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Rob Zacny

Esports Today 8/11/15: Reliving the International

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Is jungling in LoL still the primary ganker role? If so, that's replaced in Dota by roaming supports, rather frequently! But also as sclpls said, it's not like you can't jungle. It's just that it doesn't happen often. (It used to happen more, and will probably come back into style again at some point in the future.)

 

Also, Baron does exist in Dota! It's just called Rosh. The buff you get from killing it is different, but it's still essentially a bonus to your team for a period of time. I just looked up the changes to dragon. That's weird. But still essentially just an extra buff-boss. It's more of a readjustment of expectations than an unlearning of expectations. At least, that's how I know I'd treat it if I went back to LoL.

 

I had forgotten about jungle buffs! Those are interesting. I always liked those.

 

Also when I was talking about change, I wasn't really talking about tweaking balance or whatever, I was talking about actually changing the fundamentals of the game. Like you'll never see an Invoker type of hero in LoL. Or a Meepo. Or denying. Or jungle stacks. Stuff like that is why I think it's not a big deal making that jump (at least in terms of Forgetting Things). You're mostly learning new things when going from L->D.

 

Dota, for better and/or worse, has many more things that League doesn't, than League has that Dota doesn't. Oof what a sentence that was.

 

I use argument and discussion interchangeably. They mean the same thing here. It's perfectly possible to have a calm and friendly argument! But these forums have had them many times before, so I was trying to avoid it. But whatever you get what you asked for!

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^^^ 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.

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There's the obvious denying and pulling jungle camps to kill a wave and deny the enemy all that xp and gold. But there's more advanced stuff, too.

 

For example, if you watch, you'll often see pros right-click on an enemy hero to aggro the enemy creeps and pull them closer to the friendly tower. This basically means that the enemy creeps end up attacking your ranged creep, which is important, because it's the one that pushes the hardest if it doesn't get attacked. It can also just help in general pulling the wave back closer to the tower.

 

But to answer your actual question that I just read: I think it's theoretically possible, but it involves such an incredible amount of fiddling that it doesn't happen often. I've personally done it a few times just to try. But it's pretty easy to counter that. Killing a big creep wave is almost just as easy as a small creep wave, unless the barracks are down in that lane. Plus it gives the enemy team a lot of farm all at once if they happen to notice before the tower kills everything. Bad enough when it just happens naturally, but when you make it happen yourself, you're a goof.

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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.

 

Yes.  It's probably one of the more important and advanced elements of dota.  In laning, you need to know about freezing the lane with pulls, denies, and blocking.  You also need to know about creep agro rules.  If you attack click a hero the creeps agro you, you can use this to adjust the lane.  You also need to know how to work the 2 second agro cooldown to harass without pushing the lane. 

 

Once it becomes time to push, you can do a single pull with the cart.  This will basically give you a double wave pushing into their tower.  With some heroes that want to tower push early this is an important strategy.  Since it will give you lots of creeps to protect your siege creep from the tower.

 

As the game goes on, pushing out waves, especially on the long lanes will help build up momentum.  There are heroes whose entire strategy is based around this kind of split push.  Nature's Prophet has a global TP and can summon units so usually the strategy is to use the hero push out a lane and then TP into the fight.  OR dodge the fight and TP to another lane to push the tower.  Other heroes, like Naga and Terrorblade summon illusions teams use to push the lanes out.  This means the enemy is always defending towers making it hard for them to claim objectives and map control.  Late game, these strategies become viable on any hero because of boot of travel which allow you to teleport to friendly creeps (and heroes when upgraded).  So, there always the ability to build up creep momentum and then return to your team.

 

Rarely is the strategy about the creeps taking out towers though since in dota heroes are a lot more mobile with items and abilities they usually will push themselves and then rejoin the team.

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Gotcha. That mostly answers my question. I mean, "just kill the creep wave" is the solution in both cases, and if you just smashed the wave up to the tower and it got farmed up by the enemy it's the same big gulp of gold/exp as if they were just in lane anyway. It's not a gift to them because it's there whether you're setting it up for them or not. The strategic advantage is you're forcing them to at best miss out on the gold, or at worst choose between farming the wave and losing map objectives or lose structures because they need to be somewhere else on the map.

 

It seems like the combination of fewer global objectives, prevalence of TP scrolls and short cooldowns, and more global abilities makes the window to do something like this much, much smaller?

 

e: Whoa right, wasn't even thinking about mirror image or illusions.

 

Yeah ewokskick I was thinking specifically about an unattended slow push rather than fast push or split push. Sounds like that's much more unfeasible in Dota.

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I think the thing is the map is much bigger in Dota, and although heroes move faster (I think??? I remember that being some I had to get used to?!), the creeps still have a long way to travel. And yeah because of things like TP and/or heroes that just have really high mobility, it's a lot easier to respond in time.

