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Let’s talk dota guides. As someone who started playing dota in 2008, I am knowledgeable enough to not need basic “alt-tab” guides. More, I’m kind of disgusted by the idea that someone might think there can be a single proper build for a hero. As any veteran dota player will tell you. there are some item choices on some heroes you can’t do justice without writing an essay. Even something as simple as going linkens on morphling requires an outrageous amount of foresight, analyzing of lineups and adapting playstyles. And then you read a guide that just tells you to get it cause it blocks spells and gives regen. What if there are no spells to block? There are alternative methods of regening, aquila and bottle should be enough if you adapt and use slightly less mana to farm.
A good guide would be literally several pages on each section, with intricate analysis full of ifs and buts in very paragraph. Say a general guide for playing a mid mirana would have a section about item choices(with all of them divided depending on how you early midgame went), a lesser section about skill choices(those are fairly stable for a mid mirana), a big section on rotations and usage of Moonlight Shadow, and an entire lecture(with slides, videos and lots of flames) on using The Arrow, something so many people do wrong I am losing hope for humanity every day. Now how long would making such a guide take? Probably a few weeks if it’s going to be really polished and have all the necessary pictures and other materials, and the writing adapted for someone who possibly is newer to dota. I hate the idea that it’s fine to simplify dota for new players btw, there are people who play dota for years and are still trapped in the trenches because of bad habits the developed in their dota infancy. A new dota player needs to realise how situational everything is, how important it is to adapt, think about your skill and item choices rather than defaulting to a list you decided before even deciding to play this one game. Yea it’s hard, that’s why we love it. Dota crowd is full of mental masochists. And if your guide is in depth, it will appeal to players that might even be better than you but simply do not have the insight into the hero you are talking about, because you covered every base.
Now that I showed how big of a commitment making a good guide is, think about how many people would actually go throu that. Most guides that are of lower quality are made by people who don’t realise how deep the knowledge of playing one hero can go. There are so many skill layers in dota, that if you separated the worst and the best player in the world with a layer for each time the skill difference is big enough for the game to be a complete stomp, we’d easily go into 3 digits of said layers. Now people can be still terrible in eyes of even an average dota player and still look like a sage to a complete noob. And guess what, the people that flame you for playing the game properly, the ones that always know better? They write guides. Terrible ones. The ones that tell you to get 2 bracers on puck so you can survive the enemy spells after orbing in. Always. It got to the point that if I can scroll throu a guide in less than 15 seconds, I instantly dismiss it. Also that is the reason I don’t do guides myself. Ever for anything. I am smart enough to know that the real masters in matter are usually the people know how much they don’t know and are able to deal with that. And those people are always reluctant to teach others without preparation. And most people on the internet are too lazy to do this much for a bunch of noobs.
DISCLAIMER: This is mostly meant as a writing warmup for me, don’t get all serious about this nonsense rant
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Lalalaland34502 Posts
Although I agree with your point about the fundamental way to approach Dota, the main problem with this is that any new player who comes into Dota isn't going to receive much benefit from guides that give a million and one different things to consider before recommending any one item. He simply isn't going to be able to recognise when an enemy team has a lot of single target disables that go through BKB or when the enemy team has predominantly magic or physical damage, etc etc.
Writing a guide is a careful balancing act. You have to emphasise how important it is for the reader to think about his choices and not blindly follow a set item/spell build, yet at the same time you need to guide him in the right direction.
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You know what, you should contribute to liquipedia. We've talked lots about how our strategy section would need to be re-done, guides have been discussed but ultimately dismissed. I still think that something like a wiki is the best way to present general advice and strategies. I mean you seem pretty passionate about this so together with some good people you could revamp that section of LP:Dota
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
other than purge's guide which i read a couple years ago (and kwarks lycan guide which i tried using for a bit) i havent read any guides because i was afraid i would fall into the pitfall i fell into when i played LoL. I knew NOTHING about what different items do and why they were bought, i just bought them cos the guide said so, i was an even worse moba player than i am at dota if you can imagine that.
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Just compile all of Yango's post and you'd be god
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I have promised you guys a techies guide and I shall deliver.
We just need techies.
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Northern Ireland22212 Posts
I'd rather have an alt tab guide to get me started than no guide at all. I don't think it would require that much space to list out the pros and cons of each item. The guide should be enough for the newb to get by, until they have developed their understanding of the game and can make item choice decisions for themselves.
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5673 Posts
On May 12 2014 20:32 Steveling wrote:
I have promised you guys a techies guide and I shall deliver.
We just need techies.
How mad were you when Techies weren't a TI4 stretch goal?
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On May 12 2014 20:47 riptide wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2014 20:32 Steveling wrote:
I have promised you guys a techies guide and I shall deliver.
We just need techies. How mad were you when Techies weren't a TI4 stretch goal?
You fool, that only means that we will get them before ti.
Right?
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The problem is that such an in depth guide like that requires you to know all those things confidently and then put in the time to write an entire guide about it, and it's just for one hero. I doubt many people around 4k mmr would know enough to write a guide on even one hero, and that's the top 1-2% of the playerbase. I guess the best way to really get a guide like that written would be to start a discussion thread about a hero and have the OP compile all the information from the thread, but we'd need some sort of filter so only the good information gets in.
