[Megathread] DotA 2

[PizzaSHARK]

When this quote comes someone who lost the credibility with tons of "this is OP bullshit" its even more convincing. I've never seen you made a good point. I don't consider your walls of texts with skill explanations good points. And finally, I really give no shit about making good points. I think all this theoretical circle jerk kinda meaningless as long as the owner of that post lacks the skill to execute what he/she's thinking/saying.

Skill isn't really the determining factor in a lot of things in Dota, it's more about memorization and what you would call "gamesense." That's achieved by simply playing lots and lots (and lots) of games, not through being particularly skilled. Obviously you need quick reaction times to perform at the professional level, but those reaction times and APM (actions per minute) are far below that of professional Starcraft or Quake players.

Most games are won or lost based on the decisions made by the given teams, not based on reaction times or pure APM. Knowing when someone will be in their jungle, when they'll be coming for a gank or what route they'll take when trying to escape a gank, memorizing pathways through trees, predicting their lanes and arranging yours to stymie theirs... all of that's based purely off of experience, which is quite different from skill.

It's fun as hell to watch Dendi pull of feats of amazing reaction time, but very rarely do those isolated incidents make the difference between a win and a loss.

Observation is not enough in any game. For DotA case, sometimes professional players/teams outskill/outpick each other that's why some heroes may seem underpowered or overpowered but you can't even understand it.

lol? Some of the best commentators on sports in general are people who never played it at the professional level, and especially in a game like Dota where the burden is mostly on rote memorization and general experience, you can get a lot of information simply from watching and analyzing other people play, especially people at a high level. This goes double for the after-game interviews that are becoming more common, where those players are explaining what was going through their head at the moment something happened.

About morph, Some heroes easier than the others but the hardest and only significant part is playing against good players which always have room for improvements and skill. They would know exactly what you are going to do and I really don't think a game is purely lost in pro scene just because you could combo wave shotgun and back to base or somewhere else combo.

It was a significant contributing factor in a lot of games where Morphling won - the ability to dive into the enemy team to instantly kill a support and replicate back out to avoid punishment. Like Lysah said, that turns it into a 4v5 at minimal cost to Morphling's team.

[Kuntantee]

Skill isn't really the determining factor in a lot of things in Dota, it's more about memorization and what you would call "gamesense." That's achieved by simply playing lots and lots (and lots) of games, not through being particularly skilled. Obviously you need quick reaction times to perform at the professional level, but those reaction times and APM (actions per minute) are far below that of professional Starcraft or Quake players.

DotA is not an action per minute game, that's for sure but skill isn't determining factor? You are spoiled hard. I suggest you to consider the bullshit you are saying because in a professional game, both side is equally experienced. Especially in DotA 2 because the game is new and there is not years of experience between professional players.

Sometimes you win the lane in a pro game or in pub just because your timing is better than your opponent. The sum of these abilities called skill. According to you, the difference between you and a pro player is experience and game knowledge "in a lot of things". Right...

Most games are won or lost based on the decisions made by the given teams, not based on reaction times or pure APM. Knowing when someone will be in their jungle, when they'll be coming for a gank or what route they'll take when trying to escape a gank, memorizing pathways through trees, predicting their lanes and arranging yours to stymie theirs... all of that's based purely off of experience, which is quite different from skill.

Most games? You got a statistic? How do you determine if a game won by decisions or outpicking an opponent or outskilling? Just bunch of bullcrap as arguments.

pro tip for you: You can change the fucking lanes during game. Predicting the lane means nothing.

It's fun as hell to watch Dendi pull of feats of amazing reaction time, but very rarely do those isolated incidents make the difference between a win and a loss.

Maybe it's because their opponent is nearly as skilled as Dendi, that is why he can't make his show all the time?

lol? Some of the best commentators on sports in general are people who never played it at the professional level, and especially in a game like Dota where the burden is mostly on rote memorization and general experience, you can get a lot of information simply from watching and analyzing other people play, especially people at a high level. This goes double for the after-game interviews that are becoming more common, where those players are explaining what was going through their head at the moment something happened.