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I was a bit suprised by ppd's felxibility with his draft, kind of juxtaposed to what Sean had said about his draft being what it is, and the team mates would take what they get. Obviously he needs to be flexible with his team and what they are good at, but I also had this impression ppd was a bit more strict with sticking to a plan that he had before the draft.

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Watching TI got me thinking about how important the baron buff that boosts minions a hero is in lane with minions in Lol is for breaking the enemy base (the boost to hero damage also helps). The lack of the that buff in Dota and the influence of the high ground  drags out the matches compared to league with the sieging team being very cagey about taking towers and racks.

 

The other thing that stood out to me was the roles being numbered in terms of need for gold v League's role of top,mid, adc, jungle and support. That and the higher mobility of the teams in dota with the boots of travel and teleport scrolls. Alot more chanes to got from a 1v1 to a 5v5 compared to League.

 

I prefer how League displays information when you watch it with towers, kills and total gold on the top, a table of the all players items, KDA on the bottom and the portraits on the side with health,mana and utls. I find it alot easier to get a clear idea of who is winning. Dota does have the graphs for gold, exp and player worth that they show alot during the match but I like having it all there on the screen by default. I don't think the item part would work for dota though cause it has far more items with timers which would be harder to see in a League style table.

 

I am looking forward to the majors for dota 2 just to watch it more than once a year and see how the meta and team rankings shift.

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I'm psyched about this new podcast. 2 weeks ago I can't imagine having said that, but after watching the final day of TI5 with friends and beers I realized that this sort of thing might be in my wheelhouse. Sports have never been my bag and I've never excelled at competitive video games, but there's something about some kids from around the world sitting in glass boxes clicking mouses to "echo slam" some "dire heroes" while a walrus-man rolls into a snowball and "walrus punches" the "roshan" for some "cheese," all while a flying donkey brings them funky items. Also, the casting sounded great and I loved hearing the roar of the crowd even though I didn't understand half of what they were saying even with the "newcomer" commentary. But that's where this podcast fits in.

 

One thing that I did want to bring up is the severe lack of women at the international. I mean, were there any? Is this pretty common in esports? It seems to me that one of the great things about video games is people can compete no matter their gender. If you can click a mouse, you can dodge a "gyrocopter."

 

Anyway, great show. I think the intro with Zacny's NPR voice is pitch perfect.

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I agree Seamus about the viewer interface not being great.  Fortunately, this is improving a lot in source 2.  This is what it will look like viewing in client: https://cdn.steamstatic.com/apps/dota2/images/reborn/day1/DotaTV.jpg

 

There's definitely some improvement there! When you say viewing in client, that's what you get by default if you find the broadcast and are watching it? There's a lot of redundant/extra information going on. The playing field is also super tiny. TWO MAPS. The entire bottom bar of the "player screen" is repeated information somewhere else, with extra rock textures just cause you like 'em. Still needs to be refined a great deal, but agreed that it's at least a step forward.

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There's definitely some improvement there! When you say viewing in client, that's what you get by default if you find the broadcast and are watching it? There's a lot of redundant/extra information going on. The playing field is also super tiny. TWO MAPS. The entire bottom bar of the "player screen" is repeated information somewhere else, with extra rock textures just cause you like 'em. Still needs to be refined a great deal, but agreed that it's at least a step forward.

I don't know what the final version will look like.  That's the promo image.  It's not yet implemented in the beta client.  They had a beta of that on dota2.com during TI that looks just like that. What's hard to see on that is how interactive the menus are.  You could click a players name and get more detailed info or switch the bar on the left to show a number of different items.  The chat seems to be capped in size so it never gets as bad as twitch which is a plus.

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Hey

So I'm new to the forum and I'm just pairing to say I love the new show. I'm mostly into CS so this weekend episode was very exiting for me. One thing I noticed is that you guys mentioned that the resent losses was giving people the impression that there might be a shuffle in the French scene but that the most resent performance at games on crushed those rumours. There was actually a shuffle about a month ago between the 2 main French teams, Titan and envyus. Envy picked up KennyS Who up until a recent awp need was considered the best awper in the world and Apex a highly regarded rifler. Titan picked up shox who in 2014 was considered the best player in the world and smithzz who is alright. Indeed the performance of envy at the games on event was a pretty big surprise considering it was their first event post shuffle and envy seemed to have adapted to the change quicker then Titan. Oh and the event in Cologne is the ESL cologne and is one of the 2 valve funded majors by ESL that happen each year. This event is looking to be insane fnatic is finally showing signs of being mortal, cloud9 is performing at the level of tier 1 teams a place that's historically been reserved for European teams, kinguin is having huge success as the first international team and mouse sports coming out of nowhere as a potential tier 1 team a thing they have never really been and finally NIP after seemingly falling from grass have taken the last month of to practise leading many to wonder if the night make the comeback that so many people want. Oh also virus. Pro will either be top 3 or bomb out of the bracket stage. Compared to previous events there seems to be far more dynamics then "NIP will play against fnatic in the finals and fnatic will win".

