Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

This game swallowed up must of my autumn. As of now, I haven't touched it for a month, my subscription has expired and I have no real desire to go back anyway. Therefore it's a good time to make a writeup about the first and (probably) last MMORPG (just MMO from now on) I have played. First one I have played properly anyway; I did play one and half starting areas of World of Warcraft, mostly for the same reason I started this game - it was easier for me to justify starting an MMO when I did with a friend or two. On the one hand, playing an MMO alone is not that much fun at all. On the other hand, limiting playing time to playing with friends helps against sinking too much time to the game (that's wishful thinking, just so you know). This post is likely to be a long one because I want to go through some game mechanics (and dynamics) and talk about my own experiences, including the reason I quit playing.

1. FFXIV - the game

As an MMO, this game's pretty traditional. Game mechanics wise it follows in the footsteps of World of Warcraft and as such I'm not going to delve too deeply into the basics. It's a Final Fantasy game, clearly made for fans of the series - it has everything people expect to see in FF. For me personally the biggest deciding factor in choosing to play this over other MMOs was entirely technical: it was released for the PS3. On top of my office work and my daily Dota 2 dose, I really cannot sit in front of a computer much more. Not that sitting on a couch with a pad is super healthy, but the ergonomy is just way better. Anyway, the combat mechanics are cooldown-based with some abilities on shared cooldown (called global cooldown) while others on their individual cooldowns (these abilities are referred to as cooldowns... because that's not confusing at all). 

All in all, the mechanics are pretty slow-paced and not challenging in the least to execute. Gameplay decisions revolve more around positioning, rotations (the order in which different abilities are used) and timing of cooldowns. It's honestly not that interesting, which is why I always find it weird when single player RPGs choose to adopt similar mechanics (e.g. Xenoblade). Based on what I heard from people who have played other games, positioning matters slightly more in FFXIV - at least with some classes - because certain abilities have different effects when they hit the enemy from the side or behind. It makes melee damage dealers (DD) more interesting to play - or at least there's a bit more to do than just walk next to the enemy and start pushing buttons in a predetermined order. When playing solo, combat is still pretty damn static. Basically solo playing goes back to easy fun, a topic I brought up in my post about Amalur. 

The overall game concept is very familiar. The game progresses through a long series of plot-related quests, and of course includes an insane amount of sidequests. I'm not a big fan because the vast majority of these quests are not interesting in the least - another point I brought up when writing about Amalur (which just goes to show how accurate it is to describe Amalur as a single player MMO). Could we have an MMO with less sidequests? I'll write a separate section about the plot, so let's move on. Equipment is also very standard and for me the biggest disappointment - or would be if I had expected anything more. All you ever get is more numbers and typically the next piece of equipment is only very marginally better than the last. So although new stuff is gotten fairly often, it doesn't really seem to do anything. In a way the biggest win is when you get rid of an ugly piece of gear. 

As a game, the one thing FFXIV has going for it is its class system. Unlike most MMOs, there's no need for alts (alternative characters) because characters can freely change their class by changing their primary weapon (or tool) anytime outside of combat. Each class is leveled independently and any class lower than your highest gets an experience bonus (so they level up a bit faster). Not that remarkable in itself, but in true FF style classes can borrow skills from other classes. Honestly though it sounds cooler on paper because each class only has a few skills that others can borrow. Furthermore, advanced classes (jobs) are even more limited because they can only borrow from two predefined classes. The usefulness of this system depends on which job you're playing - playing paladin I found absolutely no reason to level up other classes for skills. 

Crafting is a bit different from what I've heard about other games. Crafts are full classes with their own skills and mechanics. They're divided into disciplines of the hand (DOH) and disciplines of the land (DOL). DOH mechanics are the most interesting and for them, it actually makes a lot of sense to level up other crafts to get more skills. Crafting rotations are a bit different from combat rotations, because they depend on several factors: primarily what is being crafted and how many crafting points (CP) the character has. Each skill costs either CP or durability (or both). Durability is basically an indicator for how many operations can be done to the item being crafted. Generally speaking operations raise either progress or quality. Progress defines whether the crafting succeeds (inability to fill the progress bar leads to failure) while quality defines the odds of getting a high quality item. DOL mechanics are mostly about playing around with odds of getting items and hq items from nodes. 

