Badfinger

Undeniably true. I believe these will prove my point.

I'm going to be really mad at myself if I come home today and my copy of Windows is activated. The only reason I was even thinking about it is I was home and had time on my hands.

^^^ I'd say yes, to a degree. Most high-tier jungle picks are either team-fight centric and usually tanks, or have a strong early game kit to make early plays or counter-jungle the opposing team. Talking about at the competitive level. Oh yeah, there's less gold in LoL's jungle as well, which is why it's always such a huge focus of seasonal revamps. If there's an equivalent amount of power to be gained out of the jungle, people will just sit in it for 25 minutes, burst out of it like a phoenix and hard carry the game. Enough of League's latent champion power happens from levels and buying power that multiple duo lanes are inefficient, and two "no" income spots from roaming supports, etc will leave carries unsafe and weaken your team overall. Question: does the concept of wave manipulation and management exist for DOTA? I'm aware of creep blocking and camp pulls to help make the long lane safer or maybe freeze, but that (seems to be) it's a more short-term safety measure? Basically, once the first towers are down in the side lanes, because of where the minions meet and their target priority, if you kill the right number and kind of minions, if the other team doesn't deal with it the creep wave will build up and take towers all by itself. So you start a slow push and then pressure objectives somewhere else on the map, and force the other team to make a choice of how they're going to deal with it.

Whoa Jen that's so cool, thanks for sharing! Haha, the simple answer is "Yes, so many things have changed." League is so different from where it was 4 years ago when I started. They've remade the jungle a dozen times, dragon and baron are different, towers act differently, so many items are different and new, new champions have added a lot more layers of mechanical complexity than the original run, they literally remade the map. But things are still the same, too! Small example - the way the jungle camps work. Buffs, jungle monster buffs, dragon and baron are things that really don't exist in DOTA with the obvious exception of Roshan dropping the Aegis, which is a wildly different strategic objective in its own right. Jungling is a completely different animal in League than it is in DOTA, and that cuts both ways (camp stacking, creep blocking, etc, etc). Watching TI, jungling as a role doesn't really exist at the professional level in DOTA at the moment. It's more a team function of how to eke out all the gold and exp on the map when it's convenient. I'm completely uninterested in having an argument about League and Dota. I am very invested in having a discussion about the comparisons between the two in an environment where I know an intelligent conversation could actually exist. I watched every second of finals, and I watched most of Saturday's matches. I'm not interested in fighting about DOTA. Dota's cool, yo. League, also cool.

I think it's nuts. Totally quay quay.

That's the frustrating thing. I've already done that! I upgraded my copy of Windows 7 to Windows 10. Then Windows 10 had an unrecoverable crash, and I used my media to reinstall it. Now it's not activated, but I don't have a key. I am fine that the upgrade is the path to get the Win10 copy, but I'm already past that. I am asking (whining into the void), somewhat hypothetically, why the solution to getting an activated copy of Windows 10 is to REINSTALL WINDOWS 7 after I have already upgraded and the only way I could recover my tanked computer was to use my USB drive with Windows 10 and now it's working again. I mean, it was activated. I should have a key SOMEWHERE right? Outside of having a crash and having to format my hard drive, this is more or less what I've done except that my copy of Windows isn't activated. I am having the same issue that the first two respondents are having. I would be less REALLY, REALLY mad if the 7 people I talked to on the phone yesterday said "oh, the activation server is having an issue just give it 24 hours" which has apparently been a known issue for two weeks rather than 1) telling me to reinstall Windows 7, 2) Telling me to reinstall Windows 8 because they didn't listen, 3) pushing me over to purchasing to sell me a Windows 10 key. Also the tech supervisor hung up on me. Flat ended the call.

Andrew and Twig, I've played a little bit of DOTA (counting hours in the dozens, basically insignificant), but I've been playing League since 2011. There's no hours counter, but I would have to estimate I'm at at LEAST 2000 hours with it. So I'm at the opposite end. I realize that the biggest barrier to me playing Dota is me. I just... don't really want to. I've put a lot of time and a reasonable amount of money into League of Legends, and I really like it. I'm comfortable with how things work and how I work. It'd be like switching my fandom to the CFL from the NFL. Everything is still the same, it's just different and I'm comfortable. Here's the cool part - everything you said about DOTA is true about League, but applied differently. They both have all those things, all the time, forever. I've found that at a general level, League's complexity manifests on a more strategic, objective focused level than DOTA, where tactical and mechanical complexity have a nearly unlimited skill cap. e: oh hey, thought this was cool. PPD did an in-depth video on his drafting strategy against CDEC.

No, I understand. I'm saying it's stupid and terrible. It's doing 4 extra steps that I shouldn't have to do. Beyond that, I know I have a good Win 7 key, but every time I've reinstalled it says I need to contact Windows Tech Support, so I'd be on the fucking phone with them anyway to get a new Win7 key. I'd also have to wipe the USB that has my Win10 media drive on it to do so. Here is what I want: A clean, non-upgraded install of Windows 10 after I have upgraded from Windows 7. Here is what I have: precisely that, though not on my terms. I'm being told by tech people that's possible, but apparently it's not?

