Dota2 is a massively popular AAA game created by Valve which just came out of beta yesterday. The game is known to be difficult to play and master.
Why Linux release is important:
Valve released Steam for Linux couple of months back but apart from TF2 and other Valve titles, Steam for Linux is picking up pace very slowly. Even games like TF2 and L4D are more or less last generation titles. Dota2 on the other hand is brand new, it uses all the new features from source engine and hopefully is capable of pushing Gaming on Linux like no other title.
League of Legends is DotA with training wheels. Basically the original DotA started the genre, and LoL strived to take what they deem "anti-fun" mechanics out of the game. Good examples would be denying friendly creeps / towers, lack of stuns and CC, and the inability to dive towers early in the game.
Another main difference is that League of Legends has scaling magic damage. Because of this, spells are significantly weaker in the early game (due to the fact that you can get items to boost their power as the game progresses). There are no +magic damage items in DotA, so spells are significantly more powerful early game but become less effective compared to auto attack damage as the game progresses.
I'm probably fighting windmills but here it goes: DotA did not start the
AoS genre which is now called MOBA. In fact the first AoS map was the map
Aeon of Strife, made for StarCraft.
There were tons of AoS maps before and tons of AoS maps after DotA.
But i agree when you say DotA mad the AoS genre popular even though there
were other very well known AoS maps beside DotA (EotA, AotZ, DoE, ToB, AoS GT, etc.).
I think you're understating Dota's influence. Its predecessors were tiny blips in comparison. Dota professionalized the genre and had huge popularity, which was only limited by Blizzard's poor infrastructure and support. Many people wondered why Blizzard didn't embrace the mod that far surpassed the popularity of its own games (the answer is probably "WoW"). League of legends took it to the next level with the infrastructure the genre needed.
I hate it when people say LoL is Dota for kids. Even though LoL started as a Dota rip off, removing "hard to master" mechanics from it, LoL added new and fun mechanics and made a unique team game, hence becoming so popular.
The biggest different between Dota 2 and LoL is pricing model.
Dota 2 is free. Really free. You have access to 100+ heroes from your first game and there isn't a single thing you can buy that has an effect on winning or losing a match. It's all skins, alternate announcers, and other stuff just for fun.
LoL is free... to play. There are a set of heroes that are free at any given time which is constantly rotating. You have to pay to unlock heroes permanently or can unlock them very slowly over time. You will never unlock everyone without paying money. There are additional other systems you have to level up, or can pay to level more quickly, that provide small bonuses to character attributes in game.
This effects more than the price.
For example in Dota 2 one of my favorite modes is "Reverse Draft" where each team picks the OTHER team's heroes. So you try and give your opponent the worst team you can think of. Something like this is impossible in LoL because every person only has access to a small set of heroes.
Well, this gives the false impression that you have to pay to be competitive in LoL. Which is far from true. The only thing that can be bought only with money are: skins, name changes and transfers between regions. The things that make you actually stronger (runes, levels) can't be bought directly with money. You can spend money to accelerate your's account XP progression (by a factor of two). But that's irrelevant for first account, as it's not the account that is the limiting factor - I'm pretty sure any very good player can make a level 1 account and beat me hands down using it, as I can beat with a level 1 account a person who just got max level with XP boost.
After all, we talk about a game where you have over 100 champions with completely different skill sets, over 100 in-game items to buy, all creating a huge array of possible plays and counterplays... That at the same time requires split-second reflexes, maintaining map awareness and, the hardest part, good teamwork.
Nobody is saying you can spend a lot of money and suddenly be able to beat a "very good player." Instead, you can spend money and gain a competitive advantage.
Actually my main problem with LoL is that you have to spend money to access champions. In DotA I'm used to having access to a huge complement of heroes, and a common strategy is choosing heroes specifically because they are powerful against the enemy team (counter-picking). In LoL it's a lot harder since you only have like 20 (or fewer?) heroes available.
Paying for champions is paying for additional content -- content that's free in DotA 2.
That's true, but you also don't need (or usually want) to unlock every single champion. Most players have at most 20 champs they're really good with and will typically play. There's also the new mode they recently added, ARAM, that will randomly assign you a champion from the pool of all champions. Playing ARAM gives you the opportunity to try out other champions for free, and if you decide you like one of them you can spend your IP to unlock it.
The total cost of all champions available right now is 443100
and the average number of IP per game won is 110.5 and 72 for loss. This gives a total of 4855.9 games at 50% win rate. Sounds high, but you may still need triple of that to actually know how to play all those champions ;)
No, you don't have to pay to be competitive in LoL. But a lot of players don't want to be competitive, they just want to have all the options of the game available to them (which they never will unless they pay money).
I don't agree that not owning all (or many) champions hinders your gameplay or skill cap. People have reached the top 10 with a single champion.
Runes on the other hand, do allow for slight advantages during a game. They're also free (as in, you can't even buy them with real money), but once you've gathered an amount of in game currency (Influence Points), you have to choose between using those IP to buy runes or champions. So while everything that's able to give you an advantage in the game is free, those investing real money will have a wider range of champions and/or runes sooner.
It is feasible to unlock all the champions without paying money: the metagame evolves constantly and the pool of really viable champions is not nearly close to them all.
League of legends is probably the most mass market online game running right now when considered worldwide, except perhaps for World of Warcraft - and at this point I think it probably easily dwarfs WoW.
"As of October 2012, Riot Games claims League of Legends has over 32 million registrations and averages 12 million players worldwide per day;[5] global concurrent users online regularly peak at over 5 million players, as of March 2013.[6] In July 2012 Xfire released a report stating that League of Legends was the most played PC game in North America and Europe, with 1.3 billion hours logged by players in those regions between July 2011 and June 2012.[48]"
In terms of gameplay, many regard the original DotA game as more hard-core compared to League of Legends. Champions in DotA generally have higher burst capabilities, which can punish mistakes harder. There's also the concept of denying minions, which add another element of micro-management to the game.
League of Legends on the other hand add a bit of depth to the genre by giving customisation options to champions outside of the main game (runes, masteries, summoner spell). The learning curve should be smoother, as people need to reach level 30 on their "summoner" (account) before they can enter ranked games. They also need to "buy" at least 16 champions on order to participate in ranked games. This will force the player to learn a bit of the game before entering the competitive scene.
Currently League of Legends is definitely the most competitive MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game around and Riot invests heavily in keeping it that way.
Agreed. According to wikipedia, it is also known as "action real-time strategy (ARTS)." That's marginally better, but I'd guess that'll never catch on.
The ARTS name predates the MOBA name iirc, but the ARTS term was unpopular because it's plainly obvious that they aren't RTS games and they were only called that because they fell out of the modding tools for Blizzard's RTS games. Ironically the existing genre they resemble most is ARPGs since they're basically ARPG gameplay and progression mechanics in a team vs team setting, but people get grumpy when you bolt the term "RPG" onto something with no plot to speak of.
To answer your child post. There is SMITE a third person MOBA. First person MOBA wouldn't work as well because you couldn't see your character do the cool move.
Look up 'Monday Night Combat'. Devs like to experiment by mixing and matching genres, so in my experience things like this often exist somewhere. It was a pretty average game, but the idea is sound.
