Also, this game genre has a very high skill cap, regardless if you want to admit it or not. If it didn't everyone would be in tournaments making cash wouldn't they? Again, just like any other game. Would you say the same thing about Quake, could you keep people suspended in the air with rockets continuously til death? No, oh well the game must of a low skill cap right?
Gotta disagree. I think these games have exceedingly low skill caps, and that's really why they've got so many players. Giving characters so few abilities and the emphasis on gold and gear really promote a 'any given sunday' sort of environment where even a small mistake can catalyze a team's advantage because character building is nil and power comes almost exclusively from equipment and levels.
I think this gives momentum too much influence and promotes a "winning induces winning, losing induces losing" style of game. Which is normal, you get rewarded for winning, but the problem is that reward is measured in that which grants power, incuding further winning. In most other game designs, simply the removal of an enemy (normally granting you an an opportunity for advantage, not an amount of power) from play for a period of time is reward enough. It lets you gain ground, play more aggressively and capitalize. But by monetizing the reward at the same time, I think it amplifies the momentum change.
These games play like a WoW BG that grants the winning team bonus attack power for every kill they make, or like a hockey game where you give points to a team for simply having a powerplay.
Of course due to the item and level limit, things eventually even out, but many games don't reach that point because of the problem.
I think the champions themselves are not designed with high skill caps in mind either, although they want to be in some cases. You can see this in the proliferation of champions (well, in LoL at any rate) whose abilities have secondary or conditional effects to try to compensate for the fact that each champion can really only have 4 usable abilities, and many have even fewer. Few actual character abilities means that (not always, but often enough) that games are significantly influenced by the Rock Paper Scissor dynamic (as are all games to an extent, but again this genre amplifies the problem). A champion like Katarina against a team with no stun or taunt or knockup (or silence? i forget) can be devastating. Same goes for, say, a strong carry against a team without an exhaust or a blind, or a mundo or a healer against a team without ignite. It's not a guarantee but there are a lot of hard counter mechanics in game, so again, 'any given sunday' based simply off of blind picks.
There's plenty of others too; there's too many champions, the banning system is a terrible idea (Would you have watched the superbowl knowing the teams were both arbitrarily crippled without 2 of their starting stars? Would the result still have been legitimate?), the way scaling is inconsistent creating "early" or "midgame" champs to exploit the momentum mechanics.
To me it just boils down to a series of games that pander to the RPG crowd by giving them items and levels but in turn they create a game that is inconsistently balanced and unfocused.
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