i play dota 2 from time to time. maybe once a week other 6 days i play LoL or something else.
But it really seems like Dota 2 (not counting champions/balance/learning curve) will be a better game...
here are my reasons why
1: They take alot of fan made skins/ideas and use them in there game. Riot only done this like 3 or 4 times? dota has done this alot now and it's still in beta. They even have a workshop Where you can make your own skin pretty easy to use and they may take it and put it into the game.
2: All champions are free and the game is free, in LoL you need to spends lots of money or lots of time for all the champions, Now people may argue that you dont need all the champions. But the point is, it still takes alot of Money or time to get even half the champs in LoL.
3: Dota has special events, Now i think this is probably one of the best things for halloween/x-max they had special events (one going on right now) they are very fun to play usually no raging because it doesn't effect your rating.
LoL doesn't even have a winter map this year... Dota 2 is in beta they are working constant just like LoL but they are able to make a winter map and a whole new game mode, it seems like riot was just lazy TBH. Now people may argue they were working on s3, yes this is true but not EVERY rioter works on the items/balancing.
4: can play with friends all around the globe in Dota. With LoL you need to log off go on a NEW account to play on a different region, This is way better for scrimming Eu/NA/Korea/ect or just playing with friends in EU if you live in NA.
5: they have replays/spectator and it's still in beta. ATM in LoL you need to use a 3rd party program for replays which is pretty outrageous LoL should of really had replays since day 1 and they still don't have it today.
6: We can all agree LoL client adobe air is pretty much trash... lags alot while dota 2 Doesn't since it isn't adobe Air.
TLDR: Dota 2 looking so good right now and it's only in beta IDK about you guys but it might be playing Dota 2 more then league... If you can get over the learning curve it seems like the better game ATM TBH.
And also sorry for bad english.
I been playing LoL for 3 years now so it's not even me being bias. And never played Dota 1 only dota 2 like 50 games and LoL around 3k.
Also forgot #7 You can unlock "skin pieces" while lvling up and you customize your char better. EX: imagine having half of gentlemen cho'gath with his other legendary one.
Edit: A Red thank for posting Riot Nome, i follow you since the other moba =)
What bothers me the most about LoL is the conceptual flaws...someone on here was talking about those ridiculous CC skills in DoTA...You wanna know the LoL-version of something broken? Dem manaless champs.
Who at RIOT once thought that an AP carry whos manaless with cooldown resets would be balanced(read Katarina)? Or who thought that a manaless "warrior" who has 3 gap closers and all her skills scale from AD would be balanced? And why is there no way to stop some1 from snowballing? Why is that that a 40 minutes game will probably end the wrong way if there's a Jax on the other team?
Don't get me wrong. I love LoL. But these things always bothered me.
I feel that in DoTA i get rewarded to play good. Regardless of the champion I'm playing.
"Who at RIOT once thought that an AP carry whos manaless with cooldown resets would be balanced(read Katarina)?"
If all of Katarina's abilities did 2 damage would she be overpowered, still? Obviously not. If she's overpowered right now, and if she could be conceptually useless, it implies that there's some point between the two where she can be balanced. This is a gross oversimplification of the balance process, as it's not considering champion feel, identity, and all sorts of other things, but it's silly to say X can't be balanced if it has Y.
"Why is that that a 40 minutes game will probably end the wrong way if there's a Jax on the other team?"
He scales well! This is true of any game in the genre; some of better tailored for the early game, and others excel late. Ever played against a good late game Spectre or Faceless Void? DotA has entire champions designed solely around conflict avoidance until they're sitting atop a pile of gold. Strategy in MOBAs has always been featured both at both the micro-level (last-hitting, general command of mechanics) and the macro-level (team composition, group movement).
Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainAMorgan
Me and my game designer buddy (works for 343 industries) discussed how they don't produce. He was as baffled as me when it came down to it. We don't know how, with all their talent, they are not producing MORE. Just MORE. It's shocking that they have the most played game in the world and only manage to make small balance tweaks every 2 weeks, and releasing a champ every 2-3 weeks that is almost never near balanced.
Making quality isn't just about making "more". Cramming content in without regard for quality control is a recipe for disaster. I'm not knocking on traditional development, but it's a very different world from MOBA development--this is about continued development and support, not shipping a one-off. It's very cyclical--we research, we design, we build, we go live, and the process repeats. With more than 100 champions in the game, it's impossible to see internally how each little change will ripple and interact with others. We operate with an imperfect knowledge of how the game currently is, simply because oftentimes no one knows the theoretical "true" state of balance and there is no authoritative figure to consult. How long did it take for players to figure out AP Eve? What about Jayce or Elise? If you perused the forums during their releases, you might even remember players calling them weak.
Keep in mind that the players are viewing through the lens of a finished product; you don't see the layers of iteration that have shaped it. What seems obvious or simple typically isn't so; a champion may have had a completely different ability set during conception. Entire projects are created, worked on, and cancelled without any public mention. The vast majority of people here are working on unreleased, unannounced, and sometimes unheralded features and content that may not even be released for quite a while. Considering only visible content output is a gross oversimplification of the process.
Agree that Riot are honestly way more slack than they should be.
Ever since this game has launched it has lacked basic fundamental features like replay mode (currently provided by a 3rd party program) or clan support. It took them well over 2 years just to get spectator mode working. There is no LAN functionality, which for a game that wants to be taken seriously as a esports property is simply RETARDED, especially after the number of tournament games that have been disrupted by connection issues (the season 2 championship fiasco was the absolute nadir of Riot's performance). The Achievements tab has been greyed out ever since I first started playing and Riot have given NO indication whatsoever that they're EVER planning on doing anything with it. There are many, MANY really obvious things that need to be fixed and HAVE needed to be fixed for a long time, which they seem to be simply blind to (I like to bring up the massive mess that is rune balance).
I can't see a company as efficient and organised as Valve making these kinds of blunders. If Riot doesn't lift their game then, even if LoL IS a better game than DotA 2, the world will simply slip through their fingers.
Dota 2 is built on Source, which had its first release in 2004. Since then, it's been continually getting upgrades and add-ons. League of Legends is Riot's first game, and the technology it's built on is very specific to the game. Adding new features builds on top of a platform created when Riot was much smaller and in addition, is now sprawling across multiple continents with fairly established infrastructure. Again, this is a gross oversimplification of delivering quality content.
Yes, LoLReplays offers a rudimentary replay system. But this isn't how Riot would want to do it; we'd want to create a fully-featured, well-integrated, bug-free (as much as possible). quality replay feature. Quality is the operational word here. Something like our Thunderdome event shows that we're fully capable of doing awesome things quickly, but there's always a lot of extra work necessary that must be done before we can push a feature to release that we can be proud of and stand behind.
Dota 2 comes out of the box with access to the entire hero stable. You have access to any and all replays of games you played. You have access to a feature that allows you to create your own custom armor (and even make money off of it if you're lucky). When it comes to accessibility, Dota2 trumps LoL massively in the general regard, as there is no grind involved. You can spend the time you would spend grinding making your own armor! (I do want to state that they have larger financial backing, so they may be able to afford this model, and I am understanding of that)
LoL comes out of the box with access to a free rotation of champs and a few unlocked. You have to download a 3rd party developer's software to have access to a bad replay feature. If you want any aesthetic change then you have to pay money for it.
