Starcraft 2 is a fantastic game, worthy of all the praise and obsession it has garnered. However, it will soon be challenged by the inevitable UI comparisons that will take place between it and Dota 2 the moment the game goes live. The amount of amazing features Dota 2 has while still in beta should greatly shame the devs of sc2. For those of you not priveledged with a Dota 2 key, I will point out some of the most glaring comparisons.
accessibility In starcraft 2, once you are in game, youre in game. The main menu goes away and becomes inaccessible without forfeiting. A paltry friends box hovers over your hotkey pad, serving as your sole window to the community during a round of play. Any messages received from outside of the game are placed in the exact same in game chat window as your opponents/allies, and at first glance are indecipherable from each other.
In Dota 2, the UI is an overlay, there to be accessed in full at any moment of the game save one load screen. Online friends are all visually available from this screen with the same access you would have if not in game. Friends chatting from outside of the game message you from a completely separate chat reel, tucked neatly in the top right corner. If one wished to view these messages in full without losing site of they game, Dota 2 operates off of steams translucent community overlay, which can be seen with a simple tab+shift input.
education If one were to attempt to learn SC2 solely on their own merits, they would forever be doomed into wondering why one base 14 worker at 15 minutes isnt winning the game for them. That is because SC2's in game learning format comes from its single player, an experience related to multiplayer starcraft in name only. Yes the game has tech trees and a "challenge mode" that reminds users gently that some units are better in some situations rather than others, but ultimately Starcraft forces users to learn to play through third party communities, youtube, and outside replay webpages.
In Dota 2, the front page not only has access to a dev blog akin to starcraft's, it also tracks live games which you may hop into and view at any time. Should the three games they suggest you view be too little for your eager eyes, Dota 2 saves replays of nearly every game played, and allows you to filter them by player name, hero used, skill level, and tournament type. These replays can be downloaded, saved and viewed again and again all within Dota 2, needing no third party rapidshare-esque webpage to have to go to. Yes, to play at top level still requires reading and studying and community access and public theorycrafting, but the game serves as a resource to this, not a stumbling block.
time/experience Here comes the most dissappointing issue of all in this. Starcraft is a blizzard product, and while they are not the creator's of the RTS genre, they are largely seen as the patriarch. With their prior two RTS releases, starcraft and warcraft 3, Blizzard produced quality UI and community access for their time, even having a generally lauded league system and clan management in WC3. In SC2 we see a step back from this in a lot of ways. League rankings are intentionally vague, clan support is non existant and the mod community has been smothered by a piss poor ranking system. Such things become less excusable when one considers the 10+ years in development the game sat in. ValvE, while no stranger at all to the multiplayer format, is pioneering a new niche, and has never before needed to worry about in depth analysis, pro scenes, RTS style unit management and so on. Their current beta is a brilliant example of a for gamers by gamers product, and leaves very little to be desired in order for its implementation to be a complete masterwork. The cherry on top? Despite it being a ValvE product, it has been in development for a fraction of the time SC2 had and shows all the polish you would hope and expect from a top tier game.
I love Starcraft, and I love blizzard. But their wake up call is coming. It will soon be common knowledge that SC2's UI does not cut the mustard and will require fundamental changes to stay at the top of the heap where it belongs. Only time will tell if the legendary California devs can rise to the challenge ValvE has set before them.
(Composed on an android phone. Proofread as much as possible, but may contain grammatical errors. The writer apologizes)
It's already common knowledge that SC2's UI is bad. Also, every feature you listed of DotA2, HoN already has, so I wouldn't expect the release of a new game to be this tremendous wakeup call you're making it to be.
While I can agree some things need to improve, I don't play Starcraft for its UI. Unless you lurk the menus and don't play the game I don't think this is going to be too huge of a deal. As was mentioned in the other recent thread about SC2's UI, HotS is going to be the first realistic chance for anything to be added or refined. Don't expect anything before then. I'm pretty sure the added functionality will be something that is actually a marketing point for HotS as well. As much as some people might hate it and feel that it should be there from the start, the expansion itself will make up for issues in WoL or it will flop. Blizzard has to do it right or severely damage their product. That doesn't seem likely.
The issue here is mainly that Valve and Blizzard have deviated from each other in how they provide their products. Valve provides a service and has this indie feel about them, and they legitimately care a great deal about the customers. That's why they go out of their way to do awesome things for the community. Blizzard, on the other hand, is really out for profit. Things like limiting regions so you have to buy multiple copies, no LAN mode for tournament support (even though SC2 was touted as the ultimate game for a professional competitive scene), these things all limit what we can do with their product.
@zakmaa, i don't think you have to worry too much about that. Valve got involved in dota because many of their staff were huge fans of the game. icefrog will be leading development with a small team at Valve, so i think we'll be ok.
The only thing I worry about for DOTA 2 is the lack of involvement from VALVe. I take this from my experience playing CS:S for years, but they never did anything about that game for the longest time, and when they did, the community was (for the most part) outraged at the changes they made. Of course, CS:S is a lot smaller than DOTA 2 will be, I assume they'll actually be active with the community with this one.
Everything is so vague in your post. Comparing a moba to a RTS? Not the greatest idea, for obvious reasons. Anyway, about the "education" paragraph, I don't know what to say man, so here we go:
If one were to attempt to learn SSF4 solely on their own merits, they would forever be doomed into wondering why spamming shoryukens isnt winning the game for them. That is because SSF4's in game learning format comes from its single player, an experience related to multiplayer street fighter in name only. Yes the game has tiers and a "Arcade mode" that reminds users gently that some moves are better in some situations rather than others, but ultimately Street Fighter forces users to learn to play through third party communities, youtube, and outside replay webpages.
That being said, nothing is "forcing" people to "learn to play".
Also are you talking about Sc2's UI or BNET's UI? There's a big difference here. While Bnet's UI has definitely A LOT of room for improvement, Sc2's in-game UI is accessible, smooth and user-friendly. That's like the second thread in a week where people confuse Bnet with the actual game.
This is all rather pointless in the end. While the UI of both different genres have relevance they're not game-changing in the sense that people will play both and neither really have any real effect on one another. You pit them together as if one trumps the other, the other diminishes or fails which is far from the truth.
In dota, you right click and press 3 or 4 hotkeys while occasionally waiting for HP / MP to regen. Your teammates yell at you if you do something wrong.
In Starcraft 2, I don't have time to pay attention to my chatboxes or adjust settings after 2 minutes into the game. There is much more to the game than controlling one unit.
On February 05 2012 08:07 Bswhunter wrote: Shame the point about education is moot because of the community of dota
Can someone elaborate on that? Not really familiar with the community of fota.
As someone who's played DotA for a majority of his gaming career (lol career), I can only share my experiences. Before other MOBA games came out the community was known for being asshats to newer players. Its a team game after all, and so having an inexperienced player in your team usually meant that you were at a disadvantage. Since there also was no (proper) match making system, this issue eventually lead to the community getting coined for their elitist attitude.
Being the shell of what it was due to other games such as LoL and HoN taking chunks of their consumer base, I find that the DotA community has (for the most part) matured greatly from the past few years. I think coupled with the new UI mentioned in the OP plus the experience of the more veteran community members, DotA 2 should break this image about their comunity in time.
On February 05 2012 08:07 Bswhunter wrote: Shame the point about education is moot because of the community of dota
Can someone elaborate on that? Not really familiar with the community of fota.
As someone who's played DotA for a majority of his gaming career (lol career), I can only share my experiences. Before other MOBA games came out the community was known for being asshats to newer players. Its a team game after all, and so having an inexperienced player in your team usually meant that you were at a disadvantage. Since there also was no (proper) match making system, this issue eventually lead to the community getting coined for their elitist attitude.
Being the shell of what it was due to other games such as LoL and HoN taking chunks of their consumer base, I find that the DotA community has (for the most part) matured greatly from the past few years. I think coupled with the new UI mentioned in the OP plus the experience of the more veteran community members, DotA 2 should break this image about their comunity in time
On February 05 2012 07:52 atwar wrote: who the fuk cares about dota 2 ? everything is copied from HoN.
Lol I do this sometimes when I'm watching dota games to troll people (you can chat with all the viewers while watching which can be pretty cool, saying things "hey guys question im new to dota why did icefrog copy LoL's champions?". It used to get more responses now everybody seems to recognize it right away as troll.
Back to the main topic though, yes fully agree 100%. My god the dota UI is incredible. The disconnect feature is genius, if you disconnect from the game you have 5 minutes to return before you are fully disconnected. During these 5 minutes you can even turn off your computer or disconnect from the internet, when you get back within 5 minutes you can still get back into your game. For example, I was playing then all of a sudden my computer shut off completely. I booted it up again, and started dota 2 right away, and got connected to original game. Now that's pretty cool...especially for those people who had internet problems.
On February 05 2012 08:07 Bswhunter wrote: Shame the point about education is moot because of the community of dota
Can someone elaborate on that? Not really familiar with the community of fota.
The dota community, unlike SC2, is not centered around learning and good manners. If your team is losing, for 95% of the players, it is because your teammates are dying noob dipshits.
Dota players get very inflamed by pretty much anything. While in SC2 it is easier to recognize you suck, and how to get better, many players (both in SC2 and Dota) think that they deserve to win.
On February 05 2012 08:07 Bswhunter wrote: Shame the point about education is moot because of the community of dota
Can someone elaborate on that? Not really familiar with the community of fota.
I find that the DotA community has (for the most part) matured greatly from the past few years.
Really? Jeez I'm happy I wasn't playing years ago, because as much as dota is an amazing game, the community is probably the worst gaming community I've come across, and I've been involved in at least 7-8 competitive games. The amount of harassment and trolling in that game is at a completely different level than any other game. In my opinion it's the only downside to dota, hopefully it'll change with release.
On February 05 2012 08:07 Bswhunter wrote: Shame the point about education is moot because of the community of dota
Can someone elaborate on that? Not really familiar with the community of fota.
I find that the DotA community has (for the most part) matured greatly from the past few years.
Really? Jeez I'm happy I wasn't playing years ago, because as much as dota is an amazing game, the community is probably the worst gaming community I've come across, and I've been involved in at least 7-8 competitive games. The amount of harassment and trolling in that game is at a completely different level than any other game. In my opinion it's the only downside to dota, hopefully it'll change with release.
I actually didn't consider trolling when I made that post, just the elitist part, but you're probably right in that regard. I dont know about worst community, but if it's anything, I'm currently playing league of legends since I dont have a beta key and the community there feels just as bad.
On February 05 2012 08:07 Bswhunter wrote: Shame the point about education is moot because of the community of dota
Can someone elaborate on that? Not really familiar with the community of fota.
I find that the DotA community has (for the most part) matured greatly from the past few years.
Really? Jeez I'm happy I wasn't playing years ago, because as much as dota is an amazing game, the community is probably the worst gaming community I've come across, and I've been involved in at least 7-8 competitive games. The amount of harassment and trolling in that game is at a completely different level than any other game. In my opinion it's the only downside to dota, hopefully it'll change with release.
Yeah I think the only communities that can be compared with the Dota community are the HoN community, the LoL community, the WoW community, the D2jsp community, and the Bnet forums.
On February 05 2012 08:07 Bswhunter wrote: Shame the point about education is moot because of the community of dota
Can someone elaborate on that? Not really familiar with the community of fota.
Its a teamgame which requires 5 people , to win, each of these must play and work TOGETHER.
lets leave it at that
And Yes, the Dota 2 UI is miles better then SC2, its simplicity makes it excellent, and more features will be added such as the aforementioned coaching feature and the ability to pull save files from any point in the game(this is still being worked on) so that when someone loses to due lag, disconnect or anything, the game can be played from that part forward
Dota 2 has MUCH better UI and features outside of the game then SC2.
Well actually I don't know if Dota 2 has facebook integration.
On February 05 2012 07:28 Sickkiee wrote: Well Dota 2 is a newer game than SC2. Then again, I think we're all still waiting for the new Battle.net (I think LOL).
Then again all I want are proper SEA servers for Australians.
They already had those ideas long ago... but they also decided to actually implement them...
some things could still improve on dota 2's UI ( ingame one )
You're telling people who already know the SC2 UI is pretty shit that the UI is pretty shit, but in a superior tone that suggests that you don't know this...
