Brannigan

DOTA 2

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I can't believe you buttes are still discussing this non-issue.

 

Here is a dumb video from some guy 

 

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It's only a non-issue for you because you already have it your way. For everyone who disagrees, it's an obstacle they have to overcome half the time they play the game.

 

Stop acting like your opinion and situation is the only one that matters.

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ugh, this is exactly like a game the night i had.  our ursa tried to go in lvl 4...and with 2-3 hits left got RNG bashed and died.  my dark seer & WD showed up to salvage and killed 2 more...but slow top response ended up with everyone walking in one at a time, with a 9 - 4 swing for the other team AND rosh never died.

 

at that point nightstalker was out of control, they had map control and stuns, and we ended up losing at a 30k gold deficit.  ursa 0-10, no rosh, bad morale

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I think I agree with Chris Thurston's position on this issue in his recent PC Gamer article. I mean, I'm not 100% certain I understand what it is, but I think I agree with it.

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/07/31/three-lane-highway-surrender-buttons-gordian-knots-and-other-thoughts-on-giving-up/

 

It's an interesting position, although I don't think Thurston understands what a Gordian knot is. It's a needlessly complex problem that is easily solved by lateral thinking, or alternately the ability of the powerful to declare themselves the winner even if they break the rules. Either way, it's a tortured metaphor that doesn't really enhance the argument of the article.

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Yeah, he ran with that several paragraphs more than necessary.

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It's an interesting position, although I don't think Thurston understands what a Gordian knot is. It's a needlessly complex problem that is easily solved by lateral thinking, or alternately the ability of the powerful to declare themselves the winner even if they break the rules. Either way, it's a tortured metaphor that doesn't really enhance the argument of the article.

 

Dollars to donuts that at some point this paragraph was birthed in his head, and come hell or high water, he was going to find a way to make it work:

 

There are other ways of telling that story. In 333BC, a longstanding and much-revered Persian multiplayer puzzle game was hacked to pieces by a singleminded Macedonian powergamer who valued his experience above that of the other players. The game's (possibly real) forum must have been in uproar; I imagine they had something to say about it in the pages of Phrygian Hemp Gamer. This Alexander guy, they'd write, cared nothing for the intent of the game's designers or the rules that they'd created to ensure an optimal play environment. He didn't have the taste or patience to value complexity for its own sake, and his reductive actions had curtailed everybody else's freedom to enjoy it too. What a scrub. Broke game Midas fix.

 

It's a fun paragraph, even if it ultimately doesn't work very well in the rest of the piece.

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Dollars to donuts that at some point this paragraph was birthed in his head, and come hell or high water, he was going to find a way to make it work:

 

 

It's a fun paragraph, even if it ultimately doesn't work very well in the rest of the piece.

 

Yeah, I think he's a really thoughtful person, and I think he was just trying to have fun. I just think he didn't need to carry on with it beyond that paragraph.

 

We're pretty far off on a tangent at this point though. I think the whole idea of early concession needs to be handled with the same sort of delicacy that one has when playing a board game with friends. There are times when it is worth calling it because the rest of the game isn't going to be enjoyable for anyone involved. This is not such a common thing for a lot of Euro games that have catch-up mechanics built into the system, but I can think of quite a few games like Axis & Allies played where we just ended the game early because one side did unusually well in the beginning, and the rest of the game would have just been a slog and not that interesting for anyone. I don't know how you reach that level of understanding with strangers on the internet though.

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It's so much easier to play one-sided board games to the end though because the losers (assuming you're not playing with complete assholes!) can still participate banter-wise, or even go full kingmaker (which is my favorite thing to do in that situation).

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About the Thurston article a intresting piece of context is that he found out about the polygon article at the end of stream which included what seemed like the least fun game of dota I've ever seen, where he really had every reason to want to GG. They got slaughterd, there were several long discons from the opposing team that stretched it out further, & the opposing team were pissing about fountain diving rather than finishing them (& being farmed enough to just shrug off the fountain damage).

