When comparing Realm of the Mad God vs Dota 2, the Slant community recommends Realm of the Mad God for most people. In the question“What are the best free games for macOS?” Realm of the Mad God is ranked 3rd while Dota 2 is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Realm of the Mad God is:
With a spell and a weapon equipped you aim and shoot at enemies and dodge their incoming projectiles. Sounds simple, but it is not when you have over 100 different missiles coming at you. This is the essence of Realm of the Mad God (RotMG). You are supposed to evade enemy attacks and strike back yourself to countless numbers of enemies. Just as when you feel that you have beaten the last enemy, another one starts firing at you. All of this comes varied as different enemies, have different attack patterns, projectile speeds and intricacies to them.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Fast-paced combat
With a spell and a weapon equipped you aim and shoot at enemies and dodge their incoming projectiles. Sounds simple, but it is not when you have over 100 different missiles coming at you.
This is the essence of Realm of the Mad God (RotMG). You are supposed to evade enemy attacks and strike back yourself to countless numbers of enemies. Just as when you feel that you have beaten the last enemy, another one starts firing at you. All of this comes varied as different enemies, have different attack patterns, projectile speeds and intricacies to them.
Pro Easy to learn, hard to master
The game is built with 8-bit retro style in mind. Such design choices made the game feel and look simplistic, and not overwhelming right from the start.
The game is simple to pick up with a helpful tutorial aiding you at the beginning of the game. A few minutes in you will find yourself accustomed to controls, interface and the abilities of your character.
If you play for a while, you will encounter more dangerous enemies that will force you to flee and to face them once again until you are able to fight against them properly.
Pro Huge fights
Realm of the Mad God features massive fights that occur between players and Oryx's minions. Some of the most exciting and terrifying enemies are not beatable alone and it requires co-operation between the players. As a result, you will see yourself teaming up with other 85+ strangers and trying to beat the boss.
Pro Permadeath
Permadeath is what adds spice to this game that makes it what it is. If you die, you lose your beloved character and all the items you had with you. You start over again.
This is what draws you in to play more as you want to get back where you were.
Pro Variety
The game offers multiple settings, hundreds of different items and monsters. Over a dozen of different classes with different powers, abilities, perks and playstyles are available to try out.
Pro Fair free-to-play business model
Microtransactions involve only cosmetic items such as custom weapon designs or clothing colors and tickets to view live events.
Pro Start with all heroes
You don't need to unlock or purchase characters.
Pro Incredibly deep gameplay
For players who put the time into Dota 2 to get past the early beginner phase, Dota 2 can become an extremely satisfying game. There's a reason it's one of the most popular eSports titles in the world. The amount of strategy, skill, and variables involved make it a very deep game where anything could happen.
Pro A very diverse MOBA
This game has a steep learning curve, but it's well worth it. The games that came after Dota like League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, Smite, and other lookalikes don't even compare to the complexity of Dota 2.
Every hero is unique and valuable in one team composition or another. The amount of versatility of each hero is amazing as well. The mechanics by far destroy any other Dota style game (MOBA) and that's what makes this game top tier in its genre. This game is the highest grossing eSport game in the world and will probably continue to be for a long time.
Pro It's very well-balanced
Gameplay is balanced in the sense that while other MOBAs would have only around 30-60 viable picks for the competitive scene, Dota 2 has heroes and strategies in the game that are more varied, which enables more heroes to be picked in the competitive scene.
Number of Heroes Picked in Dota 2's Recent Major Tournament in the past 4 months (as of July 2016) is 86/111 heroes picked and 100 out of 111 heroes picked.
To compare between Dota 2 and LoL pick diversity, LoL has 64 out of 131 champions picked for LCS.
There are also factors such as the ban/pick phase difference and the more rigid positions in LoL that may limit the viability for different playstyles and hero picks (typically it is 2 (AD, Support Bot) -1 (AP mid) -1 (Tank Off) - 1 (Jungler), with a possibility of double junglers in LoL).
On the other hand in Dota 2, there are a lot more different positions compared to Lol/Smite such as Duo Mid (1-2-2), Traditional (2-1-2), One Jungler (1-2-1-1, most similar to league), One Roamer (1-2-1-1 as well with the difference being the hero roams the map for kills to create space for the mid and safelane rather than farm the jungle which can weaken a lane), Duo Roamer (1-1-1-2, all lanes are weaker in lane presence with the tradeoff being they get solo experience with two aggressive supports roaming), Trilane (1-1-3, Aggressive or Passive Trilane) and Abandoned Offlane (0-1-3-1 where the offlane is completely left empty due to a strong duo or trilane on the opposing team).