I feel similarly about Dota, for very similar reasons. I think both LoL and DOTA can inform your knowledge of each other very well. Some of the lords look awfully similar. But dammit, I already had to learn 120 LoL Lords. Relearning a second whole set of lords with new physics, mechanics, and items is just... I had a day at home yesterday where I had some free time, and told myself there were a couple of champions in Legal Legends I wanted to play. I ended up playing 2 games of ARAM because the time commitment to put in 90 minutes and think about warding and build paths and whatever didn't feel like it was there. Now multiply that for 90 hours and that's DOTA to me. I often wonder if the cost of learning the game is higher than for a new player because there are so many unconscious things I have to unlearn. I bet that's not true, but I think about it. I'm glad you, Rob and Andrew, are into SC2, because that helps me know when the hell things are happening. That's the hardest part about following it is knowing when and what's happening. (I know what a 6-pool is! It's when you build a spawning pool as Zerg when you only have 6 workers. It's a do-or-die rush move designed to end the game quickly by catching your opponent off guard as they build their economy thinking they're safe.) BTW I want to touch on the use of the word "meta". Why is that a slimy word? I guess you could say meta-game all the way out rather than abreve-ing. But the fact that you understand the concept of a metagame means you DO know what you're talking about. It's like talking about zone blitzing in football, or saying your soccer team runs a 4-4-2. Triangle offense. You might not be able to speak to the intricacies of what goes into the formulation of those things or all the depth that a professional or analyst requires, but you're not a professional! I think it's a natural progression of fandom to want to dig into the details of what makes something tick.

You're now Big Boss.

You're terrible. Go Twins, go Blue Jays.

WOO WINDOWS 10! Is there no way to do a clean install after having done the upgrade? My exciting new copy of Win 10 threw a fucking kernel error, and none of the repair/rollback/restore functions worked, so I had to format my drive and reinstall. Already not happy. But it says Win 10 isn't activated. More not happy. After spending over 4 hours battling with Windows tech support, they tell me that the only way to get a properly activated copy of Windows 10 is to install my 6 year old software and then upgrade over it? Fuck that. I'm pissed. I wouldn't even have a working computer but I created a media USB drive before doing the upgrade. I have my Win 7 key, but I don't have Windows 7.

Ah, gotcha. I'm learning! So from your informed standpoint, chanting "USA" when Na'Vi won something was irony and not ignorance? Because, they're such fan favorites and so popular, I could imagine people literally don't know they're not American.

EG is a US-based organization, right? They're seen as an American team. I can't imagine the chant's original intent is irony in the slightest.

^^^^ Whoa, really interesting! So, looked up what a League LCS salary is. It's literally half what I thought it was ($12.5k per split, and I thought it was $25k). That's no good at all. Do not like that. No, I wasn't counting tournament winnings and sponsorships. Just thinking about what the worst guy on the last place team would be guaranteed to earn. This is unfortunate to learn, really shitty. Now, at the top of the standings, players are almost certainly being paid salaries through the team on top of that Riot-specific stipend. It's how they've recruited top pros from other leagues. But the bottom tier guys are probably getting the butt-end. That's genuinely funny, because those are the sorts of things I care about a great deal (I mean, if I didn't care I wouldn't have looked it up). Incidentally sclpls, Team Secret is almost exactly the story of Team Origen in the EU LCS. Guys from Fnatic, including S1 World Champion xPeke left their team. xPeke and SOaz formed a super team, smashed their way through the Challenger Series, and finished 2nd in the group stages with the playoffs upcoming this weekend (2nd to new Fnatic, an amazing basically completely remade upstart team in their own right, first undefeated split in professional LoL). It's definitely possible to have results like that in a playoff environment. I can also say you are almost certainly seeing the best teams and best organizations compete, because the poor challenger teams come in and either are instantly Cloud 9/Origen split winning good, engineered to compete, or get smashed because they're good enough to make it to the show but not enough to hang. The environment in Korea and especially China is completely different. Riot has the rights to broadcast those leagues, but the LPL in China is a billionaire's playground and poached players for literal million dollar salaries from Korea at a rate that it was dubbed the Korean Exodus over the winter. e: oh man, I'm doing a lot of longposting. :[ Sorry about that. I am genuinely interested and want to learn stuff! Especially from people I want to interact with and sources I trust! I still feel like whenever I pop in and ask questions about The Dotes I get kind of ephemeral answers. "Dota's like, all around you, man. The invocation of the planets determined the wild cards. You just have to FEEL it." and I want brackets and structures and data and that's way less important to other people here. That's completely valid, but it must be frustrating to have a conversation with me when we're very nearly speaking different languages. I watched a bunch of TI this weekend, and I'm excited EG won, but I literally don't know how they made it into the tournament.

