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Is it possible to learn a MOBA without necessarily treating like learning chess, or a second job?
I like the idea of MOBAs, and sometimes contemplate learning one. Not to be really good -- just enough to have fun as a lower-class player. It sounds attractive as something that might occupy my brain for a few hours, but I wouldn't wanna treat it like a career without pay, like I used to work on my chess (with serious courses, studying books, etc).
So my question it, is that something that can or should be done? And what game would be best?[1]
[1] As long as it is not an FPS.
My personal opinion is no because they're generally live service games designed to eat up as much of your time as possible while encouraging you to spend money. I had my fun with League of Legends back around seasons 3 to 5, but it was such a massive time sink.
If that's something you're looking for, they're fun. I just can't commit myself to something like that anymore.
Time sinks are definitely an issue, but I am usually not inclined to game addiction and most live service incentives have no effect on me.
I would be content if it was possible to have some fun without getting another degree.
This is kind of where the issue is, though. MOBAs (and other live service games) are only going to be 'fun' if you're playing at a competitive level (that is, competitive against the other players in your game), and to do that, you kind of have to commit to playing it, keeping up with patch notes, and just kinda committing insane amounts of time to it.
I played League of Legends back when it was in beta, and up until like 2012-ish, and I realized when I stopped that I was never having fun with it, it's just the thing my friend group played.
On top of that, MOBAs aren't exactly in their prime any more, and there are only a few that are truly 'viable' as a game, when you consider population and the like. But because of the way live service games work, if a game isn't being updated and changed constantly, the whales and top-tier players will go elsewhere. So you end up in this situation where you need to really commit to one as your 'primary' game, or just have friends to goof around with, or else you really won't be able to enjoy it, because you're not really going to get a lot out of it.
All of this is a long, roundabout way of saying "I have no recommendations."
And here I was thinking "Well, it's time to finally cave in and start playing that thing young people seem to like so much" :P
Aye. I spent way too much of my teens, 20s, and early 30s in competitive multiplayer games and all I have to show for it is the occasional numbness along my ulnar nerve thanks to resting my left arm for hours on end as I WASD'ed and QWER'ed my life away. These days I'm more than happy playing single-player adventures with a proper story and, most importantly, an ending. I have no problem limiting and peeling myself away from these kinds of games, whereas that was never the case with anything involving patch notes and multiplayer.
You're two trend cycles behind. MOBA's already gave way to battle royale games, which have since begun giving way to "extraction shooters."
We may also be seeing an RTS renaissance but that's still speculative.
I'm a little confused by your question, because you can play any game, in any genre, to the extent you want to play. You said you're not trying to be really good, so what does it matter if you don't understand everything?
I played League of Legends from the beta to 2020 and knew the game like the back of my hand, but still played with plenty of people who didn't even know how to farm. Play at the pace you want and learn at the rate the pace allows for you.
If you just mean, is there a MOBA I can play that is casual, then the answer is no. lol
But you can download League and play their unranked rotating modes and that will often be more casual or you can play their 5v5 single lane match.
In many games, there is a minimum of competence required in order to have fun. That degree of competence can vary according to the type of game, the specific game, and its game modes. Some games are fairly easy, but they are also boring (checkers, tic-tac-toe). Others are stimulating, but require a great amount of study (chess, shogi, go). And many in between.
What I am asking is, can I have fun in MOBas with the degree of competence and effort I specified?
I think this quote captures the spirit of the question you're trying to ask:
This reflects my personal philosophy for chess.
Although to be fair, there are a lot people who derive a lot of pleasure and success from being very good at chess, so I would not say it is universal.
I know the original question was not about chess, but I will plug lichess.org anyway. It is free, and the android app is great.
I really like the puzzles. They are great if you are casual, or if you want something brain stimulating but just have a minute. It gives you a position where there is a "best" move -- either a mate or a capture that disadvantages your opponent. If you don't see why the answer is "best", you can start from the position with stockfish giving you moves to see what would happen next and explore alternatives. You can also start a game from the position against the computer and play either side.
I don't have any illusions that it's developing my game skills. I can solve an endgame pretty well, but know almost nothing about openings. And the puzzle gives you the advantage of knowing that there is a best move to find, which you don't have in a real game.
Finally, while I am plugging lichess, they have a kids mode setting on accounts that disables all the chat features but gives you the full set if features for playing the game otherwise. So it's fantastic for kids of any age because they can just play and not have to worry about the badness of the internet creeping in.
