Tons of exceptions to this, DotA being practically one of them. As of 2 (almost 3!) years ago Icefrog had the # of people who play DotA pegged at 24 million people world wide.

StarCraft + Counter-Strike are also other notable examples. In their respective times, Quake and Tribes.

You see, the thing is is none of the above games focus on a hardcore audience like you suggest or argue. Rather they focus on an audience that likes deep well designed gameplay, you know the old adage, simple to learn, difficult to master. Many casual players like that too, in fact one would easily argue that DotA + Dota 2 are actually easier on casual players because they do not have to grind a ton of games to be on fair ground with someone or to get their favorite hero like in League of Legends.

To put it in a more common analogy, League of Legends is checkers and DotA is Chess. Sure, Chess takes a bit longer to learn, but learning it is more rewarding to the point that no one has truly perfected it yet, nor will they for some time to come (if ever). The amount of strategies you can do in Chess far exceeds the amount of strategies in Checkers, just like DotA (where there is not anything remotely resembling a forced lane setup like Summoner's Rift, and many different team comp goals are viable to be built). Chess is also a vastly more popular and more played game than Checkers world wide, but Checkers is really fun to play if you want to mess around or relax without investing too much thought into what you're doing.

I played DOTA 2 and:

deny is an awful, uncreative, dead mechanic that imbalances MOBA's and makes them worse.
I think DOTA 2 would have been greatly helped to have done away with this mechanic, but I guess since they wanted to get their built in DOTA audience they kept things mostly the same.

Also the inventory is a bit of a mess, why keep a weird old mechanic like "Secret shop" and "inventory ponies"(whatever those things are)

I enjoyed the voices, and it's pretty enough, it's just pretty un-intuitive (Certain champion skills can take down towers and others can't) [Wards are a limited commodity wat?]

Juking is weird and un-intuitive in that it is not clear what scenery you can and can not run into so you often end up just spamming ahead of your character while they smash their faces into trees and stumps and suddenly path through other areas.

Also in my games I never really felt like I subtly contributed to the outcome. Worse, I don't feel like I can name a reason that I can stand behind, it just feels like "oh I guess we win" or "oh, we lost... let me look at the cs and stuff, someone must have done poorly" towards the end.

Oh, also, unless they changed it since I have played, how do you have a game with that much potential for snowballing and not have a /surrender option?

Nice choice of descriptions for a mechanic that is pretty much at the back of the average Dota player's mind. How is lessening the amount of xp that an enemy receives and denying potential gold to them an awful mechanic? To be honest, denying does more than just reduce potential enemy xp and gold as it also helps to push the lane back. In LoL you pretty herp derp last hit and wait for the enemy to push your lane. There is also creep pulling that is another option to push the lane back. LoL is stuck with one method... I would expect you to be one of those people who can't last hit for the life of them let alone deny anymore than 5 creeps a match.

The inventory has 6 slots just like LoL. As for the shops and couriers: the secret shop is 50/50 as some like it and some don't. The original idea was that in order to have access to higher level items you would need to venture out to get them with the risk of potential ganks from the enemy. I don't really mind it at all given my team has a courier. Couriers allow the ferrying of items back and forth. They are very simple to use. There are also side shops which help sustain you in lane, while giving you the option of purchasing basic items such as TP scrolls in case the need arises for you to fall back or defend/gank another lane.

Wait... having a wider array of abilities than to LoL is somehow un-intuitive. -.-' Seriously your argument isn't very convincing. Wards are limited in stock for a reason... so that the enemy can't just spam them all over the map. This forces you to strategically place them and in higher level games is the stuff of mind games.

There is a reason why Dota is almost universally considered a harder game to pick up than LoL. Manipulating the fog of war is one of these reasons. It's a lot harder to do than simply running into some brush and becoming invisible! When you also have high/low terrain, destructible trees and day/night reducing the vision of most heroes - things get trickier. Dota is fun because it's challenging and that is why it became so popular. It's simple enough as a concept but challenging to master.

