DOTA 2

[Dewar]

We have an Idle Thumbs chat channel and guild, though I've found them to be pretty empty. I generally hop in the GiantBomb chat to find most of my games these days, though I find a lot of the folks over there outclass me by a fair margin.

[njoos]

The giantbomb channel is probably your best bet. Just state that you are a noob and someone will take you in and not expect all that much. The idlethumbs channel/guild doesnt have enough people in it. Hard to get stuff going when there are only 9 people online, 3 are already in a game, and the rest is some guy with 2000 games played, 1400 games played and two with <100. 

[Dewar]

Let the games begin!

 

I might have not exactly lied, but fudged a little, and got Monday off

[Salacious Snake]

I've been digging the newcomers's stream. I think they still have some work to do in finding a balance between over-explaining certain things while letting other ridiculous jargon slip through without comment, but they're doing a good job. On some level, it seems like an impossible task, since any given spectator will have different gaps in knowledge.

 

I'm not going to remember any of the specifics, but I like getting a sense of the type of logic that goes into the various decisions made during play. If anything, it makes the game seem even crazier.

 

The more sedate tone of their commentary is nice, too; I can never keep up with the energetic play-by-play style in the main stream. They do get excited, and there's a fair amount of clowning around, so it isn't too staid, either. Good shit.

[Jutranjo]

Are they swapping who does the commentating on the noob stream? I think there's two groups of people they have for that.

[Twig]

Yes, there are two groups. I don't remember who's in each group, though!

[Jutranjo]

EG just won at least one million dollars!

[casktapper]

The EG vs DK game was crazy inside the arena. I've been posting some photos from today on my tumble at http://casktapper.tumblr.com

[Jutranjo]

The EG vs DK game was crazy inside the arena. I've been posting some photos from today on my tumble at http://casktapper.tumblr.com

 

This one man

[sclpls]

Going from watching the World Cup obsessively to watching TI obsessively has been intense. Hopefully I'll get to enjoy summer and get on with my life one of these days...

[Jutranjo]

This was a pretty good reveal

 

[Ghobot]

Techies is something that I've had so hyped by my WC3 Dota friends I dunno if I can even play them. Is it out on the main client yet?

[njoos]

no

[undermind9]

generally anti-climatic finals.  game 3 was over before the horn

[osmosisch]

I don't think I've seen a draft that disastrous all of TI4. Sad.

[Codicier]

I found that last draft interesting in it's own way. It reminded me a bit of the Brazil-Germany game in the world cup where it felt like one team realised subconsciously almost as soon as it kicked off they had made a mistake and reacted not by trying to adapt but just falling into a delusion that the only thing going wrong was execution not the plan itself. Maybe Dota has even less room to adapt than international football though.

 

Come on though, for me 2nd game Puck performance seemed excellent enough to make the day as a whole worthwhile. Admittedly she's the hero(ine) I've spent the last week practising with so it was great to see someone execute flawlessly with it.

[osmosisch]

Yeah Mu's Puck was out of this world. That game was the best of the series.

[Twig]

Puck plays are flashy and fun to watch but don't really mean a good game. I'm not saying it wasn't a good game, but.

 

It was one game of NewBee losing to warm up and then three games of NewBee stomping all over ViCi Gaming. Pretty one-sided and boring.

[osmosisch]

Are you disagreeing that it was the best game of the series? I can't really tell.

[Justin Leego]

I found that last draft interesting in it's own way. It reminded me a bit of the Brazil-Germany game in the world cup where it felt like one team realised subconsciously almost as soon as it kicked off they had made a mistake and reacted not by trying to adapt but just falling into a delusion that the only thing going wrong was execution not the plan itself. Maybe Dota has even less room to adapt than international football though.

Funny you should say that but the Twitch chat at least was filled with cries of "7-1"

[Codicier]

Funny you should say that but the Twitch chat at least was filled with cries of "7-1"

 

Football has always & will always remain my baseline for all competitive sports, part of why I found myself pleasantly surprised at how well Dota held up at times as a spectator sport.

 

 

Puck plays are flashy and fun to watch but don't really mean a good game. I'm not saying it wasn't a good game, but.

 

It was one game of NewBee losing to warm up and then three games of NewBee stomping all over ViCi Gaming. Pretty one-sided and boring.

 

 

That brings up a interesting question for me as a relatively new to dota person. 

 

Both the Puck play today & Universe's play on faceless void the other day just seemed near perfect in the drama & spectacle they brought to the games they took place in, virtuoso pieces of individual skill perfectly capitalised on by their team mates.

Now over the years football has had a lot of rule changes to make that sort of play more likely within it & to make what we call "route 1" play (the offside rule being the biggest of these) either impossible or suboptimal.

Before the tournament i saw a lot of talk of "rat" as dota's of "route 1" equivalent a very efficient style of play which could be very boring to watch (iirc it was a ratty strategy which eliminated one of the fan favourites EG)

So do you think as time passes pressure may grow on Valve to tune the game to make the optimal plays also the most spectator friendly? 

[Twig]

Are you disagreeing that it was the best game of the series? I can't really tell.

GOOD LET'S KEEP IT THAT WAY.

 

I'm saying it was a boring ass series.

Codicier: I hope Valve doesn't change the game explicitly with the mindset of making it more fun for spectators. But as the meta shifts, it'll happen all on its own. Every patch brings in a new flavor of the month, even if it's only because of a "hey remember this hero exists" buff to level one attack damage on Phantom Lancer, or whatever.

 

But that's sort of aside from what I was getting at. I think the strategies NewBee and ViCi employed are awesome. I just found this particular series rather boring to watch. It was a stomp.

[Cleinhun]

I don't think valve needs to chance the game for it to be more interesting for spectators, seeing as most of the games in the tournament were already good. Lords like Tidehunter Faceless and Enigma were all common picks outside of the 4 grand final games, and they all have flashy exciting teamfight abilities. I do not believe that final games were an inevitable result of the current game balance, they were just what those 2 teams happened to do.

[Twig]

Also Razor's the most boring hero in the game let's remove him entirely thanks Valve.

[njoos]

Football has always & will always remain my baseline for all competitive sports, part of why I found myself pleasantly surprised at how well Dota held up at times as a spectator sport.

That brings up a interesting question for me as a relatively new to dota person.

Both the Puck play today & Universe's play on faceless void the other day just seemed near perfect in the drama & spectacle they brought to the games they took place in, virtuoso pieces of individual skill perfectly capitalised on by their team mates.

Now over the years football has had a lot of rule changes to make that sort of play more likely within it & to make what we call "route 1" play (the offside rule being the biggest of these) either impossible or suboptimal.

Before the tournament i saw a lot of talk of "rat" as dota's of "route 1" equivalent a very efficient style of play which could be very boring to watch (iirc it was a ratty strategy which eliminated one of the fan favourites EG)

So do you think as time passes pressure may grow on Valve to tune the game to make the optimal plays also the most spectator friendly?

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.