I'm very familiar with Lichess, including the kids mode ;)
I'm terrible and I don't care. But I'm tired of it. I have been playing Chess almost every day for 3 years now.
Can you have fun in chess at 500 ELO? I mean I guess, there are people who play at that level.
If you're talking chess.com, and depending on the time control and how much you have played, a consistent 500 ELO already demonstrates a relevant amount of learning or aptitude that is out of reach to many people.
I know it sounds like a ridiculously ELO for many players, but believe me, it is not. When I was 500 ELO on chess.com, I demolished most casuals in real life without even thinking (I'm talking about real casuals, not chess club people).
Casuals as in people who kinda know how the pieces move but don't really know what castling is?
I'm not too surprised. I mean most bronze/iron players in league will still beat most people who have less than 100 hours played.
No, those were people who played the game for years but never online.
When people only play occasionally with close friends and family members, they often have no idea of their real strength. A very low-rated online player can outperform them.
If you want to play full 45 minute long games of League, you'll need to learn some stuff. This will probably take at least a dozen hours depending on your gaming background.
If you want to have fun playing ARM, that'll make sense after the tutorial. Many people like playing them with friends.
I'm sorry, what is ARM?
Thanks ;)
ARM is the ultra casual mode with random characters and a single lane (extremely simplified map). I never enjoyed it, but some people really like it due to the randomness.
Depends on the game and mode you're playing in.
Does anyone play Pokemon Unite seriously? I doubt that. You could probably pick it up, even ranked, and play without learning every meta matchup.
You'll probably get flamed in DOTA casual for not having a PhD in your main though.
Granted, there's a lot of MOBAs out there that I don't know of so maybe one of the less mainstream ones is more casual friendly... Dead Island: Epidemic anyone?
People absolutely play Unite seriously (my League group has a few people that occasionally play), but I'm pretty sure matchmaking takes care of most of the literal children jumping on and feeding...
Hey @lou, if you're interested - League is actually bringing back Arena soon, which is a mode they test-flew this summer that's straight teamfights mixed of autobattler elements. It's a 2v2v2v2 setup where your team has 20 HP and you get dropped against one of the other three teams in a small map; when one of the teams loses, they lose team HP. You round robin against each other team repeatedly until one team remains. In between each round you either get some money to buy an item or you get a random pack of augments that give some specific abilities - anything from a simple attack damage buff to gluing yourself to your teammate and drastically improving their movement speed.
League keeps trying to emulate the teamfight experience without making it feel cheap - Dominion and Blitz were fails IMO - but the mix of strategy against the random aspects of augments makes Arena extremely addicting and entertaining to me. They said it's still in a test mode where they're not sure they'll keep it as a permanent mode down the line, but the champions are balanced for the mode. I played enough the last run to make buying a battle past worth it in a game for the first time in my life, and it's much more relaxed than any other mode... Highly recommend it.
Didn't Dead Island Epidemic get shuttered years ago?
It did! Like a year after it came out...
At least that means no try hards in your matches.
Yeah, sure. I would say, pick up Pokemon Unite. Otherwise, honestly, MOBAs are a bit of a dying breed. Really the two most actives ones are just League and Dota. Out of those, if you really had to, I'd pick League - it's just a larger community, and in my experience has way more casuals (there's a lot of people that get dragged into playing by their friends but have no interest otherwise). Dota 2 is pretty hardcore at this point.
The thing is that a lot you can learn by osmosis, and that you also don't need to be super up to date with things when you're not in high Elo. At the lower Elos, the meta doesn't really matter, player skill has such a bigger impact - if you can CS, you can stomp bronze games or silver games just by being richer than people who can't use a mouse correctly.
If you have a switch, unite is a no brainer for a casual friendly MOBA.
I unfortunately do not own a Switch. I see that Pokemon Unite can be played via Android emulator, but I'm not sure how comfortable or viable that would be to my machine.
Yes. Moba difficulty is vastly overhyped especially if you're willing to play more casually. While it can have the complexity of very serious chess, you can also play it how most people play chess and just know what the pieces do.
The only tricky part there is there's a LOT more pieces, but tools have gotten much much better at helping you learn quickly.
For dota (which i recommend in general), I'd suggest starting out just playing some games vs bots to get a feel for how things go. Once you're comfortable just moving around and dealing with the controls, you can pick a few heroes you like, find ANY guide for them and watch a few replays, and do "ok".
Once you move online, my main recommendations are-
Stay out of ranked, especially to start. A LOT of frustration for people comes from when you get people together who have different goals. I highly recommend more casual modes like all random as well.
