[Megathread] DotA 2

[PizzaSHARK]

I understand what your saying but I agree with Varix. My reasoning lies with Skeleton Kings stun. Its "storm bolt" style as you put it. but its Damage is reduced because of a dot that deals very minuscule damage and slows. If all "Storm bolt" style stuns followed this, it would hinder some hero play styles. Like Svens, who's current stun hits in an aoe and hits the main target fairly hard, which is in line with that hero's play style - cleaving with large dmg.

Leoric's stun does the same 300 damage as Sven's. It's dealt over time instead of up front, but that can be an advantage in some ways (eats refraction charges, breaks blink dagger, etc.)

---------- Post added 2012-11-13 at 11:08 AM ----------

Well, whatever. Combined with the moronic shit I've seen in recent pro games coupled with the usual bullshit of pubs, I'm done with Dota. If Icefrog can't get his head out of his ass and figure out how to fix all the stupid, no-skill-required bullshit mechanics in that game, it ain't worth the time.

Hermanni, Lysah, the rest - nice talking to you.

[Longview]

Pendragon released the database to dota-allstars.com earlier today. Most images are lost, but all posts are still there.

[llDemonll]

Pendragon released the database to dota-allstars.com earlier today. Most images are lost, but all posts are still there.

Only took him three years...

[Hermanni]

Well, whatever. Combined with the moronic shit I've seen in recent pro games coupled with the usual bullshit of pubs, I'm done with Dota. If Icefrog can't get his head out of his ass and figure out how to fix all the stupid, no-skill-required bullshit mechanics in that game, it ain't worth the time.

Hermanni, Lysah, the rest - nice talking to you.

Considering the amount absurd or vague complaints you've spouted and the amount of disrespect you've showered at Icefrog it's about time. Perhaps one day you will pull your head out of whichever cavity it's been stuck in, master the 'no-skill mechanics' and come back with less QQ.

If you need some perspective on game balance, however, I recommend checking out HoN.

@Longview: Tide does a lot of things well, besides carrying, but he is great at only a few of them.

I don't know what Pendragon is trying to achieve with his stunt, I seriously doubt he will ever redeem himself in the eyes of the dota community. This is the comment his posted in reddit about it: http://www.reddit.com/r/DOTA/comment...stored/c70dlon

[Finear]

Pendragon at his finest

@PizzaSHARK
i heard that chess is pretty balanced not sure tho devs slacking with updateds lately

[Longview]

@Longview: Tide does a lot of things well, besides carrying, but he is great at only a few of them.

Yeah, that was a joke.

Only took him three years...

http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflege...es_ama/c26dxj5

[Morally Grey Storm]

Leoric's stun does the same 300 damage as Sven's. It's dealt over time instead of up front, but that can be an advantage in some ways (eats refraction charges, breaks blink dagger, etc.)

---------- Post added 2012-11-13 at 11:08 AM ----------

Well, whatever. Combined with the moronic shit I've seen in recent pro games coupled with the usual bullshit of pubs, I'm done with Dota. If Icefrog can't get his head out of his ass and figure out how to fix all the stupid, no-skill-required bullshit mechanics in that game, it ain't worth the time.

Hermanni, Lysah, the rest - nice talking to you.

would you be as kind as to elaborate on your view on how and what is unbalanced in dota besides imba-stuns?
pretty please?

@PizzaSHARK
i heard that chess is pretty balanced not sure tho devs slacking with updateds lately

IRL chuckle

[Jinto]

Chess is totally unbalanced, the devs should work on the inherent advantage of playing white.

[llDemonll]

http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflege...es_ama/c26dxj5

Sorry, two years.

Either way, it's a lousy cop-out that "he ran out of time" when his site was an ad for LoL. He moved to Riot, and abused his site in doing so.

It doesn't take two years to move web servers, it takes a competent, semi-motivated person a week at most

[cudomix]

Is ThisisBob's Axe guide still alive? That was probably greatest thread ever written on dota-allstars. Sniff, i still remember double/triple Aegis strategy, one of most imbalanced things ever in history of gaming.

[Lysah]

Stacking stuns was a great mid-tier HoN strategy (which I suppose applies to dota too), after that it will cease to be as effective.