I still am on the side of surrendering here, although I wonder if allowing a GG only after a certain time would perhaps be a reasonable compromise. Say 30 mins

This is not such a common thing for a lot of Euro games that have catch-up mechanics built into the system.

On the other let's just have Rosh drop a Blue Shell and be done with all this :D

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... Except for the implicit assumption that most people will be playing multiplayer with their friends and that the game should be tuned for that. Did you read my post?

 

Okay, several things and then I'm done:

  • You have no evidence that players will do a surrender vote the moment the tide turns. It's purely your assumption, which says more about you than any other player. Anecdotal accounts from other people on this forum who play other LoMa games with surrender options say that player behavior is not noticeably different with or without it.
  • People say fuck it all the time already. It's not like the absence of a surrender option turns a dude who says it's over after five minutes and goes creeping in some deserted corner into a hard-fighting hard-winning player. If Valve is hoping to motivate their players to become better by trapping them in losing games with no hope of recovery, then they've failed and no surprise, because it's bad design.
  • Multiple people have said that the game's meant to be played with preset teams, so maybe the solution to playing with unmotivated players is to play with your friends instead and meanwhile let me have the option to get out of a truly terrible game every once in a while.
  • And really, why should I have to keep playing a game that I think is over and that I'm not enjoying anymore, just for someone else's rocks and the vague philosophy that giving me the choice is a slippery slope? You guys know it's a game, right? Other "serious" games like Counter-Strike let me quit when I'm tired of losing with my team of pub assholes, why shouldn't Dota 2, so long as appropriate measures are taken to keep it from becoming a tool for trolls.

 

1) I disagree with your premise.  There are people who claim that surrender does cut short LoL games.

2) The argument is that more people would give up more often if they knew it was something that they could do without "throwing" the game.  Even if you want to give up, you only do so right now if you're an asshole.  I don't think it's a question of if more winnable games will be abandoned prematurely, it's how many will when you put the power in the hands of everyone rather than just the jerks.

3) This is the point that I most wanted to dig up your post and reply about.  I don't agree that the game is "meant to be played with preset teams", in fact I think that in terms of match making, it's not.  It's very very hard to write a matchmaking system that's accurate with groups of people, especially when the members of the group are constantly shifting.  I'd argue that people who play more in groups actually experience bad games more often than those who queue solo exclusively.  They also probably play more good games, but you're bouncing around the extremes.  There's a huge skill range in DOTA, and even one or two players can really tip the balance, so if you're match making with a player who is really good, it's not hard to come up against a team of people much better than you.  Marginal skill gaps are enough to dramatically shift the balance.  I enjoy playing with people I know, but I feel more at home matched against my peers.  And when it comes to frustrating games that feel unwinnable, I've experienced far more while in a pre-made party.

4) CS:GO's ranked matches will not let you quit. You agree to play a best of 30 rounds in competitive, and it creates a much better experience.  I think the main difference is that DOTA can't afford to run pub server style modes because it's a 5v5  team game.  And even casual shooters are unbalanced once you start playing with less than 5 people on a team.

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1) I disagree with your premise.  There are people who claim that surrender does cut short LoL games.

2) The argument is that more people would give up more often if they knew it was something that they could do without "throwing" the game.  Even if you want to give up, you only do so right now if you're an asshole.  I don't think it's a question of if more winnable games will be abandoned prematurely, it's how many will when you put the power in the hands of everyone rather than just the jerks.

3) This is the point that I most wanted to dig up your post and reply about.  I don't agree that the game is "meant to be played with preset teams", in fact I think that in terms of match making, it's not.  It's very very hard to write a matchmaking system that's accurate with groups of people, especially when the members of the group are constantly shifting.  I'd argue that people who play more in groups actually experience bad games more often than those who queue solo exclusively.  They also probably play more good games, but you're bouncing around the extremes.  There's a huge skill range in DOTA, and even one or two players can really tip the balance, so if you're match making with a player who is really good, it's not hard to come up against a team of people much better than you.  Marginal skill gaps are enough to dramatically shift the balance.  I enjoy playing with people I know, but I feel more at home matched against my peers.  And when it comes to frustrating games that feel unwinnable, I've experienced far more while in a pre-made party.

