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Dota 2 has come a long way in 2013. Perhaps what should have been a massive event, it's launch, was really more of a brief headline than anything significant, probably not a surprise to anyone familiar with open betas and free to play games.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/RFTzki7.png)
One thing that followed the release of Dota 2 was that mainstream gaming publications saw this as the green light to review the game. Of course game reviewers are expected to enjoy and sample a wide variety of games, particularly single player games where the critical response is closely tied to the commercial success of the product, and more often than not you get people reviewing online games that have played the game for all of one week, or at best, played casually over a longer length of time.
Fortunately for Dota 2, by the time it was 'released' it had been out for long enough to cement itself as the most played game on steam and be generally recognized as a massive successful game, largely in part due to the gaming media coverage of The International and other eSport events. In turn the reviews of it were largely a joke, the casual newbie given the task of reviewing it undoubtedly knowing full well the game was a runaway success and any critique would fly in the face of massive community support and strong questions about the reviewers ability to play the game.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/lbF11Ll.png)
As such Dota 2 became an undisputed critical success, holding a 90 and a 'Universal Acclaim' rating on meta critic, despite being almost a straight 1:1 remake of a (in gaming terms at least) ancient mod for warcraft 3.
This annoyed me. Dota is a good game, but it has a lot of shortcomings. Ignoring the stupidity of even reviewing a F2P PvP mutli-player online game by a single perspective, it got me thinking about how I would review the game, and more importantly, if I was Gabe Frog (ie. had complete control over the development team for Dota 2) what would I change or implement.
The one thing I really want to dive into for this blog is the players account within the game. What I mean by this is how the player is represented, and their experience in the game, when not actually playing the game. This part of the online game experience is criminally overlooked by developers.
The chat in Dota 2 is terrible. A player is identified solely by their name, which by the way, can be changed instantly at any time. Compare this with the warcraft 3 lobby. Players are unique and have status that is recognizable.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/jQHKAEi.jpg)
I know if a player has a rank within the clan. I know what race they play (icon). How much they play (icon). I know what level their account is. I know what clan they are in.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/aLCAxME.png)
Now for Dota 2. I know their name, which not only is non unique, but can, and is often changed to be something unrecognizable.
It might seem like a petty grievance but people who have actually played online games for long period of times know that it's things like that that add up to make the difference between logging on to wc3 when you're bored just to hang out with the clan and the trivia bot, or play that extra 20 games as random to unlock the 150 wins icon, and quitting Diablo 3 after 2 weeks because you get the same amount of connection with your friends from playing Skyrim.
Anyway this is just 1/100 things I wanted to talk about but this took a lot longer than expected so it'll have to be another time.
  
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One thing I wish dota 2 had was a team vote surrender in ranked matches. The punishment system is pretty harsh, and if you are getting owned and you know you lost have a team vote for surrender to move on. I still think the game is pretty good but the community is harsh. I try to do my part and be nice and give tips to people who may not be so good.
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That's another topic I'd like to cover. I came from HoN and no conceded was my biggest frustration with Dota 2 when I switched. I've since come to appreciate having no concede however there's still ways to improve the current situation. I think straight up asking for a concede is pointless now, it's just completely off the table as far as Valve is concerned.
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Dota 2 needs to implement a way for teams who want to surrender to be able to do so. There is absolutely no point to keep that opportunity out of the grasp of so many Dota players. You raise an interesting issue with the chat channels of Dota 2, a thing that I have thought about in the past as well.
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As for the chat, I don't mind the way it is, but then again, I don't use it much.
As for concede, I definitely don't understand why it's not available to 5 stacks, in ranked or normal. If 5 people want to concede, that should be fine. It should definitely not be allowed otherwise though, I hate it when people concede in LoL and whine about it just because they didn't do well in their lane.
The reason valve isn't allowing it at all is probably because they don't want to fuel the fire. If they allow it for 5 stacks, other people will start to whine about why they can't do it, and so on. Still, it makes sense to me that a 5 stack should be able to concede.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
I know if a player has a rank within the clan. I know what race they play (icon). How much they play (icon). I know what level their account is. I know what clan they are in.
have you tried left clicking a name and clicking 'View Dota Profile'?
I really wouldn't say its UI is bad at all, it gives the players who want privacy, privacy, and lets everyone else be seen publicly in chat rooms.
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On January 08 2014 19:58 Tobberoth wrote:
As for the chat, I don't mind the way it is, but then again, I don't use it much.
As for concede, I definitely don't understand why it's not available to 5 stacks, in ranked or normal. If 5 people want to concede, that should be fine. It should definitely not be allowed otherwise though, I hate it when people concede in LoL and whine about it just because they didn't do well in their lane.
The reason valve isn't allowing it at all is probably because they don't want to fuel the fire. If they allow it for 5 stacks, other people will start to whine about why they can't do it, and so on. Still, it makes sense to me that a 5 stack should be able to concede.
Well u can concede in 5 stack, everyone just has to quit game really fast
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Or play TMM and then u can actually concede >_>
I mean you can just make a team for any 5-stack u wish to play with it's not like theres a drawback to being on 7 different teams or remaking them every day.
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United States47024 Posts
On January 08 2014 19:58 Tobberoth wrote:
As for concede, I definitely don't understand why it's not available to 5 stacks, in ranked or normal. If 5 people want to concede, that should be fine. It should definitely not be allowed otherwise though, I hate it when people concede in LoL and whine about it just because they didn't do well in their lane.
If all 5 players on one team leave a game, the game ends with no penalty.
If you're a 5-stack you effectively can concede.
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You can easily add nicknames to friends on steam so no matter what they change their name to they are identifiable. I really don't see a problem with the name changing thing. I feel like the need to spend 20 seconds permanently identifying a person is well worth the ability to change names whenever.
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If you miss WC3 trivia bots, I run a trivia bot in channel Trivia in dota 2.
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EPT
