Ixtellor wrote:Having played a ton of both games, I prefer Dota as a game. But I like LoL for the ranked play, runes, masteries... the micro-rewards u get for playing.
That was actually one of the biggest things that turned me off of LoL - all the crap you have to do outside of the actual game, to be able to play the actual game. Grind to level 30 so you can have a full rune page and masteries and stuff.
Now grind points so you can buy runes to put into your rune page. Now grind MORE points so you can buy more rune pages, since you need different pages for different roles. And while you're grinding points for that stuff, go grind points so you can permanently unlock heroes rather than being stuck with each week's rotating selection. Or, of course, buy cash shop points and skip the grinding if you'd rather spend money.
I didn't really have a problem with that before Dota 2 arrived, but once you take a look at Valve's business model, you have to wonder why anyone would prefer Riot's. With Valve's model, the entire game is immediately, totally free to play. Every hero, every item, every game mode,
everything is free to play, and the only things that aren't free are cosmetic items (which you can get through random rewards or by trading), or tournament tickets (which have to be purchased, but support the tournament and its sponsors as well as allow you to watch the games through DotaTV.)
And, for me, the best part of all of it is that the majority of cosmetics you can buy are made by players, and every time someone buys one of their items, they get a portion of the sale. There are even some folks, just like with TF2, who make a comfortable living off of making items for Dota 2, due to Valve's business model. That's pretty damned awesome, if you ask me.