Outside Looking In: What Dota 2’s Newest Updates Look Like to a LoL Player

Hello, I’m Kyle “Calithilon” Edralin. You might’ve encountered me before as the author of PL;DR — the series that explains in succinct detail what each LoL patch means for the PH community. I’m a design guy in career and education, which means the visual impact of something is a feature of great importance to me.

Gaming is no exception. Within the confines of a virtually created world of fantasy, anything can be an inspiration, call-out or an important aspect that makes the game what it is. For the past four years, I’ve followed League of Legends. I noted how it evolved from those “pizza feet” champions like Ashe and Sivir, to the first Champion Relaunch where Karma suddenly existed and the Summoner’s Rift visual update.

Remember when Sivir looked like this? Thank heavens for Champion Updates.

With each update, I would rejoice and critique the changes made to the game’s visual identity — how it was affected by the champion’s design, lore and the fantasy that it offered to the people who would play the game as a whole.

However, I didn’t start with League. Like most people, my very first MOBA was Dota: the original modded map that existed in the Warcraft III engine. In it, I mastered skillshots such as Mirana’s arrow and Pudge’s hooks. Skills that had special conditions to be used effectively, such as Enchantress’ Impetus, running backwards immediately to maximize damage dealt with distance.

My itemization started with figuring out that Traxex always needed Agility items to do damage and character interactions such as Rikimaru’s invisibility is rendered moot near your tower (or a Gem of True Insight.) When I picked up LoL, I dropped Dota and lost myself in a world of brushes, summoner spells and Teemos.

I never forgot about Dota though. When Dota 2 came out, I picked it up out of curiosity. It was good, but couldn’t connect with it. I set it down and booted up League of Legends almost immediately. I loved the world, the brush, Ignite and Teleports. Let Dota have Roshan, I said. Let them have their denies, their buy-backs and secret shops. League of Legends is different, and I was happy playing it — that’s all that mattered. So passed years of patches, champion releases and visual updates.

However, Dota once again recently came up in my feed. The news of Reborn and their push for a newer, more improved Dota experience. I watched as Valve rolled out step by step what they had planned for their MOBA and I could not help but feel a twinge of dismay.

The way they presented it didn’t help that reaction either. With clear videos showing the ideation, specifics and concepts behind each new feature and GIFS showcasing their new champion viewer and dashboard, League’s client felt a hundred years behind. And that was only the beginning.

Part Two of Reborn brought the iteration of Dota to full circle from it being a mod of Warcraft III all those years ago. Custom games can now be created thanks to Source 2’s engine, bringing the possibility of playing (or updating) the popular old custom games back in Warcraft III’s heyday to the current field.

Valve didn’t bother keeping all their eggs, either. Everything, from developer tools, material editors and scripting support are to be included in the new Reborn. Not to mention that IceFrog and Eul, two legendary figures who laid the foundations of MOBAs are on the development team. In every sense of the name, it really does feel like Dota has been reborn. It has seemingly managed to merge Dota with its parent, Warcraft III.

This update was so massive that even League players have taken notice. A topic on the League of Legends sub-reddit has surpassed 3000 comments at the time of writing, and it’s clear to the observer that some League players have already promised to jump ship once the update comes out.

Criticism of Riot Games’ attitude towards its player base don’t lag far behind, as well as bemoaning about how slow League’s development process is compared to Valve’s. The Dota hype train is real, and with good reason.

So where does that leave players like me? I won’t deny that I’m tempted to check it out. Reborn isn’t just about a new dashboard and visual updates — it’s a whole new playing field that gamers can utilize and create with.

Adding the other features that Dota inherently has such as their replay system and special announcer packs that Leaguehas a distinct lack of make for a strong case for me. The new dashboard and champion viewer looks amazing from a design perspective, and the ability to create custom maps and game modes using the Source 2 engine make me think of playing those Warcraft III mods I loved so much before. I can potentially relive all my fond memories of Footmen Frenzy, MooMoo, Uther Party and X Hero Siege.

