League of Legends Veteran sOAZ Explains Why He Enjoys Dota 2 More Than LoL

In a recent conversation with H2k Founder and former CEO, Richard Wells, League of Legends (LoL) veteran Paul "sOAZ" Boyer said that Dota 2 is more fun than LoL. SOAZ spoke about how he had played a lot of Dota 2 before switching to LoL. He further added that Dota 2 had a lot more creative freedom when it came to playing style, which made it a lot more enjoyable. He discussed how additional elements of Dota 2 such as fog of war, making crazy moves, and getting punished harshly for mistakes, contribute to the game's appeal.

SOAZ emphasizes Dota 2's creativeness as a primary reason for it being more fun than LoL

As part of his conversation with Wells on the Desert Islands Games' series on YouTube, sOAZ recalled the time when he had first played Dota 2 and LoL. SOAZ played both MOBA games extensively, so Wells asked him to separate LoL's successes for a bit and tell him if he enjoyed one game more than the other. In regards to various Dota 2 features not present in LoL, SOAZ believed the former was more enjoyable to play.

“I think there’s a lot more, I would say, crazy things that happen in Dota so there are a lot of fun moments in Dota. Joking with tangos or things like that, the fog of war in Dota, doing crazy moves. There’s a lot more action in Dota. So I guess it depends on the meta.

I have not been following the last few years in Dota but back then, I would say that as purely off playing, I think at the top Dota is probably more fun. League is a lot more team play based. Not that Dota is not, it is super high in team play as well but I think there’s a lot more room for error in Dota.”

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“You can be more creative in Dota. That’s probably the most fun thing in Dota compared to League. You can be a lot more creative in Dota in your style of playing the game,” he added.

In his younger years, sOAZ played a lot of Dota 2, and also participated in a local French league. When LoL came out and its ranking system was implemented, he gradually stopped playing Dota 2 and devoted more time to the game.

Transitioning over from Dota 2 to LoL was easy for sOAZ back then, since there weren't many aspects that exist now. However, sOAZ believes it will be a lot harder for a Dota 2 player to move to LoL today.

“The transition was super easy back then. There weren’t as many champions, things like that. Right now, if you are playing Dota and you are translating to League, it’s a lot harder because League got a lot more complex because there have been more than 10 years of League of Legends so it’s obviously a lot harder,” he added.

SOAZ believes that it is easier to adapt in the early stage of a game transition when the new game is of a similar genre to the one a player is already playing (LoL arrived when he was already playing Dota in his case). Using CS:GO and Valorant as an additional example, he said that 10 years from now, as Valorant evolves, it will be difficult for players to easily transition from CS:GO to Valorant.

SOAZ, in the latter stages of his 10-year long LoL career, currently plays for Waves Esports. He is best known for his stints with Fnatic and Origen.