Huh? League is bigger than dota 2. By like a lot. Because League has much more mass appeal than dota. And that was their point, it has a dedicated but niche fanbase.

Hard disagree. There’s plenty of games that are little more than dressed up choose your own adventure stories. Plenty that are meant for chill and relaxing gameplay. Plenty that do little more than guide you through horror scenes. And so on.

And even beyond that, most people don’t even play a game long enough to have any real “skill development over time.” I read from the Civ7 director recently that if you’ve ever finished a game of Civ you’re literally in a minority of the player base. And that tracks with what I’ve heard about other games as well.

Most players of any given game never finish it. Most of those quit at the first sign of frustration and most are on the easiest game difficulties. This would indicate to me that the majority’s conception of “fun” has little to no relation to skill development in the game. They’re there for the moment to moment experiences. Rubber band mechanics are there to evoke those fun experiences more often in the majority of the player base.

The thing is I don’t think it has anything to offer to bring in people from outside the genre. Some people really enjoy it but you kinda have to already be into that kind of thing (DOTA).

I think you’re overstating the importance of games as a platform for skill development as opposed to a platform for, you know, having fun. The fact is that the vast majority of players play any game on one of its lowest difficulty settings.

Rubber banding is made for the core of the game’s audience and challenge-seekers are just not large enough to be that core. Some of those rubber banding mechanics can and are disabled at higher difficulty settings. Others are needed at higher difficulty because the AI can’t compete and the investment in dev time to improve the AI just isn’t worth it because, again, very few people actually play the game at those difficulties.