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Behind League of Legends, E-Sports’s Main Attraction

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Re: Behind League of Legends, E-Sports’s Main Attraction

#41

Post by Semaphor »

jokoon wrote: post #10
greatergoodguy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important attribute of an e-sport is that it should be entertaining to watch. Since LoL is a game where a player controls a single unit, it's easy to follow along for the spectator.

I certainly want to also enjoy playing it, just watching it is not going to be very entertaining to me.

It's a bit different for me as I used to play LoL (stopped 1-2 years ago, ~4-5k games played), but now I only watch the championship and some league games (usually those my favorite team, Fnatic, are involved) without playing the game at all.

Re: Behind League of Legends, E-Sports’s Main Attraction

#42

Post by Omniusaspirer »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #30

E-sports betting is where the real money making opportunity is. Of course, finding the way to do it legally (in the US at least) is the big challenge.

It's already started (csgolounge) to get big to mixed results- very popular but also very controversial.

Re: Behind League of Legends, E-Sports’s Main Attraction

#43

Post by jamesaguilar »

sondr3 wrote: post #33
cheepin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vision choices are more limited, access to team stealth is just an item away. However, I would say that Dota still has a problem with stalling, maybe even more than League of Legends. There are often one-sided games that drag on for quite a long time before the winning team has a decisive enough advantage to actually finish the game. This comes from a few features, foremost 'buyback' which lets players come back from…

Which is what I like about Dota, with LoL it's usually blatantly obvious who will win by the 10 minute mark but it's not so much so with Dota. Obviously stomps happen and the team that leads at 10 more often than not wins but it doesn't feel as loop sided as LoL does.

I have heard this view, but is it actually supported by the data? That is, do comebacks happen with any significant frequency in high-level DotA?

For example, in all of the finals of the recent International, there was a leader at 10m who won the game. I'm not going to go through all the games and check, but I'd guess we'd find this to be true the vast majority of the time in professional DotA games, as it is in League games.

Not to make too sweeping of a generalization, but I expect it is inherent in games with an economy and relatively low random factors. On top of the normal expectation that who gains a lead is likely to be more skilled, economies that allow you to build additional strength via the dominance conferred by your current strength reinforce existing leads.

Re: Behind League of Legends, E-Sports’s Main Attraction

#44

Post by duskwuff »

sliverstorm wrote: post #29
cheepin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vision choices are more limited, access to team stealth is just an item away. However, I would say that Dota still has a problem with stalling, maybe even more than League of Legends. There are often one-sided games that drag on for quite a long time before the winning team has a decisive enough advantage to actually finish the game. This comes from a few features, foremost 'buyback' which lets players come back from…

DoTA games definitely stall, part of which I think has to do with a desire by the developers to avoid "freak" outcomes- it's rare to be able to win in DoTA with only a small advantage, so even if it is pretty obvious who is going to win they have to build up their advantage to end the game. Most of the time it's frustrating, although the extra time sometimes leads to incredible turnabouts. I am most curious about the…

> DoTA games definitely stall...

That's been in flux recently! Patch 6.81, which was active from April 2014 until a few weeks ago, devolved into a "deathball" meta which tended to end games early. (This was responsible for the rather anticlimactic conclusion of The International this past July.) Patch 6.82 introduced some new "comeback" mechanics, which generally enhance the ability of a team that's playing from behind to recover after taking a teamfight, or finding high-value pickoffs. The details are still being tweaked, but so far the result does seem to have been less one-sided games, both in amateur and pro games.

And yes, "team stealth" is referring to Smoke of Deceit. A really interesting item, available in limited quantities, which allows a group of players to become temporarily invisible and sneak around the map -- even under sentry wards, which usually reveal invisible heroes! -- until they close in on enemy heroes or towers.

Re: Behind League of Legends, E-Sports’s Main Attraction

#45

Post by chc »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #43
sondr3 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is what I like about Dota, with LoL it's usually blatantly obvious who will win by the 10 minute mark but it's not so much so with Dota. Obviously stomps happen and the team that leads at 10 more often than not wins but it doesn't feel as loop sided as LoL does.

I have heard this view, but is it actually supported by the data? That is, do comebacks happen with any significant frequency in high-level DotA? For example, in all of the finals of the recent International, there was a leader at 10m who won the game. I'm not going to go through all the games and check, but I'd guess we'd find this to be true the vast majority of the time in professional DotA games, as it is in Leag…

AFAIK the "deathball" strategy recently became really dominant leading up to The International. The most recent balance patch after The International included a lot of measures to swing it back the other direction.

