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On April 14 2015 04:45 etofok wrote:Rubber-band is mostly to keep teams through mid-game and not to fall off in 20 minutes. It keeps early/mid-game entertaining, however that might lead to retarded late-game in some rare circumstances This can be said about everything
That's my point. You assume that developers, and people want an "interesting" game throughout mid to late. You think that this is how it should be, and that everyone already agrees.
I am saying that it doesn't have to be that way.
To give some examples:
In Starcraft, if you greedily fast expand and then get proxy rushed, you will be crippled going forward.
In Warcraft 3, if you lose an early footman, you will be at a disadvantage. Your opponent will not "snowball" from a one-footy advantage though.
If you play aggressively, you will probably be a unit behind because of the supply line, but through skill you can win.
If you get outdrafted, or if you make a gamble and go for late and your opponent goes for early, maybe some of the time your opponent's early game will pay off and you lose. Maybe there was no "interesting" mid and late game; but it was, in my opinion, interesting that there was option to choose between early and late lineups.
When the rubberband patch first hit, obviously it was extreme, but immediately we saw heroes like QOP fall off dramatically in win-rates. Your late game is more interesting, but is the game more interesting overall?
I agree with you that there is a balance. I disagree that having one-sided games, or a lack of a late game is a bad thing, necessarily.
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In Starcraft, if you greedily fast expand and then get proxy rushed, you will be crippled going forward.
You assume that developers, and people want an "interesting" game throughout mid to late.
The very advent of photon overcharge / siege-queen buff / bunker build time / 12 worker start (lotv) are directly aimed to carry a player into mid-game, where the actual game starts.
I see the point you are making there, although it fits into the first picture (snowball <-> rubberband) so there are can't be any arguments: it is clearly a balance "problem". The reason I put that in quotation marks is because the real balance is almost impossible to achieve due to players inventing and discovering new ways to play the game.
Even if you can do that, and it happens, after some time it will lead to stagnation and gameplay being boring (because everything is expected) meaning developers are forced to introduce new mechanics / new stuff basically to keep it fresh. And the cycle continues.
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On April 13 2015 02:20 Fencar wrote:
@Acritter, the second graph with the "useless gold" label and the paragraphs it follows address that. It says a similar thing that you do, in that there's a point where you get 6-slotted and then you have a bunch of gold giving you nothing, while your NW increases, and in the meantime the enemy heroes are still getting stronger.
You partially misunderstand my point. It's not just that 6-slotting is a problem now, but also that 6-slotting is more of a problem now. The game has developed in such a way, mostly thanks to the vast expansion of ways to get gold without any comparable expansion of the net worth ceiling or ways to limit the farm of the opposition, that 6-slotting is a realistic concern on 3-4 heroes out of the 10 in any game that goes late, instead of it very rarely being an issue on one or two heroes.
The logical extension of this is that leads become more and more difficult to maintain, thanks to the leading team capping out extremely fast and thus creating room for the losing team to catch up. As a thought experiment to demonstrate the concept: if every team got infinite money, it would be impossible to maintain a lead. We aren't currently that far along, but we are getting closer to the absurd situation, and it's definitely getting harder to maintain a lead. The increased income can account for some of this.
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relevant thread on reddit today: http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/32no1m/anyone_else_have_their_friends_slowly_stop/
a lot of people for some reason, je ne sais quoi, don't feel like playing dota anymore
I thought I was alone/just my friends who all switched to CSGO or something, but it seems there are others who feel the same
I still maintain that dota is not as rewarding to play or watch at the moment, and I think one factor is the so-called comeback mechanic
for me personally, the trend started much earlier with the nerf to farming during buyback, and I think since then it's been more and more of an anti-fun streak
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I think we can safely say that the patch where Anti "Antifun" Mage was prevalent was more fun than this patch.
+ Show Spoiler +I don't actually know if that's true. I was just learning the game when Anti "Antifun" Mage was a thing.
In all seriousness, I do feel like when I play midlane, I'm gimped if I don't pick heroes that scale well into the lategame (SF, Sniper), or really secure the early game for heroes that do while still being useful late (Lina, and also Pudge... Very occasionally). Anything that seems falls into a middle ground, like Invoker or Puck, are among my least played despite Invoker and Puck being my favorite heroes to play mid.
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Interesting read. I definitely think the TCM was supposed to make games more exciting by increasing the potential for visible game-shifting plays, but given this set of circumstances it's wound up doing the opposite.
Seems to me that the problem with the TI4 meta was sort of similar---if you were against a pushing team, you usually couldn't make a dent in the course of the game.
