EPT"The Transformation of e-Sports" - Page 3
| Blogs > MichaelJLowell |
|
corumjhaelen
France6884 Posts
| ||
|
PrinceXizor
United States17713 Posts
| ||
|
Kupon3ss
時の回廊10066 Posts
On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: You're going to try to answer the questions you can come up with arguments for, OK If it makes you feel better about yourself, sure. I'm picking and choosing which questions to respond to because my time is better spent dissecting the arguments that are not tedious, minutiae, or otherwise lead to pointless conclusions. So, for instance, I'm not going to acknowledge your colorful assertion "every shooter is a dumbed down version of Deus Ex because they took the shooting part of the game and made it more complex" because I'm not sure whether you have even played the game or understand what makes Deus Ex interesting. Tedious minitae like facts sure do suck when they get in the way of your sensationalism doesn't it. For instance, you're not going to address the fundamental gap in Logic here but instead of an ad-homiem attack because you cannot avoid the FACT that your convoluted logic cannot get around the fact that: Just because the elements of a game as existent in part in a different game and becomes more developed, the second game cannot be called a stripped down version of the first. I've said nothing about Deus Ex, just that your central argument that DotA or indeed anything in that genre contains a nonsensical leap in logic that happens to be one of the lynchpins of your so called "argument". My comparison is a parallel, not some sort of snide commentary on Deus Ex, to your silly, groundless claims. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: Have you played DotA to any meaningful amount? Yes. I played it enough to understand it and what the problems with it are. No, I'm not going to amaze you with my knowledge of the metagame, because I don't and didn't play these games enough to do that. I believe the last time I played Defense of the Ancients was sometime in 2008. And no, I have not played the game at a "world-class" or "high level" of play. I have a large number of the fundamentally similar real-time strategy games, I have played them competently. And in the process of playing those games well, I was able to understand those games well and create a personal game design philosophy that allows me to compare those games to each other, and whether to assert that they are "good" or "bad". I am not precluded from commenting on the games because "LOL U SUK". There's a difference between your claim of "I played the game competently" and my claim of "you're an uninformed flamebaiting troll", let's go over a bit of the claims you've made about DotA MichaelJLowell wrote: Do you honestly think that Defense of the Ancients exploded in popularity during late 2003 and early 2004 because the DotA player base (most of whom had below .500 records and were absolutely terrible at the melee modes decided that "This is a harder, more complex, more satisfying game than Warcraft III, and I can't wait to test myself?" First of all, the cornerstone to nearly all of your groundless claims have been personal experience somehow moved into fact, is that true of the above as well or as you just completely pulling shit out of your ass now instead of the limited personal experience that has been your modus operandai thus far. You've tried DotA and this is the only evaluation of it you give, every other point you make is aimed at LoL implies that you've played LoL far more. You appeared to have been playing DotA in 2008. So I must ask you then "Do you honestly think that LoL exploded in popularity during late 2009 and early 2010 because the LoL player base (most of whom had below .500 records and were absolutely terrible at DotA)" decided that "This is a harder, more complex, more satisfying game than DotA, and I can't wait to test myself?" Is this not what you did, given what appears to be your imitate knowledge about the LoL game structure, metagame, and business model. You appear to be the very subjects the Riot appealed to, congratulations, you bought into a game, it sucked, and now you somehow think the entire genre sucks. Grow up. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: Of course, I've never said that a competitive game is inherently superior to one that is not. The tower defense genre is lacking the spirit of competition and human element that defines Esports, Alright. Just the Tower Defense genre? The lacking of that element is why, as I said, those games cannot be considered competitive and thus you cannot compare their ability to "be solved" to those of games involving human factors and human opponents. The exact same point I made about popular RPGs and other single player games to point out that your point about games like DotA being figure out was factually untrue, that your logical extension that that somehow makes a bad game is completely laughable. If you're having to quote cherry-picked pieces of what the last person wrote and still unable to come up with compelling factual elements, I recommend you just stop trying. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: I'm saying the fact that you're using it as a inept strawman comparison just because they were both inspired in some way by the warcraft 3 mod scene is like saying Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines is the same as Counter Strike source because they're both made in the source engine. Both come from similar origins, popularized through the casual underbelly of the same real-time strategy community, games which strip away the Warcraft III game template and then try to insert complexity elsewise. It's worth looking at, and the comparison is worth mentioning in passing. You can't just keep on saying "striped away" while providing no factual arguments to back that up. Both games come from the warcraft 3 engine, just as the two games I mentioned come through the source engine, that is a factual parallel. What your claims of stripping away are personal opinion that you yourself cannot be bothered to defend. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: The Koreans do, mostly because Koreans did not have a game like DotA fill that niche due to the popularity of brood war and the korean WC3 map Chaos, DotA 100% sprang as a competitive community based on extended enjoyment of the games. The game was community driven to its logical extreme, without even the proper release, advertising and distribution venues of games like Quake or Brood war. I did not lump Defense of the Ancients into that class of game, unless you are making some leap that DotA 2 is merely an "enhanced remake" and not a sequel. Same lead developer, same mechanics, same heroes, same numbers, better engine. I don't know, is say OoT MQ an enhanced remake because it probably changed about as much about the game as Dota2 did. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: Again, I'm just pointing out the continuous stream of logical inconsistencies in everything you attempt to argue. Please start remembering the bullshit you continuous to spew out, because at this rate, congratulations, you just called chess casual, go bring your "uninformed flamebaiting trolling" to that community. "Giving Hero X +100 damage to its special attack" is not essential to its character. "Giving Hero Y a Blink ability" is not essential to its character. They may lead to changes in the Tier Listsfor those games, but those Tier Lists are not essential to their character, either. When I talk about "essential to its character", I talk about changes that fundamentally redefine how the game is played. There is eventually supposed to be a time that you take faith in your work and let the game sit, and you let people explore the game. If the developer of the game must continue to make changes in order to repeatedly respond to imbalance, then it is probably not a good game and you're making those balance updates as a means to hide it. A blink change did redefine the way the game is played, I have to chalk this up to the "First of all, the cornerstone to nearly all of your groundless claims have been personal experience somehow moved into fact, is that true of the above as well or as you just completely pulling shit out of your ass now instead of the limited personal experience that has been your modus operandai thus far." On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: So this argument is that casual games are bad, it depends on where on the spectrum you're from, personally I found FFVII and OoT significantly dumbed down compared to their 2D predecessors in terms of both difficulty and gameplay, mostly shouldered by their "shiny new systems and their graphics" That doesn't mean i'd dismiss them out of hand the way you seem to casually do just because you didn't personally enjoy lol. Final Fantasy VII was one of my favorite games growing up as a kid. I put a couple hundred hours into it. I now acknowledge that the game is awful, and I do not cede to the hive mind that propagandizes games like Final Fantasy VII as a high point of video game role-playing. The same goes for Ocarina of Time, a game which I never enjoyed at any point, a game which has absolutely laughable combat, a complete lack of difficulty, piss-poor dungeon design, and lays all of these things into a game overworld which is not only painful to explore, but poses no threat to the player, something that the Souls games and Dragon's Dogma have recently done very, very well. I don't really care what Game Journalism Consensus has to say about these games because most of those people have absolutely no clue what they're talking about. Just because IGN has given it a perfect score does not mean it is good, just because the randoms on GameFAQs vote the game as "BEST EBAR" does not mean it is good. You see how you're able to analyze those games, and LoL, because you know something about them? You see how you've never said anything factual about DotA of that nature? This is why I called you an uninformed flamebaiting troll, because the rest of your quote explains why you're a flamebaiting troll. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: I think DotA exploded in popularity because it's a different type of game and a pioneer of the genre, it exploded in popularity because it filled a gap in places the same way brood war or counter strike did. It had an environment that fit the niche and grew, in this case a fun, contained game that was playable with multiple players. Most of all, it was new and interesting. I don't know if you played WC3 during 03-04 but that's when the multiplayer scene died. Warcraft III melee gametypes took a hit because of the new Matchmaking System (essentially a test run for what would eventually be used in World of Warcraft and StarCraft II) and all the players who were playing for a shiny icon or a pretty record all quit. The game recovered just fine and peaked in 2006, when advanced multitasking techniques and full utilization of the rock-paper-scissors model really began to take off, and then Orcs figured out around 2007 that they don't have to do much more than Grunt/Raider/Spirit Walker/Blademaster/Shadow Hunter. (But even today, you get variations on this, and there's been much more Witch Doctor play as of recent, and you got these changes in the metagame without having a single major balance patch in over five years. You eventually take confidence in what you have and you sit on it.) Oh thank god, there were some facts in that last quote, with, dare I say it, evidence?! This is a not totally inept analysis of the recent war3 Orc meta, it seems to say that the game became somewhat dull because Orc became more or less figured out and there's only been one major metagame shift? That's what generally happened in DotA, a stable version will undergo metagame shifts over a year or more before it reached a state where things became "figured out" and some sort of shift is made, thus avoiding some of the problems (along with lack of new maps and designs) that so plagued WC3. Maps constantly change the game and introduce new elements while serving as a balancing factor. This is what made brood war live longer than any other game, because of constant change and introduction of new metagame developments. The fact that the most recent major Wc3 tournament still uses Bable TM EI, is one of the reasons it died. http://gleague.gamefy.cn/view_26781.html League is here if you're interested because you seem to enjoy wc3 and for good reason. see how much more productive talking to you can be when there's factual evidence and knowledge that could be used instead of the uniformed generalities you tend to use otherwise? On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: Individually, Quake is more "complicated than counter-strike" but the fact that counterstrike was designed as a teambased game made it completely different in terms of execution and the skill at the highest level. Sure you can make some sort of silly "omg individual skill" argument, but you'd be completely disregarding the multiplayer aspect of game design. The "skill cap" for team multiplayer has no bearing on my ability as an individual to derive pleasure from the game's systems and aesthetics. Some games are more fun as single-player games and others are more fun as multiplayer games. The existence of a higher theoretical skill cap for a team-based multiplayer shooter has absolutely no bearing on there's more to versus multiplayer games than skill ceilings. ??? not sure I follow you here. Games are fun, but you used low skill cap as a piece of evidence on your critique of games in the DotA genre and you're now admitting that it doesn't exist? Please elaborate on how being fun is had because that's sure as hell how LoL has a giant playerbase, because it's fun. I'm somewhat befuddled here. You've stated some points that don't seem pertinent and seem to contradict your previous views. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: Quake started out as single-player focused game but gained popularity when that was stripped away and the multiplayer competitive side was developed. Doom multiplayer was already very popular at the time of its release and the Quake multiplayer was not tacked on as some random side-jib. The company had to create QuakeWorld because almost immediately after the game's release because people were complaining about the netcode, of which there was none. (They settled on the client-server model that the Apogee guys had used earlier in the year.) People complaining about engine limitation and terrible netcode leading to them creating an enhanced, single element-oriented remake?! Sounds like the exact same thing Dota2 does. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: Portal is an acclaimed success and just because you personally didn't enjoy it says absolutely nothing about genre. Once again, "the journlolists liked it" is not a measuring stick. You'll be surprised how many games don't hold up to scrutiny once you open your mind about them. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: For example, with your logic I can say, I personally believe that "you are an uninformed flamebaiting troll", and then write a bunch of random florid sentences, it doesn't make it concretely factual, or does it? No, I'd have to prove it my pointing out logical fallacies, attention-whoring, poorly constructed strawmen, counter-factual arguments, etc. etc. I'm going to take it that you're mad I was critical of a genre that (looking at your post history) you overwhelmingly enjoy. ? I'm mad because I've calmly identified elements where you were a) uninformed, b) flamebaiting, and c) trolling. I was also able to have the insight to notice that it was all often in the same paragraph. It's not mad, it logical conclusions made due to overwhelming evidence, something you seem to have trouble doing and addressing. Oh yeah, once again failing to address. Let me recap this for you You have a working knowledge of wc3, LoL, and many single player RPGs You hate LoL and its business model. Go make a well informed article about how the marketing elements and the way the business model forces a certain mode of game design in LoL, compare it to wc3 and RPGs instead of wasting time defending an uninformed, sensationalist one. (hint: this is a good time to pack up instead of embarrassing yourself further) | ||
|
zMuffinMan
Australia23 Posts
I can't be fucked reading through all the junk to find that particular response and it's most likely a bad one because you lack a true understanding of the game and therefore can't criticise it for the skill and strategy involved until you do understand it fully. MichaelJLowell wrote And now Valve has placed direct financial incentive on themselves to create game updates which will maximize profit from the existing player base. They did the same thing with Team Fortress 2, and no, I don't think that having people running around in silly hats makes a video game more compelling or immersive. (I understand that DotA 2's cash shop clothes will all fit within the context of the game, but who knows what they'll come up with elsewise.) Hello. DotA became a popular esport without Valve's help so I'm pointing out that this particular argument of yours is plain wrong. There is no inherent design behind the game to make it simple and easy and therefore be a popular esport as you are suggesting there is. Obviously there is work being done to make some serious money out of Dota 2 where fun elements (items and different couriers) are being added by Valve, but these are superficial and irrelevant to the game as a competitive esports title. Aesthetic changes are completely seperate from the balance of the game so none of what you are saying fucking matters in the slightest. | ||
|
rabidch
United States20287 Posts
It goes an exceptionally long way in keeping a disinterested player base from going in different directions. Imagine if all the chaos that happened a couple of months back took place while the KeSPA Brood War were still going strong and those KeSPA tournaments had muscled out StarCraft II in South Korea. I feel pretty confident stating that there are a lot of players (both salaried and elsewise) who now stick with StarCraft II because "the scene is gone", and that the salaried players don't have a goal to shoot for in Brood War. Brood War is still very popular in Korea, the player base is not dead there by any means and IIRC it is still more popular than SC2. The pro playerbase is a very small population there and if SC2 has changed any playerbase drastically it is the Western playerbase which is now unsurprisingly stagnating, but not because of e-Sports. And even then In general, if players want to switch to newer (not even better) games then splintering the playerbase is of course the the natural option, so I see no point of making a fuss about it when you want to see more influx of different games as you want. And again, this is a developers problem, if SC2 was rightfully seen as the successor of Brood War by the majority of the playerbase then Koreans would have flocked to it, the fact is that SC2 did not live up to its predecessor, similarly with Quake 4 and CSS. On the flip side you can see successful transitions in most Fighting Games, Quake 2 and 3, and now apparently DotA and Dota2. Then if the game becomes boring, you move on to a new game instead of creating a potato chip comfort zone within the old game and its occasional, artificial balance updates. (And yes, there have been good sequels and bad sequels. While I'm no savant of fighting games, even things as superficially similar as the early Street Fighter II games have major changes and additions which improved the game beyond "new characters" or "balance tweaks". And even the balance tweaks were not done in the dead-ahead pursuit of 5/5 matchups.) You go play and enjoy other excellent video games, of which there are absolutely no shortage of. Whether the best players have completely explored all available strategies in a game is unlikely to have any bearing on your experience when you pick it up for the very first time. I still play some fighting games with other people, what I mean is that I don't play or watch those games for the meta, I play them because it's a different kind of game just like FPS, RPG, Puzzle, etc. And as for "artificial balance updates", a lot of DotA changes have been significant enough comparable between ST2 and 3rd Strike, and depending on how far back you look, comparable between the first Street Fighter II and MvC3. On November 21 2012 00:18 corumjhaelen wrote: He's not doing science or journalism either, and I suggest you read him more closely. reads like an Opinion article. On November 20 2012 23:29 Tal wrote: Then your problem is that your starting point is far from most peoples. You'd be better off making a thread explaining why DOTA isn't a good game, than trying to discuss e-sports on a foundation no one's going to agree with. Having said that, you wouldn't be much better off, because you'd get similar reactions you got to this thread - people telling you you don't understand DOTA. The problem is they are probably right. You may have "given it a ridiculous amount of thought", but so have countless TL hardcore BW players, staff and progamers, and have found a lot to like in DOTA. Seems the odds are it's you who's wrong. To pick on one point: "valuing game balance over interesting unit design, by fixing “problems” with rash design decisions, you gut the depth of your games. As we’ve seen in StarCraft II and League of Legends, we have now gotten to the point where the development of playstyles is not centralized around improvements in player skill and the process of exploring a game, but around the game balance updates themselves, where the illusion of depth is created every time Riot Games creates a new Champion or recreates the skill set for an old one." I don't play SC2 (doesn't run on my computer), but playstyles in LoL often change because of a pro-teams unique style (see moscow 5 or CLG.EU), rather than balance patches. Also, can't depth be reached through different routes? Can't we have both the elegant simplicity of a game like Go, and the insane complexity of a game like Magic the Gathering. Why can't both kinds exist? To use sport, can't we have tennis and cricket? Or music - art songs and symphonies? Depth isn't as simple as you make out. Finally, your writing seems pointlessly abrasive, e.g "Woah, hold back on the butthurt, DotA fans. I don’t think StarCraft II is very good, either." It'd just be even worse in a thread like that. | ||
|
MichaelJLowell
United States610 Posts
