Now, I've been playing League of Legends (hereafter referred to as LoL to spare my poor typing fingers) for nearly five years. It's a great game, in my opinion, full of variety and fun experiences and is just generally a great way to spend 45 minutes... or 5 hours. Depending on how much you enjoy avoiding responsibilities, really. As such, I have a lot to say on the subject, and obviously, it's not going to fit in one blog post unless I don't want to sleep for four nights straight. That being said, I figure I'd focus in on one small point of the game - balance.
(A quick aside, for those who may be unfamiliar - LoL is a MOBA game, or a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. There are two teams, each with a base on opposite corners of the map, and each of the five players on the teams play as a "champion," one of many fantasy or sci-fi characters with a unique skillset and varying strengths and weaknesses. The goal is to work with your four teammates, along with waves of non-player "minions," to destroy the enemy base while simultaneously defending yours.)
Balancing a game can be tough work. Not that I've tried, personally - I've never made a game - but I imagine that when you've got a load of moving pieces, it'll be tough to make it really seem like every option available to you is as effective as the others. Even games like Smash Bros, which only have upwards of a few dozen available characters, can feel like one option is completely dominant over the others.
So who here had this guy perma-banned in their friend group in Brawl?
That's the sort of thing I'm talking about here.
So now you look at LoL, which has easily over 120 different playable characters, and you think to yourself, "How can this game possibly be balanced?" And frankly, I'd argue that with constant updates and balance tweaks, Riot Games (developer of LoL) does a pretty damn good job of keeping up with it all. But more on that in a moment - let's get to the other game in the title first.
Dota 2 is another very popular MOBA game, with a very similar map layout and general playstyle to LoL - I'm not sure of the numbers, but I think Dota 2 is the second most popular MOBA, after LoL. (I feel I should mention here that the original DotA, which stands for Defense of the Ancients, was a Warcraft 3 mod that essentially kickstarted the creation of the MOBA genre. LoL was heavily based on DotA.) I haven't played much Dota 2, admittedly, and when I did play, it was essentially because I wanted to see how it stacked up against LoL. And some of that game didn't sit right with me. The heroes didn't have nearly as much personality as the champions of LoL, it seemed to have a higher skill floor and a lower skill ceiling than LoL, and a few other things. But that's not what I'm here to talk about (well, today, at least). I want to talk about the different philosophies of balancing the two games.
Before I continue, as a disclaimer, I think that both games are balanced pretty well, all things considered.
Here's the biggest difference I notice between the two games. LoL seems to be balanced with the thought that every champion should be equally viable, and there shouldn't be anything overwhelmingly powerful or overwhelmingly frustrating within the game. Dota 2 seems to be balanced with the idea of "if everything is overpowered, nothing is." Heroes can have ridiculous abilities, like extra-long stuns or silences, or RNG-based effects, with the intent that other heroes have equally-ridiculous abilities to keep you in check.
Again, I haven't played much Dota 2, but this guy's name is Silencer.
In a surprising turn of events, he silences enemies. And by that I mean
that he silences every enemy on the map for 6 seconds. Which is kinda
what I'm talking about when I talk about Dota's heroes.
In case you couldn't tell by the fact that I've played easily over 2000 LoL games and maybe a dozen games of Dota 2, I vastly prefer LoL's balancing system. While I think both are valid for various reasons, I feel like LoL's makes for more interesting gameplay. Essentially, you'll rarely feel like the game itself is screwing you over when you play LoL (I mean, unless servers decide to drop, or some such). But when it comes down to it, single champions rarely feel like they are exceedingly frustrating to play against. It happens, certainly, but it's relatively uncommon, in my opinion. Plus, whenever there is a champion that feels like that, they often get reined in within a patch or two. With Dota, however, I feel like that system of balancing breeds frustration rather than prevents it. Again, it's a system of "That ability is frustrating as hell to play against... but I, too, have a frustrating ability to use." You see what I mean? To sum up broadly, LoL feels like it's striving for equally fair play amongst all its champions, while Dota feels like it's striving for equally unfair play that just sorts itself out.
That's pretty much all I have to say on the topic, really. Does LoL do a perfect job of balancing? No, of course not. Right now, for instance, a fed Vladimir can demolish an entire enemy team by himself, while even a fed Elise might feel like she's bringing a wet noodle to a swordfight. (I have serious problems with Vlad's design, by the way, so don't crucify me just yet - wait 'til I make an entire post about why I don't like him. Then you can do it.) And does Dota 2 feel horrifically unbalanced? No, because frankly, there's always that feeling of "Oh, just you wait until I get you back for that one!" when something frustrating happens to you in the game. Like I said earlier, I think both systems are pretty much equally valid, and obviously, there's no one perfect system. I just feel like LoL's balancing system (well, the philosophy behind it - say what you will about their actual attempts at balancing) promotes a healthier game in the long run.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. See you next week!
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