When 6.82 came out, I felt like it was an attempt to give Dota 2 some of the suspense factor you see in, say, a CSGO match, where each frag can be a big, potentially match-changing event, and where there's no real snowball advantage (even if you've lost 10 rounds in a row, you have a very reasonable chance of winning your next buy round). But again, the recent patches kind of did the opposite---whereas in CSGO any unanswered frag can snap a round shut, in Dota stellar blink dream coils, clever ganks, and quick-thinking body blocks don't really amount to much.
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United States12244 Posts
On April 16 2015 04:26 RuiBarbO wrote:
Interesting read. I definitely think the TCM was supposed to make games more exciting by increasing the potential for visible game-shifting plays, but given this set of circumstances it's wound up doing the opposite.
Seems to me that the problem with the TI4 meta was sort of similar---if you were against a pushing team, you usually couldn't make a dent in the course of the game.
When 6.82 came out, I felt like it was an attempt to give Dota 2 some of the suspense factor you see in, say, a CSGO match, where each frag can be a big, potentially match-changing event, and where there's no real snowball advantage (even if you've lost 10 rounds in a row, you have a very reasonable chance of winning your next buy round). But again, the recent patches kind of did the opposite---whereas in CSGO any unanswered frag can snap a round shut, in Dota stellar blink dream coils, clever ganks, and quick-thinking body blocks don't really amount to much.
That's not true at all. In the late game, respawn times are so high and damage output is so high that killing one enemy core hero (and sometimes not even a core hero) in a pickoff or teamfight initiation and forcing a retreat can land you t2, t3, rax and throne. Buyback is the most valuable resource of all in the late game. When the enemy Sniper is dead for 100 seconds because you smoke ganked him while he was farming jungle, you pretty much win the game right there if he doesn't have buyback. Even if he does have buyback, if he so much as shows his face within 6 minutes and isn't surrounded by all 4 teammates at all times, he immediately dies again and his team loses because now he's dead for even longer. The stakes are so high in the late game and the game itself is so fragile, that element really can't be understated.
That's not really a commentary on the comeback mechanic per se, it's just how games tend to play out most of the time.
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On April 16 2015 12:27 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2015 04:26 RuiBarbO wrote:
Interesting read. I definitely think the TCM was supposed to make games more exciting by increasing the potential for visible game-shifting plays, but given this set of circumstances it's wound up doing the opposite.
Seems to me that the problem with the TI4 meta was sort of similar---if you were against a pushing team, you usually couldn't make a dent in the course of the game.
When 6.82 came out, I felt like it was an attempt to give Dota 2 some of the suspense factor you see in, say, a CSGO match, where each frag can be a big, potentially match-changing event, and where there's no real snowball advantage (even if you've lost 10 rounds in a row, you have a very reasonable chance of winning your next buy round). But again, the recent patches kind of did the opposite---whereas in CSGO any unanswered frag can snap a round shut, in Dota stellar blink dream coils, clever ganks, and quick-thinking body blocks don't really amount to much. That's not true at all. In the late game, respawn times are so high and damage output is so high that killing one enemy core hero (and sometimes not even a core hero) in a pickoff or teamfight initiation and forcing a retreat can land you t2, t3, rax and throne. Buyback is the most valuable resource of all in the late game. When the enemy Sniper is dead for 100 seconds because you smoke ganked him while he was farming jungle, you pretty much win the game right there if he doesn't have buyback. Even if he does have buyback, if he so much as shows his face within 6 minutes and isn't surrounded by all 4 teammates at all times, he immediately dies again and his team loses because now he's dead for even longer. The stakes are so high in the late game and the game itself is so fragile, that element really can't be understated. That's not really a commentary on the comeback mechanic per se, it's just how games tend to play out most of the time.
Good point, I guess what I was saying in that last paragraph was more about the early to midgame. Once you're at the point where towers start falling in a tenth the time it takes a hero to respawn, then yeah, someone getting caught out is a total game changer.
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How about making the bounty on lane creeps change with the diference of buildings between teams on that lane.
For exemple:
Radiant has all towers mid and Dire only has tier 3 left, so when Dire heroes kill mid creeps that try to go HG they get less gold. When Dire destroys Radiant tier 1 and 2 mid, the creep value increase again because the lane is equal to Radiant's.
This way, a team which has map control and more standing buildings get more gold when killing lane creeps. Forcing the other team into low ground to take buildings if they want to keep up. Becoming more vulnerable in the process.
I think this method would give equivalent results to Starcraft's sieging and camping outside one's base. It kinda emulates resource depletion...