Noting these things it's quite obvious that I pay for this game with my time played. You can argue "time played" =/= "work" but it does. Time = Money, and as my time becomes more valuable, so do the things I choose to do. I will say that I have thoroughly enjoyed my time playing this game, and I can say I earned probably 75/85 of my champs through play time alone, but many times it was not enjoyable. It was not fun waiting for weeks trying to get a champ that I really wanted, or was FOTM. This happens all the time, and now with your new model you have new champs releasing at an even higher price than before. (this continual practice of $$/IP price increases through the lifetime of this company does not bode well with me and many of my friends. With increased prices you would expect more out of the game, but we have been seeing less and less pure content overall, DW I will get to S3) These increases show where this company is going, in my group's eyes, that is not a good place, not a place we are going to go with our time/money.
Making any change in any business takes all that research. I work in a constantly evolving industry (online loans and lead acquisition). I have to look at tons of data and make informed decisions based on that data. Sometimes it takes weeks/months to gather data to make those decisions, but we know what we need to make those decisions, and we make those decisions as soon as possible to see improvement ASAP.
My industry is more hard pressed for time than the gaming industry, I understand that, but the amount of changes that are being made and the types of changes don't seem to solve issues. When there are clear and obvious issues that can be fixed even a little (it seems as though) there is nothing done about them. Eve will always be my perfect example of this as she could have been made playable again, but no effort was set forth because "When we release her/stealth rework, it will be perfect/of high quality".
And that right there sums it up for me. If you know that this is such a constantly evolving piece, parts flying everywhere, little changes have large ripples, then why would you even try to sit for a YEAR to discover the "perfect" solution??? Knowing fully that this will get entirely re-vamped again because that is the nature of the beast.
If you are going to make massive changes what is the point? At the end of the day we both know that they will be adjusted.
The design philosophy that I see as a consumer is that of "perfection", but that cannot be achieved, so you shouldn't even try. Keying into making constant improvement is far more valuable to me as a consumer and player than waiting a year to play a character I paid cash for. Tweaking numbers slightly and monitoring effects over a 2 week period rather than internally testing and rewriting something over and over just to release it and have the community condemn it. It's something that has been happening for years now and I see no change on your end regarding this.
Right now with the S3 changes I have to say that I can only wonder "WHY?".
Why was this done now? What was the purpose of changing mechanics? (while on mechanics, can we please talk about changing the way armor values are displayed to players, PLZZZ)
From what I understand Morello is a fan of "It was too broke to fix it, so we started over (... just to realize that new thing was also too broke, so we have to start over...). I played his games, I know how this works, but why? With such a good understanding of how these games work, and how long it takes to make something "balanced" "Fair" and "Fun". Why all this effort to eventually revamp again?
To me it seems that the game is being treated more maturely than it is. This game is ONLY 3 years old. It NEEDs the tweaks and changes on a regular basis because the game is in discord now, especially with the recent changes. Making slight number adjustments to damage on a skill, It's CoolDown, Something. There are champs that get little to no attention for years just to get completely remade. This is a slap in the face of anyone who likes them the way they have been for a very long period of time, and it's sudden. It's not enjoyable to have that familiarity ripped from your hands.
Moving from my NES to the computer was hard, but once i was there and got used to it I was happy as anything with my new toy, but that change was not easy, that change took time. Your change in my NES scenario is taking my NES, smashing it with a hammer, and handing me a computer you just built. I am not happy with this new thing, I don't know it, never knew it, and never planned on it.
I understand that major changes need making sometimes, but me having a toy for a year just to have it taken away for the reason that "It sucked the way it was and couldn't be made better, we had to destroy it and make it from scratch for it to be fun". You saying that is telling me that my idea of "fun" was flawed all around.
Doing things behind the curtain is fine, but doing it at such a slow pace is what kills you. In my eyes, I have seen too many "soontm"s here. Things that were coming "soon" took over a year in some cases. I saw the posts, I know this to be true. At this point I have no faith in announcements. I honestly don't, I have been given no reason to believe in your company. I have literally been lied to (soon may be a relative term, but only use it within reason).I want to believe, but so long as these things continue I will continue to give you less of my time, because I feel as though it can be invested elsewhere with a better and more timely return.
