Introduction
In the realm of competitive gaming, MOBAs are one of the biggest genres around, games in this genre are massive and attract a great deal of competition, leading the pack is League of Legends with a massive player base all over the world that play every day.
But one question is commonly asked these days: Is League a Hard Game? Or is it just as hard as any other MOBA? In this article, we’ll explore the factors that contribute to the difficulty of MOBAs, compare League of Legends to other prominent titles, and determine if it truly takes the crown as the most challenging MOBA.
The Anatomy of a MOBA
Before delving deep into the comparative difficult of each MOBA we should first take a look at what this genre does and what are some of the common difficulties players face no matter the game, as in genre-wide factors.
MOBAs are typically played in teams of either 3v3 or 5v5 but there are other configurations available too. Players face off and attempt to destroy or occupy the enemy’s territory or base.
The basic gameplay consists of players acquiring resources like: experience points to level up their character to become stronger and money to buy items inside the match and strengthen their position. These are not the only resources available but they are the most basic. In some games there are even more things to keep track of, for example in LOL there is a dragon that gives different rewards to whoever team defeats him, in Dota 2 there might be outposts that provide healing and teleporting options to whichever teams controls it and so on.
There are some common factors that contribute to a MOBAs difficulty:
Complexity
Unlike other games MOBAs have a big roster of different characters and items to choose from (more than 100 most of the time). This means that there are many different character/item combinations (they are commonly known as “builds”) in the game.
New players might feel overwhelmed at first having to learn what every character does while also not knowing which items to buy. Most of the time people recommend you start playing with someone more experienced to introduce you to the game.
Teamwork
Success in MOBAs depends on team performance just as much as individual performance. Even the most skilled player in the world will find it difficult to win a match if even just one of his teammates is not playing to win. In this genre you’ll need to strategize, adapt, and work together to achieve victory, making these games inherently more challenging than many single-player games.
With this understanding of what commonly makes every single MOBA hard, let’s assess how League of Legends compares to other popular MOBAs at the moment.
Why is League of Legends Hard
Let’s take a look at what makes League of Legends hard, what do most new players struggle with and so on.
League of Legends was released by Riot Games in 2009, as such it’s one of the oldest MOBAs in the world. Riot games has continually developed the game since launch and from a starting roster of just 40 champions the game has expanded to have more than 160 champions with a grand total of 163 as of today.
This insane number of available characters means that the game is now about 4 times as complex as it was back in 2009. With way more different champions to learn and a very experienced player base that has played the game for more than a decade at this point.
New players can expect to lose most matches at first until they get carried and it’s going to take between 30 to 100 hours to become “competent” enough to play with more experienced friends without it feeling like a chore for their allies.
One thing that is specific to League is how almost every skill now is a skillshot, other games might have targeted spells but League has all but abandoned that concept a long time ago, and these are harder to hit on average.
Why is League of Legends Not That Hard
It’s not all bad though, while the game is definitely hard to get into, there are some things that make League of Legends easier than some other games.
Because the game has been out for so long, there are plenty of guides that while out of date, still provide a lot of useful information that is still somewhat useful. Additionally, the big community around the game means that there are always videos, blogs and guides with information all over the internet thanks to the games vibrant community.
Another thing that makes League of Legends simpler, is the fact that it doesn’t accurately follow some of the older and more archaic traditions and mechanics that Defense of the Ancients had to work around because the game was based in Warcraft 3 like creep denies, pulling, jungling difficulty and so on.
Finally, League isn’t as hard as DOTA for the simple reason that the game was designed with the idea of streamlining some of the ideas that were first introduced in DOTA. Riot Games sought to create a more accessible game that was more about skill than just complexity, it worked and here we are with League of Legends being the top MOBA in the world.
What about: DOTA 2
DOTA 2 was officially released in 2014 but the game is based on DOTA 1 which is the grandfather of MOBAs. This means that DOTA2 is objectively harder, the inclusion of mechanics like creep denying, turn rates and high ground mechanics make DOTA2 much more complex than even League.
On the other hand, it’s not like these mechanics make it so difficult that a player that switches from one game to the other will find it that much different. If you are good at one game you have a great chance to be good at the other one it will just take some time to adapt.
One thing I want to end this section on, think about sports when comparing games like these. Someone who is good at basketball will not necessarily be good at baseball. They require different skill sets and reward people with different kind of body types, the same happens in these games.
Someone might be an expert player who has incredible twitch reflexes, in that case League of Legends is probably going to be easier for them seeing as it relies more on faster skillshots than strategic complexity.
What About: SMITE
Smite is an interesting game, it’s a MOBA but it’s played in a third-person perspective. This simple change completely changes the entire feel of the game and makes it much harder for people who have not played any third-person action games in the past.
In general, SMITE will appeal to players who want to mix the traditional MOBA gameplay loop with that of third-person action games. So, it’s going to feel harder for people who never played those kinds of games in the past.
Besides the camera, SMITE generally follows the standard MOBA formula and as such has all the difficulties included in that (teamwork and complexity).
But there is one thing that is different about this game. And it’s that Hi-Rez is a way smaller studio than Valve or Riot. This means: less servers (higher ping for some people), less online resources to learn, and a much smaller population to play with (you will be matched with stronger opponents because there are less weaker players to start out with).
Which MOBA is the hardest
Putting it in simple terms and only including these three games, it goes like this:
DOTA2 > LOL > SMITE
But it also depends on the person playing the game, if they previously played RPGs, RTSs, third-person action games and so on, then their experience will be way different to that of someone that is going in completely blind.
Conclusion
We already gave a definite answer in the previous section about which game we think is harder, but that is only a general assessment of how easy or hard it is to just “play” that game.
What I mean with “play” is that, when people ask a question like “Is League a hard game?” this they usually mean something closer to: “How much time does it take to become average at this game?”
In my humble opinion, the differences are really small. So, for example: while it might take you 40 hours to play ok enough to enjoy a match with a friend in League of Legends versus 60 in DOTA2 that difference means nothing in the grand scheme of things.
I say this because at the end of the day most players who play MOBAs, even casual players will on average play between 250 and 5000 hours in total, so a difference of 20 hours is nothing!
My reccomendation to every player is that they try their best and find someone to teach them the ropes of the game.