4) CS:GO's ranked matches will not let you quit. You agree to play a best of 30 rounds in competitive, and it creates a much better experience.  I think the main difference is that DOTA can't afford to run pub server style modes because it's a 5v5  team game.  And even casual shooters are unbalanced once you start playing with less than 5 people on a team.

  • The tack you take with my first point is a matter of opinion. I'm just challenging the apparent "consensus" that a surrender option leads to everyone abandoning perfectly enjoyable games. I've heard opinions both ways, just like I hear opinions both ways that the lack of a surrender option allows for unpleasant player behavior like fountain-camping to become ubiquitous.
  • If, when you give everyone the option to surrender a game, everyone is surrendering games all the time, that sounds like a problem with the game itself, not the surrender option. If a Dota 2 game is enjoyable the entire way through, especially considering the "comeback" feeling that everyone always raves about, then there shouldn't be any surrenders except for truly lost causes. I would be interested in hearing why people think that isn't the case and how Valve could design around the problem.
  • My entire "game is meant to be played with preset teams" bit comes from Reyturner's argument two pages ago that the "solution" to getting stuck with annoying randos is to play in a team, which is what the game should be designed for anyway. Basically, what I'm learning is that there's no consensus on whether the random or team game is the "true" heart of Dota 2, which makes design arguments about it a bit more tenuous than I expected.
  • The LoMa model became huge as a custom game on Warcraft 3. Somehow I feel like it's not an insuperable engineering problem for Valve to make the same work, except they get no benefit from people playing Dota 2 any way except the way Valve wants them to play. They're invested in funneling people into a hyper-competitive "ranked" mode that a lot of potential players, myself included, find really unpalatable. I strongly suspect that this reason, and not anything that's been said about the spirit of the game, is the reason why there's no surrender option.

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People are still talking about this? There should be a map condition preset for the gg. So if everyone on a team GGs (or clicks the surrender button) and the map condition is set (for an extreme example lets say your ancient is exposed or maybe you've lost all your barracks or something. At that point the ancient should explode. I've played games that are clearly won in under 25-30 mins where the other team would just fountain farm basically forever. Most of the times we have ended games like that by organizing a group quit. I think it's probably good to give players the option to call a match a wash. They do it in competition I just think they would need to conditionalize it heavily if they wanted to introduce it into the mainline game. 

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People are still talking about this? There should be a map condition preset for the gg. So if everyone on a team GGs (or clicks the surrender button) and the map condition is set (for an extreme example lets say your ancient is exposed or maybe you've lost all your barracks or something. At that point the ancient should explode. I've played games that are clearly won in under 25-30 mins where the other team would just fountain farm basically forever. Most of the times we have ended games like that by organizing a group quit. I think it's probably good to give players the option to call a match a wash. They do it in competition I just think they would need to conditionalize it heavily if they wanted to introduce it into the mainline game. 

 

Oh, I agree! I don't think any pro-GG party is arguing for a unilateral surrender option from the moment the game starts. It should be unanimous and have a minimum time threshold that everybody agrees on beforehand. After all, the main thing I'd like to prevent is games going on longer than they have to because of antisocial player behavior on the winning side. It's funny that the option only exists in professional Dota 2, where such behavior is the least likely to occur.

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I don't know Gormongous, it feels like you're back-peddling from out right claims you made in your previous post.   I agree that there aren't a lot of certainties about what the outcome would be.

 

I feel like I've never experienced a delay of game longer than a couple minutes.  What do you guys consider getting trolled?

