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Undo 6.79 lane changes and neutral XP sharing
Games are more interesting when there is asymmetry, and natural advantages. Having a true safelane with defender's advantage opens up more strategic complexity.
The original intention was to help offlaners so they don't get nothing. I think it's possible to strike a balance and maintain a "safelane" and "hardlane."
Lean toward soft counters and not hard counters
The great RTS's, by accident, all have more soft counters, and more natural advantages. A siege tank has natural range advantages, which a skilled player can utilize. Artificial advantages like "+20 vs armored" lead to a less subtle game if overdone.
Icefrog has a tendency to buff things to extremes instead of making heroes softer around the edges. Examples are Enchantress's Untouchable, Sniper's attack range, ET's aura. Unfortunately, Icefrog loathes undoing changes, but balance is subtle and there's no shame in fixing something that has gone too far.
Adjust movement speeds
Reduce movement speed bonuses of Tranquils and Euls, and buff movement speeds of less used supports such as CM.
Part of the character of this patch is the racecar Tranquils and Euls build, which almost necessitates a ranged carry like 950-range Sniper. Normalizing move speeds will bring more heroes and strategies into play.
Reverse the trend of buyback nerfing
The late game is too heavily dictated by buyback. Teams will not commit to anything without buyback available and it makes the gameplay stale. Tactics become "catch the enemy carry and make him waste buyback", "just don't get picked 'till buyback is back", etc. Economy almost doesn't mean anything in the late game. There's not even a new BKB to farm.
Ultimately, it depends on what you think a good game looks like. Is stalling and buyback management good viewing? good gameplay? What if the cooldown was shorter, and it didn't add to your next respawn time, and it wasn't an auto-loss if you don't have buyback?
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Interesting post, but I'm not sure I agree with it. Wouldn't mind a small discussion
Undo 6.79 lane changes and neutral XP sharing
Games are more interesting when there is asymmetry, and natural advantages.
I don't agree there. Forgive me, it's been a while since I played (am traveling) . . . But from what I've been seeing, neutral exp sharing doesn't create symmetry, it creates a situation where the puller has to be aware of where the offlaner/enemy is when they are farming neutrals - like the idea that a BH could be invis at a big neutral stack or that the offlaner could be positioning himself to get exp from both the pull camp and the lane.
Such a neat situation for the offlaner may be unlikely but I think that it creates more depth because there are now more things that players can be aware of/take advantage of. It was always dangerous to be around other heroes, and now an offlaner who wants exp might be baited to move too close to the enemy thus creating an opening or something.
It's not like it the offlaner just gets to stand there and drink up exp for no risk - there's still risk involved.
But I dunno.
I certainly don't like the tranquils/euls meta. I certainly don't want anybody to nerd my race car euls Ursa build (tornado bear patent pending) on the other hand.
What exactly do you mean by reversing the buyback nerf trend? Are you suggesting that reversing those nerfs might make it more exciting were buybacks to be more common/less valuable? I thought that they were nerfed BECAUSE they were too powerful and made the game stale.
Maybe buyback gold/cost could be changed to relate somehow to overall gold advantage/disadvantage? With the idea that a team that is really far behind cannot turn a net profit from a buyback and return kill on a team that is attacking uphill which has the gold advantage?
The point of that would be to deincentivise buyback based starts for teams that are behind.
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I don't think there's a huge problem with turtling except the fact that Sniper is incredibly good at base defense. He even surpasses the traditional hardest carries because Void, Medusa, Spectre have to get close to do significant lategame damage which leaves them vulnerable to disables.
I think the solution is to nerf shrapnel.
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you have a very weird way of looking at the game...
Games are more interesting when there is asymmetry, and natural advantages. Having a true safelane with defender's advantage opens up more strategic complexity.
The original intention was to help offlaners so they don't get nothing. I think it's possible to strike a balance and maintain a "safelane" and "hardlane."
this is an opinion which is completely unbacked. TI3 offlane meta was incredibly stale which depended on squeezing out as much as you could from the lane before retiring to a lane called the jungle. now the offlane is far more interesting with the exception of a hero called broodmother as safelanes have to balance jungling and smoke ganking and offlanes have a greater chance to do things in the midgame
what broke the offlane in the current patch is the 2 bounty runes at level 1, which justify the need for supports to not be setting up a strong safelane to pull and block
Part of the character of this patch is the racecar Tranquils and Euls build, which almost necessitates a ranged carry like 950-range Sniper. Normalizing move speeds will bring more heroes and strategies into play.