What heroes were you playing might I ask? I mean if you're always performing badly then of course you're gonna feel useless right? xD Also, the game is still in beta. Once the full release comes there will be a lot (A LOT) more polishing up, more features, tutorials, more heroes, more modes, more maps (hopefully), achievements & cosmetic items (that can be purchased with real money or earned through finishing matches) etc.

All I got from your rant was how Dota was different (more difficult for you). Are you a bit sad that you can't do as well in a different game? Is that it?

All of this basically seems to boil down to "I don't like deep games."

You talk about dead, and old mechanics... what makes them dead and old? Because LoL doesn't use them? That's ridiculous.

Denying makes laning deeper and gives players the ability to play mind games on their opponents. It also allows for better lane control in general. Secret shops give items that allow players to stay in lane longer and also make map control more important.

Yes... different heroes have different abilities... surprise! There are heroes great at pushing towers, others great at defending towers. Did you know some can go invisible while others can't!

Juking is more complex than what you will find in LoL. Another area where knowledge you gain through playing will help you become a better player. Learning and improving at a game, another dead mechanic?

If you don't know why you won or loss, again, I'm going to say it's probably because you don't understand the game. And lastly, imo LoL has a much higher snowball effect. Big comebacks are much more possible in DotA. Countless times I've had teammates on my team calling gg when it was something like 5-16, only for us to win a couple big team fights and win late game. There are many games where i guarantee my team would've surrendered, but not having the option lead us to win the game.

I'm fine with responding specifically.
I played a ridiculous amount of SOTIS before I came to LOL, like I played in the SOTIS channel with the devs and I was on there forums and stuff like that, so I have a fair amount of experience from that end of it, and I guess I can start with Deny.

Deny still sort of exists in LOL, it's just more of a zoning issue and a sustain issue. Deny isn't fun and creative, if you are ranged you just watch a low health minion on your own team, just like you would the opponent, you just click it and it isn't hard. It doesn't feel deep to me to have 8 minions to watch instead of 4... I don't know how anyone would find that complex. And I was fine at deny, thanks for asking.
One of the major problems to a deny mechanic (beside it just being a weird hold over from the WC3 engine that only continues to exist because it existed in WC3. True they could have eventually taken it out, but by that time people were use to it and built strats around it. There is a pretty good thread about it here http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...1244690&page=3 ) is that it imbalances things towards ranged, either melee type classes get destroyed because to deny they have to get into shooting range, or they just have to buff the melee champs so that they don't actually get punished by denying.
IDK, I'm sure it's debatable, but I never miss deny while playing LOL.

I've experienced secret shop ganks, but mostly it's "put some **** around the secret shop (mines whatever) and then inconvenience someone". It isn't like the secret shop is deep in enemy territory, and it's weird because some items are just suddenly secret shop dependent in a recipe, but then other items aren't, so if you want the secret shop item first you
1. Go back to base,
2. then to secret shop
3.then back to base
4.then back to lane
Also, courier ponies wouldn't need to exist if that mechanic wasn't flopping around getting in everyone's way. And they(the mechanics and the ponies) are not intuitive for new players.

Oh right, and denying towers is game cancer. The fact that a tower can get brought super low, then I have to bring a creep wave up to it to two shot it is anti-strategy. There is no choice there, if the enemy team lucks out and the creep dies before the tower is dead and it's low enough they just deny the tower and Bob's your uncle.

Next is, I don't believe harder = better, I very strongly believe in the "easy to pickup, difficult to master" mind set that some major game developers have. I don't believe in keeping game pointlessly difficult in certain ways just because that is the way it has always been.

About abilities affecting towers, if Death Prophet can send a Harem of little dead girls at a tower and beat it up, then everyone's ulti should be able to bring down towers right? That is the kind of thing I am talking about. Just make it auto attacks only, I don't see any benefit to randomly giving certain champs the ability to bring a tower down faster than others. I say that knowing full well that Wukong can Q towers and I don't understand why that is the case either.

