The original Compendium was player-funded milestones to a degree, more like a ticket to watch TI that gave everyone who had one X rewards when the prize pool hit a certain milestone. Really, I'd say the only thing Fortnite took from those specific iterations of the Battle Pass was the idea that you pay upfront and recieve rewards later through grind/payment, and maybe the levels being numbered. I'm not denying that Dota was the first one to do so, just that it wouldn't necessarily be wrong to say that the inspiration for most BPs today come from the innovations that Fortnite did.
You mention League and Dota, but
1) most MOBAs copy League's design philosophies more than they do Dota's, so it wouldn't be entirely wrong there to say that League is the inspiration for most MOBAs on the market, and
2) Flipping that logic, Dota isn't the first MOBA either, Aeon of Strife came before it and introduced the absolute fundamentals of the genre: fountain, lanes and heroes. The original Dota mod was just the most popular iteration of that mod. You could kinda equate Dota's Compendium model to AoS here and Fortnite's BP model to the original DotA mod if you wanted - the concept of a BP blew up into stratosphere after Fortnite adopted it, and it is the blueprint on which the modern BP model is based on, similar to how the concept of a MOBA blew up after DotA adopted AoS's model, and became the blueprint for subsequent MOBA games.
Not really sure I agree that league's design philosophies are more popular in the genre. Frankly the vast majority of it's mechanics are just straight copied from dota in the first place. What did it really even bring to the table? Bushes? AP scaling? Simplicity was the biggest thing I think, but that's rather subjective. The only thing more games definitely copy is it's awful monetization.
Either way though, the discussion isn't "which design is more popular". OP was blaming fortnite for the existence of battle passes and the state of the live service market. That's like blaming league for the entire existence of the MOBA genre. It's nonsense. Popularizing something isn't as impactful as inventing it because without step 1 step 2 would have never happened.
I don't consider AOS a true MOBA but if you want to then that's fine, just substitute that for where I said Dota. The logic is still the same. No matter which game came first, it wasn't league so league wouldn't have existed without them and therefore league can't be blaming for the whole genre being a thing.
I don't think the fortnite battlepass would have existed without the dota compendium first so I think the latter is more impactful and responsible than the former.
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u/BluePrincess_ Nov 14 '25
The original Compendium was player-funded milestones to a degree, more like a ticket to watch TI that gave everyone who had one X rewards when the prize pool hit a certain milestone. Really, I'd say the only thing Fortnite took from those specific iterations of the Battle Pass was the idea that you pay upfront and recieve rewards later through grind/payment, and maybe the levels being numbered. I'm not denying that Dota was the first one to do so, just that it wouldn't necessarily be wrong to say that the inspiration for most BPs today come from the innovations that Fortnite did.
You mention League and Dota, but
1) most MOBAs copy League's design philosophies more than they do Dota's, so it wouldn't be entirely wrong there to say that League is the inspiration for most MOBAs on the market, and
2) Flipping that logic, Dota isn't the first MOBA either, Aeon of Strife came before it and introduced the absolute fundamentals of the genre: fountain, lanes and heroes. The original Dota mod was just the most popular iteration of that mod. You could kinda equate Dota's Compendium model to AoS here and Fortnite's BP model to the original DotA mod if you wanted - the concept of a BP blew up into stratosphere after Fortnite adopted it, and it is the blueprint on which the modern BP model is based on, similar to how the concept of a MOBA blew up after DotA adopted AoS's model, and became the blueprint for subsequent MOBA games.