Jake

Dota Today 1: QOP Top and POTM Bottom

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The weird thing about the League character designs is that LoL tries to have Lore with a capital L. For a while every character's backstory had a hook about why they came to fight in the League of Legends, which is an Actual Thing in the world they've created. Thankfully they've gotten away from that for the most part and now the characters are just sort of notable people who live in this world and the fact that you select 10 of them ever game isn't included in the backstory, but every character fits in somehow. There's the Generic Good Guys and the Generic Bad Guys, Far Away Asia Land, the warring factions fighting for the ice plains, and a little yordle town where all the yordle people (gnomes I guess?) live, and the monsters all come from another dimension. So you'd thing in general terms they would all make more cohesive sense, but outside of some of the core characters of those places they don't really.

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I'm pretty sure it's pronounced Dotato Day.

"This Dota Today brought to you by Potato Doritos"

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I hate runes/masteries in League. It's one of those things that just feels like it's mostly in there for monetization.

However, I love summoner's spells. They are an awesome addition, even if some of them rarely see competitive play.

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I prefer the dota method actually. Where you have to pay in to get those abilities rather than having flash immediately available

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I prefer the dota method actually. Where you have to pay in to get those abilities rather than having flash immediately available

 

You mean pay in the match for the usable item, correct? As opposed to Actual Dollars. Not sure I disagree with you, although my brain has atrophied so much that everyone always has it it's hard to get a perspective without it. The problem comes that if you just straight up removed it from the game it might actually be cripplingly unbalanced, because they have to design everything around the idea that everyone might have flash. It's a tough nut to crack. On the other hand, the inclusion of an ability like Smite (a ~1 minute cooldown ability that does up to 1000 true damage to monsters) means they have reinforced that the game is about contesting neutral objectives (Baron, dragon, Blue & Red buff) to gain an advantage which I think is a good thing. It encourages team fights in the earlier game for reasons other than just BATTLIN' for its own sake. You could have everyone take Smite and have much better/faster monster control, but generally you only have the Jungler take it to secure an objective, because it keeps you from taking other summoner spells that might be more useful for the type of lord you are.

 

Masteries are purely a leveling thing. It's a sort-of-weird MMO idea carried over. The game actually starts at Level 30. They don't cost money, everyone has exactly the same trees, and the way you get more points is by leveling your "summoner" (account). You can have up to 20 pages, and they cost nothing. I guess they're possibly monetizing in that you can pay for an XP boost with real money, but looking back from the perspective of hundreds of games played, if you are just starting the game that 1-30 leveling curve is for your own good. You get to slowly learn what all the summoner spells are, the skill trees slowly unlock, and you get to earn a big chunk of IP for runes and lords while you figure out what a Last Hit is. So sort of the exact opposite of monetizing the game. If someone wants to smurf and pay for an XP boost to rush up a second account, hey knock yourself out. I don't have a problem with that because all competitive play starts at level 30 and it doesn't matter how long it took you to get there.

 

Runes are something you can only buy with IP (sweat equity), but to get more rune pages they will sell them to you. THAT'S a monetization thing, because buying the pages with play money costs as much as the most expensive champions.

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That's hilarious. I have been playing LoL forever and I never realized you could only buy runes with IP. Oh well, I look silly now.

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I hate runes/masteries in League. It's one of those things that just feels like it's mostly in there for monetization.

 

I find it really cool that you can adapt your toolbox going into the game to your intended role. There's a lot of cool counterpicking that goes on with this at the pro level, with things like Froggen taking AD runes on a lot of his AP mid champions for early harass because most mids wil forgo armour runes in favour of MR. Stuff like that.

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The effort to fill a page with T3 runes is a hell of a lot though. There is more than a little push to buy an IP boost if you want to stay up to date for a lot of people I'd say. Info one would love to have tune pages customised to my favourite champs, but I just don't have the time to grind the IP.

Or the internet at the mo.

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I hate summoner spells because Flash is fucking stupid. I might be okay with them otherwise.

 

But yeah runes/masteries are stupid.

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One thing thats really standout about dota compared to almost any other game is Icefrogs balance ideals. Whereas other games almost universally balance by using small, incremental number tweaks The Frog balances laterally, throwing more crazy shit in. Its really refreshing, and reminds me of an older school (ie. games like Diablo2 or Broodwar) where things were 'balanced' by the devs by letting systems of sufficient complexity balance themselves.

 

Broodwar would go through phases where one race would be dominating, and a month later things would be back on par - not because of feverish, overbearing tweaking by blizzard, but simply because the game was so mechanically dense that something would be discovered, and it kept the game from getting stale at the pro level.

 

Or in Diablo 2's case: it was okay that things where broken, that there were a million affixes of questionable usefulness, and that 99% of players had no idea how any of the deeper, obfuscated, mechanics worked. It didn't matter because it was interesting. (one of diablo 3's biggest failings (after the RMAH) was homogenizing items into utter blandness, an issue they've taken pains to remedy with the new legendarys, but they've still rather missed the point).

 

dota patches are still fun to read after all these years. Necrolytes aghs upgrade makes heros unable to buy back for that death (hilarious), suicide with a bloodstone, empty bottles make couriers slower, etc. All balance changes to under/overpowered things that add even more depth to the game.