I have played with the high ground/low ground mechanic and it's just another way to be a bush, except with auto-attack immunity. When you run by high ground, you just check it, or give it wide berth. If you are constantly skipping past high ground while the Tusken Raiders are taking pot shots at you, you are doing it wrong. I could not care less about high ground and low ground, it exists to a very minor degree in LOL and it neither thrills me nor bothers me.
Really the un-intuitive comment was just show me what is passable terrain, I don't think it's unreasonable to just want to know where I can and can not run. I don't believe it's a good game design if a new user is constantly surprised that they can go into certain parts of the woods, and then they have difficult navigating it.

Wards being a limited commodity does not find it's excuse in the fear that someone would "spam it all over the map" if people spent that much money on wards, then that would be gold out of their equipment and they would have to convert that extra intel into enough of an advantage that it makes up for their gear deficit. Players don't need baby sat to prevent them from spending all their gold in the wrong place.

I played mid, because that was what I was primarily playing in LOL. It was not particularly thrilling, I ran up the river and such to make sure to keep grabbing and bottling sigils and that was a bit of a change of pace, but it wasn't high stakes or exciting, it was just something I did. If I saw an enemy I just ditched into woods or back into mid . If I cared an extra large amount I would ward Sigil or someone else would.

And regardless of whether or not someone who is losing has the ability to win, please explain to me why not having a surrender option makes sense. People surrender because a majority chooses to, I like to assume that the end user-gamer either isn't an idiot or will learn from their mistakes. I also like to assume that they value their time. If it is obvious that you are losing, you should be able to save yourself 5-10 minutes and get out of an unpleasant situation.

I really did try to play DOTA 2, signed up for the beta, filled out some things, all that ****. And SOTIS is basically SC2 DOTA, so I am not unfamiliar with things or bad at deep games. I have the option to play LOL or DOTA2 and I choose LOL. I have more fun with it.
If you want me to say something positive about DOTA2 I had a good time getting a cloning sigil and sending my clones out to "gank" other lanes or to get dived on. Or to work as wards. I don't think it should be ported in or anything, I just wanted to say something positive.

I read through the link you posted and disagree with most of what the guy had to say. Denying doesn't promote passive play, it's just another layer to the laning phase. You still bully people out of lane just like you will find in LoL. You still harass when not attacking creeps. No one is arguing that denying is the most complex mechanic out there and that it would melt a LoL player's brain... it's just something else that adds to the difficulty. Something else that adds to the skill ceiling. Also I greatly disagree with his assessment that it forces players to choose ranges heroes and also creates a crazy snowball effect. There are plenty of items that reduce damage you take as a melee hero.

I'm guessing you aren't complaining about the sideshops, but specifically the items that you can ONLY purchase at the secret shops. Again, this is to reward map control and prevent a team from being able to turtle and still be able to get powerful items. Also, I'm not sure why you're complaining about the courier mechanic. It keeps you in lane longer and in the action longer whereas in LoL you have to b and then walk all the way back to where you want to go.

The enemy team didn't "luck out" You let the tower get into deny range without finishing it off. That's just bad planning on your part.

Yes, many heroes have very powerful pushing ultimates... but no not all ultimates should be extremely powerful on towers. This is just something else that adds to the depth and variety of the heroes. One of the main reasons you pick Death Prophet is because she can push down towers so well. It's also one of the main reasons you pick Nature's Prophet, or Leshrac, or Chen, or Enigma. Push strategies are common in DotA and it would be a more boring Metagame if everyone could push as well as everyone else.

Learning what is passible terrain takes very little time. Pretty much 2 ~10 minute bot games should give you the time figure it out.

There are many heroes in DotA 2 who require next to no farm and are still extremely effective in helping their team in team fights. Limited wards is to prevent them from warding everywhere, which would make ganking practically impossible. No one wants to play a MOBA where you can't get any kills.

Rune control is extremely important for ganking and also to win Mid. I agree that right clicking on a rune isn't the most exciting thing in the world... it just adds something else you have to keep track of while playing. Push mid when it's getting close to a rune coming up is generally what you want to try to do.