On November 20 2012 23:29 Tal wrote: Then your problem is that your starting point is far from most peoples. You'd be better off making a thread explaining why DOTA isn't a good game, than trying to discuss e-sports on a foundation no one's going to agree with. Having said that, you wouldn't be much better off, because you'd get similar reactions you got to this thread - people telling you you don't understand DOTA. I'll do it at some point in the future. It's been on my "to write" list for a very long time. But obviously, I want it to be thoroughly and utterly exhaustive when I do it, and that takes some time. (I also have some regular readers on my web site who also like the DotA clones and are no doubt sick of the input I give on the topic there as well. I don't want this to turn into a crusade.) On November 20 2012 23:29 Tal wrote: The problem is they are probably right. You may have "given it a ridiculous amount of thought", but so have countless TL hardcore BW players, staff and progamers, and have found a lot to like in DOTA. Seems the odds are it's you who's wrong. I'm going to put this in bold so everyone can read it: Playing a handful of games within a limited spectrum of genres for X number of years does not make you an expert or authority on game design. I've read plenty of input and discussion from those placed on the pedestal in this community, and most of "the pros" are either clueless on the topic of game theory or aren't very good at expressing themselves beyond the way that mechanics and variables operate within an extremely tight-knit state of game balance. And I don't care if it sounds arrogant coming from someone like me, a guy who has never won a major StarCraft tournament. It's just as arrogant for people to play three or four games for a dozen years and think they have game design figured out. "Your ability to play the game" does not equal "comprehension of the topic". Because I'll tell you right now that all of the things I was told "could not be done in StarCraft II" ("hero units", greater strategic complexity, unit movement automation) have been done extremely well in other games and those lessons could have salvaged the game if all the "StarCraft experts" weren't sitting around saying they wanted to play the exact same game. You're judged by what you know about the topic, whether you design games or you write about them, and that has nothing to do with how fast you can operate the mouse. I'll tell you right now that Chris Taylor, Louis Castle, Bill Roper, and Sandy Petersen have never won a major video game tournament. Hell, most of those dudes have been programming games for X number of years, which means they haven't had time to settle down and play what's new. But you bet my ass that I would value their knowledge on the topic of real-time strategy design before any of yours. On November 20 2012 23:29 Tal wrote: Also, can't depth be reached through different routes? Can't we have both the elegant simplicity of a game like Go, and the insane complexity of a game like Magic the Gathering. Why can't both kinds exist? Ideally, the more complex with less erroneous parts, the better. There's two points to be made: One, "elegant simplicity" is often confused with "depth" or "quality of the work" because they see their grandmother pick up Angry Birds and somehow come to the conclusion that "Wow, Angry Birds is easy to learn and hard to master!" (It's not. It's easy to learn and pathetically easy to master.) And two, as I allude to in the article, there has been a general movement in game design towards large numbers of erroneous moving parts because 1) It's easier to monetize those erroneous moving parts and 2) Most players don't know the slightest thing about depth, so it is easier for them to visualize "large number of "choices" as depth. Just as an example, look at shooters like Half-Life, the Serious Sam series, Doom and Doom II, Quake, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, and so forth. There is hardly a redundant design mechanic in any of these games, and even the ones that are redundant tend to be exceptionally satisfying to use. Magic: The Gathering-style complexity is all fun and good, but it's also a business model that relies on people buying large amounts of cards, a business model that features a large number of outright worthless cards (i.e. needless complexity) as part of that business model. (I stopped playing in 2000 or so, and I've heard about the absurdly-powerful new-age card design, but I'm sure this still applies.) On November 20 2012 23:29 Tal wrote: Finally, your writing seems pointlessly abrasive, e.g "Woah, hold back on the butthurt, DotA fans. I don’t think StarCraft II is very good, either." Do you honestly think anyone who likes Defense of the Ancients and got that far down the page said "Well, I was on his side until he called me a butthurt DotA fan"? On November 20 2012 23:55 corumjhaelen wrote: I haven't given much thought on the matter, but I'm clearly leaning toward's MichaelJLowell side. Now do note, I'm not casting a blanket statement on all things popular. There have been many excellent, excellent commercially successful games (Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, Metroid Prime, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, StarCraft, and Half-Life all come to mind). But generally speaking, players have so much access to entertainment these days (and models to group around that entertainment) that if something gets popular, it's always good to take a second look at it and try to figure out why. A basic example would be Super Meat Boy, a game that has sold over a million copies because it's "super-hardcore", but not only does the audience in question have limited question with actual "super-hardcore" game experiences (top-notch action games such as shoot 'em ups and other arcade luminaries), but it doesn't make sense that such a game would become so popular at a time when the entire game industry is moving away from mechanics that actually provide difficulty. And of course, when you actually look at the game, you realize it's actually an easy game because it is simply stripping out all punishment for death and "removing the aggravation" from platforming. (If the game had three lives and you had to continue at the beginning of a world, absolutely nobody would have played it. And the game would still suck, but that's a topic for another year.) On November 21 2012 00:16 PrinceXizor wrote: also all the arguments about dota he makes are "well LoL is like this" his only argument against dota is "it's made from war3 engine therefore i must compare it to war3" and then his knowledge of actual professional dota is so minimal he clearly just looks at the complete basics *how many units do you have? how do you get money?*, he's writing like a math student or a sensationalist, not like a scientist or statistician and especially not like a legitimate journalist. No, "failing to have a comprehensive memory backlog of various game variables in the DotA clones" does not mean I cannot provide a good opinion of a game because the things that make most games "good" or "bad" are usually rooted in lower-level design principles that have nothing to do with the damage and cooldown of Meepo's spells. Some various excellent games are made better by their fantastic game balance (Doom, StarCraft, Serious Sam, Quake, various iterations of Guilty Gear) but the very specific interactions between those weapons are not the primary reason that video games are awesome escapist fantasy. | ||
|
MichaelJLowell
United States610 Posts
