You mentioned that you play competitive fighting games sometimes. Well in those fighting games, does the better player not usually win? If one player is ahead in a match (say by 50% of the healthbar), doesn't he have a huge advantage? Why shouldn't he have a huge advantage, he earned that lead. Sure, there may be small mechanics like a bigger "super" bar for the losing player, but ultimately, the player which has a large lead in health is going to have the advantage. Playing from behind is always going to be more difficult, but in the end, the better player typically wins right?
Actually I think this bit kinda helps explain the point I was trying to make.
In a fighting game, the player who has 50% more healthbar..... actually is NOT at a fundamental advantage (and I say this as someone who has played the genre utterly to death and is at a very high level... some other players may disagree with me on this "advantage" bit, but I've decided I'm correct, therefore I am, of course). They're closer to the goal, but that's it. No increased attack power, no special something that they've magically gained the ability to use by going further than the other guy, nothing. The currently-losing player doesnt need to do anything extra to harm their opponent and bring them down. And that's the big problem that I tend to see in Dota and in mobas as a whole: When you're ahead in one of those, you DO have not just a "closer to the goal" situation, but also a "definitely more powerful than the other guy" situation. And that's a HUGE difference. And Dota's problem, as I see it, is that it pushes this idea a bit too far. The "power gulf" expands further and further as one team gets closer and closer to the goal. And the lack of skillshots in the game actually hurts this quite alot, now that I think about it. You cant just go into a fight against a stronger opponent and kick some major ass by awesomely dodging all this oncoming stuff to make a dramatic attack of your own.... because you cant dodge any of it to start with. If you're in range of the enemy's attack, and they fire, well, for most of the spells in the game.... you WILL get hit. It's either that or waste a BKB charge or something (and as you know, there's plenty of attacks that go through that..... is it me, or is "magic immunity" kinda not the right term sometimes in that? Though it might be a tad OP if it blocked literally everything...). I think that's one of the things that gets me about Dota VS the other mobas; I do like being able to dodge things, and defend by reaction, and have to deal with aiming and such. Granted, Dota's focus on positioning is interesting in it's own way, but still.
As for the bit about supports in LoL being a joke, THAT one I dont believe. This being because I tend to focus on a supportive role in any of these games, as my extremely-reactive playstyle fits well to a defensive role. Honestly, if someone is playing that role and not being effective.... they probably arent very good at it, and should be doing a different role. Even I can change the direction a teamfight is going in that game, and I'm not exactly a high-level player.... but I generally DO know what to do with whatever spells I have as the character I'm playing, and I'm capable of actually hitting with them and knowing when to use them (as well as building equipment properly to make sure that when they hit, they'll DO something).
Smite is kinda the exception to that one for me.... something about the different viewpoint/controls knocks me out of that defensive mindset, and back into my usual hyper-aggressive style that I use in every other genre ever, like the fighting games. Granted, this can be a bit of an issue at times, since "randomly go totally berserk" is my usual way of doing things in most games, but when it works it's satisfying.... I think it's the WASD controls that end up getting me to do it, in that game. I'm fine with mouse controls but I wish these games would do things differently more often.
There's more to say overall but I'm still not entirely awake here.... feh.
Feel free to add me as well, for Smite. I am Enchu on there. Ah, I aint been on in ages though.... I really should fire that up later tonight and start getting used to all the changes.