If the bots would not crash constantly, it might do for me. I would like some more strategy for the commander and a game mode which works for few players in a LAN.
I would argue that Dota is just tower defense which predates the common form of tower defense made popular on mobile phones. There are towers, creeps follow established patterns, and the creeps attempt to destroy those towers. That's tower defense.
The gameplay is very similar. League of Legends is heavily based on the original Dota but with different characters and slightly different mechanics where Dota 2 is a port of Dota 1 from a Warcraft III map to a standalone game.
I personally prefer Dota 2 but it's largely subjective.
The biggest difference is probably in business models. While both games use micro-transactions Dota 2 only sells cosmetic items, League of Legends requires you to buy (either via $ or points earned in game) access to champions/heroes.
Also, in LoL, you unlock runes the more you play(or masteries, can't remember exactly). These give small bonuses (e.g. +4% attack speed, turrets do splash damage). This means that people who have played the game more have an advantage in terms of stats and also champion choice.
As mentioned, DotA 2 only sells cosmetic items, or access to streams of events. This means that the game itself doesn't change whether you're new or experienced. You have access to the exact same heroes, and no extra bonuses.
>This means that people who have played the game more have an advantage in terms of stats and also champion choice.
untrue. you can get full rune page quite fast (~ month). and once it's done, there's no disadvantage anymore. if you play smartly from very beginning, you can get that done around lvl 30, right when you are allowed to start playing game competitively.
also - champion choice is not that important. especially in low level. and it's better to learn few champions thoroughly than "gotta catch em all" and being good at none.
I actually really like the marketing of not offering all champions directly, KNOWNING that you can acquire champions without money but with points you get from playing the game.
When you start playing LOL you have to choose from, I think 6 different champions? Which is pretty limited but let you master those 6 before changing them the next week to 6 new champions. I learned the game without problems this way.
DOTA2 let you play with all the champions directly, oh boy was I lost and still am 200hours of games later. I only play "random" so I can learn every hero but I still haven't played 25% of them I would guess.
Also I know many friends who bought champions on LoL, I think it's a very good source of income.
Well then u have never played original DotA then, most veteran/hardcore DotA player i know never play LoL for this reason, and also other reasons such as changed game mechanics and game points benefit. It removes the originality and thrill of DotA from the game, thats why we rejoice as Dota2 came out, and we played dota for almost 8 years.
I'm talking about a new players point of view, and even for a veteran of DotA coming to LoL, he doesn't know the champions so he would have to learn them. And I think the method of changing the default champions every week is a good way to do that. Just my 2 cents.
League of Legends has about an order of magnitude greater number of players. However, Dota 2 has until recently been in open beta, and League of Legends came out years earlier. Although the beta keys are essentially obtainable for anyone, the extra step in obtaining said keys may be enough of a disincentive for many people to not play.
"open beta" is a bit of a misnomer - if you didn't get into the selective invite phase you had to buy a beta pass for $30. Later on (I'm not sure if dota 2 was already the most popular valve game at this point) people with accounts were given a large number of invites to give away. Now that it's been released, dota 2 is free.
Valve (or whoever is responsible for the beta keys) was giving out a huge number of keys to some gamers. One of my close friends received 32 (!) beta keys, if I recall correctly, a few months ago. He gave one to everyone in our circle of friends.
Not only that, but I told everyone who was interested (myself included) to apply for an invite, and we all got one a few days later, so it was definitely rather open to play.
The price of invites on the Steam Marketplace has been about $0.03 since January (and there were several bots that collected invitations and handed them out to applicants).
League of Legends was made with complexity/difficulty != fun in mind.
It's easier to master mechanically, but I feel it is all around a much better made game. For one, it actually runs smoothly. This could just be my PC, but super lowest settings and custom config on DotA2 still runs sluggishly, while LoL is very responsive and satisfying to play.
Gameplay-wise, DotA is very cutthroat in that a single hero can go rambo and 1v5 the other team if he gets out of control, while LoL generally allows you to come back if you play smartly with your team. The item shop in DotA is terribly confusing, but I suppose you'll learn it if you play long enough.
The only negative things I can say about LoL is: the leveling system and runes/masteries, while helping new players ramp up to competitive level, seem to take a long time to fill out to get on par with a "normal" player. DotA 2 allows you to jump in straight away on the same level of play and with all heroes available. You have to unlock champions in LoL (it takes a while if you take the free route as most do).
TL;DR - LoL is a polished, simplified, beautiful take on the MOBA genre that DotA popularized. Hardcore DotA fans will call it easy/noob-friendly/etc, but in reality it's just different and in my (biased) opinion, better.
> Gameplay-wise, DotA is very cutthroat in that a single hero can go rambo and 1v5 the other team if he gets out of control, while LoL generally allows you to come back if you play smartly with your team.
The same thing happens in Dota, too (especially if you play smart). The game has very good comeback mechanics. If you're losing you'll be fighting closer to your base (so it takes less time to buy stuff and to go back and heal), you'll probably be around your towers (so you'll have additional firepower), you'll also have better vision and a position on higher ground (same as in real war - higher ground = better position to fight), you'll probably be underleveled and respawn faster if you die, so you can come back into the fights faster, if you kill the higher leveled enemy you get a LOT of gold and experience, etc.
1v5ing in Dota only happens in very low level games where most people don't know the game and their characters. Sadly, many players don't know it and think it's Quake or something :)
> Gameplay-wise, DotA is very cutthroat in that a single hero can go rambo and 1v5 the other team if he gets out of control
Well it only happens if there's too much of a skill gap between the 1 and the 5. The same exact thing would happen between an experienced Quake 3 player vs 5 noobies.
Agreed, and league of legends managed to 'removed' this feature thus preventing the actual fun and competitiveness of Action RTS, i conclude that league of legends are of new players that come and go, play a few games and then left, while DotA/dota2 players are the opposite.
Dota 2 on my PC runs pretty smoothly, I do play it at lower settings as higher setting and bloom gets distracting.
Dota 2 is really hard to get around for beginners as compared LoL. But once you are use to it, believe me it is much much better.
As the case of Rambo, it is really a team effort to make one carry hero be given farm and experience, that's the motive of the carry class here for late game.
I single well fought team clash can easily turn the table around. I have won many games playing smart with other team being overpowering. So there is a chance most the time to comeback. Valve has cleverly created suggested items for each phase of the game very well for an easier shopping experience.
I think valve has done a really good job in bringing Dota 2 with perfected balancing.
That all said I think the individual opinion is mostly affected by the game he has played more and start to love the characters and feel of the game.
I found the gameplay of LoL to be a bit stale and DOTA2 much more dynamic.
Also, 'buying' champions to play with did not sit well with me at all.
Edit: Also, yes, LoL was made to run with much lower-spec PC's than DOTA2. That being said, DOTA2 has much higher levels of polish when it comes to characters, voicing and environment.
One assumes the fact that it just launched is partially responsible for that. We should see it take a more stable, but lower, position in the next month.
Dota 2 has been the most popular game on Steam for a while now, and with the gradual rollout of beta keys the number playing has been steadily climbing - you can see a graph of the number of players on steamgraph[1].
No, it's been the most popular Steam title for well over a year now. It's been several times more popular than the second most (usually Team Fortress 2) for quite some time as well.
