DOTA 2

[Henroid]

The grand final ended up being boring in some ways but exciting in others. Not that I can definitively describe either way. Overall I have mixed feelings.

It seemed like VG was throwing the series though. Round 1 they drafted a sturdy team and dominated with it. Round 2 they drafted a way more fragile team and lost with it; they then decided that was the strategy to stick with. It was very qualifier-rounds Team Liquid.

But hey, that was the first e-sports event that I watched more or less the entire way through, and I liked it. I dunno what other tourneys I should look into (I know there's many leagues so I have homework to do).

[njoos]

Star Ladder season 10 should start soon. 18 top teams, league first, then LAN finals in Kiev in October. Should start late august. http://dota2.starladder.tv/news/5029

Will be a silent time for a bit because teams usually shuffle their rosters after TI.

[Codicier]

Rat dota is fun to watch too. The people comparing it to your soccer metaphor were wrong, very wrong. And no, VG did not play rat dota versus EG. Rat dota is out because of changes to blink dagger and the meta that followed. Hard to say if that was intended. Who knows. It is also hard to rat when there are 5 heroes death balling down your middle lane at 11 minutes.

Rat dota is when you push lanes without showing your face, multiple lanes at the same time. Natures prophet with shadow blade being a prime example.

I don't think icefrog cares about outside pressure. But who knows. I find it amazing that the lead designer/producer/guy behind one of the biggest PC games is just a nickname and a matching avatar. No one but valve knows who icefrog really is. The only known thing is that he was 25 years old in 2009. Nuts.

 

Wait, what?  I'd always assumed it was just a nickname & everyone knew who he was. That is truly crazy.

 

Yeah your 100% right on that VGvEG game, though there was some split pushing that was more about just absolutely efficiently destroying towers.

 

I think my mistake was to think about "Rat" as being defined by efficiency & concentration on objectives (which route one certainly is) & that game more than almost any I remembered over TI4 was one where the winners just went straight for the throne.

So is "Rat" more about refusing to engage while denying your opponent the important objectives? Any good examples of it you can think of this tourney? I seem to remember one example which fit that bill but failed, I think it was Alliance vs EG (will go check replays).

 

Anyway competitive Dota terminology is still very new to me so thanks for the clarification.

[BobbyBesar]

DoTA has so many problems as a spectator sport, I don't think changes like rat vs. teamfight are going to solve anything.

[Dewar]

Rat dota is fun to watch too. The people comparing it to your soccer metaphor were wrong, very wrong. And no, VG did not play rat dota versus EG. Rat dota is out because of changes to blink dagger and the meta that followed. Hard to say if that was intended. Who knows. It is also hard to rat when there are 5 heroes death balling down your middle lane at 11 minutes.

Rat dota is when you push lanes without showing your face, multiple lanes at the same time. Natures prophet with shadow blade being a prime example.

I don't think icefrog cares about outside pressure. But who knows. I find it amazing that the lead designer/producer/guy behind one of the biggest PC games is just a nickname and a matching avatar. No one but valve knows who icefrog really is. The only known thing is that he was 25 years old in 2009. Nuts.

 

There was some successful rat Dota in the groups stage, but it seemed like the aggressive teams figured out how to deal with it there and had no problems in the main event (as evidenced by Newbee barely gettingp past the first stage and then destroying for the rest of the tournament.) At least with rat Dota, you get some fun base races from time to time.

 

I was actually rooting for Newbee, so that's awesome they won, but I definitely wish it was a lot closer.

[njoos]

From last year

Alliance are good at rat dota. I don't know why LGD let them have the 4 rattiest heroes, but it is a pretty good example.

This too. Alliance didn't really pick to rat here, but they didn't manage to finish in the mid game (WK is pretty bad as a late game carry).

[Jutranjo]

DoTA has so many problems as a spectator sport, I don't think changes like rat vs. teamfight are going to solve anything.

 

It has problems when one team does the same draft strategy 3 times in a row and fails. It was between 10 and 15 different heroes picked in 4 games in a row.

[njoos]

Home teams are more boring than others, that is a fact of all sports. To be fair to VG they did play some spectacular dota for most of their games.

 

The noob stream concept is interesting if they can make something like that good. Keep it interesting for people who don't understand all the details, but can appreciate the push and pull of a tower defence game with 10 human players. I'm not a noob, and as such I didn't really watch that stream so I don't know how successful it was. Most of my non-dota playing friends watched the 'real' stream, and thought that was fine, but they all have familiarity with Warcraft and briefly league of legends. Are there any "noobs" in this thread who can share?

[Dewar]

I'm not exactly a noob, but I found the noob stream a good mix of new things that I didn't know and repetative information about the very basic mechanics. Purge especially did a great job, and his explanations of the heroes and their different power at the start was super useful for someone who hasn't seen a lot of them played. As hero picks got repetative and I had a good idea of what each of them could do, I tuned into the noob stream a lot less.

[undermind9]

I wonder if there is a policy in place or process to shutting down twitch chat for an event of that size.  Mods shut it down during the short pause when the feed went down in an EG game, and then when it came back up was a cascade of "nazi mods"

 

I just dont see the purpose of keeping it open when more than a 1-2k people watching (figuring only <10% even type to the window)

 

First there is an inherent problem of scrolling when +/-150K people typing, emoji faces, or spamming "picnic" every time the stream stopped/stuttered

 

Secondly, it is filled with essentially the worst you-tube comments in real time.  The moment Kaci or Sheever came on the screen there was a cascade of gross, weird, and asinine comments. 