More heroes are viable and balanced in Dota 2 partly due to the greater flexibility in laning. This can be attributed the mechanics such as creep pulling and creep stacking which allows the team doing trilane to make up for the shared experience between three heroes. Besides that, the existence of teleport scrolls that allow you to defend your towers or punish a tower dive also allows you to react and assist other lanes.
In pub games, any hero/lane/lineup can work, and it is more about your individual mechanical skills (understanding of hero, combo execution, map awareness, last hitting, timings, item builds, flow) over the lack of coordination and teamwork (on both teams).
Pro Has user-created custom games
Dota 2 includes Workshop Tools that allow users to create custom games as well as other play them.
Pro Moba-leading graphics
When compared to other leading MOBAs, Dota2 has some of the best graphics to be found.
Pro In-game mic
Has in-game mic so you can get toxic with voice chat.
Pro Cross-platform
Available on Windows, OS X, and Linux.
Pro Very active professional scene
Dota 2 has one of the most active professional scenes in eSports today. If it's not the most active, it's certainly got the largest prize pools, coming in at over $20 million in 2016.
Pro Players can trade self-made cosmetic items
The game includes a system for players to create, buy, and sell cosmetic items.
Pro Dota 2 has the world's biggest e-sports tournament
At The International 7 in summer 2017, players raised the prize pool to more than $23 million, one of the largest prize pools in sSports history.
Pro Can be played online and offline
However, you will need to be logged in to Steam either way.
Pro Good for brain
Trains brain hard.
Pro Regularly updated
Dota 2 is regularly patched and changed with new characters being introduced and balance changes made. This can prevent the game from becoming too stale as the tactics utilized by players changes often.
Cons
Con Pay-2-Win
The game uses "Coins" as a currency to purchase both cosmetic and fundamental items to the gameplay. Coins cannot be earned and are only obtained through real-world money. Although you can grind your way to all of the items without paying, it will be harder and will take longer than paying a few bucks for one of the best items in the game.
This can be felt when you have to pay to not run out of vault space (permanent storage for your items) or have another character slot without sacrificing your initial character. Moreover, in the Nexus (game's town safe area) you can buy one of the strongest items in the game.
A prime example of this would be maximizing pet skills which help you in combat. It takes months taking skills to the maximum level, if you are not willing to spend any money. On the other hand, if you pay a significant amount of money, it will take you less than a day.
Con Sometimes lags
There are various issues that can cause lag within the game. For some tips in dealing with it you can read here.
Con Glitches back to the main screen
During massive brawls, where there are a lot of enemies and other players, the game starts lagging and glitching. Worst case scenario, the players are sent back to the login screens.
Con Repetitive
In order to take your character's skills to the highest levels or obtain strongest items in the game, it will require grinding. Grinding means doing the same thing over and over again to gain something of value. This is where repetition comes in.
Usually, this is felt when players are trying to make their characters strong enough to compete with end-game content (strongest bosses). This requires maximizing the skills and obtaining items which sometimes could take a while. For instance, the chances of getting one of the strongest bows in the game "Doom Bow" is 1%.
Con It's got a huge learning curve
Dota 2 has 111 heroes, all of which are unique from each other. It will take time and effort to learn which heroes you like to play, and become skilled with them.
Con Rude, toxic community
Many players feel free to flame and insult, especially in the lower ranks and from non-English speaking countries.
Con You can be put into a low priority mode for being bad at the game
Con Matches are too long
The game is great but even just a single match can take a lot of time. And when you get to mid game and realize you already lost, you have no option but to keep dying and literally wait for the game to end.
Con Zero merit goes to good players
If you score, say, a 20 kills 0 deaths but your team loses because 4 people are noobs, you lose -26 personal rank.
Con Miserable community
Takes 100s of hours not to suck, and even then, you're still not going to be good.
Con No SURRENDER option
As ridiculous as it may sound, you are a slave, once you start a game.
You may suffer, you may cry, but you can't concede.
Very much influences an overall toxic atmosphere of game.
Con It's a slow and repetitive game
This might be the most repetitive MOBA game.
Con The controls are terrible
It feels more like SC as a MOBA than an actual MOBA.
Con Waste of time
Con It has voice chat
It boosts rage and toxicity so much it has to be removed.
Con Valve doesn't care about their players
No surrender option and bad teamate can influence your personal mmr even if you perform good. Plus the company seems way too big and the services start to lack and suffer.
Con You love and hate the game
While infuriating at times the addictiveness of the game keeps the players coming back.