LOL or DOTA2 for a total noob?

Magill

Yeah, i dont even think its that there are more "Dicks" in moba's.. i just think its that the game can bring the worst out of people because of how competitive team orientated it is. If one of your lanes is getting roflstomped, its likely that all your lanes will have a bad time once it gets to midgame. I know its brought out the worst in me sometimes anyway.

Icyseanfitz

i started playing lol a while back but ive given up on it, most people are ass hats in it, just dont find the game fun anymore its all so god damn serious

Dcully

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

i started playing lol a while back but ive given up on it, most people are ass hats in it, just dont find the game fun anymore its all so god damn serious

Thats exactly whats turning me off even trying the genre.

nesf

Magill wrote: »

Yeah, i dont even think its that there are more "Dicks" in moba's.. i just think its that the game can bring the worst out of people because of how competitive team orientated it is. If one of your lanes is getting roflstomped, its likely that all your lanes will have a bad time once it gets to midgame. I know its brought out the worst in me sometimes anyway.

Yeah, this has made me stay away. I don't mind competitive team games once, you know, it's opt-in. Most of the competitive stuff I've done has had a "random friendly mode" and a "serious team mode." MOBAs seem to just have the latter while reality means most players will doing a fair bit of the former.

That said, I haven't played them so what do I know.

cherryghost

SMITE is good but it really becomes a problem when teamfighting, you're less 'self-aware' of your surroundings and difficulty can ramp up unfairly as a result due to the nature of the camera angle.

Cunning Alias

Iv played about 2k games of lol and about 200 of Dota and LoL is much easier to get up to speed on the necessary skills.

LoL: It is much more forgiving (you dont lose gold when you die, you get a free blink as a spell)
Abilities don't cost much mana in the early game.
Vision is simple (If you are in a bush and they dont have a ward in with you, they cant see you)
Free back to base spell
No courier

While these points are to point out the easy side of LoL, some of them are also a negative. The fact that it is forgiving promotes stupid play. When there is a big risk in making any sort of aggressive move, people take it more seriously. I have seen much more "tunnel vision" type play in LoL than dota, where all that matters is someone getting a kill, even if it means their own death (followed by the inevitable "Worth" in chat).

I would start with LoL to learn the basics and then try a bit of Dota. Learn the map, last hitting, wards and vision. Everything else will come from playing games and finding out what different characters can do. The recommended builds should be fine when you are starting out.

Edit: also the way you unlock characters in LoL actually works pretty well if you are new at the game. Having the choice of 100 characters wrecked my head when I started playing dota. If you go the dota route, play Single Draft games. You get a choice of 3 characters. I find it very useful for learning.

Grimebox

I have very limited experience in both games. I'm rubbish at both of them but I would recommend DotA over LoL. The LoL community are far, far worse

GO_Bear

Both communities are complete tripe to be honest, but that will become a non issue once you have been playing for a while and find a group of regulars to play with. Having played both games ( primary dota ) The the single best piece of advice I can give is, look for a group to play with ( whether it be a clan or just randoms you enjoyed playing with ) it makes the uphill battle of learning the in's and out's a lot more fun.

Both games have similar skill ceilings, LoL is easier to pick up for alot of reasons already mentioned in this thread. Dota is more complex, and offers more variety and emergent game play in the average public game ( that's not to say league does not offer this, I see the pro games are shaking things up lane wise but the average MM game still forces the 1-1-2 and jungler meta, from MY experience, feel free to correct me if I am wrong )

If you want to jump in and feel useful quicker I recommend league, have fun in the ARAM queue and learn all the heroes mechanics, play vrs bots and learn the feel of the 5v5 map etc.

That being said if you ultimately want to play Dota I would strongly recommend you don't use league as a "stepping stone", and just start playing Dota, as many of the things you learn from league are counter intuitive in Dota, and the switch from Dota to LoL is easier to make then the opposite.

Obviously being a dota player I recommend Dota in the long run, I have always enjoyed games with steep learning curves, where after years of playing I can still be surprised at things I have missed ( e.g Eve ), and to me its the funner game, but at the end of the day its subjective, you have to try both and form your own opinion, I suspect that a lot of the reasons I prefer Dota is why League players don't etc.