Dota2's UI may be better but it's just Dota with better graphics, and that game just isn't my thing. The UI won't change that. However, I do hope that it causes the industry standards for this kind of thing to improve.
edit- also for that lower third, the thing you have to consider is that (I'm a Dota noob, so this may be false but is my perception) you don't really need all that space under there. In SC2 you can't have that chat and shit in game because pretty much every element on screen is used. I guess you could have an option to toggle between the unit select and shit in the corner and chat for people who know all the hotkeys, but most of that space is needed.
On February 05 2012 07:52 atwar wrote: who the fuk cares about dota 2 ? everything is copied from HoN.
Not sure if troll or serious...
Anyway, the dota 2 UI is amazing. Ive been playing it alot the last few days and i love so much about it. The steam chat stuff you mentioned is great. Its generally super easy to navigate. And pretty much everything ingame is customizable.
i blame activitision for this btw, blizzard has said in a past interview that activision is in control of everything, they simply let blizzard handle the gameplay, meaning that activision is in control of the multiplayer and UI and bnet 2.0 and such (which explains why it looks like an xbox UI and a step back haha)
Anyways, i hope they upgrade stuff. I'm sure it'll come, they're probably waiting for HotS though or something =/ really a shame
On February 05 2012 08:24 Ooshmagoosh wrote: In dota, you right click and press 3 or 4 hotkeys while occasionally waiting for HP / MP to regen. Your teammates yell at you if you do something wrong.
In Starcraft 2, I don't have time to pay attention to my chatboxes or adjust settings after 2 minutes into the game. There is much more to the game than controlling one unit.
This is comparing almonds and oranges
read the title and the op its comparing fucking UI(user interface if you dont know which you probably dont know) and NOT gameplay
I know people complain about the UI, but I honestly don't see what's so bad. Maybe it's because sc2 is the first game I've really played besides rpgs, but it does do it's job right?
On February 05 2012 08:24 Ooshmagoosh wrote: In dota, you right click and press 3 or 4 hotkeys while occasionally waiting for HP / MP to regen. Your teammates yell at you if you do something wrong.
In Starcraft 2, I don't have time to pay attention to my chatboxes or adjust settings after 2 minutes into the game. There is much more to the game than controlling one unit.
This is comparing almonds and oranges
read the title and the op its comparing fucking UI(user interface if you dont know which you probably dont know) and NOT gameplay
On February 05 2012 09:41 KimJongChill wrote: I know people complain about the UI, but I honestly don't see what's so bad. Maybe it's because sc2 is the first game I've really played besides rpgs, but it does do it's job right?
No it doesn't :/ It's missing key features, and even more depressing : key features that were present in earlier Blizzard games.
erm.. dota 2 is a totally different game- i mean, do you REALLY wanna be bothered by your friends chatting you while your in the middle of a sc2 game? I would hate that. I mean i agree on some other stuff, but its really not a big deal at all for me. Plus Dota>HoN > Dota2
On February 05 2012 07:31 SkaPunk wrote: Some competition for sc2 would literally be the greatest thing ever for Starcraft .
Only if blizzard decides to fight.
The starcraft UI should be ashamed of itself being used in such a great game. I soooo miss finding new cool maps and sharing them with my friends in BW and wc3.
ofc dota2 is going to maintain a large focus on clan/team functions. especially chat related due to the glaring mistakes of past team games where the community had to resort to outside mediums to function properly on any competitive level (mIRC for example). these design ideas are also congruent with the idea that games tend to be on the long side (if they are good); meaning players will inevitably HAVE to keep good contact with consistent players to have any sort of stable mass competition/ranking system. relying on pick up games for the majority of regular players is what inevitably led to the horrible image the dota community currently holds.
as far as im concerned. interfaces are designed for their utility and practicality. so much emphasis on "learning" techniques is due to the nature of the game; a large amount of heroes, items, spells, etc creates a steep learning curve for the game because of the sheer amount of "things" you need to memorize to be any good at the game. where as a game like starcraft is easily learned through repetition; especially made easy with the fact that you play single relatively short games one after the other where the scope of mechanics is smaller albeit refined.
dota also doesnt have the third party community that sc:bw/sc2 has. they NEED to have the features like "top live matches" or else the competitive scene would naturally take longer to mature as that sort of information can be found in so few places.
anywho; im just playing devils advocate as dota2's chat and team features are indeed "better" than bnet 2.0's. but, id still like to remind people that the ui designers keep the average user in mind. sc2 players want to jump on bnet and get in and out of however many games they want to play; where as dota requires a much larger time investment to play. there is a reason the "find ladder game" button is one of the largest and brightest on the screen.
I think the OP has confused "UI" with "Features accessed via UI"
The features in particular that I sorely miss in SC2 after playing 200 games of the DotA beta are:
+ Spectating Games in Progress + In-Client search engine for finding replays + Ease of spectating friend's games (Click + Watch Game) + Directed Spectating camera (AI driven spectator that never misses a kill) + Player Perspective (Spectating Camera Option -- Shows the selected player's screen & mouse movements) + Cross-Region Play + Developer Console for Customizing My Game Experience (Changing minimap dot size, right click deny, etc) + And Lastly, sort of unfair comparison, integration with Steam for friendslist/chat systems
DotA2 essentially just took WC3 UI and improved upon it, because DotA was on WC3 TFT. The piss poor thing is, that Battlenet 2.0 fails against Battlenet 1.0 It´s completely beyond reason why they don´t have things they already had years ago.
Yes, LAN is removed for copyright reasons. I can live with that. But why were all the other things removed?
another one of these threads? If you are trying to convince TL that Blizzard needs to step their game up you are wasting their time WE ALL KNOW THIS MAN
But if you want to convince Blizzard this isn't the place either and they are well aware of the complaints they recieve on their own forums.
and Dota 2 still isn't on par with HoN, it needs a god damn voting system.
everyone is unhappy with blizzard's approach to sc2 outside the game play (i'll leave gameplay out). its just the matter of how much does blizzard care. its been over a year since the most basic things have left out of the game, when will they ever be introduced?
On February 05 2012 07:52 atwar wrote: who the fuk cares about dota 2 ? everything is copied from HoN.
The trolls arrived early!! Oh god i would love the UI to be changed. it can go from a great game to an extraordinary game. and its sad that its simply the UI that kills the custom map scene
On February 05 2012 07:46 DCRed wrote: Dota(1&2) mini-map, staying the same since '03.
No but really, Valve hasn't touched the gameplay itself that much, which is more than sad really.
How is it sad that they're preserving an already proven format? I think it's absolutely fantastic that a company has the balls to do that, instead of redesign their product just for the sake of making it "different" and potentially worse than its former game (SC2).
If you compare the UIs, it's not completely 1-sided. The in-game UI for SC2 isn't bad honestly. For the amount of things accessible, it's ok. And to be honest, there isn't a need or desire to be able to exit out of the game screen, goto server/chat, then go back to the game. It is however really cool that you can do that.
For Battlenet 2.0 however, I do agree the UI is kinda awful. Dota2 is definately better there.
If we're talking about UI however, it's probably worth mentioning the UI for the shop in Dota 2 isn't very good. While it's powerful, and usable once you get used to it, it's not intuitive. Also it's rather poor for people new to DOTA even if they played other MOBAs.
On February 05 2012 10:57 SySLeif wrote: Dota 2... sounds like everything Heroes of Newerth has... weird.
HoN does have a really incredible system as well. All of the UI and features outside the game are so useful. It's pretty sad that it isn't more popular.
On February 05 2012 10:57 SySLeif wrote: Dota 2... sounds like everything Heroes of Newerth has... weird.
HoN does have a really incredible system as well. All of the UI and features outside the game are so useful. It's pretty sad that it isn't more popular.
HoN did a great job to be sure, but hard core dota fans can go right to dota 2 and LoL has the more casual and friendlier gaming community. Over all both end of the spectrum has a home and HoN can't find a good niche. It's the overlooked middle child of moba.
On February 05 2012 12:27 MichaelDonovan wrote: I don't think you can compare the two. It's like saying Halo's UI is better than Worm's Armageddon's UI. It's just not the same thing.
...Huh?
No, they are comparable. SC2 has a shit UI, this isn't up for debate -- it's common knowledge. Dota 2 has a fantastic UI that really connects its players. As said in the SC2 UI thread in the SC2 forum, the game feels so lonely because of how disconnected it is. People connect to each other on forums like these and elsewhere, not so much ingame. Dota 2 makes sure everyone is always connected, able to hang out in games and watch pros play and shit. That's a distinct advantage Dota 2 has right now. Hopefully Blizzard picks up on this and improves.
This thread is by no means saying "SC2 IS DEAD, DOTA 2 KILLED IT!!!!", it's saying Dota 2 is bringing a fantastic UI to the table and an actual standard that SC2's will not live up to, and people WILL notice.
As nice as your post is, SC2 UI is BW's bitch as well, so I don't see what the point you're trying to make is.
On February 05 2012 10:54 Saishuuheiki wrote: If you compare the UIs, it's not completely 1-sided. The in-game UI for SC2 isn't bad honestly. For the amount of things accessible, it's ok. And to be honest, there isn't a need or desire to be able to exit out of the game screen, goto server/chat, then go back to the game. It is however really cool that you can do that.
For Battlenet 2.0 however, I do agree the UI is kinda awful. Dota2 is definately better there.
If we're talking about UI however, it's probably worth mentioning the UI for the shop in Dota 2 isn't very good. While it's powerful, and usable once you get used to it, it's not intuitive. Also it's rather poor for people new to DOTA even if they played other MOBAs.
Is the shop UI really poor? I've played dota since 03 so i don't notice as much, but I think its good. The items are all listed where they should be, there are items that will get you through a game suggested on the sidebar, and you can customize them once you find a build that can work for you. Also, you can search for any item, which is useful when you don't want to spend the time flipping through pages, or you can just hit q/w/e/r and a number to buy what you want. Theres a lot of customization.
everything is copied from HoN , lol at the kidz that doesnt accept this , if u want to discuss something discuss about HoN we have been HoN bitches for a long time.
On February 05 2012 07:52 atwar wrote: who the fuk cares about dota 2 ? everything is copied from HoN.
User was warned for this post
I just have to ask, not having played dota 2, only having watched.
Is his statement true? I mean it's not bad if it is. There are worse things than copying from a well made game.
EDIT: There are also more sensible things than calling everyone on the forum bitches, atwar. After all, you're expressing an opinion, inevitably, and you could be wrong.
On February 05 2012 12:40 atwar wrote: everything is copied from HoN , lol at the kidz that doesnt accept this , if u want to discuss something discuss about HoN we have been HoN bitches for a long time.
You do realize that HoN is copying DotA, not the other way around, right?
On February 05 2012 10:57 SySLeif wrote: Dota 2... sounds like everything Heroes of Newerth has... weird.
HoN does have a really incredible system as well. All of the UI and features outside the game are so useful. It's pretty sad that it isn't more popular.
HoN did a great job to be sure, but hard core dota fans can go right to dota 2 and LoL has the more casual and friendlier gaming community. Over all both end of the spectrum has a home and HoN can't find a good niche. It's the overlooked middle child of moba.
You should seriously look into the LoL community comrade. 'Cuz I assure you that it isn't a great place to be.
On February 05 2012 07:52 atwar wrote: who the fuk cares about dota 2 ? everything is copied from HoN.
User was warned for this post
I just have to ask, not having played dota 2, only having watched.
Is his statement true? I mean it's not bad if it is. There are worse things than copying from a well made game.
HoN was a direct port of DotA, I don't play and I can tell who every hero is by their starting stats, except for the few they added in afterwards. I don't play it because the community is worse than DotAs and the balance is generally poor, but a lot of people enjoy it, and I never gave it a fair chance.
On February 05 2012 08:10 Dandel Ion wrote: I don't like how you treat DotA2 as the second coming of christ
LOL, best laugh I had today
On topic, I feel like the best features that could be implemented in battle.net could also be the easiest logistically. Save all replays and make them searchable, sortable. In client browsing of TL. Just those two things alone would change the landscape of SC2 forever...