How many heroes actually get both standard Tranquils+Euls before a Blink???
If you played sniper before 6.83, you'd know that he was pretty good but took a while to get started, even with 950 range. Shrapnel got buffed, strengthening his laning and teamfight to a very strong level, and this is why Sniper is one of the strongest heroes of the patch, because he is strong at all levels of the game.
The late game is too heavily dictated by buyback. Teams will not commit to anything without buyback available and it makes the gameplay stale. Tactics become "catch the enemy carry and make him waste buyback", "just don't get picked 'till buyback is back", etc. Economy almost doesn't mean anything in the late game. There's not even a new BKB to farm.
Ultimately, it depends on what you think a good game looks like. Is stalling and buyback management good viewing? good gameplay? What if the cooldown was shorter, and it didn't add to your next respawn time, and it wasn't an auto-loss if you don't have buyback?
the late game has literally revolved around this for almost 2 years, and many great games have resulted from it, however theres been constant patch after patch that greatly change the landscape of the lategame (most recently the rubberband patch)
you say that economy management doesnt matter greatly in the late game, but just watch c9 vs tinker game 1 in this current starladder and how tinker completely starved their supports with 6 slotted carries. the reason why its not so apparent is because of the accelerated worth gains that came with rubberbanding and the fact that now teams must play 4-1 or 5 man to deal with how strong vision into blink initiation into death is.
removing buyback limits would be an interesting change, but ultimately it would purely favor the team with the gold advantage
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Tranquils are great, they really make playing support more enjoyable as it allows to spend more time actually doing something instead of slowly crossing half the map to gank and having to go back to base/ferry a pot if you tanked one spell.
Offlane is better now but dire's one still needs a small buff imo, it could use a pull camp.
I don't know about buyback, longer CD means it's more valuable to let supports catch back in farms. Shorter CD means actions may occur more often but the window to do something after ennemy bb is shorter. I don't know how it could be changed but I think it should change, it's not a priority imo.
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On April 25 2015 17:30 rabidch wrote:
you have a very weird way of looking at the game...
I know, and even though games are usually balanced using democracy these days, I still wish to at least say something.
On April 25 2015 16:12 StreetDog wrote:
I mean asymmetry in that one lane is advantaged and one disadvantaged.
In RTS's, or really turn-based ones too like chess, heroes of might and magic, age of empire, anything, too,
the first, most basic source of asymmetry is the starting distance of the players. In order to attack, you must travel away from your base and your opponent will have more units, for example.
Dota lacks this starting source of tension, and I think it's unfortunate. I know it's not a popular opinion, but I saw nothing wrong with an offlane abandoning to jungle. It made certain types of offlaners stronger picks. I also see nothing wrong with helping offlaners so they don't have to abandon (the popular pro-fun view), but I do wish that the sacrifice wasn't diminishing the safe/hard lane dynamic.
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On April 26 2015 01:03 aboxcar wrote:
In RTS's, or really turn-based ones too like chess, heroes of might and magic, age of empire, anything, too,
the first, most basic source of asymmetry is the starting distance of the players. In order to attack, you must travel away from your base and your opponent will have more units, for example.
Dota lacks this starting source of tension,
I think you're starting to make a strong argument for yourself here. In AoE there was asymmetric maps since they were randomly generated (unlike SC2 for instance) thus sometimes you did get an early source of tension. I also agree DOTA2 lacks a starting source like this. I think many people at Valve are wondering how to add to the source of early tension, we saw the 0:00 rune change as evidence to try and increase it.
My idea, to add to early game tension, would be to appoint a hero on each team to receive 'leadership/captain' status in the game, and this person always receives bonus XP from kills, or something like that to incentivize a specific hero on each team to go out and try to make plays to capitalize on their leadership/captain buff. The buff could fall off or ween in the late game. AoE 3 had scouts to rectify a lot of the early game tension/among other issues AoE2 had.
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On April 25 2015 16:51 greebosnabble wrote:
I don't think there's a huge problem with turtling except the fact that Sniper is incredibly good at base defense. He even surpasses the traditional hardest carries because Void, Medusa, Spectre have to get close to do significant lategame damage which leaves them vulnerable to disables.
I think the solution is to nerf shrapnel.
1. Kill 1/2 the cast range of it
2. -10 on movement speed to beat him like a horse.
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@Op: I cant say I agree.
