What do you do when you're just not fit to play a game professionally? Start casting it!
Joking aside, I have (somewhat) recently been part of the casting crew in two Dota 2 tournaments. The first one was in August and the second one was in November. Since I still have no new games to write about, I decided to share some thoughts about casting.
1. Casting? Dafuq?
To start things off, here's an overview of what a Dota 2 caster does. This is mostly applicable to all eSports, but I have no experience outside Dota 2 so I'll just stick with what I know. On the basic level, casters follow the game and commentate what is going on. Since stream viewers will only see what the caster sees in-game, it is important for the caster to have their camera where the action is. Another important task is commentating continuously. This includes simply describing what is happening on the screen and more importantly giving some more insight on what might be going on - what the teams could do next, what is commonly done in similar situations etc. Beyond that, the primary caster's job is to raise enthusiasm, typically by being enthusiastic. They should also be able to inject bits of knowledge about the scene, teams and players into the cast.
This sets certain minimum requirements for casting. In order to show meaningful things about the game, the caster needs to know the game pretty well. Understanding hero abilities, items, roles and lanes is pretty much mandatory. Some of this knowledge must be obtained through playing the game; the rest must be obtained from following the scene (i.e. watching professional matches). Knowing what teams typically do helps in making predictions and overall evaluating the game situation. Even if the teams currently playing are entirely unknown, casters can draw a lot of interesting information from the current meta game. It is worth noting that a caster need now know these things as deeply as professional players do - after all, most of their audience doesn't know either.
Besides, the role of the main caster is to be the enthusiastic commentator. Typically casters also have co-casters - often professional players - who are more intimately familiar with both the game itself and strategy. Co-casters typically lack the verbal expression skills required to be a good main caster and also because they are not constantly talking, they have more time to think about what's happening in the game. They can give more specific details about how a particular skill or item works, and they are better in predicting strategy and answering questions like "how can they come back from this situation?". Having a co-caster also allows the main caster to have some dialogue in the cast which generally makes it more interesting to follow than if it was just pure monologue. Sometimes co-casters can also be personally acquianted with the players, and have more intimate knowledge about how they approach the game.
2. More personal view
The previous chapter is a rough summary of casting in general, and something that is pretty obvious after watching a few casts. I want to talk more about my personal casting experience. First of all, without any doubt I am much more suitable to the role of a co-caster. In case you haven't noticed, I love analysis and I study games - especially Dota 2 - with due diligence. I'm certainly not a professional player but I have pretty good knowledge of high level play (I just lack the execution). While my verbal expression is solid, I find it really hard to bring the required level of enthusiasm into the cast. Unfortunately our entire casting crew on both occasions has been made of people who should be co-casters.
Whether you are a co-caster or main caster, the experience is quite significantly different from playing (obviously) but also from mere viewing. When watching a stream, you have the caster(s) to help you focus on the most important things. When casting, it is you who should not only figure out the important bits but also draw viewers' attention to it. The level of awareness required is almost on par with what the players need to have - but as a caster you have more information to process thanks to being privileged to lot of stuff the players cannot see. I mean you see both teams of course, but can also look at all kinds of neat graphs and statistics.
Combat situations in Dota 2 can be very chaotic and these are the toughest moments to cast. When a teamfight involves all 10 heroes on the map, each throwing their abilities, processing everything quickly enough to actually say something intelligent about what's going on is not easy. Sometimes it's not even possible and here's where a co-caster is really helpful: they may have noticed other things and can fill in more details after the fight is done - usually nothing significant happens after a big fight for a while so there's time to recap a bit. Of course in order to do that, decent short term memory is required. Memory also helps when casting a longer series of games - a caster can recall similarities between drafts etc.
3. Advantages
In my experience, casting is a great way to improve your ability to read the game. When playing a single hero, it is too often okay to just pay attention to things that have direct impact to you. It doesn't give optimal results, but there is nothing in particular forcing the player to pay attention to peripheral things. When casting, every single one of the 10 heroes on the map are equally important to follow. Likewise, keeping an eye on the minimap is crucial in order to be able to react to action anywhere on the map quickly enough. This widened awareness can transfer into gameplay as reduced tunnel vision, especially during fights. It's not an unexpected outcome really - in this sense casting is a lot like teaching: through teaching, the teacher also improves their own understanding.
All in all it goes to show that as a player, it is advantageous to approach a game from multiple perspectives. Although playing the game is the main activity, peripheral activities like spectating and casting can provide advantages that cannot be gained through gameplay alone. The experience closest to casting is most likely viewing replays and preferably analyzing them with another player. Overlooking things is much more common when viewing alone largely because our brains tend to fill gaps in thought quite sneakily. To put it another way, gaps in understanding tend to become apparent only when explaining things to another person. If something is truly understood, it should be possible to put it into words. When everything happens in the mind, it's easy to nod in understanding, although no real understanding takes place.
Conclusion
I started writing this article like a month ago, but kinda run out of things to say and left it to hang. Since I still don't have anything more to say about the subject, I'm just gonna put this out there as it is. The bottom line is: casting is yet another way to appreciate a game you love - and it can also make you a better player. I will definitely be looking for more opportunities to cast tournaments this year, maybe even work on that enthusiasm a bit. I could also try casting in English when I feel confident enough.
Showing posts with label dota 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dota 2. Show all posts
Friday, January 3, 2014
Friday, March 1, 2013
Dota 2 in Depth: Drafting
Since I still haven't managed to complete any new games (Xenoblade is rather lenghty!), I want to write more about Dota 2. For my topic I have chosen different drafting (hero selection) modes that are currently available in the game. I have chosen this topic primarily because hero drafting is one of the most entertaining phases of the game to watch. The irony here being that not much happens on-screen during drafting. Nevertheless, it was indeed drafting that sparked my interest in Dota. The most interesting drafting mode by far is the one that is used in tournaments, Captains Mode. A couple of other modes are however noteworthy as well.
1. Captains Mode
This mode is the de facto tournament mode in MOBAs in general. The drafting is divided into four phases: first bans, first picks, second bans and second picks. The name of the mode comes from the fact that it is the team captain that does all hero bans and picks for their team. In the first phase, a total of four heroes are banned. This banning phase could be called a balancing act in a sense because usually the heroes that are currently considered most useful get banned. These bans tend to give away very little information, and they are fairly standard. There is typically a pool of less than ten heroes that get banned in this stage. These bans are therefore the most dependent on the contemporary meta game. Some additional information does go into this process though: match history. Knowing what heroes the enemy team is particularly strong with generally allows a captain to make the most out of their first bans.
This first ban phase is interesting because it can give off the impression that the game is imbalanced in the sense that some heroes are simply better than others. This does ring true but one thing to consider here is what we discussed last time. Sometimes the meta game shifts because of balance patches that buff some heroes and nerf others, but they also shift simply because teams come up with new ways to use heroes. Besides, banning four heroes out of the pool does have one huge advantage: it prevents the game from becoming too repetitive. From the captain's point of view, the first bans also ask a very important question: "which two heroes we are the least prepared to deal with?" Answering this question does require some general idea of what kind of strategy the team is prepared to go for. The team that picks first also has an advantage here because they can leave two nasty heroes into the pool and force the opposing team to give them one of those heroes while banning the other.