On November 21 2012 00:53 Kupon3ss wrote: Tedious minitae like facts sure do suck when they get in the way of your sensationalism doesn't it. For instance, you're not going to address the fundamental gap in Logic here but instead of an ad-homiem attack because you cannot avoid the FACT that your convoluted logic cannot get around the fact that: Just because the elements of a game as existent in part in a different game and becomes more developed, the second game cannot be called a stripped down version of the first. When you strip down the elements in a game so they compare unfavorably to real-time strategy games and then end up with a game that compares unfavorably to 1) the expansive inventory and item selection in dungeon crawlers, and 2) the nuanced design of top-notch fighting games, then yes, you can make that statement. (And no, let's not pretend for a second that, after roughly twenty years of completely and utterly failing to make anything resembling a crop of good Western fighting games and beat 'em ups, that Riot and Icefrog magically figured out those lessons in a completely different genre.) On November 21 2012 00:53 Kupon3ss wrote: I've said nothing about Deus Ex, just that your central argument that DotA or indeed anything in that genre contains a nonsensical leap in logic that happens to be one of the lynchpins of your so called "argument". My comparison is a parallel, not some sort of snide commentary on Deus Ex, to your silly, groundless claims. So you made a metaphor or comparison for a game that you don't actually know anything about? That goes a long way in explaining your position in this thread. If you haven't noticed, pretty much all of the comparisons that I have made to other games in this thread come from the fact that I have actually played those games and understand those games. And in the rare case where I don't know the game particularly well (mostly fighting games and shoot 'em ups), I mingle with an audience that knows a lot about the games and has taught me a lot about them. That probably explains why you responded to my assertion that Ocarina of Time and Portal are "not very good" by saying that "the critics said the game was good so who are you to question them?" You don't actually know anything about them and deferred to the lowest common denominator (the mainstream vidya gaem journalist) to find those answers. (And before you say, "But you base your impressions of fighting games off of what other people say, too!", the people I discuss the topic with know the topic, and when I draw their precedent into this conversation, I'm not only confident in their opinion, I'm confident that I can defend their opinion as though you're having that discussion with them.) On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: Is this not what you did, given what appears to be your imitate knowledge about the LoL game structure, metagame, and business model. You appear to be the very subjects the Riot appealed to, congratulations, you bought into a game, it sucked, and now you somehow think the entire genre sucks. Grow up. Yes, because "I don't have utterly exhaustive knowledge of League of Legends' variables" means "I'm making a leap to conclusions." You're making the same mistake as everyone else. Hell, I don't think anyone has otherwise suggested that League of Legends is a superior game to Defense of the Ancients, so unless your argument is "Yeah, it sucks, but I don't want you saying that", then I don't know where you're coming from. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: The lacking of that element is why, as I said, those games cannot be considered competitive and thus you cannot compare their ability to "be solved" to those of games involving human factors and human opponents. Any game with a goal can be competitive, and it is inherently impossible not to have goals when you are playing a video game, however meaningless those goals may be. Minecraft can be competitive. Angry Birds can be competitive. Tower Defense games can be competitive. You're making the argument that a versus multiplayer game like Defense of the Ancients inherently has more depth because the presence of adaptable human intelligence will allow that game to hold up to scrutiny for a longer period of time and I'm making the point that "depth and complexity are not the only thing that makes a video game fun to play", that "the presence of a 'metagame' does not make the game fun to play". I'll discuss that a little more in a couple. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: You can't just keep on saying "striped away" while providing no factual arguments to back that up. Both games come from the warcraft 3 engine, just as the two games I mentioned come through the source engine, that is a factual parallel. What your claims of stripping away are personal opinion that you yourself cannot be bothered to defend. The Tower Defense model removes unit strategy and tactics and focuses on the placement of defensive structures. The DotA genre automates unit production, strategy, and tactics and focuses on the use of powerful hero units. That constitutes "stripped away". "Stripped away" is the appropriate phrase regardless of what negative connotation you are subconsciously attaching to it. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: You see how you're able to analyze those games, and LoL, because you know something about them? You see how you've never said anything factual about DotA of that nature? This is why I called you an uninformed flamebaiting troll, because the rest of your quote explains why you're a flamebaiting troll. How do you think I got to the conclusion that Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII are lousy games? By comparing them to titles in other relevant games and genres. When compared to Ninja Gaiden, or Bayonetta, or even a game like God of War, the combat in 3D Zelda games is not good. (There's a reason that Darksiders was able to find a small but hugely devout audience by taking the Zelda dungeon model and combining it with God of War's combat model.) When compared to the strategic complexity of SRPGs and the choice presented by WRPGs, Final Fantasy VII (and by extension, the entire Japanese Role-Playing Genre) is largely crap. "Good" and "bad" are statements and comparisons that are completely rooted in that comparison process. (And this may surprise you: Through all of my combined playthroughs and time spent with Ocarina of Time, I've probably played the game about once. I have never played it all the way through from start to finish. I just know that the multitude of problems within the game are completely indefensible and you don't need an exhaustive knowledge of minutiae like equipment and hidden locations in order to figure that out.) So yeah. The reasons I dislike DotA clones have absolutely nothing to do with higher-level design functions and everything to do with lower-level design functions that do not compare favorably to other genres. I am not going to end up enjoying DotA if I play a thousand games and assume mastery of most heroes because the individual skill sets of those heroes have very little to do with the reasons that I am repulsed by the Defense of the Ancients game model, and those reasons come from relevant comparisons to other games. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: That's what generally happened in DotA, a stable version will undergo metagame shifts over a year or more before it reached a state where things became "figured out" and some sort of shift is made, thus avoiding some of the problems (along with lack of new maps and designs) that so plagued WC3. Maps constantly change the game and introduce new elements while serving as a balancing factor. This is what made brood war live longer than any other game, because of constant change and introduction of new metagame developments. Here's the difference: Change through a higher-level function like "map design" is good because the variables that have changed are utterly and obviously overt (map design being inherently visual) and don't infringe upon the lower-level design of units, buildings, and other moving parts. On the other hand, rote memorization of new numbers (as applied through game updates) is boring. New maps provide immediate visual feedback and more interesting functional applications, where the player has to figure out how the utility of his units (rather than their damage output) apply to the design of this new environment. TAnd yeah, I'm fairly familiar with the problem that the Warcraft III Anonymous Matchmaking System posed for the rotation of maps, since Blizzard never wanted to regularly update the map pool. I don't consider the StarCraft system of player-hosted maps to be superior, but a matchmaking system requires a bare minimum level of commitment on the end of the developer. Map redesign is good. Tweaks to invisible game variables that repeatedly compromise the illusion that comes with visual feedback (where a hero deals 100 damage one day and 120 damage the next) are bad. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: ??? not sure I follow you here. Games are fun, but you used low skill cap as a piece of evidence on your critique of games in the DotA genre and you're now admitting that it doesn't exist? Please elaborate on how being fun is had because that's sure as hell how LoL has a giant playerbase, because it's fun. "Fun" is completely subjective, but it's primarily rooted in immersion, i.e. "how well the game sucks you into the illusion". Depth and complexity are two routes to immersion, but they're not the only ones, since those game rules have to be justified with interesting visuals, mechanics, and narrative in order to sustain that illusion. (Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, a game that has been maligned for its white-bread third-person shooting, is one of my favorite video games from this generation.) So, for example, there are ways that games with shallow learning curves can be more interesting and fun than games with deeper learning curves, but those lessons don't apply to this particular instance because there is hardly anything compelling or immersive about the art direction in most DotA games. (When compared to relevant games and genres, of course.) On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: People complaining about engine limitation and terrible netcode leading to them creating an enhanced, single element-oriented remake?! Sounds like the exact same thing Dota2 does. Do you know what QuakeWorld is? QuakeWorld is not an "enhanced remake". QuakeWorld was a complete oversight by the id Software game developers (who were playing the game through the internet on their state-of-the-line internet services) to provide decent netcode for Quake. It is not a "remake", it was a tool that was intended for use with valid copies of Quake. On November 20 2012 16:07 Kupon3ss wrote: Go make a well informed article about how the marketing elements and the way the business model forces a certain mode of game design in LoL, compare it to wc3 and RPGs instead of wasting time defending an uninformed, sensationalist one. (hint: this is a good time to pack up instead of embarrassing yourself further) Since this is the last post I'm making in this thread, I'll go ahead and be thorough about this. No, you're not going to like the things that I say, but you'd be wise to value them. And while it would normally be a little bit creepy to see what input you have on the topic outside of this web site, your post history (which is pretty much nothing but DotA 2) made me curious. So I looked at your YouTube profile, which is pretty much nothing but DotA 2. Then I looked at your Steam account, which features only one thing: About four-hundred hours of play history with DotA 2. That is the only game on the account. You only play one video game, and like most of the other people on the internet that only play one video game, I value your opinion as such. Would I be interested in listening to what you have to say about the inner workings of DotA 2, and which variables within the game are "good" and "bad"? Hearing about which heroes are "good" and "bad"? Which tactics are "good" and "bad"? Whether Player X is "good" or "bad"? Sure, why not? And I've never denied anybody on this message board the right to do that with the games that this message board specializes in. I would love to hear what any professionally-paid player or commentator has to say about StarCraft II. But when it comes time to discuss the matter of whether DotA 2 is "good" or "bad" (as determined with relevant comparisons to other games), you offer absolutely nothing to me because you only play one video game, and I sure-as-hell don't want to hear a defense of the only game you play because "I'm not good enough to make that criticism", i.e. I have not pooled my video game efforts into becoming a respected savant of a genre that I think is boring. That would be more irrational than an outsider opinion that the DotA clones aren't very good. I'm not going to make the argument that crunching through thousands of games immediately makes you an expert on the topic, just as it wouldn't for watching movies or reading books. There are people on my own, small message board who have played a lot more video games than I have, and a lot of them play and understand certain genres better than I do. The question would obviously be whether or not they can provide better criticism of the topic than I could, and the mental mechanisms that provide that criticism are fairly detached from the process of playing the games. But there comes a time where a lack of experience with the greater medium becomes an absolute detriment to that pursuit of criticism. The idea that an expert at StarCraft or an expert at DotA or an expert at Halo is an expert on the topic of video game criticism is just horseshit. You seem to be perfectly okay with all the criticisms that I have applied and leveraged to other games. That's the exact same philosophy and thought process that led to my opinion of the DotA clones. You can either accept that, you can disagree with my opinion, but you can't come to the conclusion that "Your opinion on every game except the one I like is good, and your opinion on that game FUKKIN SUKS MAN." And even if you disagree with my opinions, you may be interested in knowing that there are hundreds and thousands of other excellent games out there waiting to be played. That would be a better idea than than elevating games to the status of "spectator sport" and using that status as a blanket dismissal for the opinions of outsiders who otherwise have an excellent comprehension of video games. That's my input, thank you for the discussion. | ||
|
MichaelJLowell
United States610 Posts