1)I dont think the map should be totally different for each side. Yeah in big tourneys they choose their side, but I cant do that in cm, ap, or anywhere else unless I scrim (haha). Tbh I really dislike that some of my hero pools works way worse on one side or the other and I agree that dire offlane is still a bit underpowered in comparison. The asymmetry comes from the picks imho and with the gigantic hero pool that's enough for me.
2) MS is a part of asymmetry that you now dont want? I like that IF uses MS as a balancing tool. I agree that there are too many heroes running around with too much MS atm, but that's more because euls, mom and yasha are super popular right now. I expect euls and mom to get a nerf, so this will dwindle.
I think that tranquils is a big part of why roaming supports work and tbh I like that they do.
3) I think BB is at a good place right now. I dont really enjoy the BB after BB battles and currently BB is an important yet expensive resource that overall costs slightly less for the team that is behind. The only thing IF could try out imo is some rubberband mechanics in the BB cost, aka if the NW is 60/40% team two pays only 80% of their normal BB cost.
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Pubs are not fun cause of comeback mechanic. Getting rid of it is all that needs to be done to make Dota 2 pubs fun again.
They are adding too many random gameplay mechanics into the game and people like the above poster (buybacks costing a certain percentage) are requesting even more. That is a shallow approach to artificially balance the game. Keep the rules simple like how Dota always was and let the players determine what happens instead favouring this and that. Playstyles will always counter each other and each team has their own way of playing the exact same heroes.
Dota was most similar to a sport in spirit because there were no artificial advantages given to a player. On top or that Dota also takes away any innate advantages a player has outside of the game. All advantages gained in the game are earned during the current game. A gold advantage is suppose to mean you have more gold and you can use that to your advantage and nothing else.
Changing the heroes won't do anything unless they change all of them to fit into the comeback mechanics. Pro play is different cause they will also adjust accordingly. The IceFrog I remember cares about how fun Dota is for everybody.
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On April 26 2015 06:38 Reson wrote:
Pubs are not fun cause of comeback mechanic. Getting rid of it is all that needs to be done to make Dota 2 pubs fun again.
They are adding too many random gameplay mechanics into the game and people like the above poster (buybacks costing a certain percentage) are requesting even more. That is a shallow approach to artificially balance the game. Keep the rules simple like how Dota always was and let the players determine what happens instead favouring this and that. Playstyles will always counter each other and each team has their own way of playing the exact same heroes.
Dota was most similar to a sport in spirit because there were no artificial advantages given to a player. On top or that Dota also takes away any innate advantages a player has outside of the game. All advantages gained in the game are earned during the current game. A gold advantage is suppose to mean you have more gold and you can use that to your advantage and nothing else.
Changing the heroes won't do anything unless they change all of them to fit into the comeback mechanics. Pro play is different cause they will also adjust accordingly. The IceFrog I remember cares about how fun Dota is for everybody.
I dont know how it was for you, but my most memorable games were games where one side made a comback or the game stayed close at least. Cant say most one sided stomps were interesting or fun in any way for either side.
The main thing of why I suggested that is that BB is usually stopping item progression for the team behind, so the cost is a lot higher for the team that cant farm as well, but BB is still a necessity in the lategame.
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On April 25 2015 17:30 rabidch wrote:
TI3 offlane meta was incredibly stale which depended on squeezing out as much as you could from the lane before retiring to a lane called the jungle.
Ah, yes, I remember the good old days where the offlane was dominated by jungle Clockwerk and jungle BH and jungle aggressive trilanes.
Seriously, if you went back and watched some of those old games, you'd see a great reason for bringing that shit back. The effect of a skillful offlane player on the game was often greater than that of a skillful mid player. Remember the game where Brax blocked the pull camp with Rocket Flare for like 5 minutes running, meaning that his team had double brown boots while the enemy supports had regen and nothing else? Or maybe do you remember every game that ABD played, where he would completely disrupt the offlane and get crazy amounts of levels and farm compared to every other offlaner at that time?
Maybe it would be fine to make it a little easier, so that a few more heroes can get into that lane. This current incarnation, though, is just plain ugly.
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the issue with the old offlane is, that it was mostly based on some prelearned tricks that are easy to execute but neither that fun to do nor fun to play against and required almost no tactical decision making. trapping creeps in the woods with cogs is not all that exciting and pulling creeps with the bear isnt either. and hiding for 5 min+ in the trees might make hyhy proud, but is boring as all hell. at the end of the patch we even saw straight up ancient farming and na'vi was prefering radiant over dire just because they valued a windrunner with qb more than the roshan advantage of the old map.
i find the new offlane by far superior.