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First things first, I agree to ahswtini, an alt+tab-guide is better than nothing. There is such a thing as playing the hero for the first or second time and e.g. going blink dagger on high mobility-heroes like timber or ds doesnt look intuitive until you try it out. I dont agree that a beginner guide ruins you, the better a player becomes the more he will reflect on things like item choices automatically and at some point people start to understand the possibilities of a skillset, it just usually takes a while.
What comes immediately to my mind would be a possibility to switch between levels. Similar to the old way you could filter teamliquid.net for the games (bw, sc2, dota2) you could add a filter for advanced or very detailed content. Instead of filtering sites you could just filter content. Alternatively the spoiler tag could be used for advanced stuff.
I would really like the initial posts of guides to be editable by everybody, similar to wiki pages, maybe with a mod that overlooks changes, so pros or semi-pros like firebolt could add aditional info if something comes to their mind. It would also mean that people who arent over 6k mmr are still allowed to write a guide if they have a basic understanding. Also the top 10% wont always feel like writing a guide for everybody, because many things will seem obvious to them that dont seem obvious to someone who has been playing dota for half a year. This would also reduce the amount of work for a single person by possibly distributing the work.
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Lalalaland34502 Posts
On May 12 2014 22:42 Blackfeather wrote:
so pros or semi-pros like firebolt
I love you, saving this forever
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On May 12 2014 22:43 Firebolt145 wrote:I love you, saving this forever
You are welcome :D
Is there a possibility to embed wiki pages in posts? Can we make a guide-liquipedia and just embed the page of the hero in the original post? That would add the possibility to add content for everybody, while still having the possibility of posting below it.
Related to that: No idea, how much capacity a liquipedia-sub-section takes. Might be a really bad idea, might not make much of a difference.
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What about dotabuff just going through what skill/item order works out in average? That'd be a good baseline for trying out a hero you've never played before.
The other option is writing out a guide for most items for every hero but that'd be better if a general item guide was written. Only hand of midas has any general guidelines but other items don't really have much discussion. Like between force staff or blink. When to get either or both? On which heroes?
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Netherlands6192 Posts
Pretty legit idea from Blackfeather. Still don't get why you're tired if this shit though Qbek.
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Qbek can we get a Gosi x CRMS fanfic?
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On May 12 2014 19:17 Firebolt145 wrote:
Although I agree with your point about the fundamental way to approach Dota, the main problem with this is that any new player who comes into Dota isn't going to receive much benefit from guides that give a million and one different things to consider before recommending any one item. He simply isn't going to be able to recognize when an enemy team has a lot of single target disables that go through BKB or when the enemy team has predominantly magic or physical damage, etc etc.
Writing a guide is a careful balancing act. You have to emphasize how important it is for the reader to think about his choices and not blindly follow a set item/spell build, yet at the same time you need to guide him in the right direction.
I don't know if I'd say that, it just depends on who your target audience is. I feel like you're somewhat supposing that all guides need to be written with newer players in mind. However, I do believe that there's a place for more advanced guides, both in general and hero-specific.
For example, I recently saw this one linked: http://chaqdota.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/chaqs-ultimate-guide-to-advanced-solo-middle/
I read it, and learned a couple of things from it that I didn't know. I wouldn't consider it a very newbie friendly guide though. If a player isn't able to tell things like the damage makeup of the enemy, then I doubt they'd be cognizant of the different roles mid heroes play, or the more subtle parts of laning, and so doubt that they'd find much use in that guide when starting out.
So, while I agree that there should be guides that new players can use to get the general gist of a hero, there's definitely room for things on the other side of the spectrum. I don't feel that more advanced guides that covered a hero in great detail and depth would be amiss, and I don't feel that those guides would take anything away from guides targeting newer players. In fact, I'd maybe even go so far as to argue that most guides, as opposed to references, for new players should probably focus on wider parts of the game than on specific heroes.
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On May 13 2014 10:53 Dubzex wrote:
Qbek can we get a Gosi x CRMS fanfic?
delightful!
also, guides are helpful stepping stones to brand new players. If someone takes guides as gospel and never deviates or thinks for themselves, they were probably never going to be any good at dota anyway, so who cares. :D~
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I get where the OP is coming from, but I don't mind having guides for all levels of play. But I would seriously like to see more of really in depth and advanced guides. Where are those essays about heroes and item choices? 
The already mentioned guide that Chaq made was so awesome, but it seems dota community in general holds on dearly to their secrets, at least at the higher levels.
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To be honest, i almost dont see the point of guides after the 3k bracket; hero discussions should be dynamic, and dota is far too varying of a game to limit to guides. But i get it i suppose
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Guides are useful for those who really have no idea how to play a hero at all. I find that guides for new players should have a cookie-cutter, can't go wrong build that they can go with that should allow the player to get used to the hero.
Leave the discussions on when to deviate from it for when they get used to the hero and can actually think about whether or not an item is apt for the situation or not.
I suppose you can even have an "Advanced" section in guides and have people write down situational items and discuss in length the situations where you can get certain items. Maybe even include when to forgo getting certain items that were included in the cookie cutter build.
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EPT
