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Author Topic: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients  (Read 3211 times)

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Defenestration

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Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« on: March 10, 2009, 10:58:05 AM »

A lot of my WoW friends have been into a WC3 map mod of no small amount of fame called "Defense of the Ancients" from here on referred to DotA. How they derive pleasure from it, or even if they do, is something I continue to wonder about.

First up, let me be up front. I hate RTS games. I just cannot wrap my mind around them or force myself to have any skill despite time played or training that I might force upon myself. At one point, I knew every possible build pattern I could do as a Terran in SC, reasons for building this first or that first, common ways I'll be attacked, but I'll still have a base in its mere infancy when I begin to be assaulted by endless hordes created by some magic of the other players. And I really really REALLY hate the isometric click click click and click some more control scheme. But that aside...

At first, I thought I might actually like it, since the amount of micro needed is infinitely less than an actual WC3 game, since all you are in control of is a single hero. Yeah, I think to myself, I won't be punished for not looking in a million places at once, since all I have is one unit! As long as I level him and choose smart items, I surely must be able to perform well! I was wrong. As far as I can discern, the outcome of the entire game is determined in the first 10 minutes. The team with the highest level player always wins. And if you are ever ganked by another player, then you might as well resign yourself to losing now since you'll be 3 levels behind the dude in your lane that killed you.

That is, of course, if you weren't doomed before the game even started. If DotA isn't Rock Paper Scissors balance, I don't know what is, aside from the fact that some heroes are simply worlds better than the others. I have yet to see a game where a team with either Stealth Assassin or Balnazzar lost. The other force for winning is how well you know the game. I've had many a team yell at me for taking too long shopping simply because it's a giant pain in the ass to find ANYTHING you need to make the next item. And what exactly is the point of the "secret" shop that's required to make anything more than a lower-mid level item anyway? Put it in the goddamn base with everything else!

Also, the players themselves are infuriating. While pubbing games to try to get better for the games I play with friends, I've been banned for everything from picking the wrong hero to picking the wrong item to "backdooring" (I'm sorry, I don't give a shit if mobs are in my base. If the rest of my team are handling the mobs, it's the PERFECT time to take out lane towers while the enemy team is pushing ahead. That's not cheating, that's goddamn good strategy). And what horrible neckbeard started the trend of banning people for leaving a game early?

But yeah, in short I guess what I'm saying is that I hate DotA.
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Burrito Al Pastor

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2009, 11:09:11 AM »

DotA is a fine, fine game if played with friends. The biggest problem is, and always has been, the DotA community; something as simple as a ladder system would be tremendously helpful towards some of the problems, but others are essentially unsolvable, since at this point the DotA community has basically turned into the Counter-Strike community.

I'm hoping Blizzard does something to accommodate some kind of standardized DotA system for Starcraft 2.
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Pacobird

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #2 on: March 10, 2009, 12:17:06 PM »

given that those guys are frequently sitting on ventrillo, it necessarily follows that they would be playing dota.

EDIT: the point of the secret shop is to gank people.
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Doom

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #3 on: March 10, 2009, 02:36:25 PM »

DOTA has a lot of legitimate crippling problems. If you don't like it, you probably will not grow to like it.

But

There are a lot of things here that are your problems. "What neckbeard bans leavers?" Well, in the rare case a game of DOTA is good, all it takes is two sniveling pussies deciding that being killed by that other guy is TOO MEAN and leaving to ruin it, so any routine DOTA host worth his salt can try to curtail it with a kicking program. The standard is that if the ratio drops from 5v5 to 5v3, the other 3 can just fuck off: the first two idiots have already ruined the game.

If you don't like DOTA and people expecting competence of you, stop playing it now and forever. DOTA is a lot more like TF2 than any part of the decade old Warcraft 3 system it's made from: a communicating, trusting team will typically bulldoze any number of pub-tards picking "god tier" heroes.

And for what it's worth, Balnazaar is a matter of watching the GIANT DAY AND NIGHT COUNTER AT THE TOP OF YOUR SCREEN and planning effectively, and they sell 200 gold wards for all those gosh darn mean stealth heroes. The number of dipshits who get ruined by stealth mechanics(losing hundreds and eventually thousands total of gold) and won't buy some wards is probably triple digit that I've personally seen.