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On April 26 2015 10:16 Acritter wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2015 17:30 rabidch wrote:
TI3 offlane meta was incredibly stale which depended on squeezing out as much as you could from the lane before retiring to a lane called the jungle. Ah, yes, I remember the good old days where the offlane was dominated by jungle Clockwerk and jungle BH and jungle aggressive trilanes. Seriously, if you went back and watched some of those old games, you'd see a great reason for bringing that shit back. The effect of a skillful offlane player on the game was often greater than that of a skillful mid player. Remember the game where Brax blocked the pull camp with Rocket Flare for like 5 minutes running, meaning that his team had double brown boots while the enemy supports had regen and nothing else? Or maybe do you remember every game that ABD played, where he would completely disrupt the offlane and get crazy amounts of levels and farm compared to every other offlaner at that time? Maybe it would be fine to make it a little easier, so that a few more heroes can get into that lane. This current incarnation, though, is just plain ugly.
Who were all incredibly inferior to heroes like Nature's Prophet, Dark Seer, Batrider, Doom, Lone Druid. Even BH fell out of favor after constant nerfs before the offlane changes even hit and would not even be relevant in the current offlane.
The current meta already has Clockwerks and aggressive trilanes (and aggressive duallanes) so I don't even see what you're getting at with those.
And we can all forget how every team learned from Alliance's example after TI3 and turned the jungle and ancients into a huge cash farm, negating how much offlane can actually disrupt supports, and ignore Bone7 and iceiceice's offlane magic now. We can just look at previous DotA versions with giant nostalgia goggles.
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On April 26 2015 20:41 rabidch wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2015 10:16 Acritter wrote:On April 25 2015 17:30 rabidch wrote:
TI3 offlane meta was incredibly stale which depended on squeezing out as much as you could from the lane before retiring to a lane called the jungle. Ah, yes, I remember the good old days where the offlane was dominated by jungle Clockwerk and jungle BH and jungle aggressive trilanes. Seriously, if you went back and watched some of those old games, you'd see a great reason for bringing that shit back. The effect of a skillful offlane player on the game was often greater than that of a skillful mid player. Remember the game where Brax blocked the pull camp with Rocket Flare for like 5 minutes running, meaning that his team had double brown boots while the enemy supports had regen and nothing else? Or maybe do you remember every game that ABD played, where he would completely disrupt the offlane and get crazy amounts of levels and farm compared to every other offlaner at that time? Maybe it would be fine to make it a little easier, so that a few more heroes can get into that lane. This current incarnation, though, is just plain ugly. Who were all incredibly inferior to heroes like Nature's Prophet, Dark Seer, Batrider, Doom, Lone Druid. Even BH fell out of favor after constant nerfs before the offlane changes even hit and would not even be relevant in the current offlane. The current meta already has Clockwerks and aggressive trilanes (and aggressive duallanes) so I don't even see what you're getting at with those. And we can all forget how every team learned from Alliance's example after TI3 and turned the jungle and ancients into a huge cash farm, negating how much offlane can actually disrupt supports, and ignore Bone7 and iceiceice's offlane magic now. We can just look at previous DotA versions with giant nostalgia goggles.
Only ABD ever played LD offlane after the Armlet nerf, and even he played it mostly solo safelane. Doom wasn't even relevant in the offlane until after the patch, I don't know what you're thinking with that one. Dark Seer was known as the one hero who could actually farm the offlane and was also a strong regen burner against melee carries, and only retreated to jungle once he was done harassing (or if he lost the lane). This is also not to mention the real offlane heroes, which were supports like KotL who rotated once the offlaner had started to farm jungle. So, at best, we have two pure laners compared to three junglers. That's not even close to the ratio you're trying to imply.
Post-TI3 meta was characterized by people knowing so little about how to play that it was impossible to punish the greed of taking a slow jungle support followed by people realizing that the self-sufficient cores had been buffed so fucking hard that it was stupid to not have someone to farm the jungle. This is, of course, not mentioning the fact that ancients were only ever taken by mids and offlanes and that supports would at best leech experience, which is something that someone who posts as much as yourself certainly already knows. Unless, of course, you count the Enigma Dire Ancient lane dodge as a core strategy of the game.
I'm also sure you're well aware that players like ABD who specialized in excellent control of the offlane are now irrelevant despite losing none of their talent and that good offlane players are playmakers and better resemble mid players than old offlane players.
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EPT