After four heroes have been ejected from the pool, teams pick their first three heroes. The process has four steps: 1) the first team picks a hero; 2) the opposing team picks two heroes; 3) the first team picks two heroes; and 4) the opposing team picks a hero. This is the phase where teams generally pick heroes that afford a wide variety of strategies because giving away too much information at this point can be disastrous. Just like first bans, these first picks are fairly standard in competitive play. It can be tricky to not give away too much information here, because after these picks, three out of five heroes in a team have been picked. The last picks in this phase tend to be more interesting than the first ones. This is where teams have to start playing some of their cards and they also have more information. There are a lot of things to consider here. There's generally 5 roles in a team, and although some heroes can comfortable fit into more than one, this is often where three roles will be filled.
That is why the second ban phase is much more context sensitive than the first one. Both teams get to ban three more heroes and the goal of the captains here is to get rid of heroes that would be the best fit for the opposing team's lineup. This asks for quite a bit of strategy sense because now is the time where a captain really needs to have a very solid idea of what kind of strategies both teams are going for. This in turn requires pretty deep understanding of every single hero in the game. Although a lot of the same heroes do show up in matches, some really wild picks have been also witnessed in tournament games. The three bans are what make this possible: the most obvious best choices are gone, so a captain has to fill their last two slots with heroes that are not the most optimal choices. This is interesting design because taking away heroes from the pool actually makes the effective pool larger.
By the time teams get to the last picking phase, a total of 16 heroes have left the pool due to being banned or picked. The last picks are done in 1-2-1-2 order, and here the team that picks last has the advantage, counterbalancing the first picker advantage from earlier. In a sense they can counter both of the first team's last picks because the last two picks need to fill different roles. The countering ability of the first team is weaker because their very last pick needs to both fulfill a role and at the same time counter the previous pick (if necessary). Of course, the very last pick of the second team cannot be countered at all. This makes it the only pick in the entire process that is done with complete information available to the picker. If you have played any decent strategy games, the advantage given by complete information in decision making should be pretty obvious.
In a way the captains mode might have risen out of necessity. It is simply not possible to completely balance a game like Dota 2 without making it dull. The captains mode is a clever design that prevents the game from becoming too stagnant. Bans force captains to look for unexpected solutions, and this way the meta game slowly changes. I think there is something more interesting going on here though. I think that Dota 2 is so interesting because of its imbalance. The captains mode is not a monkey patch to fix an imbalanced game - it's a mode that capitalizes on the imbalance as an advantage. The myriad of ways heroes interact with each other makes the hero pool a highly interconnected structure. Taking out even a single hero from the pool can massively impact the usefulness of another hero. Therefore, although the total number of bans sounds quite small, their impact on strategy is huge.
2. Random Draft
This mode is the other mode that can be considered almost tournament worthy. Like captains mode, this one also reduces the hero pool size, forcing teams to pick alternate solutions. As a measure, random draft is far more drastic: only 22 heroes from the entire game are made available. This limitation is naturally even better at preventing stagnancy. The biggest reason this mode is not used in tournaments is its random nature. The draft can be rather lopsided, sometimes giving a huge advantage to the team that gets the first pick. This is especially true if there is only one good hero for one role in the entire selection. What this mode is good for however is playing with random internet strangers. Captains mode is tricky because one player makes all the decisions and poor communication can lead to very disastrous picks (such as four heroes that no one knows how to play).
Random draft on the other hand does two things that make it suitable for quite serious play on public servers: it forces a pick order which makes counter picking a more strutcured activity than the chaos that is all pick. Second, it restricts the hero pool so drastically that every player in a team needs to carefully consider their choices against their skills. It also acts as a better catalyst for communication, because after the first picks a clearer image of available strategies starts to form in a way that everyone can perceive them. Furthermore, the most popular heroes often don't all make it into the pool. This creates some much needed variety. Seeing certain heroes come up in every other game does get a bit old eventually. Of course you can get very unlucky, and have none of the heroes you actually know come up. This is the disadvantage of random draft. However, I do consider it the best mode for playing with random internet strangers. The only thing it's not good for is practicing a particular hero, because the odds of them actually being available are quite small.
3. Least Played
This mode is not mentioned because of its tournament worthiness, but because of its ability to encourage people to practice new heroes. The system is quite simple. Every player has their 40 most played heroes banned (but only heroes that the player has three or more wins with can get banned, so effectively this can be less than 40). What this means is that every player in the game is playing with a hero they are just not very good with. It gives players a friendlier environment to get the hang of new heroes and still allow them to play against other people instead of bots. Everyone knows that everyone else is new to their hero so people generally wont get flamed for not knowing how to play their hero (there are some asshat people who choose to flame in this mode, but they are very rare). It is the mode where players are allowed to screw up because the punishment for mistakes is generally lower (because the opponents don't know their heroes very well either).
I like this mode because it allows me to play some heroes I would not even dream of trying out in any other mode. I also like the fact that people care much less about winning or losing in this mode. Furthermore, most players have played the most popular heroes too much to get them in this mode, so hero picks tend to have a lot more variety than in most other modes. The matches can also get pretty weird in this mode, far more often than in any other mode. It is entertaining, more relaxed and even a source of new ideas. Currently my biggest lament is that this mode is not nearly as popular as it was after its launch, It often takes up to five times more time to find a least played match (compared to all pick).
Conclusion
Different drafting systems in general are an interesting topic, and they have been used quite effectively in Dota 2 to improve the game. What is really interesting about drafting in Dota 2 is its impact. Like I said, it is the most exciting part of a match between two professional teams. Seeing how it plays out is of course entertaining too, but the draft is where it is really easy to get absorbed. As the captains are doing their job, couch strategists can in a sense take part in the process by trying to guess what is going on in those great minds. The most fun of course is discussing the draft with other players who are watching the match. Another important way in which drafting affects the game is its impact on how games with random internet strangers roll out. The game experience is always affected by the draft mode. It allows Dota 2 to be played in more than one mindset.
For improving one's play with a given hero, there is all pick; for the best team play experience, there is random draft; and for the most relaxing gaming experience, there is least played. Captains mode is there for those moments when a full team gets together to really play some hardcore Dota. That is how I roll anyway. There are yet other modes in the game but they are less noteworthy.
1. Captains Mode
This mode is the de facto tournament mode in MOBAs in general. The drafting is divided into four phases: first bans, first picks, second bans and second picks. The name of the mode comes from the fact that it is the team captain that does all hero bans and picks for their team. In the first phase, a total of four heroes are banned. This banning phase could be called a balancing act in a sense because usually the heroes that are currently considered most useful get banned. These bans tend to give away very little information, and they are fairly standard. There is typically a pool of less than ten heroes that get banned in this stage. These bans are therefore the most dependent on the contemporary meta game. Some additional information does go into this process though: match history. Knowing what heroes the enemy team is particularly strong with generally allows a captain to make the most out of their first bans.
