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Author Topic: DOTA2  (Read 461602 times)
Jeff Kelly
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I'm an apathetic, hedonistic, utilitarian, nihilistic existentialist.


Reply #1785 on: August 15, 2016, 02:02:13 AM

As someone who has no clue whatsoever about Dota2 yet ended up watching a few of the matches and the final between Wings and DC anyway my impression was that if you're not intimately familiar with Dota and the minutiae of the game mechanics and hero powers you might as well give up and watch something else. This is not an accessible e-sports for people that don't already play Dota2. Also the broadcast didn't make any effort whatsoever to change that and help newcomers ease into things.

The broadcast didn't make any effort whatsoever to explain anything to people who might have been new to the International and who might not be intimately familiar with Dota2. This is bad in my opinion because The International 6 drew quite a crowd of people that were new to Dota and the general reaction on social media was that nobody had a clue what any of this meant. Since the game is not as easy to grok as soccer or football those people need help to at least understand the basics.

In the downtime between matches there was a lot of fluff and a lot of small talk by entirely too many commentators (4 + occasional guest on the floor, two in the studio space, 1 in front of a huge screen failing to do any sort of meaningful post-game analysis + 2 roaming reporters getting testimonials from the crowd and the two people doing the game commentary) yet there was almost no contextualization or tactical analysis. The game commentary was generic US/UK/commonwealth "oscillate between not saying anything at all and breathlessly shouting hundreds of words per minute into the microphone until the amp clips". Additionally due to how Dota plays the stream director had a hard time to choose what he wanted to focus on and so the camera kept jumping around between the lanes and different parts of the map which is just utterly confusing if you're not familiar with the maps.

Lastly not seeing the teams play or player reactions to what happens in-game makes this feel very clinical.

The whole broadcast looked great and the on screen design was good yet it still lacked a lot of the trappings and little details you get from even a mid-tier CBS or ESPN sports broadcast. What made me the most sad is that they treated it like a TV broadcast when you could be doing so much more due to the fact that it is a stream. Make a "newbcast" for new viewers, make a real time tactical analysis or special game analysis stream. Have a broadcast that captures the players and their reactions etc.

Also the prolonged draft procedure kills any momentum. The Taiko drums were a nice touch but they couldn't alleviate the boredom of watching the screen for what felt like an eternity just to wait for people selecting characters. Felt entirely too much like waiting in an in-game queue.

The crowd seemed to enjoy the final quite a bit and it seems at least that the better team won but I frankly couldn't tell you anything about the final or what anything even meant. While I don't expect everyone to cater to my exact needs I think that it is bad e-sports in general when it is making no effort to make things easier for new viewers.
Azuredream
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Reply #1786 on: August 15, 2016, 02:37:04 AM

Make a "newbcast" for new viewers

I could've sworn they used to do this, and I'm not sure why that was absent this year.

I do agree that it's probably unwatchable unless you've either played or have watched a lot already.

The Lord of the Land approaches..
Jeff Kelly
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I'm an apathetic, hedonistic, utilitarian, nihilistic existentialist.


Reply #1787 on: August 15, 2016, 04:08:03 AM

I thought about why the broadcast is so confusing and I had a few ideas.

- new viewers don't know the rules and the principal mechanics of the game, there's no one who explains them and the game is not that easy to parse or understand compared to most sports competitions. American Fotball might have arcane minutiae (at least from the perspective of a casual viewer) but the principal game mechanics are easy to understand even by just watching. A special broadcast stream for newbs or introductory videos might help but the whole broadcast is structured so that only players familiar with the game can see what's going on. This is in contrast to almost every other sport that usually integrate mechanics and guidance to help spectators (even something as simple as different colored kits to distinguish the different Teams).

- There is a distinct lack of visual or structural guidance in both the broadcast and the spectator client to make things clearer for casual viewers.  Since it's Dota there are no 'sides' and no cardinal directions the teams move along (left to right for example) that might implicitely help you. There is no 'long shot' view of the whole map (the maps are usually too large for that to be feasible anyway) like for example in soccer or most other sports played on a pitch to give you a sense of the 'whole' and the camera is too close to the action in the lanes for casuals to make any sense of the 'whole' game. There's no real 'kit' that helps you distinguish teams by color and the spectator client that the broadcast is using is cluttered with UI elements yet lacks simple visual elements to help you see who's fighting who where on the map. The spoken commentary has to offset a lot of that and that makes the commentary a breathless mess of color commentary and infodumps with a high word/minute count. If you're a casual viewer you might even have a hard time distinguishing between heroes and the AI mooks.