On February 05 2012 07:52 atwar wrote: who the fuk cares about dota 2 ? everything is copied from HoN.
User was warned for this post
I just have to ask, not having played dota 2, only having watched.
Is his statement true? I mean it's not bad if it is. There are worse things than copying from a well made game.
HoN started as an exact clone of dota, with permission. They imported hero from dota regularly and more recently came up with lots of unique heros of their own. Dota2 is made by the person who wrote most of dota 1 as it is now. Dota2 is a even strict clone of dota 1, with nothing that I know of taken from HoN that wasn't already in Dota 1.
On February 05 2012 07:52 atwar wrote: who the fuk cares about dota 2 ? everything is copied from HoN.
User was warned for this post
I just have to ask, not having played dota 2, only having watched.
Is his statement true? I mean it's not bad if it is. There are worse things than copying from a well made game.
HoN started as an exact clone of dota, with permission. They imported hero from dota regularly and more recently came up with lots of unique heros of their own. Dota2 is made by the person who wrote most of dota 1 as it is now. Dota2 is a even strict clone of dota 1, with nothing that I know of taken from HoN that wasn't already in Dota 1.
Thanks. I knew HoN was copied from Dota. I know Dota 2 is Dota with nicer graphics etc. I just wanted to confirm if Dota 2 copied HoN's UI, as this troll seems to imply?
Bnet 2.0 has a bunch of issues like randomly taking long to load quite often. The UI for BW is so much smoother. I don't understand why a newer game has a crappier UI. DotA 2 should easily be better if they don't make the same mistakes.
On February 05 2012 07:52 atwar wrote: who the fuk cares about dota 2 ? everything is copied from HoN.
User was warned for this post
I just have to ask, not having played dota 2, only having watched.
Is his statement true? I mean it's not bad if it is. There are worse things than copying from a well made game.
HoN started as an exact clone of dota, with permission. They imported hero from dota regularly and more recently came up with lots of unique heros of their own. Dota2 is made by the person who wrote most of dota 1 as it is now. Dota2 is a even strict clone of dota 1, with nothing that I know of taken from HoN that wasn't already in Dota 1.
Thanks. I knew HoN was copied from Dota. I know Dota 2 is Dota with nicer graphics etc. I just wanted to confirm if Dota 2 copied HoN's UI, as this troll seems to imply?
DotA2 isn't a complete copy of DotA either. There's some slight mechanics changes and a bit more balancing has gone into it to this point, plus there's some new items.
I think DotA2 is setting up to bridge the gap between LoL and HoN, and as a personal opinion, I think it will eclipse SC2 as the major ESPORT. The overall MOBA community is much larger than SC2's and it has far more competitive features than SC2 and LoL. HoN has more but its UI and community is too technical and hardcore for most people, the way Linux is. It might be more powerful, but the designers have little sense of style and aren't as skilled as Valve at merging form and function.
I am biased because I enjoy DotA2 a lot more than SC2 now, but one of reasons is that I can leave DotA2 open all the time and find stuff to do, even when I'm not playing. I watch friends playing all the time and the occasional pro, sometimes review replays or just practice quickly on bots. I don't nor did I ever do any of that stuff with SC2, and I only kept the client open when playing. To me, despite not having Facebook interaction, DotA2 feels a lot more social.
Also, The UI is relevant because they come from the exact same place, despite being different genres. DotA improved upon WC3's, SC2 got worse.
On February 05 2012 13:21 Jibba wrote: DotA2 isn't a complete copy of DotA either. There's some slight mechanics changes and a bit more balancing has gone into it to this point, plus there's some new items.
I think DotA2 is setting up to bridge the gap between LoL and HoN, and as a personal opinion, I think it will eclipse SC2 as the major ESPORT. The overall MOBA community is much larger than SC2's and it has far more competitive features than SC2 and LoL. HoN has more but its UI and community is too technical and hardcore for most people, the way Linux is. It might be more powerful, but the designers have little sense of style and aren't as skilled as Valve at merging form and function.
Well, the new items exist in WC3 dota as well, as did all the balance changes, but yes all the silly nuances caused by the WC3 engine are gone (quelling blade an orb, unable to crit with phase boots active etc.) thankfully.
I agree, I anticipate great things on the horizon, only 40 heroes to go!
On February 05 2012 09:53 mrRoflpwn wrote: erm.. dota 2 is a totally different game- i mean, do you REALLY wanna be bothered by your friends chatting you while your in the middle of a sc2 game? I would hate that. I mean i agree on some other stuff, but its really not a big deal at all for me. Plus Dota>HoN > Dota2
erm...how can Dota>Dota2 when Dota2 is made by icefrog, has pretty much the exact Dota1 gameplay + a much cleaner/upgraded look and extra features like rejoining disconnected games, clan support, stream watching support and much more?
On February 05 2012 07:52 atwar wrote: who the fuk cares about dota 2 ? everything is copied from HoN.
User was warned for this post
I just have to ask, not having played dota 2, only having watched.
Is his statement true? I mean it's not bad if it is. There are worse things than copying from a well made game.
HoN started as an exact clone of dota, with permission. They imported hero from dota regularly and more recently came up with lots of unique heros of their own. Dota2 is made by the person who wrote most of dota 1 as it is now. Dota2 is a even strict clone of dota 1, with nothing that I know of taken from HoN that wasn't already in Dota 1.
Thanks. I knew HoN was copied from Dota. I know Dota 2 is Dota with nicer graphics etc. I just wanted to confirm if Dota 2 copied HoN's UI, as this troll seems to imply?
There are... but it's hard to say that the UI is copied from HoN because DOTA 1 is entirely running on the Warcraft 3 engine. Things like spell range and area of effect aren't supported by the Warcraft 3 engine. Things like score board, symbol for denies and gold, had to be implemented with quite a bit of ingenuity. Spell hotkey changes like QWER are also new. However, these are things that LoL share as well, and are natural improvements over a game that was running on an engine that was never intended for it. So I would not call it copying, even though some traits are shared.
I think Blizzard has too few people working on SC2. They must be busy with HotS, because they ignored everything else in the past months (including WoL patches, UI updates, name changer, etc).
Honestly, I care about zero of the UI "advantages" that you named in the OP. Chat channels out of game, clan support/chat mod support, statistics, etc, on the other hand... (aka everything in b.net 1.0)... :/
One thing I wish for on a regular basis is for SC2 to have to compete for rts market share the same way LoL HoN and Dota 2 do. There is no rts that even comes close to SC2 in terms of competitive play so blizzard gets to be lazy and milk us for all we are worth. Then again I imagine the starcraft community would be just like the FGC where if it doesn't have the capcom brand on it, it doesn't get played... even if it is a better game for competition.
On the topic of things DotA 2 should copy from HoN: Being able to throw your quelling axe at creeps to last hit them every 30 seconds. Wards, health potion and mana potion at secret shop (although keep all the secret shop items there too) Concede vote function
As an aside, things HoN should copy from DotA 2: Auto-building items even if you don't have room for all the compenents. Smoke of Deceit
On February 05 2012 14:08 Meta wrote: On the topic of things DotA 2 should copy from HoN: Being able to throw your quelling axe at creeps to last hit them every 30 seconds. Wards, health potion and mana potion at secret shop (although keep all the secret shop items there too) Concede vote function
As an aside, things HoN should copy from DotA 2: Auto-building items even if you don't have room for all the compenents. Smoke of Deceit
I haven't played HoN myself, but buying pots in the lane seems really weird. Can't you stay in lane for ever with absolutely no effort? Either way, irrelevant to UI discussion.
The quelling blade thing could be interesting, but has nothing to do with Dota 2's UI and a change of that in Dota 2 would likely follow/be followed by the same change in Dota vanilla.
I would how ever like to see a forfeit vote option. I presume valve has got a reason for not implementing it, as it's not hard to do and they haven't been slow to implement a whole bunch of other useful features.
Well they set up the foundation for the game correctly, through the built in steam overlay and the overall functionality of the UI and spectator options (just watch how the International was run compared to most SC2 tournies). SC2 on the other hand seems to be integrated poorly into the new bnet 2 as a result of it not being fully ready during the development process. I think a lot of blizzs time was spend preparing that instead of building bnet 2 first as a central hub service that Steam and it's overlay are. As a result, clans, groups, chat (think how long that took to implement), replays, and demos are much easier to jump into a view.
I think a better comparison would be how much better/functional steam is vs. how bad bnet 2 is. The UI isn't that big a deal, the features offered by both platforms are vastly different in quality.
Comparing totally different gamestyles, let's compare MW3 v/s Gunz the duel, shall we? It's a known fact that SC2 interface is not perfect, but, it's not THAT bad either, Blizz can only upgrade it from where they are now, getting it worse is... impossible .-.
What pisses me off the most about SC2's UI is it's custom game UI. The game has no meaningful way to find games THAT HAVE PLAYERS IN THEM as opposed to just the most played games. There are far more issues that just that, but the whole game creating, joining, and listing system is just complete trash.
I also don't understand the whole "fun or not" system. First of all it seems terribly implemented. It seems to only choose from the more popular maps (which even then oftentimes really suck), and it has no method of choosing preferred game type. Aside from that, I don't see why people can't just rate the games they CHOSE to play — that's how reviews work everywhere else. It's not like a map is going to be #1 rated when he alone rates his map a maximum rating. Are rating systems like metacritic a complete fail or what? it just baffles me what was going on in Blizzard's head.
Aside from all that, I just hate SC2's UI in general. It doesn't look very nice, and it's extremely laggy — the UI uses more CPU power than the first 5 or 10 minutes of an SC2 1v1 game, which I think is appalling. I heard it essentially uses an engine which is just lie a modified version of Adobe's Flash — so appalling.
On February 05 2012 15:12 WilDMousE wrote: Comparing totally different gamestyles, let's compare MW3 v/s Gunz the duel, shall we? It's a known fact that SC2 interface is not perfect, but, it's not THAT bad either, Blizz can only upgrade it from where they are now, getting it worse is... impossible .-.
I doubt it's going to go anywhere. While I have very high hopes that they will eventually add a better map joining system, they are way too greedy/careless to care about something that doesn't affect a whole lot such as the overall visuals/mechanics of the UI. It would take ridiculously huge amounts of re-coding to get a new UI system that doesn't use Flash for instance. There's an extremely short list of things I like about the UI in SC2 (outside of the game) so I would definitely say it IS that bad.
None of these games ever truly matter on the large scale. As both a veteran DOTA player and high level starcraft 2 masters, only the rejects of starcraft 2 ladder, warcraft 3 ladder, or starcraft broodwar truly try to excel in these MOBA games. I know this because I interact a great deal with all of these communities, have seen people quit laddering in broodwar, sc2, and wc3 to go to these custom games because they were tired of their feelings getting hurt from losing 1v1 and never improving.
These same people tout these games as "requiring different skillsets" This part always cracks me up. Like, I seriously laugh my ass off. I laugh my ass off at the same people who say team games in starcraft 2 require a different and more complex skill set because it involves multiple people with multiple strategies. It's hilarious because these same people get dominated and smashed utterly in both sc2 team games as well as dota and custom games when me and my other sc2 1v1-focused players get into it.
I'm all for supporting different games and having variety, but it's utterly laughable to ever hear any moba player cocky about the superiority of their game.
On February 05 2012 07:31 SkaPunk wrote: Some competition for sc2 would literally be the greatest thing ever for Starcraft .
Only if blizzard decides to fight.
The starcraft UI should be ashamed of itself being used in such a great game. I soooo miss finding new cool maps and sharing them with my friends in BW and wc3.
On February 05 2012 23:01 Liph wrote: None of these games ever truly matter on the large scale. As both a veteran DOTA player and high level starcraft 2 masters, only the rejects of starcraft 2 ladder, warcraft 3 ladder, or starcraft broodwar truly try to excel in these MOBA games. I know this because I interact a great deal with all of these communities, have seen people quit laddering in broodwar, sc2, and wc3 to go to these custom games because they were tired of their feelings getting hurt from losing 1v1 and never improving.