 

*i know, you can minimize the chat and forget it even exists...but for anyone casually coming by to see what this massive featured event on the home page was, the chat groupies didn't do any favors for showing the dota community in a less-toxic light

 

Did anyone watch the games live with the in-game client? I only caught the evening games and didn't find there to be a lot of rude/gross people spamming the chat box

[Codicier]

I'm not exactly a noob, but I found the noob stream a good mix of new things that I didn't know and repetative information about the very basic mechanics. Purge especially did a great job, and his explanations of the heroes and their different power at the start was super useful for someone who hasn't seen a lot of them played. As hero picks got repetative and I had a good idea of what each of them could do, I tuned into the noob stream a lot less.

 

My experience was pretty much the same (except i really am considerably more n00bish), watched most of the initial rounds with the beginners stream before switching to the main stream later in the tournament when i felt i was familiar with more of the vocab and hero abilities

[Jutranjo]

I wonder if there is a policy in place or process to shutting down twitch chat for an event of that size.  Mods shut it down during the short pause when the feed went down in an EG game, and then when it came back up was a cascade of "nazi mods"

 

I just dont see the purpose of keeping it open when more than a 1-2k people watching (figuring only <10% even type to the window)

 

First there is an inherent problem of scrolling when +/-150K people typing, emoji faces, or spamming "picnic" every time the stream stopped/stuttered

 

Secondly, it is filled with essentially the worst you-tube comments in real time.  The moment Kaci or Sheever came on the screen there was a cascade of gross, weird, and asinine comments. 

 

*i know, you can minimize the chat and forget it even exists...but for anyone casually coming by to see what this massive featured event on the home page was, the chat groupies didn't do any favors for showing the dota community in a less-toxic light

 

Did anyone watch the games live with the in-game client? I only caught the evening games and didn't find there to be a lot of rude/gross people spamming the chat box

 

Chat is readable if it's like 100 to 200 viewers. THen it's maybe 50 people talking, probably the streamer is looking at the chat since you can read it.

 

Anything bigger, anything with 1k+ viewers, that isn't in sub only mode, is noise.

[njoos]

All of twitch is like that BTW. Not really a reflection on Lords Management communities.

[BusbyBerkeley]

All of twitch is like that BTW. Not really a reflection on Lords Management communities.

 

LoMa communities are also shitty though. I totally agree that Twitch chat being on by default is a godawful choice and when that's the most popular place to watch "esports" it has to be a fucking horrible first sight for a casual viewer who decides to check this kind of thing out.

[Dewar]

Chat on the noob stream wasn't too bad, it had around 5k in there when I was watching and there were even some honest noob questions getting answered in there. I did watch some of the games from the client, but with chat turned off, so I don't know what was going on there.

[prawks]

Did anyone watch the games live with the in-game client? I only caught the evening games and didn't find there to be a lot of rude/gross people spamming the chat box

I watched most of the games in the client, and it was much, much better. Spectators are (to my knowledge) heavily segmented into smaller groups for chatting in the client, so it was at most 10 people talking during the course of a game, and only one or two comments a minute.

 

In addition, the in-game client's chat is tabbed to include the channels you are idling in-game. It was pretty neat when we had about 8-10 people in the idlethumbs channel talking in between games here and there. Hoping it gets more active, I'm often the only one in there.

[njoos]

You are likely not alone, the chat only displays active people.

[Twig]

I didn't actually watch any of these interviews during TI4, but I clicked on this one today because I was curious what Kaci had to say as someone who has only been involved with, and probably only really known about, Dota 2 for a little over a year.

 

 

It's a pretty good interview! Now I feel like I should go watch the rest of 'em.

 

Also Kaci's awesome!

[njoos]

Hot_bid is cool. The matchmaking series joindota did is funny too.

[BusbyBerkeley]

Broodmother is solo top vs a duo lane. She is winning the lane. Should the duo give up on the lane and start roaming or should the rest of the team focus their energy on trying to stop the already fed Brood?

[Dewar]

I suppose that would depend on how bad it's gotten, but I usually see people call for a rotate (swapping lanes) in these situations, thus putting your more-farmed team members up against their farmed Brood.

[prawks]

I suppose that would depend on how bad it's gotten, but I usually see people call for a rotate (swapping lanes) in these situations, thus putting your more-farmed team members up against their farmed Brood.

 

Additionally/alternatively, gank. Ideally before she gets out of control.

[njoos]

She is pretty easy to kill now. Just buy some sentry wards and kill her, one stun and she should be dead. Unless she has farmed a bkb she dies pretty easily. Brood can't go into the trees anymore when she has taken damage. 

[RavenholmDX]

Who do I have to kill to get an invite to the guild for this fine Lords Management game?

 

YAY FIRST POST.

[BusbyBerkeley]

The two dudes we had top were each like 1-6 around 15 minutes in or something like that while the other lanes were going fairly well. I know I went top and killed brood at least once before like 20 minutes. The other team started four manning while brood was top and our two dudes insisted we go top to fight the single brood while the three other people were narrowly losing teamfights.

 

Then the guys top said I was bad. It seemed like they weren't getting anything from the lane and could have been better use if one or both of them started playing with the rest of us and either taking fights or pushing another lane in.