Mute EVERYONE. At the very least the opposing team, and your team at the first sign of nonsense. There's enough idiots out there that you're going to run into them, and it'll save you time and sanity if you don't bother with their stupidity.
Beyond that, dota is not that complex to be functional in. Learning just to last hit (be it as carry or support) , buy items, and have basic map awareness will do WONDERS compared to all the nonsense people will often talk about. The final step is figuring out what your hero does and how they work with their items.
Again this is where bot matches can do wonders (both playing as, and against them) or watching a few replays/skipping through them to see what others are doing. Guides as well. For example Tinker looks boring as hell until you realize just how unhinged his ult is with certain items.
Obviously, some heroes are more complex than others (invoker/meepo/tinker vs Skeleton king/viper/lich), but as with any game you're trying to play like this, I HIGHLY recommend picking someone you think is cool, screw difficulty. There's easier ways to play all of those heroes to get comfortable with them, and you'll enjoy it a lot more if you're doing things you think are cool rather than just drilling someone simple.
Honestly, you'll probably enjoy it more than most people playing.
Cool, thanks for all the specific and sensible pointers.
Why would recommend Dota 2 instead of other games in this genre?
It's actually free and you have the exact same playing field as anyone else the day you start. The best players in the world and you starting whenever have access to the exact same heroes, items, etc. The only stuff you can unlock or buy is 100% cosmetic.
Grinding for heroes in games where heroes matter, in my opinion, fucking sucks.
On top of that, there are moments in dota where, due to how the game is designed, despite me intending to take one role (carry/support/whatever) I wind up in another due to infighting or someone who just doesn't care. It doesn't always work, but it can.
Games like League however make you front load decisions like masteries, which means if you suddenly have someone else who wants to jungle and you're stuck supporting, you're screwed.
HoTS was in a middle ground of the two with dumb grinding but usually some way to get off the ground.
The other big problem with these models though is that you might think you like X or Y hero, but suddenly you get wrecked or see Z played really well, and now you'd like to try them. Hope you've got enough grind/cash for League, HoTS. Dota? Pick them next game.
Oh, and if you DO want to get more into the game, it can really suck when you can't actually field a real team because "oops your team needs X support and you only have Y".
In the end though, they do test different skills, have different flows, and attract different players, so just like "pick a hero you like" that extends to the game to. If you just like that league is way more focused on last hitting, great, enjoy the more controlled environment of hots, great. I honestly don't remember what else is out there these days, but I think you get the point.
I can't really judge anything too specific, but people say LoL tends to be simpler.
My mediocre analogy for that is that people tend to say go is easier to learn than chess, and I think that's a dirty semantic lie.
Or the other analogy that I think really helped nail it down, is that league is a lot like American football. You have a position and a role and you do that one thing to the best of your ability. Most roles will rarely deviate from their norm, while a few might be flexible.
Dota is more like Hockey/Basketball. You have a roll, but you need to be ready to adapt and there's a lot more flexibility in a game.
I really don't think either is more simple than the other. Just different focuses.
I had to replace everything with soccer in my head, but I think I get your points ;)
I will second Dota 2. If you just want to have fun at your own pace you just play against bots (Which you can do on your own or with other people). The game is as complex as you'd want it to be, for me it got a bit too complex to play against humans when they introduced neutral items (I didn't want to have to worry about another button) but that largely doesn't matter if you have control on the game's difficulty.
The upside is that if you end up liking the complexity you can always move to play matches against humans with the option to do turbo mode (More money, more XP, shorter sillier matches), casual and ranked.
Great.
I have downloaded both LoL and Dota 2.
LoL's tutorial is short and barely teaches anything. Game and client are buggy, I had to restart both many times. Sometimes I click on "Accept" and nothing happens, only to realize later that the game thinks I was on a match for the past five minutes. And every time I click "accept" (or "start", or something) it creates a new process until I am (supposedly) running seven instances of the game. One match got stuck in "Reconnecting" forever even though my wired connection was fine, and finding matches was surprisingly difficult. At one point I gave up after waiting 12 minutes for a match.
Dota 2 has a much longer and more comprehensive tutorial, game and client (Steam) work flawlessly, and I found a match much faster. Which is weird given that it is less popular, but maybe that's a regional thing.
I'm trying to give a chance to LoL, but it's difficult.
Despite my conviction that Dota is generally the more complex game, I'd also recommend it because there is, aside of skill, no grind to it. Every game starts off with a clean slate.