It's more important in DOTA to learn how to safely level yourself to six without the opposing lane hero killing you. A gank is when four separate enemy heroes surround and rape you. You sound like you've lost a few legit duels and you can't believe somebody doesn't want to play with you after you left in a tizzy, leaving only twin trails of tears as any indication that you tried this "game nobody in their right mind could enjoy."

And "no backdooring" is a courtesy thing. Ignorance of what to expect doesn't make what you experience wrong in every case.

But as far as the one legitimate complaint in your thread goes...

Yeah, the DOTA public is a bunch of festering shit-cunts. Play with 4-5 friends or give up. Not to mention that the game can't support more than one person on a single side leaving for almost any reason.
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James Edward Smith

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #4 on: March 10, 2009, 02:42:50 PM »

Ahhhhhhh..... *Cracks his knuckles* Alright, where to begin.

As some of you might know, Bal, Rico, Ocksi (Dima), Malvado, Kazz, Doom, probably a few others I'm forgetting and I have been playing DotA while voice chatting over ventrilo for over 3 years or so now (probably more actually). I don't profess to be the best player to take up the game, but I can safely say that I know more about the ins and outs of the game than I know about any other online game I have ever played. DotA for me is pretty much what WoW has become for far too many people. So let me try to explain some of these things for you, Defenstration.

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First up, let me be up front. I hate RTS games. I just cannot wrap my mind around them or force myself to have any skill despite time played or training that I might force upon myself. At one point, I knew every possible build pattern I could do as a Terran in SC, reasons for building this first or that first, common ways I'll be attacked, but I'll still have a base in its mere infancy when I begin to be assaulted by endless hordes created by some magic of the other players. And I really really REALLY hate the isometric click click click and click some more control scheme. But that aside...

DotA is not an RTS in any real sense. There is no resource gathering or base building. You control nothing more than your single hero unless you are playing a hero with summons or that can convert enemy units. It controls like an RTS because it is a WC3 custom map, but other than that the gameplay mechanics are completely different.

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At first, I thought I might actually like it, since the amount of micro needed is infinitely less than an actual WC3 game, since all you are in control of is a single hero. Yeah, I think to myself, I won't be punished for not looking in a million places at once, since all I have is one unit! As long as I level him and choose smart items, I surely must be able to perform well! I was wrong. As far as I can discern, the outcome of the entire game is determined in the first 10 minutes. The team with the highest level player always wins.

DotA is very much about levels. You need to keep your team's overall experience level close to that of the other team or they will overpower you and kill you. This is a concept that you have to learn quickly. Now, when a player kills an other player, this affects the level balance in two ways, the killer gets a lot of experience for the kill and the killed loses the potential experience they could have gained through killing creeps while they are dead and waiting to spawn. Early in the game this penalty is not severe though as spawn timers for low level heroes are very short.

The main thing to keep in mind is simple, Always try to be gaining experience and don't waste time doing things like shopping and traveling between lanes. You have to do those two things to play the game properly, but you have to do them PROMPTLY and limit the amount of time you are not farming creeps in lanes or ganking enemy heroes(the two ways you can gain experience).

Don't worry too much about deaths to ganks, you can come back in the end. I have been in DotA games where both my teamates and myself have been getting DESTROYED by ganks to the tune of the game being 25-2 in the other team's favor and still won in the end. Were we in a bad state? Yes, of course we were. But we HELD ON and we defended our base as best we could. We used our towers for cover, we watched our minimap like a hawk for further gank attempts, we stuck together and fought as team when we had to and split up and tried not to drain eachothers experience gaining when it was safe to do so and in the end we beat the bastards back and broke their throne.

It is very possible to gain an advantage in DotA due to items and level advantage, but until they can actually walk in and kill your World Tree or Frozen Throne without you being able to stop them, it isn't over.

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And if you are ever ganked by another player, then you might as well resign yourself to losing now since you'll be 3 levels behind the dude in your lane that killed you.