I'm not sure if they will eventually add a surrender option to DotA 2, but many are against it. I personally agree with them and believe that not surrendering helps players get better and keep trying. New players especially want to be able to surrender, but that isn't teaching them the game. Comebacks are very possible and I'm not sure they would ever learn that if their first 100 games 80% ended with a surrender option.

I can understand why someone might not like DotA 2. I just personally think it becomes pretty amazing once you get over the initial learning curve and can start really enjoying the game. Most competitive games have an initial learning curve that can be difficult for some to bulldoze through... especially for people who don't care enough to look up guides online, or check out youtube videos.

Actually, melee has a huge last hitting advantage. They can buy a Stout Shield to negate a portion of the ranged damage (and upgrade to Vanguard or Poor Man's Shield to help more if so desired), a Quelling Blade for more last hit damage, their animations are faster (ranged attacks have travel time), and they lose less EXP from being denied than ranged. While they take more harass, that's really the only downside to being a melee against a ranged. And if they have a lane partner, that lane partner can harass the enemy right back. And really, the melee carries SHOULD be harassable in lane given that an easy laning phase for them can win the game for their team. They need a downside. So, in the end ranged gets safer last hitting and harassing, melee gets better last hitting.

Why not just buy the items you need at base, then hit the shop and then go straight to the lane? I don't see why you go back to base in your example. If you meant to buy the recipe, you buy that while in base and then combine them at the secret shop when you buy the last component. Or you go to the secret shop while you are still out, then go back to base to finish the shopping, then buy a TP Scroll and go back to the lane from base. That's assuming you just don't use the courier of course. How is the courier unintuitive, anyway? You use it once and you know what it is and how it works. Everything is hoykeyed, it requires minimal input or micro. It's not just for the secret shop. You can bring important items to you in lane without spending a ton of time walking back and forth. I love bringing myself health potions and the like, allowing myself to stay in lane longer. Nothing hard or unintuitive about the courier.

Then last hit it yourself. Problem solved. Don't rely on the creeps to do it for you. Put up more pressure on a low health tower and you stop them from denying it. Denying towers is a good way to punish teams playing too passive and not committing. It's also a counter to pushing teams. You lose the tower, but push teams are usually very reliant on that early tower gold for the advantage, since they aren't farming and ganking as much. Remove that and they lose one of their advantages. You want that tower gold, you have to work for it.

Nothing is pointlessly difficult in Dota. Everything has a purpose in the game that has been refined for years. There is not a single feature in the game that does not serve a purpose in the gameplay and would have a huge negative impact if removed. And really, the hardest part of the game is the burden on knowledge in regards to items and heroes. The mechanics themselves take a little bit of getting used to but are not that hard. Once you know them, you don't even have to think about it.

It's not random. Krobelus is an amazing pusher. It's a big reason you pick her. Giving her the ability to murder towers with her ult (Leshrac can do it too with Edict) gives her a reason to be picked. God forbid there's some hero DIVERSITY. Not every hero needs to do the same thing. How is giving some champs the ability to push harder bad? The heroes having their quirks is what makes the game fun and the heroes so well designed and diverse.

The paths are usually visible if you look. There are small gaps in the trees. You can also create your own paths with tangos, quelling blade, and certain abilities. And while it's not immediately apparent for new players, there is nothing wrong with having things come with practice. It's a lot more depth and benefits in exchange for a learning curve. It's not a bad thing, and again, much like with other mechanics once you have done it, it's like riding a bike and you don't even have to think about it. A good juke is a joy to watch. You can also find resources online that show you the juke paths, so you can just look it up.

Except with unlimited wards you get what you do in LoL. Passively farming for half an hour because there's no point in ganking if they know you are coming. Wards limits promote tactical use of wards, prevent you from having total vision all over the map, and allows for more aggressive gameplay. Roaming is HUGE in Dota, with characters constantly ganking, and with unlimited wards the game would revert back to the way it used to be, which was hard carries farming all game. It's at a good balance now. You get enough wards to see what you want, but can't cover everything so both teams can maneuver around and play aggressive.