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On April 15 2015 23:29 aboxcar wrote:relevant thread on reddit today: http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/32no1m/anyone_else_have_their_friends_slowly_stop/a lot of people for some reason, je ne sais quoi, don't feel like playing dota anymore I thought I was alone/just my friends who all switched to CSGO or something, but it seems there are others who feel the same I still maintain that dota is not as rewarding to play or watch at the moment, and I think one factor is the so-called comeback mechanic for me personally, the trend started much earlier with the nerf to farming during buyback, and I think since then it's been more and more of an anti-fun streak
i stopped playing during 6.83c because the game basically makes doing anything with risk -ev. that's the essence of fun when you play a game, i think, never taking risks. (not being able to farm during buyback is most certainly anti-fun too)
(1) support issues:
one thing seldom talked about is that dual roaming support was the optimal support play during ti4, whose success and failure directly leads to stomp games either way. you could see some western supports switch to this style prior to ti4 and noticeably struggle to have an impact. the chinese had always played this style more than the west, and it was quite obvious of this disparity during east vs west games
now, supports get 100 less gold per tower, significantly less per aoe assist, and if your team gets ahead, gives up significantly more gold.
if you're a support you lose money if you successfully rotate and kill an enemy hero because of the utility cost (gold gained, enemy gold lost in the kill, smoke cost, loss of jungle camp income for pulling supports, loss of safe lane income, gain in offlaner income, loss of income due to respawn time and tps force, etc) and 45 aoe gold bounty. on average, you need something like a 60% kill rate no deaths for a gank attempt to be net positive for your team. support rotations in lane are mostly not about getting an advantage but redistributing team's net worth onto your cores.
i think this is the major reason heroes like sniper, sf, storm, lina are so insane mid this patch. you used to be able to just sit on them for the first 15 minutes if the other team didn't have a lineup that could protect them and they'd go 0-3 and lose the game. now, it's extremely difficult to punish a greedy mid laner while not falling behind overall.
(2) equation issues:
huge dumb teamfights are the major point of contention re: rubberband but 3 4 5 man ganks on a single hero yield nearly double the gold what they did in 6.81. i mean that used to be just bad play most of the time.
NWFactor = (v^2+ov-kv)/(v+o+k) v=victim's networth, o=other players' networth sum, k=killer's team's networth
it's been a long time since i've taken a math class but this seems pseudo-exponential to me, especially considering v correlates positively with o and negatively with k.
so you have a pseudo-exponential gold and xp mechanic in addition to kill streaks (itself a comeback mechanic, albeit the effect is unpredictable and chaotic), three regression mechanics.
i mean i don't even know why a "NWFactor" even exists and why team networth is even involved other than for the sake of complexity. whats wrong with having the enemy hero just give out like 2% of his networth as aoe gold???
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I like this post. My personal solution is a relatively simple one:
Add a consumable item worth, say, 5k gold that refreshes in the shop every 5 minutes or so. What it does is grant the user the ability to make an item "shareable." In this way, you don't get 6-slotted carries with 10k+ gold banked. They can use that gold to help out their supports and provide a massive boost in teamfight that can combat the defender's advantage in such a way as to still retain a bit of a lead during clashes. This requires the defender not only to do everything in their power to break out of their base and contend with farm, it also requires them to outplay not just the enemy carry but the supports because the latter are suddenly so much stronger.
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A fine post (I particularly liked some of the funnier pictures), but I hope you're okay with some friendly criticism.
I think there's more depth to it than what your sliders would imply. Well of course there are... but anyway, I'd like to elaborate by making my own slider.
Let's just call it "<- Mutually passive end-game with one team farming the map for fear of pushing high ground <---> Exciting and close lategame without boring passivity <---> Pointless last 20+ minute late-game farming before inevitable gg push -> "
The first part of the slider is what you seem to want to avoid. I hate the other side of the spectrum more, which is when with complete map control you can achieve victory without too much issue so long as you just farm the map over and over and starve your opponent. It's not just boring in the sense that the game is passive, as when the team in the lead avoids pushing for fear of the comeback mechanic, but it's also boring because the game at that point is basically over but both teams need to go through the pointless last X minutes of farming before LGD the team in the lead wants to end the game.
It's a matter of uncertainty vs certainty.
If you offer the team with map control an additional income you're moving closer to certainty.
What is the purpose? With the comeback mechanic in the game, adding more income to the team in the lead does nothing to incentivise pushing high-ground. All it does is help the team in the lead to close out the game, eventually. If you try to balance it by not increasing jungle gold too much, you might just increase the time it takes to build the advantage LGD the team in the lead needs to push high ground comfortably.