I would highly recommend finding someone to play with though. If you're in the EU region (or willing to play there, despite the ~100ms ping from North America, games like dota don't require such incredibly good ping at lower brackets of skill), I play occasionally with a bunch of plebs and some decent folk and we have fun.
I've played League for [redacted] years. I still suck. I've also done it with a single group of friends, pretty much always with at least 4 people, and barely any of it ranked. It's kept it fun. I don't play League for League, I do because it's a zone for us where funny shit happens and we all know it.
Solo queue is a toxic quagmire of dunning-kreuger. If you play a MOBA, do a mode like ARAM that's specifically meant for fun or find people who won't get pissed to play it with.
I'm not really into this genre, but I keep hearing that HOTS is the go-to beginner/casual/easy-to-learn MOBA, it may be worth checking out?
I believe Heroes of the Storm is officially in maintenance mode, but it is certainly worth checking out ;)
It'a a shame, because it was a solid semi-casual MOBA.
I have played heroes from the alpha till now. At levels going from literally the highest rank to now being mostly high Silver(which, due to rank decay and their overall matchmaking, is literally the entire player population, including masters and diamond players on smurfs) so that can be an issue, HOWEVER, it is my favorite MOBA and to this day the one I have the most fun with, and I've kept playing and enjoying it this whole time. It doesn't have nearly the same learning curve as other Mobas, it's simplistic on some heroes but complex enough to have fun. It's a lot less individualistic than league or Dota is. I'd recommend trying it out, feel free to let me know if you want other tips or to play
It's been years since I've played or heard anything about hots. But I've heard it's become toxic and blizzard has abandoned it
All mobas are toxic, it's a big part of why I've bounced off all of them.
same
I've played hots since beta and can confirm it's gotten very toxic. Idk exactly what happened, but I only play aram now. If you play any other mode everyone only plays the top meta characters and will flame you the entire game if you make a single mistake. I bounced around plat/diamond ranks when the game was more popular so I have some idea what I'm doing and I still get attacked even in aram for just wanting to have fun sometimes.
If you have a friend that can play some with you, you will skip some hours of misery for sure. I don't think it takes that many games or hours to have a good time, though.
I suggest DOTA, since every character is available from the start without any purchasing or grinding.
If you spend some time (even in bot games) practicing the fundamentals-- last hitting, farming-- you will immediately be better than a large section of the trench that treats the game as a deathmatch.
Play twenty bot games, find hopefully 3-4 characters that you click with in a couple different roles (tip: DOTA allows you to filter by hero complexity and hero role), and once you feel like you have a general hang of it jump into some unranked games. Play top or bottom lane (where you'll generally have a teammate with you) and just start by focusing on the fundamentals: get last hits (gold), don't die (play with your team, don't tunnel-vision on last hitting).
DOTA has in-game guides that will help you select items and skills for your hero (or pay $4/month for DOTA+, which uses machine learning to dynamically suggest what to do next based on what's happening in the game).
Half of the fun is just trying heroes out, but some good potential starters might be:
Carries (do more damage as they get more items)
Juggernaut: simple mechanics, has a heal
Viper: durable, ranged
Wraith King: gets two lives, has a heal
Sniper: not as easy as it looks because the hero is slow and fragile, but hide behind your team and kill everyone
Supports (have impactful skills but generally deal less damage)
Witch Doctor: ton of fun to play, big nukes
Shadow Shaman: easy to understand, pushes towers
Ogre Magi: durable, lots of fun buttons to push
And finally, as long as you go into games with the mindset that you want to personally improve / learn something from the game, and don't get frustrated when you get stomped for awhile, you'll be fine. Even when I can tell games are going poorly, I just concentrate on doing as best I can so I can improve for the next one.
It will take a considerable number of games (I only play a few games a week; you don't have to nolife it) before you feel comfortable enough with the basics to start thinking about the macro game-- is it safe where you are? Should your team take this fight or try to avoid it and farm? How far can you push before you need to get back?-- but if it clicks for you then this will come with time.
If you're interested in league my advice would be to play solo normal games and never play as a premade with people who are better than you.
Keep losing until you are at a level where you are winning 50% of the time, avoid blaming teammates for your losses.
A year of two of that and unless you're naturally talented I would say that would put you at around Silver.
Play one lane, stick to 2 or 3 champs.
If this sounds weird, think about how long it would take to learn chess with absolutely no instructions or guides. Most aren't hitting 1500+ MMR that way.
