DOTA 2

[Codicier]

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.

 

HoN keeps coming up in this discussion as a game who's way of implementing a GG seems almost universally despised, (& who as Osmosisch say's is renowned for having a particularly toxic community even among LoMa's)  but obviously LoL existis and has a surrender option and people don't seem to think it has as much of a problem with concedes as HoN (or as toxic a community).

 

So what is LoL doing that HoN doesn't to stop people GGing as quickly? Is it something mechanical or something about the social engineering surrounding the game?

 

If it's the later how would people feel if valve adopted a approach of rewarding players for keeping fighting & punishing players for showboating. 

 

What if for instance Valve offered more battle point's for winning than they do currently just for completing a game, but that the number of points the winner received decayed the longer a match went on?

So there would be both a reward for a comeback(admittedly a smaller one), but also a incentive for someone to go for the kill?

 

Or even if they simply offered a GG mode where players had the option of GGing but received battle points at a lower rate than they do currently? give players a choice but give a incentive to people to try & play without GG?

[Jutranjo]

I've only played like 4 games of LoL before the art style turned me off but as far as I know it's got a fixed game with 5 explicit roles players need to fill with heroes being specific for those roles and with bigger items being more gold and slot effective every game might be a lot more predictable so when players think they're losing or have lost, they've actually lost. 

[Twig]

So what is LoL doing that HoN doesn't to stop people GGing as quickly? Is it something mechanical or something about the social engineering surrounding the game?

Basically it's that HoN is filled with nothing but the most vile dregs of humanity, and LoL has actual people playing it, much like Dota 2.

 

People like to use HoN as an example of surrender gone wrong, but really it's just an example of everything gone wrong, so it's not an apt comparison. The people who employ the HoN comparison know all this and insist on using the comparison anyway because they think other people don't know better.

[Jutranjo]

Basically it's that HoN is filled with nothing but the most vile dregs of humanity, and LoL has actual people playing it, much like Dota 2.

 

People like to use HoN as an example of surrender gone wrong, but really it's just an example of everything gone wrong, so it's not an apt comparison. The people who employ the HoN comparison know all this and insist on using the comparison anyway because they think other people don't know better.

 

HoN is the dregs of dregs now, it didn't use to be so bad but since then everyone moved to DOTA2 or LOL.

[Codicier]

If truly it is the worst of the worst, the obvious question remains why? what made that community become that way?

Taking surrender out of the discussion for the moment. Twig & Jutaranjo, what design/community choices did HoN make which (in you guys personal opinions) led to it's current state.

[Twig]

It's aesthetically disgusting. Much like Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, its overall look and feel is designed to produce the purest form of rage within its players. Every moment of visual acknowledgment of the game smacks the player in the face with an anger stick. Over and over and over, until there's nothing left.

 

oh god why new page whyyyyyyy

[Dewar]

I guess this conversation is sticking around a while, so I'll just say that the surrender option in LoL made me feel terrible because I thought we still had a chance and I was bullied into conceding a bunch of times. A higher percentage of LoL games ended with people yelling at me for not conceding or me just conceding because everyone else seemed inclined to than I've personally had Dota games end with fountain camping. I wonder if it might have something to do with the MMR that people are hovering at. I played pretty lousy in LoL, so I might have been down at the bottom of the matchmaking pool, while in Dota I've actually had a pretty good win rate.

[Jutranjo]

Sorry for the trainwreck post that follows.

 

When HoN entered closed beta (it got closer and closer to open beta as the beta was ending) it was a very similar game to DOTA1, out of the 50 or so heroes it had, around 10 were new, and the rest of them were copies of DOTA1 heroes, reskinned, renamed.

 

The items were all renamed, as were the creeps, neutrals, Roshan/Kongor but everything had the same price, effect. Blink dagger became Portal Key, etc. This was Fine. Only change that was made was the change in turn speed for everything, everything seemed to instantly turn. I don't know if this was due to S2 games making a mistake when making the new engine or if it was intentional but most of my group of friends didn't care or notice since we hadn't been actively playing DOTA for a year or two. I can't remember if they changed S&Y from the start or only later. It showed everyone's HP and mana bars, view was maybe a bit more zoomed out.

 

They started adding more heroes, few ports, mostly their own new heroes. Items were changed, new items were added, recipes changed. Sange became a mini Skadi that you could upgrade. They made some weapon that made your autoattacks do magic damage while costing mana. All the heroes and changes they made seemed to be made to have gankers roam most of the game and all the heroes they added seemed to do this very well.

 

Some changes were at least interesting and they added a at least one mechanic that was new and interesting. Antimage (Magebane) spell shield passive was only active on him after he blinked and it also gave his allies magic resistance. Faceless void (chronos) backtrack that in dota avoids damage let him take the damage and then heal it back up to where he was before. Some owl mage they added had a gust of wind that pushed things away from him. You could click and drag that to select from where to push heroes into which direction. I think this was added to force staff as well. Pudge/venge could buy blink and if you were on some unpathable cliff you had cliffwalking to get down. They added a rune that spawns where the actual rune doesn't that fills 2/3 of your bottle.

