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I don't want to clutter the Dota2 section since this doesn't contribute much.
I did play a lot of Dota back in the day, so I was actually pretty comfortable getting back into it. It's probably been about 5 years back been Pendragon was still a part of the Dota community. I did also play Hon to some level and a lot of Leaugue of legends too. I'll try to list the major differences.
Dota to Dota2
If I could pick the graphics of choice, the original gets my vote. The new graphics (I know its still a beta) blend everything together too much. One, there are no team colors for heroes. That pisses me off. It was especially bad my first few games when I wasn't quite sure which models were who. Two, there is no form of hero glow or anything that really differs the heroes from the creeps. Also, I'm not sure if they kept some of the delay from war3, but the backswing for heroes is very obvious. I haven't played the original Dota in a long time so I've forgotten how bad the delay was.
The new item system I dislike. The older system was better imo.
Hon to Dota2
Hon did start out as an exact copy of Dota but eventually started to introduce more unique elements. They had to do something with the release of Dota2, but I think they failed pretty hard in terms of balance.
Lol to Dota2
My number one complaint for Lol was the snowballing effect. Once behind, its very hard to pull your way through. Also, because I used to play a lot of lol recently, I found last hitting to be much harder in dota2 because everything is instant in lol; there is very little delay or backswing when you cast or attack. Having lol experience will help you depending on how skilled you were in lol. The map awareness and ganking is pretty similar.
Dota2 Itself
The good
- Sounds, some of them are odd, but I think they're enjoying to listen to.
- Graphics, I did complain, but aside from the heroes and units blending too much, its actually very clean and not distracting.
- Minimum requirements, its slightly higher than sc2. However, if you can comfortably run sc2, you can run Dota2. If you can barely run sc2, Dota2 will be a pain.
- Live watch system, I don't know if there's a limit, but you can watch live games happen. They are at least 2 minutes delayed to prevent ghosting. It's very cool if you're waiting on a friend to finish. You can watch them play.  They also have a replay system too.
The bad
- Item system, just not as convenient to use, especially when the items you want aren't in the recommended items. They have some hotkey system available for the shop, but it its way to easy to accidentally buy something.
- Pause system, there's something like a 30 second wait before the other team can resume. Very annoying when the other team is full of little kiddies.
- UI, its bland, hopefully they add something to it.
In the end, its exactly what you expect, Dota on an updated engine.
(p.s I played with JP yesterday! It was sad when he told me he wasn't streaming. No screen time for me, but at least we destroyed. :|)
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Australia8481 Posts
I have absolutely zero idea how graphics and minimum requirements made it into your "Good" list. Those are close to the 2 worst parts of dota 2 along with the shop and the UI.
The most painful part of Dota 2 is the unit response and turn around time - drives. me. insane.
That coupled with the slowest games in the universe i am still trying to get used to it and find reasons to play it.
At the end of the day i am playing Dota 2 because S2 couldn't balance a game to save their lives and LoL tbh is far, far, FAR from the type of game i want to play
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Yes, the pause system is horrendous, I can't stand it.
I can't stand the item system either, it's impossible to find the items I want at a rapid pace unless I remember the association of X items with Y item and then go to Z.
I like DotA 2 overall, the art is something I have to get used to, but I enjoy the small touches they did (I love when Tiny gets his ulti and its him getting bigger with rocks falling, really cool).
Some animations could use a better indicative.
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The shop UI grows on you. Initially I hated it also, but it has some nice sides to it once you are used to it. I agree that the hotkeying could use some fleshing out, and it would be nice to be able to reconfigure recommended items somehow for each hero. While you and I are used to the old shop UI system, it was next to impossible for people starting out in DOTA to figure it all out with the huge number of recipes, etc.
As far as pause abusers, there is a rating system for people. Rate the play experience as bad with them, presumably it does something to you if you are obnoxious enough.
