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Alright, the title was a little bit of an attention grab, but I want to get some opinions on this topic. I will make some anti-Dota arguments in this thread, but don't get me wrong, I like Dota, I'd just like to be a bit critical for a bit.
To me, it seems like if Dota doesn't get a patch every 3 months, people will get cranky because something is overpowered, or they don't like the repetitiveness. Whether that was troll/sniper last patch, terrorblade and naga the time before, etc, etc.
Is a game good if people can't manage playing it for a couple months without it changing? Is the game that simple that the game is figured out in 2 weeks to a month and nothing can be done to counter certain strategies once they get figured out in that time frame? Is not enough time being spent not patching the game, to allow counters to develop?
I originally come from a SC:BW background, where there wasn't a balance patch since 2001, and new revolutionary stuff came around 7-8 years later, like the forge FE by Savior for example.
The reason I ask these questions is because I believe a game that is constantly changed has really poor longevity. I simply can't stop playing Dota for only one or two years, and then come back, and know what is going on. It makes it that only the really active players are able to have a coherent conversation about the pro scene, or really just the game in general.
I can't go discuss Dota 2 with someone who plays now, if I played Dota 3 years ago if we just met, much like you could discuss an old movie or TV show. It makes it so that people who leave for a bit have a much more difficult time to come back. For example, when a big boxing or chess match comes on, people who were into the activity before, can just come back, that is not possible in Dota 2. Like geez, I play Dota quite sparsely, but even patch 6.84 was just so overwhelming for me. Makes me not even want to queue another game because there is so much to learn. Even like 6.83 was quite significant for me, and for someone who doesn't play, it's completely overwhelming.
I just wish the balance of the game could remain constant for long periods of time, yet still keep the interest of people. Anyway, thoughts, input?
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AFAIK, the balance of SC was heavily affected by maps.Whenever a race was perceived too strong/performing too well, tourneys would switch up the map pool, and add maps that were not good for the dominant race.So I don't exactly accept the sentiment that there were absolutely "no patches" when the meta was clearly being affected by external factors.
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Completely different games every time you play a pub is part of what attracts everyone to Dota, that also makes people play more different heroes. But with ranked play and sites like dotabuff showing heroes with 60% win rate you feel like playing games with them will make you rank up.
So a shit load of people start to play them, and last patch was just too much. Sniper was close to 50% pick rate in pubs.
It's not about heroes being OP in competitive play, it's about variety in pubs. This isn't like a fighting game were people main stuff, here people pick wtv they feel like playing except when they feel like picking a broken hero is easy MMR, Sniper was OP and easy to use. I would argue that a good Meepo player is much stronger in pubs, but playing Meepo is hard so that spam doesn't happen.
People just want something different to play every time they queue up, and heroes being spammed just prevents that.
Also, most people enjoy those WTF ICEFROG PATCH, and figuring out what new thing to try out, Dota is a lot about experimentation, and a new patch brings more fuel.
PUBS!=COMPETITIVE.
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On May 09 2015 09:57 Piledriver wrote:
AFAIK, the balance of SC was heavily affected by maps.Whenever a race was perceived too strong/performing too well, tourneys would switch up the map pool, and add maps that were not good for the dominant race.So I don't exactly accept the sentiment that there were absolutely "no patches" when the meta was clearly being affected by external factors.
Yes, the game was balanced by maps for most part, but at the same time, if we look at the common maps, you do have things like Destination, Heartbreak Ridge, and Fighting Spirit that stayed around forever. And even now, for lower level players, the most commonly played map is the one that has been the most commonly played forever, and that is Python.
At the end of the day though, yes, the terrain changes, but you can still go watch now, if you watched 10 years ago, and understand the game as well as your memory serves you.
Meanwhile, you go to Dota... Okay, great... Roshan timer is now random, oh, there's bounty runes, and there are two runes every two minutes. Oh, you get a free glyph for T1 now. Oh, lots of come back gold now, the amount of money for killing tower changed completely, which changes how game is approached. Oh, a few heroes completely reworked, okay. Denying creeps now denies experience too, hmm. New items, recipe costs completely changed, some item build-ups changed. Not to mention how much changed are made to a hero just in a typical patch.
I think they could make the changes a lot more subtle, but people always want something "fresh".
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On May 09 2015 10:03 TMG26 wrote:
Completely different games every time you play a pub is part of what attracts everyone to Dota, that also makes people play more different heroes. But with ranked play and sites like dotabuff showing heroes with 60% win rate you feel like playing games with them will make you rank up.