Furthermore, even though they've just announced that they've come out of Beta, almost none of the new players have been invited in yet as they're inviting people via waves.
Once all new players actually get in, and Dota 2 opens up in other countries such as China and Korea, these figures will skyrocket by several magnitudes - probably well overtaking World of Warcraft in number of players.
Partially responsible, sure, but DotA has a very dedicated fanbase, stretching back to the days of the first DotA map in Warcraft 3. Also, it's a game that offers huge replayability, meaning the current number of people playing the game will likely stay stable, if not increase.
Dota2 being the most commonly played game on Steam has been true for several months. During which time it was "Beta", not that it was hard to get your hands on a beta key.
I wouldn't say it's difficult to play, you get the jist pretty quick, but yes it is hard to master as there are a lot of good/seasoned players and takes a lot of time learning all of the playable characters skills. It's really fun.
If you assume a company doesn't want to port games, but decide to support linux at the beginning of their development cycle, we'd really need to wait a few years for proper titles. That is making the assumption they are interested right now though, which is less than likely.
However, there are currently many indie games available for linux. Even some well-known hits, like Kerbel Space Program and Surgeon Simulator (by chance, they both happen to use the Unity engine, which natively includes linux support).
Just out of interest, what was the timeline for OSX steam like? I don't use a Mac, so I'm not sure.
I know that their Linux initiative is a recent development, but if they want it to succeed, they really need to get more current generation titles out there. I play Counterstrike: GO, its the only reason I still use Windows. Instead of wasting the effort to port Counterstrike Source, they should have put those resources into porting the latest version.
It's a curious phenomenon, isn't it? As a long-time DotA player myself, I maintain a separate "DotA Persona" which I fall into when playing. It's basically an offensive response to assholes: also be an asshole.
I think it essentially comes from the nature of the game: as an individual, you're suddenly stuck with a bunch of other people you have to cooperate with. It's not like tf2 or CS. The teams are smaller and the stakes are much higher. People care about winning games in DotA a lot more than they do in most FPS games, where the journey is the destination. In DotA, the win is the destination and it's the validation of your abilities (k/d ratio doesn't cut it).
You would think having the win be so important would make it easier or better to work together, but the fact of the matter is most DotA players suck. Even people who consistently win public games still suck. Players hold everyone else to incredibly high standards and get frustrated when they feel like their team "drags them down." This is compounded by a feeling that, if you're doing badly yourself, you should scapegoat a team member in order to shift the blame.
DotA 2 is actually a lot better. I'm not sure why exactly, and it depends on your level. Maybe there's hope.
You might be right that is the nature of the game. I played DotA for the thrill of having a powerful character exerting his dominance over other players. It just doesn't happen if your team isn't performing. Plus, DotA has incredible death penalties.
The fact that you are launched into a game where your fun depends on the performance of a bunch of strangers in a fast -paced, hostile environment that penalizes mistakes heavily with only short bursts of text to communicate is a recipe for vile players.
The weird thing is that the stakes are largely only whether the game will meet the player's expectations.
Also, humans are generous when judging their own abilities and are miserly when judging a stranger's abilities.
Also it's a compounding process. Having a game that's fun only when you're succeeding selects for players that like that, which creates a social component that makes it so it's only fun to succeed.
I don't find this genre fun whether I'm succeeding or not, for me it's 100% journey (casually and socially exploring the way mechanics combine into interesting gameplay - including failures as much as successes) and these games and their player base seem to be the precise opposite of that.
The death penalties are what really turn me off to Dota. A player A killing a player B results in player B being unable to play for a short time, player A getting experience AND player A getting gold? It seems like far too many matches quickly become one sided and you either farm them or are the ones getting farmed.
That's actually curious -- studies have shown that people from more collectivist cultures don't tend to make the fundamental attribution error, such as places like East Asia, and the former USSR states.
This game is massively popular in both of those regions.
If you force slaves to work harder, they'll work harder. Whoop dee effing doo.
I think MOBA games (except for the kiddie ones like LoL) are popular there because they like their games to be challenging. Most games today are rich in graphics but poor in gameplay, dumbed down for the masses to enjoy. At least in D2 and HoN even the most dedicated players still get a thrill out of sharpening their skills and being better then the other guy.
All this discussion about dota (and LoL etc) boil down to one thing: you NEED to play as a team.
A lot of games involve team work, but it isn't crucial: that is you'll play better if you work as a team, but you don't need to and you can still enjoy the game if you ignore your team.
This is manifestly untrue for Dota. if you ignore your team you'll have a horrible time and so will the rest of your team.
As result this is actually an interesting social experiment: based on dota it looks like a lot of people don't like working as a team.
In FPS games the gameplay is a lot more ephemeral. You're racking up point after point, and your teammates are all interchangeable. In DOTA, there's only one real point. Your teammates are people you're stuck with for the entire duration of the match. And you can see their every move, no matter how far they are from you. And the worst player? The scrub? He's not just ineffective, he's actually feeding power into the opposition.
I spent some time analyzing this when playing WoW. The strongest correlation is with the "goal" aspect of the players.
Imagine that baseball games were played using a non-discriminatory matchmaking service. So start of the "Dodgers vs Giants" game there would be a pause and then 25 "players" would materialize. Some of them would be athletes in their 20s with strong skills, some would be 40+ year old veterans who have good skills but aren't in shape, some would be 10 year old little leaguers who are very knowledgeable but inexperienced and out of shape, and some would be people who just randomly picked "play baseball" as their selected activity, not really knowing even what the rules of the game were. Then there is a "manager" who has to create a starting lineup, assign positions, and win the pennant.
Extremely frustrating.
Blizzard was working on "fixing" this by segregating selection of players into "twinks" and "non-twinks", "experienced" vs "non-experienced" and "hardcore" vs "casual" which helped but it still made for a crappy experience a lot of the time.
Dota 2 has fantastic matchmaking, so it avoids the problem of total newbies playing with experienced players. Because there are over 100 different heroes to choose from, sometimes you end up with people who are very experienced at the game but completely new to their heroes though, which can be frustrating for them.
How the hell does it end up 50% wins all the time? It frustrates me to no end that, no matter how good I get, DOTA can still make sure I only win half the games.
Also, I realized that I feel around ten times worse when losing than how good I feel when winning, so the expected derived pleasure from the game is really really negative, so I scaled my playing down a whole lot.
>How the hell does it end up 50% wins all the time?
Because that's what the system was designed to do. If you're winning more than 50% it means that some percentage of the time, the game can't find 5 people who are better than you to put in a game. You'd have to compete at a semi-pro level to get this to happen.
I think you're vastly exaggerating the situation, especially for people who are not at the extreme low end play skill. 10 years ago this may have been the case for some games, but a lot has been done towards fixing it. Guilds in WoW allow for players to only do 25 man PvE or premade PvP with people they both know and are equally skillfull. Besides, arena is is the only PvP that's truly competitive in WoW and that has both a matchmaking system and ability to have premade teams.
Other games such as Dota 2, Starcraft 2 and League of Legends feature excellent match making. Anyone who takes these games seriously usually has a set group of people to play with, and only do public games when they have to.
You forgot the part where every time somebody drops a catch / pitches a ball / gets a strike the other team gets stronger and faster and if one player were to get struck out / get a walk the game often becomes a forgone conclusion.