Well, no. I incidentally hear about CS, and Hearthstone, and Starcraft and even like Warcraft 3 and I would not consider myself an "X" person for any of those. Does DOTA maybe have an issue where it's insular and you almost MUST be a DOTA person to be able to invest yourself in the competitions? For reference, I looked up IEM, ESL, and DreamHack results and DOTA 2 results were ONLY listed for DreamHack (on wikipedia, the lazy person's reference). Maybe it's possible that my brain rolls past those competitions because it takes more cognitive effort to invest in DOTA than it does for a couple casual rounds of CounterStrike? Oh, I feel like the contracts are quite restrictive and potentially very bad, although one of the slight positives is that Riot can put the clamps down on some of the real shitheels that get into gaming. It's worth pointing out as well that the contracts are per season, and not per year. It's not millions of dollars, but if the salaries are being split fairly and you are employed for an entire year that is a very comfortable salary. Should they be paid more? If the market will bear their salaries they should make as much as they can! I think that contracts are a different conversation than competition structure completely, though. What does an "open system" look like? What is off putting about league systems? The things I like about them are they give a necessary structure to competition that allows me to follow it and gives insight into how competition is progressing. It attempts to determine who the best competitors are over time, as well as indicate an overall winner at the end of the proceedings. One of the biggest positives about having structure is that I know when the goddamn events are actually happening so I can follow them. Ok, serious request: please explain how the teams for TI were selected. I have tried to look it up and I can't figure it out. The website sure as hell did nothing at all to explain it.

Well, the reason people (or at least, me) compare them is they're the only two things that are particularly comparable. I'm curious what you don't like about their structure. I would like to discuss it! I don't like all of it, but the parts I do like are things like "hey, this has literally any fucking structure thank god", but I like sports and sports leagues and so competition in my mind is inherently structured. I believe you also have more faith in the community than I do, because TI is literally the only DOTA thing I know anything about. I am pretty pessimistic that community-run events end up with any cohesion or structure rather than dying on the vine. Plus, DOTA isn't represented at IEM or ESL is it? Do they have DOTA at DreamHack?

I noticed the self congratulatory air that permeates the GDQs as well. I wonder if that doesn't stem from the event gaining momentum, itself. It's the same as having your donation comment being read that says "Hype!" and having the donation reader annoyingly yell it and then having the audience annoyingly yell it back in the nerdiest call and response possible. It's as if the comments are a form letter. Other people say hype, and mention how cool and good SDGQ is. I don't know what to write, but I know this is acceptable to write, so I will write this. A weird trend I also noticed was people writing things along the lines of "Iwata would have loved the way you're breaking games" and I all I could think was hey dog, this is like the 11th GDQ. Iwata was alive for all of them but this. If he loved them, he already knew.

No. Planning for TI6 should have started as soon as the people responsible for TI5 knew that it was working. I know we've talked about it before, but I cannot possibly imagine that the event planners and project managers for their on the ground events have the carte blanche to do the casual work on whatever that we often assign to Valve's design aesthetic. I don't even particularly have any investment in the dotes, but imagine if, when you have your largest possible audience including casual and interested observers, you announce and roll out your major tournament schedule? Someone who knows nothing about DOTA then has a firm date on their calendar to check back in. Boom, you built an audience. Now all the important details are going to be buried on Liquipedia until it's actually happening and you, the DOTA fan, nudge me in the ribs to remind me.

Since this thread seems pretty well read, I'll put this here rather than email. I'd be really interested in having a discussion about the differences in the LoL vs DOTA metas. Not what they are, but rather how they evolve/what they revolve around. Based on what I've seen, the DOTA meta seems way more settled than it did the last time I paid much attention. The positions seem much more set and less volatile, as well. The Riot casters often focus in on "win conditions", which is what teams target with their compositions and the map in order to win in the style their team is built. I'm curious what the win conditions are, what teams are doing to build towards them, and how win conditions vary from game to game and match to match.

I appreciate that they actually explained what happened, but holy shit what a horrible call. I am looking for enthusiasm, but just saying "oh my god" over and over is really awful.

Ok, gotcha. I saw that there were 2 double kills, I'm just unfamiliar enough with the skills that there was an extra big tick I couldn't associate. Yes, I want most of what Riot has, but with DOTA's casters, pretty much. Valve can pretty clearly run a hell of a tournament, but there are still some rough elements the can fix.

So, TI nitpick - I kept waiting for replays and detailed analysis and breakdown of plays and I never got it. You ask an extremely buzzed, tired man what he thinks of how people have named the play, but you aren't showing me the play while you're at it? Literal game defining, tournament winning moment has been identified (in the moment, by the live team!) and you only show it once before you go off air? Valve has a lot of really good presentation, and in general I like the casters, but that's such a missed opportunity. As such, I will make you be my stand-in analysts and ask where the 3rd source of damage is coming from? The slam and the ice blast hit, but then the middle two guys just pop and I'm not sure why.

"IT'S A DISASTER!!!" is burned into my brain.

I hope you stayed awake.