This first ban phase is interesting because it can give off the impression that the game is imbalanced in the sense that some heroes are simply better than others. This does ring true but one thing to consider here is what we discussed last time. Sometimes the meta game shifts because of balance patches that buff some heroes and nerf others, but they also shift simply because teams come up with new ways to use heroes. Besides, banning four heroes out of the pool does have one huge advantage: it prevents the game from becoming too repetitive. From the captain's point of view, the first bans also ask a very important question: "which two heroes we are the least prepared to deal with?" Answering this question does require some general idea of what kind of strategy the team is prepared to go for. The team that picks first also has an advantage here because they can leave two nasty heroes into the pool and force the opposing team to give them one of those heroes while banning the other.
After four heroes have been ejected from the pool, teams pick their first three heroes. The process has four steps: 1) the first team picks a hero; 2) the opposing team picks two heroes; 3) the first team picks two heroes; and 4) the opposing team picks a hero. This is the phase where teams generally pick heroes that afford a wide variety of strategies because giving away too much information at this point can be disastrous. Just like first bans, these first picks are fairly standard in competitive play. It can be tricky to not give away too much information here, because after these picks, three out of five heroes in a team have been picked. The last picks in this phase tend to be more interesting than the first ones. This is where teams have to start playing some of their cards and they also have more information. There are a lot of things to consider here. There's generally 5 roles in a team, and although some heroes can comfortable fit into more than one, this is often where three roles will be filled.
That is why the second ban phase is much more context sensitive than the first one. Both teams get to ban three more heroes and the goal of the captains here is to get rid of heroes that would be the best fit for the opposing team's lineup. This asks for quite a bit of strategy sense because now is the time where a captain really needs to have a very solid idea of what kind of strategies both teams are going for. This in turn requires pretty deep understanding of every single hero in the game. Although a lot of the same heroes do show up in matches, some really wild picks have been also witnessed in tournament games. The three bans are what make this possible: the most obvious best choices are gone, so a captain has to fill their last two slots with heroes that are not the most optimal choices. This is interesting design because taking away heroes from the pool actually makes the effective pool larger.
By the time teams get to the last picking phase, a total of 16 heroes have left the pool due to being banned or picked. The last picks are done in 1-2-1-2 order, and here the team that picks last has the advantage, counterbalancing the first picker advantage from earlier. In a sense they can counter both of the first team's last picks because the last two picks need to fill different roles. The countering ability of the first team is weaker because their very last pick needs to both fulfill a role and at the same time counter the previous pick (if necessary). Of course, the very last pick of the second team cannot be countered at all. This makes it the only pick in the entire process that is done with complete information available to the picker. If you have played any decent strategy games, the advantage given by complete information in decision making should be pretty obvious.
In a way the captains mode might have risen out of necessity. It is simply not possible to completely balance a game like Dota 2 without making it dull. The captains mode is a clever design that prevents the game from becoming too stagnant. Bans force captains to look for unexpected solutions, and this way the meta game slowly changes. I think there is something more interesting going on here though. I think that Dota 2 is so interesting because of its imbalance. The captains mode is not a monkey patch to fix an imbalanced game - it's a mode that capitalizes on the imbalance as an advantage. The myriad of ways heroes interact with each other makes the hero pool a highly interconnected structure. Taking out even a single hero from the pool can massively impact the usefulness of another hero. Therefore, although the total number of bans sounds quite small, their impact on strategy is huge.
2. Random Draft
This mode is the other mode that can be considered almost tournament worthy. Like captains mode, this one also reduces the hero pool size, forcing teams to pick alternate solutions. As a measure, random draft is far more drastic: only 22 heroes from the entire game are made available. This limitation is naturally even better at preventing stagnancy. The biggest reason this mode is not used in tournaments is its random nature. The draft can be rather lopsided, sometimes giving a huge advantage to the team that gets the first pick. This is especially true if there is only one good hero for one role in the entire selection. What this mode is good for however is playing with random internet strangers. Captains mode is tricky because one player makes all the decisions and poor communication can lead to very disastrous picks (such as four heroes that no one knows how to play).
Random draft on the other hand does two things that make it suitable for quite serious play on public servers: it forces a pick order which makes counter picking a more strutcured activity than the chaos that is all pick. Second, it restricts the hero pool so drastically that every player in a team needs to carefully consider their choices against their skills. It also acts as a better catalyst for communication, because after the first picks a clearer image of available strategies starts to form in a way that everyone can perceive them. Furthermore, the most popular heroes often don't all make it into the pool. This creates some much needed variety. Seeing certain heroes come up in every other game does get a bit old eventually. Of course you can get very unlucky, and have none of the heroes you actually know come up. This is the disadvantage of random draft. However, I do consider it the best mode for playing with random internet strangers. The only thing it's not good for is practicing a particular hero, because the odds of them actually being available are quite small.
3. Least Played
This mode is not mentioned because of its tournament worthiness, but because of its ability to encourage people to practice new heroes. The system is quite simple. Every player has their 40 most played heroes banned (but only heroes that the player has three or more wins with can get banned, so effectively this can be less than 40). What this means is that every player in the game is playing with a hero they are just not very good with. It gives players a friendlier environment to get the hang of new heroes and still allow them to play against other people instead of bots. Everyone knows that everyone else is new to their hero so people generally wont get flamed for not knowing how to play their hero (there are some asshat people who choose to flame in this mode, but they are very rare). It is the mode where players are allowed to screw up because the punishment for mistakes is generally lower (because the opponents don't know their heroes very well either).
I like this mode because it allows me to play some heroes I would not even dream of trying out in any other mode. I also like the fact that people care much less about winning or losing in this mode. Furthermore, most players have played the most popular heroes too much to get them in this mode, so hero picks tend to have a lot more variety than in most other modes. The matches can also get pretty weird in this mode, far more often than in any other mode. It is entertaining, more relaxed and even a source of new ideas. Currently my biggest lament is that this mode is not nearly as popular as it was after its launch, It often takes up to five times more time to find a least played match (compared to all pick).
Conclusion
Different drafting systems in general are an interesting topic, and they have been used quite effectively in Dota 2 to improve the game. What is really interesting about drafting in Dota 2 is its impact. Like I said, it is the most exciting part of a match between two professional teams. Seeing how it plays out is of course entertaining too, but the draft is where it is really easy to get absorbed. As the captains are doing their job, couch strategists can in a sense take part in the process by trying to guess what is going on in those great minds. The most fun of course is discussing the draft with other players who are watching the match. Another important way in which drafting affects the game is its impact on how games with random internet strangers roll out. The game experience is always affected by the draft mode. It allows Dota 2 to be played in more than one mindset.
