Why Dota 2 is going to be bad.

[JimPaladin]

And just to clear it up now, no it's not because "it wont be 100% exactly like the original", but I'll actually talk about that in a bit.

As a small introduction to this rant, let me give you a little bit of history in my experiences with Dota (Or if you don't give a fuck, skip this first part.). I actually never really played it back in the day. I was a big fan of Warcraft 3 and I played all kinds of dumbass custom maps (mostly just 'normal' WC3 gameplay, though). I had a few friends at the time who played Dota, and they'd always talk about it and everything, always making it out to be "that one hero mod that doesn't suck dick and isn't riddled with anime characters or typos." Naturally I thought they were all idiots because my mind was (understandably) molecularally structured to instantly believe anything involving the words "Warcraft 3" and "Hero battle mods" put together without having "is not a game with good" between them was horseshit.

Then I tried it.

It wasn't a great experience or anything, but I could feel the effort put into it and I wanted to try and get into it more, but my small web of friends sort of dispersed after that and we all stopped contact with each other, and I never played Dota again. Dota was a game way ahead of it's time (or at least ahead of it's game engine) At best it was a game with a large, diverse roster of heros and items with hundreds of hours of gameplay potential and uniqueness and at worst it was a clunky, difficult to play mod that Warcraft 3's engine just couldn't quite support as well as it should have. It was this more difficult, primal nature that gave Dota the "Asians play it" stereotype it always had (Oh wait, it wasn't a stereotype because it's true!), and it wasn't exactly new-player friendly. The UIs were a mess, the shops were a mess, creeps and heros were incredibly difficult to distinguish from one another without getting to know the game really well, etc...

It really only made sense that years later, renditions of Dota began popping out. League of Legends and Heros of Newerth were the top contenders in the Dota-like scene, both boasting the rights to claim that original Dota developers were working on the games. I never got into Heros of Newerth because I knew that even though they were trying to make it into a "Dota 2", it'd never get anywhere. And oh look, it didn't! Which is a shame because HoN started out as what Dota 2 should have been: a SEQUEL to Dota and not an HD remake, but more on that in a bit.

While it wasn't HoN I got into, I did start playing League of Legends around early 2010 at the recommendation of a friend. I really, really enjoyed this game. It was everything Dota really should have been. Better balanced heros, better designed heros, simplified shop page, etc etc... Sure there were some things different about it that I always initially didn't like (Summoner Spells being one of them.) but all in all, it was a pretty awesome game.

Do take note of all the past tenses I use. League of Legends started great, but somewhere in about the middle of their season 1 stuff did things really begin to go south with the game. I wont turn this into some big League of Legends argument, but hero design began taking a real downturn. Suddenly it felt like Riot was really running short on ideas, having to constantly pump heros out every two weeks with two skins. Sure they plan stuff out ahead of time, but it was apparent their ambition with hero releases were beginning to catch up to them. Nowadays the game isn't worth much. It's a messy, over-inflated money grab that is currently more interested in being as Dota 2 like as possible instead of focusing on what I liked about the game to begin with way back in 2010.

But enough about that.

When I heard Dota 2 was coming, and Valve of all companies would be behind it, I couldn't believe it. Before the beta began I was sort of hanging in this "Oh that's cool but I don't care much" state. The beta came out and I read about it a bit, but then went back to just being neutral on it. It was then I got a beta key from a friend and installed the game, I didn't really take to the game much at first but after awhile I got into it and have been playing it a lot ever since.

And this is where the problems, both immediate and near-future, began to arise.

My first problem with the game is the game in itself. It's called 'Dota 2', but they're more interested in it just being a remastered remake of Dota. I liked HoN because it made retarded, useless heros like Axe into viable characters who had a move set that totally flowed off each other. What's the Dota Axe? A wonky 'tank' with a bad taunt, a bad DoT that is useless against smart players and an ult that is quite literally just designed to killsteal carries and shit, also you totally fall off the radar at about 30-40 minutes in and become an easily ignorable sponge tank. I'm not trying to downtalk Dota or anything, but facts are facts. This was a mod made by like three guys or so. Not every hero is going to be the epitome of well designed balance, as much as raving little fanfucks will poop themselves in disagreement over.