"Here is this free game. You have to spend time earning the things in it to enjoy exactly what you want, and to go even further, to look like what you want, you have to spend $$.
Now I offer you this other free game. You don't have to earn things, you have them. You can look like what you want, but for a price, OR you can spend your own time building exactly what you want."
Honestly, who would pick #1 over #2? Creativity is the future of the online industry. Giving people opportunity to create what they want is paramount across the board. Customer choice is the spice of life. You guys have a lot of choice, at a super high premium. Others offer more choice at a lower premium. At what point do you guys combat this?
Whew... Now that I am done with that (for now).
Thank you. Seriously thank you guys for one of the best gaming experiences I ever had. Thanks for all these awesome times with friends. Thank you for giving me another simple thing to be good at and appreciate. It's really great.
You guys have come leaps and bounds ahead and were far ahead of your time. You guys are the most played game in the world, from next to nothing. This has inspired me to go to my greatest heights, for that there is no amount of thanks I could give.
I want you all to know at RIOT that you have helped me in many ways.
You guys have many impressive features that I haven't had the time to elaborate on or tell you I appreciate. Maybe in another thread later.
Thank you guys. I only want to see the best for you and your future. I want to keep appreciating your game for as long as you can! And I want the same for everyone.
Keep up the good work guys!
Again, thanks for the response, I know you guys are busy. If anyone could find the time another response would be much appreciated!
A user earlier posted a link to another Rioter alluding to our tech debt. Source was built from the ground-up to be moddable, scalable, and flexible when it comes to adding additional tech. League of Legends had much humbler beginnings, and if you read any interview of Tryndamere and Ryze (our president and CEO), you'll find that they always emphasize how the company and game have performed beyond their wildest dreams and has spiraled from a small reimagining of the MOBA genre to the market leader. The issue with simply attaching bells and whistles to League is that the hooks to put them on don't quite exist--and don't take what I say quite as gospel, because I'm a game designer with very limited technical knowledge (an engineer, producer, or tech designer would be much more knowledgeable about this subject)--so we have to work very hard to actually create those hooks whenever we want to expand the scope of the game. In addition, every little change we make causes disruption--a piece of code here inadvertently breaks something somewhere else that no one thought could happen. Valve also has the advantage of catering largely to the Western audience; but League of Legends is very, very global, and we have to keep that in mind with everything we do. A large update that you download in 2 minutes here may have to be hand-distributed by CD/DVD in another region. Introducing a potentially buggy feature--getting that "something, anything" out as soon as possible--can have catastrophic implications to our millions of players worldwide. That's why we have to polish, polish, and polish, and make sure everything is A-OK. We have to be proud and sure of our product.
Talking about things we're working on is a whole 'nother issue. There's lots of times where a Rioter will see a thread in GD, or a post on Reddit, and want to say "Oh man! I'm working on that!" or "You want X? We're going to deliver X+Y!" But we can't say that, and this goes true for all game development, because you never want to create expectations before you're ready. What if the project is cancelled? What if it's delayed? And delays can come for a lot of reasons... before the work is shoddy, because it's buggy, or even because you just hired a whole bunch of really awesome dudes onto the project, and they know how to make it 10 times better. That last one has actually happened a few times on projects I've been involved with, by the way. Yes, we do take our time... good things take time. Hopefully when X requested feature is released, we blow some minds and then some!
I'm not knocking on you with the following statement, nor am I really criticizing anyone with this point of view. I had it to before I joined the industry. I started my first job and had a revelation, then I joined Riot and had another one. Looking at it from an insider's point of view vs. an outsider's point of view is an eye-opener because you really get to see the gears in motion. Every company is different here, because they all have their own set of challenges to face, and the end-user really never gets to see the 90% of the iceberg that's underwater.
Um, I'm going to have to severely disagree with this; LoL was started by and from a company standpoint with funding, etc---DotA was started by a community--no funding, no company, nothing--just the dedication and love of the fans.