For improving one's play with a given hero, there is all pick; for the best team play experience, there is random draft; and for the most relaxing gaming experience, there is least played. Captains mode is there for those moments when a full team gets together to really play some hardcore Dota. That is how I roll anyway. There are yet other modes in the game but they are less noteworthy.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Dota 2 (Overview)
OK. So my friend - who has been going on and on about Dota 2 ever since its release - decided to do me a "favor" by giving me a beta access key. Suddenly the pace at which my "games to play" used to get shorter came to a near-halt. Instead my Steam profile tells me that during the past three months, I have played Dota 2 for something like 400 hours. This outcome was not exactly unpredictable; there is a very good reason I have limited myself to single player games for a very long time (the occasional fighting game aside). As you might have guessed, I get engrossed in my games a lot. This is a good trait for a game designer to be sure but it is also a very dangerous trait. It's easy enough to control with single player games because they ultimately end. Either I reach the end, or I get all the achievements - it doesn't matter which, there is always a point where I can put the game away and mark it as "done". The problem with multiplayer games is that they don't really have an endpoint.
In this article I have decided to ramble about random things that pop into my mind. Mostly about Dota 2. I am not going to explain the MOBA concept. Go play one or read a Wiki article. This article is more overview-y. I might do some more detailed pieces about game mechanics. Maybe.
1. Studying as a way to play
I'm a scholar type gamer. Let's face it: my execution sucks. I have never been able to do the really tricky things in fighters even though I have played them for quite a long time and have been somewhat successful on a national level. My reaction time and my manual dexterity are just not up to the task. That is why I play a lot of slow-paced or turn-based games where the advantage lies in knowledge and cunning. I used to be a regular GameFAQs junkie, even reading guides that had no real relevance to my own playing. I wanted to know how others play the games I have just completed; I also wanted to know stuff that the game failed to reveal to me. I used to write guides myself too. I would discuss this stuff with anyone willing to participate. I still do. For a scholar gamer, playing the game is just half of the fun. If I look at my all-time favorite games, they are all games that inspire studying.
Being an extremely complex game, Dota 2 demands study. At first the huge amount of information is just overwhelming. At the time of writing there are almost a hundred heroes in the game, each with their unique abilities and varying attributes. On top of that there's even more items, a lot of them with their own distinct purpose. Sorting all this out takes time and experience, but even more so, it requires studying. I was at about 300 games when I could finally tell what every hero and item in the game can do from memory. I still check details almost daily. But it is not the amount of information that makes studying Dota 2 so compelling. The real complexity is in the way all this information interacts. There are five heroes on each side of a match, and every other hero in the game affects how you should play yours. The beauty of this is that the complexity here is so immense that there is no guide you can read that could cover your situation.
Unlike MMORPG's that have their loathed cookie-cutter builds, these do not largely exist in Dota 2. Therefore even a rather new player like myself is compelled to theory-craft. The fluid nature of Dota 2 can be witnessed by following tournament and league matches between professional teams. The list of most played heroes is living constantly, and new surprising lineups come up all the time. Teams figure out entirely new ways to play some heroes and suddenly those heroes are the new thing. Because everything is so situational, there are basically endless possibilities for a scholar gamer to improve their game simply by studying, theory-crafting and experimenting. When watching pro matches, I find myself constantly trying to figure out why they did what they just did (e.g. why did they pick hero X and not Y).
Because of this constant evolution, most written information is not up to date. It is often useful, but you can usually theory-craft beyond it. Likewise, the most current information comes from watching tournament and league matches, but it is often situational; again with the theory-crafting. The beauty of all this of course that it really pays off. You can easily tell when players have only played the game and never bothered to study it. They go for their standard builds and have very little concern for overall strategy. They choose their heroes based on what they want to play without paying any attention to picks made by other players. They fail to grasp when they have a massive disadvantage in a particular matchup. They even struggle with very basic concepts. Any player in the know will immediately take advantage of this. Although Dota 2 has some degree of technical skill, it is easy to outplay opponents with pure strategy.
It is the studying aspect that really keeps me interested in Dota 2. It also is linked to enjoyability of the game.
2. Goals of playing
Enjoying the studying has a very strong psychological background. The brain is simply wired to reward learning, and Dota 2 is excellent at showing results. At least my experienced rate of improvement has been very high. Reality may or may not agree, but it doesn't really matter to the brain. Another psychological concept that I have experienced is the difference in orientation. On the very highest level of orientation, there are two modes to do things: task-oriented and ego-oriented. The former happens whenever I play with a practice mindset, e.g. learning a new hero, practicing to use a certain skill, trying out a new build or figuring out a counter to a hero I lose a lot to.The latter happens whenever I get too obsessed about my own performance scores or winrates. I am most vulnerable to this when I'm "just playing" with no real goal. Let's just say that when playing a game like Dota 2 you should never ever play for no reason.
Being task-oriented means paying attention to the thing that you have set out to do and simply getting better at it. Basically this means that whatever happens, you will never be disappointed with the outcome. Either you have realized a new flaw or - better scenario - witnessed some clear improvement. Note that this is not the same as playing with "just do your best" mentality. Whatever you are doing should still be aimed ultimately at winning the game. You just shouldn't be obsessed about the outcome: this will only make you cranky and, most importantly, play worse. Whenever someone gest a rage fit in the game, they are very likely playing with an ego-orientation. When you are ego-oriented towards a task, your sense of self-worth hinges on the outcome of the activity. This makes you likely to take a loss personally and blame others in your team for playing poorly.
I have found it really useful to always ask myself "what will I get out of playing this match". It is really easy to become ego-involved in the game if you are "just playing" it. This does a lot to explain the bad reputation of MOBA communities in general (they are considered largely not friendly towards new players; I'll get back to this). Always practice something, and you will always get something out of every game. Although I will very likely never be good enough to play in a serious team (I am playing the "I'm too old for this shit" card here), I nevertheless try to practice towards the goal. Playing occasional matches with four friends also boosts motivation considerably because that is when all your knowledge and skill is really put to use. In public games with random team mates the unwillingness of others to cooperate often results in some weird ways to play the game that are not really viable in real team vs team matches. When it is you and four of your firends you get to practice the most important aspect of the game: effective teamwork.
3. About the players...
What you usually hear about MOBA games is that they are hard games to learn and while you are learning, everyone will cosntantly tell you exactly how much you suck. I also went into the game in a "brace for impact" mode but it turns out this is largely a dated stereotype. True, players do rage from time to time but it is in no way as common as it could seem from the talk. As we just speculated, this raging could happen largely because a lot of players are rather ego-oriented about the entire thing. Another problem with ego-oriented players is that they tend to be rather ignorant too. I think it is essential to make a clear distinction between two types of "bad" players: inexperienced and ignorant players. Although I do not openly flame people, I am not above getting really annoyed at one of these groups: the ignorant players.
