DOTA2

[Megrim]

Yes yes, keep saying it. Someday it'll magically be true.

[Samprimary]

I felt the exact opposite, actually - DOTA2 to me looked pretty dull for the most part. Perhaps it's a product of "competitive" play, but that DOTA replay looked painfullly conservative to me.

lol's fault — they got rid of the 'passive play' encouragements and streamlined the process of getting to teamfight endgames. Now by comparison dota's (and hon's) conventions tend to grate.

[Strazos]

Apparently at high ELO LoL is conservative as well...but screw that, I just like to play the game, it's not a sport.

[Megrim]

Apparently at high ELO LoL is conservative as well...but screw that, I just like to play the game, it's not a sport.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just wanted to clear up some of the misconceptions which people seem to have, in thinking that comp gameplay is all tryhard fucktardery. It reality this is just a well-made, well honed game which can be enjoyed at all levels.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Apparently at high ELO LoL is conservative as well...but screw that, I just like to play the game, it's not a sport.

Yeah, I was gonna say. I just watched the better part of the IEM LoL tournament and the games were extremely conservative -- like, first blood at 20 minutes, 98%-of-gameplay-is-farming conservative. The variety of engagements in the DOTA2 games (in terms of ganks, counter-ganks, teamfights, etc.) I watched was much greater, though as mentioned they generally have their own periods of farm-drudgery.

But as someone mentioned, the lethality of ganks in DOTA is much higher, especially in the early game -- and the much-maligned 'lose gold on death' actually means that a few early kills (on the right hero) can significantly change the shape of the game. In LoL an early kill or two, while still an advantage, is not really worth putting yourself out for -- basically, the early game has less risk and less reward, and therefore less variance in play. Which is nice for casual play, because small skill differences do not snowball as radically, but makes high-level play kind of samey.

[schild]

Apparently at high ELO LoL is conservative as well...but screw that, I just like to play the game, it's not a sport.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just wanted to clear up some of the misconceptions which people seem to have, in thinking that comp gameplay is all tryhard fucktardery. It reality this is just a well-made, well honed game which can be enjoyed at all levels.

A well-honed, well-made game that stinks of design flaws that are artifacts of the Warcraft III engine :(

Sorry bro, it's not your fault, or any players fault that Valve drank the Icefrog stupidsauce.

[Vaiti]

You misspelled geniussauce.

[Slayerik]

I liked LoL enough to never play HoN. I still like it enough to not play DOTA2, especially after watching the vids.

I think Riot does a pretty damn good job of balancing, especially considering the number of champs in game. When one of my champs gets nerfed, I almost always think 'not unexpected, he was a little OP'.

Anyway, cya in LoL guys.

[Ashamanchill]

The weird thing is, I liked LoL enough to try HoN with friends. It was wretched. Now that I hear there is easy mode, I may also try DOTA 2 if it is F2P.

[Margalis]

Yes yes, keep saying it. Someday it'll magically be true.

Why do you keep disagreeing with me when everything you wrote indicates that the game is in fact unbalanced and you've basically conceded the point?

I'm genuinely confused. Again, you yourself wrote that some champions are picked way more often than others and have greater reward for less risk. That's "balanced" to you?

[Megrim]

Apparently at high ELO LoL is conservative as well...but screw that, I just like to play the game, it's not a sport.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just wanted to clear up some of the misconceptions which people seem to have, in thinking that comp gameplay is all tryhard fucktardery. It reality this is just a well-made, well honed game which can be enjoyed at all levels.

A well-honed, well-made game that stinks of design flaws that are artifacts of the Warcraft III engine :(

Sorry bro, it's not your fault, or any players fault that Valve drank the Icefrog stupidsauce.

We need a shrugging smiley. At the end of the day I guess we'll see what happens with this new version.

[Flinky]

I'm genuinely confused. Again, you yourself wrote that some champions are picked way more often than others and have greater reward for less risk. That's "balanced" to you?