I was comparing featureset and tech between League and Dota 2. But if you're talking about Dota 1, then you're comparing League and Warcraft 3.
Exactly my point (in LoL and WCIII) many work around, tricks, etc had to be implemented just to get things working/running in a certain manner (and some become permanent mechanics to boot).
In any event if you're discussing feature-set I still think some of the objections are applicable--yes LoL had to start form scratch, yes source was already in place, but it's been over 3 years now that LoL has been out, and there's a few areas that are extremely lacking, even after all this time (simple little things here and there).
Some things, I understand and get, but others I don't feel there's a good excuse for (after this long of at time).
That's an extremely poor comparison.
DotA 1 is not a retail game. It's a map (not even a mod, really). The features that players are asking for in this thread like replays, pausing, LAN, etc. were bundled with Warcraft 3. Those are Blizzard-created features. The ingenuity you're describing is entirely script-side using JASS, which again is a system created by Blizzard. DotA's not even the best example of great scripting; check out Tides of Blood, Eve of the Apocalyse: Twilight, or Hand of Sorrow Knight, Desert of Exile, or Advent if the Zenith for very well put together MOBA maps. And even so, the vast majority of these scripting quirks wouldn't fly in a retail game for various reasons typically related to performance. Ever wonder why all of these retail games don't support a mode like ARDM (for the uninitiated, ARDM is all-random deathmatch, in which your champion is swapped out for a new one every time you die)? Because it's not feasible, under current hardware restrictions, to be freezing every player in the game every time a new champion has to load. DotA 1 was OK with it because again, it doesn't have that quality bar and player expectation attached to it.
There is no "work around" or "trick" that can allow us to get major features working quickly. Taking shortcuts, or using "hacky methods" that put future development efforts in jeopardy is exactly the mentality that leads to why we're dealing with these tech debts now. So again, patience is key; if we want to add a feature, we will make sure we do it well.
LoL is going to need to step up there game soon.
i play dota 2 from time to time. maybe once a week other 6 days i play LoL or something else.
But it really seems like Dota 2 (not counting champions/balance/learning curve) will be a better game...
here are my reasons why
1: They take alot of fan made skins/ideas and use them in there game. Riot only done this like 3 or 4 times? dota has done this alot now and it's still in beta. They even have a workshop Where you can make your own skin pretty easy to use and they may take it and put it into the game.
2: All champions are free and the game is free, in LoL you need to spends lots of money or lots of time for all the champions, Now people may argue that you dont need all the champions. But the point is, it still takes alot of Money or time to get even half the champs in LoL.
3: Dota has special events, Now i think this is probably one of the best things for halloween/x-max they had special events (one going on right now) they are very fun to play usually no raging because it doesn't effect your rating.
LoL doesn't even have a winter map this year... Dota 2 is in beta they are working constant just like LoL but they are able to make a winter map and a whole new game mode, it seems like riot was just lazy TBH. Now people may argue they were working on s3, yes this is true but not EVERY rioter works on the items/balancing.
4: can play with friends all around the globe in Dota. With LoL you need to log off go on a NEW account to play on a different region, This is way better for scrimming Eu/NA/Korea/ect or just playing with friends in EU if you live in NA.
5: they have replays/spectator and it's still in beta. ATM in LoL you need to use a 3rd party program for replays which is pretty outrageous LoL should of really had replays since day 1 and they still don't have it today.
6: We can all agree LoL client adobe air is pretty much trash... lags alot while dota 2 Doesn't since it isn't adobe Air.
TLDR: Dota 2 looking so good right now and it's only in beta IDK about you guys but it might be playing Dota 2 more then league... If you can get over the learning curve it seems like the better game ATM TBH.
And also sorry for bad english.
I been playing LoL for 3 years now so it's not even me being bias. And never played Dota 1 only dota 2 like 50 games and LoL around 3k.