I have no complaints about playing with inexperienced players who are willing to learn and communicate. Even if we directly lose the game because of an inexperienced player, there is no reason to rage at them really. If they are someone I know I usually point out later how they can improve their game. I will take an inexperienced communicating player over an experienced ignorant one any day. I don't even rage at ignorant players unless they start raging at either me or another team mate. Well, I don't rage really, just snark at obvious flaws in their play. Still it's not constructive criticism, just a snide remark that their own play wasn't particularly shining either. But I do rage about ignorant players, like right now in this blog. There used to be this joke about how our game design study group gathered weekly to rant about bad players. Let's just face it: I don't like ignorant players in any game. Not very adult of me, but whatever.
I find it impossible to fathom how some people can play a game for hundreds of hours without giving a shit about even the most basic concepts. To me it seems like a big waste because they are not improving at all. Why play a game if you are doomed to suck? Even worse, they don't even realize how bad they are playing. Dota 2 is tricky that way. If you don't stop to think, it is easy to find a lot of explanations how losing the game was not your fault. Your team mates can be noobs, the opposing team has OP (overpowered) heroes etc. At least there is no randomness in this game to blame (there is a clever trick, I might cover it in another post). The problem of course is that when players fail to notice how they failed, they really cannot improve either. It is very hard to admit failure for players who are ego-oriented, because admitting failure hurts their self-esteem.
This is usually when I get told "but we are having fun". To this my response is to find someone else to play with. Still, this casual attitude is more understandable than the attitude of the most obnoxious players. In Dota 2 these are largely ignorant players who think they are good in the game, and their primary reason for playing is to "pwn" (get a lot of kills). Whereas a casual player will just shrug at a loss, this obnoxious type will get on with the raging. Obviously they are not taking the game casually, but they also show no interest in actually trying to improve their game. This is what truly perplexes me. To me it seems like being stuck in an infinite loop of un-fun where over 50% of the matches you play will suck (because you lose). I guess to each his own, but judging by my own ego-oriented streaks, the un-fun part really rings true. There are also the occasional trolls, who I have equal difficulty understanding.
One tricky thing about team-based games is that the development of an individual player's matchmaking rating is always to some degree dependent on their team mates. This is particularly true in Dota 2 because a bad teammate not only fails to contribute anything, they actually hurt the team because enemies get experience and gold for killing them. Although statistically the chance of getting bad teams is equal to getting decent teams, games that are lost in hero selection are not very couraging (it is quite possible to pick a lineup that has no chance at all). Another problem with the matchmaking system is that a lot of matches are rather lopsided. Either your team loses so badly nothing you do can affect the outcome, or your team steamrolls over the opponent with no challenge at all. Both types of games are rather bland. Overall this is a problem that cannot be really avoided when matchmaking among so many players.
4. The hidden lore
What makes Dota 2 hard is that the game is not exactly what it seems like on the surface. Or, rather, it is about many more things than it might initially seem. A very simplistic initial impression might be something like this: you get to choose a hero, then you proceed to farm levels and items to become a killing machine, then you take your enemies out. This is not exactly false, but it is definitely not true either. Let's just walk through over game phases to get some insight into what is not immediately apparent from playing the game.
Hero selection is the very first thing to do in a game. The most commonly played mode is All Pick, where every player gets to freely choose whatever hero they desire (exception: the same hero cannot be picked twice). So you just choose a hero you like and everything is go, right? Well, obviously, no. If everyone does this, it is entirely up to chance whether the lineup makes any sense at all. In truth, every pick should serve some purpose. For instance, there is only limited amount of farm available in the course of the game. If everyone wants an equal share of the farm, no one will come out strong. The problem in picking heroes in public games is that picking a really effective lineup requires communication before anyone picks anything. Why? Let's take a look.
Heroes are divided into several roles. Most importantly, there are more roles than there are players in the team. This means all roles will not be covered. As it should be, most heroes are at their best when played as part of particular strategy. Another important variable about heroes is their time frame. Put simply, this indicates which phase of the game that hero will be the most powerful at. This has very serious implications on overall strategy: a team consisting of mid-game heroes has to play aggressively to secure victory before their heroes run out of potency. There is also another role system, the 1-5 roles. The number means farm priority: role 1 gets majority of the farm, while role 5 gets practically nothing. While this may sound bad for the role 5 player, what it really means that a team should always pick heroes that do not need farm.
On top of all this, counter-picking needs to be considered too. You also need to consider lanes: these are positions that the heroes take at the early stages of the game. Not all heroes are suitable for all lanes so that's another thing that needs to be considered. The trickiest heroes in this sense are those that absolutely need to get into a given lane. If one of those is already on the team, picking another is simply stupid. In a sense All Pick is a stupid mode because there is no forced pick order and, theoretically, the team that picks last has the advantage of seeing what their opponents are going to play. This doesn't really show though, because in public games picking resembles a rather unstructured random process. I highly dislike players who wait and wait before picking and then make some really dumb pick that has no synergy with the rest of the team. Whereas if they had actually picked first, the rest of the team could have reacted to the pick.
So we are not even in the game yet and already there have been a lot of ways to screw up. Welcome to Dota 2. Laning is the next phase. This is a relatively static phase in the game where teams face each other in the game's three lanes, usually 1-2 heroes per lane. It is important to consider who goes where, as we just discussed. Laning two heroes who need farm together for instance is a bad idea, because they will be stealing from each other. Heroes who need farm should instead always lane with heroes who don't. Another thing that can go wrong in the early game is the purchase of starting items. There are a few items that help the entire team, but does not buff the hero who buys them. As you might have guessed, no one really wants to buy these. Someone usually buys the courier, because the little critter is criticial (otherwise heroes would need to run back to base to buy stuff).
There are also wards. They sound rather unimpressive: all they do is sit in a position where you put them and provide vision of the area. The importance of vision seems to be one of the hardest concepts for many players to grasp. Another type of ward is used to reveal wards placed by the other team; they also reveal invisible units in their vicinity. If there are heroes who use invisibility then these wards may get bought, but the more important, vision granting ones often go unbought. It is actually somewhat hard to truly realize the importance of vision at first. I bought wards because my friend told me that it is a thing I should do when playing a support hero. But it really took me quite some time to actually see why wards are important. The importance of vision in a game that features a fog of war may not be shocking news to strategy game folks but somehow it is quite hard to grasp in Dota 2.
But here is the thing: if you have no vision of where the enemy is moving, the only sensible thing is to assume that they are coming to kill you right now. If you don't assume this, you have no way to prepare for it and you die. Preparing for it usually means having to retreat from your farm and do nothing. Both options are really bad. Vision also works the other way around. There is no way to go and kill a "lone" enemy hero if you cannot be sure that his four friends are not hiding nearby (does not prevent people from trying - they usually die). But as soon as you see where they actually are - boom, dead enemy hero. Overall, the fact that you "saved" money by not buying wards is not much of a consolation when the enemy team can just roam freely all over the map killing whoever they want and there is nothing you can do about it. The problem with buying wards is that it should always be done by heroes who don't need farm. If they don't do it, the team is basically screwed because either they go without vision or someone who really needs money has to spend it on wards.
