DotA 2 has been in beta since The International at GamesCom and, mysteriously enough, I've been able to con my way to access the servers. And it's been amazing!
To give you a little bit of knowledge of my background in MOBA games, it's pretty much where I came from before, I went into StarCraft. I tried DotA a few times, but the WarCraft engine never got me hooked, but I liked the gameplay a lot. I've also played about 2000-2500 games of Heroes of Newerth at ~1900 rating. Lastly I also played a bit of League of Legends (around 250-300 games which got to me about level 30). In the few weeks, I've gotten to play the game, I have managed to play a few hundred games and maintain a ~71 % winrate.
My experience has been tremendous. But it's very much coloured by the fact that, deep down, I hate Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends. S2Games has been nothing but disappointing to me throughout the history of their game. It's horribly imbalanced and they just keep spitting out new heroes every second week without balancing the old ones a tiny bit. As for League of Legends, it's more so that it's a very different game than bad game-design, even though I think there's some basic flaws to the game. A little example could be that the flash ability "ruins" the game. But I'm not interested in getting into a huge debate about whether or not the other games are good. DotA2 is amazing, but it will not be the answers to your prayers and be your saving grace in a moment of desperation.
What's up with DotA?
A few things that are always (and need?) talked about when MOBA (..and beta) games are mentioned are how do you get into the game, hostile environment, game bugs, etc.
"I really want to get into DotA, but the environment is hostile and people just flame me," is something that is heard fairly often and it sucks. It really sucks to be known to have a hostile environment that is not very welcoming for new players and makes a lot of people not want to play the game. However there is two sides of the story as always ..and let me start out saying that I completely understand both sides of it.
When you're new to the game and you play your first games, you literally have no idea of the game, the mechanics or the heroes. In a game of DotA, you need to understand the heroes (as units in StarCraft) and as soon as you don't do that, people tend to be quite aggressive towards you and blame you for a lot of things. This is the point where a lot of people just back and out and can't be bothered to play it anymore. Why? Because you're not having fun when people are blaming you, flaming you and insulting you in every way they can.
It's kind of blatant, but what could help is if people were more forgiving and welcoming in their tone, and willingly to use some of their games on explaining new people what to do and what their role is. Unfortunately this is quite a big thing to do as there is a million heroes (no.. but it feels like it when you have to explain people the game) in the game and a lot of it comes with experience, but you can kind of draw a comparison to StarCraft with the roles on the team. If you're playing Collosi (your DPS which is often times called a carry in DotA), you need to have a lot of units that backs it up (support in DotA terms) or it will simply crumble in the teamfights and you will lose the game because of that.
On the other side of the hill, you have the pro-gamers, the experienced users and just people who have been playing this (or these) games for a long time. And I can totally understand why sometimes it can be unbelievably frustrating to lose back to back games because you're playing with people who are completely new to the game. To me it's literally the most annoying thing that if you stomp your opponent and do your job super-well, but still ends up losing because of that one atrocious, new guy. It can sometimes just be too much for people who wish to play the game, be good and win. Not all people are interested in educating people and expect a certain standard of play; this is also why matchmakingrating is developed. But it's just the ever-debated thing about these type of games.
In context to the above, you will within no time acknowledge people really care about their games. As Heyoka stated to me; people care about dumb things. Things like a win/loss ratio, kill/death ratio and alike are things people really, really care about. This also leads to a lot of whining when things are not going the way you want them to.
Interestingly (and somewhat funny) you will also notice that there will be drawn a lot of comparisons to other games. If someone is doing badly, people who tend to whine accuse them of being LoL players. If someone is flaming and blaming everybody but himself, he's labelled a HoN player. Haha.
I'm not amazed as I kind of expected it, but the UI is really good. It's very easy to understand (except for X2-F1, what the fuck is that! It took me a little while to figure out that it was two times F1. Haha) and it's very friendly set up, especially the in-game hotkeys. As you can see on the picture, I posted below, it's actually set up as the in-game UI would look like. That way there's absolutely no excuse for not setting your hotkeys right or screwing them up.