That's what I meant when I said that the broadcast is lacking elements of even mid-tier TV sports broadcasts. TV is doing a lot of stuff in their broadcasts to implicitely help you make sense of a game visually. From instant replays to how the cameras are used (long shots vs. closeups) to how the stats and game info is presented.

- the broadcast had a really hard time to handle the inherent 'parallellism' of MOBAs. Key plays can potentially happen at the same time on different parts of the map and so the broadcaster was jump cutting between different views constantly, sometimes almost every second. Since the camera is so close to the action and the teams are not that easy to distinguish you could get utterly lost in the action and lose any sense what any of that meant for the game as a whole. This is also something the commentators had to offset.

- the biggest issue for me was that the visual presentation was not helping you to make sense of the game and the spoken commentary was aware of that and tried to offset that by incessently talking about almost everything at once. There was also not a lot post-game stuff to at least contextualize the game for you after the fact.Almost no review of important plays, no tactical analysis, no explanation how a certain draft had changed thy dynamic of the game etc.. Instead we got ten minutes of Taiko drums accompanying a static view of a character select Screen while the on site Reporter tried to be funny while interviewing the crowd.

The Dota broadcast gave me a newfound appreciation of TV sports broadcasts because I realized that a lot of the stuff we like to complain about (from replays to player interviews to the expense for the dozens of cameras and the big broadcaster teams) are actually necessary or at least beneficial to help you make sense of a game while you're watching it or after it ended. especially when you're only casually following a sport.

Chimpy
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Reply #1788 on: August 15, 2016, 05:19:47 AM

Make a "newbcast" for new viewers

I could've sworn they used to do this, and I'm not sure why that was absent this year.

I do agree that it's probably unwatchable unless you've either played or have watched a lot already.

They kinda stopped doing that after TI4.

While I understand where Jeff is coming from, I found it a bit confusing when I first watched it as a non-player as well (I still don't play, just watch). The thing that probably hurt a lot too is that you may have ended up watching matches with bad casters. Maut and LD were especially terrible as their preparation and actual game knowledge is obviously inferior to the other casting teams around and they got a lot more of the good matches than they should have. Tobi and Merlini are good but they do gloss over a lot of the stuff. Cap and Blitz are by far the best casting duo that were at TI to have if you are not as familiar with the game.

As for the tons of hopping around between panels and little analysis, I think it was an attempt (largely successful) to not have what they had in previous years which was a lot of completely dead time where they just had a logo and background music playing.

I think part of why this year might have been hard to use as a way to pick things up is that there was so much variety in the hero picks and strategies used that it would be harder to figure out.

When I first watched DOTA2, it was the TI4 lower bracket finals and I had almost no clue what was going on other than it was similar to LoL. I thought it was enjoyable and more interesting to watch but I was mostly clueless. The same thing happened when I watched Rugby for the first time 15 years ago. I had no clue what was going on, and the commentators were just as bad if not worse than what you are complaining about. It took me quite a while to understand what was going on. I know people who have no clue what the rules are for the "accessible" sports you mentioned and I find that commentary for pretty much every sport for people not familiar with it is similar. If you explain to much, the people who watch all the time get pissed because you didn't give them information they didn't know.

All that aside, from a quality of games played standpoint, this was an amazing tournament. I was disappointed DC wasn't able to pull it off but they were obviously pretty exhausted by the time game 3-4 rolled around. They still did something no one would have expected and Wings is the scariest team to play against as you have no idea what they are going to do.

'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
Kail
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Reply #1789 on: August 15, 2016, 05:45:48 PM

Since the game is not as easy to grok as soccer or football those people need help to at least understand the basics.

I don't know that it's really that different in terms of understanding, football especially is a mess of "who's allowed to touch who, where, how and when" if you don't know the rules.  The issue is that football is way more common and more often a social activity so you're more likely to have been sitting next to someone who knows what's going on at some point, while if you're watching Dota alone in front of your computer, you've got nothing.  I was watching the finals with three guys who never touched Dota and once you explain some basic stuff it gets a lot clearer.  Each character has a really short list of really important information you need to know (generally the ult and how they're usually played) and a few items that need to be explained (Blink Dagger, Black King Bar, TP Scroll, Ward, Dust, Gem, maybe Rapier if it comes up) and then the game at least becomes comprehensible, even if you don't know why a Butterfly would be a good choice now or something.