That's why matchmaking in MOBA is not "non-discriminatory". LoL has elo points, HoN has MMR, Dota 2 has some hidden rating. Overall it converges to win ratio about 50% for most players.
you wouldn't believe how much effort was put to actually make LoL matchmaking reasonably correct. Game collects a lot of data points per match and it is fine tuned frequently
It's not inherently the nature of the game. It's the nature of matchmaking.
I played HoN before matchmmaking, and it was quite interesting: you created a lobby, people would join, and you as leader could vet your teammates and kick the ones you didn't want to play with. Then the game proceeded once both sides were happy.
It took about ~10mins to get a game going, but the games were far higher quality.
I played DOTA back in highschool and HoN for the first year or so. The toxic nature of the DOTA community has nothing to do with matchmaking. You can certainly filter people in your own games, but that only identifies the people who are so socially inept that they can't make it to the start-game-countdown without being a jerk. In the WC3 era, people left during the 5 second countdown (i.e. after attempting to ensure they were not jerks) so often that the various hosting assistance programs would watch for it specifically.
The real hazard in DOTA / AOS / MOBA games are the people who slowly (or quickly) transform from quiet or reasonable people into insanely angry trash talking monsters. After all, the DOTA community got its reputation for being awful back in WC3, totally independent of any matchmaking.
I'd like to introduce you to www.dotanoobs.com - a personal project to create a rage-free environment for both new and experienced players to have fun together.
Just moved from Wordpress to Flask, got the Valve Dota2 replay-parser running on Linux and am preparing some cool stuff with that on the back end.
tl;dr: get on teamspeak (voice.dotanoobs.com) and play with people who aren't mean.
Awesome. I've just started playing dota2 in a semi-serious way and it's incredibly frustrating not having 5 to play with. I don't mind being called a noob and getting critical feedback, but it's exceptionally difficult to learn how to play effectively with others when the pub community is so bad. Unfortunately, to play with good people, you have to learn how to play, and that's very hard if you can't play with good people. Your little community sounds like it'll be my gateway out of MM noob hell. I'll be on TS to try it out tonight :)
Glad to have you! While real-life might keep me away from my precious DotA this evening, hopefully I'll catch you soon! Feel free to add me on steam, name is the same as HN username.
We started with Mumble server but moved to TeamSpeak because it is more feature-rich. I have the website now able to link your TeamSpeak/Steam/Forum accounts and am working on an interface where we can create "events" (in-houses, all mid days, other games, whatever) and you will earn "points" for attending those events.
TeamSpeak's serverquery let me do a lot of cool things easier than Mumble/ice. There is a TeamSpeak client for linux (http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=downloads)!
Fair enough. Historically, the TS linux client was always more limited and harder to work with than its Windows counterpart, but it's been a few years since I've dealt with it at all.
Did you ever submit any feature requests or talk to the Mumble people about those integrations you use? Being an open-source project, it may not be too far-fetched to see them added in.
+1 for doing something genuinely pleasant for online gaming. This is something that would have been nice when I was into online gaming; hopefully it becomes more common for people to run their own vent/teamspeak servers not just for personal friends but based on attitude and level of commitment.
You should try Dota2. Out of all the games in that genre (HoN, LoL, original Dota), Dota2 seems to have the best community out there. There is match making, so you will be paired with people that are at least somewhat close to you in skill.
To deal with trolls/toxic people, they have a reporting system. If someone gets reported by a number of people they will be muted and/or put into the low priority queue. Muting lasts X duration (depending on repeat offences) and prevents that person from talking at all in game (they can still use the chat wheel I believe).
The low-priority queue is a separate match-making queue, where only people in this queue will play against one another. It is for people that regularly abandon games (or are toxic players). It tends to be filled with the trouble-making players.
Toxic communities are intrinsic to the DOTAlike genre. Think about it - if you have a bad teammate, what happens? In other games, a bad teammate will be around for only a short game, or you switch servers, or the server will auto-scramble the teams, or the teams are large enough that the one player's failures will be diluted among the rest of a large team. At the very least in a normal game, a bad teammate will simply be inneffective.
In DOTAlike games? You're married to the bad teammate. If you drop, the game brands you a leaver. You won't be scrambled. The round won't even end any time soon - you're just stuck with him for many, many minutes of play. But the worst part is, he's actually feeding power to the enemy. Every time you get in a fight and get your ass kicked, you're going to think of the screwups your bad teammate did.
And there's no perspective, no fog-of-war between teammates. You can see his every screw-up. Can watch it in hateful detail.
And then the other team just reams you and clobbers you because they've cranked their power up.... but the game doesn't even have the dignity of ending quickly, you're stuck while they pummel you until the game ends properly instead of being trapped in this moribund state.
And all the time, your hatred for that idiotic scrub boils.
The game is practically designed to make you hate the weakest player on your team.
> You're married to the bad teammate. If you drop, the game brands you a leaver. You won't be scrambled. The round won't even end any time soon - you're just stuck with him for many, many minutes of play. But the worst part is, he's actually feeding power to the enemy. Every time you get in a fight and get your ass kicked, you're going to think of the screwups your bad teammate did.
It sounds like you need to do the opposite -- help the bad teammate. Yelling at the person is just going to make them less cooperative. How is it that we've been programmed to yell at these people when that makes it worse? (or have we learned that yelling works and we apply it to everything?)
It sounds like you need to do the opposite -- help the bad teammate. Yelling at the person is just going to make them less cooperative. How is it that we've been programmed to yell at these people when that makes it worse? (or have we learned that yelling works and we apply it to everything?)
The Dunning-Kruger effect gets in the way of this. A lot of unskilled people take offense at unsolicited advice, particularly if they're so unskilled as to deem themselves the best player on the team. It doesn't help that the game tracks somewhat superficial stats such as kills and deaths; a score that can run counter to the actual hidden score in the game: gold/experience differential. Like a basketball player who shoots all the time and refuses to pass, bad players will often prioritise individual success in lieu of team success. Then when you try to help them they lash out at you for not having as many kills as them; seemingly ignorant of the different roles on a team.
I've played dota, dota 2, and... well far ganes more than I Care to admit.
I have played War 3 competitively, at my best was ranked second nationally in my country when it was a thing, and I went and managed/founded a team as well.
From personal experience, I disagree with the implication that the dunning-krueger effect gets in the way of it.
I have a hard time explaining how precisely atm, but you can often get the weaker players to work with you, and at the same time create a team even in the middle of a pub game.
TO give an example of some of the core tricks: in WoW battlegrounds the simple act of constantly YELLING the enemies incoming to a node, and keeping up the communication banter (even alone in local chat) will result in a spate of wins.
If I were to simplify it, it would be know what to communicate, and communicate simply. Your greatest enemy is discord, and poor communication.
Further: in pub games its probably easier because a modicum of co-ordination will get you quick battle wins over the opponents and so solidify camaraderie. Strong opponents who know what they are doing better than you can assist will leave you with few opportunities on the field to capitalize on.
----
For weak players in DoTA 1 and 2.
No one likes being cursed, and become more receptive to someone who steps in, while also providing some space to enjoy themselves and win. I've found myself saying
> "Chill out. All of us were noobs once. Player X, you did screw up, but it happens. Next time, call out, or let us know." Or
> "mate, we're bugged because we NEED your skill to land, thats why they are pissed, they depend on you."