Re: Behind League of Legends, E-Sports’s Main Attraction

#46

Post by duskwuff »

heyheyhey wrote: post #4
KhalilK wrote: post #2

Funny how LoL is what got me into programming (Lua).

SC:BW got me into programming. Rigging UMS maps with triggers that only I knew of...ahh good times.

The incredible part is, DotA started out as a Warcraft 3 custom map. Hell, there's still a version being maintained by the developers at Valve which largely maintains feature parity with DotA 2.

Re: Behind League of Legends, E-Sports’s Main Attraction

#47

Post by duskwuff »

tprynn wrote: post #40
jjcm wrote: post #25

While LoL is by far the more popular game, I find what Valve is doing with Dota to be more interesting. They're heavily investing in the spectator portion of the sport, and it's paying off in spades. They've added in the ability to watch replays, see instant-replays during live games (especially useful when the casters miss a battle off screen), see post-battle stats, and view player analytics all in-client. The arti…

I agree that Riot could do more with the spectator experience, but you should be careful comparing Valve's International profits with Riot's Championship Series. For one, the cost of Riot's esports push encompasses the entire scene, around the world. Riot pays player salaries for the players on every professional team in their sponsored series, which have tournaments and matches pretty much every week throughout the…

On the other hand, Riot's tournaments account for most of the LoL pro scene. There are tournament games of DotA 2 going on almost constantly, but they're being run by independent sponsors, not by Valve.

Re: Behind League of Legends, E-Sports’s Main Attraction

#48

Post by duskwuff »

spiritplumber wrote: post #11
jokoon wrote: post #8

I played long hours of counter strike, warcraft 3, wow, quake, starcraft 2, and I never liked the original dota map nor LoL. I just think it's a bad mix of several games. The level format doesn't make a lot of sense. It has the disadvantages of a RTS while being some sort of a RPG (little or no persistence), doesn't have a solo mode, and doesn't even allow to control more than 1 unit. It's slow and boring. The conten…

I'd play LoL if one player per team could play as the minions... I love RTSs, was ranked in starcraft (a lifetime ago) and prefer setting up and executing clever strategies to microing an enemy to death. LoL is Starcraft with most of the non-micro elements gone. Nothing wrong with that, just not my thing.

> I'd play LoL if one player per team could play as the minions...

DotA has a few heroes you might be interested in! Chen and Enchantress have the ability to take control of jungle creeps and use their abilities. Enigma, Broodmother, Visage, and, to a lesser degree, Lycan, Beastmaster, and Brewmaster have abilities which summon multiple controllable units. Illusion-based heroes like Naga Siren, Terrorblade, and Phantom Lancer which can create temporary copies of themselves. And, of course, there's Meepo.

Re: Behind League of Legends, E-Sports’s Main Attraction

#49

Post by Blackthorn »

duskwuff wrote: post #47
tprynn wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Riot could do more with the spectator experience, but you should be careful comparing Valve's International profits with Riot's Championship Series. For one, the cost of Riot's esports push encompasses the entire scene, around the world. Riot pays player salaries for the players on every professional team in their sponsored series, which have tournaments and matches pretty much every week throughout the…

On the other hand, Riot's tournaments account for most of the LoL pro scene. There are tournament games of DotA 2 going on almost constantly, but they're being run by independent sponsors, not by Valve.

This used to be the case in League too back in Season 2 (so a bit over two years ago), that it is no longer the case is very much by design.

Re: Behind League of Legends, E-Sports’s Main Attraction

#50

Post by duskwuff »

Cyranix wrote: post #38
sliverstorm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you are familiar with DoTA, but can you comment on why DoTA doesn't seem to have the problem with games stalling as players fight for vision control? I believe the DoTA ward model is very similar to the original LoL ward model.

I'm far less familiar with DotA in this regard (and other regards) but I'll hazard a guess. My not-at-all-certain observations are that 1) DotA's jungle is more complex and perhaps a bit larger and 2) DotA's terrain behavior is more advanced [tree removal, cliffs overlooking the river]. These factors would probably make it more difficult in DotA to place wards in the jungle in a way that is highly likely to yield sol…

> In DotA (if I'm not mistaken) the teleport limitation is not the same, so the pressure is not the same.

If anything, teleports are more limited in DotA. Teleport scrolls can only target allied buildings, or a small area around them. Boots of Travel can also target allied units, but are rather expensive, and thus typically only seen on certain heroes which particularly benefit from them (especially Tinker).

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