The game still hasn't even started and there are yet more ways that we can have screwed up. Fun times. The next opportunity to screp up consists roughly of the first ten minutes into the game. This is called the laning phase, and it involves killing a lot of creeps (small squads of AI controlled units that march along the lanes to fight enemy creeps). The mind-boggling thing about creeps in the laning phase is that you do not want to kill the enemy creeps as quickly as possible. No matter who makes the kill, everyone in range will get their share of the experience, but the money - the actual farm - goes to however got in the hit that killed the creep. So there is no benefit in killing the creeps quickly. Instead, it hurts your team a lot. There are towers in the lane, and in the early game these things are deadly to heroes. The closer you are to your own tower the better. The lane gets pushed or pulled based on whose creeps die faster, so in fact you want your own creeps to die faster. You even want to finish them off yourself to deny farm from the enemy.
This logic is kind of counter-intuitive, so I get it that not all players grasp it. However constantly attacking the lane creeps is way too common. Yes the whole concept is rather mind-boggling but it's the very basics of the game. Yet it is one of the most common screw-ups (on my skill level). Another thing that has to be kept in mind during laning is: who gets farm and, more importantly, who does not. It is not enough to secure farm for the team; farm needs to be secured for the heroes who actually need it, and at the same time should be denied from enemy heroes who need it. To put it simply, heroes have different bang-for-buck factors. So by taking farm from a hero who needs it more, you are effectively stealing from your own team. It is not as simple as "I get money, we get money". This again is very hard for some players to grasp.
There are several obscure concepts in the early phase of the game too. Fortunately it does get more intuitive towards the end. Not easy, but more intuitive. As we discussed, the team should have some idea when they are at their strongest. If the lineup is heavily early game focused, then they need to start pushing - attacking enemy structures - early. A late game lineup on the other hand will want to keep their structures up while their key hero is farming. A typical late game carry needs to farm 30 or even 40 minutes to become really effective. Basically this means the rest of the team needs to be able to fight one man down. Involving the late game carry in too many fights is risky because they can die and also because they lose precious farming time. They are typically quite useless early on too and will be the focus of enemy aggression.
All this requires quite a bit of knowledge of all the heroes in the game. Another thing the game requires is carefulness, but not too much of it. Because of the way hero respawn mechanics work, dying late in the game causes a hero to be out of the game for a very substantial amount of time. If someone dies solo in the endgame, the rest of the team has to fight 4 versus 5, and if they lose that fight it is usually game over regardless of how the game has been going until that point. Although some people criticize the game because it feels like the outcome is often decided early, this is not accurate exactly because of the way the endgame plays out. Even a great start can be wasted by not realizing the time frame where that advantage is useful, or by stupid deaths in the end game.
The game also has its share of obscure information and exceptions to rules (much like the English language). However this has gone on for quite a bit so let's leave something for another time.
Conclusion
There are plenty of reasons for me to like Dota 2. As far as competitive games go, it is one of the few I can actually play because it does not require too much execution. It also goes very well with my study-heavy attitude towards games because not only is there a lot to study, there is also a lot of room for theory-crafting. What I really like about the game is its context-dependency; basically the answer to most questions about the game start with "well, it depends". Players need to use their own brains to figure out what they should do. Or at least one player needs to, if there is very good team communication. However because the team captain also has to mind his own play, it is far more optimal if all players have a good grasp of what they are supposed to be doing.
It is a game I actually don't recommend if you are not willing to put a lot of time and effort into it. Although the chance of getting yelled at in the beginner level has diminished quite a bit, going into the game with no research is going to be a very confusing experience, involving a lot of dying. The game doesn't have any built-in tutorial because it is still in beta (which it has been for what, two or more years?), but players have written an assortment of guides for understanding the basic concepts and also hero-specific guides (usefulness can vary). If you have the willingness to put yourself into the game, then I think Dota 2 is a really rewarding game. Just keep what I said about playing attitude in mind.
In this article I have decided to ramble about random things that pop into my mind. Mostly about Dota 2. I am not going to explain the MOBA concept. Go play one or read a Wiki article. This article is more overview-y. I might do some more detailed pieces about game mechanics. Maybe.
1. Studying as a way to play
I'm a scholar type gamer. Let's face it: my execution sucks. I have never been able to do the really tricky things in fighters even though I have played them for quite a long time and have been somewhat successful on a national level. My reaction time and my manual dexterity are just not up to the task. That is why I play a lot of slow-paced or turn-based games where the advantage lies in knowledge and cunning. I used to be a regular GameFAQs junkie, even reading guides that had no real relevance to my own playing. I wanted to know how others play the games I have just completed; I also wanted to know stuff that the game failed to reveal to me. I used to write guides myself too. I would discuss this stuff with anyone willing to participate. I still do. For a scholar gamer, playing the game is just half of the fun. If I look at my all-time favorite games, they are all games that inspire studying.
Being an extremely complex game, Dota 2 demands study. At first the huge amount of information is just overwhelming. At the time of writing there are almost a hundred heroes in the game, each with their unique abilities and varying attributes. On top of that there's even more items, a lot of them with their own distinct purpose. Sorting all this out takes time and experience, but even more so, it requires studying. I was at about 300 games when I could finally tell what every hero and item in the game can do from memory. I still check details almost daily. But it is not the amount of information that makes studying Dota 2 so compelling. The real complexity is in the way all this information interacts. There are five heroes on each side of a match, and every other hero in the game affects how you should play yours. The beauty of this is that the complexity here is so immense that there is no guide you can read that could cover your situation.
Unlike MMORPG's that have their loathed cookie-cutter builds, these do not largely exist in Dota 2. Therefore even a rather new player like myself is compelled to theory-craft. The fluid nature of Dota 2 can be witnessed by following tournament and league matches between professional teams. The list of most played heroes is living constantly, and new surprising lineups come up all the time. Teams figure out entirely new ways to play some heroes and suddenly those heroes are the new thing. Because everything is so situational, there are basically endless possibilities for a scholar gamer to improve their game simply by studying, theory-crafting and experimenting. When watching pro matches, I find myself constantly trying to figure out why they did what they just did (e.g. why did they pick hero X and not Y).
Because of this constant evolution, most written information is not up to date. It is often useful, but you can usually theory-craft beyond it. Likewise, the most current information comes from watching tournament and league matches, but it is often situational; again with the theory-crafting. The beauty of all this of course that it really pays off. You can easily tell when players have only played the game and never bothered to study it. They go for their standard builds and have very little concern for overall strategy. They choose their heroes based on what they want to play without paying any attention to picks made by other players. They fail to grasp when they have a massive disadvantage in a particular matchup. They even struggle with very basic concepts. Any player in the know will immediately take advantage of this. Although Dota 2 has some degree of technical skill, it is easy to outplay opponents with pure strategy.