Also forgot #7 You can unlock "skin pieces" while lvling up and you customize your char better. EX: imagine having half of gentlemen cho'gath with his other legendary one.
Edit: A Red thank for posting Riot Nome, i follow you since the other moba =)
Who at RIOT once thought that an AP carry whos manaless with cooldown resets would be balanced(read Katarina)? Or who thought that a manaless "warrior" who has 3 gap closers and all her skills scale from AD would be balanced? And why is there no way to stop some1 from snowballing? Why is that that a 40 minutes game will probably end the wrong way if there's a Jax on the other team?
Don't get me wrong. I love LoL. But these things always bothered me.
I feel that in DoTA i get rewarded to play good. Regardless of the champion I'm playing.
If all of Katarina's abilities did 2 damage would she be overpowered, still? Obviously not. If she's overpowered right now, and if she could be conceptually useless, it implies that there's some point between the two where she can be balanced. This is a gross oversimplification of the balance process, as it's not considering champion feel, identity, and all sorts of other things, but it's silly to say X can't be balanced if it has Y.
"Why is that that a 40 minutes game will probably end the wrong way if there's a Jax on the other team?"
He scales well! This is true of any game in the genre; some of better tailored for the early game, and others excel late. Ever played against a good late game Spectre or Faceless Void? DotA has entire champions designed solely around conflict avoidance until they're sitting atop a pile of gold. Strategy in MOBAs has always been featured both at both the micro-level (last-hitting, general command of mechanics) and the macro-level (team composition, group movement).
Keep in mind that the players are viewing through the lens of a finished product; you don't see the layers of iteration that have shaped it. What seems obvious or simple typically isn't so; a champion may have had a completely different ability set during conception. Entire projects are created, worked on, and cancelled without any public mention. The vast majority of people here are working on unreleased, unannounced, and sometimes unheralded features and content that may not even be released for quite a while. Considering only visible content output is a gross oversimplification of the process.
Ever since this game has launched it has lacked basic fundamental features like replay mode (currently provided by a 3rd party program) or clan support. It took them well over 2 years just to get spectator mode working. There is no LAN functionality, which for a game that wants to be taken seriously as a esports property is simply RETARDED, especially after the number of tournament games that have been disrupted by connection issues (the season 2 championship fiasco was the absolute nadir of Riot's performance). The Achievements tab has been greyed out ever since I first started playing and Riot have given NO indication whatsoever that they're EVER planning on doing anything with it. There are many, MANY really obvious things that need to be fixed and HAVE needed to be fixed for a long time, which they seem to be simply blind to (I like to bring up the massive mess that is rune balance).
I can't see a company as efficient and organised as Valve making these kinds of blunders. If Riot doesn't lift their game then, even if LoL IS a better game than DotA 2, the world will simply slip through their fingers.
Yes, LoLReplays offers a rudimentary replay system. But this isn't how Riot would want to do it; we'd want to create a fully-featured, well-integrated, bug-free (as much as possible). quality replay feature. Quality is the operational word here. Something like our Thunderdome event shows that we're fully capable of doing awesome things quickly, but there's always a lot of extra work necessary that must be done before we can push a feature to release that we can be proud of and stand behind.
LoL comes out of the box with access to a free rotation of champs and a few unlocked. You have to download a 3rd party developer's software to have access to a bad replay feature. If you want any aesthetic change then you have to pay money for it.
Noting these things it's quite obvious that I pay for this game with my time played. You can argue "time played" =/= "work" but it does. Time = Money, and as my time becomes more valuable, so do the things I choose to do. I will say that I have thoroughly enjoyed my time playing this game, and I can say I earned probably 75/85 of my champs through play time alone, but many times it was not enjoyable. It was not fun waiting for weeks trying to get a champ that I really wanted, or was FOTM. This happens all the time, and now with your new model you have new champs releasing at an even higher price than before. (this continual practice of $$/IP price increases through the lifetime of this company does not bode well with me and many of my friends. With increased prices you would expect more out of the game, but we have been seeing less and less pure content overall, DW I will get to S3) These increases show where this company is going, in my group's eyes, that is not a good place, not a place we are going to go with our time/money.