....wat? Pro lineups stack stuns just as much as anyone else. The team with the bigger stuns almost always wins. This applies to all high level skill brackets, it's usually the lower skill brackets where it does not, because an Ursa or Wolf can just get a BKB and 1v5.

Also:
Saw the pendragon stuff, easily #1 on my most hated member of the video game community. He's always been full of himself and was a major jackass from the minute he took over TDA PR. I agree with most of what was said in the reddit thread. Some of us have been with DotA since it was created, and many of us do have long memories. The name Pendragon will never be anything but a sour taste in my mouth, unfortunately for King Arthur. I have so many things I wish I could say on these forums.

[Faldric]

Why was Centaur let loose? He is so absurdly unkillable thats not funny. On lvl 11 he idles at over 1100 hp with not a single Strength item. On lvl 18 he had no Strength item and still had more HP than the equal lvl huskar with some strength items. And when you get him down, he can pop his ulti and just run away. And dont make me talk about Double Edge. I know he is banned in Captains Mode but why was he even put in game, somebody must have seen how op he is.

[Morally Grey Storm]

Why was Centaur let loose? He is so absurdly unkillable thats not funny. On lvl 11 he idles at over 1100 hp with not a single Strength item. On lvl 18 he had no Strength item and still had more HP than the equal lvl huskar with some strength items. And when you get him down, he can pop his ulti and just run away. And dont make me talk about Double Edge. I know he is banned in Captains Mode but why was he even put in game, somebody must have seen how op he is.

Look at my horse, my horse is amazing!~

[Nightfury Treann]

Eggs. WHEN?!

[Hermanni]

The team with the bigger stuns almost always wins.

I'm sorry but in my experience that is very, very far from the truth. I didn't mean to imply stacking disables isn't still a popular strategy in high skill/pro play, but the success rate dwindles down heavily. If you don't accept that I can link a bunch of vods when I'm not busy, but I'm not buying what you were saying unless you have something to back it up.

On the eggs, I'm betting they hatch when the patch hits, if not sooner. If anyone has a spare Quas essence, I wouldn't mind trading it if I have something you'd like. profile

[PizzaSHARK]

would you be as kind as to elaborate on your view on how and what is unbalanced in dota besides imba-stuns?
pretty please?

It's less about numbers and more about mechanics. I don't like how easy some of the most powerful skills and abilities are to use - too many skills are "press button, click target, collect gold," and aren't particularly demanding on player input. When those abilities are also tied to a disable that completely prevents the victim from acting, and those abilities can be effortlessly stacked on top of each other with zero drawback to continually prevent the victim from doing anything, it gets stupid. I compare this to the shooters I've played competitively in the past, or even Brood War (which I didn't stick with long enough to really play competitively, but which I've watched quite a bit), and I just feel like these kinds of mechanics are holding the game back from being really skill-based.

There are a lot of RNG mechanics that don't really seem to add much, and could be replaced with something consistent - random chance to miss attacking uphill with a ranged attack, random chance to crit, random chance to dodge, Chaos Bolt stuns and damages for a random amount within set limits, and so on. Over the course of an entire game or several games it evens out (otherwise the mechanic would deemed broken in some way and I'd assume something would've been done about it), but that's not really much consolation when you might win a game you should've lost because you rolled a 20 instead of an 18.

I'm not a fan of how carries can often grow to become virtually unstoppable after a certain point. I agree that it's possible to delay that point, and I've seen professional teams pull it off plenty of times, but I still don't feel that's an acceptable mechanic for a game that's purportedly a skill-based game... especially when the majority of the gameplay for a carry consists of "right-click a target, continue right-clicking until all targets are gone, and then right-click to somewhere else."

I'm just disappointed that, after close to 400 hours in Dota 2 (and however many hours of Dota back in ~2004-2005), the game still seems to be mostly about spamming disables and less about real, skill-intensive actions, especially when you compare it to a proper shooter like Quake or UT, or even the more indie-style ones like Nexuiz (haven't looked at the new version, talking about the old one) or Warsow, where it's literally your skill against their skill and nothing else.

[Morally Grey Storm]

By such a logic we can safely conclude that hook-rot-ulti combination executed by a pudge is a prime example of click-collect gold gameplay you are talking about.
Have you ever done WoW arena?
It is the most natural thing, to stack stuns i.e. - Crowd Control.
Either you accept and adapt, or you dont.
thats it.