Let's get one thing straight. Dota is poorly balanced. Oh, I know, people will literally take shits on their keyboards over this and claim "I'm wrong and I'm bad and I just can't understand the complex inner workings of genius game creators", but it's true. Dota, in it's current state, literally makes League of Legends look like fucking chess. You have so many heros that are literally garbage, so many that can't do anything late game so what's the point in playing them, so many that are blatantly overpowered, then you have ones that are just poorly designed like Lion (Oh yeah he has two abilities that do no damage and one that does small damage, let's give him an ult that does 550 damage at level one BECAUSE THAT WILL MAKE HIM OKAY AND BALANCED!!!!). So many heros just cry for reworks and tweaks they will NEVER get in all probability, because Valve wants to keep it as Dota-like as possible.

This in itself is already bad enough, but then you have issues with Valve themselves.

There are two things you can say about Valve. They make good games, and they're assholes. I swear to God Valve knows they can get away with being lazy and unproductive because people will just shake their heads, throw their hands up and say "Ha ha, Valve time, guys! What can you do?" I mean, when Valve wants to release shit and get stuff done, they do it FAST. Look how quick Left 4 Dead 2 came out after the first game, and that was a game literally no one fucking wanted. But this isn't about 'valve time'. It's about the arrogance Valve has for their beta.

Dota 2 is in BETA right now, yet Valve is releasing heros very, very slowly (more often than not missing their own release dates, as usual). Why? Because they're fanatically obsessed with making sure every BETA hero is as 100% close to the final cut as possible.

What is the fucking point.

Though this problem will 'go away' as soon as the game is actually released, it's still a very annoying issue. Just recently Ogre Magi and another hero were found in the Dota Test client and were playable. They had most of their animations and voices and everything but weren't quite done.

Valve pulled them from the game.

It doesn't help most of the heros they have right now are all boring ones (Who wants to play Nightstalker while simultaneously putting their own fingers in a toaster and setting it to "crispy black"?) or ones like Lion or Enchantress (Enchantress is so much fun don't you like her generic high damage ult that doesn't play with her hero at all because the ability was designed in literally five minutes or so?), but why Valve has to be so uptight about everything is really offputting. It also makes the beta hard to play as there's a fairly small pool of heros currently available and because lots of them are so useless you often get games that are nothing but the 'tier 1' picks of the current list. I just love every single fucking game comprising mostly of all the same heros every time! Again, I know, this isn't a problem all that worth talking about because it'll disappear with the game's actual release, but it's still frustrating and there's no reason Valve can't treat their beta as a BETA. Not every hero needs 15+ minutes of voices and complex animations. Focus on getting the fucking heros into the game before you focus on pointless aesthetics. They're more concerned with photoshopping almost every single item icon (they were all fine to begin with) or changing hero splash arts than they are with implementing actual gameplay. Okay, Valve. Okay. I like my heros having a ton of specific kill quotes or 'greet another hero' quotes as much as the next guy but I'd rather have all the heros be present in the game as beta-stage than have Tiny tell Clockwerk he's soft inside. Whoopy fucking cowdick.

This takes me to my next issue. The cash shop.

Right, inevitable. Of course they're adding a cash shop for hats or skins or whatever. It's how valve (and anyone else wanting to make money) does things. And this is fine and all but they appear to want to add this to the game before it's even out of beta. This is a minor issue, but it still looks really stupid for them to be all concerned about making sure their shitty cash shop is in the game before they even have a game. So I wont complain too much.

Another small issue is the playerbase. The Playerbase is pretty tiny right now (at least by non-beta standards) with only like..... I dunno? 50-60k people or something? Enough to feel like it's larger than a beta, but smaller than Runescape at the same time. This causes a mess of issues. People being assholes is a constant problem in the game, and very few (if even ANY at all) of them will ever be banned. Valve, above any other company, just doesn't give a fat, flying fuck when it comes to stuff like this. I don't think they have EVER banned someone from one of their games for harassment. Hell, they hardly ban people at all, even when they're doing things that indirectly begin to ruin the entire fucking game. Along with ill-spirits are the ever present foreigners. Now let me just say this now- I'm by no means racist or anything but when I'm trying to play a game where communication is basically the biggest win-lose factor of the game, I don't want a team where two people are speaking fucking Russian.