Making any change in any business takes all that research. I work in a constantly evolving industry (online loans and lead acquisition). I have to look at tons of data and make informed decisions based on that data. Sometimes it takes weeks/months to gather data to make those decisions, but we know what we need to make those decisions, and we make those decisions as soon as possible to see improvement ASAP.
My industry is more hard pressed for time than the gaming industry, I understand that, but the amount of changes that are being made and the types of changes don't seem to solve issues. When there are clear and obvious issues that can be fixed even a little (it seems as though) there is nothing done about them. Eve will always be my perfect example of this as she could have been made playable again, but no effort was set forth because "When we release her/stealth rework, it will be perfect/of high quality".
And that right there sums it up for me. If you know that this is such a constantly evolving piece, parts flying everywhere, little changes have large ripples, then why would you even try to sit for a YEAR to discover the "perfect" solution??? Knowing fully that this will get entirely re-vamped again because that is the nature of the beast.
If you are going to make massive changes what is the point? At the end of the day we both know that they will be adjusted.
The design philosophy that I see as a consumer is that of "perfection", but that cannot be achieved, so you shouldn't even try. Keying into making constant improvement is far more valuable to me as a consumer and player than waiting a year to play a character I paid cash for. Tweaking numbers slightly and monitoring effects over a 2 week period rather than internally testing and rewriting something over and over just to release it and have the community condemn it. It's something that has been happening for years now and I see no change on your end regarding this.
Right now with the S3 changes I have to say that I can only wonder "WHY?".
Why was this done now? What was the purpose of changing mechanics? (while on mechanics, can we please talk about changing the way armor values are displayed to players, PLZZZ)
From what I understand Morello is a fan of "It was too broke to fix it, so we started over (... just to realize that new thing was also too broke, so we have to start over...). I played his games, I know how this works, but why? With such a good understanding of how these games work, and how long it takes to make something "balanced" "Fair" and "Fun". Why all this effort to eventually revamp again?
To me it seems that the game is being treated more maturely than it is. This game is ONLY 3 years old. It NEEDs the tweaks and changes on a regular basis because the game is in discord now, especially with the recent changes. Making slight number adjustments to damage on a skill, It's CoolDown, Something. There are champs that get little to no attention for years just to get completely remade. This is a slap in the face of anyone who likes them the way they have been for a very long period of time, and it's sudden. It's not enjoyable to have that familiarity ripped from your hands.
Moving from my NES to the computer was hard, but once i was there and got used to it I was happy as anything with my new toy, but that change was not easy, that change took time. Your change in my NES scenario is taking my NES, smashing it with a hammer, and handing me a computer you just built. I am not happy with this new thing, I don't know it, never knew it, and never planned on it.
I understand that major changes need making sometimes, but me having a toy for a year just to have it taken away for the reason that "It sucked the way it was and couldn't be made better, we had to destroy it and make it from scratch for it to be fun". You saying that is telling me that my idea of "fun" was flawed all around.
Doing things behind the curtain is fine, but doing it at such a slow pace is what kills you. In my eyes, I have seen too many "soontm"s here. Things that were coming "soon" took over a year in some cases. I saw the posts, I know this to be true. At this point I have no faith in announcements. I honestly don't, I have been given no reason to believe in your company. I have literally been lied to (soon may be a relative term, but only use it within reason).I want to believe, but so long as these things continue I will continue to give you less of my time, because I feel as though it can be invested elsewhere with a better and more timely return.
"Here is this free game. You have to spend time earning the things in it to enjoy exactly what you want, and to go even further, to look like what you want, you have to spend $$.
