League of legends is an interesting twist on the LOMA genre, the base of the game is still as it was invented in the Warcraft 3 days with creep waves and towers and heroes and all that stuff that new players might find intimidating. League of Legends has no denying, you don't lose gold when you die and there are some elements of persistence here and there to hook you in some kind of meta-game much alike achievements do in other genres. It's a nice LOMA, but after playing it for a while, the community is still what makes it a little hard to get in.
The game tries to tutorialize the main concepts of what you have to do, but there is more to it than what they show you, all LOMAs do this, but there is no good tutorial in this game. Instead, the game forces you to play versus bots until you're level 3, which is a bit useless because you don't learn how to play versus players; furthermore you can get to level 3 by losing and fumbling around terribly. This game should have a proper tutorial, a video that explains everything of what a LoL match is. There should be a bunch of little tutorials on all the things you need to do in the game, watching out for towers, harassing, last hits, etc. There should be a proper tutorial per lord so you can learn what they do and what to do against them. People say that this would be 'overwhelming' and that would turn new players away from the game. I think that being called a 'stupid loser noob feeder [expletive]' because you didn't know that such or such lord could stun you and then panicked while you could've used your Q to escape is even worse.
Unlike DOTA, LoL releases new heroes periodically. You can buy them for in-game currency you accumulate over time OR with real money. How can you make new heroes that people want to buy if they're weaker than the existing roster? You make them stronger, of course. This is the same issue than Magic the Gathering has; It's tough to balance something when you want people to buy it. Skins are on sale, also runes and boosts and other silly things, I don't mind them as much, but heroes should be less expensive, or they should make a list of 10-20 heroes they want to make and then be done with it, balance the existing roster, refining it over time and then find new ways to make money. I'm fine learning a handful of heroes, not a new one every two weeks.
A game of LOMAs usually go like this; You buy items, monsters spawn and start marching towards the other team's base, you kill monsters for a while and try to hinder your opponent without putting yourself in danger, after killing a bunch of monsters, you buy items to kill monsters better, then the game can go in multiple directions; you destroy towers, team up with your other teammates to go kill enemies or just wander around the map trying to surprise attack your foes. All games have the same structure, but they vary wildly with the skill of your teammates/opponents, random luck and execution. LoL has nice systems, I love the choice of items, some of them are pretty original, I love the 'ping' system they've put in place so you can alert your team of multiple things with a simple click, I wish you could mute people easily tho, DoTA2 is doing that well, but in LoL you have to type /ignore [playername], that's kinda harder than clicking somewhere. You also can 'surrender' in LoL, sometimes comebacks are possible but people just wanna throw the match, this can be frustrating if you've been playing for only 8 minutes.
One of the two systems in LoL is the rune system, you unlock rune slots after each level, then you need to buy 4 types of runes to slot into them. I think the rune system is a bit iffy, there are 3 rune levels but level 2 is kinda pointless if you buy all level 1s and 3s, also the effect of the runes have various level of strength, so some slots are better for some effects and using something else would kind of be a waste. Why use a 50% effect attack damage rune when you can get a 100% one? They help customize your character, but you don't have that many viable choices. There is a 'right' set of runes, and that's not really customization. Also you can mix runes to create random runes of the same/higher level, that's pointless.
I like the mastery system, you can pick weird abilities like having a free cookie or more gold or experience and focus the way you usually play your characters. I love playing supports, so I went with the Utility branch. Since this game is all about the small things though, you won't get huge buffs from this system either, the 'ultimate' ability in the utility tree, for instance, is 3% bonus movement speed, that might not seem like much, but it is.
I wish I had 4 people to play LoL with (or Dota, or any other LOMA) so my main gripe with the game would go away (the players), otherwise, it's pretty complex, fun, and LoL is a good "one of these"