2. Fail

There are a couple of pretty big faults. One is more specific to FFXIV while the other feels like it applies more broadly. Let's talk about the main plot. As such the plot is pretty standard Final Fantasy (or any RPG), - nothing really special to it really. If plots are salvaged at all, it usually happens through interesting characters. Herein comes a bit of a problem because in MMOs, the player's character has no personality - and in FFXIV at least they don't even have any lines. This feels a bit off, because the player is supposed to control the central character in the story, it doesn't really feel like it at any point because the only slivers of personality have been granted to NPCs. I guess the intention is for the player to fill in the blanks inside their head but it just doesn't work at all (it works in Persona 3/4 though). The fact that story quests are almost indistinguishable from sidequests doesn't help. 

All in all, it feels like the player's role is to be a task-completing robot. A lot of these tasks also feel like they're there only to make the experience longer - which is understandable from the business point of view what with FFXIV being a subscription game and all. Every time you go to see someone to get a piece of equipment or information, you can bet they send you on an errand or ten before allowing you to proceed with the actual story. The story just drowns in a sea of errands. It also bothers me that MMOs basically just ask you to look away from the fact that there are thousands of characters doing the exactly same plot... which kind of retracts from the idea of being the "only hope" or whatever. There's a very half-assed attempt to explain all the other player characters but it doesn't really work. Could we get an MMO that actually takes this into account? 

It's painstakingly clear that the story is there just to give you something to do on your way to level 50 and the endgame. Leveling up is the other sore point in FFXIV, and here's why: quests aside, the hands down best way to get experience is to do Fates (well, FATEs really but I don't even remember what the acronym was for). These are events (read: fights) that pop on the map periodically, and they can involve any number of players. They give much higher experience rewards than killing enemies or doing dungeons. What this means is that the best way to level up other classes (and at some points your main too) is to go to an area that has a lot of fates for roughly your level, then just wait for one to appear, go do it and... rinse and repeat. The waiting part is already annoying, as is doing the same fates all over again but that's not the biggest problem. 

The biggest problem with fates is lazy-ass programming and lag. Because popular fate areas contain a lot of players, each fate has a ridiculous amount of players trying to get enough contribution for the highest rank. That causes a ton of lag, and at times makes the game entirely unplayable because for some reason the programmers decided to prioritize loading of other players above loading monsters. Because you cannot target unloaded objects and almost every attack in the game is unit target... good luck trying to do some damage. The contribution mechanics are also bonkers because whoever hits a monster first gets full credit for killing it even if that's the only attack they contribute while others have to do significant percentage of the total damage to get credit. Which means people are just spamming aoe attacks to "claim" enemies as fast as possible, then leave them for someone else to kill. 

I was actually quite happy I didn't need any high level skills from other classes because leveling up in this game sucks balls so hard. Even in the main quest there are moments where you are asked to grind a couple of levels before proceeding. Wow. Such design. Very grind. Leveling up crafts is actually a lot faster (or at least it was, they nerfed it a bit after I stopped playing). I actually found it quite fun to level up my crafts alongside my main class because it allowed me to create my own equipment, primarily because leveling up crafts wasn't nowhere near the insane grind that adventuring classes needed. The game also has a bunch of minor issues here and there like non-sortable inventory (dafuq?), but these two things are the major issues.  