Its not that they have a greater reward for less risk, its that they have a smaller margin between risk and reward. In other words they don't have a power advantage, they're just harder to fuck up with in terms of abilities and/or meta.

Does that make sense?

[Malakili]

Yes yes, keep saying it. Someday it'll magically be true.

Why do you keep disagreeing with me when everything you wrote indicates that the game is in fact unbalanced and you've basically conceded the point?

I'm genuinely confused. Again, you yourself wrote that some champions are picked way more often than others and have greater reward for less risk. That's "balanced" to you?

Think of it like Starcraft - an aggressive low economy one base all in play is high risk high reward,   On the other hand, doing a safe build with a focus on economy is much safer, but you aren't going to win immediately either.  Both types of builds can be balanced within the larger strategy meta game though.

I don't play DOTA, but it sounds like a similar thing he is describing with the Champions.

[Mosesandstick]

Are there stats for the number of heroes picked competitively in LoL vs. Dota?

[Ingmar]

I'm not sure it follows that having some bad heroes that nobody ever picks means a game is unbalanced. Probably 80% of the cards in MTG are never played outside of sealed/draft, but that doesn't make it an unbalanced game. This is a deckbuilding genre at its core it seems to me. All games like that have bad "cards", that's the way it works pretty much by definition.

[Fordel]

This weekends MLG has LoL as an event.

http://pro.majorleaguegaming.com/live/league_of_legends


If people want to compare the DotA2 tourney to a LoL one I guess?

[Ice Cream Emperor]

I'm not sure it follows that having some bad heroes that nobody ever picks means a game is unbalanced. Probably 80% of the cards in MTG are never played outside of sealed/draft, but that doesn't make it an unbalanced game. This is a deckbuilding genre at its core it seems to me. All games like that have bad "cards", that's the way it works pretty much by definition.

Agreed. There are (at least) two main ways to achieve balance: you can have a very small number of inputs, and meticulously test all possible combinations of play, or you can create so many inputs and possible combinations that it is functionally impossible to determine what, if any, optimal plays exist. (And then, of course, tweak things as various dominant strategies emerge.) MOBAs clearly operate in the latter paradigm, so judging their balance -- or the skill of those people responsible for balancing them -- is more about how quickly and how appropriately they react to emergent strategies/tactics. My totally subjective impression when I played DOTA was that while I did not agree with all the balancing decisions that were made, my impression was that these were the result of divergent opinions about what the game should be like, not incompetence in execution.

Whereas, again totally subjectively, LoL's fuckups mostly felt like incompetence -- their vision of the game was obviously much closer to my preferred casual playstyle, but their ability to bring that about seemed to be constantly undermined by their own business model and/or their own shitty code and/or poor decision making. Now since they're apparently making a lot of money, I optimistically imagine that they have used that money to hire more people, and that those people are more competent, and so things have improved. In some cases this has clearly happened -- I see from watching a Livestream that you can actually preset masteries now, for example, which didn't used to be the case.

But I also notice that most of the non-support heros people play now are unfamiliar to me, suggesting that the power creep that acts as the engine to their business model has continued apace.

[Strazos]

Such as who? Ashe is still one of the most popular champions, as much as I detest her.

[Margalis]

LoL definitely does suffer from development slowness and/or screwups.

[Amaron]

But I also notice that most of the non-support heros people play now are unfamiliar to me, suggesting that the power creep that acts as the engine to their business model has continued apace.

This confuses me.   I'm not sure where you got the crazy idea that they have power creep.   Most of the staples are super cheap release heroes like Ashe ,Trist ,Alistar ,Annie, etc.   Four of the 450 ip (basically freebies) heroes were big staples of the tournament.   There were also plenty of old heroes that were new to you I'm sure but not new in general.   I actually had the thought during the tournament that the heroes represented were definitely not what the marketing department would choose.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

This confuses me.   I'm not sure where you got the crazy idea that they have power creep.   Most of the staples are super cheap release heroes like Ashe ,Trist ,Alistar ,Annie, etc.   Four of the 450 ip (basically freebies) heroes were big staples of the tournament. 