For both the people watching and playing the game, it's really important to understand it's a game in progress. It's early beta and a lot of things are not implemented yet and there is still a lot of bugs in the games that needs to be figured out, no matter how annoying it can be to have them there. But for the sceptics: Valve is updating the game every Thursday; fixing bugs, adding new content such as sounds, heroes and other good stuff.
The spectating feature of the game is nothing but absolutely amazing. Some of you might have played other Valve games as Counter Strike 1.6 or Counter Strike: Source and is already aware of the HLTV or SourceTV possibilities in those game. In DotA, we have DotATV. It lets you spectate any game that is live at the moment and it lets you do it in amazing fashion.
The features that you have in game are just.. Wow! The games are delayed with two minutes, which makes the directed camera feature a possibility. It controls the camera for you and takes you anywhere on the map where there's action going on so you won't miss any kill or gank attempt. Also there's a player perspective, but not only do you see his perspective (i.e. camera), you also see his mouse cursor, when he clicks and stuff alike. And there's of course a free camera as well.
Besides that there's a broadcast feature, which makes broadcasters able to join the lobbies and broadcast the games as a "real" spectator and then people on DotATV can turn on the broadcasters on/off as they want to.
Next to those features, there's all the standard stuff. A scoreboard, a board with gpm, xpm and that too. Instead of just numeric values, there's also graphs so you can see it shown on when a team is in the lead with gold earned or experience gained, etc. They've just done a really, really good job!
Another thing that I also feel needs to be mentioned is that Valve has implemented bots! I haven't actually tried it myself, but I know they're working really hard on making the bots good and so that people can actually improve their skill by playing against these. They've actually already implemented that you can "control" the bots by pinging, writing and other things (i.e. you can set up ganks, push, etc.). If this ends up being done well, it's another amazing feature for the game.
What do I want within a short time frame
In the long run, I think we all just want a perfect game (which will of course never happen, lol). But on a short term notice, there is a few things that I'd like to see implemented or fixed.
The ranged creeps aggro kind of weird, I think. It's like they sometimes prioritize me, the hero, over the creeps even though I'm just standing there. On the aggro aspect, the creeps also prioritize enemy heroes over the catapults. I don't really know if this how DotA was or meant to be like this, but it's definitely something I don't like.
I want to see my loved ones, Mortred & Troll, in the game!
I'd like a re-work of the Lion and Venomancer model. They're just not good looking. I also miss my Pandaraen Storm Spirit, but the Mexican is funny as hell!
I'd like to see some sort of banning pick or single draft in matchmaking instead of all pick only.
Congratulations to @8mmspikes and @staphu - I hope you'll enjoy your DotA 2 beta access!
"I really want to get into DotA, but the environment is hostile and people just flame me," is something that is heard fairly often and it sucks
The thing about Dota and MOBA games in general is 2 reasons namely and the combination of that. Step 1.It is a teamgame, and by this I mean a REAL teamgame, not a 40v40 or 16v16 deathmatch FPS were you can carry your team ridicilously hard by doing it right(you can, but this is impossible if your team is that bad, meaning you will have a hard laning phase and thus will be unable to farm up) You are reliant upon your team for basically everything, you have to defend together, attack together, gank together, you need coordination and on a pub level this is often hard to find.
The second reason is the skill curve of Dota, it is really hard to be decent at the game if you have no idea how to play it, it takes a very long time before you can understand the game on even a basic level(E.G team roles, items, general lasthitting). These 2 reasons combined leads to a large amount of BM, the first thing people do in a teamgame when they lose is think logicallyblame their team mates, simply because you are reliant upon your team so much and that the general skill curve is so high.
Ow yeah I almost forgot, people play carry only because everyone thinks that their team is absolute shit, so this leads to ridicilously stupid lanes such as Juggernaut+Anti-mage on one lane or well any given choice. Which leads to rage.....alot of rage.
Yes people care about KD ratio and kills(people often steal from the carry even if they play support), this is annoying.(There were in fact clans which only accepted people with a KDR of a certain level, which is ridicilous because supports never get a good KDR, or should not). The labeling other plays as hon and lol players idk but I haven't played Dota 2 so I can't comment on that. People are however on threads all the time laballed as the aforementioned simply because the games are so different, plus Dota/hon has a generally elitist attitude towards LoL(similair to BW>SC2).