On November 21 2012 01:19 zMuffinMan wrote: Obviously there is work being done to make some serious money out of Dota 2 where fun elements (items and different couriers) are being added by Valve, but these are superficial and irrelevant to the game as a competitive esports title. Aesthetic changes are completely seperate from the balance of the game so none of what you are saying fucking matters in the slightest. Pouring money into tournaments and making them a part of the "DotA 2" experience will inevitably end up having an impact on the player base and their expectations for what in the game will get balanced. It is impossible not to think of a situation where this will not have a negative impact. And just to note, aesthetics and mechanics are inseparable from each other in game design. Form fits function. On November 21 2012 07:45 rabidch wrote: Brood War is still very popular in Korea, the player base is not dead there by any means and IIRC it is still more popular than SC2. The pro playerbase is a very small population there and if SC2 has changed any playerbase drastically it is the Western playerbase which is now unsurprisingly stagnating, but not because of e-Sports. And even then In general, if players want to switch to newer (not even better) games then splintering the playerbase is of course the the natural option, so I see no point of making a fuss about it when you want to see more influx of different games as you want. At least as far as what I've seen on Gametrics, Brood War has been trailing off as League of Legends runs away with the rankings. (Brood War was somewhere around 5.5% of playtime shortly after the release of StarCraft II and is now about half of that. I don't know how that compares any numbers prior to 2010.) There is little doubt in my mind that the presence of a healthy, stable Brood War scene, even if it's one that has an aging player base and a lack of new talent, would have helped to maintain some of that popularity. And in spite of everything that Blizzard did to muscle KeSPA out of the way, the game is probably still going to "fail", i.e. "trickle off onto obscurity as the Koreans affix themselves to the new flavor of the month". But most video games suffer that fate, so it's not like it would be surprising. On November 20 2012 23:29 Tal wrote: It'd just be even worse in a thread like that. I had absolutely no intention of making this a DotA thread and that's what it turned into. Obviously, there's only so much writing I am willing to do on that topic and I'll step aside. So enjoy. | ||
|
Kupon3ss
時の回廊10066 Posts
On November 21 2012 11:07 MichaelJLowell wrote: Since this is the last post I'm making in this thread, I'll go ahead and be thorough about this. No, you're not going to like the things that I say, but you'd be wise to value them. And while it would normally be a little bit creepy to see what input you have on the topic outside of this web site, your post history (which is pretty much nothing but DotA 2) made me curious. So I looked at your YouTube profile, which is pretty much nothing but DotA 2. Then I looked at your Steam account, which features only one thing: About four-hundred hours of play history with DotA 2. That is the only game on the account. You only play one video game, and like most of the other people on the internet that only play one video game, I value your opinion as such. Would I be interested in listening to what you have to say about the inner workings of DotA 2, and which variables within the game are "good" and "bad"? Hearing about which heroes are "good" and "bad"? Which tactics are "good" and "bad"? Whether Player X is "good" or "bad"? Sure, why not? And I've never denied anybody on this message board the right to do that with the games that this message board specializes in. I would love to hear what any professionally-paid player or commentator has to say about StarCraft II. But when it comes time to discuss the matter of whether DotA 2 is "good" or "bad" (as determined with relevant comparisons to other games), you offer absolutely nothing to me because you only play one video game, and I sure-as-hell don't want to hear a defense of the only game you play because "I'm not good enough to make that criticism", i.e. I have not pooled my video game efforts into becoming a respected savant of a genre that I think is boring. That would be more irrational than an outsider opinion that the DotA clones aren't very good. I'm not going to make the argument that crunching through thousands of games immediately makes you an expert on the topic, just as it wouldn't for watching movies or reading books. There are people on my own, small message board who have played a lot more video games than I have, and a lot of them play and understand certain genres better than I do. The question would obviously be whether or not they can provide better criticism of the topic than I could, and the mental mechanisms that provide that criticism are fairly detached from the process of playing the games. But there comes a time where a lack of experience with the greater medium becomes an absolute detriment to that pursuit of criticism. The idea that an expert at StarCraft or an expert at DotA or an expert at Halo is an expert on the topic of video game criticism is just horseshit. You seem to be perfectly okay with all the criticisms that I have applied and leveraged to other games. That's the exact same philosophy and thought process that led to my opinion of the DotA clones. You can either accept that, you can disagree with my opinion, but you can't come to the conclusion that "Your opinion on every game except the one I like is good, and your opinion on that game FUKKIN SUKS MAN." And even if you disagree with my opinions, you may be interested in knowing that there are hundreds and thousands of other excellent games out there waiting to be played. That would be a better idea than than elevating games to the status of "spectator sport" and using that status as a blanket dismissal for the opinions of outsiders who otherwise have an excellent comprehension of video games. That's my input, thank you for the discussion. I LOL'd PS: I looked up "MichaelJLowell" and no steam account exists, by his own logic he must not play games PSS: No youtube either, must not watch any videos how dare he comment on video games if he doesn't watch/play any of them, too bad he'll never post here on this topic to assuage the questions of my heart On November 21 2012 11:07 MichaelJLowell wrote: Pouring money into tournaments and making them a part of the "DotA 2" experience will inevitably end up having an impact on the player base and their expectations for what in the game will get balanced. It is impossible not to think of a situation where this will not have a negative impact. And just to note, aesthetics and mechanics are inseparable from each other in game design. Form fits function. At least as far as what I've seen on Gametrics, Brood War has been trailing off as League of Legends runs away with the rankings. (Brood War was somewhere around 5.5% of playtime shortly after the release of StarCraft II and is now about half of that. I don't know how that compares any numbers prior to 2010.) There is little doubt in my mind that the presence of a healthy, stable Brood War scene, even if it's one that has an aging player base and a lack of new talent, would have helped to maintain some of that popularity. And in spite of everything that Blizzard did to muscle KeSPA out of the way, the game is probably still going to "fail", i.e. "trickle off onto obscurity as the Koreans affix themselves to the new flavor of the month". But most video games suffer that fate, so it's not like it would be surprising. I had absolutely no intention of making this a DotA thread and that's what it turned into. Obviously, there's only so much writing I am willing to do on that topic and I'll step aside. So enjoy. I LOL'D some more | ||
|
zMuffinMan
Australia23 Posts
| ||
|
MichaelJLowell
United States610 Posts
| ||
|