Those lines sound cheesy when I write them down, but context, delivery and crafting of the appropriate sentence matters a lot more.
Side note: In DoTA I've found you can control your team better playing a support role.
I've never played these games so I may be missing something, but why is that a problem? Somebody else in this thread mentioned that lossing in Dota is worse than losing in other games, but didn't explain why either.
I'm getting the sense that the real cause of the issue is that for some reason people take Dota way too seriously. If you lose, what's the big deal? You still had fun right?
A coworker told me a few days ago that he use to play "league of legends" but quit when he realized he wasn't actually having fun since the experience become too stressful.
I've played a lot of games, and when I lose a game of Dota it's absolutely devastating but when I win a good/close game, I am absolutely euphoric, sometimes even into the next day. I don't think (most) people actually take the game very seriously, it just has to do with the mechanics involved. First, it requires a high level of knowledge and focus. There are constant macro and micro strategy decisions to be made and a high level of constant fine motor skills required. Additionally, you are highly dependent on your teammates, as they are on you. If one person on your team makes a big mistake, it can cost your team the game. However, there is frequent opportunity to work with your teammates to set up great plays, which are extremely rewarding to pull off successfully. The third important factor is the match structure. Each game of LoL/Dota is a discrete thing with a small number of participants. It is common in other multiplayer games today to have people coming in and out during a "session". For instance in first person shooters, perhaps you join a 32 player server that is halfway through a map, you play for 15 minutes and then the server changes maps. New people join, some people leave. In LoL/Dota, a game lasts 30-60 minutes and you are stuck with the 5v5 team for that game. I think the extreme highs and lows are at least partially due to the above factors: the level of focus required, the intense team dependence, and the match structure.
> I'm getting the sense that the real cause of the issue is that for some reason people take Dota way too seriously. If you lose, what's the big deal? You still had fun right?
When you start getting better in such games, you need to be very concentrated, very nervous. It isn't all fun and casual gaming anymore. When this concentration pays off and you win, it feel amazing, when it doesn't and you lose, you feel miserable. Anyway, you can't get back to lower level casual gaming (make a new account, for example) since it becomes so easy that you could play blindfolded.
Of course you could somewhat alleviate the negative effect of losses by having good permanent teammates, also whole game becomes much more interesting if you coordinate with fellows you know. Still, blame shifting happens even in the friendliest of teams.
I've stopped playing MOBA (HoN is my poison of choice) when I understood how nervous and unpleasant I am after the game session.
what some people don't realise is that MOBAs - played at a high level- aren't a game anymore, they're an e-sport. They are played competitively, the only goal being to win. This applies to HON/DOTA/LOL, but also to Counter-strike, Starcraft, and, to a certain extent, Halo. Obviously also to Quake and UT, but those are to old to be relevant now.
An e-sport is taken as seriously as competitive sport in the USA. Any American will know how important winning is in sports. To understand the importance people attribute to winning in some video games, you have to see them as an e-sport.
League of Legends has a much more sophisticated system for dealing with jerks. It has skill-based matchmaking too (does HoN really not have it?), and you can actually be permabanned if you keep being a jerk and don't shape up. League of Legends also tries not to be infuriating as much as it can, so for example while killing somebody does reward the killer, it doesn't take gold from the person who got killed or prevent them from getting XP.
I'm fairly certain LoL also has these counter measures in place, alas, it's still full of trolls and toxic people (not to say that there aren't well behaved ppl, but compared to other games...)
The game is extremely addictive. When you start getting serious at this game, it means that you will be offended by many small things you wouldn't care about if you were just a casual gamer.
Let's say you play at a high level game. You do well at your top lane with your carry, you farmed well for 10 minutes, even got a kill and you're satisfied with how the game's going so far.
Meanwhile you have your mid lane getting crushed by the enemy. Your ally mid dies 5 times in 8 minutes and you soon get ganked by a level 12 middle hero when you're only level 6. You get run over as well as they're little you can do.
The rest of the game snowballs like this and because you can't give up in DotA 2, you have to play for 15-20 minutes defending or not defending your base against feeded (too strong) opponents. So yea, that's when the unfriendliness comes from
I think the solution is to prevent people from playing vs other players until they've won enough games vs bots. There's nothing more annoying than someone who is too lazy to learn the basics before ruining a half-hour game for 9 strangers. And then abusive, as though they're entitled to do so.
There's that. But most players don't have to deal with this thanks to the matchmaking system. I'm talking about how any veteran player can feed in a game and it ruins the game, inciting insults and frustrated remarks.
I think the big necessity for Dota 2 is to add a forfeit button. Too much time is wasted on finishing up games. Demolishing a base with low damage can take a very long time...
> ... and you soon get ganked by a level 12 middle hero when you're only level 6. You get run over as well as they're little you can do. The rest of the game snowballs like this and because you can't give up in DotA 2, you have to play for 15-20 minutes defending or not defending your base against feeded (too strong) opponents
This block of text here explains why I consider the entire genre to be fundamentally flawed.
At high skill level, these things don't happen. When you play pub games, who cares about winning or losing, its fun to lose anyway. If you are serious, you will have a team (and may be organized team tournaments), and it doesn't suck the way described above.
These players tend to stay in the low levels of matchmaking. In high and very high matchmaking, people are a lot more cooperative or criticize constructively. However, without playing ~500 games (~500 hours), you probably won't graduate from the low skill bracket.
Knowing that those people are out there, what you can do is be the moral leader. When the game starts, give the all-chat "good luck have fun" greeting, start discussing lane strategy, team strategy (push/turtlefarm/gank), etc. If you make a mistake, live up to it. The only time the trolls really ruin games is if everyone else is silent and lets the person continue ranting.
Learning to float above the trolls' guilt trips while still being able to admit your mistakes is an interesting emotional exercise.
I haven't run into many (I have about 300 hours played). There were only 2 or so that were unfriendly. I turned off voice chat a while ago though, that was due to me playing together with my brother and using mumble instead of the built-in chat. Although there was an idiot in mumble that was trying to mess with us while we were playing. I think it has to do more with he voice chat rather than the actual game.
Please please please please don't be That Guy. I encourage muting individuals who are annoying. But I use mic exclusively and how are we supposed to cooperate?
Because so many people are unhelpful. It's not that they are being rude or anything, but they whine and complain after the fact... That does nothing at all to help the current situation. If that person had given instructions, or given intelligence that could be acted upon in advance, then criticism would be accepted, but so many people are saying 'why didnt you x' or 'you should have y' or 'why did you buy that piece of junk it wont work'. It's not rude, but it's not helpful either. And most people are not like you. If you are a person who uses the mic and helps the team then yes, I will turn on voice chat if you ask nicely in the text chat.
I (unfortunately) think you'll find that this was due to it being in beta. Hopefully I'm wrong and the community stays relatively decent, but I'm not confident in it yet.
I seriously doubt that anyone who wanted to play the game a week ago couldn't find a beta key floating around somewhere to play (there are about a million key giveaways on reddit, etc). I think that Valve getting rid of the beta status is more about them being confident that it's polished than wanting to release to a broader audience.
