game and get a complete package, but that won't stop me from enjoying & playing this game.
To anyone that is interested in this game, it might be good to know that the ingame Store is down untill the 17th of November. This means that all 40 champions are "unlocked" untill then, as was in the beta. So it's a good oppertunity to try out every champ before they restrict them. #leagueoflegends
11/04/09
The problem with LoL is that they're editing the source material (DOTA) so much that it's almost a different game.
Add in the insane microtransactions and you have something that is really imbalanced and shallow.
HoN, on the other hand, sticks close to DOTA's ideas while adding their own. I haven't had a single issue with the changes made or any hero added in HoN. Everything seems warranted and S2 Games are out to make a competitive game that also is able to be learned by those who didn't play DOTA for years. #leagueoflegends
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:D #leagueoflegends
11/04/09
Before you go nuts and flame, I agree with you, to an extent. I was in betas for both, played both a lot, and still play HoN a lot. HoN is much closer to the source material, has much more depth, and much less weird things like runes/unlockable heroes.
LoL isn't for the hardcore DotA community, it's for people who want a F2P game that's probably pretty good if you're into this sort of game but are afraid of the even steeper learning curve and initial cost of HoN or War3/etc...
So, good review. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Crecente has a strong history of DotA. If this is true, the game serves its purpose wonderfully. It is a more acessable DotA-lite game where people can more easily jump into and enjoy themselves. The game will probably do well for it's targeted audience. HoN will probably do well to a more hardcore/crazy competitive/ex-DotA audence. #leagueoflegends
11/04/09
League of Legends actually improved upon DOTA by making casters more useful (Spell power allows them to scale, where as in HON they just become crowd control or support characters at best late game). They've also simplified the store and item upgrade system while HON is still a bit of a mess in this regard.
The community for HON is also seriously lame - it hasn't improved from DOTA it's gotten worse - if your team isn't dominating within the first 10 minutes everyone wants to leave.
11/04/09
As far as casters not scaling in DotA/HoN, I agree it's a neat concept with LoL... but DotA was balanced around this fact. In DotA/HoN a caster like Zeus/TB or Lina/Pyro will be phenoms early-mid game. They do much more damage than their LoL counterparts at this point. They do taper off late game, but any well balanced team will try to have a couple nukers because the early game benefits are so huge. They can get more support-based items, like Shivas/Sheepstick to which LoL has nothing close to.
And I played plenty of LoL games with leavers in the first 15-20 minutes too, if the game was going bad. It wasn't the majority of the time, but it happened. I have to say it actually happens LESS in HoN, but I have a pretty high PSR and it's probably skewed due to that. From my experience LoL's community is no better than HoN's, which in turn is no better than DotA's... they're all pretty terrible. #leagueoflegends
11/05/09
Welcome to online play. I've played hardly any game online that doesn't have some kind of elitism. No matter what the game is, the new people and the terrible people will get blamed and attacked for letting your team down. It's the same everywhere. In FPS's, in MMO's et al. LoL is not going to be that different, you're always going to get people that think they're better than everyone else.
Also I wouldn't say that LoL's change to casters is an improvement. A big part of DotA is the early, mid, late game balance. Casters generally carry the early game while late game carries are too weak to do much. Then late game they use the items they've built up to act as team support/disabling.
Changing that just makes it different from DotA, not improved. #leagueoflegends
11/05/09
Also keep in mind that this is the route blizzard went with WoW - while not the same glameplay style, all the casters at 60 didn't have any means to improve upon their spells damage until blizzard introduced spell power. Sure the casters had crowd control and other utility spells but it doesn't matter when melee/ranged heros are 1-2 shotting their opponents. This is still true for DOTA / HON in many ways.
11/06/09
That's how it was created yes but what was a limitation defined one of the core mechanics of DotA. #leagueoflegends
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