Just a bit ago I lost a match ONLY because we had a Portuguese Slardar who did nothing but complain about 'massive lag', miss EVERY single Silthereen Crush and feed the enemy in general, gimping our team incredibly. Even when we all got fed, we just couldn't manage a 4v5 with the Slardar being totally useless. And okay, if this were League of Legends- a game with millions of players and a company too incompetent to make servers for them- I could understand why this guy is playing on a US East server, but HE HAS HIS OWN FUCKING SERVERS. So why do people do this? The USA players and the Chinese players all stay to their servers. Why? Because they get acceptable latency and they understand each other. We don't go queing in the South American or European servers. Why? BECAUSE WE DON'T GET ACCEPTABLE LATENCY AND WE DON'T UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER.

So why do so many people do this? All they do is lag and are cut off from speaking with their team. It'd be just as stupid if I were quing in Germany's servers. Why would I do that? It'd totally ruin the game for me and all my Deutschland Clinkz player buddies. I don't get why they do it and I don't get why they're even allowed to do it, but it's a problem in every game like this. In World of Warcraft or Team Fortress 2, this isn't really an issue and I don't mind it. If I run into some guy speaking Spanish in a random dungeon queue, okay whatever. We don't really need to understand each other to kill shitty bosses. But imagine trying to raid or do arenas with someone speaking another language than you and who also has like 8k latency. Does it make sense for either of you to be playing together? Not only does it ruin your game, but it ruins their's as well. Literally no one wins but the enemy in this kind of shit, providing they're not facing the exact same issues.

But every point beyond the first has been mostly personal issues. The big, real picture here is Valve is clearly not treating this as Dota 2, but rather just Dota HD which is a big, big problem because the game really does need professional reworking and tweaking here and there- IE what HoN originally was before S2 started getting all wacky and Icefrog left them. While this might be nice for all the stinky hardcore Dota nerds who get seriously angry if so much as a single stat point is changed from the original, it's not nice for people who weren't lobotomized with a tar kettle. The outstanding issues with Dota is the poor hero design, making many heros useless and creating a clear, solid 'tier list' that is strictly followed. Valve obviously doesn't really care about the game itself, and just wants to use it as a cash cow while Icefrog uses it to get bigger than League of Legends so he can wank off on Morello's pillow as a sign of 'look who ended up being the bigger of us'.

So if you feel happy with Dota 2 how it is and you can look past the crippling design flaws (or you mindlessly believe every hero is 100% balanced and fine-tuned with no counter arguments being viable) than more power to you, I guess. I'll still be here, awaiting the day someone makes a Dota-like that isn't riddled with stupid design choices, stupid marketing choices and is more than just a cash cow for grubby companies.

I'll be waiting a pretty long time!

[Deleted]

I'm about halfway I'll read the rest tommorow.

[Deleted]

I'm about halfway I'll read the rest tommorow.

I'll sum that up for you: "I think the heroes are imbalanced, they aren't importing the heroes I like fast enough, the players are mean and some don't talk English. If you disagree with me, you're a Valvedrone and a mindless hardcore DotA fan."

[saberon]

Why this thread is useless.

First, let me clear this up by saying that it's not because, "Holy fuck that's a lot of words dedicated to whinging". Even though it totally is.
Before I begin my scathing review of your post, let me tell you about myself. I frequently visit these forums, and often take joy in partaking in the wonderful variety of threads such a great forum has to offer. However, lately I (and many others) have noticed an emerging trend among a small portion of the forum-base. I call it the, "OH NO IT TOTALLY FUCKING SUCKS EVEN THOUGH IT HASN'T BEEN RELEASED YET" portion, for reasons that are rather apparent.

Now to my review of your post. First off, let me thank you for using paragraphs and punctuation to make this thread even remotely readable. I commend you. Truly.

Secondly, holy fuck that's a lot of words dedicated to whinging. In the future, I suggest you condense down your complaints into half a dozen paragraphs at most, because quite frankly, nobody wants to read a fucking novel on a forum.