I play dota2 and im pretty nice and always try to be friendly to people in game, ive not really ran into "horrible" people. Depends what level you play at but once you get into the "know your bad but can play the game" level then most people are fine.
It's true, and of all the clones, I've found Dota 2 to have the friendliest community by far and it's is constantly getting better. It's night and day from what I remember it being six months ago.
While this is true far too often in DOTA, LoL, and HoN, I think it's worth mentioning that there are nice players out there.
I play League of Legends, and while there's a decent chance that you'll run into a few toxic players every 3 or 4 games, most of the time if you set the tone at champion select or the start of a game with "gl hf" and, more impoartantly something like, "hey guys, how's it going?" or "let's have a good time" (as cheesy as it sounds) things end up going really smoothly. Silliness and joking helps too (such as, "Party at our nexus!" or "ey yo [champion name], what u doin later tonight?"). I've played 4 games over the past 2 days and only one person came close to raging.
The worst of the worst tend to have the lowest ratings, so if you're halfway decent (which is pretty easy to achieve) then you'll be alright, barring the occasional crazy person.
I agree with some of the others, Dota 2 really tries to work on this. I've met so many nice people in Dota 2 willing to help out, but of course, I've met scumbags aswell.
The best solution to enjoy your game when a scumbag is in your team (or the other):
1. Mute him/her. Both the chat and microphone will be muted.
2. Report.
3. Keep playing.
I've done this since day one, I've muted about 5 people during the last month. It's acceptable for me. And if you team up with friends in a party, you'll have so much more fun.
Please remember to commend the people helping you out. I love being commended, and that's why I'm trying to help out and staying friendly during all of my games no matter how it turns out.
I've been involved in competitive gaming since the early days. Asshatery is universal and found in other communities like counter strike, quake, unreal tournament, halo, et al..
Games typically last 30-40 minutes and are heavily team-based.
This scenario makes it very easy to get agitated when a person on your team screws up badly and ends up costing your team the game.
Dota 2 has recently introduced a robust muting system that has really done a good job changing the behavior of the more... voiceful members online - this has led to an overall much more pleasant in-game chat experience.
DOTA and LoL teeter-totter as to which one has the most unfriendly players. currently, LoL around level 20-28 doesn't seem very bad. i hear Ranked (level 30, organized/draft (both teams ban some champions and then choose them, elementary school sports style)) is a bit less friendly.
I'm actually really sad that these take off so well, because imho the DOTA format is the worst thing to happen to online gaming. The game is feels deliberately brutal to newbies in so very many ways. The whole genre seems utterly dysfunctional for any kind of player who doesn't have a tight, committed clan to play with.
Long high-commitment match-ups make it bad for people with other committments, a hyperlong list of powers and heroes makes for a tremendous amount of trivia to learn, there's the various play mechanics that make you hate the weakest man on your team (and can examine his failings in detail), and the way DOTA2 embraces counterintuitive hardcore tweaks that were eradicated in other iterations (like killing your own troops to deny the opponents XP).
I like the pro gaming circuit, but a truly good game is one that's approachable, friendly, and deep.
How can the existence and relative success of this game offend you so? Virtually all games out there nowadays are newbie friendly and watered down to a fault. People with your preferences are drowning in choices. For those of us who enjoy uncompromising skill-based games, the only AAA titles to come along in recent memory have been Dota 2, Dark Souls and a handful of RTS and fighting games.
League of Legends addresses many of your apparent concerns with Dota's game design. But guess what? Its online community is every bit as toxic and obnoxious. Both are skill-based team games that are played over the Internet, require a lot of coordination, and usually take over 30 minutes per match. You can address in-game bad manners at the margins with something like Riot's tribunal system or Valve's reporting system, but I doubt you can do much to eliminate the problem without also eliminating those essential features of their game design.
Unfortunately Dota is not so much skill based as it is trivia based -- you need to know many many many combinations of item progressions to match your hero's stats and abilities. The gameplay of Dota, creep denial or not, isn't that deep, but the sheer complexity of items and purchase order is overwhelming. So more about trivia, not so much skill.
Classic FPS's in minstagib mode are generally very simple to play with a total of about 3/4 controls and are very much skill, not trivia based, and an anathema to console gamers and noobs. Skill is not about memorizing dictionaries of trivia.
Our office has a lot of Dota players so we regularly play five man dota. We range in skill from very noob to ex-pro.
The difference in skill between the ex-pro, or even several of the just very talented players and the rest of us is immense.
The trivia helps, knowing counter items and the like helps but at high level play all sorts of things become very important. For example positioning of your unit(s), to either miss a spell being cast or to physically block the person you are trying to kill makes the difference between a major win or complete loss of a fight. Or your ability to farm, last hitting creeps, stacking/jungling and maximizing your gold per second.
So yes at low level Dota is all about the trivia. I'm a better player then a random new player because I know the characters, their abilities and the items. But at the end of the day despite putting in hundreds of hours I pale in comparison to a Excellent player because I don't have the reflexes, or the split second analytical mind. In addition, and most importantly, I've not put in the hours upon hours of purposeful practice that a pro dota player has.
I wouldn't go as far as to say that the key word is trivia and tbh the things you mentioned (item and skill builds) are actually quite static and you can even just follow a guide if you want. I think you are putting too much emphasis on the reflex-based combat at the detriment of the more general "macromanagement" things like predicting the position of the opponents, managing resource aquisition, etc. I'd say that Dota is much more like an RTS without worker units and base building than it is an FPS where each round takes 30 minutes.
Not to say that there isn't a fair share of unintuitive things. A good example is how even though the objective of the game is destroy the enemy base most of the times a team will avoid attacking the enemy buildings until the very end of the game.
>but the sheer complexity of items and purchase order is overwhelming.
There are built in user contributed guides that suggest what what to build and why, with the guide's author comments on both individual items and skills, for every hero and numerous alternative builds. There is in game voting on the quality of each guide. It's a cinch now in Dota 2 to buy basic stuff even if you've literally never played a hero before, and also easy to try experimental builds for fun right in game.
The skill is all judgement calls and spacing. Memorizing item or skill progressions is irrelevant and indeed "trivial" in the sense that it plays little part in the game or your thinking during it. On the other hand, having the skill to use the blink dagger and catch opponents or save yourself is essential.
> Dota is not so much skill based as it is trivia based
You're saying that because obviously you haven't progressed past the trivia plateau.
There's a LOT of skill involved in DotA. You need a few hours of play to acquire the basic mechanics and principles of the game, but you need a lot more hours to become a good player - even if you already know your heroes and your builds. I've spent more than 1000 hours playing the original DotA (since 2004) and Heroes of Newerth, and I've seen a lot of mediocre players with a shitload of experience, as well as a lot of absolutely terrific players with only a few hours of play behind them.
Memorizing the basic knowledge required to play the game doesn't make you instantaneously a good player.
For low level players, maybe. High level dota includes both strategical and tactical nuances that are not trivial. Map movement, ward placing, map control, when to push, when not to push, team composition, picking and counterpicking, laning, rune control, seeing when it's profitable to attack and when it's costly, positioning in team battles (!).
Besides, there is a great portion of skill in laning. You can watch best players like dendi winning 9 times of 10 on the middle lane against other top players. It's a spectacular feat.
There's a difference between games requiring intensive amounts of skill and a game that basically scapegoats your newest players.