I can't comment on the UI much but from what I saw at the Dota 2 tournament it has huge potential, the observer client is excellent and the game's graphics are tailored so that the audience has an idea what is going on(I was watching NASL HoN the other day and I couldn't see shit what was happening when Zephyr threw down his tornado)
The ranged creeps aggro kind of weird, I think. It's like they sometimes prioritize me, the hero, over the creeps even though I'm just standing there. On the aggro aspect, the creeps also prioritize enemy heroes over the catapults. I don't really know if this how DotA was or meant to be like this, but it's definitely something I don't like.
I don't remember this being in Dota 1, what happened was that creeps would ocasionally attack you when nearby(which basically meant you were hugging the enemy creeps while standing next to your own). You also gain aggro from the ranged creeps, or any creep really if you even click the enemy hero( a great way of pulling creeps to ''your side''. The catapults only prioritize towers as far as I know, for the rest they are fairly similair to regular creeps. This might be a difference in Dota 2 but Idk, .
Mortred and Troll warlord really-.-?useless heroes . Unless Mortred gets ridic fed that is and can 1v5 people with Battlefury, reaver,bkb and shit.
Personally I like the new lion model, remember that the WCIII model also looked like a clown basically so they brought it over quite well, also not a huge fan of venomancer but nothing beats it being a hydralisk which is not allowed.
And yes Storm spirit should be a panda .
CM and SD mode will be added later I am sure.
In the end you should play Dota, or moba games in general with friends. Not only makes this it more bearable as you have a general idea of people's skill levels, plus its more fun shouting at your friends and its incredibly fun if you can share your Godlike streak with your friends. Ow yeah, they can help you learn the game and improve and give constructive criticism, as well as make decisions on the fly for you which will improve your game sense.(such as calling out mias and judging where you need to go back, map awareness is a HUGE part of the game)
Good post. I'm in the beta as well and was really intimidated by what's commonly understood to be the hostile atmosphere that surrounds MOBA games. I never actually played a full game with humans, only spectated a couple of games, to try and pick up common strategies and learn by watching. Once the bot patch arrived last week, that gave me an opportunity to learn how to play hands-on at my own pace without worry of being yelled at or belittled for being a newb. I took the advice of some posters in the DotA subforum here and am nearly ready to play with actual people.
The bots themselves are pretty smart. They deny constantly, they're really good at coordinating with each other, and although I don't have the knowhow to control them, they seem to do pretty well at making their own decisions. They target the weakest heroes, they take calculated risks, and overall I would estimate that they're around the level of a mediocre player.
On October 15 2011 02:07 shinlh wrote: So... do we have to post a reply here or what?
No, follow me on twitter and throw me a tweet there with any comment including DotA2.
On October 15 2011 02:08 rupert wrote: darn it. I guess I was too slow for the tweet Do I still have a chance?
Oh, I didn't mention it. But it will go on for some days before I choose people, so you will all have a chance. It's not about being the fastest and browse TL all the time. :-) I will randomly choose some people in a few days.
On October 15 2011 02:08 rupert wrote: darn it. I guess I was too slow for the tweet Do I still have a chance?
Oh, I didn't mention it. But it will go on for some days before I choose people, so you will all have a chance. It's not about being the fastest and browse TL all the time. :-) I will randomly choose some people in a few days.
Thanks for the info I honestly have no idea what I'm doing on Twitter, I probably sent the reply twice because I couldn't see my first one. Oh well.
A heads up about the catapult thing and creep aggro. Creeps will basically attack the first target they come to. If the target they come to runs out of range, they will attack the next closest.
They will attack catapults if there is nothing else around, but they are lowest priority. If they are attacking a catapult and anything else shows up, they attack that instead. This is an important mechanic that essentially keeps catapults alive more often, which means creep waves are more likely to push towers, because catapults are really good against towers. Ultimately, this means games are faster(which is important as Dota games are long usually).
Creeps also are pulled to attack enemy heroes if an enemy hero within range right clicks an allied hero. Spells(or orbs like drow frost arrow) do not set this off.