I don't think commentators in any e-sport or sports are the authorities when it comes to whatever game they are commenting on. They just comment on game, this does not mean they are better than anyone or know more than anyone who's interested in that sport.

According to you John Champion(a british football commentator) is one of the best football players in the world, well because he's a commentator...Right brah

Dota is pure skillbased game. In low MMR ratings, knowledge may be the winning factor but at high MMR and professional games skill and strategy is deciding the winner.

It was a significant contributing factor in a lot of games where Morphling won - the ability to dive into the enemy team to instantly kill a support and replicate back out to avoid punishment. Like Lysah said, that turns it into a 4v5 at minimal cost to Morphling's team.

How about team fights? Where you can not go back to base? What you gonna do after shotgunning some1 with 1k hp? Str back? That takes time.

Sorry but I'm not buying "the most hard part of dota is learning" crap. Dota is nothing absolutely nothing in terms of amount of information a human can learn.

[PizzaSHARK]

DotA is not an action per minute game, that's for sure but skill isn't determining factor? You are spoiled hard. I suggest you to consider the bullshit you are saying because in a professional game, both side is equally experienced. Especially in DotA 2 because the game is new and there is not years of experience between professional players.

Sometimes you win the lane in a pro game or in pub just because your timing is better than your opponent. The sum of these abilities called skill. According to you, the difference between you and a pro player is experience and game knowledge "in a lot of things". Right...

That'd be the largest and most important part, yes. The difference between a professional player and me in a game like SC2 includes experience, but also a whole hell of a lot of raw APM, or skill. I'm not even close as good as IdrA (who's a pretty low-tier pro player) and I'm not sure I'd ever be able to play at MarineKing's level.

I don't see that in Dota. The vast majority of difference between my play and a pro player's play is experience. Maybe on a hero like Invoker or Meepo or Visage, a hero that requires good APM, I'd be very outclassed, but on most other heroes? The difference would be fairly minor compared to the difference in experience, and that difference in experience would be the biggest reason I'd get completely trashed against them.

Most games? You got a statistic? How do you determine if a game won by decisions or outpicking an opponent or outskilling? Just bunch of bullcrap as arguments.

pro tip for you: You can change the fucking lanes during game. Predicting the lane means nothing.

Almost guarantees your lane an XP/gold advantage, depending on whether or not they buy a TP or run to the lane they need to be in. If it's a solo lane you can often be level 2 before they finish switching lanes, meaning you're against level 1's - that's huge.

Maybe it's because their opponent is nearly as skilled as Dendi, that is why he can't make his show all the time?

It's more because those twitch reactions are usually only going to take place during the laning and early ganking/pushing phases. Once it moves into teamfights, those twitch reactions are considerably less important for most of the heroes I've seen him play.

I don't think commentators in any e-sport or sports are the authorities when it comes to whatever game they are commenting on. They just comment on game, this does not mean they are better than anyone or know more than anyone who's interested in that sport.

Day9 is widely considered one of the absolute best commentators for SC2 and yet while he's good, he's nowhere near the level of the Code S or even Code A players he's often analyzing.

According to you John Champion(a british football commentator) is one of the best football players in the world, well because he's a commentator...Right brah

Reading comprehension, brah. John Champion is not necessarily a good player, but he's extremely knowledgeable about the game.

Dota is pure skillbased game. In low MMR ratings, knowledge may be the winning factor but at high MMR and professional games skill and strategy is deciding the winner.

Strategy is not skill. Actual skill is a fairly minor difference between teams - the biggest difference is in finding ways to out-think the enemy team and play accordingly... which is based on experience and general knowledge of the game. Not skill.

How about team fights? Where you can not go back to base? What you gonna do after shotgunning some1 with 1k hp? Str back? That takes time.

At worst it's a 4v4 and they're missing a support. What happens if you lose your Chen or your Enigma or some other squishy support to Morphling's combo? You're going to have a difficult time holding off that 4v4, and it'll be a matter of seconds before Morphling's recharged and back in the fight, at which point it becomes a straight up 4v5.