I mean, look at the great online games of yesteryear - say, Quake for example. Quake's mechanics are fundamentally simple. Run, jump, pickup stuff, shoot. There's only 9ish weapons to figure out in the average Quake-like game, and in most cases the behavior is "point at what you want to die and click the button". Learn the maps so you can control the pickups. The hardcore players will have to learn to exploit the bugs in the motion model to get a little speed edge, but that basic stuff is all there.
And in a Deathmatch game, you know what happens if you suck? You die. Over and over and over and over again. But since it's a free-for-all, there's no teammates you're letting down. Nobody screaming at you about how much you suck. And even in a teamgame, the teams are larger so one weak player can fade in the back. And none of his teammates are watching him suck and screaming at him, they're all too busy playing and can't see what he's doing through walls. If he drops out, nobody cares.
But you can't say Quake et al are low-skill. See also RTS games - RTS team-games face many of the same problems as DOTAlikes, but in most RTSes the 1V1 matchups reign supreme, and FFA is also a popular option. In a 1V1 a newbie will get utterly annihilated repeatedly and there's the same bad slippery slope of DOTAlikes, but nobody will hate the loser like you'll see in a teamgame where everybody just watched one idiotic ally spend the last 25 minutes ruining their fun. Plus, RTS games at least will give you the dignity of a quick death unlike a DOTAlike where you'll still spend several minutes watching the towers go down before the victor is declared.
You could make a super-simple DOTA-like game with only one hero to choose from and super-simple combat mechanics and you'd still see all the cultural and mechanical problems you see in modern DOTAlikes. You'd still have players screaming at the newbie who's accidentally feeding. You'd still have players hurling verbal abuse at each other while they get pointlessly pummeled because the game is functionally over but doesn't have the dignity to end even though the leveling has made it completley moribund.
It's not about skill, it's about a long-form team-game with bad slippery slopes. A low-skill game with that format would still be cruel to newbies, just like high-skill games that avoid that insanity are newbie-friendly (see any twitch-FPS for example).
> You could make a super-simple DOTA-like game with only one hero to choose from and super-simple combat mechanics and you'd still see all the cultural and mechanical problems you see in modern DOTAlikes. You'd still have players screaming at the newbie who's accidentally feeding. You'd still have players hurling verbal abuse at each other while they get pointlessly pummeled because the game is functionally over but doesn't have the dignity to end even though the leveling has made it completley moribund.
Games like that already exist and they don't capture any of the aspects of Dota I find compelling. The new Infinite Crisis game is essentially the Dominion game mode from League of Legends with DC superheroes and villains. There was another game like that announced recently for iOS with the slogan "No farming, just fighting." Those games all sound terrible to me. They're tailor-made for the attention-deficient iPhone gaming generation. Can the rest of us have a few games to play?
Quake was a great game but it's strategically and tactically shallow. Dota is an intrinsically team-based game with the tactical and strategical depth of a game like Starcraft. Arguably it surpasses Starcraft's depth in some areas owing to the many 5v5 match-ups you can generate from a pool of over 100 heroes. I disagree with nearly every adulteration Riot made in designing League of Legends, but even they realize that you cannot alter these features without making a different kind of game entirely.
Not every game has to be like chess where the rule set can be learned in five minutes.
You're example is where a newbie gets matched with 9 other experienced players, this scenario is no fun in ANY 5v5 team game. Now imagine the scenario where the newbie gets to play with other newbies, the game is more fair and fun. The problem you're describing is the problem of matchmaking, and not a problem of game design.
It's a third person, heavily skill shot based MOBA. So no you don't have to be pro to learn how to play. The skills rollover from other games (especially WoW), so you don't really have to relearn basic mechanics. And new players are matched with all new players (so besides from smurfs), you should have a relatively easy time.
Coming in late here, but DotA's difficulty coupled with its focus on spectating any game, including professional tournaments, provides an amazing viewer experience. It's really one of, if not the best in my opinion, game to watch professionals play. This matched with its large viewerbase means that sponsors are bigger, and tournament prize pots are bigger. MasterCard recently sponsored the recent Alienware Cup tournament [1].
As a side note, Valve has recently crowdsourced the prizepot for The International 3 with great success (their large DotA2 tournament) [2].
MOBA games aren't really that hard to get into. Millions of players find it rather easy to get into. In fact, if numbers are anything to take into account, MOBA games may be the easiest type of competitive game to actually get into.
LoL does some things I like, such as fixing creep-denial (a bug that becomes popular to exploit is still a bug, I don't care what the pro-gamers say), but it still has the fundamentally grief-oriented play I loathe.
To be clear, my complaint is not about skill-intensive gaming. My problem with the DOTA format is that it makes you hate the weak teammates in so many different ways, and putting together a single match requires such a large commitment of time from so many players.
Compare vs. TF2 where the 6v6 pro circuit exists but casual players still have access to 12v12 pubs where nobody cares if you suck or you drop. Or compare vs. StarCraft where there's an extensive single-player campaign and a 1v1 community online, and the only person who hates you if you screw up in 1v1 is yourself, and at least when you fail in a 1v1 starcraft game the end will come blissfully swiftly. And nobody would say that SC or TF2 are low-skill games.
> (a bug that becomes popular to exploit is still a bug, I don't care what the pro-gamers say)
Do you hate rocket jumping and wall hugging in Quake as well? Both are essential to playing Quake at a decent level. Both started as accidental features (call them bugs if you will) but were then given the official stamp of approval and carried forward through all the sequels.
In other words, you are committing the genetic fallacy.
Denying started as an accidental feature or bug. But it was found to be interesting and the game has since been balanced around it. Now, you can only auto-attack allied creeps when they are below 50% health, the XP from denied creeps is higher for melee heroes, etc. As a game mechanic, it emphasizes that the laning phase is a head-to-head contest between adversaries that can disrupt each other's progression through means other than direct harassment. The usual retort is that it's bad because it's counterintuitive. But what does that really mean? Not every game mechanic can be intuited. The rules of chess are not intuitive. Games are formal systems with a veneer of verisimilitude.
> creep-denial (a bug that becomes popular to exploit is still a bug, I don't care what the pro-gamers say)
That's a subjective opinion. Creep denial is typically one of these game mechanics that differentiate skilled players from unskilled ones. I find it a highly valuable feature. It defines so much of the meta-game, particularly for the middle lane.
Actually the difference between DotA and LoL is precisely that (or so I've been told by a friend who plays LoL; I play DotA): LoL creators realized the problem with DotA was that it was terribly newbie-unfriendly. So they created LoL trying to do the opposite.
Dota2 seems to be a lot more newbie-friendly than the original DotA. Eg: you get hints on which items to buy and how to combine them to create better items. But I would still put it in the newbie-unfriendly category. Nothing, nothing can generate so much hate and rage as a DotA match. I have lost IRL friends to it.
Just to be clear, I love the game and I still play it when I want some adrenaline.
Dota is no more difficult to learn than games like starcraft IMO the only difference is aRTS games have significantly worse communities than pure rts games.
But what happens when you screw up in a 1v1 RTS game? You fail, you die quickly, you rematch. In a DOTAlike game? You spend the next 10 minutes getting insulted by your teammates and watching your game end painfully slowly.
