Happy new year everyone!

I spent the last couple of days in Aarhus, Denmark, visiting friends.
Had a blast. Great fun, not just because of our friends, it's just nice to get out of Berlin from time to time to get a glimpse of a less stressed out society

Went to a climbing club gym that was eyewateringly amazing with great routesetting, almost exclusively done by the members, free coffee (part of the running costs), huge bouldering spraywall and I think a fixed angle kilter board.
Mindblowing that its like 300€ a year membership fee for that.

I appreciated walking everywhere in the inner districts and saw some cool architecture in the the old and new districts.
Loved the butterfly greenhouse and ate too many sweet treats the danish are rather excellent at conjuring, like the Flodebollen we had.

If it had proper hills and a couple mountains I'd be sold.

murielhalley

1 Post

March 08 2025 23:12 GMT

#211966

--- Nuked ---

Lambertus

South Africa983 Posts

March 17 2025 07:16 GMT

#211967

Well, Wallachia S3 was a pleasure to watch! :D

Slomo

Germany7198 Posts

March 22 2025 22:04 GMT

#211968

IDK what do do guys. I lost 1.5k MMR since december and all games are absolute stomps. Sadly 3/4 are unwinnable.

Aerisky

United States12129 Posts

March 28 2025 02:56 GMT

#211969

Damn I feel, game is hard haha. Wow it's been a minute :O

Archeon

3265 Posts

April 06 2025 21:17 GMT

#211970

On March 23 2025 07:04 Slomo wrote:
IDK what do do guys. I lost 1.5k MMR since december and all games are absolute stomps. Sadly 3/4 are unwinnable.

Imo the game has put more and more value on teamfight execution and quick concise reaction to global movement. While I think that's good for pro matches, it also means that it's become harder and harder imo to swing the pendulum when people perform noticeably worse.
To boot imo MM has been a dumpster fire in the last year or so. Perhaps longer and my perception is just wrong, but I feel like before you had a close game in 2 or 3 games and most were winnable and now I feel like I have a close game in maybe 5 and a comeback in 10. The shift makes the game significantly less enjoyable for me.

Tbh I still think rubberband made for enjoyable pub games, but apparently I was the vast minority.

Vansetsu

United States1454 Posts

April 22 2025 11:17 GMT

#211971

Welp, as someone who's been playing for 15-20 years or w/e, here is my boomer take - sorry if it's been expressed before in this 10000+ post thread.

Everything in the game has been normalized - carrys don't carry as hard, everyone gets more gold, or at least has a lesser difference in gold (contributing to the first point). Things like aura strats have been killed off, with many heroes auras changed in a way that makes them less viable for team stacking/pushing - things Necrobook being gone and Helm of Dom not being a carry item for how many years also adds to this. Supports getting more gold simply by existing makes Mid and Carry and roaming ranks less impactful. I know it won't be a consciously popular take, but I liked the way old supports functioned - doing more with less was a fun way to support. Trilanes also felt pretty good, and again gave you more ways to play (at least, I'd love a meta where both duo and tri lanes were viable options, as well as jungling). Tri lanes and jungler options had players making choices for greed vs team enablement, as well as offensive trilanes, or stronger support roams (the gate is nice, but it's not quite the same).

I could list more, but in general, the above takes away from the ways you could win the game, and takes away nuance from drafts.

IMO, Dota was fun because of all the OP stuff you could cook up, ways you could approach getting to the end game objective. Taking away a lot of the ways you could choose to optimize a strat - say 4 protect 1, rat, deathball, etc, just makes the game feel like a more complex version of league.

I'm not saying it's all doom and gloom - I like that they made some changes to things like gleipner and at least tried to mitigate hero health to a degree. I'm also not saying it is league, just that the normalization trend makes it feel like dota is continuing to move in that general direction. In example, WR and Marcy carry getting nerfed to get forced to be played more in line with some arbitrarily "intended" role, feels about as anti dota as something can get - Dota has always been about freedom of choice and cool interactions - removing choices and having players, heros, or items "stay in their lane" so to speak, always feels bad to me.

Anywho, I still love the game, but I hope they start moving away from the current balance trends, and start re-adding or regrowing some teeth to "core" heroes and ways to try to win the game.

Faruko

Chile34173 Posts

April 24 2025 01:05 GMT

#211972

Should we not have some kind of discord? Don't wanna lose years of friendship tbh.

Miss you guys

I've been really absorbed in my phd but it's been going great

dhresearchlabo

Canada1 Post

April 24 2025 01:54 GMT

#211973

--- Nuked ---

PhoenixVoid

Canada32747 Posts

April 24 2025 02:56 GMT

#211974

I wholly endorse another way for us to stay connected. Looks like we're all spending less and less time on TL.

Faruko

Chile34173 Posts

April 27 2025 22:53 GMT

#211975

On April 24 2025 11:56 PhoenixVoid wrote:
I wholly endorse another way for us to stay connected. Looks like we're all spending less and less time on TL.

Maybe a discord of sorts.