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You've never had a team abandon a push that would easily net them the ancient before anyone on your team respawned so they can go get Rosh and farm up another big item or two while you're forced to pretend to care until they finally deign it time to come in and fountain camp the shit out of you with only two out of three rax down and neither of the T4s down so it takes even longer - sometimes ten minutes longer or worse! - than it should for the existing mega creeps to kill the ancient on their own?

 

I wish I could be so lucky.

 

I mean, that's an extreme and a rarity as far as assholes prolonging the game goes, but it happens often enough to make note of it. Not to mention the lesser degrees of that where maybe they will kill all rax and will not go for Rosh but they'll still sit at fountain until the megas take down T4s literally just standing there waiting for you to respawn in the meantime. At least that way it's only a couple minutes at minimum. Unless your team manages to kill them while they fountain camp and then someone pulls the megas into the fountain to save the ancient and wait for the next big push.

 

And of course no matter how nicely you ask them to stop camping and end they don't do it. And sometimes they'll even respond with racist or homophobic slurs. At least I get an easy report out of those situations. I take some minor point of solace in that.

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Sorry to intrude, but if there are any new players lurking in here, hit me up. I am moving my shift to a more shift (from 3rd shift) so I'll finally be able to play with people, hah!

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Pros can be trusted with a gg button because they have a vested interest in winning, not finishing fast to get to the next game (tho ViCi at the TI4 Grand Finals proved even pros can strain that trust).

Dota 2 needs a gg to better accommodate time sensitive players the same way the Vatican needs to knock the ceiling out of the Sistine Chapel to better accommodate giraffes.

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Pros can be trusted with a gg button because they have a vested interest in winning, not finishing fast to get to the next game (tho ViCi at the TI4 Grand Finals proved even pros can strain that trust).

Dota 2 needs a gg to better accommodate time sensitive players the same way the Vatican needs to knock the ceiling out of the Sistine Chapel to better accommodate giraffes.

 

This is an exceptionally bad analogy. Not only are you comparing Dota 2, a constantly evolving video game with a ten-year history, to an ancient and timeless work of art, but you're implying that people who'd prefer the option to surrender in Dota 2 are as common or as welcome as giraffes in the Sistine Chapel, which I assume is to say not at all, and that any effort at all to accommodate them is tantamount to destroying the entire game for everyone forever.

 

See, this is why I pretty much agree with various people here that there's no point having this conversation. I feel like pro-GG people are willing to be flexible in what they want from a surrender option, in order to accommodate the concerns of anti-GG people, but every anti-GG person seems to hold the same hyperbolic opinion that any surrender option at all will irreparably destroy the game in a way that the trolling allowed by the current system somehow doesn't, when this same game had an unofficial surrender option for years and still has an official option for professional play. I can do my best to articulate my own reasons for being pro-GG and to acknowledge points for and against, as well as to pull back when I realize I'm taking too extreme of a position like Forbin pointed out, but then someone rolls in and say something as unbelievably vapid and unhelpful as "giraffes in the Sistine Chapel," like there's no need for a dialogue at all. Whatever, enjoy your "perfect" game, everyone.

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Dota with a concede option exists and it's called Heroes of Newerth. As far as I'm concerned, it isn't a hypothetical that a concede mechanic completely changes the psychology of the player-base for the worse. The amount of GG CC 15 spamming I've run into playing HoN FAR exceeds any game extending trolling I've experienced in Dota 2.

Players trolling other players is a problem, but a GG button isn't the solution.

There's another criticism that I often see, especially from professional game designers: that Dota 2 without a concede mechanic is disrespectful of the player, wasting their time forcing them to complete a game they "know" they can't win when they'd rather quit. Not just a game where they are getting actively trolled but ANY game. While I don't doubt that people have had games of Dota ruined by assholes on the other team dragging a game out long, I do suspect that these experiences are a little overemphasized to buttress this criticism. The logic goes: Losing Dota 2 isn't fun and a game that can leave a player not having fun for an extended period of time must be broken. Therefore, remove the potential for that period of time to occur. Misery is removed, so net enjoyment must be preserved. Expecting the player to change their mindset to meet the expectations built into the game is unthinkable. I feel like this is supported by the amount of pitches for new LoMas that concentrate on making games less stressful and easier to pick up and play.