 

One of my favorite balance changes was a while back to Shadowfiend. He's wasn't terrible by any stretch, but definitely not in the top tier. How could we buff him a bit, Icefrog?

   -Shadowfiend now explodes on death

 

Yep. Although Icefrog excludes heroes from tournaments until they are balanced. Centaur Warrunner was added in late october and is still standing on the sidelines. :( 

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Yep. Although Icefrog excludes heroes from tournaments until they are balanced. Centaur Warrunner was added in late october and is still standing on the sidelines. :( 

At least until Dota 2 receives parity with 6.78

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I hate summoner spells because Flash is fucking stupid. I might be okay with them otherwise.

 

But yeah runes/masteries are stupid.

 

I like how runes and masteries allow you to play the same lord very different ways right from level 1, depending on how you build them. I can understand why someone might not like them, but they have value.

 

I know Flash is divisive, but it's a significantly different tool than a Blink dagger. It's been nerfed pretty significantly since 2010. 5 minute cooldown, 400 unit range (about 2/3 of standard ranged lord AA range) compared to 14s CD with 1200 range (about 2/3 of the range between the base towers and the inner mid tower). It does a different job, honestly. The idea that you buy a blink every game is super interesting, though.

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You mean pay in the match for the usable item, correct? As opposed to Actual Dollars. Not sure I disagree with you, although my brain has atrophied so much that everyone always has it it's hard to get a perspective without it. The problem comes that if you just straight up removed it from the game it might actually be cripplingly unbalanced, because they have to design everything around the idea that everyone might have flash. It's a tough nut to crack. On the other hand, the inclusion of an ability like Smite (a ~1 minute cooldown ability that does up to 1000 true damage to monsters) means they have reinforced that the game is about contesting neutral objectives (Baron, dragon, Blue & Red buff) to gain an advantage which I think is a good thing. It encourages team fights in the earlier game for reasons other than just BATTLIN' for its own sake. You could have everyone take Smite and have much better/faster monster control, but generally you only have the Jungler take it to secure an objective, because it keeps you from taking other summoner spells that might be more useful for the type of lord you are.

 

Masteries are purely a leveling thing. It's a sort-of-weird MMO idea carried over. The game actually starts at Level 30. They don't cost money, everyone has exactly the same trees, and the way you get more points is by leveling your "summoner" (account). You can have up to 20 pages, and they cost nothing. I guess they're possibly monetizing in that you can pay for an XP boost with real money, but looking back from the perspective of hundreds of games played, if you are just starting the game that 1-30 leveling curve is for your own good. You get to slowly learn what all the summoner spells are, the skill trees slowly unlock, and you get to earn a big chunk of IP for runes and lords while you figure out what a Last Hit is. So sort of the exact opposite of monetizing the game. If someone wants to smurf and pay for an XP boost to rush up a second account, hey knock yourself out. I don't have a problem with that because all competitive play starts at level 30 and it doesn't matter how long it took you to get there.

 

Runes are something you can only buy with IP (sweat equity), but to get more rune pages they will sell them to you. THAT'S a monetization thing, because buying the pages with play money costs as much as the most expensive champions.

Yes in game items with gold. There's a build up period to earn those abilities. Flash in LoL often feels like a get out of jail free card early on. I honestly wish they would adopt at least the delay on use if you get hit, like the blink dagger in dota. As for the smite diatribe... People compete over neutrals in dota all the time, even when there isn't someone jungling. Largely this has to do with the existence of pulling, but when there's junglers you do get the counter jungle action going on as well. Plus in dota you can do roshan much earlier game depending on the team, you have to keep an eye and contest that for a lot more of the total game than you would baron.

On runes/masteries... it just feels like that they wanted to add a persistence to the system. While LoL certainly is balanced around having it around, I do feel like it's just another layer of abstraction that isn't totally needed. You can play lords differently simply through item choice.

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Really?

 

Really a forum for this?

 

This won't last long.

Good contribution, thanks.

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Really?

 

Really a forum for this?

 

This won't last long.

 

0ykZkea.jpg

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I really like summoner spells but I've been thinking about why for a while now and I can't explain the reasoning very well. Suffice to say, I miss them when they're not there.

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How is DOTA what people want.

 

It is, amazingly, I just want to know why.

 

Dude, they do what they want. They don't need your approval for anything.

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On runes/masteries... it just feels like that they wanted to add a persistence to the system. While LoL certainly is balanced around having it around, I do feel like it's just another layer of abstraction that isn't totally needed. You can play lords differently simply through item choice.

 

You're totally right. It absolutely has to do with persistent account leveling being a thing that appeared to be important in 2009, and it's sort of a legacy system now. 

 

You can obviously play them differently just with items, but a mastery page with mostly offense vs a mastery page with mostly defense can end up making a large difference in how the game goes early, and have an effect on late game teamfights.

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How is DOTA what people want.

 

It is, amazingly, I just want to know why.

It's an experience you can't get anywhere else. It combines aspects of RTS, RPG, and multiplayer team coordination in a way that basically no other genre does. It forces you to learn constantly. There are super high highs and very low lows. It's sports with dungeons and dragons.

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How is DOTA what people want.

 

It is, amazingly, I just want to know why.

 

Goodbye.

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