What can be improved in Diretide competition

etofok

138 Posts

November 18 2013 13:15 GMT

The process of 10man stacking and brain-storming about something is an incredible experience: fun and exciting.

This reminds me WoW, Wc3's "Impossible Bosses" map and many more games, even Dota scrims to some extent - trying to cookie-cut everything you can to perform somewhat strategy you've been discussing with your friends for hours is a great time and pure fun. And when something big is achieved - your enjoyment rises tenfold.

But you can't experience this in a random Diretide pub match, even if you're 5man stacking - you always end up with worse result rather than 10 man stack will. Even with your 100% perfect execution, you just can't beat their record.

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So the main problem with this is that you should exploit Matchmaking and overall do gimmicky stuff to be able to TOUCH this "game" - actual competition for top1. I think this is not how the game should been played in Valve's thoughts, but this is the way how it is played right now if you want to compete.

But of course if the "rosh" event requires certain heroes to perform a strategy, and in almost any circumstance this is true - you can't have fun with "candies" part, I mean if the "candy" part is different from the "boss" part, then you should separate them, because you pick only one hero and Pudge is more fun for "candy" part, but is shit for the boss fight.

And this is basically what it is right now: Public fun game about candies, and only the boss part for tryhards as the actual competition. I hope Valve is taking notes for their future events which, I think, will be at least as good as Diretide, but more polished for 5 or 10 man stacks, so everyone can be a part of competition more "officially" if this makes sense.

Or you should be able to repick or somehow adjust for each stage to play both.

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Another not that good thing is exposure of strategies. Basically, you can just look at other's people tactic and copy it, which is not a good thing at all. This can help you even if you are not going to copy it 1 for 1, but you may understand some points or things that will make your strategy better than theirs.

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This is not fair, because Party1, the best team at the moment, created their strategy from a scratch and let's pretend Party2 at the same time created theirs strat, but it worked poorly. Then they saw "something" already explored by Party1, simultaneously improving both Party1's and Party2's strategies to create the Startegy3 and eventually to take their 1st place, because there are no "world first" system, but "get most points until the end of a cycle".

My point is: you shouldn't be able to see this. At least till the end of a cycle.

If you haven't played WoW you may not know that ~3 years ago the guild Paragon (I can be TOTALLY wrong, but I heard this rumor, even if this is complete bullshit - still really cool and will make my point) when they defeated The Lich King boss, and I believe he is considered till this day as one of the hardest boss ever created, they (Paragon) did NOT release their Youtube video until there was a second guild to kill the boss - just not to reveal their strategy.

So, what do you guys think?

p.s. my English is better this time, but let me know about mistakes

Update:

Now you can 10 man premade in custom games (in other words everyone can try the boss now as IG does), and the statsman came up with one of my ideas. I feel satisfied

Yurie

11670 Posts

November 18 2013 14:31 GMT

There are both pluses and minuses to showing replays.

You can see this in how Starcraft 1 developed. At the start there was no replays so everybody guessed from second hand information and innovative plays dominated since you couldn't do replay analysis and the game wasn't as developed.

Then replays came in and people could start copying each other strats, leaving only execution and mind games as what was left in a long term view.

With no replays you get more innovative and unique plays. With them you get much faster improvements of ideas until you get to the level where mechanics is the deciding factor. In diretide execution is stuff like getting maximum dps by using helm of the dominator and courier buffs. Also keeping everything running optimally so you keep hitting. That is what will be different between the top teams, training on execution.

This is also the discussion about patents, on the one hand it promotes sharing of knowledge, on the other hand it allows just you to use your knowledge for a while.

Stratos

Czech Republic6104 Posts

November 18 2013 16:22 GMT

On November 18 2013 23:31 Yurie wrote:
You can see this in how Starcraft 1 developed. At the start there was no replays so everybody guessed from second hand information and innovative plays dominated since you couldn't do replay analysis and the game wasn't as developed.

Then replays came in and people could start copying each other strats, leaving only execution and mind games as what was left in a long term view.

This is a very questionable summary. In theory it sounds logical but with a game that has so much strategical, tactical and mechanical depth it doesn't work well at all.

Replays and vods have seen many a revolution come by and go in this game. Bisu serves well as a prime example of that.

etofok

138 Posts

November 18 2013 16:40 GMT

Then replays came in and people could start copying each other strats, leaving only execution and mind games as what was left in a long term view.

But 10 men against an AI boss is completely different beast from Player vs Player: No matter what you gonna do the boss is still the same, it does not evolve its strategy or execution at all. So taking this consideration, I think for those small "fun" events you should create primary a puzzle to solve, not something you can execute only after 50+ tries, but maybe 3 or so.

Portal games comes into my mind to get you an example - hard to solve, not that hard to execute after that.

In diretide execution is stuff like getting maximum dps by using helm of the dominator and courier buffs.

I would prefer to call this a "preparation", which is a part of solving a puzzle, because those thing are easy to execute - you get the helm and find the creep you need, that's it.

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China13814 Posts

November 18 2013 16:40 GMT

I wish the modes were separate. Too often you get conflicting teammates who want to aim for a high rosh score / want to win the first stage for double item drop.

I agree in some sense that replays make it too obvious how the top teams are getting their high scores, but given the time frame of each cycle I don't see how you could do better than the top team without insider information.

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