DOTA2

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Sounds like too many modes to me.

Will split the player base and/or a lot of the modes will be neglected / unbalanced / etc. When they have tournaments which mode(s) are they going to use?

It's also kind of silly to call that "easy mode." Why not just call it "if you play this you're a retard mode"? TO be clear about what I mean here, just the name indicates Valve turning their nose up at the mode.

It's pretty easy to tell who in this thread actually participated in the DOTA community and who did not.

They called it easy mode in DOTA and people still played it. (Though easy mode in DOTA only made people level faster, last I played; it didn't interact with the denial mechanics.) Yes some percentage of people get all snooty, but the name itself certainly didn't deter enough people from playing it that you could easily find a game if you wanted.

The game will almost certainly be balanced for normal mode or a specific tournament mode, because that's pretty much the goal of DOTA -- competitive 'e-sport' balance. I think people making comparisons to TF2 and expecting feature sets (mods, etc.) based off Valve's track record may be sorely disappointed. My feeling is that this is still DOTA, and Valve is footing the bill, not remaking the development philosophy of the game.

And honestly, what sets DOTA apart from LoL is that, frankly, IceFrog and whoever works with him are just a lot better at balancing a competitive game, and take doing so a lot more seriously. LoL's release-heros-nonstop-for-cash model resulted (at least when I played it) in a nearly impossible-to-balance environment in which the game was constantly flooded with poorly-tested and default-overpowered heros designed to encourage players to buy them ASAP in order to take advantage of the fact. Does this make LoL a worse game? Not really, from the casual player point of view. But it does make it a worse sport, for whatever that's worth -- and for DOTA, that's obviously worth a lot.

I also find DOTA's heros a lot more interesting, but it's hard to separate that from their iconic they-came-first status.

--

The concern about denial mechanics also seems really overblown -- except insofar as people are just treating them as a stand-in for a whole general attitude on the part of the developers. As someone pointed out, 'zoning' exists in LoL as well as DOTA, and successful zoning is far, far more crippling to the opponent than creep denial. As is, you know, killing the other guy, which is what actually happens in both games when you have two players of vastly different skill levels. The learning curve in LoL is plenty harsh, and most of the improvements over DOTA have to do with better item-buying suggestions, sensible key-binding, etc. Losing gold on death is certainly a far worse rule than creep denial, from the point of view of avoiding new players being completely frustrated.

In any case, I found both communities to be so poisonously aggravating that the game mechanics kind of faded to the background. A game can have a difficult learning curve, but if its full of people -- who are on your team -- calling you a faggot and rage-quitting whenever you dare to do something wrong, the precise shape of the curve doesn't really matter. Because guess what -- they never stop doing it, no matter how good you get.

[Mosesandstick]

One of the key LoL design decisions is that it is intended to be (generally) balanced for both balanced and competitive player, which is something from my understanding that is not the case in DOTA. The end result is that there are champions which are fairly clearly unplayable at high levels so that they're not frustrating at lower levels.

[Amaron]

And honestly, what sets DOTA apart from LoL is that, frankly, IceFrog and whoever works with him are just a lot better at balancing a competitive game

   

[Margalis]

It's pretty easy to tell who in this thread actually participated in the DOTA community and who did not.

....

In any case, I found both communities to be so poisonously aggravating that the game mechanics kind of faded to the background.

This would be a stronger point if you didn't begin your post by being needlessly antagonistic. It sounds like your problem with the communities is that they are full of people like yourself...

[Megrim]

Ok, at this point I'm actually laughing out loud. Can you possibly be any more of a whiny bitch? What, is valid criticism too hardcore for you?

[Vaiti]

This thread is going places.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

This would be a stronger point if you didn't begin your post by being needlessly antagonistic. It sounds like your problem with the communities is that they are full of people like yourself...

Well, okay, I guess I could have phrased my opening remark differently, but it's true. Concern that the extra game modes will somehow dilute or unfocus the player pool or otherwise undermine the game's balance don't really make sense if you are aware that DOTA already has all those game modes (and several more) and this doesn't happen. I had intended to append that directly to my statement to make the connection clearer -- it wasn't intended as some kind of blanket dismissal.