Sorry but I'm not buying "the most hard part of dota is learning" crap. Dota is nothing absolutely nothing in terms of amount of information a human can learn.

Far and away, the most difficult part about learning Dota, and the part that makes it so hard for newbies to learn, is the sheer volume of information that has to be memorized to play even at a very low level. If you want to play at a higher level, it requires even MORE information to be memorized.

Dota is a very, very simple game from a gameplay perspective - the depth of the game and why it's successful as an eSport is due to the sheer number of permutations and alternatives you can find in a single game. Compare this to League of Legends, which has only slightly simpler gameplay, but MUCH much simpler knowledge requirements (or, the "metagame.")

[Kuntantee]

Almost guarantees your lane an XP/gold advantage, depending on whether or not they buy a TP or run to the lane they need to be in. If it's a solo lane you can often be level 2 before they finish switching lanes, meaning you're against level 1's - that's huge.

That's minor as it can get.

Day9 is widely considered one of the absolute best commentators for SC2 and yet while he's good, he's nowhere near the level of the Code S or even Code A players he's often analyzing.

That's what I'm saying playing != analyzing or observing and than making comments like a boss...It may be case for SC2 because that game is heavily APM oriented but DotA is not. Also DotA is far more complex to balance compared to a strategy game because you can measure efficiency in strategy games for each stat. You just need to determine how valuable damage, movement speed, etc. ALso you should stop comparing SC2 with DotA. It just doesn't make sense.

Reading comprehension, brah. John Champion is not necessarily a good player, but he's extremely knowledgeable about the game.

You disproved yourself yet again. Skill has nothing to do with being knowledgeable. You, indeed, lack skill for generating strong arguments. Sometimes you just disproof yourself...

Strategy is not skill. Actual skill is a fairly minor difference between teams - the biggest difference is in finding ways to out-think the enemy team and play accordingly... which is based on experience and general knowledge of the game. Not skill.

Who said skill is strategy? Reading comprehension fail? Pizzajoke...

Read that part, give yourself sometime, try to understand and then come back.

Let me help you a bit. Here is the org. post:
"skill and strategy is deciding the winner."

it clearly says skill AND strategy.

At worst it's a 4v4 and they're missing a support. What happens if you lose your Chen or your Enigma or some other squishy support to Morphling's combo? You're going to have a difficult time holding off that 4v4, and it'll be a matter of seconds before Morphling's recharged and back in the fight, at which point it becomes a straight up 4v5.

4vs4: If morph does not jump there is a big possibility he will die with that low hp, if he jumps to base that means they are missing a support but you are missing your CARRY in team fight. Enjoy your team wipe. I'm not saying this will be always case. Sometimes you will just win games because of shotgun combo of morph but I think it's rare and morph was not close to OP.


You answers are poor if not repeating previous post. You've been destroyed in last two pages yet you keep talking. Well I'm done on this.

[Grading]

No one cares.

[Storm the Sorrow]

No one cares.

I cares :0
It's funzies watching them struggle to maintain a semblance of discuss

[Unholyground]

Does anyone else have free copies of DOTA 2 to give away? Valve gave me 3 and I am not sure what to do with them, all of my friends prefer LoL so I have no reason to keep the extras.

[PizzaSHARK]

I cares :0
It's funzies watching them struggle to maintain a semblance of discuss

Yeah, I'm just adding him to my ignore list :-/

---------- Post added 2012-11-22 at 10:28 AM ----------

Does anyone else have free copies of DOTA 2 to give away? Valve gave me 3 and I am not sure what to do with them, all of my friends prefer LoL so I have no reason to keep the extras.

Yeah, Valve's been spamming people with extra keys. I imagine they're ramping up for an official release sometime early next year, and it's not like they stand to lose anything since the game will be F2P, anyway.