 

Other changes were bad, some hilariously so, like when they enabled all orbs/unique attack modifiers to stack.

 

After the beta ended they wanted to sell the whole game for around 25 euros or dollars. I'd had enough of playing that so I didn't buy it. It went downhill from there, switched to F2P, sold people goblin coins to unlock new heroes.

 

One good thing they added was a vote for pause, which seems a much better way to do it than in DOTA2 right now, though there's not as much abuse as there could be. Shame they added vote to concede, vote to kick a player as well.

 

Why was the community worse than DOTA1 or 2?

 

 

This is the lobby/pick screen, it only loaded after heroes were picked. Also visible is everyone's rating, how much points they stand to gain or lose from the current set up of the teams. When the beta started it didn't have an actual queue to join and it would find you a game, it still had lobbies that you manually joined solo or with friends. Everyone's rating is visible, system gave a prediction of the odds of each team via how many points you'd lose or gain. Everyone also knew who the worst player on the team was before heroes were even picked. That guy better pick hard support or something that has "low impact". Top rated player deserves to go mid or carry since that's the most responsible position to play, the rest of the scrubs can try not to feed too much before he wins the game.

 

So flaming/bullying starts in the lobby. You could also click anyone's profile and see their average stats

 

Our carry averages low CS per game? Not 1.5+ KDRatio?? Fkin scrub, game will be fucked.

 

Since it's a lobby, host can just keep kicking people till he's happy.

 

Concede is available but again if one guy doesn't want to give up, expect more flaming and name calling till they do. Voice chat was included by default so you could be yelled at.

You could kick the flamer via the vote. Guess who ends up being kicked for being a feeding CM with no items at 15 minutes? Lowest rated player.

 

Later they added a queue for automated matchmaking but still thought it'd be a good idea to put the highest rated player in slot 1 on each team (blue and pink) and the lowest rated on orange or brown. So you could still know who was to blame. You could also check the player's detailed stats from above in game, via website.

 

Right from the start you were rated and you couldn't find a game that wasn't rated. I'm not sure anymore if it was because noone played it or it had no option for that.

 

An actual screen shot of a game

Antimage with maybe vanguard, maybe PMS, treads and battlefury. The art style was ok, compared to DOTA2 it looks way worse.

 

They had custom announcers that announced the owner's kills/actions. You couldn't turn them off and you just got a spew of voices and flashing rainbow/bloody double kills/triple kills.

Here's some examples

 

You could buy a taunt from the shop out of game that gave you an option to taunt a specific target, that's the bottom right icon on the bottom right of the in game screen shot. It gave your target vision of you, then played another audio clip if you killed them afterwards.

 

DOTA2 by default tracks barely any stats, you can barely see any of them in game and you can't even play for a ranked score before you have 100+ games played. The report text abuse somehow worked out and there's much less flaming now.

 

I don't know for sure what made HoN players bigger assholes than DOTA, I'd like to think the difference wasn't as big when HoN first had the beta than it is now. But now only people who liked HoN for what it does different from DOTA2 stayed. I saw this interview with one of the best/top rated HoN players

 

http://evilgeniuses.gg/Read/403,The-Dark-Side-of-the-Moonmeander/

 

Here's a quote:

Will Partin

Your reasoning, at least in the interview I read, had to do with communication. DotA only had text chat, and so DotA players are accustomed to not talking, while HoN’s built in VoIP made constant communication as technological possibility, if not necessity. I wonder if you could go into that a bit more and provide some specific examples of what you mean.

 

Moonmeander

In Dota 1, you only typed. In Dota 2, that bad habit carried on to many Dota 2 players. Thus, their communication skills are terrible (most of them at least). In HoN, everyone used VOIP and everyone raged at every mistake. You tend to not make the same mistake twice when someone yells “YOU F*CKING RETARD WHY DIDN’T YOU WAIT TILL TEMPEST ULTI-ED THEN YOU BLINK CANCEL IT YOU STUPID F*CK.” Thus, through HoN players raging at each other, we weeded out the weak and the meek who can’t handle rage. The strong stayed and learnt from people raging from them. Thus, we’re the elite of the 3 Lords Managements, while League of Lesbians has the worst players, precisely because there's no VOIP.

 

I hope this post wasn't a waste of your time reading.

[prawks]

If truly it is the worst of the worst, the obvious question remains why? what made that community become that way?

Taking surrender out of the discussion for the moment. Twig & Jutaranjo, what design/community choices did HoN make which (in you guys personal opinions) led to it's current state.

I'm really interested in this question. In the circles I played CS in, COD players were looked down upon significantly because COD was seen as a less strategic, rambunctious game with a younger audience of (mostly) console (vs. practically PC-only) players.