Finally, I'm sure some of your arguments are valid. I say "sure" because a) I didn't read the entire post, as you no doubt gathered from my second point, and b) your post possesses both correct grammar, punctuation and spelling, so I can only assume you're not a fucking moron.
However, I did notice one argument that made me stop, re-read it, and then ask myself aloud, "Is he a fucking moron?". That argument was:

Dota 2 is in BETA right now, yet Valve is releasing heros very, very slowly (more often than not missing their own release dates, as usual). Why? Because they're fanatically obsessed with making sure every BETA hero is as 100% close to the final cut as possible.
What is the fucking point.

You're upset because they are trying to perfect Hero's. .
Do you understand what a Beta is?
Are you actually suggesting they don't perfect their heroes in a beta?
Would you actually prefer that they released a plethora of heroes that are untuned and unbalanced?

Considering that you go on to complain about how bad and untuned half the heroes are, I can only assume that the answer to at least one of those questions (although most likely all of them) is a resounding,"No!".

At this point, I feel the need to point out that you are posting illogical, contradictory arguments in a manner that is far too off-putting to read, to stimulate a discussion that nobody wants to have, about a game that has not yet been released.

Please take note of the issues raised in this post so as to ensure you never again repeat what you have done here today.

Edit: Drekman summed up in 2 sentences what it took you a whole fucking novel to write. As a result, people will actually read what Drekman wrote.

[Deleted]

I'll sum that up for you: "I think the heroes are imbalanced, they aren't importing the heroes I like fast enough, the players are mean and some don't talk English. If you disagree with me, you're a Valvedrone and a mindless hardcore DotA fan."

haha there is more russian player than english speaking and it's dota so the comunity is shit (filled with kids that rage on me because i say "iam not a noob i played some lol" )

[Jangri-]

Chill the f*** out bro. Throwing useless bullshit insults at random things makes you look very mature. Did someone rape you very hard in dota? Now, back to tpic...

DotA2 was never suppsoed to be anything butHD version of dota with added comunity features - mming, ingame tournament system, coaching etc etc. Accept it for what it is.

Now WHY ON EARTH would you think dota2 wont recieve tweaks and updates? DotA has been upadated for what, 10 years now? While the game was in this half-closed beta, dota recieved two major updates with countless balance tweaks, both of which were ported to dota2, minus the new heroes. Also, hero reworks happen pretty often in dota. Get you facts straight.

TLDR of OP - Unreasonable rant for most part.

[JimPaladin]

Posts that actually counter anything I said: 0

You're upset because they are trying to perfect Hero's. .
Do you understand what a Beta is?
Are you actually suggesting they don't perfect their heroes in a beta?
Would you actually prefer that they released a plethora of heroes that are untuned and unbalanced?

This is, so far, the only thing in the entire thread worth making a response to so here goes.

They're not trying to perfect their "hero's". They're leaving them as they are and they're obviously going to keep them that way with no major changes. The heroes in the game are all done outside changes such as Lion's model rework, but that's about it. No major changes to abilities or skillsets will be made. Would I gladly take a Dota with all the heros implemented without being 100% done, and have them edited and changed and worked on as the beta progresses? Fuck yes. That's what a Beta should be and not this crap of them trying to pretend it's some 'pre-release' version or something.

Your post, like everything else so far, was stupid and bad.

Edit: Drekman summed up in 2 sentences what it took you a whole fucking novel to write. As a result, people will actually read what Drekman wrote

Not really, but go ahead and think so if that's what tickles your tushy.

[Martinussen]

Umad, brah?

No seriously, it sounds like you just dont like the dota games.

[Deleted]

Sooo....you're just mad that people outsmart you?

[JimPaladin]

Sooo....you're just mad that people outsmart you?

whoa i have no way 2 retort to this awesome and good post

[johnnyderp]

If you dont like it,dont play it,end of story.

[JimPaladin]

If you dont like it,dont play it,end of story.

god forbid people complain about things they don't like grrr that makes me so angry i could johnny derp lol (it's funny because his name is depp but i am putting a wacky spin on it and saying it's derp lol)

[Deleted]

People being assholes in mobas? My god!

In all serious though I think both valve and blizzard are a little late in getting on the moba train, as someone who plays 2 casual games of lol a day I can't see myself changing game just for a swankier engine, and I imagine people who have worked hard for their ranking will be even less inclined to move over. I mean I haven't even given a Hon a go, and it feels like the 3 we have now is quite a lot of options in this genre already.

