DOTA2

[Azuredream]

grind

There's about as much grind in a game like LoL as there is in SC or CoD. Either you like the game or you don't. I can't see why you'd stomach a bunch of games to get points so you can be more effective at this game that you don't even like.

[DLRiley]

Just raged at some nooob akali who doesn't know she does stupid dps at no cost with stealth but meh. No I love LoL I also know its grindy, I also know that i don't have 5 hours to spend on a video game, so i'm going to own at best 40% of the champs in the game at any given time eventually. I do know that if my account gets wiped than i'm kinda done with LoL, unless kicking lowbies is as fun as everyone figures it is. And yes runes matter because when your not derp derp pugging you will get rol rol rollled. Yes they are champs that are 450-1350, plenty of them, but riot hasn't released one in 2 years. Unless they plan on dropping some prices, there model of releasing a 6300 champ and maybe dropping them to 4800 is not a good sign. Fact is Riots business model is subconsciously evil, but it delivers on both ends, no matter what type of player you are.

[Mosesandstick]

Runes can make a huge difference, jungling being the obvious example. Not having a decent set of runes is an easy way to lose to people who are at the same skill level as you.

I'm not completely against a F2P model, but look at the prices I mentioned in one of my earlier posts. The cost difference between the early champions and the current crop of champions is immense. If Dota 2 goes F2P it's not hard to be cheaper than LoL, there's a huge gap.

[lamaros]

Just raged at some nooob akali who doesn't know she does stupid dps at no cost with stealth but meh. No I love LoL I also know its grindy, I also know that i don't have 5 hours to spend on a video game, so i'm going to own at best 40% of the champs in the game at any given time eventually. I do know that if my account gets wiped than i'm kinda done with LoL, unless kicking lowbies is as fun as everyone figures it is. And yes runes matter because when your not derp derp pugging you will get rol rol rollled. Yes they are champs that are 450-1350, plenty of them, but riot hasn't released one in 2 years. Unless they plan on dropping some prices, there model of releasing a 6300 champ and maybe dropping them to 4800 is not a good sign. Fact is Riots business model is subconsciously evil, but it delivers on both ends, no matter what type of player you are.

Time for more rehab.

[Bungee]

I liked the pay 30$ and get everything approach HoN has had. Personally, I don't have time to play more than 1-2h per day but I've been playing HoN since its beta and got every single cent worth of gaming out of it.
DotA is just a concept perfect for guys like me who like some short distraction in an involving PvP centered Game (before I cancelled my WoW account I only logged in to get some Battlegrounds in- now you know why I cancelled). So I'd love to see a Pay2Play model from the very beginning for a reasonable one time price. They may even get a once a year payment out of me if need be as long as it's reasonable (not more than 30$).

[Prospero]

Dota2 trailer up on YouTube. Very shiny.

[K9]

Gameplay or gtfo.

I realise it's Valve, so I will be amazed if it isn't very polished

[ffc]

Beta Signup

Tournament stream starts at 1am PST tomorrow.  Replays should be up at the site too.

[Thrawn]

Gameplay or gtfo.

I realise it's Valve, so I will be amazed if it isn't very polished

http://www.dota2.com/tournaments/international/

Looks almost exactly like HoN to me.

[Malakili]

For the people wondering, looks like there is creep denial.

[Vaiti]

Creep denial, and those little "pet" mule scout things as well. I don't know why I'm surprised, Icefrog and all, but I still thought they might learn from the better of the two DoTA rehashes instead of going for the failboat that is HoN.

[Mosesandstick]

I'm not sure they can be that popular if the game is DOTA copied.

[Nightblade]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziVx7-pGpIc&feature=player_embedded

 

[Malakili]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziVx7-pGpIc&feature=player_embedded

 

I'm not sure why the ye gods face?  I was watching the tournament live earlier and while I don't tend to like moba games anyway so it didn't look enticing to me it seemed like a reasonable execution of the genre.

[schild]

For the people wondering, looks like there is creep denial.

Yup. The moment I saw it, i stopped caring about beta access.

[ffc]

Maybe there can be a mode without creep denial for regular folk and a toggle for the true believers.

[Thrawn]

For the people wondering, looks like there is creep denial.

Yup. The moment I saw it, i stopped caring about beta access.

Agreed, although I'm sure people will come defend it.  I feel like creep denial makes laning much more tedious and boring.  The more time and effort I can focus on actually fighting and harrassing my opponent instead of watching npc health bars the better.

[Prospero]

The last match of the day was pretty fun to watch. It's definitely worth watching if you like the genre.

[Nightblade]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziVx7-pGpIc&feature=player_embedded

 

I'm not sure why the ye gods face?  I was watching the tournament live earlier and while I don't tend to like moba games anyway so it didn't look enticing to me it seemed like a reasonable execution of the genre.

Because it looked tremendously boring, generic and muddy?

[Fordel]

Watched a few games and the most fun I had was seeing how they changed heroes from their original War3 models.


I've never played DotA or any of it's spinoffs, so spectating is such a lost cause.

[K9]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziVx7-pGpIc&feature=player_embedded

 

Is it normal to spend 11 minutes just getting teams?