It sounds to me like what you should really want is to make the defender's advantage not quite so strong. That would be lowering a threshold, as opposed to introducing an acceleration type mechanic which can be used over (boring) time to overcome a threshold.
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I think giving the winning team an option to spend their surplus money on something that directly helps to break high-ground would be great. For example allow a team to spawn a megacreep that pushes down a lane.
This would also remove the problem of getting your creepwave cleared to bullshit like shrapnel and thus losing vision to siege the enemy high ground.
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My group of five dota friends and I have all stopped playing since 6.83c. There are mitigating factors but the main reason is that the patch is not fun. 6.81 was not fun either, when games were over before 15 minutes like 70% of the time, but right now the game is way too far in the other direction.
Really strongly agree with the person who said risks are now -ev. You can't take even minor risks in 6.83c lategame without putting your entire game on the line. This is exactly what PPD and others have been complaining about--it takes so long to make it safe to take the risk of going highground that the game becomes really excruciating to play.
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It sounds to me like what you should really want is to make the defender's advantage not quite so strong.
I explained the problem that emerged recently under the 6.83c circumstances just for the sake of awareness. I proposed some ideas that would [in my personal opinion] be nice to have in Dota in general and they collaterally help with any late game stalemate situations providing slightly more meaningful and fun gameplay.
I'm essentially pointing out: "This + that + these = we got this".
My group of five dota friends and I have all stopped playing since 6.83c
There are a lot of games that appeared on radars during 6.83: CS:GO got 1m viewers and got a spike in popularity, MK10 and GTA5 have been released, Dark Souls update, Amplitude games free weekend on steam - I really enjoyed Endless Legend for example.
However the game on Endless difficulty I expected to be harder as I was able to get the achievement during 2 days of playing, but I've had an amazing time. Plus I played some Stacraft 2 arcades with friends and several games were surprisingly great.
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It's certainly a fair description of what frustrates you and certainly many other players, though I honestly know nothing of how widespread your frustration is (to the point of hating/leaving the game). Has there been a significant decrease in the amount of players in Dota 2, or just an increase in whining on reddit? I haven't done any research on that.
Anyway, although I'm sure you didn't mean it in the literal sense I don't see many stalemate situations at all in Dota 2. I think we simply view what's happening differently. Let's compare Dota 2 to a tug of war. Just because neither side is advancing, regardless of how close or far they seem to be to be able to win, doesn't mean it's a stalemate. Someone's gonna tire eventually. In Dota, someone is gonna mess up eventually, or mass BKBs come out or something like that.
To me, when I watch a professional dota game, my enjoyment hinges on not knowing the outcome of the game and whether I like it or not I continually evaluate who will win and once a state has been reached after which there is no reasonable chance of a team coming back I often lose interest. So even in extended periods of farming there is still tension because the game isn't over yet.
I will concede that most games these days aren't perfect from a viewing experience, but I think suggestions such as those you propose may have very undesirable side effects and I don't even think much would be gained other than a very different game.
Perhaps I'm just more of a cautious person, but...
On April 09 2015 06:40 etofok wrote:I mean something really ridiculous like 4k for a cheese at 80 minutes might be actually a great thing for the game.
That seems completely insane to me. I mean, if you want to make sure the team with map control wins then yes, you have found a solution. Would it be interesting? Heck no. Why not? Well, a multitude of reasons but e.g. why would LGD the team with map control want to push high ground and risk losing their advantage when they can build a bigger advantage? They could wait for 2 roshans, 3 or 4, heck why not 5? If there's a sniper on the other team why risk it you know? Jungle camps drop a complete Daedalus at 120 minutes into the game, what's the hurry?
Okay I got a bit carried away there, but you get my point. The team with the advantage needs to be under pressure to keep the game interesting. Well, interesting for me anyway.
I think some minor changes to the game might be in order... like not counting unspent gold when calculating rubber band gold for kills, or something like that. And other than that I'm sure we'll see heroes like Sniper take some hits from Icefrog after Starladder.
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frustrates you
It actually doesn't in the slightest because I'm not a competitive dota player. When I play I just have fun with friends.
Well, a multitude of reasons but e.g. why would LGD the team with map control want to push high ground and risk losing their advantage when they can build a bigger advantage?
Point is, in the late game, where all towers are gone, and runes are not that important anymore the only contest points that are still in the game are barracks, thrones, Roshan and neutral camps (kind of). By adding some late-game value to Roshan and Jungle - because sometimes you physically can't go and contest the first two - we are increasing value of these "open world" contest points that creates impending "soft-enrage" which encourages defenders to be drawn out of their base. This is the logic I have.
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EPT