In Dota the character who goes mid should be the roaming ganker who can use the fast levels to dominate. If you are too passive, that's your own fault. I relish mid, as it means I can make the lives of the side lanes miserable. That's the general trend in pubs though. Some people like to play passive and just farm. That's fine, but don't complain about the game being boring if that's what you do. If you are not a hard carry, you have no reason to glue yourself to a lane. Branch out and kill some *****es.

Well, it's beta, it can still be added. However, the comeback potential is much higher in Dota than LoL. All it takes is the enemy to screw up one teamfight and you can recover a huge gold and EXP deficit, and push a lane down. Just last night my team was nearly 20 kills behind with a leaver as well, and we still managed to win because we had better initiation (I was playing a good Axe) and we had better late game. So we went from being destroyed in the first half hour thanks to my feeder team mates (1/7, 1/6, and a leaver), to an even game for the next 15 minutes, to winning. With the ability to make comebacks being what they are, I don't mind lack of concede too much. I like that people don't give up.

Basically, most of your complaints seem silly to me. They don't make the game much harder, they add to the game, and become easy with a bit of practice or online research. It's like a real sport. It takes practice. I like that your hand isn't held, and that the balance is done for people who know how to play, not inconsistent pubs who don't know what they are talking about. I hate that games like LoL become popular because it dumbed so much down and made it easy that anything more complicated is bad and not fun simply by virtue of taking a bit of practice. Dota is not insurmountable. There are so many resources online, and the game so streamlined compared to the WC3 version, that there's no reason one can't learn if they are willing to put a bit into it. I was 16 and taught myself to play WC3 Dota without any help. If I can do it like that, there's no reason people can't do it now.

I thank you guys for answering back intelligently with well written points.

The only thing we seemed to misunderstand about each other was when I was talking about tower Deny. I would have loved to have brought the tower down myself. But the tower becomes physically immune to all damage if there isn't a creep wave near it, and nothing tells you that. You can't figure it out unless you attempt to take a low health tower down, and then click it and watch it's health numbers and notice that it isn't taking damage.

My opinion was just me kind of coming into the game from a relate able experience and trying to pick the game up. I didn't come up with "silly arguments" because I am hoping to win Riot Points. They are things that actually bothered me.(not that it's a good example, but I use to play a bunch of SC2 custom games and if you are going to do that you need to be fairly adaptable to whatever strange game world some random person decided to cook up for you and hopping between SOTIS and Hero Wars and LoL is not a major system shock)

I can agree with some of you guys's points, but I think you guys are okay with these things because you are use to them, which is fine, you enjoy yadda yadda, but we aren't always okay with something because it is okay, sometimes we just get use to stuff.

*but also seriously man, i hate that pony. I would buy from the secret shop, I would click the wrong button (or the right one) and somehow the item would end up at home base, and so I would go back to base to claim it, and then I had trouble finding it or the pony would have it! Or, my other fave, was I would see it go into the "stash"(thing) that, I guess indicated that it's back at base, and so I wouldn't know that and only figured it out because I tried dragging the items out of the stash, and then they would get tossed on the ground. That's how I found out the items were getting magically teleported back to base, they wound up all over the ground in base.

Ive been playing Dota all the way back from 2007... Never played it competitive since i was new to the genre then and i had people giving me a whooping every time i play.. I did end up playing competitive in local tournaments but that was the end of it.. I played HoN for a couple of months and decided to quit cuz it sucked in my opinion compared to Dota..

Ive been playing LoL for sometime now and i am definitely having all the fun in the world.. Champs are unique... Gameplay is unique and each day i play LoL.. I know for sure am gonna have more fun than i did on the previous day.. I definitely dont mind spending for champions as most of them are worth it (Including the skins) and the designers deserve those 20 or 30 dollars on RP for the hard work they've put...

My opinion... for now.. Playing Dota all these years has made me a better LoL player... I'd never give up one for the other... Peace \m/