IMO it would be nice if they'd put together some kind of "viewer's guide to Dota" and run that between the games, or at least before the first game in a set.  It would have given them something at least slightly game related, my group HATED the between game chatter, would have preferred the old blank screen with a clock so you'd at least know when to come back.  I seem to recall Blizzard doing something like this for Heroes of the Storm for the drafting phase, when someone would choose Thrall or whoever they'd run a little ~15 sec video about what he did.

That aside, I enjoyed the tournament, though I was a little sad that DC didn't win.  I was really surprised they made it as far as they did, and they came SO CLOSE a couple of times to beating the unstoppable superteam that everyone would said would just crush them.
Fordel
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Reply #1790 on: August 16, 2016, 01:28:14 PM

They stopped the newb stream mostly because almost no actual new comers watched it. It was just like, the side stream for people who were fans of whichever casters were on that stream.

People would see the main stream with like 200k+ viewers then the 'newbie stream' with like 2k and would just watch the main one.




The main thing is Dota only has like 10-15 years of history, instead of say Footballs 100+. Pretty much all sports are impenetrable without that constant background context from life. I was trying to watch the olympic rugby games the other day and I couldn't make any fucking sense of it. I had a vague notion of teams having to reach the other end of the field and that's about it.

and the gate is like I TOO AM CAPABLE OF SPEECH
Chimpy
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Reply #1791 on: August 16, 2016, 01:36:51 PM

Seriously though, if you got stuck listening to Maut and LD casting for your first few spectating experiences, you are fucked. Maut is especially terrible and I have no idea why they invited him over someone like Zyori.

'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
Rasix
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Reply #1792 on: November 28, 2016, 02:10:33 PM

This is my son's current obsession. He plays bot games every day and watches TI matches on YouTube when he's forced away from the computer. Easy bots are of course easy, but he even did OK when the gunked up the difficulty for a few weeks. 

So, in order to try and level his battle pass, I've stepped back into PVP matches. I assume All Pick is what noobs do, right? I'm seriously no good at this, and my first two games confirm it. It seems like there's no match making attempted here, and so far I've gotten on the short end of it both times.

I like Juggernaut, so I've picked him twice, but also mainly because I got on the team that didn't want to pick a damn core/carry until really late. Any build advice for pub games? I mean, I'm sure my pro teammates will get mad and tell me what I should be building, but any input might be good as well. Ohh, and fuck all of this stealth nonsense. Seems that's all I've played against so far, teams with a ton of invis.

My son would probably do better, but yah, 7 is a bit too young for a moba community. At least I got him to not repeat the "HOLY SHIT" from the mega kill announcer and the random stuff he sees while watching games. "Mom will take the game away. Keep the swearing to yourself."

-Rasix
Bann
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Reply #1793 on: November 28, 2016, 08:24:23 PM

This is my son's current obsession. He plays bot games every day and watches TI matches on YouTube when he's forced away from the computer. Easy bots are of course easy, but he even did OK when the gunked up the difficulty for a few weeks. 

So, in order to try and level his battle pass, I've stepped back into PVP matches. I assume All Pick is what noobs do, right? I'm seriously no good at this, and my first two games confirm it. It seems like there's no match making attempted here, and so far I've gotten on the short end of it both times.

I like Juggernaut, so I've picked him twice, but also mainly because I got on the team that didn't want to pick a damn core/carry until really late. Any build advice for pub games? I mean, I'm sure my pro teammates will get mad and tell me what I should be building, but any input might be good as well. Ohh, and fuck all of this stealth nonsense. Seems that's all I've played against so far, teams with a ton of invis.

My son would probably do better, but yah, 7 is a bit too young for a moba community. At least I got him to not repeat the "HOLY SHIT" from the mega kill announcer and the random stuff he sees while watching games. "Mom will take the game away. Keep the swearing to yourself."

