[Megathread] DotA 2

[EqualWin]

well for me it was obvious because of that lan im talking about . also check again, VP is roster right now asus polar+ vp FNG Lil ILLIDAN God DKPHOBOS. games u linked are from the old VP roster (which wasn't good as asus polar imhoand they got the best players from vp, so its a really good team atm.. best team after empire in RU)


who's in ehug? yawar/tralf still in the team? Mason is also back so the open qualifiers for US wont be easy

[Life-Binder]

honestly i dont even think VP deserve an invite, but w/e, Gaben knows best

[EqualWin]

honestly i dont even think VP deserve an invite, but w/e, Gaben knows best

and EE sama, PPD etc

[Longview]

well for me it was obvious because of that lan im talking about . also check again, VP is roster right now asus polar+ vp FNG Lil ILLIDAN God DKPHOBOS. games u linked are from the old VP roster (which wasn't good as asus polar imhoand they got the best players from vp, so its a really good team atm.. best team after empire in RU)


who's in ehug? yawar/tralf still in the team? Mason is also back so the open qualifiers for US wont be easy

you're right, my bad.

ehug roster is tralf+yawar+inphinity+mjw+ryuzaw i think

edit: mason was streaming an hour ago, and he said he wasn't going to ti5. he might still try to qualify, though.

[Lysah]

I look forward to VP's "performance" in August

[EqualWin]

this vp is legit imho, Asus-vp.polar was legit while the normal vp was a okay team.. and they disbanded and formed a new VP which is even better than the old asus polar.


idk why people here dont like them, i dont think theres any team that is better that deserved the invite more than them.. HR is good but not as consistent, NiP is a good team too but meh not better than them and they're from EU

[Life-Binder]

ez top12-16

[EqualWin]

they're russian teams after.. apart from navi they usually flop at TI. but that has nothing to do with the invites

[Deleted]

implying navi will qualify.
grand final will be vg vs eg with vg winning, they are as unstoppable as alliance was pre-ti3

Also I too got 9/10 and picked RAVE as 10th, it wasn't obvious at all.

[EqualWin]

where did i said navi will qualify? ayy


EU qualifiers gonna be fun to watch


maybe if u watched competitive dota u'd realize u got 9/10 which is fine.. maybe if u followed sea scene and not just DAC u'd realize TM was the ""obvious"" choice because rave wasn't that great, they only dominated the sea scene when TM disbanded

[PizzaSHARK]

more time just figuring out how many seconds you need to spend in one area to complete an item.

You mean like you already do in literally every single game of DotA ever? RNG on attack damage, creep bounty, whether Roshan will bash, and all that other shit makes NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL! Unless you get a run of extremely bad or extremely good luck, in which case it does make a difference, except it makes that difference in a way that is completely absent of player involvement. That's why I hate RNG. It completely removes player involvement from the equation. PA can play perfectly and still only roll one crit or two crits instead of the four or five she needs over the course of a fight to get the job done. Or she can play like shit and roll three crits in a row and walk away from an engagement that she by all rights should have died in because she made a terrible play.

Shit like that isn't exciting. Shit like that is frustrating and stupid. Exciting is when a team tp's Profit into rosh pit and suicides to ambush the enemy team when they rush over to the pit to stop an assumed lvl 1 Rosh. Exciting is when IG gets the drop on Na'Vi with a perfect Naga song into Ravage and LightofHeaven turns it around with insane split-second timing on his BKB to allow Dendi to escape and steal the Ravage and throw it back at IG. Exciting is when Puck uses Dream Coil to interrupt TPs to allow his team to take the base to win millions of dollars.

Yes, losing a game because of a 45 minute DD-rune/your carry getting permabashed/your supports being two-shot by PA 20 minutes into the game/a shitty roshan spawn/whatever is incredibly frustrating.

It becomes a serious gameplay issue when a million-dollar game could depend on that luck.

I don't think optimizing for pure skill necessarily equals good game design. I appreciate it when playing CPMA in Quake Live, and also in Counter-Strike. Luck elements are absolutely not needed to make a game exciting, and it's difficult to balance around. RNG does poorly in strategy-based games, but in a game where you're forced to take a lot of split-second decisions like dota, i think rolling the dice on a small section of the game is completely fine. Skill still matters a whole lot more in Dota than RNG.

It's not a small section of the game, though. A creep giving 37 gold instead of 41 gold won't make or break a game. But a PA critting the enemy carry twice in a row and instagibbing them 55 minutes into the game absolutely can, and it won't matter one goddamned bit how good or bad PA and the enemy carry were playing up to that point.