However… I don’t think I’m going to jump ship. Neither do I believe that this update, while massive in scope and changes spells the “end” of Riot Games and League of Legends. I’m not going to deny that Riot’s been blindsided by this update (speaking from a publicity standpoint), but I think it’s not fair to criticize them based on one massive Valve update. Comparing the two would be silly as well, as they fulfill different player fantasies and have their own ways of developing their respective games.

Because from a design perspective, I personally love how Riot handles their game. Music updates? Riot has released two albums as of this time: Smite and Ignite, a heavy metal album inspired by their in-game lore and characters and The Music of League of Legends, a collection of both new and old music based on their champions.

Heavy metal in my MOBA? Yes please.

Animated releases that showcase the content release in a more interesting way? One not only look further than The Curse of the Sad Mummy, a beautiful animation that came out with the aforementioned League of Legends album. Champion trailers, such as Jinx’s “Get Jinxed”, is another. From a design perspective, League of Legends has definitely more media than Dota, even collaborating with famous musicians such as the Crystal Method and Imagine Dragons.

Admit it, this was awesome.

Another key difference is the pacing of their releases. Valve has taken its time with the release of Reborn, to great effect. A massive update to the game client, engine, and possibilities for more player made modes under one update that took ages to ship. Riot on the other hand has taken a more “immediate” method of releasing content — once they think something is good to go, they’ll be shipped almost immediately.

And for those who complain that Riot only updates on a small scale, “big” updates also happen to League too. For example, the event of Shurima some time ago saw an overhaul in several champion designs, a new game mode, stunning cinematic trailers and the release of a new champion. Summoner’s Rift also received a  visual update, and other things such as Twisted Treeline and Howling Abyss are constantly being worked on. In fact, Riot has a page dedicated for upcoming updates to its champions, which can be accessed here. Riot has been far from idle, despite some of its critics are claiming it to be.

A large part why I got the Azir bundle when it came out.

It might not be too far to say that Valve concentrates on the game, while Riot focuses on the world their game has created. Few people in Dota know things like what the relationship of Timbersaw has with trees, why Tidehunter hates Kunkka so much, Bristleback’s backstory or even the fact that Lina and Rylai are related. These aren’t central to their gameplay or the player’s preferences for playing any of these characters, which is fine.

Unlike League, where each champion hailing from a specific city/faction, Sivir not being Cassiopeia’s biggest fan, Lux and Garen being siblings and exactly why Amumu is sad all the time is common knowledge among League players — and additionally is what makes these champions and the game loved by its player base.

Just recently, Riot has hired Warhammer novelist Graham McNeill as their new senior narrative writer, making good on their promise to reboot the lore of the League, something more arguably more vast than Dota’s. The two games deal with their in-game universe and their playerbase in two very different ways, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Perhaps Riot does need to develop their other game modes such as the Twisted Treeline and Dominion. Maybe they need improvements to their in game client, or they could allow more player accessibility to in-game assets. But Valve can learn from Riot’s tactics as well: make their champions more relatable to their players, create more media that shows off their game, or have a public beta environment for testing new and radical  changes.

Because while the Source Engine and mod creator of Dota is extremely awesome, I will never quite sympathize with their heroes as much as I love playing Diana because of her backstory and champion design. At the same time, while the mechanics of brushes in League are quite clever, I’ll never expect it to have a good replay feature like Dota has nor nominate it for having the slickest-looking champion selection.

Behind The Scenes though? That’s OP.

If there’s anything to take away from this experience, it would be that it’s possible to like two things at the same time. It’s also possible to switch from liking one thing to the other, as some of the players who plan on switching over to Dota might say.

Each of us likes something different, and while I’m aware that Valve has now put its best foot forward while Riot may be struggling to find a new direction, each game will always have its dedicated share of players and fans. The only time we should ever compare things is when they have released the same thing with the same goals — and that’s not what happened here. We don’t judge other people for taking different routes to their destination if their destination is different from ours. All we can do is contrast, and hopefully learn from the other.

So for the people like me who are outside looking in, while the Dota party looks awesome and I might pop in for a round of drinks or two, at the end of the day nothing is quite like the satisfaction I get from finding an invisible Teemo that’s been pissing me off all game and killing him.

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