So a shit load of people start to play them, and last patch was just too much. Sniper was close to 50% pick rate in pubs.
It's not about heroes being OP in competitive play, it's about variety in pubs. This isn't like a fighting game were people main stuff, here people pick wtv they feel like playing except when they feel like picking a broken hero is easy MMR, Sniper was OP and easy to use. I would argue that a good Meepo player is much stronger in pubs, but playing Meepo is hard so that spam doesn't happen.
People just want something different to play every time they queue up, and heroes being spammed just prevents that.
Also, most people enjoy those WTF ICEFROG PATCH, and figuring out what new thing to try out, Dota is a lot about experimentation, and a new patch brings more fuel.
PUBS!=COMPETITIVE.
My argument is kind of opposite of what you're saying. I know that people like the "fresh" feeling, always having something new, etc, etc.
But my argument is that this is bad for longevity of the game, and is there no other way to go about patching the game, without making it feel like you're playing a completely new game.
I dunno why I use the chess and SC:BW example so much, but even though very little changes with time, there is almost an endless combination of openings and variations.
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Icefrog disagrees with you
In a hypothetical situation where the game were 100% perfectly balanced, he would still change things season after season
reinvention is the key to longevity
what I dislike about dota is that brokenness is available to both parties, and if something is _really_ broken you just ban it outright, so it's not as important to get it right in the balance,
which to me is unfortunate
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You are right in that the metagame will evolve forever, even if Dota were never patched again. Metas always ebb and flow, or consolidate and disperse, and I too believe that the patches come so fast that they out-pace the speed with which a meta would organically go through one cycle of consolidation and dispersion.
But the thing is, people still complain that the next patch "can't come fast enough". As a former SC player myself, I think it's attributable to a very big change in games in general. It's not just Dota. Back in the days of Brood War, there wasn't nearly as much of an expectation of new content in games, not just so many big patches, but stuff like DLCs, and the overall degree of massively multiplayer interaction, social media elements, etc.. The internet itself hadn't quite become the beast we know today. So I think Dota is just carried away in the bigger trend of more dynamic content and shorter attention spans.
I will add that I think the patch philosophy of Dota contributes to the problem. Allegedly Icefrog doesn't even attempt to patch for balance. He buffs ignored things until they are OP and nerfs things that have been established OP to the point of oblivion. It might be different if over the years every progressive patch worked more and more toward a total state of balance. Instead, this whole time has simply been spent changing the skew of the game around. To me, the design philosophy is recipe for creating over-powered, over-picked, fad heroes and items.
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On May 09 2015 10:57 Evander Berry Wall wrote:
I will add that I think the patch philosophy of Dota contributes to the problem. Allegedly Icefrog doesn't even attempt to patch for balance. He buffs ignored things until they are OP and nerfs things that have been established OP to the point of oblivion. It might be different if over the years every progressive patch worked more and more toward a total state of balance. Instead, this whole time has simply been spent changing the skew of the game around. To me, the design philosophy is recipe for creating over-powered, over-picked, fad heroes and items.
not only that, but he never undoes things, he just nerfs somewhere else
like juggernaut was more or less fine before the buffs, he never needed to be buffed in the first place
Now his active ability Q, which used to be 30 seconds CD is 42 seconds
so anti-fun
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On May 09 2015 09:44 FiWiFaKi wrote:
I can't go discuss Dota 2 with someone who plays now, if I played Dota 3 years ago if we just met, much like you could discuss an old movie or TV show.
Actually I stopped playing/watching Dota 1 in 2008, and picked up watching competitive Dota 2 in late 2013 (I may have looked at some competitive dota 1 after 2008, but I don't think so). It took a while to recognize the heroes/items/etc., but the major elements of the game were the same (carries/supports/most items). Obviously there were some new heroes (I don't remember slark or batrider in Dota 1, for example), and item buildups were different (e.g. aghanim's used to be mystic staff + soul booster, arcane ring existed). Also when I left dota 1, everyone was still mostly playing 2-1-2 lanes and trilanes were super exotic.
When I came back to Dota 2, the competitive scene was cool because a lot of old players were still around. When I first followed Dota 1 competitve, SK (Loda Akke Tompa Bogdan) and MyM (Misery Demon Maelk Merlini Fear Mania LevenT kky?) won everything; there was a competitive SEA scene with teams like KingSurf but I didn't follow them as much. Then I think DTS was pretty good, and DTS turned into Navi IIRC. From China, I only knew ZSMJ.