 

I think you have to consider how much visibility plays a factor. As HoN has gone significantly down in popularity, the remaining players are the "core" (xxXxxhardxxXxx) HoN players who are obviously significantly invested in the game for one reason or another. Similarly, the more invested the players you play with become, the more heavily opinionated they likely become, and more assertive and vocal about those opinions.

 

DotA is (imo) doing a better and better job at relegating toxic players to low-prio queues and building out a more effective reporting system. It's obviously not perfect, but Valve has emphasized it cares a lot about cultivating a welcoming community.

 

I have barely over a hundred non-bot games played, but I've yet to run into more than a handful of truly disruptive players. I'm sure it gets worse in the 3-4k ranked range, but I've never been directly harassed in DotA, and I'm fucking terrible at the game by most people's standards.

[Twig]

It's worth nothing that Moonmeander, as far as I know, is one of the most hated public figures in the genre, regardless of game. He plays Dota 2 now, I think. Everyone still hates him. I never really knew about him until after Dota 2 came out but I don't think I've ever heard a positive impression.

[osmosisch]

I hope this post wasn't a waste of your time reading.

That was super good and informative, thanks.

[Codicier]

I hope this post wasn't a waste of your time reading.

 

Indeed I'll 2nd Osmosisch's opinion, that was a most excellent potted history/summary, thanks. 

 

It's aesthetically disgusting. Much like Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, its overall look and feel is designed to produce the purest form of rage within its players. Every moment of visual acknowledgment of the game smacks the player in the face with an anger stick. Over and over and over, until there's nothing left.

 

oh god why new page whyyyyyyy

 

That point about the art style is interesting too, looking at the screenshot that got posted it's definitely a darker take than either LoL or Dota 2, and it's modelling style feels far closer to their shared wc3 origins (which in fairness might be attributable to it's earlier development). All in all i get a vibe of 'Tradition' & 'seriousness' that certainly does play into some of the thing's that Jutranjo talks about.

 

Dota's starting to seem a lot more friendly in light of some of that stuff...

[sclpls]

As a new player I've found the DOTA 2 community to be way better than I anticipated. Like, usually when I mute someone it's just because they are kind of annoying, or their mic is too loud or something, and not because they are behaving like some terrible human being.

[undermind9]

i did enjoy some parts of HoN - not quite a rip-off hero builds - like Rampage (spirit breaker) had bat-rider like lasso, Nymph's combination of pitlord, kotl, and the boomerang move, and the buy menu was coming from dota1/wc3 cumbersome shops

 

some of the new lords were pretty interesting as well; Maliken (personal favorite), dark lady, aluna, and parasite stick out

 

 

but after the "out of beta" cash grab to not have rotating lords & the introduction of pay to early-access it really fell apart

[njoos]

The developers behind HoN were/are the scummiest of scummy dota players, so they had/have no interest in making it a good community, and even if they did they wouldn't know how. 

 

Their hero design was awful, when they stopped copying dota heroes the game turned to garbage and was unplayable. 

[Forbin]

As a new player I've found the DOTA 2 community to be way better than I anticipated. Like, usually when I mute someone it's just because they are kind of annoying, or their mic is too loud or something, and not because they are behaving like some terrible human being.

 

Yeah the dota community is actually super great at low-mid tiers.  The people at the upper tier tend to be from a more rancid time, but even most of them are cheering up.  I still think it suffers from skewing to a younger less mature crowd than other competitive multiplayer PC games, but I was expecting much worse.

[BFrank]

IMO, Dota2's gotten significantly friendlier in the last year or so. I'm convinced that the introduction of ranked mode self-segregated a bunch of the hotheads and has resulted in a much more relaxed pub atmosphere. It's still an intimate game where your teammates can cause frustration, but at least I'm not running out of reports every week.

[JonCole]

I've watched pretty much every game in the Rektreational and watching regular players rather than pros actually is far more informative as I can see how some things work and don't work in different situations. Also, I've started doing the practice stuff in the game which has been interesting. Not very good at last hits and denies... working on it, though.

[Jutranjo]

Some characters are much more difficult to last hit with than others. Lina, Crystal Maiden, Clinkz, Zeus are pretty hard. Sniper can be easy but he can throw your other hero attack timings off. Gyrocopter has no wind up timer for the autoattack.

[njoos]

Don't forget Razor. Ugh.

[Twig]

MAN Razor does have the worst attack animation.

[JonCole]

Do you guys assign any Dota 2 functions to mouse macro buttons? I was thinking about assigning a and s to two of my six thumb buttons to potentially make last hit/deny easier, but then again those keys seem to be the best place to keep those fingers on the left hand since you use qwer for skills and zxcv for items.

[njoos]

No, I personally do not.

Also: You don't have to a-click to deny. There is a autoexec config setting for it. Makes it so you can simply right click on allied creep to attack it. Explained here. http://www.liquiddota.com/forum/dota-2-general/453984-customising-dota-2

[Twig]

Careful with that, though. You'll end up doing something

 

 

terrible...

[JonCole]

Did I follow that right? Friendly deny kill?