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On May 10 2015 12:41 DucK- wrote:
I'd say the reason why the meta becomes stale is because of poor captains that choose to conform to the meta, rather than find something that suits them. Most are unwilling to experiment, and only use the most common strategies. Look at how empire changed the offlane hero pool because they were willing to experiment with putting Rubick Pudge es SK etc there.
Look at Vici against IG in star ladder. They got stomped 1 game, then they switched up their entire draft style. Suddenly they picked Invoker cm tide.
The game needs more good drafters, rather than those willing to experiment, or those fixated on a certain combos that they ignore the balance of the draft (eg. Techies draft with tiny venge Pudge).
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I somewhat agree. I think the reason why drafter dont mix up things to much is because their players play only a limited hero pool and they themselves are only accustomed to drafting around certain heroes. Change is often bound to more work and higher risk, so captains shy away from it.
@topic: Tbh I dont agree. I cant speak about bw, but for me sc2 always was a stale game, people played more or less the same three matchup strategies over and over again. Only the maps brought some change. I think the fact that dota constantly changes keeps it fresh and interesting.
That aside I think most patches actually make the game better. I liked f.e. the comeback mechanics and thought it was a great idea and I'm happy that we have such a mechanic in the game. Sure there were some patchs like the ti4 one which created rather dull games, but I think IF uses trial and error and thereby makes the game better every year. Blizzard always seems to worried about balance to make patches that create a better game.
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SC:BW was balanced by the maps. The counter example given, about certain maps being used for a long time, doesn't take away from this point. Some maps are just really really good. And some maps turn out to be shit (either unbalanced, or predictable strategy). Kespa didn't change up the maps enough though, as the typical complaint went at the time.
In Dota, the drafting mechanic helps to bring balance. And some people mention that there are always OP heroes that make drafts monotonous. With the increased overall balance that patches bring, making more heroes viable in more situations, a change to drafting seems a good idea to me.
Drafts are based around which heroes seem to be really strong, AND the ability of their players to play those heroes. The first point is worked on by patches, which should make the game more balanced as time goes on. Or Icefrog is trolling. The second is part of team strategy. It doesn't make sense to practice many heroes that never see the light of day. So a changed drafting method could force teams to practice a wider variety.
Tournaments could start using the captains draft mode (which the XMG tournament does as a novelty, which worked out really well in my opinion). Alternative draft ideas:
Option 1: Randomly ban a bunch of heroes (like 5 str, 5 agi, 5 int heroes) at the start, continue as normal (with perhaps some extra thinking time).
Option 2: Give every team 5 bans at the start, instead of the current 2.
Option 3: No bans? Forcing OP heroes into the game might make teams more creative looking for a specific counter.
Under any circumstance though, as long as there are obvious goto heroes and heroes to avoid, Dota needs patches. It's not a perfect game yet. But it ain't bad :D
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On May 10 2015 02:23 FiWiFaKi wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2015 01:35 sCuMBaG wrote: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.
Savior was a Zerg player mate  HE surely didn't come up with forge expand builts. If I remember correctly it was Bisu who came up with it. At least he came up with Corsair harrass (it was versus Savior we saw that built first though. So you were right with that part.) into DTs. The forge FE might have been around before though, not sure anymore. *edit just saw all the sarcastic posts on page 2. forget what i said Yep, thanks to the about 15 people for pointing it out. I don't know how I didn't realize when writing it, I guess I was just thinking about who fell to it (the 3-0 in the finals, Savior with no response) instead of who created it, yeah it was Bisu. I'm not such a layman to not know that Savior didn't create protoss builds 
Heh, the reason your sentence sounded so funny is because you also got the time wrong. FFE was around long before 2008 and Bisu had nothing to do with inventing it. What he invented was a specific corsair dt build off of FFE, not FFE itself.
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I'm pretty sure prior to Bisu's OGN title, FFE was really just a gimmick and not something you go BO3 with.
After Bisu, it went from gimmick and something that selective pros do to the default opening from D+ to pros.
As a protoss player those were the times man... gone are the days you open 2 gates and hope to god you can defend that hydra push.
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On May 10 2015 15:03 Badjas wrote: So a changed drafting method could force teams to practice a wider variety.
