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Comment by tester756 | Hacker News Reader

I must say that they're probably the most competent studio on the market

LoL is probably the only game that I play (maybe once a year I decide to spend up to 50h over some peroid on one title like GTA V or something) for years and it almost always feels "fresh" and very competitive.

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I think there's lots of studios just as competent or more competent than Riot. They've made so few games, it's hard to compare them to other studios in that way.

That's very fair

The way they do esport is huge part of their success

I agree. I do not like Riot's "startup" approach to game design, where gameplay elements are plucked from the most popular titles on the market. The games have never felt innovative to me, they just seem like they took from everyone else and then focused on iteration so much that it gives the features and gameplay a level of polish that a lot of games don't get (especially from a esports vantage point). The art style also feels so accessible to me that it lacks a certain soul that defines a good game.

LoL is also an amazing spectator sport, the format is so fun to watch. OverWatch/CS-GO/Valorant/Fortnite etc... the FPS aspect is a harder to follow especially for people with slower eye movement.

Lol on the other hand, its like watching Soccer/Golf/Football except the players also have magic/hi-tech abilities. The "depth" of the strategy is also sooo much more than an FPS. flex picks, lane swaps, lane freezing , meta shifts, (also mechanics but that spans across all esports).

Then theres also the music division, that collaborates with mega pop stars in korea/us/south america

I've actually never seen this opinion before. The amount of background knowledge you need to understand a match LoL is so much higher than something like CS, which I think is definitely the easiest major esport to consume

I think that it's dependent on how depth you want to understand

If you're just curious about who's winning and who's doing "cool stuff" and killing enemies then you don't need years of experience

but if you want to understand all that decision making stuff then yea

    The "depth" of the strategy is also sooo much more than an FPS

You only think that because you know more about LoL. As someone very into Overwatch, it's an absurdly complicated game where you only know about the complexity once you learn about it. After having learned a lot more about the game, I can look at high-level play and "see" a lot more of the things they're doing due to the level of complexity of the game, just like you can see that same stuff watching LoL.

At a high level, Overwatch is complicated because it effectively combines MOBA elements with FPS elements. It's not really a straight FPS, and the higher skill you get the more you have to pay attention to the MOBA elements in order to do well. As an example: Zarya is a tank whose entire ability kit (sans ultimate) is built around using an ability on herself and a teammate (on different cooldowns) to protect them from damage/negative effects for 2 seconds at a time. This ability can be destroyed if 200 damage is done to the player it's affecting, and Zarya gains increased damage if damage is done to this ability up to a cap. It sounds simple, but players who have mastered Zarya are ones who know _when_ to use these two abilities, which order, etc. which has a lot to do with the current state of the game. Bad Zarya players use both abilities instantly and simultaneously the second they see the opponent. It's all about timing abilities... which sounds a lot like playing a MOBA. But you also have to be good at aim and master the two firing modes she has, among the many, many other things to pay attention to during gameplay.

I don't whether LoL or Overwatch has more "depth", but they both have a lot of it.

Let me start a flamewar by informing you both that Dota 2 exists, and has much more complicated spells. And hence more depth. At least that's what people who have played both LoL and Dota 2 say.

Everything the GP has described is essentially only the mechanics part of a Dota 2 game. The strategic part of the game has way more depth than "use your abilities at the right time in the right order".

I agree to a large extent, but the last 2-3 years have not been kind to the Dota 2 strategic landscape. In the strategic rock-paper-scissors of teamfighting beats ganking beats splitpushing beats teamfighting, teamfighting has been overpowered by Valve.

It's not really possible to consistently win in pro Dota by ganking or splitpushing strategies. Only occasionally, can you do it, when you have a clear draft advantage the opponents don't see, and a clear plan that you can execute flawlessly. While, if both teams go for the teamfight strategy, then there is much more room for mistakes.

this is cs / this is overwatch: https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/ildfi9/xqc_...

I don't agree. While I played LoL for a while (never competitive level though), it's still not fun to watch any competitive game.

Comparing these games to soccer is impossible. Every champion has unique abilities uncomparable to other champion's. If you have no knowledge about what they are doing (or need to be doing) you are just out of depth.

The games are just too fast and way too specific for casual watchers. This is ok but this kind of gaming will never get even near of soccer in spectator interest.

Edit: typo

hmm i compare it in the sense of how you visually look at it. top down, from usually a birds eye view.

I do agree it might be hard for an extra casual person to watch. Maybe i'll say its soccer for 'cerebrals' who want the best of chess + soccer + rts. They want a juicy 'programming style' logic problem injected into the veins of their esport (i'm thinking 150 champs x (4 abilities + 1 passive), incl % reduction math and item build meta strategies)

yeah i guess some people don't like watching competitive league, but after 10 years or so, its still pulling in massive crowds and is _huge_ in china (ofc tencent owns it though)

Meanwhile, League of Legends has been the most watched game on Twitch consistently for years, only rivaled by the some-odd temporary new release and Fortnite.

It's not that complicated. The champions walk around and shoot spells at each other.

I suppose "competent" encompasses a limitless variety of accomplishments, including both reliable upkeep of a massively popular real-time multiplayer game and creating+maintaining a massively popular competitive game's balance and freshness. I reflexively associate it with technical performance, like John Carmack at iD and Naughty Dog now.

(Well, and back in the day – this writeup of Crash Bandicoot by Naughty Dog's first employee is a classic: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DaveBaggett/20131031/203788/...)

I hate that they release new champions so often.

My incentive to play is climbing the ranked ladder and, like you, I play in bursts separated by months, but each time I start playing again there are like 5 new champions whose abilities I don't know or understand, which keeps me at a disadvantaged position. I don't have time to study all the new champs abilities.

I think their high champion-release rate drives the casual, but competitive-minded players away.

They release like 5 champions a year, most of them in late summer and late fall. Most months there are no new champions.

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