People say "play around RNG." That applies to an extent - but how do you "play around" the potential for an enemy to blink onto you and literally kill you in two swings? It's only a 15% chance! It's a 15% chance of a 15% chance for it to happen twice in a row! Yet it can happen, and there's NOTHING you can do about it other than either be fucking psychic and activate Ghost Scepter the second she begins the blink animation (you also need 0ms ping), or simply never get within 1000 range of her. Neither is exactly practical. The same shit applies to Ogre Magi and any other hero with extreme burst on RNG. Honestly, I'd even say Leoric and CK's crit is too strong - 3x is insane. Leoric can buy armlet and treads and crit people for 700 damage at 15 minutes, how is that balanced? Because it might happen?

How would you feel about CS if the bomb had a randomized timer? What if Starcraft Marines had randomized stats, or the splash damage on Colossus, Siege Tanks, etc was random instead of consistent? Shit, what if the respawn timers for medpacks wasn't consistent in Quake? What if a medpack could occasionally respawn as a quad damage instead? What if a flak ammo pickup could turn into a Redeemer (that's UT, but whatever)?

What if weapon spread in CS was randomized instead of consistent? What if bullet drop was random, if damage falloff (does CS even have falloff?) was random?

Sure, it might make things more "exciting", but every single instance of RNG is removing the impact of player skill and player involvement on the outcome of the game. I don't have a problem with a hero's base damage being like 45-50 or even 45-55 (CK's 29-59 can fuck right the hell off however.) I don't have a problem with creep bounties being 35-45 gold or whatever. I wouldn't really have an issue with some variance in how much XP each creep rewards. These are small amounts of RNG that can make moment-to-moment differences, but will virtually never have a game-deciding impact. Small amounts of crit damage or a small chance to reduce damage by a bit (like stout shield, vanguard, etc) are also completely fine. A 1.5x crit is interesting but will generally not constitute such a large damage swing that players can't take it into account and plan around it, just like you can plan around a Vanguard reducing incoming damage by X amount, or a Stout Shield reducing incoming damage by X amount. A 3x crit (or 4.5x crit, lel) or any sort of complete damage avoidance is simply far too much of a swing to be randomly decided - it should be consistent.

Whether or not defensive passives like Counter Helix and Craggy Exterior should be RNG? I think that, after the change to spin, it's fine remaining RNG. I think Craggy Exterior, massive bullshit that it is, would also be fine if it were changed in the same way. Stuff like Blur, Backtrack, etc? That's too much of a potential damage swing to be allowed to be random, especially Backtrack. I've seen too many Voids walk away from a gank because they backtracked the Laguna Blade or Finger of Death, or even just because they backtracked what would have been the killing tick of QoP dagger, Venomous Gale, etc.

[Lysah]

We still have almost 4 months until finals, don't get too excited, teams have fallen apart in much less.

@Pizza
Did you see my gif? :<

[PizzaSHARK]

RNG in games is good because it often makes you unable to predict the outcome of everything ahead of time, leaving room for players to react and adjust. These also demand "skill." Too much is obviously a bad thing, but often when people blame RNG it seems to me their bad judgement is what caused the outcome rather than RNG.

It's a mix and watching the replay makes it really obvious when one is bad judgement and the other is bullshit. I'm usually pretty aware of when I died or failed to kill someone because I made a bad judgement call. I'm also pretty aware of when I died or failed to kill someone because of utter bullshit that has no place in an allegedly skill-based game. If I'm not sure, watching the replay usually makes it crystal clear since I can watch positioning and status of nearby allies and enemies too.

PA is much weaker in this version because Silver Edge turns her into a melee creep.

Silver Edge is really overrated. You practically need a blink dagger to combo with it to really use the backstab for the debuff effectively.

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We still have almost 4 months until finals, don't get too excited, teams have fallen apart in much less.

@Pizza
Did you see my gif? :<

Yeah, I thought I had a response to it typed out. Whoops

If it makes you feel any better, Storm Spirit is still more bullshit than that PA.

[EqualWin]

but storm has no rng? how is he more bullshit? if anything hes perfectly balanced!

[PizzaSHARK]

but storm has no rng? how is he more bullshit? if anything hes perfectly balanced!

Bullshit is not exclusively the domain of the Random Number God

[Kanadei]

Long rant about what qualifies as good rng and bad rng, why rng is bad game design, references to other games who dont have rng with rng inputted, etc etc.