So I followed Alliance because I was a fan of Loda from the SK gaming days. In particular, I remember he played a sick Terrorblade mid when TB still had the life drain (like pugna's ulti except not as good).
Obviously patches changed the game, but I think the biggest change was that everyone became way better. Back in the day (before I started watching competitive) Vigoss used to just outplay everyone. Then in the SK/MyM days, usually the best player would get the most farm priority and just kill everyone (at least that's my interpretation). I wasn't watching competitive dota in the EHOME era, but apparently that was another advance in specifying roles and farm priority. The only patch changes that really affected the game that I remember in dota 1 were (i) the blink dagger cd on attack change after the "everyone got blink daggers patch" and (ii) smokes.
So anyway, I think you could still talk to people who had only seen dota 1, but you'd have to explain how the game had developed. And I think the farm priority/tri-lanes changes were bigger changes than the patches.
A separate point to consider is that you have 3 races in BW2 whereas you have, pragmatically speaking, an infinite number of combinations of heroes that can be in a dota 2 game. So the question of balance is quite different. Perhaps a fairer comparison to Dota would be LoL, where they patch more frequently and less drastically to my understanding.
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Man i feel old that I instantly have an image of the BW maps talked about here despite not touching that game for almost 6 years.
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American Football, Football, and baseball get "patched" (rule changes) on a very regular basis. Hardly ded gaem
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balance is boring and overrated
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forge FE by Savior for example
booo
Also I like the patches !
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On May 09 2015 09:44 FiWiFaKi wrote:
I originally come from a SC:BW background, where there wasn't a balance patch since 2001, and new revolutionary stuff came around 7-8 years later, like the forge FE by Savior for example.
But if Savior's forge FE really was so revolutionary, wouldn't they have nicknamed him something appropriate like "the revolutionist"? But they didn't, they gave it to Bisu for his dominant Sauron style, so really, I'm going to use this point to bury my head in the sand and ignore your entire blog 
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On May 09 2015 13:13 syw651 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 09 2015 09:44 FiWiFaKi wrote:
I originally come from a SC:BW background, where there wasn't a balance patch since 2001, and new revolutionary stuff came around 7-8 years later, like the forge FE by Savior for example.
But if Savior's forge FE really was so revolutionary, wouldn't they have nicknamed him something appropriate like "the revolutionist"? But they didn't, they gave it to Bisu for his dominant Sauron style, so really, I'm going to use this point to bury my head in the sand and ignore your entire blog
Sauron style applied to zergs. Nice try though.
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On May 09 2015 09:44 FiWiFaKi wrote:
Alright, the title was a little bit of an attention grab, but I want to get some opinions on this topic. I will make some anti-Dota arguments in this thread, but don't get me wrong, I like Dota, I'd just like to be a bit critical for a bit.
To me, it seems like if Dota doesn't get a patch every 3 months, people will get cranky because something is overpowered, or they don't like the repetitiveness. Whether that was troll/sniper last patch, terrorblade and naga the time before, etc, etc.
Is a game good if people can't manage playing it for a couple months without it changing? Is the game that simple that the game is figured out in 2 weeks to a month and nothing can be done to counter certain strategies once they get figured out in that time frame? Is not enough time being spent not patching the game, to allow counters to develop?
I originally come from a SC:BW background, where there wasn't a balance patch since 2001, and new revolutionary stuff came around 7-8 years later, like the forge FE by Savior for example.
The reason I ask these questions is because I believe a game that is constantly changed has really poor longevity. I simply can't stop playing Dota for only one or two years, and then come back, and know what is going on. It makes it that only the really active players are able to have a coherent conversation about the pro scene, or really just the game in general.
I can't go discuss Dota 2 with someone who plays now, if I played Dota 3 years ago if we just met, much like you could discuss an old movie or TV show. It makes it so that people who leave for a bit have a much more difficult time to come back. For example, when a big boxing or chess match comes on, people who were into the activity before, can just come back, that is not possible in Dota 2. Like geez, I play Dota quite sparsely, but even patch 6.84 was just so overwhelming for me. Makes me not even want to queue another game because there is so much to learn. Even like 6.83 was quite significant for me, and for someone who doesn't play, it's completely overwhelming.
I just wish the balance of the game could remain constant for long periods of time, yet still keep the interest of people. Anyway, thoughts, input?
6.82 that introduced the comeback mechanic broke the balance of Dota. The balance of Dota was forged over a long period of time with small chains of counter links keeping everything in place. As long as the fundamental rules of Dota stayed the same, no matter how powerful a hero change, item change, or interaction change it was to see how those changes interacted with the game. The comeback mechanic changed something at the fundamental level that altered the foundation of balance Dota has built over time.