Dota 2 is a brilliant game to figure out and master with a huge possibility space and I honestly don't think you can force Dota 2 to be fun or painless to lose from the top down without seriously damaging what makes it unique and amazing. I'm basing that on my experience with every other LoMa I've played that has tried to solve these problems and have, in my opinion, failed. Heroes of the Storm is shallow and boring, LoL's meta-game is calcified and rigid, HoN is dominated by early push line-ups and fast concedes. I don't know for certain that nothing can but done, but I do know that a lot of sweat and treasure has been spent trying to no avail.

The elephant in the room is, of course, League of Legends which HAS a concede mechanic and is VASTLY more popular than Dota 2 (and every other game combined). I can't say that a part of this success isn't the presence of the concede function, but everyone I talk to going from LoL to Dota 2 stay because they believe Dota 2 is a better game, while anyone starting or moving to LoL is do so because that's what their friends play.

It's a totally valid reaction to not want to get sucked into the Dota 2 and the its learning curve, and its complexity, and its mad systems and its low low LOW lows. However, a lot of criticism gets hurled at games that don't follow the rules of what a game is "supposed to be", but because those games don't tend to be insanely complicated, hyper competitive, systems driven and enormously popular, it isn't a lot of people's first instinct to extend the same consideration to Dota 2 that you might for The Walking Dead or Gone Home.

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It's questionable at best to make a causal link between HoN's awful playerbase and its presence of a surrender option.

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The elephant in the room is, of course, League of Legends which HAS a concede mechanic and is VASTLY more popular than Dota 2 (and every other game combined). I can't say that a part of this success isn't the presence of the concede function, but everyone I talk to going from LoL to Dota 2 stay because they believe Dota 2 is a better game, while anyone starting or moving to LoL is do so because that's what their friends play.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case, traditionally a sports popularity has often been almost entirely based around how easy it was to participate, and how well it syncs with lifestyle of it's players.

 

In the UK football & rugby (our equivalent of gridiron) both started off being primarily played in the elite educational establishments, what lead to football becoming the national game but rugby remaining a niche sport was not that it was a "superior" game but because it players didn't have to risk what was their important asset in a age of manual labour, their physical health. 

I'd argue in the 21st century our time is our most precious resource, So i think we shouldn't dismiss the question of if a game values our time out of hand, because it is a incredibly important factor to many people.

 

Dota IS a more interesting game to me than LoL, but i don't think that the elements which make it fascinating would be diluted by giving people the option of a well implemented GG system. 

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To follow that point GG-ing out of a game at 30 minutes wasted 30 minutes of my time, sitting in base for 5 minutes wasted 5 minutes. 

 

EASY MATH. 

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It's questionable at best to make a causal link between HoN's awful playerbase and its presence of a surrender option.

 

Before LoL and DOTA2 came out, HoN was the thing people stopped playing WC3 DOTA for. It was a rarity for a game to actually end with an ancient being destroyed. The timer didn't matter, it was changed several times. If it's 15 min, the game ends then, if it's 20 minutes, one guy decides that fuck it, I'll just wait 5 min in jungle or something so I can then concede.

 

 

The only games that didn't end with a concede were the ones where one player either thinks the team has a chance to win still, but good luck getting them to do anything but spam CONCEDE FFS at every cooldown, or he wants to be an asshole and just votes no every time.

 

Later they added a 30 min or so requirement of only 4 concede votes. The game also had kick votes for players so it had loads of problems, including public ratings, KDR, average GPM, etc. But I don't see how a concede vote could work differently than it did there. You can ask anyone who played HoN what kind of games concededing produces.

 

Edit: If you could concede in dota, there's no more late game in random solo games, no more comebacks by the other team fucking up. That's a huge part of DOTA.

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