Tournaments could start using the captains draft mode (which the XMG tournament does as a novelty, which worked out really well in my opinion). Alternative draft ideas:
Option 1: Randomly ban a bunch of heroes (like 5 str, 5 agi, 5 int heroes) at the start, continue as normal (with perhaps some extra thinking time).
Option 2: Give every team 5 bans at the start, instead of the current 2.
Option 3: No bans? Forcing OP heroes into the game might make teams more creative looking for a specific counter.
There has been a lot of changes to draft order. A while the game was balanced around one side of the map being stronger while the other team had the better draft order.
3 bans was what we had before the 2 in the first phase. That made the meta more stale since nothing very strong got through, making for a lot of generic drafts that didn't really need to take into account what the opponent picked. (Exaggerating a bit.)
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On May 10 2015 12:41 DucK- wrote:
I'd say the reason why the meta becomes stale is because of poor captains that choose to conform to the meta, rather than find something that suits them. Most are unwilling to experiment, and only use the most common strategies. Look at how empire changed the offlane hero pool because they were willing to experiment with putting Rubick Pudge es SK etc there.
Look at Vici against IG in star ladder. They got stomped 1 game, then they switched up their entire draft style. Suddenly they picked Invoker cm tide.
The game needs more good drafters, rather than those willing to experiment, or those fixated on a certain combos that they ignore the balance of the draft (eg. Techies draft with tiny venge Pudge).
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Drafters are not entirely wrong to do this.
It is true that at any given time there are other viable drafts that aren't the ones being done over and over again. But the thing is, finding those drafts is an investment. Unless you think you've found a perfect counter pick in theory, breaking from the meta means exploring, which is a slow, inefficient process. When you are a competitive player, that investment could really hurt you by taking a why the time you spend maintaining/developing your skills on the drafts you've established as effective.
Some analogy to this applicable to pretty much any game. These periods of so-called staleness are what I referred to as consolidations in my first post in this thread. What eventually causes consolidation to end organically (that is, even in a game with no patches), is that all of the participants conform so much, that everyone does the same thing and learns to do it almost equally well, meaning that no competitor can gain any further advantage of the others by continuing to do it, so there's no hope for advancement other than exploring something new. In addition, the more consolidated the phase of the meta is, the easier it is to counter, because it is predicable and narrow, so the folks who go exploring new strats have a good chance of finding something that completely disrupts the present consolidation.
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On May 10 2015 15:03 Badjas wrote:
SC:BW was balanced by the maps. The counter example given, about certain maps being used for a long time, doesn't take away from this point. Some maps are just really really good. And some maps turn out to be shit (either unbalanced, or predictable strategy). Kespa didn't change up the maps enough though, as the typical complaint went at the time.
In Dota, the drafting mechanic helps to bring balance. And some people mention that there are always OP heroes that make drafts monotonous. With the increased overall balance that patches bring, making more heroes viable in more situations, a change to drafting seems a good idea to me.
Drafts are based around which heroes seem to be really strong, AND the ability of their players to play those heroes. The first point is worked on by patches, which should make the game more balanced as time goes on. Or Icefrog is trolling. The second is part of team strategy. It doesn't make sense to practice many heroes that never see the light of day. So a changed drafting method could force teams to practice a wider variety.
Tournaments could start using the captains draft mode (which the XMG tournament does as a novelty, which worked out really well in my opinion). Alternative draft ideas:
Option 1: Randomly ban a bunch of heroes (like 5 str, 5 agi, 5 int heroes) at the start, continue as normal (with perhaps some extra thinking time).
Option 2: Give every team 5 bans at the start, instead of the current 2.
Option 3: No bans? Forcing OP heroes into the game might make teams more creative looking for a specific counter.
Under any circumstance though, as long as there are obvious goto heroes and heroes to avoid, Dota needs patches. It's not a perfect game yet. But it ain't bad :D
i dont think the proscene needs changes like this because they are too volatile. you can ban most of the op heroes in -cm and dont ahve to deal with them. imo the problem why people cry for patches are the pubgames they are playing and since we only have -ap in ranked games you always see the op heroes.
im a big fan of radom draft and would love to see this mode in ranked
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I think Dota is completely unbalanced in every patch iteration. It works, because you have a large number of bans, so you can simply ban out stuff, that is too OP. But every patch has some ridiculous ban ratios on certain heroes, which is a clear indicator, that these heroes are broken. Patching always follows the same pattern. Nerf what has a ridiculous high ban/pick ratio and buff whatever is never picked/banned.