That is pretty much all of the basics of Dota creeps. It functions the same way as they do in Dota 1.
Rofl, I chose Starscream since he's Bumblebee :B I just tweeted for the first time. I think I did it right, I dunno if I was suppose to retweet or reply ._.
phew, I thought I was too late Nice blog Bumblebee. I play mostly with friends and when we get randoms in our team we try to be helpful, but it doesn"t always work out . Anyway, I'll welcome every new player in dota2.
I'm glad to hear your impressions on some of the finer points. I hope Dota 2's spectator features can put some pressure on Blizzard to do something similar.
A few years ago I played DotA all day every day. I have a good amount of friends who played with me and still play to this day.
The reason I stopped playing was exactly that hostile environment. I wasn't a terrible player, but sometimes I just didn't play that well, and the shit I got for those was just fucked up... This one time I played really bad and decided it was time for me to sleep (after 24 hours of playing), and those friends called at 3am, waking up both my parents, just to make fun of me for that one game... That was the last time I played DotA. Just imagine the shit I had to deal with while playing DotA with brazilian people. Kinda scary.
But I kept on watching streams, and I played a good amount of HoN.
I really don't understand this hostile environment. Why don't people try to teach/help others instead of just harassing the crap out of them? Help them and maybe they'll learn something and actually do well, helping you win the game.
I hope DotA 2's matchmaking system works well so I can play against people of my level i.i
And the spectating system in DotA 2 looks fucking awesome. That shit's gonna drain so much of my time..
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Oh yeah, I almost forgot: Why don't people play Zeus more often? Yesterday I was watching some streams with my brother and I finally saw Zeus for the first time. I was like: 'When did they add Zeus?!' - I had never seem him in a game. He is my favorite hero. And Drow. And Furion.
Tweeted. (AlanPearson91) Totally agree with the point on the hostile players, playing HoN up to the 1800 bracket showed a lot of hate in the MOBA scene when compared to the SC2 scene. Still enjoyable none the less. Would love to give DotA 2 a try after playing HoN since closed beta, the game looks sick.
Just about to tweet you now. Being a longtime LoL player (and hating HoN) and never really being able to get into DotA this would be a perfect way to learn everything and try it all out before the game actually comes out... Maybe I can learn in enough time to start at release on semi-even footing with people who know the game currently. Would love that beta key, and an excellent post, Bee.
Nice writeup. Hopefully I can finally get lucky with one of these contests.
In regards to the actual blog: Catapults have the lowest threat priority in DotA, so it's intended. Siege units having low priority was built into the Warcraft3 engine, so they probably could change it if they wanted to.
A banning/drafting phase in matchmaking wouldn't work if you're referring to captains mode, since you have no control over what your captain picks/bans and would be forced into heroes you might not like. There's a reason -CM is never played in public matches in DotA1, because it leads to an insane amount of flaming and leavers.
I assume they're going to implement random draft/single draft/all random as matchmaking options in the future, since those are decently popular in public games.
Question: Has there been any problems with the DotaTV yet? Is the automatic control good? Or does it look like.. "robot"ish? Can you easily say that it is controlling itself(the camera)? Just wondering how well its done and does it get annoying to watch it in a long run.
On October 15 2011 04:59 Grettin wrote: Well written.
Question: Has there been any problems with the DotaTV yet? Is the automatic control good? Or does it look like.. "robot"ish? Can you easily say that it is controlling itself(the camera)? Just wondering how well its done and does it get annoying to watch it in a long run.
Thanks!
You can see the automatic control in the video below. Personally, I think it's really good. It's smooth, and it positions the camera well. Not sure if it's been updated since the international, however.
On October 15 2011 04:59 Grettin wrote: Well written.
Question: Has there been any problems with the DotaTV yet? Is the automatic control good? Or does it look like.. "robot"ish? Can you easily say that it is controlling itself(the camera)? Just wondering how well its done and does it get annoying to watch it in a long run.
Thanks!
You can see the automatic control in the video below. Personally, I think it's really good. It's smooth, and it positions the camera well. Not sure if it's been updated since the international, however.