These same people tout these games as "requiring different skillsets" This part always cracks me up. Like, I seriously laugh my ass off. I laugh my ass off at the same people who say team games in starcraft 2 require a different and more complex skill set because it involves multiple people with multiple strategies. It's hilarious because these same people get dominated and smashed utterly in both sc2 team games as well as dota and custom games when me and my other sc2 1v1-focused players get into it.
I'm all for supporting different games and having variety, but it's utterly laughable to ever hear any moba player cocky about the superiority of their game.
I could counter this by saying that anyone who plays SC2 seriously are BW rejects, because any seriously good BW player would stick to that and not have to play SC2 to be good. Most people who play Dota and HoN came from wc3 originally, true enough, because thats where Dota started.... but now there are thousands upon millions of people getting in to LoL who have NEVER EVER tried an RTS.
Anywho this thread wasn't about which game was better, as you seems to have made your post but about the UI in Dota2 being better than SC2's.... which it is, mainly cause SC2's is bad and not cause Dota2's is particularly inventive.
On February 05 2012 23:01 Liph wrote: None of these games ever truly matter on the large scale. As both a veteran DOTA player and high level starcraft 2 masters, only the rejects of starcraft 2 ladder, warcraft 3 ladder, or starcraft broodwar truly try to excel in these MOBA games. I know this because I interact a great deal with all of these communities, have seen people quit laddering in broodwar, sc2, and wc3 to go to these custom games because they were tired of their feelings getting hurt from losing 1v1 and never improving.
These same people tout these games as "requiring different skillsets" This part always cracks me up. Like, I seriously laugh my ass off. I laugh my ass off at the same people who say team games in starcraft 2 require a different and more complex skill set because it involves multiple people with multiple strategies. It's hilarious because these same people get dominated and smashed utterly in both sc2 team games as well as dota and custom games when me and my other sc2 1v1-focused players get into it.
I'm all for supporting different games and having variety, but it's utterly laughable to ever hear any moba player cocky about the superiority of their game.
On February 06 2012 00:41 Kukaracha wrote: Change the title please, unless you truly believe that a better UI equals a better game.
He's saying that SC2's UI is going to be D2's UI's bitch. How does that relate to what you said at all?
Jesus Christ, the people in this thread need to stop being so insecure. He's not saying Dota 2 is the better game, or that Dota 2 will be more successful than SC2, or that Dota 2 will "kill" SC2 or anything like that. He's saying that D2 has an actual modern and functional interface, compared to SC2 which does not -- which leads to a far more interconnected and vibrant in-game community, while SC2 must rely on forums like these for most everything. That doesn't make it a "better" game or a "SC2 killer" or anything. It simply means that it has a better interface, and people will notice that.
People are right, a better UI does not mean a better game. However, it does mean something -- that it can be more connected and vibrant. Like it or not, the MOBA community is fucking enormous, and with a modern interface such as this, they can be connected like no other game. As said in the SC2 UI thread, SC2 feels dead ingame. You play 1v1's a bit, or maybe go play some customs or join some custom channels. It's very boring, it's very dead, and it's not very functional at all. It seems like an afterthought. D2 has had clear dedication to creating a functional interface, and it is showing.
Again, I'm not saying that Dota 2 is the better game because it has a better UI. I'm saying that, like it or not, if a game like SC2 feels dead while ingame, and a game like Dota 2 feels vibrant, connected, and alive while ingame, people WILL notice and it WILL make a difference; especially in the games growing competitive scene and for getting new players into it. That stereotype that it's impossible learn the game, and a shitty community always bashing you? With a few clicks of a button, you can observe pros playing right from ingame and talk to other people as well with a slick interface. There are wikis and guides accessed right from in-game and easily read and maintained regularly. There are ways to stay in contact with your steam friends, ingame friends, and go onto their forums and chat chanenls and everything.
Dota 2's awesome interface may not make it the better game, but it will make it seem so to a new player. Do tell me, what is more appealing to a newer player? The shit you can do in Dota 2 with the click of a few buttons ingame -- or having to go through a bunch of forums asking for help for basic shit like in SC2 with no interconnectedness. I personally believe that SC2 is a better game, with a much better potential for a competitive scene -- do not misconstrue what I am saying. However, to fresh eyes new to the game -- Dota 2 offers far more than SC2. And that means something.
As I go and ladder, it just feels like a treadmill. Go and play a match, requeue, play, requeue, so on and so forth. If I want to connect with people of shared interests of the game, I go here, to TeamLiquid because it's really the only place other than Bnet or other undesirable places. When I play some Dota 2, I feel like the game is alive. I can talk to people, I can have a true social experience as I play. Granted, it may be because it's primarily a team game and SC2 is not -- but nonetheless. It's true. Hell, it took a few weeks, if I recall correctly, from release until chat channels were even implemented. The only way to add friends initially was to know them in real life or to talk to them post game.
On February 05 2012 07:25 Kritzkrieg wrote: education If one were to attempt to learn SC2 solely on their own merits, they would forever be doomed into wondering why one base 14 worker at 15 minutes isnt winning the game for them. That is because SC2's in game learning format comes from its single player, an experience related to multiplayer starcraft in name only. Yes the game has tech trees and a "challenge mode" that reminds users gently that some units are better in some situations rather than others, but ultimately Starcraft forces users to learn to play through third party communities, youtube, and outside replay webpages.
While I agree with you in regard to the learning curve of the campaign, I think you're overgeneralizing. Even though there are even some campaign missions that actually reward bad macro (for example, if you're doomed to hold the line for 20 minutes, you gain nothing from having mined out your minerals at 15 minutes compared to 20), you seem to underestimate the scenario challenges. At least in my opinion, some of those do actually a decent job at introducing new players into multiplayer gameplay... for example, good luck at getting gold at "Opening Gambit" without a fast expo and relatively consistent SCV production.
Why pour lemon juice over our existing paper cuts? Most SC2 players already know that the Bnet 2.0 UI is trash. It's Blizzard who needs to realise it. I doubt they'll give a fuck whether Dota 2 or any other game has a superior UI. The only way they'll take real notice is if people stop buying their shit and that's not likely to happen.
(Composed on an android phone. Proofread as much as possible, but may contain grammatical errors. The writer apologizes)
Wow. Anyway, Blizzard is probably too lazy to implement any changes to the existing interface seeing as most people will still play the game regardless.
Ok now. First of all, this thread should be in Sports & Games. Second of all, it's pretty much pointless to argue about UI of this two games (as was mentioned earlier) because you want completely different things from this UI in them.
Speaking from HoN perspective (haven't tried DotA2 but all the features seem the same) it is nice to have game re-connect feature, but it would be pointless to have it in any kind of RTS. The only place I could see it being useful would be in team games, but even then if you disconnect even for a minute and you come back you'll usually be so far behind that it's ridiculous. Other cool features like custom item builds you can create for your heroes in HoN are nice but would be dumb in RTS.
Things that HoN has, SC2 hasn't and should: 1. Proper clan and chat management. 2. AWESOME spectator mode (best spectator mode I've seen in any game). 3. Every game you play is saved on the servers, you can then share it (just give game number to people) and view it alone or with friends (something I missed in WC3, watching replays with friends, best BW feature ever).
Also, I'm still waiting to check out full HoNTV implementation. You basically get access to tournament vods with commentary etc. from within the game.
On February 06 2012 01:01 Goldbullet wrote: I think I can agree on many of these points but wish that dota had a higher skill ceiling but whatever it is for e-sports I support it!
Could you please elaborate? There is no "ceiling" in DotA, just like there isn't one for SC. You can always be better, faster, smarter. Also, team coordination playing a major part in this game, it's a skill in itself (teamplay, team management, communication etc.).
I see that many people believe that having just 1 unit to control is way easier than chugging out and throwing huge armies at each other. It is not (and if you don't agree, go ahead and download HoN or other game of this type --- as they're f2p --- and see how you do). There are even accomplished BW progamers playing them (check out Testie if you don't believe me) since the competition at the top is pretty huge with all the renowned, sponsored teams and some big money on the line. Take this for example: http://wiki.honreplays.org/index.php?title=Chu`
Chu's made $16950 + gear just in prizes playing HoN since 2010. Era's made around 30k.
Personally I think the SC2 UI is respectable the way it is, doesn't detract from the experience much because of how much time i spend in-game anyway, where I don't care much about the interface. But it could be soooo much better and all the features the OP mentions would make it possible for me to actually be on BNet and enjoy something other than the gameplay...
On February 06 2012 00:41 Kukaracha wrote: Change the title please, unless you truly believe that a better UI equals a better game.
He's saying that SC2's UI is going to be D2's UI's bitch. How does that relate to what you said at all?
Then just write "SC2's UI is going to be Dota2's UI's bitch". Or change it and say "SC2's instruction manual is going to be Dota2's intruction manual's bitch" and realize how silly this thread is.
UI doesn't count for many people who are already into SC2, nor will it count for many others. An interesting aspect is to see how poor SC2's UI is but I don't see the correlation between that and, say, FIFA 2120's great UI.
I just dont see how this comparison is relevant in any way.
On February 06 2012 02:12 Jibba wrote: Why would reconnect not be a great thing in SC2? o.o
People's computers crash or the internet goes nuts all the time. No one's behind after they reconnect, because you pause...
1. Not everyone is nice enough to pause (although I can see this being useful for tournament purposes). 2. What with all the people who just ragequit? Are you willing to wait 5 min, playing against a bot because someone left the game with no intention of returning? (Note: pausing the game stops the timer)
In my opinion, in a game like SC2, the ways to abuse such feature far outweight any benefits it would give.
On February 05 2012 07:29 Najda wrote: It's already common knowledge that SC2's UI is bad. Also, every feature you listed of DotA2, HoN already has, so I wouldn't expect the release of a new game to be this tremendous wakeup call you're making it to be.
Pretty sure you couldn't spec live games until DoTA 2 came out. BLC was the first game I had seen ever to do that.
On February 05 2012 07:29 Najda wrote: It's already common knowledge that SC2's UI is bad. Also, every feature you listed of DotA2, HoN already has, so I wouldn't expect the release of a new game to be this tremendous wakeup call you're making it to be.
Pretty sure you couldn't spec live games until DoTA 2 came out. BLC was the first game I had seen ever to do that.
Guild Wars? This feature is present since 2005.
Edit: And you can connect to spec players in game in HoN too.
It will soon be common knowledge that SC2's UI does not cut the mustard and will require fundamental changes to stay at the top of the heap where it belongs
This is at least the 2nd thread in, oh, 2 days and about the 1000th this year. I'm pretty sure the message people have complaints has gotten through at this point. But yeah the Dota2 ui is nice. I'm sure Blizzard will steal some bits from it to use in their own, it's what they do well.
On February 05 2012 07:25 Kritzkrieg wrote: I love Starcraft, and I love blizzard. But their wake up call is coming. It will soon be common knowledge that SC2's UI does not cut the mustard and will require fundamental changes to stay at the top of the heap where it belongs.
No. Maybe it will be common knowledge for the people who already think there is an epic battle of UIs going on, but the majority of players will continue not giving too much of a shit.
On February 05 2012 07:46 DCRed wrote: Dota(1&2) mini-map, staying the same since '03.
No but really, Valve hasn't touched the gameplay itself that much, which is more than sad really.
Why? DotA is the best game of its genre. You don't need the fancy bells and whistles of LoL and keeping the same names makes it easier for veterans than HoN. DotA is the best, why change it?
Dota 2 UI is fantastic. It is so true that Starcraft should step up their game to fit the new standards. One thing i would absolutely piss my self to see is the viewing of games that Dota 2 has. I would love to just log in and have a whole lost of games I could watch. Knowing Blizzard it takes a looonnggg time before anything to actually be changed to their games.
People defending HoN you have to realize that even at release like 95% of their content is taken directly from DotA. (minus a few original heroes and some shitty maps). Now that DotA 2 beta has been released they've just been bitching about it while their taking their ideas. Even their new "alt avatar" bull shit is pretty much just what the DotA 2 Heroes look like.
yeah SC2 UI is pretty bad, then again I spend 5 min in SC2 UI per hour in sc2 . Other 55 min im just playing actual game... Nothing to do here *flies away*
On February 06 2012 02:36 Jusciax wrote: Can't believe you're comparing two completely different genre games, which have different learning curves, UI requirements etc. Waste of a thread tbh.