I only saw one Ashe and one Trist in the games I watched, but it is possible that I focused more on the new heros simply because they were unfamiliar to me. There was a whole lot of Nocturne, Brand, some woman with a gun and an ability called 'piltdown' somethingorother, and a few others I didn't recognize. My comment on power creep had more to do with my experience when playing the game, so probably that biased my reading of the hero distribution in the games I watched.

[Margalis]

Brand, Nocturne and Caitlin (Piltover Peacemaker) aren't all that new, especially Caitlin. And Caitlin was considered underpowered for a long time as was Brand. Nobody in the US used Brand until Euro players started doing well with him.

At this point it's less power creep than it is waxing and waning. There are a few heroes who are always good and a few who have not been viable for quite a while but for the most part the overall power level seems about constant. If you look at say Corki and Ashe both were staple picks for a long long time, and both were nerfed recently, Corki quite substantially, after not being changed in quite some time. If there was really power creep those heroes should have needed buffs to keep up rather than nerfs.

[Mosesandstick]

Annie was supposed to be one of Riot's model balanced champions but they still needed to give her AP ratios a slight boost a couple of patches ago. Ashe is supposed to be one of the model carries, but I think her high utility and poor early game made her suited for the support/carry meta which allowed her deficiencies to be easily covered hence the necessary nerf.

Recently there hasn't been so much power creep and more wild inconsistency from Riot. Orianna is very powerful, Yorick was weak, Leona was weak and didn't fit into the meta, Jarvan has been hit by nerf arfter nerf, Nocturne had to be nerfed significantly, Cass has always been viewed as weak etc.

But not all of this is Riot's fault. Sometimes Riot is further ahead of the curve than the players. Think about how long it took before people realised how powerful Irelia was.

[Amaron]

I only saw one Ashe and one Trist in the games I watched, but it is possible that I focused more on the new heros simply because they were unfamiliar to me.

Well there were a lot of interesting picks and some of the games certainly had more "new" heroes.   They kept using skins off and on too so that was probably also confusing.

[Samprimary]

lol's power balance is by now efficient enough that in order for a hero to be top tier, it has to be a function of what emergent gameplay meta they're operating in.

The problem i see is that all the general, simple, core types of abilities are covered in abundance, so the new heroes' often have powers which are getting weirder and weirder.

[Ashamanchill]

I've heard this has been pushed back to a 2012 release. Anyone here more in the know who can confirm that?

[Vaiti]

Arise! So the DoTA2 client got leaked. And there is Half-life 2: EP3 code in the files. Doesn't really shine much light on EP3 other than revealing the names of some new weapons: An icegun, a flamethrower and something called a weaponizer. Good to know they are indeed working on the title still anyhow.

Biggest news really as far as DoTA2 is concerned, is code and references for an ingame itemshop was also found, which pretty much verifies that this is going to be the F2P title they have been working on.

http://lambdageneration.com/posts/dota-2-client-leaked-including-actual-hl2-episode-three-code/

[KallDrexx]

Lol some of those icons are 

[Vaiti]

Link for the lazy

Yes, yes they are.

[Teleku]

 

[Prospero]

There is amazing art in there.

[Fordel]

Well it is Valve isn't it?

[Prospero]

Valve has decided to rejigger their release plans and try to get the current version out ASAP.

http://blog.dota2.com/

[Kirth]

Valve has decided to rejigger their release plans and try to get the current version out ASAP.

http://blog.dota2.com/

NDA has been lifted as well if i understand correctly.

[Hayduke]

Yeah there's a few gameplay streams up now that the NDA is down.  Never played DotA but this does look like quite a bit of fun.