The real consistency in my opinion is, that the heroes work always in a similar fashion. They might fall out of favor because they are weak in a certain patch or don't fit the current dominant style, but unless they are reworked, which happens rarely, their function doesn't change. With function I mean in which part they are strong in the game and their overall purpose in the game (control, push, etc.). I also think the game is more cyclic, everything comes back eventually. Gyro was gone, now they changed his barrage and he is back, because laning is so strong on him. Visage was gone, they made the birds really strong and he is back. And it will be nerfed, when people pick it a lot and buffed if people don't play it, to be eventually nerfed again.
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On May 10 2015 18:05 haduken wrote:
I'm pretty sure prior to Bisu's OGN title, FFE was really just a gimmick and not something you go BO3 with.
After Bisu, it went from gimmick and something that selective pros do to the default opening from D+ to pros.
As a protoss player those were the times man... gone are the days you open 2 gates and hope to god you can defend that hydra push.
It was the most standard build long before that. OGN casters used to make fun of P who went 1 gate gas, and that was back in 2005. If anyone should be credited for popularising FFE, it's Nal_rA.
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On May 10 2015 15:03 Badjas wrote:
SC:BW was balanced by the maps. The counter example given, about certain maps being used for a long time, doesn't take away from this point. Some maps are just really really good. And some maps turn out to be shit (either unbalanced, or predictable strategy). Kespa didn't change up the maps enough though, as the typical complaint went at the time.
In Dota, the drafting mechanic helps to bring balance. And some people mention that there are always OP heroes that make drafts monotonous. With the increased overall balance that patches bring, making more heroes viable in more situations, a change to drafting seems a good idea to me.
Drafts are based around which heroes seem to be really strong, AND the ability of their players to play those heroes. The first point is worked on by patches, which should make the game more balanced as time goes on. Or Icefrog is trolling. The second is part of team strategy. It doesn't make sense to practice many heroes that never see the light of day. So a changed drafting method could force teams to practice a wider variety.
Tournaments could start using the captains draft mode (which the XMG tournament does as a novelty, which worked out really well in my opinion). Alternative draft ideas:
Option 1: Randomly ban a bunch of heroes (like 5 str, 5 agi, 5 int heroes) at the start, continue as normal (with perhaps some extra thinking time).
Option 2: Give every team 5 bans at the start, instead of the current 2.
Option 3: No bans? Forcing OP heroes into the game might make teams more creative looking for a specific counter.
Under any circumstance though, as long as there are obvious goto heroes and heroes to avoid, Dota needs patches. It's not a perfect game yet. But it ain't bad :D
I was talking to a friend about this recently when they had asked me if starcraft:bw was the most balanced RTS, and so I started talking about the maps and how they played a pretty big role.
Like someone else mentioned here, I also think that some maps had a pretty long stay because they had some good balance across all matchups as results or players opinions would agree with.
When a map creator sits down and makes something that professionals will be testing and playing for an upcoming season they have a long list of ideas for things they need to keep as well as other things they want to experiment with.
I'd put emphasis on the things they need to keep, being that certain strategies involving high ground or rush-distances were kept in check. Even if players don't do the research or practice necessary to understand why their style doesn't work well on a given map, the map creators must account for it and make enough adjustments so that the majority of the players don't lose to something apparently strong right off the bat.
Spectators love close games.
So, I think throwing a wrench into the mix every once in a while is a great way to keep the gameplay fresh.
I'd love that even after years into the game, I'd have to change with it.
I think it keeps the scene of amateurs and professionals fresh as well as give the more experienced players something to do at all levels.
Just throwing something out there, but Korean LoL used to make blind pick a thing on deciding games in a best of X.
This means that everyone picked however they liked and there were often duplicate heroes and such.
Seemingly, it worked with the game because mirror-matches are already common in casual play.
This wouldn't work with DotA but I think it helps to show that the community aspect of a game can carry it through perceived imbalance. At the core of it, everyone just wants to play and watch something that creates a story line and looks fun.