Kupon3ss
時の回廊10066 Posts
On November 21 2012 16:13 MichaelJLowell wrote: What can I tell you? You may eventually expand your taste in video games beyond a handful that are being actively worshipped as "sports", and quite honestly, if we're going to finish this conversation on "Yeah, I don't disagree that you know the topic, except for your opinion on the one video game that I pour most of my time into"...somehow, I'm not going to feel like I'm making a mistake by holding my ground. You're getting sad now, at least have the convinction to stick to a statement like "this is the last post I will make here". Your baseless arguments have fallen apart. You've shown to have no idea what you're talking about regarding DotA. You've been shown to have consistent logical inconsistencies in your bullshit laced statements, and the best you can come up with is. "Damn you don't play anything besides DotA". as some sort of poorly constructed ad hominem attack. Guess what, people play more than 1 game. I've personally played through every major title we've mentioned game made in the last pages of discussion (cept spore, that game was too shit to look at for more than 30 minutes). I don't know about what genres you've played and such, but just the very fact that you had to backpedal when called out on the fact that FFVII and Oot, the games you yourself tried to cite as personal favorites and admitted to have grown up with, are mediocre, shows that we grew up different ages of video games. I'm not going to make any sweeping bullshit generalizations about how many game you've played the way you wantonly do as a self-defense mechanicism, but I can tell you least in the field of RPGs and JRPGs, the level of experience that we've had don't even come close. You haven't even shown a proper understanding of the popular titles available in English, let alone scratch the treasure trove of what's available in their native languages. I've been more than courteous when talking to you about games that you have the bare minimum of knowledge to produce working factual statements about, why can't you try to do the same for a game that you've admitted that you know shit about and that we're apparently some sort of devote all-knowing worshipers of. | ||
|
Boblion
France8043 Posts
Btw that's coming from someone who has spend the last year playing HoN lol but i don't feel offended when someone tells me that the genre itself isn't that great. I mean i like the game a lot but i have played enough different games to see the bigger picture. And now they are just arguing semantics and bragging about having played more Jrpgs than you lol. | ||
|
Kupon3ss
時の回廊10066 Posts
On November 21 2012 17:09 Boblion wrote: I don't know why you bother to argue with these guys Michael, they are just defending their little game and Esports™. Btw that's coming from someone who has spend the last year playing HoN lol but i don't feel offended when someone tells me that the genre itself isn't that great. I mean i like the game a lot but i have played enough different games to see the bigger picture. And now they are just arguing semantics and bragging about having playing more Jrpgs than you lol. I feel like arguing about semantics and bringing up experience in other genres is the only thing left when he dodges every factual argument and writes 1000 word ad-hominem attacks based on how many games he's supposed to have played. I don't actually think the genre is that great, there are tons of issues with DotA and its transitions to Dota2 despite being the origin and the best game of that genre. But any logical argument regarding those issues seem impossible with a guy who's literally admitted that he knows nothing about DotA and that he hates on LoL, the only game in the genre he's had any experience in. | ||
|
Boblion
France8043 Posts
I don't really know what you are arguing tbh. I mean you admit yourself that Dota has flaws and isn't the greatest game ever made but you still try to argue again and again wtf ? | ||
|
Kupon3ss
時の回廊10066 Posts
It has flaws, but this guy has no clue what they are, nor any idea of any of the inherent problems inside the genre aside from LoL's inherent business model and design limitations. I simply called him out on the fact that he's an uninformed flamebaiting troll every time he writes anything about DotA. | ||
|
Boblion
France8043 Posts
Btw mind to explain the flaws of Dota with your uber knowledge of the intricacies of the "metagame" ? | ||
|
Kupon3ss
時の回廊10066 Posts
Firstly, you have to realize that DotA has a game is an entire game structure built upon every element, it cannot be compartmentalized and broken down with replaceable elements the way LoL is without it turning into a completely different game. This, along with the wishes of the established community and of Icefrog, the lead developer, causes a no-compromise stance on the singular issue of heroes availability: the game will not be subdivided into free-and-paid-to-win tiers. This causes problems on both the business end and on the entry end of the game. On the business end you cannot argue that purely selling cosmetics will have nearly the same level of profitability (even if valve is the best company in the world at selling e-hats) as a competitive game in which paying money will give players tangible gameplay advantages over others in a situation with equal user-base. Obviously the nice thing about valve is that their business plan does not necessarily rely upon Dota2 itself making any money, since any attraction of players to steam, with its social and purchasing system as a platform will, in the long term, far offset any amount of money lost on Dota2, as well as give Valve huge opportunities moving into regions like CIS, China, and South America, where Steam has thus far not met with particularly high amounts of success. Then the question becomes, is DotA a game to be developed in and for its own sake or as a promotional title for steam? While that works out as an ecosystem, you'll note that thus the point of Dota2 is to draw players, something Dota by its very nature is pretty terrible at. Due to the lack of compartmentalization of heroes and the lack of "buffer zones" with kids gloves, as well as the inherent team-based nature of a game in which a single playing doing poorly will often have far more impact than a player doing well, DotA suffers from being one of the most rancid and newb-unfriendly communities of all time. While the attraction of complexity and of its competitive, team-based nature are very strong points and a large reason that it caught on, it nevertheless turns away many players. While this was not necessarily a problem in the past, the emergence of LoL on the scene, with it's far more business-oriented and scruple-less mode of operations, as well as doing a far better job at catering to a casual audience, causes a huge problem for DotA. Basically the necessity of balancing its community-borne, hardcore roots, and the business and audience realities of today. | ||
|
Boblion
France8043 Posts
| ||
|
zMuffinMan
Australia23 Posts
And by the way, he isn't a troll, just an outspoken individual talking about certain things he really has no idea about. I'm not going to argue against anything he has said outside of Dota 2 (because I know better than that), but I can confirm that he is wrong about everything he has said regarding Dota 2. MichaelJLowell, the aesthetic changes in Dota 2 as far as items and couriers go do not affect the gameplay. Nothing Valve has done has taken away from the quality of the competitiveness of the game that was DotA. | ||
| ||