There's no way that this should happen unless you are just getting killed over and over again or the more probable reason, you aren't getting back to your lane fast enough after the death. You have to remember, while you only get gold if you are the one who kills a creep or hero, you always game experience as long as you are nearby when a creep or hero dies. Even if you are having trouble actually getting kills and therefore gold, always try to remain near your frontline creeps so that you are gaining experience otherwise you can get out levelled very quickly, yes.

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That is, of course, if you weren't doomed before the game even started. If DotA isn't Rock Paper Scissors balance, I don't know what is, aside from the fact that some heroes are simply worlds better than the others. I have yet to see a game where a team with either Stealth Assassin or Balnazzar lost.

Hahahah.

Stealth Assassin can be a very powerful hero if he is allowed to farm gold early and can get a level advantage on other players. Balanar, the Night Stalker, is a hero who can be very powerful in the late-early game and mid game if he can get the jump on people or if people he is playing against are too inexperienced to know how to handle him or just generally handle any good chaser. Both of these heroes are similar though in the fact that when played well, they can WIPE OUT bad or inexperienced players with a lot of flare and style. Just know that in our hundreds of vent-gang games, we have mercilessly slaughtered countless Balanars and Stealth Assassins. They are not imbalanced in anyway, in fact I used to love playing as the Night Stalker but in the last 2 years or so, don't really enjoy playing as him anymore because he isn't terribly effective against good, careful players and he gets out-scaled pretty quickly towards the end game.

DotA can definitely be a game of rock-paper-scissors. However, the fact that you can see what the other team is choosing as their heros as they choose them and the fact that there are so many heroes really makes it seldom a real problem. The other thing you have to keep in mind is how a hero scales. There are some heroes like say Faceless Void, who have a lot of abilities that are percentage-based making them very weak early in the game when stats are low but incredibly powerful later on when stats are high. Then there are other heroes like say Zeus who have a lot of fixed damage nukes making them annoyingly brutal early game, but completely helpless without a lot of good items in the late game.

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The other force for winning is how well you know the game. I've had many a team yell at me for taking too long shopping simply because it's a giant pain in the ass to find ANYTHING you need to make the next item.

This is really a big barrier to new players but I don't know how you can fix it without greatly reducing the complexity of DotA strategy and there for many people's enjoyment. You have to learn the game before you can hope to play well and beat people, it's just how it is. Experience does matter, a lot. You need to know what items you should be making based on what is happening in the game and you have to know where to go to get them. It's just how it is.

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And what exactly is the point of the "secret" shop that's required to make anything more than a lower-mid level item anyway? Put it in the goddamn base with everything else!

They point of the secret shop (which is not secret but is a shop) is to place high value items somewhere that is outside of the safety of your main base. This is intentional as it adds risk of attack to buying the high-level items and their components.

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Also, the players themselves are infuriating. While pubbing games to try to get better for the games I play with friends, I've been banned for everything from picking the wrong hero to picking the wrong item to "backdooring" (I'm sorry, I don't give a shit if mobs are in my base. If the rest of my team are handling the mobs, it's the PERFECT time to take out lane towers while the enemy team is pushing ahead.

I don't know why anyone would ban you for picking "the wrong hero" but some people are just jerks I guess. Backdooring is seen across most of the dota community as bad form though. The reason is that the game is not perfect and it is potentially possible for one hero to farm like crazy and then just march through tower after tower by himself and thereby end the game before the other team has a chance to farm up themselves and stage a comeback. Is it ban worthy? It's not technically illegal but a lot of people do see it as "rude" so it's best to avoid it.

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And what horrible neckbeard started the trend of banning people for leaving a game early?

Getting a full DotA game together can be tough sometimes and the last thing you want once you have a good one going is for people to leave. Teams only have 5 players and even just one person leaving has a huge impact on the game. If you join a DotA game you are committing to playing it out to its logical conclusion, not playing until you think you've died too many times or your AWESOME PRO STRAT you just read on the DotA forums didn't work out and then leaving like a little bitch and making any good playing other players have done up until that point worthless.
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Joxam

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #5 on: March 10, 2009, 03:07:38 PM »

I have only ever played DotA about three times but have loved it and would play frequently if anyone wants to play with a giant noob.
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MadMAxJr