You can scream and kick and cry all you want that they are different games, it doesn't take away from the fact that Dota 2's UI shits all over Battle.net 0.2's UI and provides a far better experience for newer players getting into it. I don't know why Blizzard doesn't just take the time to make their Interface better -- the game is fucking awesome and trumps over a lot of things these days, but fuck, man ;_;
Makes me sad that the only thing holding back one of the greatest competitive games ever made is a shitty UI.
Here's what would invigorate the falling bnet population around the world.
Blizzard patch 1.5
*Players will now be able to choose to enter a que against other players of similar MMR at no risk of losing or gaining points towards their ladder rank. Players will be able to also choose to allow themselves to be challenged by lower mmr players or by higher mmr players at their own risk! This is intended to allow players to play against one another to prepare themselves for the real ladder competition of Battle Net!
*Clans are now available! A player must first make a charter for said clan along with the clan's emblem. Next a player must have the signatures of 10 other players not already in a clan in order to create the clan. A clan's founder can then assign officers, ranks, and news alerts for their corresponding clan channel!
*The match history of each player now have replays attached to them. However, if one player in the corresponding match has this feature turned off, then the replay will not be available to be viewed by anyone other than the players that played in that match.
*Replays are now available to be hosted as a game so that replays may be shared over Battle Net.
*All chat windows now include timestamps in addition to the ability to be rescaled according to the user.
*Region lock now no longer exists, however, GM ranks per region is still in effect.
*When typing in an incorrect password the user will be prompted to re-enter the password in the password window instead of the username window.
On February 05 2012 14:08 Meta wrote: On the topic of things DotA 2 should copy from HoN: Being able to throw your quelling axe at creeps to last hit them every 30 seconds. Wards, health potion and mana potion at secret shop (although keep all the secret shop items there too) Concede vote function
As an aside, things HoN should copy from DotA 2: Auto-building items even if you don't have room for all the compenents. Smoke of Deceit
I haven't played HoN myself, but buying pots in the lane seems really weird. Can't you stay in lane for ever with absolutely no effort? Either way, irrelevant to UI discussion.
The quelling blade thing could be interesting, but has nothing to do with Dota 2's UI and a change of that in Dota 2 would likely follow/be followed by the same change in Dota vanilla.
I would how ever like to see a forfeit vote option. I presume valve has got a reason for not implementing it, as it's not hard to do and they haven't been slow to implement a whole bunch of other useful features.
All the features he mentioned make the game easier and more noob friendly, decreasing the amount of skill neccessary to stay alive early game, the most important part of the laning phase.
On February 05 2012 07:29 Najda wrote: It's already common knowledge that SC2's UI is bad. Also, every feature you listed of DotA2, HoN already has, so I wouldn't expect the release of a new game to be this tremendous wakeup call you're making it to be.
Pretty sure you couldn't spec live games until DoTA 2 came out. BLC was the first game I had seen ever to do that.
Guild Wars? This feature is present since 2005.
Edit: And you can connect to spec players in game in HoN too.
On February 05 2012 14:08 Meta wrote: On the topic of things DotA 2 should copy from HoN: Being able to throw your quelling axe at creeps to last hit them every 30 seconds. Wards, health potion and mana potion at secret shop (although keep all the secret shop items there too) Concede vote function
As an aside, things HoN should copy from DotA 2: Auto-building items even if you don't have room for all the compenents. Smoke of Deceit
I haven't played HoN myself, but buying pots in the lane seems really weird. Can't you stay in lane for ever with absolutely no effort? Either way, irrelevant to UI discussion.
The quelling blade thing could be interesting, but has nothing to do with Dota 2's UI and a change of that in Dota 2 would likely follow/be followed by the same change in Dota vanilla.
I would how ever like to see a forfeit vote option. I presume valve has got a reason for not implementing it, as it's not hard to do and they haven't been slow to implement a whole bunch of other useful features.
All the features he mentioned make the game easier and more noob friendly, decreasing the amount of skill neccessary to stay alive early game, the most important part of the laning phase.
Actually the quelling blade change was to give a needed advantage to melee carries (at least in HoN) as the competitive meta for a long time turned into only ranged-agi as your carries in every single game and you would never see a melee carry ever in a competitive match. The change with quelling blade was one of a couple changes that made melee carries viable in competitive matches again. It had nothing to do with making it more noob friendly.
I haven't played HoN myself, but buying pots in the lane seems really weird. Can't you stay in lane for ever with absolutely no effort? Either way, irrelevant to UI discussion.
It's in the secret shop, not the side shop. So you can't really get them while laning still.
On February 06 2012 06:43 rwrzr wrote: Need some cool blend of WC3/Diablo II and HoN/DotA2.
Blizzard should just blend the 4 and then add in some inherent flaws and quirkiness to distract users from the blatant copying.
I really do love the WC3 UI. It's simplistic and efficient. When I'm on Starcraft 2 it takes around 5-10 seconds to completely load the page, and I notice my FPS drops quite a bit between screen transitions and loading. Though this just might be my internet.
On February 05 2012 08:07 Bswhunter wrote: Shame the point about education is moot because of the community of dota
Can someone elaborate on that? Not really familiar with the community of fota.
I find that the DotA community has (for the most part) matured greatly from the past few years.
Really? Jeez I'm happy I wasn't playing years ago, because as much as dota is an amazing game, the community is probably the worst gaming community I've come across, and I've been involved in at least 7-8 competitive games. The amount of harassment and trolling in that game is at a completely different level than any other game. In my opinion it's the only downside to dota, hopefully it'll change with release.
On February 05 2012 08:07 Bswhunter wrote: Shame the point about education is moot because of the community of dota
Can someone elaborate on that? Not really familiar with the community of fota.
I find that the DotA community has (for the most part) matured greatly from the past few years.
Really? Jeez I'm happy I wasn't playing years ago, because as much as dota is an amazing game, the community is probably the worst gaming community I've come across, and I've been involved in at least 7-8 competitive games. The amount of harassment and trolling in that game is at a completely different level than any other game. In my opinion it's the only downside to dota, hopefully it'll change with release.
Worst than CS?
Dude, DotA community is way worse than CS.
EDIT: I will clarify this a bit
In CS, you can join a public server and do horribly and people wont really care that much. You might get a comment or two, but thats about it.
In DotA, you cant join a public game and do horribly. You will get trolled and talked down to into oblivion until you leave the game. This was my personal experience, and why I stopped playing DotA. I played a couple dozen games then stopped because everybody just called me terrible. Not a single person offered any kind of tips.
*Players will now be able to choose to enter a que against other players of similar MMR at no risk of losing or gaining points towards their ladder rank. Players will be able to also choose to allow themselves to be challenged by lower mmr players or by higher mmr players at their own risk! This is intended to allow players to play against one another to prepare themselves for the real ladder competition of Battle Net!
A ladder without a ladder? What for, I mean seriously? Just queue in the normal way.
*Clans are now available! A player must first make a charter for said clan along with the clan's emblem. Next a player must have the signatures of 10 other players not already in a clan in order to create the clan. A clan's founder can then assign officers, ranks, and news alerts for their corresponding clan channel!
I don't see the point, really. I mean, I do not use SC2 to chat, socialize, etc.. there are other, far better tools for that.
*The match history of each player now have replays attached to them. However, if one player in the corresponding match has this feature turned off, then the replay will not be available to be viewed by anyone other than the players that played in that match.
*Replays are now available to be hosted as a game so that replays may be shared over Battle Net.
*All chat windows now include timestamps in addition to the ability to be rescaled according to the user.
*Region lock now no longer exists, however, GM ranks per region is still in effect.
*When typing in an incorrect password the user will be prompted to re-enter the password in the password window instead of the username window.
All nice to have things. But really no gamebreakers at all. You folks trying to compare SC2 to those chat-centric multiplayer games with all nice, warm and fuzzy social interaction UI elements might miss the actually great part of the SC2 interface: that it's boiled down to what actually matters. I'm not saying there is no room for improvements (replays as a media source come to mind), but chat, clans, etc.? Pretty useless imo.
*Players will now be able to choose to enter a que against other players of similar MMR at no risk of losing or gaining points towards their ladder rank. Players will be able to also choose to allow themselves to be challenged by lower mmr players or by higher mmr players at their own risk! This is intended to allow players to play against one another to prepare themselves for the real ladder competition of Battle Net!
A ladder without a ladder? What for, I mean seriously? Just queue in the normal way.
Seriously? .....
You don't see the HUGE benefit of having players being able to practice with others at the same mmr in an easy way? It would remove all "Ladder angst" for those that want to play but for whatever reason are too scared to lose.
You're comparing a MOBA to an RTS. Now I've been a Valve fan since forever, and the HL series is in my top 3 FPS games/series, but you're making DotA 2 to be a lot more than it actually is heh.
On February 05 2012 08:07 Bswhunter wrote: Shame the point about education is moot because of the community of dota
Can someone elaborate on that? Not really familiar with the community of fota.
I find that the DotA community has (for the most part) matured greatly from the past few years.
Really? Jeez I'm happy I wasn't playing years ago, because as much as dota is an amazing game, the community is probably the worst gaming community I've come across, and I've been involved in at least 7-8 competitive games. The amount of harassment and trolling in that game is at a completely different level than any other game. In my opinion it's the only downside to dota, hopefully it'll change with release.
Worst than CS?
Except for 6 years back when I'd occasionally change my name to [USA] USA #1 and go on Russian, German, and Swedish servers and spray US flags while kicking ass and taking names (increasing their rage even further), the CS community (especially from those countries, where it's pretty big) both in-game and on online forums was pretty awesome.
On February 06 2012 17:06 BuddhaMonk wrote: Sorry to burst your bubble OP, but Valve is in it for the money just as much as Blizzard is.
Of course they are. However, it seems Valve still remembers that constantly working to improve their products and listenening to their customers (and actually taking action) is a big part of that. Heck, this was what made Blizzard so good (and rich) in the first place. Now Blizzard just makes what they think is good enough and leaves it at that. I understand maximising the revenue and minimising the costs is the key to all business, but when that starts to eat into the quality of the products, you have a problem.
On February 06 2012 17:06 BuddhaMonk wrote: Sorry to burst your bubble OP, but Valve is in it for the money just as much as Blizzard is.
Of course they are. However, it seems Valve still remembers that constantly working to improve their products and listenening to their customers (and actually taking action) is a big part of that. Heck, this was what made Blizzard so good (and rich) in the first place. Now Blizzard just makes what they think is good enough and leaves it at that. I understand maximising the revenue and minimising the costs is the key to all business, but when that starts to eat into the quality of the products, you have a problem.
Funny, I remember the competitive CS community wanting a great CS follow up, but Valve didn't actually listen to the community and they just made a game that they thought was good enough (CS:S).
The main difference here is that Valve has better PR than Blizzard, mostly because Valve is a private company and doesn't have to report publicly to investors like Blizzard does which people construe as meaning Blizzard is only in it for the money.
On February 06 2012 04:58 Arathore wrote: Dota 2 UI is fantastic. It is so true that Starcraft should step up their game to fit the new standards. One thing i would absolutely piss my self to see is the viewing of games that Dota 2 has. I would love to just log in and have a whole lost of games I could watch. Knowing Blizzard it takes a looonnggg time before anything to actually be changed to their games
I wonder when blizzard is gonna fix the coding of SC2 and Bnet0.2 so that an observer/referee lagging/having connection issues don't affect the players and the game. I don't get why this inter-connectivity has to be between spectators, the players and the server being played on. It's stupid, it's bad gamedesign and its' shame on Blizzard for making it this way.
Does a spectator in HLTV make an entire server and both teams lag becasue he's having issues with his net for a few minutes? NO!
I don't agree on the accessibility point. When I'm ingame, I would actually like zero contact with the rest of SC2 (or at least when I'm in a ladder game). What I DO want is better game-restore features.