Any patch before 6.82 could last a significant amount of time. 6.84 and beyond will likely have the same potential once they reduce the comeback mechanic to non-existence.
Little changes all the time just keeps the game fun and fresh. A majority of the people you see complaining about the game don't actually understand the game.
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On May 09 2015 10:09 FiWiFaKi wrote:Show nested quote +On May 09 2015 09:57 Piledriver wrote:
AFAIK, the balance of SC was heavily affected by maps.Whenever a race was perceived too strong/performing too well, tourneys would switch up the map pool, and add maps that were not good for the dominant race.So I don't exactly accept the sentiment that there were absolutely "no patches" when the meta was clearly being affected by external factors. Yes, the game was balanced by maps for most part, but at the same time, if we look at the common maps, you do have things like Destination, Heartbreak Ridge, and Fighting Spirit that stayed around forever. And even now, for lower level players, the most commonly played map is the one that has been the most commonly played forever, and that is Python. At the end of the day though, yes, the terrain changes, but you can still go watch now, if you watched 10 years ago, and understand the game as well as your memory serves you. Meanwhile, you go to Dota... Okay, great... Roshan timer is now random, oh, there's bounty runes, and there are two runes every two minutes. Oh, you get a free glyph for T1 now. Oh, lots of come back gold now, the amount of money for killing tower changed completely, which changes how game is approached. Oh, a few heroes completely reworked, okay. Denying creeps now denies experience too, hmm. New items, recipe costs completely changed, some item build-ups changed. Not to mention how much changed are made to a hero just in a typical patch. I think they could make the changes a lot more subtle, but people always want something "fresh".
You are over reading the changes. None of the changes you mentioned other than the comeback gold affect how teams approach the game. The big picture is the same.
Control the creep equilibrium. Take fights when you have the advantage. Kill Buildings.
I believe the IceFrog philosophy is to prioritize making the game fun for everybody. He said something to that effect in a blog post in the past. Nobody notices subtle changes.
Competitive Dota will constantly evolve even without a patch (pre 6.82).
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There's nothing wrong with changing a game to keep it interesting. There's value in exploring what new ways of playing are favored in each installment in DotA or MtG as much as there is value in high depth exploration of strategy and technique in a more static game like BW . Whether the game will evolve with or without patches is not really an issue imo, just something that favors different skillsets in players.
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Two things:
One, dota's state of balance is actually pretty ridiculous. In my own circle of dota buddies, the FotM OP first ban this patch is Windranger. When we play as or against her, we won't make it through the game without someone commenting on how ridiculous the hero is, how much damage it can output and how unstoppable it can feel. What changed for WR this patch? The cast point on Shackleshot got reduced 0.15 of a second. That's it.
When THAT "small" of a change can (apparently) impact the power of a hero so much, it's hard to consider the game imbalanced. Even though in that case it's largely because a consecutive stacking of buffs, when you can consider a relatively minor change to a hero (like CM's -1 second CD on frostbite) a big deal for the balance of the hero it suggests to me that the game's as balanced as it is going to get. Considering that, it makes sense to patch for flavour as much as balance.
Second point: We've made our own market.
Back in the day, even the best games were 50% shit. You didn't get to make a forum post for a bug fix or complain anywhere in particular with a reasonable expectation of results. Today, thanks to everyone ever having the internet and using it always, if something goes wrong and enough people bitch about it, it'll get fixed. Diretide, for example. We as a collective of gamers are in a market where we've come to expect what we demand.
I don't think we'll change the market back.
I took a sleeping pill halfway through that and cant think anymore, so here:
It's not so bad. Patches are less about balance and more about flavour, and even though we'll always have FOTM heroes and shit, I don't think it'll hurt a spectator's ability to enjoy the game, unless you're someone who needs to know everything of what's going on to appreciate the plays.
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I really think people need to stop comparing games like SC2, LoL and Dota 2 to chess, it's such a bad comparison.
Chess has 16 pieces ( 32 total ) and they are mirrored to your opponent, so balance is always there regardless of how you change the rule per piece.
Dota 2 has 105(?) hero's right now with 3 unique stat growths, 4-6 abilities, different attack speed, armour and magic resistance. In what way does that compare to the "basic" ruleset of chess.
Besides that, in the process of speeding up the game, things will break really fast, and we are now on the way to getting a faster paced game, while still getting not too many OP hero's in the pool.
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EPT