I think what it all boils down to is that DotA is a game which has always had a lot of RNG. PA isn't exactly a new hero, and items like bash and Buriza (sorry, Daedalus) have been around forever.

Could you make a compelling argument that there is too much rng, that games like those you mentioned are better off due to the lack of RNG (or much lower amounts)? Yeah probably.

But at the end of the day, DotA is an RNG game. We have items, spells, abilities and even map effects which all factor into that randomness.

And tbh that contributes a lot to its replayability. It's called "a game you can play forever" because it generates unique experiences by the truckload. I played a lot of Halo, a game where there is no rng whatsoever. Weapons spawn in the same place, do the same damage, heck even people spawn in the same places once you work them out.

And once you hit 100 hours you will know all of that info back to front and side ways. You know that if your grenade makes it halfway and hits shield it will take two battle rifle shots in the head to kill or three if one clips the shoulder. You know that if you had angled your throw down the grenade would have bounced 3 feet further and it would have been one shot to the head. You know what will happen if he jumps, you jumps or everything in between.

I've played about 1000 hours of Dota2 (and probably more than that in Dota1) and I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface, thanks in part to all of its RNG.

I mean, there is some real substance to your argument. And I get that. But I think you are describing the game you wish you were playing, not the game in front of you.

[PizzaSHARK]

And once you hit 100 hours you will know all of that info back to front and side ways. You know that if your grenade makes it halfway and hits shield it will take two battle rifle shots in the head to kill or three if one clips the shoulder. You know that if you had angled your throw down the grenade would have bounced 3 feet further and it would have been one shot to the head. You know what will happen if he jumps, you jumps or everything in between.

Exactly, and that's what makes it exciting. Watching professionals square off is truly watching a showcase of skill and quick thinking. There is no random chance, literally every action is planned and consistent and it becomes a matter of directly outplaying the other players.

When random chance can decide a game, it's boring and frustrating because it might mean that the lesser skilled players won due to something outside their control. I mean, sure, you laugh when you see the huge 4 digit crit that instantly 50-0's an enemy hero but then you realize you won solely because of that one crit and pretty much everything up to that point didn't matter.

[Charge me Doctor]

People say "play around RNG." That applies to an extent - but how do you "play around" the potential for an enemy to blink onto you and literally kill you in two swings? It's only a 15% chance! It's a 15% chance of a 15% chance for it to happen twice in a row! Yet it can happen, and there's NOTHING you can do about it other than either be fucking psychic and activate Ghost Scepter the second she begins the blink animation (you also need 0ms ping), or simply never get within 1000 range of her. Neither is exactly practical.

I'm little tired of discussing "OP" PA. You can Eul her, stun her, snare her, you can eul self, get saved by Dazzle/Oracle/various items, you can apply break (vie new item of SD aghs ult (even through BKB)).
You shouldn't expect PA to not crit, you should expect her to always crit and dodge all attacks and play around it

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The same shit applies to Ogre Magi and any other hero with extreme burst on RNG. Honestly, I'd even say Leoric and CK's crit is too strong - 3x is insane. Leoric can buy armlet and treads and crit people for 700 damage at 15 minutes, how is that balanced? Because it might happen?

Ogre Magi argument is flawless, there is no way to surpass pure skill of common casts.

Leoric is a slow melee character, disarm, purge, stack armour, get peeled, etc. There is plenty of skillful ways to deal with RNG, and if you lose to RNG you had not enough skill to deal with it. Chaos Knight is great example, he has (thirty?) damage spread, also have random stun duration, stun chance, that's a good "RNG" hero, but i never seen someone complaining about his spread of stun damage, regular damage spread or stun duration, because it's fair, it can hit you for 1 second, it can hit you for 3 seconds, for heck sake, it could stun you for 2,1 second! Its also disjointable so there is skillful ways to deal around these RNG, the only one who have no means to deal with this RNG is chaos knight himself, he have no control over how long stun duration and damage will be, how often he will crit you and how many illusions he will get. And how many last hits he will lose because of poor damage spread on attack.

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How would you feel about CS if the bomb had a randomized timer? What if Starcraft Marines had randomized stats, or the splash damage on Colossus, Siege Tanks, etc was random instead of consistent? Shit, what if the respawn timers for medpacks wasn't consistent in Quake? What if a medpack could occasionally respawn as a quad damage instead? What if a flak ammo pickup could turn into a Redeemer (that's UT, but whatever)?

What if weapon spread in CS was randomized instead of consistent? What if bullet drop was random, if damage falloff (does CS even have falloff?) was random?