On February 06 2012 04:58 Arathore wrote: Dota 2 UI is fantastic. It is so true that Starcraft should step up their game to fit the new standards. One thing i would absolutely piss my self to see is the viewing of games that Dota 2 has. I would love to just log in and have a whole lost of games I could watch. Knowing Blizzard it takes a looonnggg time before anything to actually be changed to their games
I wonder when blizzard is gonna fix the coding of SC2 and Bnet0.2 so that an observer/referee lagging/having connection issues don't affect the players and the game. I don't get why this inter-connectivity has to be between spectators, the players and the server being played on. It's stupid, it's bad gamedesign and its' shame on Blizzard for making it this way.
Does a spectator in HLTV make an entire server and both teams lag becasue he's having issues with his net for a few minutes? NO!
Just so you know, in CS there's also a spectator mode that is exactly like the spectator mode in SC2. It's not bad game design to have a spectator mode, they should simply have both features.
On February 06 2012 04:58 Arathore wrote: Dota 2 UI is fantastic. It is so true that Starcraft should step up their game to fit the new standards. One thing i would absolutely piss my self to see is the viewing of games that Dota 2 has. I would love to just log in and have a whole lost of games I could watch. Knowing Blizzard it takes a looonnggg time before anything to actually be changed to their games
I wonder when blizzard is gonna fix the coding of SC2 and Bnet0.2 so that an observer/referee lagging/having connection issues don't affect the players and the game. I don't get why this inter-connectivity has to be between spectators, the players and the server being played on. It's stupid, it's bad gamedesign and its' shame on Blizzard for making it this way.
Does a spectator in HLTV make an entire server and both teams lag becasue he's having issues with his net for a few minutes? NO!
Just so you know, in CS there's also a spectator mode that is exactly like the spectator mode in SC2. It's not bad game design to have a spectator mode, they should simply have both features.
Yes, you're absolutely right but you completely missed the point. Why should someone observing the game affect the stability of the game?
i do not want to be spammed while playing. i do not need the game to offer me streams / observerspots / devblogs, i can find those on my own and better. (why would the common, even casual gamer be unable to use a browser?)
the game needs to provide a good way to play it, thus there is need for:
clansupport / yet another chatoverhaul a better custommapsystem / would like more custommaps in general
dota is dota, rts is rts, different games, different stories, copying these features will actually do nothing for me...
On February 05 2012 07:28 Sickkiee wrote: Well Dota 2 is a newer game than SC2. Then again, I think we're all still waiting for the new Battle.net (I think LOL).
Then again all I want are proper SEA servers for Australians.
your first point doesn't matter lol, battle net 2.0 is absolutely featureless and atrociously designed.
On February 06 2012 18:10 Naphal wrote: i do not want to be spammed while playing. i do not need the game to offer me streams / observerspots / devblogs, i can find those on my own and better. (why would the common, even casual gamer be unable to use a browser?)
the game needs to provide a good way to play it, thus there is need for:
clansupport / yet another chatoverhaul a better custommapsystem / would like more custommaps in general
dota is dota, rts is rts, different games, different stories, copying these features will actually do nothing for me...
What about player stats, reconnect support, jump-in spectator functionality, clan system?
Valve are the real mac daddy's of gaming, so ofcourse there'll be features in the game that will make most games out there quake in their pantalons. It seems really nice that they'll push the UI forwards, there's just one thing that "bothers" me with your post... The chat thingy.
I'm going to use an Einstein quote which I learned from Civ 5 and completely warp it's meaning in a most cunning way:
"'If a man is chatting up a sassy lad in SC2 while playing ladder, he is simply not giving dat micro/macro the attention it deserves.'
On February 06 2012 18:32 CutieBK wrote: Valve are the real mac daddy's of gaming, so ofcourse there'll be features in the game that will make most games out there quake in their pantalons. It seems really nice that they'll push the UI forwards, there's just one thing that "bothers" me with your post... The chat thingy.
I'm going to use an Einstein quote which I learned from Civ 5 and completely warp it's meaning in a most cunning way:
"'If a man is chatting up a sassy lad in SC2 while playing ladder, he is simply not giving dat micro/macro the attention it deserves.'
That quote was so bad it made me nauseous.
A man "chatting up" another man should focus more on his game and less on trying to pick up members of the same sex? What even happened there?
I think some of the most needed features for sc2 in a new battle.net. I think blizzard could do some very good things with it, and the community has already given them lots of ideas to work with.
Do it Blizzard, give us battle.net awesomeness! <3
On February 06 2012 18:32 CutieBK wrote: Valve are the real mac daddy's of gaming, so ofcourse there'll be features in the game that will make most games out there quake in their pantalons. It seems really nice that they'll push the UI forwards, there's just one thing that "bothers" me with your post... The chat thingy.
I'm going to use an Einstein quote which I learned from Civ 5 and completely warp it's meaning in a most cunning way:
"'If a man is chatting up a sassy lad in SC2 while playing ladder, he is simply not giving dat micro/macro the attention it deserves.'
That quote was so bad it made me nauseous.
A man "chatting up" another man should focus more on his game and less on trying to pick up members of the same sex? What even happened there?
You even called him a sassy lad ew
No, that's not what I meant at all XD
It was about chatting while playing! If you chat instead of micro/macro you are not paying enough attention... everything else was just filler. And since when is sassy lad a bad thing to say? I'd kill to be sassy!
I really dislike the way people are using the term UI as some generic term that covers everything and anything to do with battlenet and then applying it to SC2 the game.
The UI of the game SC2 is how you interact with the game. It's the SCV build menu, it's how you move a unit by right-clicking, it's the hotkeys you press to hatching 5 mutalisks.
The UI of Battlenet is what you use when you search for a game, host a custom game, enter the single player. There is an intentionally small crossover of these, as they are very separate things.
I don't know who plays SC2 and while in the middle of a game wishes they could have a chat window fill up their screen. That's not what I'm looking for in SC2, so don't assume what you want is what everyone wants.
There are some definite improvements that could be made to the battlenet experience, and I think it's all part of Blizzards plan to roll it into the expansions. They're not stupid, and have a good idea of what works and what doesn't. Give them some credit. They are in this to make money (and why shouldn't they be?) and want all of us to happily buy their expansions, which is why there will be additional "features" coming as part of that.
On February 06 2012 18:32 CutieBK wrote: Valve are the real mac daddy's of gaming, so ofcourse there'll be features in the game that will make most games out there quake in their pantalons. It seems really nice that they'll push the UI forwards, there's just one thing that "bothers" me with your post... The chat thingy.
I'm going to use an Einstein quote which I learned from Civ 5 and completely warp it's meaning in a most cunning way:
"'If a man is chatting up a sassy lad in SC2 while playing ladder, he is simply not giving dat micro/macro the attention it deserves.'
That quote was so bad it made me nauseous.
A man "chatting up" another man should focus more on his game and less on trying to pick up members of the same sex? What even happened there?
You even called him a sassy lad ew
No, that's not what I meant at all XD
It was about chatting while playing! If you chat instead of micro/macro you are not paying enough attention... everything else was just filler. And since when is sassy lad a bad thing to say? I'd kill to be sassy!
I think you mean "SaSe", not sassy. It's understandable, they sound very similar.
I'm just curious as to why most of these things matter. When are you going to want a SEPARATE screen for messaging your friends. You'd never be able to talk to them like that anyway in game as past 5 minutes in you'd need that APM. And for experience. I speak for myself but I think a lot of other people think this way too. I like the fact that you can't learn the game via blizzard. They aren't your babies if your really dedicated to learning the game then research it like we all did. That gets TL more people too as always the best suggestion to a newer player looking to improve, "go to teamliquid.net!!"
On February 06 2012 18:58 Pure-SC2 wrote: I really dislike the way people are using the term UI as some generic term that covers everything and anything to do with battlenet and then applying it to SC2 the game.
The UI of the game SC2 is how you interact with the game. It's the SCV build menu, it's how you move a unit by right-clicking, it's the hotkeys you press to hatching 5 mutalisks.
The UI of Battlenet is what you use when you search for a game, host a custom game, enter the single player. There is an intentionally small crossover of these, as they are very separate things.
I don't know who plays SC2 and while in the middle of a game wishes they could have a chat window fill up their screen. That's not what I'm looking for in SC2, so don't assume what you want is what everyone wants.
There are some definite improvements that could be made to the battlenet experience, and I think it's all part of Blizzards plan to roll it into the expansions. They're not stupid, and have a good idea of what works and what doesn't. Give them some credit. They are in this to make money (and why shouldn't they be?) and want all of us to happily buy their expansions, which is why there will be additional "features" coming as part of that.
I will not buy their expansions because there are no features.
It's a joke.
Look at DotA 2, their feature set is new, useful, and awesome. Now look at B.net 2.0, it's trash.
Your point about accessibility doesn't make any sense. There is an option to hide the menu, which I gladly remove. I most certainly do not want a constant chat spam when I am playing. Yes, SC2 could probably use a bit more in-game educating system for the lowest leagues. Not for anyone else though, streams would benefit in a different way. Also when I hear UI, I think about my tools while playing. It seems you mean Battle.net 2.0 in general, so I kinda dislike the title of the thread.
Comparing MOBA game with RTS is pretty wrong ,imo. On accessibility... There is no SC2 player that will ever want to chat with someone while he is playing. It just can't happen. In dota you have down time when you die or in the picking phase so you can chat, but in RTS there is no such thing. I don't even know how to comment the education part. Of course you can't learn SC2 "solely on your own merits". Even if you have access to every single replay in the b.net you still can't learn the game, because you don't know what to look for. So you need other source anyway.
But seriously is that week dedicated to the "terrible UI of SC2" ? As it was said before the UI of the game is AWESOME, period. Personally I don't think that b.net is THAT bad either : Chat windows/Channels - I don't care really, but it's important for some people to chat in game... for some reason... so it will be good. Custom games - That is needed. Replays with friends - that is needed too and it will be in HotS. LAN mode for offline tournaments only will be good too. Those are the things that b.net lacks atm, but meh... I can still enjoy the game even without them.
Why are there people in here that say you shall not comapre the UI's of Dota 2 and the Bnet 2.0?
Dota 2's UI would work for SC2 like a charm and grant WAY more features. Why do you want less features? Is there any reason to it except not wanting to compare your holy RTS-Grail to a Moba? .
Stuff that comes to mind that Dota 2 has and SC 2 doesn't:
In Dota 2 you can connect to all servers and thus they actually make an effort to improve on delay issues. You can just join ongoing games to spectate and there are matches with pros/high level players recommended for you to spectate. Dota 2 has reconnect and will afaik have LAN. While watching replays you have a highlight feature that fast forwards through the "boring" stuff and gives you the important scenes only. Also games can have a built in delay for spectators to prevent cheating and have an autocam that automatically shows you where stuff is happening (hands off keyboard ). Also they plan to have automatic audio saving in the replay so casters can just join a game and add commentary for spectators and the replay. You can download all the replays in the game client and you will also be able to watch replays with friends.
Blizz, are you even trying -__ If only Blizz would at least give us custom game system of WC3, and not this "join game" bullshit.
edit: Also imo Dota 2 is what Starcraft 2 should have been. The original game, improved and with better graphics, UI etc. No changes for the sake of changing stuff. And no over the top noobyfying the game.
Just for the record, dota is lot slower gameplay wise than sc2, specially early - mid game, your first point of accessing menu and chat is valid, but in sc2 you dont really have time at all for such, but if needed, you can still pause and chat / etc.
Tbh, I don't really mind about being restricted on options while being ingame. You're supposed to play the game when ur in it, not get distracted by all the UI options that you may have. Although, when you're obsing or something, it would be neat yes.
As for the point of education. That's 100% an opinion that differs greatly between people. "Dota noob friendly lololol" or stuff like that could be said as a response I think blizz did a decent job with vs AI, Coop vs AI, and the tutorials.
Haha praising a game with its origin in a blizzard game, I like it. Lets skip the innovation overboard and just make copys of copys with better graphics, or you could just buy ea games please. Dota2 really just picks stuff up from what is already there when the great age of esport games was (where ton of rts came out with in some part innovations people always wanted for multiplayer). The games weren't really successful though as they had to compete with the already old warcraft3.