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Yeah, shop system is just horrible with all the shops messed up etc... im hoping that they will have a customizable system like TF2 once the game release though.
about the UI i think they did a great job. Personally i dislike the HoN design overall with too much random stuff + 'ads' on the main screen while LoL is much cleaner but mostly bc the chat channel cover everything, hate the color though.
about Dota to dota2: well blizzard is good at what they do, you gota give them that. The war3 engine is just phenomenal back in the day and look at how smooth observing a sc2 game is compare to dota2. But hey, its good enough right? i mean its and eSports title, its the game balance that i care about and maintain the original mechanic is what so great about dota2.
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Oh yeah, makes no sense why the levels of all my teammates and their basic scores are not apparent or tucked in some corner. I need to know who's not farming hard enough D:<
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On December 06 2011 12:20 Torte de Lini wrote:
Oh yeah, makes no sense why the levels of all my teammates and their basic scores are not apparent or tucked in some corner. I need to know who's not farming hard enough D:<
Press \ (i think you can rebind it too)
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WC3 Dota ftw, all the way.
I honestly think that all the makers (Hon, LoL, Dota2) are trying to make something better but at the same time making other things worse, especially the little trivial features that made Dota..... Dota.
You can say that I've molded myself to the WC3 engine mechanics, backswing, attackspeed calculation, movespeed, turn speed, general delay, projectile speeds.
TBH, I don't play normal dota anymore, I play LoD Dota now, where you get to pick your skill set (3 normal, 1 ulti) from a draft of 10 heroes, then you get to pick your hero from the draft. Puts a whole new angle at the game and a mystery factor too.
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On December 06 2011 11:50 bkrow wrote:
I have absolutely zero idea how graphics and minimum requirements made it into your "Good" list. Those are close to the 2 worst parts of dota 2 along with the shop and the UI.
The most painful part of Dota 2 is the unit response and turn around time - drives. me. insane.
That coupled with the slowest games in the universe i am still trying to get used to it and find reasons to play it.
At the end of the day i am playing Dota 2 because S2 couldn't balance a game to save their lives and LoL tbh is far, far, FAR from the type of game i want to play
Yeah, my computer can only get through a dota2 game 50% of the time, and I put every setting on its lowest or turned it off... and once it crashes it takes more than 5 minutes to start the game back up again. Even when it can play it, I get negative fps or something. My computer is pretty bad for gaming though, but I won't play again until I get my new computer set up. My point is that it can run sc2 on low settings 1000x better than it can run dota2 =(
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I'm having a lot of trouble trying to like Dota 2's graphics. I don't understand why they decided to go with that art style, something similar to HoN or SC2 would've been much better 
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United States22543 Posts
On December 06 2011 11:50 bkrow wrote:
The most painful part of Dota 2 is the unit response and turn around time - drives. me. insane.
Unit response is something that, IIRC, they've said that they're trying to fix. Something related to how the Source engine works as opposed to an RTS game engine.
Turning time is something they really can't get rid of because it's so ingrained in how the game plays. There are even specific mechanics designed/balanced around it (e.g. Bat Rider's turning speed reduction on Sticky Napalm).
As far as performance issues, I think (or rather, I hope) everything can get sorted out. The game isn't well optimized yet (ths last patch just fixed a bug I had where the game would freeze for ~5 seconds whenever I bought a Bottle), but it is the Source engine, which should be decently scalable.
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Player colors is the one thing that gets on my nerves the most about DotA2. It just doesn't feel right without them.
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I thought there was a console command to enable team colors.
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On December 06 2011 11:50 bkrow wrote:
I have absolutely zero idea how graphics and minimum requirements made it into your "Good" list. Those are close to the 2 worst parts of dota 2 along with the shop and the UI.
The most painful part of Dota 2 is the unit response and turn around time - drives. me. insane.
That coupled with the slowest games in the universe i am still trying to get used to it and find reasons to play it.
