See, that abundance of shops makes everything too complex. Also Dota seems too unforgiving. I imagine you still can win after enemy is near your base, but every mistake is too serious. If you die in LoL, you feed enemy team and can’t farm and help your team for some time. If you die in Dota, you also lose money. In LoL enemy can destroy your Inhibitor and spawn powerful minions, but inhibitor will respawn in several minutes and you can still fight back. In Dota enemy destroys your baracks and you don’t spawn minions at all, forever (baracks do not regenerate, right?). I understand it’s a minor issue for professional gamers, but in Dota 2 you can loose in first 5 minutes of the game as I see it. And then you slowly die with a very little chance of counterstrike.

And yes, Dota 2 does get better. The learning curve is immense but the matchmaking system is fairly good at pitting you against opponents who are at least inhabiting the same part of it that you are, which mostly gives you the space you need to gradually soak up the game while having fun. You’ll get stomped occasionally, but even there you can learn something from players who are better than you. Still, it really isn’t for everyone, and I know LoL players tend to have difficulty making the switch thanks to the subtle differences between the two games. Despite being superficially similar they’re very different experiences.

Does it get better? In LoL new player quickly switches from “why does everyone kills me?” mode to competent understanding of what happens in the game. Dota 2 looks like chess with a hundred of figures were you must have hundreds of hours to understand gameflow.

Also, it still feels beta-ish. Though I’ve heard it’s out this summer.