[Kuntantee]

I feel sorry for your need of publicly stating that you are putting me on ignore list. I bet you didn't do that

[MasterOfInvocation]

You may not take me seriously, but as hard as I may try I don't see your post being more credible than mine. Again you're just contradicting yourself by saying Chinese teams love safe play (which isn't as much true as it used to be any more, just look at iG) and they pick Morph because he is "risky" but also he has no risk? And again your arguments just boil into your opinions made into statements without any evidence ("chinese teams used him because he was op".)

On top of that I don't think I ever saw anyone shift-queue Morphling combo, and Morph is only a steroid if you're comfortable Morphing yourself down to 1300 HP. Meanwhile you forget that AM has 1.35 second BAT, which is probably a better late-game steroid than the other two.

The rest of your post is just hyperbolic rambling so I'll leave it at that. I tried to build and argument, I used rhetorics, you reply with "nah m8 hes just OP." Why even bash pizza if you can't do any better?

You may think my post is hyperbolic rambling, to that I can only think that your morph play was terrible, that's the only sensible reason you would say that.

And I didn't contradict myself, I clearly meant that AGGRESSIVE heroes are normally risky. So to simplify it for you, I said;
AGGRESSIVE HERO=RISKY. MORPH=AGGRESSIVE. BUT HE IS SO GOOD/OP THAT EVEN WHILE BEING A AGRESSIVE CARRY, HE IS A SAFE CHOICE(CAN'T BE GANKED BUT NOT UNCOMMON TO SEE TONS OF KILLS EARLY), AKA TOO STRONK K?

Then you talk about how chinese teams aren't playing so passively anymore..WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? I am talking about TI2, you know.. almost three months ago? So what they are doing now is irrelevant.

AM's BAT timer of 1.35 means nothing when you have half the agility of morph, and you are melee while probably having less HP even while morphling is completely agi morphed.

Most pro's I have heard talk about morph considered him OP(Including Icefrog, otherwise he wouldn't have been nerfed l guess). Sure they could just say that for no reason(Maybe blaming their defeat on the hero maybe), but where is YOUR proof that he was not OP?

---------- Post added 2012-11-22 at 07:53 PM ----------

4vs4: If morph does not jump there is a big possibility he will die with that low hp, if he jumps to base that means they are missing a support but you are missing your CARRY in team fight. Enjoy your team wipe. I'm not saying this will be always case. Sometimes you will just win games because of shotgun combo of morph but I think it's rare and morph was not close to OP.


You answers are poor if not repeating previous post. You've been destroyed in last two pages yet you keep talking. Well I'm done on this.

Worst argument in this thread.

So according to you, a replicate was ONLY able to stand in well? So Morphling couldn't actually shotgun someone, then port back to his team? O.K.

And if he can, then why make that argument about the 4v4 scenario? It's freaking false.

[Unholyground]

Yeah, I'm just adding him to my ignore list :-/

---------- Post added 2012-11-22 at 10:28 AM ----------



Yeah, Valve's been spamming people with extra keys. I imagine they're ramping up for an official release sometime early next year, and it's not like they stand to lose anything since the game will be F2P, anyway.

If you call 29.99 free to play? then no it is not free to play. Only for the people in Beta is it free to play.

[Hermanni]

You may think my post is hyperbolic rambling, to that I can only think that your morph play was terrible, that's the only sensible reason you would say that.

And I didn't contradict myself, your reading comprehension is the shocking thing here. I said;
AGGRESSIVE HERO=RISKY. MORPH=AGGRESSIVE. BUT HE IS SO GOOD THAT EVEN WHILE AGRESSIVE HE IS A SAFE CHOICE, TOO STRONK K?

Then you talk about how chinese teams aren't playing so passively anymore..WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? I am talking about TI2, you know.. almost months ago? So what they are doing now is irrelevant.

AM's BAT timer of 1.35 means nothing when you have half the agility of morph, and you are melee while probably having less HP even while morphling is completely agi morphed.

Most pro's I have heard talk about morph considered him OP(Including Icefrog, otherwise he wouldn't have been nerfed l guess). Sure they could just say that for no reason(Maybe blaming their defeat on the hero maybe), but where is YOUR proof that he was not OP?