The Juggs I play with mostly seem to go battlefury into yasha first, and then either finish the manta or pick up blink. Slardar is great against invis heroes and can be run offlane in addition to safe - he also gives you an easy Rosh. I'm probably pretty biased by the stack I play with, but I think Mirana is really strong right now. As long as you are comfortable stacking ancients with a creep, Sven pretty reliably comes online out of the safelane and almost always gives you a chance to win. Warlock has been a hot pick in tournaments lately, but I think its a bit of a trap support pick playing with pubs - very rarely do people coordinate for massive fatal bonds or fight/not fight around your ultimate. I've been playing a ton of Disruptor and support Kunnka lately. I've found that Glimpse/X is a great way to get a pick or initiate a fight relatively safely as a support. I dont really ever play the offlane, so I'm not sure whats good up there.



Rasix
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Reply #1794 on: November 30, 2016, 09:16:02 AM

Played a couple Mirana games; they went pretty well.  I figure if I just pick Mirana, I'll either get mid, or I can support.  I did a game of each. The core Mirana was a lot more fun. I was getting dumpstered by a player who was a LOT better than I was at first, but a team fight went our way where I got a couple kills, and it snowballed hard in our favor. Once you get your Ahgs, it's easy money as you can farm fairly easily from then on.

Fun hero. Can do just about anything you can want and flexible to build. Nothing more satisfying than hitting a long range arrow.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2016, 09:17:35 AM by Rasix »

-Rasix
Rasix
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Reply #1795 on: December 05, 2016, 10:06:55 AM

Finally had a decent Juggernaut game, but had the misfortune of assuming I was offlane when I was forced mid. So I had a stick instead of shield. Probably should have had shield anyhow. Did a stout/ring of aquilla/phase/yasha/battle etc. Farmed really well, fought when I could. Team kept dying all over the place, so when I was online, it was against cores that were really fed. I could push and delete the squishies fairly efficiently however. (I am crap at managing clones)

WTF are you supposed to do against a fed Weaver? I suppose I could try to force out the time lapse before I ult, but god, that shit is frustrating to deal with.

Anyhow, all pick seems to be really variable in the quality you get matched against. I could be against some clueless noob (rarely it seems, lots of smurfs) or some guy that is managing to harass, last hit, and deny miles better than I can manage.

-Rasix
Rasix
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Reply #1796 on: December 07, 2016, 10:09:02 PM

So, legit noob question here: will I ever get put into an appropriate skill bracket with normal games? People seem to be expecting a lot more out of me than I'm comfortable with at this stage.

-Rasix
Bann
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Reply #1797 on: December 08, 2016, 06:27:57 AM

Trying to live up to the expectations of a whiny dota teammate is a scary road to go down. Chances are your teammates and you are probably pretty close to where you should be, even if they do not want to admit it. Id suggest trying to gauge your game off of some measurable statistics during the laning stage. Like if you were mid/carry, did you have ~50cs by 10 mins? If you were support, were you able to burn through offlane regen/make an effective rotation? As a support, how many runes were you able to secure for your team? How many camps were you able to stack? If you are stacking, are you doing it to pull the lane or for a core to farm later? Did you have vision up and were you able to use it to call out or ping enemy rotations? If you were offlane, were you able to not die (or only die once or twice) and still hit 6 by 8-10 minutes?

Are you playing ranked or unranked? I've found that unranked is usually more relaxed in terms of teammate expectations, especially for any mode besides all pick.
Fordel
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Reply #1798 on: December 08, 2016, 01:19:37 PM

WTF are you supposed to do against a fed Weaver? I suppose I could try to force out the time lapse before I ult, but god, that shit is frustrating to deal with.


That's about it yea, try to somehow catch him without his ult without being blown up yourself. The 'correct' answer is to make sure he isn't being fed obviously, but you might as well be saying 'git gud' at that point.

and the gate is like I TOO AM CAPABLE OF SPEECH
Hoax
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l33t kiddie


Reply #1799 on: December 10, 2016, 03:48:43 PM

Trying to live up to the expectations of a whiny dota teammate is a scary road to go down. Chances are your teammates and you are probably pretty close to where you should be, even if they do not want to admit it. Id suggest trying to gauge your game off of some measurable statistics during the laning stage. Like if you were mid/carry, did you have ~50cs by 10 mins? If you were support, were you able to burn through offlane regen/make an effective rotation? As a support, how many runes were you able to secure for your team? How many camps were you able to stack? If you are stacking, are you doing it to pull the lane or for a core to farm later? Did you have vision up and were you able to use it to call out or ping enemy rotations? If you were offlane, were you able to not die (or only die once or twice) and still hit 6 by 8-10 minutes?

