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this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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I've tried to watch some game play from tournaments to understand why it's so popular and I genuinely cannot understand the appeal.
These kinds of MOBA are largely inscrutable to people who haven't played them for a while. Like 10 years ago or more the Dota 2 International had a "beginner friendly stream" where they explained everything and it managed to get some friends into the game, but it was a rarity.
I'd like to see something like that. I want to at least have some sort of idea what's going on just because it's such a big cultural thing a lot of people are into. Whenever I watch from my perspective nothing interesting will have happened and the crowd will go fucking wild and the commentators are using so much jargon they might as well be speaking Klingon.
I also know that when someone asks if you're a top or a bottom it's funny to say "jungle" and I would like to understand why.
I already understood the sex part, but you lost me immediately with lanes and the only ADC I know of is an analog to digital converter.
The main level League of Legends is played on is called "Summoner's Rift" and it's based on the original WarCraft 3 map, Defense of the Ancients: All Stars, and StarCraft map, Age of Strife. The map is divided into three main paths, called "lanes," where troops ("minions") automatically spawn and travel down.
Each lane is guarded by a series of powerful towers that shoot magic missiles at enemies ("turrets"), leading back to each teams' base where troops are made. At the very back is a Nexus, guarded by even more towers. The goal of the game is to destroy the other team's Nexus. Players each control a champion, a unit that acts independently of the automatic minions. Champions are much stronger than minions, but start the game much weaker than turrets. As champions defeat other champions and kill minions, they level up and get gold to buy magic items with. Eventually, champions become strong enough they can overpower turrets and push into the enemy base to attack the Nexus. It's important to have champions from your team to guard each lane, otherwise enemy champions will overwhelm your team's turrets.
Between each lane is a large wooded area, referred to as "the jungle." On the WarCraft 3 map, it was a literal jungle, so the term stuck around. This wooded area is filled with neutral monsters players can slay for gold and experience. Champions moving between lanes to defend often have to go through these areas, leaving them open to getting ambushed by a player whose job it is to patrol and explore the jungle, called a "jungler." Dividing the two halves of the map is a river with large monsters worth lots of gold which junglers often fight over.
Back to "top, mid, bot." This refers to the three paths minions travel. One player guards the middle lane and has to play a champion capable of protecting themselves while able to travel between lanes or hop into the jungle. This is generally a wizard with large area of effect attacks that can wipe out minions waves easily.
In the bottom lane are two champions: an "attack damage carry" and a support. ADCs are ranged champions that deal damage through automatic attacks and don't need any resources to do so. They are vital to making the final push on the Nexus late-game because often a team will be weak after wiping out the other, so ADCs help bring down turrets through auto-attacks. To stop the ADC from being the dumbfuck "I'm the main character" people that they are is a support champion. These are usually healers or "tanks" that act as bodyguards for the ADC. ADCs are especially prone to getting killed by junglers and mid laners who come to the bottom lane for ambushes.
The reason mid and bottom are always set up like this is because a neutral dragon spawns in the river early in the game junglers will fight over. Both lanes often assist their jungler because the other team is doing the same thing. Slaying the dragon early can provide enough gold to snowball the rest of the game. So in addition to protecting their turrets, they're also protecting that section of the river.
Lastly, this leaves top lane. Top lane is the loneliest lane because most of the action happens at the bottom. Top laners spend most of the game on their own, so they need to be able to win duels. This also means they're easily attacked by junglers, since their isolation can make for easy kills. They have their own jungler and mid laner to help, but top laners need to be able to escape easily or fend off multiple attackers until help arrives. Thus, top is usually filled by strong fighter/brawler champions or designated duelists.
Of course, all of this goes out the window on the Howling Abyss, a level with only one lane and no jungle. Just ten peopled crammed into a tiny ass space throwing snowballs at each other.
Dragons dont give gold since a long time, now they give minor permanent buffs and when you get 4 of them you get a powerful permanent buff, the buff from a single dragon doesnt snowball the game
Ah. I only play ARAM so my knowledge is out of date.
Thank you. That makes way more sense than any time I've attempted to understand what's going on by watching. Can you build more towers or are they just there until they're gone?
Once they're gone, they're gone for good. You also can't attack a tower until the one closer to the enemy has been destroyed. That's why it's important to protect them, because they prevent minions from moving forward onto the Nexus.
they're like starcraft with no macro or build orders and you have teammates to blame for losing instead of having to hold the L yourself
I like the cat champion cause you can't be targeted as long as the person you attach yourself to doesn't die, and then you just get to harass your enemies with magic missles. Also you're a magical cat.
Totally normal, tournament games are actually trash to spectate because the game is ultimately very poorly designed so coordinated professional play is extremely tedious
If you want to get the appeal find a high rank streamer you can vibe with and watch them play solo ranked. The game's addictiveness is about the solo ranked experience
I find watching tournaments much more entertaining than playing or watching competitive games. The way the camera works, with the minimap always visible, lets you see a play before it happens. Sometimes I wish team sports had minimaps.
Talking about League or games in general? I agree for most games, for example Dota is very entertaining in tournaments. But League specifically has an extremely stale meta in terms of overall strategy, and when fights finally happen, they are just too fast to understand anything
I was talking about League. The stale meta is annoying true, season 30 with 50000 champions and we see the same 20 champions every meta every game. I can't remember a season when Azir/Ryze/Ezreal were not picked during a tournament. But I find the fights easy to understand and when things happen too fast, they show a slowed-down replay.
I don't know how that compares with Dota but you kind need to know what's the champions does to watch the tournaments, first time watching a Naafiri I couldn't understand shit, needed to read their abilities.
Same for Dota, but I've played both so in my case it's not really about knowledge. In Dota abilities have a bigger cooldown, often more wind-up, stuns are longer, the map is larger and abilities have more range which makes everything a lot more readable in my experience
And strategically it's day and night you have crazy tower dives 5 minutes in with 6 heroes, pros play ultra aggressively and every move is a clutch, it can be absolute cinema
I like that old champs can stay viable to be honest. And they're usually sprinkled in with new ones as well.
Changing of the meta is also why I like that lane switching became a thing. People complained that it made the landing phase more pointless, but I thought it added strategy and changed things up.
The last time that I remember a big strategy change was like S3-S4 when the pro teams was using a strategy with Nasus jungle with a jungle item that do burn damage in minions so they use it in a 2 x 1 lane to push as fast as possible and destroy the turret to snowball the game.
Recently, and I mean relatively so like 1-3 seasons ago, there was a weird Nasus tank mid meta. Not sure how that happened lol.
These type of meta are cool but doesn't change much of how the game is played. Lane phase farming and trading blows until around 15min, mid game rotations to objectives and controlling the vision on the map, late game controlling the baron and big team fights.
The old Nasus jungle actually changed things, first and second tower under 10min, almost nullifying the lane phase of the game.
Don't sweat it. The entire genre is complete trash from a spectating perspective. You pretty much have to play the game in order to understand what's going on. And even then, it's still pretty boring compared to something like fighting games. Too much downtime combined with point-of-no-returns. A classic example is one team with a team composition that is good early game vs another team with a team comp that is good late game. The entire match is basically over 15 minutes depending on whether the early team comp can capitalize during that time, but the actual match ends in like 40 minutes, so it's 25 minutes of pointless spectacle. The RTS equivalent is someone trying to cheese/rush, but those usually fail 5 minutes in and the player who failed to pull off the cheese/rush usually just surrenders instead of dragging out the match.