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #6 on: March 10, 2009, 03:12:35 PM »

This game used to have like, five heroes a side.  Now there are a billion.
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Kayin

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #7 on: March 10, 2009, 03:30:57 PM »

Hey I'm sort of involved in a conversation somewhere with some game designers talking about making a DOTA like game on kongregate. I really don't care about DOTA all that much, but I'm wondering what some of you DOTA vets think are the best and worst parts of the game.
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Rico

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #8 on: March 10, 2009, 03:40:45 PM »

Yeah, backdooring is an entirely etiquette thing for a couple of reasons.  First is that DotA is super-boring as a PvE game and once one team backdoors it forces the other team's hand to start and it completely changes the nature of the game.  The second is that recent changes in DotA have made it harder to actually defend against backdoors.  It's also a carryover from when you used to be able to damage the barracks and Throne/Tree directly without breaking any of the previous towers, which was super unfun and no longer the case.

Stealth Assassin is alright as if you get off to a decent start your invisibility is a perk and not a necessity, but Balanar is one of the worst heroes in the game unless you're playing against mouthbreathers, and even then there are better options (Bloodseeker).  His Silence is really his only good spell and again, it only works at night.

Oh, also, for most things banlist is host-only.  For things like leaving a game under poor circumstances there are a couple services that can make that ban much more public, since it pretty much ruins games, but for stuff like backdooring it is nothing more than a convenient post-it note for the host saying "I don't feel like playing with this dick again."
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Pacobird

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #9 on: March 10, 2009, 03:41:40 PM »

The bad parts about dota are

1) how, like any other WC3 game, people can't join mid-game, so any leavers/dc'ers completely ruin the match, and

2) it desperately needs some sort of skill-matching system because the learning curve is pretty steep and if you're outclassed you're basically stuck in the game for the next twenty minutes sucking unless you want to get banned.

I think this was what Defenestration was trying to say.
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Doom

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #10 on: March 10, 2009, 03:43:33 PM »

Most of the worst parts are by-products of the limitations of design: inability to replace leavers being chief among them.

But hey, Left 4 Dead already worked that one out!

One of the best parts of DOTA is the influence skill and personal preference has. The cookie-cutter Furion/Prophet build is to max your Tree Trap, grab a point of Teleport, and go +stats while building as a sniper. This makes you a dude who can gank damn near anybody retreating at low health.

My Furion Build is to go heavy caster, max teleport, max treants and fucking flood all three lanes with endless pushing. This wins games more often than not.

That item and skill purchase order can effect so much gets me rather randy.
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Rico

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #11 on: March 10, 2009, 03:49:31 PM »

The first big learning curve in DotA is pretty easily surmountable.  Most players will pick their heroes pretty early in the lengthy pre-game timer.  Tab out, look at their abilities really quick.  The game becomes much more interesting when you know what abilities the heroes have.  This is both a positive and a negative; it increases the very early learning curve but it actually makes the game interesting to play for extended periods of time because there's so many hero combinations for teams to have.

The second is just learning to watch the minimap and developing an internal "get the fuck out of here now" warning system.
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Kazz

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #12 on: March 10, 2009, 03:54:01 PM »

DotA's biggest problem is that you require ten people who are all committed to playing effectively and aren't going to quit once they've died a couple times.

The best thing about DotA is that you only have to worry about one guy, rather than a big base and a big army and all sorts of other shit.

I'd love to see the basic DotA concept carried over into other games; armies march toward each other and then you're a tank or something that supports the automatic troops by blowing up enemy troops.  This would make a lot more sense to me than the current model for Battlefield-type games, where the maps are designed around driving tanks around but if you don't get a tank, lol, have fun walking your own ass across the island, oh lol again you got shot.

re: internal "get the fuck out" warning system

it took a lot of shouting over Ventrilo for me to finally develop this.  unfortunately I still sometimes follow Ocksi, whose warning system is backwards
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Defenestration

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #13 on: March 10, 2009, 03:57:41 PM »

The bad parts about dota are

1) how, like any other WC3 game, people can't join mid-game, so any leavers/dc'ers completely ruin the match, and

2) it desperately needs some sort of skill-matching system because the learning curve is pretty steep and if you're outclassed you're basically stuck in the game for the next twenty minutes sucking unless you want to get banned.