At the end of the day i am playing Dota 2 because S2 couldn't balance a game to save their lives and LoL tbh is far, far, FAR from the type of game i want to play
For grahpics, I think they did a good job of making it not flashy. It's easy to tell what is going on in massive team fights. It's just that the heroes are hard to pick out because they don't stand out.
I knew there was some delay with the unit response. I thought it was intentional to keep that same feel as the original Dota. It's nice to see that they're looking into it. I had a hard time actually letting my hero finish casting and then dying because I didn't...
On December 06 2011 12:39 unichan wrote:
Yeah, my computer can only get through a dota2 game 50% of the time, and I put every setting on its lowest or turned it off... and once it crashes it takes more than 5 minutes to start the game back up again. Even when it can play it, I get negative fps or something. My computer is pretty bad for gaming though, but I won't play again until I get my new computer set up. My point is that it can run sc2 on low settings 1000x better than it can run dota2 =(
I didn't have that much harder of a time running Dota2 vs SC2. I can play SC2 on all low smoothly at 1920x1080. For Dota2, I can play it smoothly on 1600x900 on all low. I don't think thats too big of a difference. I can actually run Dota2 at 1920x1080, but it can't always stay smooth at graphics intensive fights.
I'm running on a i5 sandy bridge laptop with integrated graphics. I'd say the minimum requirements are pretty good.
On December 06 2011 12:39 unichan wrote:
Yeah, my computer can only get through a dota2 game 50% of the time, and I put every setting on its lowest or turned it off... and once it crashes it takes more than 5 minutes to start the game back up again. Even when it can play it, I get negative fps or something. My computer is pretty bad for gaming though, but I won't play again until I get my new computer set up. My point is that it can run sc2 on low settings 1000x better than it can run dota2 =(
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During my first game of dota2, I raged a lot. For some reason, I never realized when I was leveling up, so I reached lvl 5 without leveling a skill except for the first one. Also, what bugged me was the shop. After spending 4-5 years with a shop with little workers waving at you when you click on them and knowing exactly where to click to get my items, I though the shop in dota2 was very confusing. After several games, I got used to it, and now, I understand how it works. The shop is really a change I don't understand though, although everything is categorized by tabs, it made so much sense (to me) that they were separated by shops in dota1. These are less things that make dota2 a bad game, but rather me just being WAY WAY WAY to used to dota1. Like said in the OP, when there's a battelfield with full of creeps, it was pretty clear when the enemy heroes were coming, but in dota2, everything is pretty much the same. I hope they had a texture that really makes the heroes stand out. Maybe the problem is that the creeps are too detailed?
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Netherlands29371 Posts
I have trouble using the item system too, but it will probably just take a while to get used to. I was really used to, the shopkeepers aswell, weapons, artifacts, starter items they were all nicely divided by the shopkeepers allowing for quick shopping, I don't know why they changed it really.
I like the graphics alot, its alot cleaner then HoN, I watched NASL Hon 2 days ago and it was all rainbows and things I couldn't see anything, Dota 2 is alot cleaner, I do agree on the hero glow though. Also the unit turn around and response time, I don't mind, its part of the game and heroes.
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After 110 hours of Dota2, I think the shop is great. Would be cool with some hotkeys, or maybe they already have some and I've missed the option for them, not sure. As for team/player colours, you should really check the general options, that feature has been possible for a long time now.
To be honest, I don't have a legitimate gripe about Dota 2 right now. it is a beta after all, so the closest thing I can complain about is Anti-Mage not having any actual counter hero ported over yet.
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On my second game of Dota2, laning against a Riki, I looked for sentry wards from the shop.
Nope, not here.
Nope, not there.
... 5 minutes after ...
WHERE ARE THE FKING WARDS? KK SCREW THIS I'M JUST GOING BACK TO LANE
-> die like 5 times
Okay can someone else who knows where the wards are please buy the wards?
...
We eventually won that game, thanks to our AM carry.
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WCS