It is the studying aspect that really keeps me interested in Dota 2. It also is linked to enjoyability of the game.
2. Goals of playing
Enjoying the studying has a very strong psychological background. The brain is simply wired to reward learning, and Dota 2 is excellent at showing results. At least my experienced rate of improvement has been very high. Reality may or may not agree, but it doesn't really matter to the brain. Another psychological concept that I have experienced is the difference in orientation. On the very highest level of orientation, there are two modes to do things: task-oriented and ego-oriented. The former happens whenever I play with a practice mindset, e.g. learning a new hero, practicing to use a certain skill, trying out a new build or figuring out a counter to a hero I lose a lot to.The latter happens whenever I get too obsessed about my own performance scores or winrates. I am most vulnerable to this when I'm "just playing" with no real goal. Let's just say that when playing a game like Dota 2 you should never ever play for no reason.
Being task-oriented means paying attention to the thing that you have set out to do and simply getting better at it. Basically this means that whatever happens, you will never be disappointed with the outcome. Either you have realized a new flaw or - better scenario - witnessed some clear improvement. Note that this is not the same as playing with "just do your best" mentality. Whatever you are doing should still be aimed ultimately at winning the game. You just shouldn't be obsessed about the outcome: this will only make you cranky and, most importantly, play worse. Whenever someone gest a rage fit in the game, they are very likely playing with an ego-orientation. When you are ego-oriented towards a task, your sense of self-worth hinges on the outcome of the activity. This makes you likely to take a loss personally and blame others in your team for playing poorly.
I have found it really useful to always ask myself "what will I get out of playing this match". It is really easy to become ego-involved in the game if you are "just playing" it. This does a lot to explain the bad reputation of MOBA communities in general (they are considered largely not friendly towards new players; I'll get back to this). Always practice something, and you will always get something out of every game. Although I will very likely never be good enough to play in a serious team (I am playing the "I'm too old for this shit" card here), I nevertheless try to practice towards the goal. Playing occasional matches with four friends also boosts motivation considerably because that is when all your knowledge and skill is really put to use. In public games with random team mates the unwillingness of others to cooperate often results in some weird ways to play the game that are not really viable in real team vs team matches. When it is you and four of your firends you get to practice the most important aspect of the game: effective teamwork.
3. About the players...
What you usually hear about MOBA games is that they are hard games to learn and while you are learning, everyone will cosntantly tell you exactly how much you suck. I also went into the game in a "brace for impact" mode but it turns out this is largely a dated stereotype. True, players do rage from time to time but it is in no way as common as it could seem from the talk. As we just speculated, this raging could happen largely because a lot of players are rather ego-oriented about the entire thing. Another problem with ego-oriented players is that they tend to be rather ignorant too. I think it is essential to make a clear distinction between two types of "bad" players: inexperienced and ignorant players. Although I do not openly flame people, I am not above getting really annoyed at one of these groups: the ignorant players.
I have no complaints about playing with inexperienced players who are willing to learn and communicate. Even if we directly lose the game because of an inexperienced player, there is no reason to rage at them really. If they are someone I know I usually point out later how they can improve their game. I will take an inexperienced communicating player over an experienced ignorant one any day. I don't even rage at ignorant players unless they start raging at either me or another team mate. Well, I don't rage really, just snark at obvious flaws in their play. Still it's not constructive criticism, just a snide remark that their own play wasn't particularly shining either. But I do rage about ignorant players, like right now in this blog. There used to be this joke about how our game design study group gathered weekly to rant about bad players. Let's just face it: I don't like ignorant players in any game. Not very adult of me, but whatever.
I find it impossible to fathom how some people can play a game for hundreds of hours without giving a shit about even the most basic concepts. To me it seems like a big waste because they are not improving at all. Why play a game if you are doomed to suck? Even worse, they don't even realize how bad they are playing. Dota 2 is tricky that way. If you don't stop to think, it is easy to find a lot of explanations how losing the game was not your fault. Your team mates can be noobs, the opposing team has OP (overpowered) heroes etc. At least there is no randomness in this game to blame (there is a clever trick, I might cover it in another post). The problem of course is that when players fail to notice how they failed, they really cannot improve either. It is very hard to admit failure for players who are ego-oriented, because admitting failure hurts their self-esteem.
This is usually when I get told "but we are having fun". To this my response is to find someone else to play with. Still, this casual attitude is more understandable than the attitude of the most obnoxious players. In Dota 2 these are largely ignorant players who think they are good in the game, and their primary reason for playing is to "pwn" (get a lot of kills). Whereas a casual player will just shrug at a loss, this obnoxious type will get on with the raging. Obviously they are not taking the game casually, but they also show no interest in actually trying to improve their game. This is what truly perplexes me. To me it seems like being stuck in an infinite loop of un-fun where over 50% of the matches you play will suck (because you lose). I guess to each his own, but judging by my own ego-oriented streaks, the un-fun part really rings true. There are also the occasional trolls, who I have equal difficulty understanding.
One tricky thing about team-based games is that the development of an individual player's matchmaking rating is always to some degree dependent on their team mates. This is particularly true in Dota 2 because a bad teammate not only fails to contribute anything, they actually hurt the team because enemies get experience and gold for killing them. Although statistically the chance of getting bad teams is equal to getting decent teams, games that are lost in hero selection are not very couraging (it is quite possible to pick a lineup that has no chance at all). Another problem with the matchmaking system is that a lot of matches are rather lopsided. Either your team loses so badly nothing you do can affect the outcome, or your team steamrolls over the opponent with no challenge at all. Both types of games are rather bland. Overall this is a problem that cannot be really avoided when matchmaking among so many players.
4. The hidden lore
What makes Dota 2 hard is that the game is not exactly what it seems like on the surface. Or, rather, it is about many more things than it might initially seem. A very simplistic initial impression might be something like this: you get to choose a hero, then you proceed to farm levels and items to become a killing machine, then you take your enemies out. This is not exactly false, but it is definitely not true either. Let's just walk through over game phases to get some insight into what is not immediately apparent from playing the game.
Hero selection is the very first thing to do in a game. The most commonly played mode is All Pick, where every player gets to freely choose whatever hero they desire (exception: the same hero cannot be picked twice). So you just choose a hero you like and everything is go, right? Well, obviously, no. If everyone does this, it is entirely up to chance whether the lineup makes any sense at all. In truth, every pick should serve some purpose. For instance, there is only limited amount of farm available in the course of the game. If everyone wants an equal share of the farm, no one will come out strong. The problem in picking heroes in public games is that picking a really effective lineup requires communication before anyone picks anything. Why? Let's take a look.
Heroes are divided into several roles. Most importantly, there are more roles than there are players in the team. This means all roles will not be covered. As it should be, most heroes are at their best when played as part of particular strategy. Another important variable about heroes is their time frame. Put simply, this indicates which phase of the game that hero will be the most powerful at. This has very serious implications on overall strategy: a team consisting of mid-game heroes has to play aggressively to secure victory before their heroes run out of potency. There is also another role system, the 1-5 roles. The number means farm priority: role 1 gets majority of the farm, while role 5 gets practically nothing. While this may sound bad for the role 5 player, what it really means that a team should always pick heroes that do not need farm.
