Brannigan

DOTA 2

Recommended Posts

So, I literally know nothing about DOTA 2 but plan on watching the International. I bought a compendium for the hell of it, am I supposed to actually "use" this thing or just hang onto it for some reason? 

 

You should go into and make some predictions and then follow them along. Pick a favorite team or player maybe. Some of the items you can get are kinda neat, but mostly you just hold on to it and vote for stuff in it.

 

And yeah, Henroid, sometimes you get a team that just doesn't work out. :/ In those cases I try to sort of distance myself from the game and focus on doing something right. Last hits, getting a stun on a priority target, something like that. and if the lanes get jacked up in the beginning it's best to either try for an early kill and/or just buy a tp from the sideshop and move to the other lane yourself if the other player isn't doing it. Same goes for someone not buying a courier or wards. Eventually you won't be matched with people who don't play together.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So, I literally know nothing about DOTA 2 but plan on watching the International. I bought a compendium for the hell of it, am I supposed to actually "use" this thing or just hang onto it for some reason? 

 

You have to go in game and activate it to get anything from it besides adding 2.5$ to the prize pool. 

 

Once you activate it you get a bunch of cosmetic items like MSN style chat emoticons, two custom couriers, custom weather effects, an immortal item that's a cosmetic for a specific hero and you can access the compendium in game by clicking it on your profile screen.

 

You can level it up to get more immortal items, alternate styles for couriers and a higher battle point boost which is the out of game level that gives you more cosmetics each time you get a level up.

 

The compendium is I think 30 or 40 pages long now, it's got all the stretch goals, compendium levels and rewards and what you can do to get more more points for more compendium levels. You can fill in predictions on which heroes will be top picks, bans, how soon the first roshan will fall, length of shortest/longest game, etc.

 

There's a section with pictures of every player on every team at TI, you can collect player cards and fill in your sticker book for more points.

 

Like, if you don't actually play the game, just go in game and activate it and leaf through it once, it looks nice. Then check your inventory on the Armory tab to look at all the shinies you got, maybe open the chests you have. If you want you can fill in predictions for various things, but some are already locked, like the qualifier games. It'll mark how right you were afterwards.

 

If you want to watch, this link will have it started in about 3-4 hours

http://www.dota2.com/international/watch/July8/

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Do I get progress toward my compendium for watching if I'm not in the actual DOTA2 app? Does it only count for live matches, or replays as well?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You can link your Steam account to Twitch, and it should work. Replays have also worked in the past for leveling up items linked to tournaments, so that should be fine, too.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Kill him early on, ward his jungle, delay his Midas, delay level 6. A few deaths on him pre midas and he isn't really coming back in a strong way. He has no escape mechanism so until he gets one you can quite easily murder him if he tries to push.

 

and bring a quelling blade or trees when ganking him.  nothing is more irritating when someone tries to jump the guy and he self-sprouts & tele's away.  225 for the little axe goes a long way

 

nj00s is right, if you can go find him in the jungle early / often - even if you dont kill and just force him to fountain or loses all his treants it sets his timing way back.  

 

It is extremely satisfying to do this with a sand king too, caustic little guys & make em pop with an impale

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Remind me where you link your Steam to Twitch?

 

Edit: Nevermind, I'm already linked up. Click the little wrench next to your user name on Twitch, then go to the connections tab.

 

Edit2: Did they have custom in-game art and voice last year?

 

Edit3: So many different streams. I'm watching http://www.twitch.tv/dota2ti_noob#/dota2ti_noob right now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Every TI has had the announcer call out teams, the flags anyone with a custom team can set in game.

 

I find it hard to believe they managed to fuck up the audio :\

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The noob stream is so good.  Since pro-level play doesn't really correspond to low-level play, regular commentary doesn't teach me enough.  I feel much more engaged this way!

 

My wife's family will be visiting the whole weekend of TI4, so I'll miss everything good, but I will definitely go back through all of the noob archives once they leave.  I don't really care who wins, so spoilers won't really ruin it, thankfully.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So during the qualifiers I pretty much started calling Team Liquid the Oakland Raiders, because they choke a lot.

 

But man, their matches against CIS just now were really well played. That was amazing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That was surprising. I was expecting Team Liquid to give up at least one match in either of those series but they dominated the 2nd match against MVP. And that Lycan was like the best I'd seen him played ever.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hmm, I beleive they have blocked Twitch at work, so instead I will abuse my company phone's data plan.

 

Edit: Hmm, embeded streams elsewhere seem to work fine.

 

Edit2: Nice, used an HTML test page and pasted in the embed code from twitch and I can watch it there. Silly security team.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey guys, 

Myself and two friends will be playing our first DOTA 2 game Saturday morning (around 10am GMT) and I just wanted to say to invite any fellow noobs to come play/ wildly farm/ die with us. I imagine we will play against each other using bots. Also if you're more experienced but fancy imparting your obscure knowledge on fictional economies that's cool too. We just thought it would be fun to have a go and get a small taste before TI3. I appreciate if you are not in England this is all irrelevant so here's something terrible from the web:

http://www.geekdecor.net/star-wars-crap-vinyl-decal/
 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If you guys want to have a coach with a Slavic accent help you learn how the game works, I can come join your games as a spectator if you're making a private lobby, or a coach if you want to use matchmaking. I'm one hour ahead of you but I'll be on from 1 pm GMT.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Is there a way to adjust the interface at all?

 

Every time these tourneys (especially casted by Ayesee) roll around I say "no I could actually play Dota maybe", and then I log into the game and 40% of the vertical space is taken up by rocks and character portraits. I want the rocks to go away. I want to move the teams to the sides. How do I do this?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Is there a way to adjust the interface at all?

 

Every time these tourneys (especially casted by Ayesee) roll around I say "no I could actually play Dota maybe", and then I log into the game and 40% of the vertical space is taken up by rocks and character portraits. I want the rocks to go away. I want to move the teams to the sides. How do I do this?

 

No way to do this. You can load some other UI if it's shared or edit files to put transparent panes but there's nothing rendered beneath the UI. You'd still have a black panel where the UI was.

 

You can swap the side of the minimap and the items in the options, that's it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I love the Dota spectator presentation, but as a player it drives me nuts. There's far too much wasted space, especially vertically. As nit picky as that sounds, the inability to shrink/move/remove the garbage around the edges of the screen is what drives me away every time.

 

 

vvv It's just that Valve of all companies should know how valuable vertical space is. It turns a 1080 screen into a 720. It frustrates me.

 

Sorry for ranting. It's just that I feel like I check in every 6-8 months and it doesn't appear they'll ever change the thing that's dumb but I care about that keeps me from playing the game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think the goal is that everyone has the same-ish UI so the wasted space is the same for everyone. It never really bothered me, as I'm not much of a UI customizer, but I can see why some would have issues.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

it feels like every RTS from 1995 - 2005, so never bothered me either.  if anything it is less in the way than wc3 was & with the right skin on it less distracting

 

personal preference i guess, and i play on a 1200 screen

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah it doesn't bother me in the slightest, either.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't think they'll be removing it any time soon. HoN has a pretty customisable UI if you want a close-ish clone.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Eh, I've played thousands of hours of League of Legends. It's not a matter of finding a thing that's like Dota, it's not feeling squashed by Dota's interface. It's my own personal hang up and I'll either deal with it or not deal with it. To this point, I haven't been able to get past it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now