The skill level with DOTAlikes is not the problem.
Right - but some people want to play team games. I very much prefer cooperative type play to solo play, and that's obviously the case for a great number of people. Perhaps un-surprisingly, sucking in Starcraft team games (or Call of Duty, or Team Fortress) can be every bit as brutal as in Dota game.
The problem isn't DOTA (though for obvious reasons its more extreme) - its the general format of unorganized online competitive team play. If I'm bad at Starcraft for instance, and get thrown onto a ranked team game - my team suffers, and balance can only control so much of that. The social infrastructure is too limited to be effective at preventing things like rude comments, scapegoating, lack of mentoring, or easy pairing with people you enjoy playing with. Immature young adults + no consequences + people they'll never see again = crap behavior. And sadly, the social features haven't progressed (in some cases regressed) since I played TF 15 years ago.
Well. Regarding concede, DOTA 2 chose specifically not to have a concede option. I was against this at the beginning. Then, there was a match where everyone wanted to quit, we were bashing Valve, but we fought anyway. We had a huge comeback due to a huge Blackhole from Enigma. I've changed my mind since.
It sounds weird but I think it taught me to be patient and to fight till the end.
> You spend the next 10 minutes getting insulted by your teammates and watching your game end painfully slowly.
There is a concede vote option in HoN, it can be called after 15 minute with 5 of 5 votes (which becomes 4 of 5 after 25 min), so if whole team agrees, you can end the misery.
Action RTS. The problem with the genre spawned by DOTA is that it doesn't have a good name. Calling them DOTAlikes offends fans of various games that sport nearly identical maps, mechanics, and rosters of characters. Calling them ARTS games is silly because they're only RTSish in that they originated on Blizzard's games as map-mods. Riot invented the term MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) which could be applied to every online game ever. Sadly, the worst option (MOBA) seems to be the one that sticks.
i would prefer to call the genre MOBA. There isn't any RTS elements in dota, and moba is a fresh new terms without any connotation on what it is supposed to be.
Nitpick: The title is kind of misleading. They are putting Mac and Linux support in Dota 2 Test, which is a separate client with separate servers from the real Dota 2 that they use to test new features. It's not actually being released in the sense of being able to play Dota 2 with normal Dota 2 players. The actual release will come at some indeterminate point in the future.
I just want to say, there was a time once when I was overly addicted to playing dota. One of my workarounds whenever I felt I had binged too much was to whipe my windows install and go with Ubuntu. It kind of worked, but eventually I'd just go back. I even went so far as throwing my windows license in the bin and snapping my install disc. Time and time again I'd just download a cracked version and burn a new disc...
Eventually I overcame the addiction by replacing the habit with going to the gym 4-5 times a week. Now I spend my time in windows playing with the directx sdk instead of on Dota.
Not really sure what value this comment adds, but I guess soon even Linux won't be a semi-safe-haven for Dota addicts (p.s. I have an ATI card so wine wasn't an option for me).
For those interested in the MOBA genre but looking for a friendlier community and a bit more casual, yet faster, gameplay, I can really recommend the 2d-platform version: Awesomenauts.
It is available for all three major platforms: Windows, OSX and Linux. It was part of a recent Humble Indie Bundle, so you might already have it.
It has been the first online game that I've really become hooked upon since my old days of playing Warcraft 3 custom maps.
Agree 90%. I picked up Awesomenauts in the HIB, and it's been a pleasant overall experience so far. However, their matchmaking leaves a bit to be desired. After a half-dozen games, we were matched with a tier 3 prestige'd player who single-handedly destroyed us.
Yes the matchmaking can be incredibly frustrating. However it's a hard problem to solve with such a small player-base.
I also don't think it's enough to ruin the game. I currently have 170 hours logged into the game according to Steam and I plan to add many more. Hopefully more people join so that we can get better matchmaking and have even more fun.
But even then, ignore Linux for the moment, and just pretend I said Mac OS X instead. My point definitely applies there even with the pre-requisite you have for running Maya and Photoshop.
However, you're right that for some members of the asset pipeline, they may continue to use Windows. But for the developer who is debugging in-engine scripts and/or engine problems, being able to build and debug on the same platform would be a huge win.
My guess is that if you can get the editor running on Linux, you can also have it on OS X and vice-versa.
Eh... a few years ago I would have agreed with you but based on their recent releases and the kinds of statements their designers make I get the distinct impression that whatever magic Blizzard had that allowed them to make games like Warcraft 1/2/3/Frozen Throne, WoW (Vanilla and BC), Broodwar, and Diablo 1/2 has faded. Most of the original key people responsible for those games are no longer there and Blizz seems to be favoring a blander mass market approach.
Blizzard has Mac OS support, I don't see it being too much work for Linux native. The main problem is the massive amount of Linux distros. But they could support ubuntu and their offsets fairly easily.
I wonder how much Sam Lantinga is responsible for the existence. As far as I know he joined Blizzard after coming off of porting games to Linux at Loki Software. Interestingly, he's now at Valve.
I run Dota 2 at 720p on my Windows 7 PC with substantially lower spec hardware - A Core 2 Duo clocked at 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, Intel IGP GMA X4500 (G41 chipset)
This proves that the Source Engine on Linux isn't exactly efficient as its Windows counterpart as Valve claimed a few months back.
It may not be quite as dire as you suspect. Firstly, system specs in games are always specced higher than you need in reality. Secondly, Linux OpenGL driver quality varies wildly, which is why they list only the two big vendors. IIUC Intel Linux drivers are actually quite good, so you may be in luck. I would reserve judgement.
It's just that the hardware that I'm currently running the same game on fell short of the minimum system requirements sort of put me off. Guess I'll have to report back after checking it.
To be perfectly honest, I like the basic idea of the format that DOTA games present, I just find the execution to be quite awkward, and that's what kills it for me. It controls like an RTS since it came about as a Warcraft III map, and that continues to limit it.
Alternative takes on it tend to be fun for me (things like MNC), and I really feel like the genre would work a lot better with a more action-oriented control scheme. Something like a GW2 sPvP mode with a dota-style objective/flow would be quite excellent, in my opinion.
Does anyone remember the thread where people weren't sure whether steam releasing games for linux would be definitive in advancing linux? Pepperidge Farm remembers
Now I just need a Laptop with Nvidia Graphics that works on Linux. :( :( Is there even one?
I have to use vgaswitcheroo to disable my discrete ATI 4550 card, because it causes artefacts and crashes and consumes too much power. The proprietary driver doesn't even work at all.
And yet, no news on the OSX front, even though the Source Engine has worked on Mac even longer than it has on Linux. Really was hoping they'd have at least a Mac beta by the time they started the rolling launch of the Windows version :(
It'll come, they already said it would. I suspect the thing is that Linux users are generally more testing types. Mac users, like windows want an already finished/polished product.
Dota2 is a massively popular AAA game created by Valve which just came out of beta yesterday. The game is known to be difficult to play and master.
Why Linux release is important: Valve released Steam for Linux couple of months back but apart from TF2 and other Valve titles, Steam for Linux is picking up pace very slowly. Even games like TF2 and L4D are more or less last generation titles. Dota2 on the other hand is brand new, it uses all the new features from source engine and hopefully is capable of pushing Gaming on Linux like no other title.