[Sackman]

It's less about numbers and more about mechanics. I don't like how easy some of the most powerful skills and abilities are to use - too many skills are "press button, click target, collect gold," and aren't particularly demanding on player input. When those abilities are also tied to a disable that completely prevents the victim from acting, and those abilities can be effortlessly stacked on top of each other with zero drawback to continually prevent the victim from doing anything, it gets stupid. I compare this to the shooters I've played competitively in the past, or even Brood War (which I didn't stick with long enough to really play competitively, but which I've watched quite a bit), and I just feel like these kinds of mechanics are holding the game back from being really skill-based.

There are a lot of RNG mechanics that don't really seem to add much, and could be replaced with something consistent - random chance to miss attacking uphill with a ranged attack, random chance to crit, random chance to dodge, Chaos Bolt stuns and damages for a random amount within set limits, and so on. Over the course of an entire game or several games it evens out (otherwise the mechanic would deemed broken in some way and I'd assume something would've been done about it), but that's not really much consolation when you might win a game you should've lost because you rolled a 20 instead of an 18.

I'm not a fan of how carries can often grow to become virtually unstoppable after a certain point. I agree that it's possible to delay that point, and I've seen professional teams pull it off plenty of times, but I still don't feel that's an acceptable mechanic for a game that's purportedly a skill-based game... especially when the majority of the gameplay for a carry consists of "right-click a target, continue right-clicking until all targets are gone, and then right-click to somewhere else."

I'm just disappointed that, after close to 400 hours in Dota 2 (and however many hours of Dota back in ~2004-2005), the game still seems to be mostly about spamming disables and less about real, skill-intensive actions, especially when you compare it to a proper shooter like Quake or UT, or even the more indie-style ones like Nexuiz (haven't looked at the new version, talking about the old one) or Warsow, where it's literally your skill against their skill and nothing else.

I think, you are playing the wrong type of game, if you don't like those "random mechanics".

Try Starcraft 2. No random mechanics there, entirely skill based.

I play both, when I want to rely on my own skill entirely, for a pure 1v1 experience, I play SC2.

When I want to have fun but remain mildly competitive in a less structured yet more adventurous game I play Dota2 - a game that is easy to play with friends.

Dota 2 is incredibly balanced for what it is.

[Kuntantee]

If Icefrog can't get his head out of his ass and figure out how to fix all the stupid, no-skill-required bullshit mechanics in that game, it ain't worth the time.

You speak like you are a professional player who earns money from the game or a game designer who knows a lot about balancing the game. But you are neither of these. I'm sure that IceFrog knows and understands better than you and maybe he knows something you do not? I suggest you to give less shit to balancing, competitive scene and all that crap and try to enjoy the game more. Besides, the game feels balanced atm. I honestly think its you failing, not the "stupid" mechanics of the game. Maybe you are not experienced or skilled enough?

[PizzaSHARK]

You speak like you are a professional player who earns money from the game or a game designer who knows a lot about balancing the game. But you are neither of these. I'm sure that IceFrog knows and understands better than you and maybe he knows something you do not? I suggest you to give less shit to balancing, competitive scene and all that crap and try to enjoy the game more. Besides, the game feels balanced atm. I honestly think its you failing, not the "stupid" mechanics of the game. Maybe you are not experienced or skilled enough?

Game design is not hard. The issue is that these mechanics are in the game to make it "exciting," given that the way the game is designed doesn't really allow for excitement based purely off of watching a player's skill showcase something truly special.

Tobi, for example, flips his shit when Dendi disjoints a projectile with a blink dagger or whatever, and while it's impressive compared to the average player, it's just a standard twitch reaction, the kinds of which happen dozens of times in a single match of Quake or UT.

Honestly, taking a step back and looking at it, I'm seeing a hell of a lot of similarities between WoW's PvP and Dota - garbage mechanics (lol, you don't get to play for X seconds!) in place to make up for the inability for the game to showcase actual talent or skill. Whether that's intentional or because Dota was originally built on the much weaker War3 engine... who knows? It's irrelevant, either way.

Dota's fun as a casual game, I guess, but the sheer amount of information you have to have memorized just to not feed already makes it really hostile to newbies, which seems like it defeats the purpose. I sure as hell can't take Dota seriously as a competitive game.