Now I offer you this other free game. You don't have to earn things, you have them. You can look like what you want, but for a price, OR you can spend your own time building exactly what you want."
Honestly, who would pick #1 over #2? Creativity is the future of the online industry. Giving people opportunity to create what they want is paramount across the board. Customer choice is the spice of life. You guys have a lot of choice, at a super high premium. Others offer more choice at a lower premium. At what point do you guys combat this?
Whew... Now that I am done with that (for now).
Thank you. Seriously thank you guys for one of the best gaming experiences I ever had. Thanks for all these awesome times with friends. Thank you for giving me another simple thing to be good at and appreciate. It's really great.
You guys have come leaps and bounds ahead and were far ahead of your time. You guys are the most played game in the world, from next to nothing. This has inspired me to go to my greatest heights, for that there is no amount of thanks I could give.
I want you all to know at RIOT that you have helped me in many ways.
You guys have many impressive features that I haven't had the time to elaborate on or tell you I appreciate. Maybe in another thread later.
Thank you guys. I only want to see the best for you and your future. I want to keep appreciating your game for as long as you can! And I want the same for everyone.
Keep up the good work guys!
Again, thanks for the response, I know you guys are busy. If anyone could find the time another response would be much appreciated!
Talking about things we're working on is a whole 'nother issue. There's lots of times where a Rioter will see a thread in GD, or a post on Reddit, and want to say "Oh man! I'm working on that!" or "You want X? We're going to deliver X+Y!" But we can't say that, and this goes true for all game development, because you never want to create expectations before you're ready. What if the project is cancelled? What if it's delayed? And delays can come for a lot of reasons... before the work is shoddy, because it's buggy, or even because you just hired a whole bunch of really awesome dudes onto the project, and they know how to make it 10 times better. That last one has actually happened a few times on projects I've been involved with, by the way. Yes, we do take our time... good things take time. Hopefully when X requested feature is released, we blow some minds and then some!
I'm not knocking on you with the following statement, nor am I really criticizing anyone with this point of view. I had it to before I joined the industry. I started my first job and had a revelation, then I joined Riot and had another one. Looking at it from an insider's point of view vs. an outsider's point of view is an eye-opener because you really get to see the gears in motion. Every company is different here, because they all have their own set of challenges to face, and the end-user really never gets to see the 90% of the iceberg that's underwater.
In any event if you're discussing feature-set I still think some of the objections are applicable--yes LoL had to start form scratch, yes source was already in place, but it's been over 3 years now that LoL has been out, and there's a few areas that are extremely lacking, even after all this time (simple little things here and there).
Some things, I understand and get, but others I don't feel there's a good excuse for (after this long of at time).
DotA 1 is not a retail game. It's a map (not even a mod, really). The features that players are asking for in this thread like replays, pausing, LAN, etc. were bundled with Warcraft 3. Those are Blizzard-created features. The ingenuity you're describing is entirely script-side using JASS, which again is a system created by Blizzard. DotA's not even the best example of great scripting; check out Tides of Blood, Eve of the Apocalyse: Twilight, or Hand of Sorrow Knight, Desert of Exile, or Advent if the Zenith for very well put together MOBA maps. And even so, the vast majority of these scripting quirks wouldn't fly in a retail game for various reasons typically related to performance. Ever wonder why all of these retail games don't support a mode like ARDM (for the uninitiated, ARDM is all-random deathmatch, in which your champion is swapped out for a new one every time you die)? Because it's not feasible, under current hardware restrictions, to be freezing every player in the game every time a new champion has to load. DotA 1 was OK with it because again, it doesn't have that quality bar and player expectation attached to it.
There is no "work around" or "trick" that can allow us to get major features working quickly. Taking shortcuts, or using "hacky methods" that put future development efforts in jeopardy is exactly the mentality that leads to why we're dealing with these tech debts now. So again, patience is key; if we want to add a feature, we will make sure we do it well.