[Barnabas]

Let me axe you a question? What game is perfectly balanced?

[Nyaldee]

Another HUGE thread filled with only hard FACTS. At least add something like "imo" to the thread name, becouse judging from the thread you didn't play any dota or hon (ot least above complete scrub lvl). Saying that LoL is what DOTA should've been is simply insulting becouse DOTA have many times more depth then LoL even on it's outdated engine and if you'll take your time to check over DOTA 2 or HON TOP10 weekly you'll soon realise that LoL just simply doesn't provide players with tools for such plays thus skillcap celling is many times lower there.

P.S. OP mad couse bad.

[billcosby]

gb2 runescap lol x.x fuckin dota n00b russia represent getcha lang barrier LOL rudy taboodie represent no.1 shadow daemon east europe go eat fat wooper from mcdonald fuckin op getcha fuckin money gorge washington bill smack the ho listen to op is like lawnmower running over payless flopflips x.X

Please post productively and refrain from insulting other posters. Not a good start to your posting here. Infracted. -Edge

[JimPaladin]

Another HUGE thread filled with only hard FACTS. At least add something like "imo" to the thread name, becouse judging from the thread you didn't play any dota or hon (ot least above complete scrub lvl). Saying that LoL is what DOTA should've been is simply insulting becouse DOTA have many times more depth then LoL even on it's outdated engine and if you'll take your time to check over DOTA 2 or HON TOP10 weekly you'll soon realise that LoL just simply doesn't provide players with tools for such plays thus skillcap celling is many times lower there.

P.S. OP mad couse bad.

Lol.

Let me axe you a question? What game is perfectly balanced?

I'm not asking for perfect balance. That's unattainable in a game such as Dota. I'm asking for heroes to get the reworks they really deserve. Look at Legionnaire from HoN. He was Axe, but fixed up. Icefrog knew Axe was a poorly designed hero with a bad ultimate and DoT, and he fixed those with the HoN edition of Axe. Dota 2's Axe suffers the same problem the original Axe did. He's a shitty fucking unviable piece of junk no one will play on a competitive level, which is the same for a ton of heroes who have mechanics literally made up of a few amature game makers years ago. When will people finally realize this?

[Lysah]

Axe battle hunger and culling blade are bad skills, you heard it here first folks.

[JimPaladin]

Axe battle hunger and culling blade are bad skills, you heard it here first folks.

Are you implying they're not? What is your counter argument for this? Do you even have one?

Battle hunger is only good for pubstomping because no one knows how to last hit. In a 'competitive' game there's only small, choice times it's useful. Yes it's good for chasing people down- infact, for that it's fucking amazing- but outside that it could really be a better skill that fits in with his taunt and counter helix.

As far as Culling Blade goes, it's just a killsteal ultimate. Nothing more. I don't even know why you'd argue this because it's widely fucking known that's all it's for. In a 1v1 situation where you're both low it CAN be useful to kill the person before they kill you, but that's only going to happen under VERY SPECIFIC CONDITIONS that would be pointless to put into hypothetical perspective because they're almost never going to actually happen.

But I'm sure you have such good reasons why Culling Blade fits in so perfectly with Axe's skillset and why it isn't just a killsteal ult. Go ahead, let's hear them.

Oh wait you actually have no counter argument, yet you ironically display "A witty saying proves nothing" in your signature. How deliciously pathetic of you.

[Barnabas]

Lol.



I'm not asking for perfect balance. That's unattainable in a game such as Dota. I'm asking for heroes to get the reworks they really deserve. Look at Legionnaire from HoN. He was Axe, but fixed up. Icefrog knew Axe was a poorly designed hero with a bad ultimate and DoT, and he fixed those with the HoN edition of Axe. Dota 2's Axe suffers the same problem the original Axe did. He's a shitty fucking unviable piece of junk no one will play on a competitive level, which is the same for a ton of heroes who have mechanics literally made up of a few amature game makers years ago. When will people finally realize this?

Teams do pick him like Na'vi for example when they want to troll at the selection screen. I feel the same way when pro teams pick weaver but to each his own. They all have their strengths and late game weaknesses. Dota still offers things you don't have in other mobas though which makes it exciting for me though rather than relying on free passives like other mobas.