Amaron, as for your  , I don't know what to say. Better is a relative quality. And LoL was, when I played it, basically terrible when it came to balancing -- and it was very, very clear that this was the result of their business model. It's been a lot longer since I played DOTA so maybe I just wasn't paying as much attention back then, but at the very least there was no external market pressure requiring the release of new heros at an unbalanceable rate -- the structure of the game allowed for more attention to existing problems, instead of devoting resources to creating new ones before the old ones had even been addressed.

[Amaron]

Amaron, as for your  , I don't know what to say. Better is a relative quality. And LoL was, when I played it, basically terrible when it came to balancing -- and it was very, very clear that this was the result of their business model. It's been a lot longer since I played DOTA so maybe I just wasn't paying as much attention back then, but at the very least there was no external market pressure requiring the release of new heroes at an unbalanceable rate -- the structure of the game allowed for more attention to existing problems, instead of devoting resources to creating new ones before the old ones had even been addressed.

My is because at least when I played IceFrog's ability to balance anything was a complete joke.   Maybe he got better in the last few years?   The reason competitive DotA worked was because of bans and because it doesn't matter if a lot of the heroes suck in a MOBA.   That's why RIOT can keep releasing new heroes as well actually.    They have a bunch of staple heroes that can be used for real competitive play and any hero that sticks out gets hit with the nerf stick instantly.   The one or two that slip through the cracks get banned and then the rest of the bans get used for heroes you just don't want to fight.

I guess it depends on which balance you care about.  If you want your favorite hero to be viable then yea RIOT's model is not for you.   For competitive play though it's fine if they release an endless stream of too-situational-or-sucky heroes.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

My is because at least when I played IceFrog's ability to balance anything was a complete joke.   Maybe he got better in the last few years?   The reason competitive DotA worked was because of bans and because it doesn't matter if a lot of the heroes suck in a MOBA.   That's why RIOT can keep releasing new heroes as well actually.    They have a bunch of staple heroes that can be used for real competitive play and any hero that sticks out gets hit with the nerf stick instantly.   The one or two that slip through the cracks get banned and then the rest of the bans get used for heroes you just don't want to fight.

Fair enough; the more I think about it, the less willing I am to claim IceFrog's superiority in this regard, though I still feel like overall DOTA felt like a more balanced game. On the other hand, my LoL experience is just a lot fresher in my mind, and the incompetence of Riot in general was fairly remarkable -- and extended well beyond game balance issues. As you point out, though, the genre itself is fairly forgiving when it comes to competitive play, due to bans, etc.

[Typhon]

Maybe it's the DOTA style of gameplay that causes the community to devolve into barbarism, rather then the gameplay being attractive to barbarians.  I submit this thread as evidence.

[Ingmar]

I think it needs way more all-caps misspelled gay slurs to become evidence of that.

[Lakov_Sanite]

My is because at least when I played IceFrog's ability to balance anything was a complete joke.   Maybe he got better in the last few years?   The reason competitive DotA worked was because of bans and because it doesn't matter if a lot of the heroes suck in a MOBA.   That's why RIOT can keep releasing new heroes as well actually.    They have a bunch of staple heroes that can be used for real competitive play and any hero that sticks out gets hit with the nerf stick instantly.   The one or two that slip through the cracks get banned and then the rest of the bans get used for heroes you just don't want to fight.

Fair enough; the more I think about it, the less willing I am to claim IceFrog's superiority in this regard, though I still feel like overall DOTA felt like a more balanced game. On the other hand, my LoL experience is just a lot fresher in my mind, and the incompetence of Riot in general was fairly remarkable -- and extended well beyond game balance issues. As you point out, though, the genre itself is fairly forgiving when it comes to competitive play, due to bans, etc.

Sounds like you tried playing LoL, got your ass handed to you, then went back with a bleeding anus to DOTA.

[Ingmar]

Can I take back my last post?

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Sounds like you tried playing LoL, got your ass handed to you, then went back with a bleeding anus to DOTA.

Uh, seriously, what?

[Prospero]

Maybe it's the DOTA style of gameplay that causes the community to devolve into barbarism, rather then the gameplay being attractive to barbarians.  I submit this thread as evidence.

This. I was a nice guy before I started playing LoL.

[Margalis]

Dota "balance" is that half the cast is unplayable and the other half has some champions that are picked 10x as often as others.