Grimebox

RopeDrink wrote: »

That's not exactly fair to say - The state of a community has no real impact on the OP's question, which is "Which is easier to get into" - The terrible community only effect this if you're the type who reacts to negative attitude AND if said reaction impairs your game play - Otherwise, League still wins simply because it's easier to grasp (even if it's very very hard to master) compared to Dota.

State of the community effects your overall enjoyment, not so much the ability to 'get into' it - But I suppose that's down to each players individual reaction to it - I've played so many games in so many years that encountering toxic players or groups in communities is common everyday fare for me and won't stop me playing a game, whereas others would find this as one of many possible reasons that hamper their enjoyment enough to turn them off or push them away entirely. Ultimately it's a semi-avoidable if not 'ignorable' factor, if you allow it to be by using the ignore feature and/or just biting your tongue, ignoring chat and continuing to play. This doesn't stop 'troll play' or other factors like that, but those would be present in every MOBA.

I'm flabbergasted. What is your definition "getting into a game"? Of course interactions with other players has an impact on OP's question. I really don't know how "just ignore it" is a solution, when you could play a very similar game where the issue isn't as prevalent. I got abused playing LoL while I was trying to get into it. It is not a noob-friendly game at all. The usual stuff but way worse than any other game. I literally haven't come across this once in around 25 games of DotA. LoL just left a bad taste in my mouth. I have also come across toxic players in all sorts of games and I never react but it still doesn't mean that I like it. How are you supposed to attempt to play as part of a team if you have half the players on ignore?

As of the actual game mechanics of LoL vs DotA, I have no idea which is easier. They both seem identical to me in my limited experience

Magill

Grimebox wrote: »

I'm flabbergasted. What is your definition "getting into a game"? Of course interactions with other players has an impact on OP's question. I really don't know how "just ignore it" is a solution, when you could play a very similar game where the issue isn't as prevalent. I got abused playing LoL while I was trying to get into it. It is not a noob-friendly game at all. The usual stuff but way worse than any other game. I literally haven't come across this once in around 25 games of DotA. LoL just left a bad taste in my mouth. I have also come across toxic players in all sorts of games and I never react but it still doesn't mean that I like it. How are you supposed to attempt to play as part of a team if you have half the players on ignore?

As of the actual game mechanics of LoL vs DotA, I have no idea which is easier. They both seem identical to me in my limited experience

Yeah... Dota is just as bad as LoL... If you haven't come across it in 25 games then either you're lying or you're the luckiest person on match making.

GO_Bear

Magill wrote: »

Yeah... Dota is just as bad as LoL... If you haven't come across it in 25 games then either you're lying or you're the luckiest person on match making.

I think I would attribute the seemingly less toxic, new player experience of Dota2, to it being a "newer" release, resulting in a large number of genuinely new players, coupled with the fact a new account has to complete ( fully ? not sure ) the rather long tutorial campaign may dissuade or at least dilute the amount of people smurfing ( experience players making new accounts ).

I think I played league for the first time in late 2010 ( or 11 not sure, I remember Caitlyn was just added ), and I was surprised by how pleasent the first few games were, I was literally the only person who had played a moba ( having played HoN ) in my first 3 games ( was a bit stompy though :pac::pac: ), I don't think anyone used chat except me in those games !

EDIT: My point being that once you reach the top of the bell curve, its very similar !

Seifer

I've played LoL on and off since beta which is coming up on four years of play. I tried DotA 2 on one of the free weekends. So it would be unfair for me to compare them directly.

I can tell you that when LoL was being created and as part of their on-going design philosophy they wanted to improve on the original dota instead of just making a clone with prettier graphics. To that end they succeeded and improved or simply removed a lot of the less intuitive elements. Here is a thread where one of the lead LoL designers explains a lot of their decisions (some of it is quite MOBA specific but there is interesting stuff about general game design in it). As a result of this the game is generally accepted as being easier to pick up; it does not however make it any easier to master.

I'd always be the kind of player that likes to master the game they're playing so I like to get into a game and pretty much only play that. I still remember my first game of LoL and despite years of gaming knowledge (including MMO's and RTS's) I had very little idea what was going on. That was in beta though. There are a lot more tools to ease new players into the game now; both actual in game resources such as tutorials and co-op vs. AI games to external videos and guides.

So I'd say try it out and if you enjoy it keep playing but if you don't just go play genres you do like. Games are supposed to be fun after all