When comparing League of Legends vs Overwatch, the Slant community recommends Overwatch for most people. In the question“What are the best LAN party PC games?” Overwatch is ranked 86th while League of Legends is ranked 99th. The most important reason people chose Overwatch is:
Every gameplay mechanic is well though out and predictable making it great for competitive play. The game also features a competitive game mode that works great.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Free to play
It's free to play without being pay to win.
Pro Frequently updated
LoL has frequent patches pushed to the game client. However, with every patch new bugs appear.
Pro The world's biggest e-sports title
League of Legends is the worlds top e-sport title. It raises e-sports to a completely new level, making it real sport, no compromise.
It's funny that people still think of "biggest e-sports" as of "highest prize pool", playing other games, they are accustomed that there is nothing except Worlds championship and another couple of big events. On the contrary. League of Legends is a constant big event. Although it's not the first in highest prize pool on Worlds, its e-sports competition is not limited by rare championships here and there. That's why it is the biggest.
Since 2010, there have been several professional leagues, with four major: LEC (Europe), LCS (N. America), LCK (S. Korea), LPL (China) and more than 10 "not major" in Russia, Turkey, Latin America North, Latin America South, Brazil, Vietnam, South-East Asia, Australia and Oceania, Japan, Taiwan and more.
It has big "physical" infrastructure, studios and "stadiums" (usually one per region, but they have more than one in S. Korea and China) are built to take regular championship events. Each region has large "TV"-teams, a large number of analysts and casters. Major regions have more than one caster teams, one of which is English-speaking. Overall, several days a week they produce about 6 hours of an expensive TV show.
They have two seasons a year (splits). In each, 10 teams are competing. Each team plays 2-3 games each week, so the total number of games is around 10-15 a week.
Teams have large infrastructure. Each has several coaches (strategic, analyst, etc.), sports psychologists, cooks, etc.
In major and some other regions, each organization has 10 or more players, who also play in challenger league (as the second team) and/or are raised to play in the main team somewhen and/or for substitutions in the main team.
So, LoL is a real sport and the biggest of e-sports ever.
Pro The most popular MOBA by a huge margin
More than 27 million players log in each day to play the game and more than 67 million players log in to play each month. It has peaked at 7.5 million concurrent players.
Pro Largest diversity of champions with unique play styles
Having 144 champions League of Legends ought to offer the greatest diversity, and it delivers.
Many champions have long combos that need precision in positioning and timings on par with fighting games, while others can be effective without combos at all.
Also, many champions feel really unique (not necessarily complicated) in play style, unseen in other MOBAs.
Pro New Champion every 3 - 4 months
It may sound not much (and it was much more frequent), if you don't realize there are ~150 champions already.
Pro Constant champion reworks and visual updates
They are updating champions that have "outdated" gameplay/visuals on a regular basis. And usually, they hit bull's eye, giving those champions new life and making them feel "right" to the player (there are much more praises than complaints from the community).
Pro League of Legends Championship Series
League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) is a weekly 10-team league.
Pro 14 free champions in weekly rotations
Pro Offers free skins
Pro 3 different maps
There are three different maps that users can play on, which offers a bit of a change up of play and familiarity as well as allows for the player to not get burnt out on a singular stage played over and over again.
Also, there are game modes with new experimental maps.
Pro Balanced game - requires skills
The game is quite balanced and second its skill(requires) dependent.
Pro Fun mode every weekend! New fun mode every second weekend
There are a number of fun modes that are switched on Friday evening and switched off Monday evening, rotating every two weeks.
This include always highly awaited URF (Ultra Rapid Fire), AR URF (all-random URF), Nexus Siege, Hunt of the Blood Moon, Legend of the Poro King, Doom Bots of Doom, Hexakill, Ascension etc.
Pro Competitive game
Every gameplay mechanic is well though out and predictable making it great for competitive play. The game also features a competitive game mode that works great.
Pro Unique FPS gameplay
Overwatch combines traditional team-based FPS elements and MOBA-esqe characters with unique abilities and weapons. You'll still be shooting and bashing your way to victory, but instead of picking different weapons, you'll be often switching between one of the many characters. Each character has its own strengths, weaknesses, and unique playstyle.
For example, there's Tracer that dual wields handguns, is pretty quick on her feet, and can rewind time when in a tough spot, which makes her well suited to hit-and-run tactics. However, she has poor aim and low health, so you have to be a lot more careful when playing as her.
Another example would be the very durable Reinhardt who has high health and armor. He's able to protect his allies and himself with a projected energy shield while moving at a slower rate. Unfortunately, his only real means of attacking is a giant hammer, so fast characters or characters with a long range can easily outmaneuver him.