I think this was what Defenestration was trying to say.
Yes, this. I sort of have a tendency to type novels and never really get around to what I meant to say in the first place. Apologies.

And see, I am all about banning rage quitters. I've seen hosts ban people for actually "Hey, I'm on the winning team and I'm the second highest level hero so I'm not ragequitting but I have to go pick up my brother. Don't ban me, sorry" and they do so anyway. That I don't understand. Well, that and banning someone for sucking. Only one way to get better, and that's from me playing... if I'm not banned from every host ever for not being up to par.

Eh, maybe I'll join you guys and see if it is better with a more committed group (if you don't mind a horrible, terrible noob)

Tab out, look at their abilities really quick.  The game becomes much more interesting when you know what abilities the heroes have.
I was not aware of a quick reference website! I'll have to search for it later.
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Kazz

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #14 on: March 10, 2009, 04:01:48 PM »

it is a good game
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Bal

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #15 on: March 10, 2009, 04:04:19 PM »

I'm interested to see how League of Legends and Demigod perform. They both use the DotA formula, in the case of LoL this is because it's directed by the original DotA creator.

As for DotA, I used to love it, but I can't stand to play it anymore. First of all, I played a hell of a lot of it, and it gets boring after awhile. More importantly, however, all the problems with it people have mentioned result it about a 10-1 bad game to good game ratio, and I have nothing like the patience for something like that.
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Kazz

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #16 on: March 10, 2009, 04:09:39 PM »

it gets boring after awhile

it does?
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Rico

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #17 on: March 10, 2009, 04:13:50 PM »

I've seen hosts ban people for actually "Hey, I'm on the winning team and I'm the second highest level hero so I'm not ragequitting but I have to go pick up my brother. Don't ban me, sorry" and they do so anyway. That I don't understand.
I'm about 50/50 on whether I do this or not.  The thing is, most full games of DotA last around 45-60 minutes.  If you say at minute 30 "Hey guys I have to do this thing I probably already knew about" it is irritating and the game is still imbalanced by the leaving, and a well-itemized player leaving is much more likely to result in a steamroll for either team than a bad player leaving.

Also, the hero list is available from the official site.  http://www.dota-allstars.com/heroes.  Ta-da.
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James Edward Smith

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Re: Thoughts on Defense of the Ancients
« Reply #18 on: March 10, 2009, 04:18:22 PM »

Hey I'm sort of involved in a conversation somewhere with some game designers talking about making a DOTA like game on kongregate. I really don't care about DOTA all that much, but I'm wondering what some of you DOTA vets think are the best and worst parts of the game.

Basically what Doom said.

Uhm, it's just really cool how many different heros there are and how different from one an other they all are. It makes the early learning curve pretty steep like Rico says, but it also makes the game very replayable once you are initiated.

Juggernaut does not play anything like the Goblin Techies and yet they are both viable and powerful heroes. Some of the heroes are somewhat limited in how you can build them to make them as effective as possible, but there are enough that have multiple legitimate paths to take to kickass town that it allows knowledgable players to really react to the choices of other players in ways that give you a good sense of accomplishment. "Player X was milking the fuck out of combination Y, so then I build up my Z and made him pay for his over confidence."

I also like how the dynamic of the game changes overtime. Early on, towers are the almighty guardians of lanes and lane creeps savage mobs of agressors who when supported by a decent hero, are nothing to fuck with. This forces players in the early game to focus on gathering creep support before attempting to engage enemy heroes seriously and to always respect the range of the almight lane tower. However, as the game wears on, towers become more of a prize for the enemy to capture and must be staunchly defended and creeps become little more than money sacks and fuel for spells that require them.

An other fun aspect is the team aspect. It's fun to work together to exploit eachother's strengths and make up for eachother's weaknesses to get the better of the other team.

One of my personal favourite experiences is turning away or even just outright killing foolish ambushers who thought they had me or a teamate at a disadvantage or had otherwise caught us unawares when the truth was anything but. Get the fuck outta my lane Bloodseeker, you agility-based little bitch! This is my house!
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...but is it art?
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