TheLastBaron

For me personally it's not about the number of things you have to manage, it's about what they add to the game. If they removed the ability to deny creeps but added more things to think about it wouldn't automatically make the game better. As I said before this one specific mechanic is super important to the game because the game is basically dudes standing in a lane with waves of guys coming and attacking each other, and a game where you have control over what those guys do its so significantly different that one where you can't (in the same way that a game like Starcraft where you can individually micro all of your units is very different than a game where everything is grouped in squads). I would also argue that this does inherently make the game deeper because it gives you another significant level of control, though that isn't to say it necessarily makes it "better" or more enjoyable. I should also mention right now that current Dota versions are way different from the early versions (and even the Dota that was around when HoN was made) and that Dota 2 isn't exactly the same as WC3 Dota. There have been some fundamental changes to Dota like item-muting and Smoke of Deceit which was added not that long ago has a huge impact of the game dynamic. It's also worth mentioning that the courier system is way different in Dota 2 than in WC3 (whether it's better is arguable). I guess this is true, but you could also argue that it's another case of "more things to track". It's hard for me to compare it as jungling is so different between the games (in terms of both the role and the mechanics of jungle neutrals). It for sure adds more to League, but I don't think it translates to Dota well. It's not really about controlling your creeps directly, it's about having control over the dynamics of the wave and the point of equilibrium (worth also noting that the lanes in Dota aren't symmetrical). This concept exists in League, people know you shouldn't just auto attack everything because your wave will push, there's just less you can do about it. I don't see how it's objectively bad when it has a clear purpose. Even if you take away the wave dynamics aspect and argue that denying is unnecessary because things like pulling and blocking are sufficient and you're just left with the actual "denying" part (denying gold and exp) it makes sense. You are taking something away from the other team, even if you're losing something at the same time. Think of it like having a remote self-destruct feature in your super cool high-tech invention to destroy it if it falls into the wrong hands, or send an assassin to kill one of your men who's been captured and is being interrogated and about to give away valuable information. To put it in a sports analogy you can think of it like a "professional foul" in soccer (the only sport I watch a significant amount of) where a player takes out another player about to get away on goal, taking a yellow card and giving the other team a free-kick, but still leaving his team in a better position than if he didn't commit the tackle. You could say it's a stupid/cynical part of the game and I might agree with you in situations like the World Cup where Luis Suarez slapped away a shot going into the net at the very end of the game knowing he was going to get a red card and concede a penalty to Ghana, the other team (it was tied and if the goal had gone in Ghana would have won, instead they missed the penalty and lost in the shootout that followed). You're trading something bad to prevent the other team getting something good, though in the case of Dota it's more of a win-win. I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to argue that one game is objectively better or that people that play one game should switch or that League needs to have the same mechanics as Dota. My point is only in regards to the idea that Dota has outdated and poorly designed game mechanics and instead of address these problems and come up with solutions Valve has lazily just accepted them and forced people to learn them. I personally find that specifically within Dota these systems serve a purpose and the game is better because of them. Yes the game is harder to pick up and learn, I totally agree, but I personally find it to be a case of learning to understand complex system in order to play a game which I find incredibly enjoyable and rewarding as a result, rather than having to learn a bunch of convoluted systems to get by in a game that would be better without them anyways.

If they add something to the story I'll get them (like the stuff mentioned in Arkham which gives you more story), but if they're just there to make a number go up I usually ignore them. For example in Alan Wake I got the story pages but ignored the other stuff like the cans.

I didn't even realize there could be duplicates. I forgot if the avatar was chosen or generated for you, since Game 1 doesn't have any doubles.

The thing with denies, outside of the aspect of denying gold and experience to the other team, is it offers a means to control your wave which is completely absent from League of Legends. I remember when I first played League Gangplank could deny creeps and it was removed. Granted there are other ways to control the wave like pulling, blocking, creep aggro, or conversion abilities; but these are also not in League and the only real control you have over your wave comes from pushing into the tower to reset it. I think in a game about lanes with waves of npc minions attacking and pushing toward the eventual win objective having a game mechanic to manipulate the wave is valuable. When discussing denying actual player characters I just think of it as being sort of analogous to how people in League would run into towers to suicide if they knew they were going to die anyways (ironically this doesn't work in Dota as the kill just goes to the team as a whole).

Uh I was listening to an episode a few days ago from the 70's (episode numbers) and there was a part where someone said something and it was repeated and bounced from ear to ear and someone commented about being in stereo. After that I decided to jump to the current episodes (I'm like 6 months behind) and work my way back to I can comment on the episode threads while they're still active.

Can you be specific in what design choices you're thinking of (that are objectively bad)? I'm not trying to call you out to argue or anything, it's just that I played WC3 DotA so I'm really used to DotA and obviously will have a hard time recognizing anything that a new player would.

I don't know if it was a result of watching the Dota 2 Staff Cup (a tournament between sites like JoinDota and things like the GD Studio) or finding out that Studio Rumble did a League of Legends tournament. It might have just been that I'm getting excited for TI3. Anyways, I had dream last night that there was a Dota 2 game studio tournament and it was awesome. It didn't actually happen, it was just coming up or something, but it had item drop for spectators in DotaTV like The International does (probably because I got my Compendium that comes with and item drop boost and was thinking about it last night) and the items were for games in typical Valve fashion, like if Gearbox was playing you might Borderlands 2 items, or if Telltale was playing the drops might be Telltale themed TF2 items (this is likely a result of me debating getting Poker Night 2 the past week or so). The point is, I woke up and have been sad all day.