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On May 09 2015 17:25 Orome wrote:Show nested quote +and new revolutionary stuff came around 7-8 years later, like the forge FE by Savior for example. i'm a little confused
Yeah me too tbh
Nice clickbait title by OP to get the discussion going as well, just gonna say that I've been playing dota for 9 years and at this point I don't really get jittery with patches changing the game, it's just more stuff to learn, DotA has always been like this, new stuff coming into the game, which gets richer and richer. Obviously DotA has the depth to be left untouched and thrive but key to DotA's gameplay is how it's based on variety and novelty of interactions partially because it's always the same map, so, yeah, people like to have new stuff to play with, I'm pretty ok with that, hero tweaks for me just seem like trying to push the most amount of heroes possible into competitive viability while most of the cases mantaining the hero's identity, so that's cool too
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Northern Ireland22208 Posts
On May 09 2015 23:33 TMG26 wrote:
Another thing nice about Icefrog, is the "no patch talk", no explanation, no justification nothing. It's like "here is your present, discover, enjoy it"
agreed, everytime i see a league changelog it's like a (meme-filled) paragraph for each change as they try to explain and justify it.
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Variety is the spice of life and there is no such thing as perfectly balanced dota. If people want the game to remain fresh and interesting, there need to be patching.
On May 09 2015 23:33 TMG26 wrote:
Another thing nice about Icefrog, is the "no patch talk", no explanation, no justification nothing. It's like "here is your present, discover, enjoy it"
Its also nice because he is clearly aware of the issues facing the community, but feels on need to comment on them beyond dropping a patch. And also changing things like how gold is earned without justifying them and just letting people figure it out or leave if they hate it.
More games should go down this road.
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On May 10 2015 18:16 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2015 15:03 Badjas wrote: So a changed drafting method could force teams to practice a wider variety.
Tournaments could start using the captains draft mode (which the XMG tournament does as a novelty, which worked out really well in my opinion). Alternative draft ideas:
Option 1: Randomly ban a bunch of heroes (like 5 str, 5 agi, 5 int heroes) at the start, continue as normal (with perhaps some extra thinking time).
Option 2: Give every team 5 bans at the start, instead of the current 2.
Option 3: No bans? Forcing OP heroes into the game might make teams more creative looking for a specific counter.
There has been a lot of changes to draft order. A while the game was balanced around one side of the map being stronger while the other team had the better draft order. 3 bans was what we had before the 2 in the first phase. That made the meta more stale since nothing very strong got through, making for a lot of generic drafts that didn't really need to take into account what the opponent picked. (Exaggerating a bit.)
what you call "generic drafts" was, imo, realistically more variety
if more strong things get through, then those strong things are always P/B, and when they get through you have to tailor them. a great example is Sniper > Troll/SF > Axe / Jugg from last patch. The same heroes always show up cause they're too strong, and their best counters keep showing up too.
but if the balance is flatter, and you have more bans to ban out the too-strong heroes, you are freer to play your own styles, or to play more styles. the immediate trade-off is, strong heroes never see the light of day, but you end up seeing more variety overall, and imbalanced heroes are anti-fun anyway
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Russian Federation1132 Posts
I can share a bit of personal experience.
Me and my friends were playing a lot of dota allstars for years, but around year 2012 we all stopped playing for different reasons. I was watching big tournament finals and TIs, but none of them were. Eventually, a year or so ago we all started playing again and it was kinda fast to catch up, took us like 50 games probably to get to the same okayish feeling.
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I don't think you can compare 10-15 year old games with games right now.
Things get figured out much faster because the player base is generally bigger, a lot of people earn money ( or try to make some money ) by gaming, streaming, writing, casting so there's much more research going on.
On top of that gamers have been getting better and more experienced, they adapt to new mechanics and ideas a lot faster.
I remember when I first started playing games competitively UT and CS ( beta 5 ) there was very few knowledge of mechanics, you played on servers and ladders of some local community, there weren't big communities and teams usually played only against teams of the same country ( ping/server issues ). You only learned stuff from other people you played with or against or accidentaly. Nothing was on youtube and very few reliable guides were available.
Same for World of warcraft if raids like MC or BWL were released now they would be cleared so much faster because players have more information and experience. I remember being stuck for weeks on several raid bosses despite them having really simple mechanics.
tldr:
Games get figured out much faster nowadays because of youtube, experience, higher stakes, coverage,...
Patching is done to keep a game dynamic or more interesting but doesn't inherently mean it was a bad game before.
I don't think any game could stay competitive and gain a big interest without changing now and then.
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EPT