You could see this exact pattern in the Dota 2 tournament. LoL has had quite a bit of champion diversity in recent tournaments, and LoL has a lot of champions so you figure that if you have 15 different magic damage carry guys a few would rise to the top. But in recent tournaments there has been Brand, Orianna, Cass, Kass, Annie, Gragas, Fiddlesticks,  Anivia, Malzahar (maybe not since nerfs though), etc. That's quite a lot of diversity among characters who fill the same basic role. Similarly for ranged AD there has been MF, Kog, Tristana, Ez, Ashe, Corki, Urgot...again all champs that on paper fill the same role.

To really suss out which game is more balanced you'd have to develop some actual criteria but the idea that Dota is much better balanced than LoL strikes me as almost certainly false.

[Megrim]

Ugh, no. Hero picks are as they are because when one is playing for money (or just to win), players will naturally gravitate towards heroes with lowest risk and highest reward. When your game has ~90 picks to choose from, all quite different from one-another, a lot are going to be overlooked because their skillset doesn't gel with other safe heroes, or they requite too much risk for relatively similar levels of reward.

Also, the first 5-7 minutes of this game do a good job of explaining some of these things, along with the ban system.

[Strazos]

Um, am I looking at the same link? All I see is a video of people taking their sweet ass time with picks/bans, and then not playing terribly aggressively.

[Vaiti]

7 minutes into the link. 2 champs out of 5 and 2 bans out of 4 for one side, and 3 and 2 on the other. Exciting. No audio.
I'm illuminated.

[ezrast]

Ugh, no. Hero picks are as they are because when one is playing for money (or just to win), players will naturally gravitate towards heroes with lowest risk and highest reward.

So, the imbalanced ones?

[Vaiti]

No, the safe ones. 

[Strazos]

Watched to the end. Is there no constant gold accrual? The Dire team just got stomped as if they had no idea what they were doing. They were not farming well at all, and were getting stomped by the little droid guy.

[Megrim]

itt: we learn how to click on the Audio Commentary buttons in Youtube.

Ugh, no. Hero picks are as they are because when one is playing for money (or just to win), players will naturally gravitate towards heroes with lowest risk and highest reward.

So, the imbalanced ones?

Oh god I hope I get you in my division next season. Please oh please oh please oh please =3

[Vaiti]

itt: we learn how to link to the English audio commentary off the bat

fake edit: Yay! I'm like Megrim now. 

[Rasix]

This is like performance art. 

[Ingmar]

Ugh, no. Hero picks are as they are because when one is playing for money (or just to win), players will naturally gravitate towards heroes with lowest risk and highest reward.

So, the imbalanced ones?

The predictable/safe ones, more like. I don't really play MOBAs but in almost every other competitive format with picks like this that I've been involved with, the motivated-to-win players tend to gravitate towards things that are reliable rather than things with high risk/reward. Things that reduce randomness, or match up well in the metagame, etc. I didn't pick dwarves in Blood Bowl because they're particularly overpowered, I picked them because they minimize randomness and don't have a ton of bad matchups. The same thing happens in MtG, happened in DDM, etc.

It would be pretty surprising to me if it was different in MOBAs, but I admit I'm out in theory land here and don't have direct experience with them really.

[K9]

The commentators on these videos are fucking terrible. They are barely intelligible and they seem to talk utter cryptic bollocks the times they are audible.

[Strazos]

This - that feed was horrendous to listen to. I lasted about 30 seconds.

[Megrim]

Thanks for the feedback guise! I'll have to keep it in mind to find casters that suit the f13 aesthetic next time.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

The predictable/safe ones, more like. I don't really play MOBAs but in almost every other competitive format with picks like this that I've been involved with, the motivated-to-win players tend to gravitate towards things that are reliable rather than things with high risk/reward. Things that reduce randomness, or match up well in the metagame, etc.

In MOBAs you generally have one high risk/reward character chosen per team, who is then protected by the other members of the team in order to attempt to mitigate the risk while cashing in on the later-game reward. This is particularly true in DOTA, where the degree to which each team can protect and support their 'hard carry' often decides the game, but it happens in LoL as well, with certain characters being paired with support heros who are good babysitters. Of course in terms of overall strategy, there is still generally a conservative approach like you describe, but since we're talking about individual character design -- the risk/reward distribution for individual heros will vary across a team as part of a larger strategy.