Sure, it might make things more "exciting", but every single instance of RNG is removing the impact of player skill and player involvement on the outcome of the game. I don't have a problem with a hero's base damage being like 45-50 or even 45-55 (CK's 29-59 can fuck right the hell off however.) I don't have a problem with creep bounties being 35-45 gold or whatever. I wouldn't really have an issue with some variance in how much XP each creep rewards. These are small amounts of RNG that can make moment-to-moment differences, but will virtually never have a game-deciding impact. Small amounts of crit damage or a small chance to reduce damage by a bit (like stout shield, vanguard, etc) are also completely fine. A 1.5x crit is interesting but will generally not constitute such a large damage swing that players can't take it into account and plan around it, just like you can plan around a Vanguard reducing incoming damage by X amount, or a Stout Shield reducing incoming damage by X amount. A 3x crit (or 4.5x crit, lel) or any sort of complete damage avoidance is simply far too much of a swing to be randomly decided - it should be consistent.

Whether or not defensive passives like Counter Helix and Craggy Exterior should be RNG? I think that, after the change to spin, it's fine remaining RNG. I think Craggy Exterior, massive bullshit that it is, would also be fine if it were changed in the same way. Stuff like Blur, Backtrack, etc? That's too much of a potential damage swing to be allowed to be random, especially Backtrack. I've seen too many Voids walk away from a gank because they backtracked the Laguna Blade or Finger of Death, or even just because they backtracked what would have been the killing tick of QoP dagger, Venomous Gale, etc.

Personally i give 0 fucks about bomb in CS, but if it would be randomized it would pressure CT more, it would be more valuable to go for a bomb because you can get lesser (to what descent exactly?) timer on it and win easier. But anyways, placing a bomb in CS is quite hard, so any major change to this would change the pace of the game in favor of CTs sitting in corners and waiting for Ts to come.
Randomized stats is not an example of RNG, if you want SC with RNG you have WC3. The SC difference is that it has no place for RNG, it's already extremely fast paced and heavily calculated in terms of how effective certain units are, it's like a game of chess, where you make a strategy and adapt it to course of action depending on what info you have, there shouldn't be any sense of RNG (except, probably, amount if minerals in veins).

Isn't it randomized already?

The things you explained did exactly remove impact of players skill, but pseudo-random 15% crit chance does not remove skill from player, it puts the "skill burden" from his shoulders on his enemies, now they have means to deal with said RNG, not him, he has little to no control over it. It's like complaining about Riki forcing you into investing in true sight, but you refuse and lose map control because of it.

Craggy Exterior is only means of defense on Tiny, don't touch it. Just buy a fucking shipstick and it's not a problem anymore Just get SD with aghs and purge his ass off his passive.
All i can say about Backtrack is that it happens, deal with it, it exactly what the ability does, it blocks random amount of shit flying towards Void, crying about your Laguna blade being negated is not justified, you knew it could be blocked and it did, you just expected that your luck will surpass his luck, there was no skill involved.

[Lysah]

I agree backtrack is bullshit, also Craggy needs to be on landed hit so that he can't literally permastun you without you being able to do any damage back. It's also massive bullshit when you blink on top of him as a hero like ES and your hero auto attacks him and you get stunned instantly before you can even cast ult. Backtrack should do something like heal Void for damage taken over 1 sec when it procs (I hear this is how it works in HoN) so that when you laguna blade 100 health Void he doesn't live, ever. It's stupid to have a chance to block infinite damage, and the chance is rather high to boot. You could have eth blade veil bloodrage'd Huskar with scepter use life break on void (literally infinite damage) and it won't matter because backtrack lel.

[Charge me Doctor]

I agree backtrack is bullshit, also Craggy needs to be on landed hit so that he can't literally permastun you without you being able to do any damage back. It's also massive bullshit when you blink on top of him as a hero like ES and your hero auto attacks him and you get stunned instantly before you can even cast ult. Backtrack should do something like heal Void for damage taken over 1 sec when it procs (I hear this is how it works in HoN) so that when you laguna blade 100 health Void he doesn't live, ever. It's stupid to have a chance to block infinite damage, and the chance is rather high to boot. You could have eth blade veil bloodrage'd Huskar with scepter use life break on void (literally infinite damage) and it won't matter because backtrack lel.

Yes, but before changes are made, no mater how much you complain it won't change the fact that he can do that and you have to expect it and make a choice either use your Laguna Blade for 75% chance to kill him, or not.