Are you playing ranked or unranked? I've found that unranked is usually more relaxed in terms of teammate expectations, especially for any mode besides all pick.

The nugget of great advice here is: after 15min check the cs, anyone who has more than you or is playing support and you've noticed doing useful stuff like buying cour/wards/ganking might say something of some value everyone else isn't worth listening to a single word from because they don't know shit. Now a lot of those people won't say anything all that helpful and instead will just be personified cancer, but even so when they get mad can be enlightening.

Double bonus of this idea, should motivate you to cs better so that you can disregard more shithead cyka scum.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2016, 03:50:56 PM by Hoax »

A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation.
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Rasix
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Reply #1800 on: December 10, 2016, 06:36:58 PM

It's mostly players on highly greedy split pushers that seem to be the most vocally retarded. Meepo/Tinker players especially. I got crap about my warding from a tinker, when he was pinging wards I didn't put down. Bonus points: he was speaking in spanish the entire time. Then some Meepo gave me crap about my farming, when I ended up with a higher net worth than him.  Ohhhhh, I see.

The problem is that I'm like account level 11 and getting in games with people that have account level 45-90 and obviously have a lot more experience.

Right now I can support pretty well. I ward, buy the courier most of the time, and have high kill participation. My warlock games I kind of get too many kills, but rock/fatal bonds really destroys in team fights. I haven't really worked in stacking/pulling quite yet. I feel like my lane presence is pretty good, even when I get paired with a complete shitter.

My core game is not great. I don't CS well. I don't have good illusion control. But sometimes in all pick you're looking at team with no damage, and you feel like at least someone should be able to carry.  That's when I usually pick Mirana.  DRILLING AND WOMANLINESS My juggernaut still farms too slow. I'm thinking of starting off with a quelling blade.

I have fun, but like league, the shitty community aspects harm the experience.

-Rasix
Chimpy
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Reply #1801 on: December 10, 2016, 11:53:23 PM

I have fun, but like league, the shitty community aspects harm the experience.

Doesn't this describe pretty much every online multiplayer game popular enough to have a "community"?

'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
Rasix
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I am the harbinger of your doom!


Reply #1802 on: December 11, 2016, 12:08:44 AM

Yup. MOBA communities are special though.

Oh, and I played my first game with all Russians. Holeee shieet. I've had viruses that were more enjoyable than that.

-Rasix
Samprimary
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Reply #1803 on: December 11, 2016, 02:43:56 AM

Yup. MOBA communities are special though.

Oh, and I played my first game with all Russians. Holeee shieet. I've had viruses that were more enjoyable than that.

corgratulaton on ur new peresident, cyka bylat. mid or feed
HaemishM
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Reply #1804 on: December 11, 2016, 12:26:33 PM

Yup. MOBA communities are special though.

Special is one way to describe it. Pox-ridden, pus-covered slime monsters with cancerous vaginas for mouths and hate-filled racist invective for fingers is another way.

Rasix
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I am the harbinger of your doom!


Reply #1805 on: December 12, 2016, 10:14:30 AM

So, this update is fairly significant.  ACK! My son is going to be confused as hell when he gets home.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2016, 10:16:23 AM by Rasix »

-Rasix
Megrim
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Reply #1806 on: December 12, 2016, 11:14:15 AM

Im confused as well, so its not just him.

One must bow to offer aid to a fallen man - The Tao of Shinsei.
Rasix
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I am the harbinger of your doom!


Reply #1807 on: December 12, 2016, 11:38:14 AM

Yah, but he's 7. 

"DAD, WHAT DID YOU DO TO DOTA2? FIX IT."

Wonder how buggy the new UI is going to be with my ultrawide monitor.

-Rasix
Megrim
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Reply #1808 on: December 12, 2016, 01:51:25 PM

Tell him its an important life lesson. You get used to something, and then its ripped out from under you. Like, he'll be all into girls, and then BAM, syphilis.

One must bow to offer aid to a fallen man - The Tao of Shinsei.
Fordel
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Reply #1809 on: December 12, 2016, 02:43:22 PM

I'm super excited by that Treant Change of all things. I don't even know if it will make him really good or not, I just love the idea of perma stealth tree!

and the gate is like I TOO AM CAPABLE OF SPEECH
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