In any case, since this thread has rekindled my interest in the genre, I spent some time watching both the DOTA2 replays and some recent 'replays' from competitive LoL play, and the contrast was a lot greater than I expected. I couldn't say if it's the map construction, the game mechanics, or the hero design or what but the DOTA games mostly feel like they have a lot more going on, especially in the early game. (On the other hand, DOTA games seem to have a sort of longer mid-game lull, whereas in LoL the action seems to ramp up to a definitive endgame a lot faster.) But even simple things in DOTA like destructible trees and what feels like a slightly larger map seems to result in a significantly more aggressive early game playstyle, whereas in LoL the first 15-20 minutes are generally spent watching fairly straightforward lane matchups -- interspersed with some ambushes and the like, to be sure, but much less inter-lane movement than in DOTA.

It's interesting because when I think about more casual (but still high-level, expert) play in both games, I think the games play a lot more similarly -- but when it comes to coordinated competitive play, the DOTA teams seem to have developped significantly more complex tactics and strategies. I know when I was playing LoL there was a serious lack of organized team play (premade 5v5s), and 'solo queue' play pretty much dominated the culture, even amongst the best players -- I'm not sure how much that has changed recently, but it's hard to tell how much that may have contributed, apart from any actual differences between the two games.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

The commentary is definitely not aimed towards people who don't already play the game. I haven't played DOTA in years and it took me awhile to figure out half the stuff they were talking about. On the other hand, the commentary track versions tend to have superior camera movement/focus, instead of randomly showing you 10-15s of a hero walking out from his base. And they bring up some snazzy graphics sometimes.

[Strazos]

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.

In a certain sense there may have been more going on - there's no denial in LOL, no need to worry about port scrolls, there's only 1 shop in LOL.

The DOTA map certainly felt larger, but I don't think that made a huge difference - just a lot of unused space.

[Vaiti]

How I was feeling watching it as well. There was a point or two there with opposing champs walking down the river side by side without a single engagement between them, save maybe a swat with an autoattack. Alot of laning.
Pacing is just different. LoL seems to focus more on ganks and harassment of enemy champs compared to what I was seeing in the couple matches of DoTA2 I've watched.

But yeah, alot of what Ice Cream Emperor is saying feels right to me on the same note. Tactics, teamplay, that does seem to take a little more of a focal point in DoTA.

[Megrim]

You also have to keep in mind that DotA has had years to develop competitively, whereas LoL is still quite new so its not an entirely fair comparison. A ton of little things have been added over time to gradually balance out the game, and to help distill the difference between a good team, and the winning team (for example, the limited number of wards available to a team).

I actually went back and played some DotA recently (after spending the better part of this year playing LoL) and one thing which stood out almost immediately was how much more important crisp decision making matters. In LoL there is so much Ghost/Flash/Exhaust spam, that killing an enemy hero even after you've jumped him, is mind-numbingly hard. One is actually rewarded for careful set-up and positional play instead of going "welp, we've burned his summoner spells, I guess we'll come back for a second pass after his wards expire". That and the increased amount of direct disables help a lot too. All-in-all this tends to speed the game up, because if you can disable and kill an enemy team member you've gained a clear advantage and have set that player back.

On the other hand, after getting used to LoL's (frankly superiour) ui, I was struggling to keep control of my hero for a few games. Its amazing how much of a difference being able to press 'Space' and center on your hero makes.

 * Edit: also keep in mind when you are watching, that these are very high level games. The reason you don't typically see a great deal of harass is because even the slightest over-extension can mean a death and lost gold. When you have a fine line between two evenly matched teams, often the deciding factor is who makes the first few mistakes - not who tries to do something creative.

[Margalis]

Ugh, no. Hero picks are as they are because when one is playing for money (or just to win), players will naturally gravitate towards heroes with lowest risk and highest reward. When your game has ~90 picks to choose from, all quite different from one-another, a lot are going to be overlooked because their skillset doesn't gel with other safe heroes, or they requite too much risk for relatively similar levels of reward.

Other than "Ugh,no" every single thing above indicates that the game is in fact unbalanced.

Edit: As far as other stuff is concerned, Dota does have a more active early game but also has tremendous lulls in action. In the Dota2 tournament after a couple towers on each side went down there were huge stretches of essentially nothing happening. In LoL at that point you would be getting dragon fights, Baron fights and more towers. Average game length feels about the same to me.