I highly recommend that anyone who hasn't played CS before should consider watching this event.

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Great to have you guys with us, McDoom/asciibear! 

 

We're really excited to have some people coming around who are new to esports or who are big into one esports and exploring the rest of the scene. Asciibear, I believe we're going to be doing a preview of the big $250,000 ESL One Cologne event coming up. Hoping we can get a knowledgeable guest to come on and really help us understand the scene before the big event. And yeah, I agree, anyone curious about CSGO should check that out. My advice is simply to be patient with it. Very hard to follow CSGO at first, but once you begin to understand the layout of the level and some of the strategies, it's a fantastic spectator game.

 

McDoom, glad you enjoyed TI. They did a super job of packaging the event together into something that was fun to watch despite the intensely confusing and convoluted nature of Dota 2 (a game I dearly love.) As for women at the show, you're totally right. There is one great caster named Sheever who I would have preferred to have gotten more on-camera time, and the beloved host of the event is Kaci Aitchison. But other than that, it's unfortunately rare. Emily Gera wrote a good article on this topic over at Polygon a little over a year ago. http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/27/5723446/women-in-esports-professional-gaming-riot-games-blizzard-starcraft-lol

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My perception is that DOTA is especially bad in terms of representation of women involved with the pro scene, although I'm sure it is pretty bad in every game.

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My perception is that DOTA is especially bad in terms of representation of women involved with the pro scene, although I'm sure it is pretty bad in every game.

 

I think there are zero pro-players.  There are a few personalities/hosts who are women.  Sheever is probably the most popular.  She spent some time on the analysts desk in the group stage, I think.  There are a handful of popular streamers and content-makers.  It's pretty bad in the western scene.  I've noticed that there seem to be more women in the Chinese scene.

 

Another issue is that there are basically no black people in the North American scene.

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Yup. In League there are women casting games, but in the English speaking DOTA world it seems like you just have Sheever at TI, and she keeps getting a more marginalized role at TI each year so the problem is actually getting worse.

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On this topic, I've always wondered why (and I probably ask someone this at least three times a year) the fighting game community seems to have a lot more black people than any other gaming community. Most of the personalities that I know of (as a follower of exactly zero fighting game scenes), in fact, are black.

 

Still very few women, if any(?).

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Ewokskick & I had a conversation about this, and it was pure speculation, but one thing I noticed was that something like a console seems to be a far more likely large purchase that a poorer family would make over a PC. Because Black households in the US are on the whole poorer than white households, I was wondering if this was part of it. Pure access to fighting games on a home console must contribute right?

At least I know that the kids I went to school with were far more likely to talk about their xboxes or playstations than their computers.

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Ewokskick & I had a conversation about this, and it was pure speculation, but one thing I noticed was that something like a console seems to be a far more likely large purchase that a poorer family would make over a PC. Because Black households in the US are on the whole poorer than white households, I was wondering if this was part of it. Pure access to fighting games on a home console must contribute right?

At least I know that the kids I went to school with were far more likely to talk about their xboxes or playstations than their computers.

I've also heard it postulated that black and Hispanic kids are more likely to have grown up with access to arcades than to video game equipment in their own homes, although I imagine this would be increasingly less common across all demographics as time progresses.

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I've also heard it postulated that black and Hispanic kids are more likely to have grown up with access to arcades than to video game equipment in their own homes, although I imagine this would be increasingly less common across all demographics as time progresses.

Yeah I forgot to mention it, but I've heard that, too!

 

It'd also make sense that once the foot's in the door, it's open to everyone, so to speak. So the arcades don't even need to exist, anymore, people just see that it's okay for them to be into this and so the community continues growing as such.

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I don't know the FGC that well, but it's pretty clear Smash is highly influenced by black & hip-hop culture.  For example, their used to be crews and they would have crew battles.  It's not as much of a thing now.  But you can learn about it in the Smash Brothers documentary. 

 

I'm going to shamelessly promote my thread.  If you're interested in that smash documentary or other esports documentaries please check out this thread and share anything you might know about: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/10345-pro-gaming-documentaries/

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Speaking of women in the pro scene, Kotaku just wrote a piece about the first woman pro in League of Legends. Big ups to team Renegades! Although unfortunately it will come as no surprise that this story isn't all sunshine and love, and a lot of dudes are terrible human beings.

 

http://kotaku.com/the-league-of-legends-championship-series-has-its-first-1724136651

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Speaking of women in the pro scene, Kotaku just wrote a piece about the first woman pro in League of Legends. Big ups to team Renegades! Although unfortunately it will come as no surprise that this story isn't all sunshine and love, and a lot of dudes are terrible human beings.

 

http://kotaku.com/the-league-of-legends-championship-series-has-its-first-1724136651

 

There is a woman called Strawbella playing support for Absolute which is an Australian team. 

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