Well i am seeing the good side of things, atleast now blizzard knows that console stuff sucks for pc gamers x3. (but since you can sell console games overprized its always nice to release an unplayable version of a pc game on xbox360) And i remember bnet 1.0s first moments. So i am not that worried. Especially compared to that dota2 ui ^^;
On February 06 2012 20:58 imPermanenCe wrote: Tbh, I don't really mind about being restricted on options while being ingame. You're supposed to play the game when ur in it, not get distracted by all the UI options that you may have. Although, when you're obsing or something, it would be neat yes.
As for the point of education. That's 100% an opinion that differs greatly between people. "Dota noob friendly lololol" or stuff like that could be said as a response I think blizz did a decent job with vs AI, Coop vs AI, and the tutorials.
edit: but ofcourse SC2 UI sux nontheless :D
By that logic, we shouldn't have any features at all, no custom games, no chat, no icons, no achievements, no channels.
Valve is an amazing company, who has traditionally made amazing games, and pioneered Steam, which regardless of your personal opinions on, is a highly successful system.
Is it any surprise that Dota 2 is so polished with a company like Valve behind it? Hopefully Blizzard does what they do best, which is see other people's good ideas, steal them, polish them, and make them ever better.
On February 06 2012 17:45 Dumbtruck wrote: It doesn't matter if Dota2 has a good UI. The gameplay is rubbish. A slowpaced farmfest.
Maybe some HoN? As has been said before, overall a better UI and faster gameplay. I think more people need to be made aware of HoN. It's something the SC2 community would enjoy, especially due to the hate games like LoL get for appealing to casual gamers. The game is fast, complex, and competitively balanced. Sadly the community is small and perhaps dying. It's a shame to see a game that's so dedicated to being the best game of its genre tossed away or even compared to a game like League of Legends, which while fun for a lot of people, is not developed in the spirit of hosting high level play.
Dota 2 will indeed have LAN. They are releasing the dedicated server client, I'm pretty sure it already has a steam Appid. They used it at the invitational and had everyone connect locally. In the future any tournament will be able to do the same with a box that can run the server.
It's unrealistic, but my dream for the RTS ESPORTS future is that someone makes a mod of Dota2, taking everything that Valve has done to the source engine and making an RTS game so that the community doesn't have to be at the mercy of Blizzard anymore. Of course it would be a lot of work, and getting people to play an RTS that isn't made by Blizzard is no easy hill to climb either.
Competition is always a good thing, and Blizzard is sitting on top of their throne as a fat king living of their plast glories. I hope Valve and other companies wake them up, because even though i don't care about blizzard, they have the exclusive rights to produce starcraft, so if they fail, so does SC.
On February 05 2012 07:52 atwar wrote: who the fuk cares about dota 2 ? everything is copied from HoN.
User was warned for this post
you know hon started as a direct "copy/port" of dota 1 ?
also i can i only agree that valve has done a great job in making the game easier to learn for newer players, and making it more directly connected with the competitive dota scene than blizzard has. I think you will be able to litterally go and watch promatches in the game (not 100% sure, but in HoN you were able to watch it all in replays, and they introduced streams embeded in the game of promatches, and i think valve is doing something similar), while in sc2 all you got is a couple ads for the biggest tournaments.
On February 05 2012 07:46 zakmaa wrote: The only thing I worry about for DOTA 2 is the lack of involvement from VALVe. I take this from my experience playing CS:S for years, but they never did anything about that game for the longest time, and when they did, the community was (for the most part) outraged at the changes they made. Of course, CS:S is a lot smaller than DOTA 2 will be, I assume they'll actually be active with the community with this one.
Off topic: it's VALVe not ValvE,
It's neither of these and it makes me a bit mad every time I see someone spell it like this. That is simply how they stylize the name in their logos. When they write about the actual company it's just Valve. Their name has never been rediculously capitalized. Please don't ever tell people this again. Thanks.
Battle.net 2.0 has been really lack luster and Blizzard doesn't seem in a rush to improve it. UMS lobby is my biggest problem with the SC2 UI. Though there is nothing to do about that in DoTA2, I can still compare the quality of what they offer and DoTA2 offers far better quality.
On February 05 2012 07:47 Al Bundy wrote: Everything is so vague in your post. Comparing a moba to a RTS? Not the greatest idea, for obvious reasons. Anyway, about the "education" paragraph, I don't know what to say man, so here we go:
We're talking about UI comparisons. An RTS could be compared to a MOBA or FPS or sports game for all I care when looking at the out-of-game UI.
On February 05 2012 10:34 Mataza wrote: It´s not comparing apples to oranges.
DotA2 essentially just took WC3 UI and improved upon it, because DotA was on WC3 TFT. The piss poor thing is, that Battlenet 2.0 fails against Battlenet 1.0 It´s completely beyond reason why they don´t have things they already had years ago.
Yes, LAN is removed for copyright reasons. I can live with that. But why were all the other things removed?
QFT. Blizzard had a great/working product years ago- WC3 Battle.net, why would they go and throw everything away and replace with an inferior one?!? I hope the whole Battle.net 0.2 team is fired and they fix it in HotS, but I highly doubt it...
The OP's sweeping statements are way out of proportion to the minor examples he brings up. Being able to bring the main menu from in-game, and download replays from in-game rather than from a browser, are things that are not a big deal at all and certainly not game-changers. I actually could care less about those things.
The good thing about Blizzard these days is they wait until the "competition" one ups them in their brand new games, and then all of a sudden Blizzard does a patch that includes the features and they are done a little bit better. Give it time.
Bnet 0.2 being really bad is nothing new. It is no surprise that Dota2 made something better, because it is really not that hard. Blizzard should really put more effort into develloping a proper client. I still find it incredible that they don't seem to recognize how important it is to have a good one.
I don't see why DOTA 2 is being regarded as such an amazing product, when it's just a COPY of a warcraft 3 mod with shiny graphics. It has the same gameplay mechanics, the same map layout, even the interface is similar. Obviously when you only need to port a game to a newer game engine the majority of the work is going to fall on making it as accessible and user friendly as possible. Valve have a lot of talented designers and artists, doing that is no big deal.
SC2's in-game user interface is close to perfect. It's the best in an RTS game to date. BNET 2.0 on the other hand is BAD. So if we are talking about the main menu, then yeah I guess it's bad, but the in game UI is just brilliant, no complaints there.
I literally couldn't believe my eyes when I first got into the dota2 beta half a year ago. It was so sexy and easy, chat channels? done, spectating any pro you want any time you want? done, awesome friendlist? done. I can't wait to see what they will do with the clan features. It's such a shame that bnet2 sucks ass.
And to give you a comparison between the two companies. Neither game had time stamps in chat. In dota2 after some whining and a couple of threads in the dev forums we now have time stamps. We all know how that turned out in sc2.
Yes, SC2's UI is bad. Husky's Wc3 battle.net video reminds us all of what battle.net used to be like. When I first watched his video, I noticed the magnifying glass next to the battle.net button and instantly remembered that being able to switch between servers was simple and easy. I forgot about all of the other cool features over the years....thanks Husky for taking the time to remind everyone.
I really hope that battle.net gets re-vamped with HoTS. They really have a lot of work to do, and I hope they don't push their lacking UI to the back burner for too much longer.
@OP - Thank you for taking the time to write this and to point out the competition and the differences between these 2 products. I found it to be informative and helpful.
On February 07 2012 06:04 papaz wrote: Granted their products are outstanding but so are Valves and they somehow are really fast.
Valve = fast? I don't think you've done your research: Valve Time. They've been working on DOTA 2 (a simple game compared to SC) for quite a long time too...
Both companies take their sweet time and cancel projects as they see fit. Remember how long and how many iterations it took to get to Team Fortress 2? Where is Half-Life Episode 3? Half-Life 3? Please don't take this as a bash against Valve as they are my favorite game company along with Blizzard. Quality Assurance is probably the biggest similarity between Valve and Blizzard.
On February 05 2012 08:44 ArvickHero wrote: some images to compare would be nice
2 Basic images from the interface.
It allows for quickly tabbing, you can easily see friends to the right(steam friends)
Each tab will quickly bring you to the features.
Top live matches, more then often from pros can be accessed easily in the system of most popular matches, you can then watch them play.
its overlay is clear
Too much clutter. An option to hide some of the panels would be nice. 80-20 rule. Most of the time I'll just be chatting or looking for a quick game, those features works well enough in battle.net.
On February 05 2012 08:44 ArvickHero wrote: some images to compare would be nice
2 Basic images from the interface.
It allows for quickly tabbing, you can easily see friends to the right(steam friends)
Each tab will quickly bring you to the features.
Top live matches, more then often from pros can be accessed easily in the system of most popular matches, you can then watch them play.
its overlay is clear
Too much clutter. An option to hide some of the panels would be nice. 80-20 rule. Most of the time I'll just be chatting or looking for a quick game, those features works well enough in battle.net.
If you think that's clutter, I'd love for you to see an interface that's actually cluttered.
Having a lot of options on one screen isn't inherently cluttered.
Does the SC2 UI do what it needs to do? Yeah, you can ladder and talk to friends and setup custom games. However, that's about when the functionality disappears, unfortunately.
On February 05 2012 08:24 Ooshmagoosh wrote: In dota, you right click and press 3 or 4 hotkeys while occasionally waiting for HP / MP to regen. Your teammates yell at you if you do something wrong.
In Starcraft 2, I don't have time to pay attention to my chatboxes or adjust settings after 2 minutes into the game. There is much more to the game than controlling one unit.
This is comparing almonds and oranges
While it might be comparing almonds to oranges, its not true that peeling oranges is easier than peeling almonds when it comes to a competitive level, or just higher level of play.
Dota is much more about knowing what you are allowed to do, how you need to position yourself, when you need to retreat, what you have to watch out for, when you need to pressure and such. You need to know all these factors, for all the different hero and item combinations, and since there are over 100 heroes and over 100 items, the amount of information you need to gather before you can safely lane against all kinds of scenarios is just immense.
Being afk a minute or two during that in a pub game is not as big of a deal, since you can position your hero at a safe location and be fine. Go afk for a minute or two against a good enemy team, and you probably already lost lane dominance and thus the game.
I have been playing Dota for almost 8 years now and i never had a match that equalled any previous match, even though i had plenty of games where the exact same 5 heroes played against the exact same enemy 5 heroes (and my wc3banlist tells me that i have over 6k games accumulated). In sc2 you have scenarios that reoccur pretty frequently, like the 11/11 rax against zerg, and they even have the same outcome frequently aswell, in Dota you dont. The more scenarios you encounter, the more knowledeable you become, and the better you are at laning, ganking, pushing etc.
Dota has probably one of the steepest learning curves, even today, i still learn new stuff almost every day. Just to give an example of what i learned (just yesterday):
In dota there is a day night cycle, during daytime, heroes have a sight range of 1800, while during nighttime, the vision is reduced to 800. There is a hero in Dota, called pudge, that can throw a hook in any direction, and if he manages to latch the hook on someone, he pulls that particular entity to himself.
Now, if you lane against Pudge in the midlane (its basically 2 ramps facing each other with a river inbetween), you always try to stay behind some kind of blockade in order to NOT be hooked by pudge, since his hook latches onto the first target it encounters. Therefore you always try to position your hero behind creeps, if Pudge tries to move around in one way, you move around it the other way, its a constant repositional game to not get hooked by Pudge.
Usually when you lane against pudge, and it becomes nighttime, its very dangeroes to farm inbetween the two ramps (down at the river part), since you cant see whats going on above the enemy ramp (pudge could be anywhere and just be waiting to hook you). Why is this not an issue during daytime? Because during daytime, you can look across the river from your ramp and perfectly see whats going on on the other side, since you have 1800 sight range, and usually you will have a ranged creep above your own ramp spotting across the river for you, thus making it safe to farm down in the river.
That obviously goes the other way aswell, pudge cant look up your ramp during nighttime and you can safely farm from above your ramp with a ranged hero (as long as you constantly reposition yourself, since you briefly show up to enemies you attack). This is already information im pretty sure 50% of dota players dont know about, and 90% of the ones that know dont utilize this information fully to their advantage.