Nice, so you jump to more hyperbole, refuse to admit your errors and assume I'm bad. Cute. I thought your posts were rambling because you didn't seem either capable or willing of engaging coherent discussion on the matter, but if it bothers you I can let you in on the fact that I've only ever played Morphling on random and I was just fine, and my ability to play the hero has nothing to do with my opinion on the matter.

My reading comprehension is also just fine, and what you had to emphasize in allcaps is something that was never in your original post. And when I was talking about the current playstyle of some Chinese teams, I was actually referring to the agressive style they've showcased since months before TI2, which I thought would be obvious because of the the iG reference. Maybe I should have allcapsed that for you, no? Anyhow, I'm glad Lysah was already able to discuss the matter politely and coherently so excuse me for not engaging in further conversation Mr. pizzashark 2.0 lest you put some focus in appearing polite and actually knowledgeable.

[Zefie]

If you call 29.99 free to play? then no it is not free to play. Only for the people in Beta is it free to play.

29.99 is only for instant access, they've confirmed it's F2P on release.

[Unholyground]

29.99 is only for instant access, they've confirmed it's F2P on release.

Ok that is an interesting model lol. Anyone want an invite?

[Hermanni]

I've read quite a lot about game theory because it's an interesting subject. Designing balanced games is not difficult.

Oh you read things. Not difficult, no? Then you wouldn't mind letting me in how you would balance a game like dota without reducing gameplay depth? Or just design a game that is more complex than checkers yet balanced?

I've stated repeatedly that I base my opinions off of professional games and "very high MMR" games that I've watched, not my own games. The game isn't balanced around my wood league solo queue gameplay, but it is balanced around the professional level... right?

This is the 5th or something time you say that. I shall thus base my opinion on Pizzasharks opinion because he says his highly intellectual opinion is based on him watching professional games.

No, really, you think you're going force feed your opinions to someone on the basis that "I've studied this matter, you should have my opinion on it?" You never have an argument that isn't just you paraphrasing dota2wiki and being overly aggressive about your opinions, you never have statistics or replays or examples or throughout theorycrafting or pretty much anything solid. You just say how you think it is because everyone should think like you think it is.

OP rarely is.

You heard the story of "The boy who cried OP?" It's not very funny, either.

[Daraiki]

Oh you read things. Not difficult, no? Then you wouldn't mind letting me in how you would balance a game like dota without reducing gameplay depth?

What is gameplay depth?

[Hermanni]

What is gameplay depth?

The difference between tic-tac-toe and chess. I'm sorry if I articulated that badly, but you get the general idea - designing is easy if you go for simple design without many layers of depth. I could say that art is easy, I got a good grade in my one and only high school art class.

Maybe I will leave the discussion it at this anyway, I feel more flame coming my way and I'd just rather focus on this Dreamhack, so many good games already. Does anyone know what the fuck happened to James and who is this guy with a shave and a haircut in a suit?

[MasterOfInvocation]

Oh you read things. Not difficult, no? Then you wouldn't mind letting me in how you would balance a game like dota without reducing gameplay depth? Or just design a game that is more complex than checkers yet balanced?

You heard the story of "The boy who cried OP?" It's not very funny, either.

You are a hypocrit. You are mad at Pizza because he speaks out against how Icefrog is balancing, and that Pizza disagrees with it.

But so do you. This is too funny.

Disagreeing with Morph was OP you actually indirectly disagree with icefrogs decision to nerf him.

Oh and how much time did you use on your last post? I actually edited it right after I made it, yet you still have the old quote. Meh, just found that funny :P

[Hermanni]

I was kindly asking you to step up the quality of your posts, you do the opposite. Too much attention, I guess.

Edit: This would be like remotely challenging if you didn't try so hard to prove me right.

[Finear]

If you call 29.99 free to play? then no it is not free to play. Only for the people in Beta is it free to play.

tbh items are worth 90% of this price so its not like you are paying 30euro for ONLY beta