Resolution: Dota 2 is a better game than League of Legends

I would ask the voters to please look at the resolution today and ask yourselves whether my opponent’s argument is really relevant. My contention that the very simple reason he mentions is not relevant to whether Dota 2 is better game or not. Although my opponent is correct that League is (at the moment) the larger of the two, he completely fails to mention why this important to making a better game. Further, bigger doesn’t constitute better surely the advances of games with similar mechanics have led to significant decreases in fan bases. Many reviewers, for example, have concluded that Guild Wars 2 is a much better game than World of Warcraft. Subsequently, World of Warcraft is losing many of its fans (. http://www.pcgamer.com...). While World of Warcraft has much better community (and larger) than Guild Wars 2, the fact remains many (if not all) reviewers and game journalists regard World of Warcraft to be inferior. If we take another way to measure community size than Dota 2 could be leading. According to reports from DFC Intelligence, in terms of hours played, Dota 2 surpassed League of Legends. The report of course doesn’t take into account concurrent players, nevertheless the impact of such a statement shakes my opponent argument that Dota 2 will never get any bigger than League(which seems to be unfounded anyway, and just a bare assertion). Now when we analyze the size of the community versus the quality of the community, it really is a no contest. While League may have a larger community, Dota 2’s is certainly better. This is for three major reasons. The first reason is that we still have many players that have been playing since DoTA 1. This is important because much of the metagame carries over into Dota 2. This also carries over to having who are going to switch once Dota comes out of beta(which worthy of mentioning, since League has been around for a while, while isn’t even out of beta yet). The second reason why Dota 2’s community is better has to do with Valve’s (the company that produced Dota 2) effort to make a quality experience for the community. While League has a similar system (the Tribunal) it is nowhere near as effective. Valve produced said results (. http://www.pcgamer.com...): “Since the ban system has been implemented, there’s been a 35% drop in negative communication interactions. Less than the 1% of the active player base (players who have played Dota 2 in the last month) are currently banned. 60% of players who receive bans go on to modify their behavior and don’t receive further bans. Total reports are down more than 30%, even after accounting for the reduction in the number permitted per week. ” This is an immense accomplishment in a genre known for its toxic community. The idea of purely communications bans has been a new concept invented by Valve that surely will be a part of every MOBA. On a side note, this gives a growth potential for Valve, since on this system, less people are permanent banned from playing and instead may not be able to communicate via in-game chat. This lessens the loss of overall players increasing the player base without hurting other people who play. The last reason why Dota 2’s community is better has to do with Celebrities. Not Celebrities in the traditional movie star sense but really popular gameplay commentaries and analysis that Valve has worked immensely hard to produce. You see, Valve has done their best to allow there game to be shown to nearly everyone and played by nearly everyone. Since the first International people have seen icons, most notably Dendi and Na’Vi, play pro games and really become famous among the Dota 2 universe. Another example might be the fame and ‘legend’ of ZSMJ who is known as the ultimate farmer (he gets gold really fast). Purge, Luminous, Pyrion Flax, SunsFAN, Reaves, and many, many, others are fundamental celebrities in Dota 2 world because they bring something to the community that makes it fundamentally better. Purge brings gameplay commentaries, advanced level anaylsis, and the famous “Welcome to Dota, You Suck” guide in which all most all new players read or glimpse at before diving into the extremely deep world of Dota 2. Whatever they have to offer, they share a singular advantage over League of Legends, and that’s star power. Even if my opponent is correct and Dota 2 is somehow worse because its community is smaller, why should we think this the end all, be all for game superiority. Surely from my arguments in round two we can conclude that Dota 2 is a much better game. A note on my arguments for Round two As of yet my opponent has dropped my arguments from Round two. However, he could be waiting until Round three to respond since he laid out he primary case in the second round. However, if he fails to respond to them please count this as a drop and award the argument points to me. A Comment on Sources While I don’t think Sources are completely relevant in this debate, it is important to note most of opponent sources are unnecessary. For example, there is no reason to link to the Wikipedia article on GO, as it has little relevance on this debate.