As a result, Overwatch not only rewards accurate shooting, but also quick decision making and clever use of your abilities, creating gameplay that feels different from most competitive FPS games.
Pro Tons of unlockables to keep you playing
Each playable character in the game can have more than 90 different unlocks such character skins, color schemes, emotes, and victory poses. While these don't affect gameplay, they allow you to create a personalized character you can feel more attached to. This gives additional goals for both regular players and completionists, keeping the game interesting for a long time.
Pro Simple to learn and play
While Overwatch has MOBA elements, it's very simple at its core, you just shoot the enemy and take objectives. It may take a couple matches to get the basic down, but from then on it's gonna be a blast. This makes it a lot more accessible than most MOBA-esque titles that take a really long time to learn and master.
Pro Variety of maps to keep gameplay interesting
Overwatch currently has 16 maps, which includes a Moon colony, an encampment in Antarctica, and various futuristic cityscapes. The distinct themes, color palettes, and layouts make each of the maps feel and play differently, keeping the gameplay fresh for a long time.
Pro Beautiful graphics
Highly detailed character models, weapons, and environments, smooth animations, distinct particle effects, a vivid color palette, great lighting, and intricate shadow mapping make Overwatch a joy to experience.
Cons
Con The community is very toxic
Your teammates will most likely be hostile towards you for every mistake.
Con Characters are unbalanced
There are heroes that are OP, and others that are completely unplayable.
Con Unbalanced
They release a new champion every 3 months which requires a series of patches every week for a year to balance properly. Too frequently changed.
Con Balanced around pros and not the average player
Riot keeps balancing the game around the professional players, disregarding the majority of the players, making the game unbalanced until you reach top 0,1%
Con Bad matchmaking
Con They want you to spend money
You will just buy RP and your accounts gonna be banned for calling someone a degenerate. Hard-worked money is gone. No refunds, exchanges, or skin transfers.
Con Support never cares about players
You can get banned just by spamming chat.
Con Takes a long time just to learn the game
If you want to get in the game as a new player, you'll have to play for at least a year, or put in hours and hours of studying just to be able to keep up with what characters do what, and what items to get for which character in any given situation. If you take a few months off from the game and return, you will probably have to relearn the whole game again. Almost every Champion is different, not just in stats, but in mechanics and gameplay altogether, from their original launch. The item shop is changing quite frequently, making you have to relearn it every so many months.
Con Player Support is useless
They can't speak English and they can never help you out. No exceptions, and no exaggerations here.
Con Not fair
Every match you will find someone who will give kills to enemy and you will loose almost every match because of that person, and then you will unninstall the game.
Con Can't get blue essence easy enough
Not even if you play the game 20 hours a day.
Con Only 14 heroes are free each week
There is a rotation of 14 heroes that are available each week for free. To unlock the rest they can be purchased for ingame currenency.
Con It's boring
It's repetitive, always the same, not challenging, gets boring very fast. You can feel that the game is made to get money in for Riot and not to make you happy or excited. Its not like that
Con Too many champions
141 champions are too much and too expensive, when you want to buy a better champ you need to play constantly for 1 or even 3 weeks to get that big amount of gold that is required.
Con Buggy engine
With every new patch, a wave of game breaking bugs are created yet the developers still refuse to update the game engine. Some bugs result in characters being removed from the game for up to a week.
Con Items are broken
Con Terrible graphics
Models of champions looks flat.
Con Long games (average 25-30 min) and leaver penalties
Long games aren't bad per se but when paired with leaver penalties (not just for ranked games but also normal games) it means once you start a game you are practically locked to your computer for a good amount of time.
Con Champions cost money
While in Dota 2 every hero is for free and you can catch up which characters you like, you have to buy them in LoL and spend a lot of time and hopefully (what they want you to do) spend real money.
Con Not complex enough
Very static game. You get pushed into a pattern you have to play, can't make your own decisions.
Con Not for solo players
Overwatch is all about team compositions, cooperation, and communication. If you prefer a more solo-oriented playstyle, this game might not be as fun for you since it's very hard to win a match with your abilities alone.
Con No content creation tools
You can't create custom maps or game modes, which considerably limits how much the community can contribute for keeping the game fresh and exciting. This is a step back when you look at the Warcraft 3 map editor, which helped the game stay popular a decade after its release even without regular updates from Blizzard.
Con Lacking in story
Even though Overwatch has a very detailed world and distinct characters, it doesn't ever delve into the history of the world or overarching story of each character. All you ever get are vague hints in voiceover lines and writings found in the environment.