I believe that everyone knows the most popular modification for Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne – Defense of the Ancents, otherwise called Dota. Paths are still produced to her, her own community of fans has already formed around it. There are many people who put Warcraft 3 only to play Dota. Naturally, the developers, looking at the success of a free fashion, wanted to make their analogue, hoping for solid profits. Gas Powered Games with a beautiful and stylish, but not particularly playable demigod, and S2 Games with Heroes of Newerth, which actually actually the good old “dot” on a modern engine and demanding to pay $ 30 in order to be able to play. The Riot Games studio did not stand aside, which released its “heir to the“ Dota ”” – League of Legends: Clash of Fates. Unlike Demigod and, on the contrary, too similar to Dota Heroes of Newerth, the League of Legends, tried to make a golden mean between both approaches, adding a lot of their own, but leaving the features familiar to the fans. What happened in the end?
League of outstanding gentlemen
The first thing that catches the eye when starting League of Legends is stylistics. Bright, sometimes cartoony, sparkling with rich colors. This style is withstanding in everything – in the design of the menu, in character models, in the landscape of cards and so on. A cheerful, colorful, slightly grotesque style very successfully fit into the gaming process, allowing you to create outwardly radically different heroes, whose abilities not even a newcomer to the eye will confuse. This is important, because in Dota or Hon, even their own people sometimes distinguished it from strangers because of similar silhouettes and multi-colored AURs, concealing details.
As in Dota, the players manage not by any of anyone, but by real super -heroes, legendary personalities – in fact, that’s why the game was named. Each of the characters has its own background, personality and reasons to take part in the tournament. A hero, and a first-priest, and a hired killer, and a couple of pirates and a ninja, and suspiciously reminiscent of a protoss from Starcraft, a guest from a void, and a crazy scientist, and even lichs suspiciously, were closed here. Their biographies are simply interesting to read, because in this way the developers introduced into the game something like a plot unfolding around the struggle between cities-states, which most heroes represent. Yes, and they are written interestingly, with a good share of humor.
The personality of the callingman
The first serious difference from the Oril Dota lies in wait for us as soon as we open the player statistics window. The developers decided to introduce additional elements of the role system into League of Legends, giving us the opportunity to develop not only their heroes, but also our virtual alter ego. For each battle won or not, we get the experience and influence points (Influence Points).
I will talk about https://dream-jackpot-casino.co.uk/ the glasses of influence a little later, but for now we’ll figure out why the experience is needed. After setting a certain amount of experience, our virtual alter ego (in the game it is called summoner-“calling”-implying that we call our hero on the battlefield and command them) gets a new level, opening new spells (Summoner Spells), runes for runes and skills (Masteries). Before the battle, the player can choose two Summoner spells, in addition to the default heroes available to his hero. These spells do not require mana for their pronunciation, but recharge for a very long time. However, they give very interesting opportunities – teleportation to a friendly tower or a fighter, the imposition of a slow -down and blinding enemy of the curse, an instant jump in the forward space, about a third of the screen, a sharp acceleration and the like.
Bought runes, essences, and so on – objects that directly strengthen any of our hero, give him a bonus to the amount of health, the chance of a critical blow, speed of movement, and so on can be inserted into open slots. Even the most expensive runes give a very small plus, but they can be inserted a few ..
Masteries are a Seba tree of skills, which, like runes, have a direct effect on our heroes, accelerating the reload of spells, allowing to get money from the air over time and the like directly from the air and the like. In fact, Masteries are very similar to runes in action, differing only by a few unique effects and the fact that they do not need to buy them – each new level gives one point that can be distributed according to its understanding. And the entire level in the game thirty.
As a result, the players got the opportunity, changing the combinations of runes, skills and spells, additionally strengthen their heroes in accordance with the chosen tactics.
Immortal tournament
The second serious difference from Dota we see as soon as we start the game. We are given nine heroes out of more than sixty – and that’s all. It’s all about the spread of the game. It is free, but the developers still need to earn money for something-and therefore, every week, players are given to freely choose from only nine randomly named heroes.
If you want to play with someone specific, without looking back at the list of available champions, that is, two ways. It is necessary or to invest real money in the game by buying the so-called Riot Points (riot glasses), and already purchase a character you like in the game store, or play a dozen or two games and accumulate a sufficient amount of Influence Points (influence points), for which you can also make purchases in a gaming store. As you can see, everything is honest – either pay money and buy now, or save and buy a little later. Even on the most dear hero, you can accumulate a not too intense game in two or three days, and the cheapest generally become available after a couple of successful battles. Moreover, other purchases in the game store are made on the same system – in particular, runes are purchased. And only non -standard skins for characters are sold exclusively for Riot Points – without putting money in the game, you cannot buy them. But they are not critical for the gameplay, although among them there are really gorgeous look.
The features of the hero’s selection explain that both teams may be the same character. In general, the gameplay from the ideological ancestor is not very different – there are also two databases on the map, from which small monsters go along the roads. On the roads there are towers that are painfully shooting, but do not have too much health and therefore demolish much faster than in Dota. There are shops on the bases in which the heroes for honestly earned by their and alien blood gold buy artifacts for themselves, sharply strengthening them. True, there were no interesting innovations here.
So, bushes grow on the roads and in the forests in some places. Any hero who entered them becomes invisible to the enemy team, so you can arrange effective ambushes on careless opponents. The “Deny” mechanism (from the word Deny is “prohibition”, “cancellation”), who allowed the players to kill allied monsters, not allowing the enemies to receive experience and money for them, who was gently beloved by others. The dead heroes now do not lose gold, but for the murder of the player, very impressive amounts are given both the killer himself and everyone who helped him. The range of spells and the area of their defeat are now shown to the player in the form of circles on the ground. Among the neutral monsters living in the forests, peculiar bosses appeared, which killed which a temporary blessing receives, sharply strengthening it. In general, the game makes much smaller requirements for the player’s ability to quickly pull the mouse and press on buttons than Dota, compensating for this increased role of the team game, monitoring the situation on the map and the correct choice of the hero development strategy.
And the last innovation that is worth mentioning concerns the abilities of the heroes directly. In the same DOTA, magicians, which inflicted serious damage with their spells at the beginning and middle of the game, closer to the end, lost their relevance, giving way to those heroes who cause the main damage by automatic attacks, because the auto -enemy intensified by artifacts and characteristics, and the spells did not. At League of Legends, the developers took pursuance over magicians and introduced a new parameter – Ability Power (“Strength of abilities”), which directly affects the damage caused by spells. Thanks to this, now in the late game, heroes are able to inflict tangible harm with their spells.
Summing up, we can say: before us – not dota. Before us is the development of her ideas, a beautiful and fascinating game that should like the original fans and those who have never launched the most famous mod for Warcraft 3. Well, the democratic payment system shows that the developers think not only about their own wallet, but also about the players. For which they are low.