Oh they used this feature in the Dota 2 Invitational? Well then i have nothing to ask about it!
It really is smooth and thats what i was wondering. If you are really sensitive and all, it could cause motion sickness etc. So thats why i was a bit worried.
OMG Keeeey lol, Great post, I personally don't really get mad when people are bad or just simply not very skilled, its just ignorant people who don't know what they're doing and insist they are right, and say you suck when you are better than them really piss me off D:
If you don't understand the game at all and admit it I don't mind and you probably have more of my respect than 99% of the players that play dota/hon etc...
Good post to read. Did in-game voice chat just recently get implemented? I don't recall seeing it watching linklink's stream but I happened to catch it on someone else's the other day. Do most people actually use it and take advantage of it?
Ok, I decided to close the contest already as there's already been about 250-300 people signing up for it. Congratulations to the winners! I hope you'll enjoy your key. Let the discussion about DotA2 go on! :-)
Damn, didnt win, but thanks anyway for the chance for the keys Robin. Didn't really know how to use twitter either way, probably screwed up my reply anyhow, damn all this social media ;P
Hopefully you manage to get those extra keys somehow
On October 15 2011 06:24 Bumblebee wrote: Ok, I decided to close the contest already as there's already been about 250-300 people signing up for it. Congratulations to the winners! I hope you'll enjoy your key. Let the discussion about DotA2 go on! :-)
I'm around twenty minutes late. Interesting read anyway.
On October 15 2011 06:24 Bumblebee wrote: Ok, I decided to close the contest already as there's already been about 250-300 people signing up for it. Congratulations to the winners! I hope you'll enjoy your key. Let the discussion about DotA2 go on! :-)
If you get more you should try to restrict the give-away to TL members .
On October 15 2011 06:24 Bumblebee wrote: Ok, I decided to close the contest already as there's already been about 250-300 people signing up for it. Congratulations to the winners! I hope you'll enjoy your key. Let the discussion about DotA2 go on! :-)
If you get more you should try to restrict the give-away to TL members .
Ah man, I didn't see this thread until you'd already given out the keys. I know playing the original is just as good if not better at this point (all heroes and no (new) bugs) but that doesn't stop me from wanting what I don't have haha. I agree about LoL being a fun game with fundamental flaws.
How did you get access to the beta? Connections through Liquid ESPORTS, or through the Dota community? HoN?
On October 15 2011 09:47 myopia wrote: Ah man, I didn't see this thread until you'd already given out the keys. I know playing the original is just as good if not better at this point (all heroes and no (new) bugs) but that doesn't stop me from wanting what I don't have haha. I agree about LoL being a fun game with fundamental flaws.
How did you get access to the beta? Connections through Liquid ESPORTS, or through the Dota community? HoN?
Awesome. Can't for the actual release. Also lol'd at
On October 15 2011 01:40 Bumblebee wrote: If someone is doing badly, people who tend to whine accuse them of being LoL players. If someone is flaming and blaming everybody but himself, he's labelled a HoN player. Haha.
I'm part-guilty as a member of the hostile party (which is really like 95% of the pub players anyway). I recall playing a game recently where our tiny probably hit about 3/20 avalanche he attempted, and probably never tossed an enemy hero (he tossed everything else though, lol!). Poor guy didn't even speak English, but our team really put down the verbal beating on him. In the heat of the game, even the good-natured people may "lose it."
You also have to take into account that these "new" players are not entirely open to suggestions either. A lot of these guys, despite being new to the game, are absurdly arrogant and stubborn towards tips, suggestions, and commands. There's no excuse for dying along near enemy tower when the team already explained that "b" means back, and spammed b several times prior to retreating before the enemy tower.
Also,
On October 15 2011 01:40 Bumblebee wrote: If someone is doing badly, people who tend to whine accuse them of being LoL players. If someone is flaming and blaming everybody but himself, he's labelled a HoN player. Haha.
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Bumblebee/dotablog/dotabanner1.jpg)
. Unless Mortred gets ridic fed that is and can 1v5 people with Battlefury, reaver,bkb and shit.
.
. Anyway, I'll welcome every new player in dota2.