The other option is you get adopted by a group of players that are better than you, you never really get better but they don't mind carrying you.
League and DotA aren't any easier than Chess, so it makes sense that they're just as hard to learn. I mean, there's a reason people pay money for coaching.
Do you want it to be a MOBA exactly, or any kind of game that's multiplayer but doesn't require you to nerd over it from day one?
Because Warframe really seems up your alley. Theoretically it's an FPS, but most people play with a sword (or hammer, whip, metal fists, your pick) and just slash the shit out of enemies, maybe occasionally using the gun to hit a distant target or something. It's way closer to a hack-and-slash than an FPS.
You can play missions multiplayer, you can do them solo, there's a lot of progression and complexity if you want it, but you can also just go casual mode and play a mission or two without having to allocate more than 15 minutes of your time.
I'm playing it very sporadically and while I'm behind on progression and all the latest updates, I don't feel like I'm out of the loop. Sometimes it gets just a little grindy, but that's the good part in being able to take so many breaks easily, you can do it at your own pace.
This is only tangentially relevant, but I miss the early to late 00s when most people you’d come across in online games were just as bad at those games as you were, and truly skilled players were more unusual. It was a lot more fun than the modern environment where it feels like everybody and their dog is playing like they’re heading for the world tournament or something.
It seems to me be that, as a consequence of going mainstream, gaming became highly specialized. There's a tendency for very popular games to be at extremes -- they are either mind-numbingly casual or exhaustingly competitive.
As someone who was generally on the higher end of the tryhard/skill spectrum back then, I'm kind of surprised this was your experience. Whenever I played games back then, especially ones without proper matchmaking systems, it was often stompfests where the other team just had no chance. Sometimes people would just quit out because obviously it's not fun if you're not able to do anything. Of course sometimes we'd get people of comparable skill since it was basically just random people getting thrown into the games, but that's also how my friends and I were able to tell we were better than most just because most of the games weren't particularly challenging. If we got people to quit it was like the ultimate victory (yeah we were immature and not very friendly teens). Of course I also selected games I was good at, and if I played a game where I was the one that got stomped, I wouldn't be inclined to play that game more or enjoy it at least.
Nowadays the matchmaking systems are good enough generally as long as the playerbase is large that you're keeping around 50% win rates if you play enough games. There's definitely scenarios where people get higher or lower than that, but clearly the systems try to push matched games toward both people/teams having equal chances of winning. Does mean you have to try to win just because of matchmaking systems.
Might have to do with the games I played, or how I’ve never really done ranked (now or then). I’d say the competitive game I spent the most time in were random Halo CE maps in the early-mid 00s, and most people playing weren’t amazing at it.
Now people take even casual/non-ranked play super seriously which is what throws me off. There’s not really any space dedicated to just screwing around and having fun.
I don't know if I have a solid yes/no answer to the question, but I'll share my experience.
I played Dota 2 as a moba first timer probably like 10 years ago or so, and it was kinda daunting at the time. I was too intimidated to play online at first because I didn't know what I was doing so I just played the bots for awhile. Eventually I played online and found I wasn't any worse than anyone else really, thanks to the matchmaking system intentionally trying to match me with people who weren't significantly better than me. Of course that's only half the problem, because you still have people who think they're more capable than they are and its their teammates holding them back so they'll shit talk you even though the matchmaking system has accurately determined this player isn't better than you.
There's been a lot of changes since I started, but overall they've done many things to make the game better for new players. When I played, there was a lot of interactions you had to look up on a wiki or such to even know how they worked because it wasn't explained in game, and to get into the nitty gritty of some of them still often necessitates going to a wiki or such, but that level of detail isn't really required for a new player. Most of the basic info is actually available in the game nowadays. It's also my understanding there's a semi-serviceable tutorial now which also didn't exist back when I first played the game. There was no role queue back then, so when I played, everyone just played whatever with little concern for roles (at the skill level I was at, and some people who would complain about someone not playing support or whatever). Nowadays I guess there are role queues so that is a bit different from when I started.
All that to say, I think it's possible to play without considering it a second job or learning chess but not necessarily fun. I'd say the more difficult aspect of the game is really just the social component, where you have to deal with toxicity and conforming to standards of play rather than playing for fun. In some ways, you playing for fun can be at the detriment to your teams chances of winning, and thus some view you as the toxic player, or they become toxic themselves to castigate you. Then it adds into it being more like work rather than play, because you have to spend more time learning the appropriate roles and standards of play etc. and obviously those standards change depending on what skill level you're at. These were the main reasons I stopped playing matchmaking years ago. Occasionally I just play against bots or play custom modes, when first starting out if you get the right bots they are generally fairly capable opponents.