On top of all this, counter-picking needs to be considered too. You also need to consider lanes: these are positions that the heroes take at the early stages of the game. Not all heroes are suitable for all lanes so that's another thing that needs to be considered. The trickiest heroes in this sense are those that absolutely need to get into a given lane. If one of those is already on the team, picking another is simply stupid. In a sense All Pick is a stupid mode because there is no forced pick order and, theoretically, the team that picks last has the advantage of seeing what their opponents are going to play. This doesn't really show though, because in public games picking resembles a rather unstructured random process. I highly dislike players who wait and wait before picking and then make some really dumb pick that has no synergy with the rest of the team. Whereas if they had actually picked first, the rest of the team could have reacted to the pick.
So we are not even in the game yet and already there have been a lot of ways to screw up. Welcome to Dota 2. Laning is the next phase. This is a relatively static phase in the game where teams face each other in the game's three lanes, usually 1-2 heroes per lane. It is important to consider who goes where, as we just discussed. Laning two heroes who need farm together for instance is a bad idea, because they will be stealing from each other. Heroes who need farm should instead always lane with heroes who don't. Another thing that can go wrong in the early game is the purchase of starting items. There are a few items that help the entire team, but does not buff the hero who buys them. As you might have guessed, no one really wants to buy these. Someone usually buys the courier, because the little critter is criticial (otherwise heroes would need to run back to base to buy stuff).
There are also wards. They sound rather unimpressive: all they do is sit in a position where you put them and provide vision of the area. The importance of vision seems to be one of the hardest concepts for many players to grasp. Another type of ward is used to reveal wards placed by the other team; they also reveal invisible units in their vicinity. If there are heroes who use invisibility then these wards may get bought, but the more important, vision granting ones often go unbought. It is actually somewhat hard to truly realize the importance of vision at first. I bought wards because my friend told me that it is a thing I should do when playing a support hero. But it really took me quite some time to actually see why wards are important. The importance of vision in a game that features a fog of war may not be shocking news to strategy game folks but somehow it is quite hard to grasp in Dota 2.
But here is the thing: if you have no vision of where the enemy is moving, the only sensible thing is to assume that they are coming to kill you right now. If you don't assume this, you have no way to prepare for it and you die. Preparing for it usually means having to retreat from your farm and do nothing. Both options are really bad. Vision also works the other way around. There is no way to go and kill a "lone" enemy hero if you cannot be sure that his four friends are not hiding nearby (does not prevent people from trying - they usually die). But as soon as you see where they actually are - boom, dead enemy hero. Overall, the fact that you "saved" money by not buying wards is not much of a consolation when the enemy team can just roam freely all over the map killing whoever they want and there is nothing you can do about it. The problem with buying wards is that it should always be done by heroes who don't need farm. If they don't do it, the team is basically screwed because either they go without vision or someone who really needs money has to spend it on wards.
The game still hasn't even started and there are yet more ways that we can have screwed up. Fun times. The next opportunity to screp up consists roughly of the first ten minutes into the game. This is called the laning phase, and it involves killing a lot of creeps (small squads of AI controlled units that march along the lanes to fight enemy creeps). The mind-boggling thing about creeps in the laning phase is that you do not want to kill the enemy creeps as quickly as possible. No matter who makes the kill, everyone in range will get their share of the experience, but the money - the actual farm - goes to however got in the hit that killed the creep. So there is no benefit in killing the creeps quickly. Instead, it hurts your team a lot. There are towers in the lane, and in the early game these things are deadly to heroes. The closer you are to your own tower the better. The lane gets pushed or pulled based on whose creeps die faster, so in fact you want your own creeps to die faster. You even want to finish them off yourself to deny farm from the enemy.
This logic is kind of counter-intuitive, so I get it that not all players grasp it. However constantly attacking the lane creeps is way too common. Yes the whole concept is rather mind-boggling but it's the very basics of the game. Yet it is one of the most common screw-ups (on my skill level). Another thing that has to be kept in mind during laning is: who gets farm and, more importantly, who does not. It is not enough to secure farm for the team; farm needs to be secured for the heroes who actually need it, and at the same time should be denied from enemy heroes who need it. To put it simply, heroes have different bang-for-buck factors. So by taking farm from a hero who needs it more, you are effectively stealing from your own team. It is not as simple as "I get money, we get money". This again is very hard for some players to grasp.
There are several obscure concepts in the early phase of the game too. Fortunately it does get more intuitive towards the end. Not easy, but more intuitive. As we discussed, the team should have some idea when they are at their strongest. If the lineup is heavily early game focused, then they need to start pushing - attacking enemy structures - early. A late game lineup on the other hand will want to keep their structures up while their key hero is farming. A typical late game carry needs to farm 30 or even 40 minutes to become really effective. Basically this means the rest of the team needs to be able to fight one man down. Involving the late game carry in too many fights is risky because they can die and also because they lose precious farming time. They are typically quite useless early on too and will be the focus of enemy aggression.
All this requires quite a bit of knowledge of all the heroes in the game. Another thing the game requires is carefulness, but not too much of it. Because of the way hero respawn mechanics work, dying late in the game causes a hero to be out of the game for a very substantial amount of time. If someone dies solo in the endgame, the rest of the team has to fight 4 versus 5, and if they lose that fight it is usually game over regardless of how the game has been going until that point. Although some people criticize the game because it feels like the outcome is often decided early, this is not accurate exactly because of the way the endgame plays out. Even a great start can be wasted by not realizing the time frame where that advantage is useful, or by stupid deaths in the end game.
The game also has its share of obscure information and exceptions to rules (much like the English language). However this has gone on for quite a bit so let's leave something for another time.
Conclusion
There are plenty of reasons for me to like Dota 2. As far as competitive games go, it is one of the few I can actually play because it does not require too much execution. It also goes very well with my study-heavy attitude towards games because not only is there a lot to study, there is also a lot of room for theory-crafting. What I really like about the game is its context-dependency; basically the answer to most questions about the game start with "well, it depends". Players need to use their own brains to figure out what they should do. Or at least one player needs to, if there is very good team communication. However because the team captain also has to mind his own play, it is far more optimal if all players have a good grasp of what they are supposed to be doing.
It is a game I actually don't recommend if you are not willing to put a lot of time and effort into it. Although the chance of getting yelled at in the beginner level has diminished quite a bit, going into the game with no research is going to be a very confusing experience, involving a lot of dying. The game doesn't have any built-in tutorial because it is still in beta (which it has been for what, two or more years?), but players have written an assortment of guides for understanding the basic concepts and also hero-specific guides (usefulness can vary). If you have the willingness to put yourself into the game, then I think Dota 2 is a really rewarding game. Just keep what I said about playing attitude in mind.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)