[Mosesandstick]

There should be an easy mode which will have no creep denying and no gold lost upon death.

I think the smart thing would've been making that standard and making another mode for the traditional players 

[Teleku]

There should be an easy mode which will have no creep denying and no gold lost upon death.

They do.  The mode is called "League of Legends".

[Margalis]

Looks pretty much exactly like DOTA with improved graphics.

[Amaron]

GameSpy: What is Valve's stance on experience-denial mechanics (i.e. counter-killing your own creeps)? This is something of a hot-button issue for fans of this subgenre, particularly since League of Legends managed to do away with it pretty successfully.

    Erik Johnson: We don't really understand why this is a hot-button issue. One of the reasons why we think DOTA has such broad appeal is that there are so many different ways for players to improve their skills. Many traditional RTS games put a high premium on a person's ability to micromanage a large number of units at once; in DOTA, while you tend to focus on a single hero, there are some parts of the game that will reward player who have good microing skills. Being good at controlling a lane in the early game is one of those, but is not something that is required to have fun or be competitive.

All interest dead.

Zoning > creep denial on all fronts.   I used to feel guilty for disliking this mechanic since it is a "skill".   LoL has removed any doubt I've ever had though.   Zoning is far more interesting as a high end skill and is far easier for casual players to grasp and use in a limited fashion.

[KallDrexx]

As someone who has played Dota (a loooong time ago) but never LoL, what's zoning?

[Amaron]

As someone who has played Dota (a loooong time ago) but never LoL, what's zoning?

It's easy to explain as controlling the space around the mobs to stop farming or even push the enemy out of XP range. 

You have that in DoTA some of course but LoL has a couple differences that make it much more prevalent.   The creep waves won't aggro you unless you auto attack.   There are also fairly large bushes on the corner lanes where you can become invisible to drop creep aggro and make the enemy cautious about where you are at.  LoL also allows a single hero to kill creeps in the jungle from lvl 1 for XP and thus the opponents must be wary of where that hero can come from.   Abilities are much cheaper and can be used more often early on as well.

You could honestly probably combine the two styles somewhat but I don't see how anyone could argue that LoL doesn't have a high enough skill cap already anyways.   Adding more skill cap is just going to take away from the value of something else.

[Mosesandstick]

To me, DOTA gameplay looks stale after playing LoL. Even if DOTA has a higher skill cap, who really wants to play with that sort of community?

[Ashamanchill]

This game looks waaaaaaaaay too similar to HoN for me to beleive it will garner anything but the most hardcore, and rabid fans. Creep denial and gold loss on death may make the game more hardcore, but they make it no fun at all.

[Malakili]

This game looks waaaaaaaaay too similar to HoN for me to beleive it will garner anything but the most hardcore, and rabid fans. Creep denial and gold loss on death may make the game more hardcore, but they make it no fun at all.

Notice the two languages the cast was in besides English(for obvious reasons) and German (local to the event).  The original DOTA is still huge in Russia and China - those markets are going to pay dividends to Valve on DOTA 2 would be my guess.  A Chinese DOTA team just sold for 6 million dollars a few weeks back.

[DLRiley]

GameSpy: What is Valve's stance on experience-denial mechanics (i.e. counter-killing your own creeps)? This is something of a hot-button issue for fans of this subgenre, particularly since League of Legends managed to do away with it pretty successfully.

    Erik Johnson: We don't really understand why this is a hot-button issue. One of the reasons why we think DOTA has such broad appeal is that there are so many different ways for players to improve their skills. Many traditional RTS games put a high premium on a person's ability to micromanage a large number of units at once; in DOTA, while you tend to focus on a single hero, there are some parts of the game that will reward player who have good microing skills. Being good at controlling a lane in the early game is one of those, but is not something that is required to have fun or be competitive.

All interest dead.

Zoning > creep denial on all fronts.   I used to feel guilty for disliking this mechanic since it is a "skill".   LoL has removed any doubt I've ever had though.   Zoning is far more interesting as a high end skill and is far easier for casual players to grasp and use in a limited fashion.

This has to be some crack dev team wearing the valve publisher name....cause no way is valve just reskinning dota and charging people for it... jesus, do they seriously want a slice off the stale hon/dota pie that much....

Though people in Russia and China willing to give fist full of dollars for a dota clone thats not english only seems to be a good motivator.

[Azuredream]

All the heroes in that video looked exactly like ones from DotA. Why would you copy the heroes instead of making new ones?

[Malakili]

All the heroes in that video looked exactly like ones from DotA. Why would you copy the heroes instead of making new ones?

 You have to realize, as big as LoL is, there is still a huge population around the world of people playing the original DotA.  I think this game is supposed to appeal to that crowd, while finally making DOTA a stand alone product rather than a WC3 mod.  Its called DoTA 2, but it might be better thought of as DOTA 2.0, if that distinction makes sense.

[Margalis]

All the heroes in that video looked exactly like ones from DotA. Why would you copy the heroes instead of making new ones?

Because the goal of DOTA2 is to remake DOTA with newer graphics and better matchmaking/community stuff.

[Ashamanchill]

This game is going to be the EVE to LoL's WoW (sorry for all the acronyms). That would make HoN the equivalent of, oh, I dunno, Tabula Rasa.