I'm generally not a fan of games designed around roles to begin with, and if they have to introduce a role queue, it highlights the issue with roles which is they have to force people to play roles that no one wants to play. If all roles were equal, then they wouldn't need a role queue.
I think if you enjoy the learning part you don't need to commit a ton of time to just have some fun with them. Bot matches can help with that but real players will still take advantage of anyone they think is new and punish them. Generally you will have to suffer through losing dozen games or so before you learn the survival basics and that will turn away a lot of players who don't at least have some level of competitive spirit.
Years ago I tried to get into League and Heroes of the Storm. I had a hard time with situational awareness, both what's going on in the whole map as well as in teamfights. I tended to tunnel vision, get tense and mess up (and piss off my teammates), had a hard time learning anything.
Later I played a 3 v 3 MOBA for a few months (forgot the name). No laning, smaller character and item roster, no last hitting, fewer players on a small map, it was focused on going after objectives and teamfights. That was much more manageable and I improved as I played without doing anything specific for practice. It was also great that games were short (10 - 15 mins IIRC, though I don't remember queue times) and focused on the good stuff (teamfights) instead of busywork.
That was casual fun for a few months before the servers shut down. It never gained a large player base, possibly because it seemed dumbed down to MOBA fans. This worked for me for a bit but I stopped playing MOBAs after that. So I can't say if this is a good approach towards learning something heavier like League, or even Heroes of the Storm.
It's a shame you don't remember the name :(
The game is long gone though so I don't think it would help. Nowadays I guess there are simple mobile 3 v 3 MOBAs? I see people playing on the train and I imagine there are some designed to be simple like what I described. Especially with the interface limitations of fat fingers on a small rectangle, and folks expecting to finish a game in a trip.
Edit: Can't find it on any googled lists of MOBAs. Here's what I remember of the game, maybe someone happens to know the name
I played it on Steam, though there may have been a mobile version
map was basically PC monitor height tall (no vertical scrolling) and a few widths wide. Bases are at the left and right ends, minimal branching paths. So usually it's meet close to the middle and fight over objectives
objectives were towers protecting the bases, as well as permanent stat upgrades that a character collects by uninterrupted channeling for a while. Random types spawned at regular intervals
there was a 'spin-to-win' character called Hamhock who was a rather obvious ripoff of a character in another MOBA. I also remember Diesel who was clearly 'inspired' by League's Blitzcrank.
Sounds like Solstice Arena
Yes, that's it!
Sadly, it shut down in 2015, if I remember correctly.
There's a post on Reddit that says it shut down on Aug 2015. HoTS open beta started May 2015, I think I started playing HoTS either then or during the official release. I could be misremembering things: maybe I played Solstice before or alongside HoTS. Definitely came across Solstice after League though. I was struggling with situational awareness and anxiously fumbling in HoTS (though not as badly as with League), but quite comfortable in Solstice. So maybe it didn't help much with learning HoTS .
Solstice was unfortunately badly balanced. I remember the last character released was completely OP, seemed like a last ditch effort to get players to spend money to unlock it quickly. But it was fun while it lasted! I like cleaner, simpler games like this that still have interesting depth. Solstice had a lot of potential, it was certainly interesting for me but I don't think it would've help up in serious competitive play.
Wild Rift on mobile is a bit more chill then the original League of Legends.
The game is shorter then it's older brother and also just feels less "toxic" in my biased opinion.
I'd suggest an autobattler instead of a MOBA. In particular if you play Teamfight Tactics (TFT) you'll pick up knowledge as you go that's useful to League of Legends - I played LoL for about its first 6 years, and only recently started playing TFT, and the knowledge from LoL helped immensely, so I'm sure going the other way will help quite a bit. It's not exactly the same, but you get an idea of the "vibe" of the champions, and more or less what a bunch of items do.
Anyway, since autobattlers aren't a team game, there's nothing of letting teammates down etc, and you can learn as much or as little as you like - watching streamers is a great way to learn. And a lot of play is based on statistics, so if you have a stats site open on your phone while playing, you can literally look things up to make decisions for you during the game. (Obviously you do need a certain APM, and things like scouting are pretty important but again, not a team game, play how you want.)
Then you still get to watch teamfights happen, make teamcomps, etc, but you don't have to be amazing at micro or farm or anything like this, and you can later change to LoL if you want.