I love every episode with JP. If there was a podcast that was just him getting talking a ton about the stuff he's super into like he does when he's on the show it would probably be my favorite cast in the world (no offense). When he get's going on something he's passionate about it's just so great.

So with boardgames and Neptune's Pride being recently discussed, what are some good games in the same vein, as in working together and also screwing people over at the same time? The only thing that comes to mind for me is Battlestar Galactica and The Resistance, but these are also more about hiding a secret agenda that is set by the game and dictated to you rather than freely making alliances and betraying people because you want to. Gormongous mentioned Shadows Over Camelot which seems cool. Also regarding The Resistance, has anyone played the new version of it, also related to Camelot?

Just won a 1 hour game where we were down to a single ranged rax 25 minutes in with a score of maybe 15-35. We had a PL. I felt so guilty.

You can't enchant arrows.

What did Jake's head look like? Listening to Sean talk about XCOM makes me want to play it and also not play it. I get super attached to people in games, to the point that in games that have parts that give you nameless grunts to accompany you I will instantly reload a save if any of them die.

I don't have anything interesting to ad, but I was browsing Twitch this past weekend and saw there was a tournament for Quake Live going on and watched it and it was cool to see people in a both with a professional casting set up super pumped about Quake.

I really want to play board games, but none of my friends ever do Over spring break I finally managed to get two friends to play Pandemic with me. They were starting to get into it and actually enjoy it, but then we lost and now it will probably never get played again.

It's cool that there's official matchmaking for it, and even having the browser for custom game lobbies is a step up on Dota. I've been in the main channel for finding -shom games ever since the qualifiers for aotD 3 and it's usually around 10 people total at any given time meaning that the chances of actually getting a full game going are very small. It'd be cool if Valve added a browser for custom games and maybe even made it possible to submit them to the workshop. Even people adopting standard passwords would be cool, like always making the password aram or shom or whatever so you could type that in and find games easily. I know there's a few more games modes in progress by Valve like em and dm, so they probably have something in the works.

Every week since the weekly bundles stopped has been a terrible week and even though I already own every single one of the games in this I might get it anyways (also my Brutal Legend is for 360).

I thought everyone knew what happened to him.

Well Dota 2 is still in beta, meaning new stuff is getting added every single week and lots of big stuff is going on so I guess there's more to talk about. I'm assuming Riot is not still releasing a new champion every other week. Speaking of new stuff I like the The International 3 Compendium added today, Valve have finally gotten money from me.

I don't even notice the new avatars, I still picture his avatar from two avatars ago.

I'm so close to finishing Arx Fatalis, but I'm also at the point I get in most games when I feel like I've gotten the full experience and maximum level of enjoyment out of the game and actually finishing the game is more of a completionist side achievement for gamer points. I think I'm going to manage to finish it, but at the same time I think the last game I actually finished was Bastion when it came out, so I could be lying to myself.

I've played a couple games that helped me with a foreign language, though not as directly as a game actually intended to teach the language. One was playing HoN with my friend who was a German exchange student when I was in high school while on Skype with him and some of his friends, and another was the mod Nehrim for Oblivion, which is a total conversion/original game in the Oblivion engine with completely original voice acting (which is in German and you can choose between the subtitles and text in the game being in English or German). In both cases I didn't really learn German as much as I improved at it as at the time I had already taken a couple of semesters of German at college and without that baseline I probably would have gotten nothing out of either experience. Basically I just sort of picked up some stuff, and it was probably not the fastest way to learn as for a foreign language if you aren't speaking it you aren't going to learn much and even on Skype with Germans I just used English. I probably picked up the most from that though, and unfortunately unless you know a bunch of people who speak the language you're trying to get better at that want to play games it's probably the hardest to do, I can't even really do it anymore since none of them except the one I actually know has moved to Dota 2 and he plays maybe once a month.

I like how if I could travel back in time 1 year everyone I know was super hyped about Diablo 3, and now everyone I know is super hyped about the D2 ladder reset on the 14th.

Yeah it's kind of a bummer, especially since they're both adjacent and completely on one side of the nebula. Maybe if it were the two galaxies in the middle it would not be bad as it would make everyone rush in to grab stars.

I noticed that when I make typing errors it's pretty much always letters out of order, so I look like I have dyslexia (dysgraphia?) I realized that it's because one of my hands types faster than the other and when I misspell word it's always because of letters in a word on one side of the keyboard (right side) coming too early. Ol' Leftie needs to pick up his game.

For me personally if I'm doing anything that takes a high level of thinking or concentration I think I usually think of things in terms of words pretty early on just so I have something I can manipulate, sort of like writing a math problem down on paper so that you can work it out (which I guess is a bad example because I almost never write down stuff when doing math, I probably did in like linear algebra, but for most stuff I don't or do only at the very end). I have a friend who was born in China but moved to the states pretty young so he's perfectly fluent in speaking and writing both English and Chinese. I once asked him what language he thinks in and he said basically both for ambient thoughts and he only thinks in just one when having a conversation in one language, but I think he said even then his background thoughts and reasoning were probably still both English and Chinese (and on top of this he probably think in terms of both English/Chinese and non linguistic thoughts).