Now comes the part i didnt know about till yesterday. The only way a Pudge down the river could be of any danger to you on your side of the ramp (during nighttime), is if he had placed wards in order to spot across the river for him, but since i was in the lane the whole game, i was quite confident that there werent any wards. Now i was just standing there above my ramp, constantly repositioning myself after each attack, completely abusing the lack of vision pudge had, and he was standing down in the river unable to hook me. Suddenly pudge places a perfect hook into my face and kills me, and i immediately asked how he could have seen me and he just answered that he suddenly had vision. I was about to accuse him of maphack, but was skeptical, since he played pretty poorly.
Later on, i watched the replay like 5 times in order to figure out how he could have seen me, and like i had assumed, there werent any wards. I was about to dismiss it as a lucky hook up the ramp, when i noticed that he actually really had vision up my ramp even though he was standing down in the river. There was another enemy hero above his own ramp (just crossing by, he didnt stay there) but usually during nighttime, no creep or hero can spot across the river, since they only have 800 sight range (instead of 1800), but somehow he gave vision up the ramp. I did know that some heroes had a little more sight range during nighttime, but it never occured to me that some hero other than pudge might come and spot up the ramp for him (since not many heroes have more sight range during nighttime, and the ones that do, only have slightly higher sight range during night, not enough to spot across the river anyways).
I went on and looked up the passing heroes stats and as a matter of fact: http://www.playdota.com/heroes/geomancer Frigging meepo really has 1800 sight range during nighttime. It came to me as a complete shock that meepo out of all heroes, has 1800 sight range during night, like how random is that? There are heroes that are associated with night, and they have more vision during night, but why meepo? But fact of the matter is, he has 1800 sight range, and because of that i got hooked into oblivion by pudge standing down the river.
Its pretty obvious that pudge himself (or meepo for that matter) didnt know why they had vision on me, judging from the chat that occured afterwards, but now i know one more scenario to watch out for when laning against pudge, suffice to say i looked up all the sight ranges of all the heroes in order to never get caught in the same scenario again. I can now tell you that there are a dozen heroes in Dota that have above 800 sight range during nighttime, but only 6 of them have enough extra sight range in order to look across the river (out of over a hundred heroes).
If it ever happens again that one of these heroes is in the same team as pudge and i am at midlane during nighttime, i now know what to watch out for. It might never happen again the same way, but there is advantage in knowing about it.
On February 05 2012 08:44 ArvickHero wrote: some images to compare would be nice
2 Basic images from the interface.
It allows for quickly tabbing, you can easily see friends to the right(steam friends)
Each tab will quickly bring you to the features.
Top live matches, more then often from pros can be accessed easily in the system of most popular matches, you can then watch them play.
its overlay is clear
Too much clutter. An option to hide some of the panels would be nice. 80-20 rule. Most of the time I'll just be chatting or looking for a quick game, those features works well enough in battle.net.
Your post makes no sense, since all of the extended features are hidden behind tabs, which is exactly what you want (hiding stuff). If you dont click on any of them, you wont see any of it.
If it is chatting and playing a quick game for you, then all you need is the play button at the top of the screen and everything else is hidden except for exactly the two features you want. Look at the play tab, its almost completely empty except for the big "find match" button, some self explanatory buttons above that to configure stuff and thats it.
At all times you can see the chatchannels you are in, the party you are in (at the bottom left) and online friends (bottom right). Everything is kept very simple.
Now ill ask you something, when was the last time you actually pressed on the home tab in sc2 and read any of the news that were displayed there? For me it is never, because the news tab is kept extremely small in sc2, as if blizzard doesnt want you to know about what is going on in the sc2 community. Press on the home tab in dota 2, and you immediately see a huge picture of the newest stuff in the dota world (like clinkz introduction to the game in that particular screenshot).
Im pretty sure that tournaments and stuff will be announced ahead of time in the home tab, perfectly visible to everyone that logs into dota (this is something many refer to as the reason why LoL has so many viewers, because they advertise their tournaments on their client). How has blizzard advertised their tournaments? In a small 4x4 square no one can read since its so small.
Hmm...the argument that dota2 & sc2 are of different genres doesn't hold here. This is because the moba genre developed from rts and can even be said as a subgenre of rts. So their uis are completely comparable.
On February 07 2012 06:04 papaz wrote: Granted their products are outstanding but so are Valves and they somehow are really fast.
Valve = fast? I don't think you've done your research: Valve Time. They've been working on DOTA 2 (a simple game compared to SC) for quite a long time too...
Both companies take their sweet time and cancel projects as they see fit. Remember how long and how many iterations it took to get to Team Fortress 2? Where is Half-Life Episode 3? Half-Life 3? Please don't take this as a bash against Valve as they are my favorite game company along with Blizzard. Quality Assurance is probably the biggest similarity between Valve and Blizzard.
Can you explain how exactly it is a simple game (programming wise) compared to sc2? They have been working on Dota2 for 2 years now, and their client has by far more useful features than sc2 could ever dream of right now.
Shared watching of ONGOING games (blizzard doesnt even manage to implement shared watching of replays), it even has a built in delay in order to make cheating impossible (something sc2 struggles with).
A way to reconnect to an ongoing game in case you have a disconnect (how many regames did we have due to someone dropping out in sc2? plenty).
An automatic observer that automatically catches everything of importance during a game, since it can basically look into the future. (how many times did an observer in sc2 completely miss a game deciding drop? almost every game)
A feature that displays popular games that are being watched right now, making it easier for people to get together for the same thing.
Valve already confirmed lan support, something sc2 will never have (because apparently they would have to rebuilt their whole interface from scratch and that would take way too long -Dustin Browder)
A feature where you can apply as a coach/apprentice and immediately get put together with someone. (sc2 relies on third party websites in order to accomplish this).
A feature where you can shoutcast a match from within the game interface, people can look up how many shoutcasters there are for a particular game and choose the one that suits them best (sc2 relies on third party websites to accomplish this)
Im quite sure there is stuff i forgot about and stuff that will be continuously added, while sc2 didnt even have customkeys at release and blizzard needed several month to introduce customkeys lateron (this is a friggin joke).
The game itself also is most probably harder to program than sc2, since in sc2 you dont have as many spells that interact in a unique way with units. For the most part, you have units that can damage other units in a generic way, by taking away a fixed amount of health. Thats something you program once, and can reuse for every unit that behaves in such a way, except changing the variables (damage value, armor value, range of attack, etc). Add an animation to them and you are basically done with some of the most basic stuff in sc2.
The only stuff that is working uniquely in sc2 and needs to be programmed individually, is concussive shells, fungal growth, psistorm etc, all spells basically. Flying units need to be programmed individually once aswell (their behavior in air compared to ground) but you only need to change variables for different air units once you have it programmed generally.
In dota you have over a 100 heroes with 4 spells each (some have more than 4 spells), thats basically individual programming for each and every one of them, and you even have to consider how the spells interact with each other (not only how they behave towards heroes). Since you have so many spells, there are like a huge amount of permutations you have to program individually until everything works bugfree. As an example, how does a spell that slows an hero interact if put on a hero that has a speedbuff? How do these two particular spells stack with each other? Some stacking stuff you can program once (kinda like a template), most stuff you will have to look at individually.
On top of that, every hero in dota has a much larger soundset than units in sc2. They will talk in unique ways depending on what hero they are talking to (facing off against basically). They even talk uniquely towards items. An ursa that buys a vladmirs, says "roshan i come to reclaim what is rightfully mine", just how awesome is that? Considering how there are over 100 heroes and over 100 items one can only imagine how big some of these soundsets are going to become.
I used to play alot of CS1.6 and Wc3 back in the day. VALVe never game a SHIT about the CS-community. They never patched their game, and they left bugs unfixed to this day.
And at the same time, in Wc3, blizzard had made the most awesome battle.net possible. It's clearly a product made by gamers, for gamers. It's something that they would like to use themselves.
So, now it's 2012 and I wouldn't in a million years believe back then that we would be sitting here praising VALVe and laughing at Blizzard. But Bnet2 really is that bad and it's flaws deserves to be mentioned as much as possible.
I wouldn't blame the developers, I believe that they were misguided. Every part of bnet2 is designed to work perfectly with ONLY the mouse, like it was a stupid console. This design choice was really terrible and it broke many of the things that made us spend years just being online on the Wc3 battle.net.
And don't think for a second that Bliz learnt from our criticism here. Look at diablo3. It's the same fucking deal. Being online, and not in a game, is a terrible, isolated experience. And diablo3 doesn't have chat rooms. Don't believe for a second that major changes will happen in HOTS to bnet2.
On February 08 2012 01:34 cnas wrote: I used to play alot of CS1.6 and Wc3 back in the day. VALVe never game a SHIT about the CS-community. They never patched their game, and they left bugs unfixed to this day.
And at the same time, in Wc3, blizzard had made the most awesome battle.net possible. It's clearly a product made by gamers, for gamers. It's something that they would like to use themselves.
So, now it's 2012 and I wouldn't in a million years believe back then that we would be sitting here praising VALVe and laughing at Blizzard. But Bnet2 really is that bad and it's flaws deserves to be mentioned as much as possible.
I wouldn't blame the developers, I believe that they were misguided. Every part of bnet2 is designed to work perfectly with ONLY the mouse, like it was a stupid console. This design choice was really terrible and it broke many of the things that made us spend years just being online on the Wc3 battle.net.
And don't think for a second that Bliz learnt from our criticism here. Look at diablo3. It's the same fucking deal. Being online, and not in a game, is a terrible, isolated experience. And diablo3 doesn't have chat rooms. Don't believe for a second that major changes will happen in HOTS to bnet2.
I agree with you except for the bolded part, thats stretching it alot. Wc3 bnet is missing alot of features any game should have, and if it was made by gamers for gamers, these features would have been included. There are plenty of examples i could give you (since im still in wc3 bnet the majority of my time due to dota 1) but i will only give you two of the most important ones:
1. If you want to access the main options, you have to leave battlenet and relogin afterwards to check if the changes made are alright. If they arent alright, you have to log off again. Self explanatory issue.
2. You cant customize any hotkeys at all. If you want to use items with proper hotkeys, you have to rely on third party programs.
There is plenty of other stuff (like the 250 ms built in delay in wc3, or the bad customgamelist without any proper filter options which was still alright until bots conquered it) but i dont want to go too indepth now (since sc2 managed to botch the custom game list even harder), point is it has a lot of flaws, but back then it was state of the art.
On February 05 2012 07:46 DCRed wrote: Dota(1&2) mini-map, staying the same since '03.
No but really, Valve hasn't touched the gameplay itself that much, which is more than sad really.
Here is Valve's response
Q: Don’t you think you should make a lot of changes to the gameplay? (by Robert) A: Significant changes would not necessarily make it a better game. There are countless features we are building around the game that will make the experience a much better one. The gameplay itself, though, has always evolved step by step, and it will continue with that methodology. We consider this a long term project, in the same way DotA has always been. We want to provide a quality experience and not just change for the sake of change. You’ll naturally see additions and improvements to the game as time passes, but it would be a natural progression aimed at improving the game for the players and not for other arbitrary reasons. Valve and I strongly believe that the player focused development process the game has gone through is what will allow us to continue making the best decisions with regards to where we spend our development time.
Unlike Blizzard, Valve isn't going to change up the game just because they feel like it. I'm willing to bet that a lot of people would have preferred that Blizzard take this approach with SC2.
Q: Don’t you think you should make a lot of changes to the gameplay? (by Robert) A: Significant changes would not necessarily make it a better game. There are countless features we are building around the game that will make the experience a much better one. The gameplay itself, though, has always evolved step by step, and it will continue with that methodology. We consider this a long term project, in the same way DotA has always been. We want to provide a quality experience and not just change for the sake of change. You’ll naturally see additions and improvements to the game as time passes, but it would be a natural progression aimed at improving the game for the players and not for other arbitrary reasons. Valve and I strongly believe that the player focused development process the game has gone through is what will allow us to continue making the best decisions with regards to where we spend our development time.
Unlike Blizzard, Valve isn't going to change up the game just because they feel like it. I'm willing to bet that a lot of people would have preferred that Blizzard take this approach with SC2.
"We want to provide a quality experience and not just change for the sake of change why couldn't browder think this way? some are good change but stuff like mothership is exactly this.
EPT
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