3. Dungeons and... more dungeons

FFXIV uses the standard paradigm for its dungeons. A basic party consists of one tank, one healer and two damage dealers with each of these having its own distinctive role. It ain't broken so there's no real need to fix it. Guild Wars 2 tried to break the paradigm but it only resulted in dungeons being more boring than ever (they basically gave every class a heal etc. so anyone could do any role). I started the game with a DD, but when my friends stopped playing I switched to tank. The reason for the swap was simple enough: most players want to play DD which puts tanks and healers in higher demand. Each role has its own challenges so I think in general all should be interesting to play. In addition to keeping enemies agroed to themselves, tanks are also expected to lead - which includes choosing and prioritizing targets. I enjoyed that part, because it allowed me to be an active player in dungeons. 

Dungeons can be roughly divided into mob and boss phases. For tanks, mobs are often the more challenging part - keeping multiple enemies targeting you is harder than keeping just one. For damage dealers bosses are often more interesting because they usually need to take care of adds (reinforcements) and other smaller details, while the tank just sits there toe-to-toe with the boss. This varies from boss to boss, and some designs are clearly better than others. Worst designs are pretty much slugfests while best ones require active participation from everyone (e.g. tanks need to kite the boss around instead of tanking in one spot). Mostly these bosses are not that hard. Before the endgame there are only very few show-stoppers. There's nothing particularly hard about mobs in dungeons as long as the tank doesn't pull (engage) too many at once. Of course, later on, speedrun tactics involve pulling quite a bit more than standard runners are used to.  

Dungeons and other party instances feel like the essence of MMOs. Even with random people they are way more fun than solo gameplay - with friends they are of course even better. FFXIV is rare in one respect considering dungeons: the main story includes most of the game's dungeons as mandatory stops. I actually like this decision because it gets all players involved with dungeoneering way before the endgame - after all, playing in a party is the only thing in the entire game that is actually challenging. To make things easier for players, the game contains the dreaded Duty Finder (DF), which is the equivalent of matchmaking for multiplayer games. Instead of trying to get parties by shouting in area chat, players just register to DF alone or with friends, and DF forms complete parties and sends them off to the dungeon. Because DDs are rather abundant, it takes a while for them to find a party. I was usually DFing with one friend who played healer, so we basically got parties instantly. 

DF is honestly just fine until harder dungeons and instances start to appear. After that, well, you get to deal with the usual matchmaking problems: some people are undergeared while others don't seem to have any idea about how to play. Considering how easy and intuitive I found most of the things in this game, I can only wonder how people cannot grasp the basic concepts... oh well. I didn't experience many problems at all, probably because I was always queueing as a tank and usually had my own healer too. Most of the time poor DDs only make things slower, not impossible. Some bosses in the game do require a healthy pace from DDs at which point those with poor gear or rotations become a hindrance. One of the biggest show-stoppers in the game is especially obnoxious for DF because it always creates parties with the same 1:1:2 formula. For this particular boss, there is absolutely no use for a second tank, and there's a phase that is highly dependent on damage output where a fifth DD would really help. 

For the record I didn't make it through that one particular boss because - DF issues aside - it's fricking hard. Therefore I also haven't experienced any of the endgame raids but it's pretty safe to assume they are still mostly like any other dungeon. The endgame in general is mostly about speedrunning dungeons - the faster the better - and although it's pretty damn repetitive in the long run, I found it quite fun to try and shave off minutes from completion times. For the record, the difference between DF parties and premade parties is pretty staggering here. 

4. Reasons to play

I guess I covered the game itself to as much detail as I had planned. As a game, it really is not that great. Most single player RPGs - even ones that suffer from the MMO syndrome - are better as games. But playing an MMO is not like playing other games really. It's more like a project. A project where success is pretty much guaranteed if you put enough time into it. Likewise, it's much easier to pick up than any real project. It's easy to see how this makes these games highly attractive - and addictive. Like I said, I started off with a couple of friends but they didn't last very long. I had however already put significant amount of time into the game and felt like at least playing through the main story. At that time I had plenty of things to do besides progressing in the story: I enjoyed gathering, crafting and playing the market (i.e. capitalism). In short, the project was already well underway, and every day I reached a milestone or few. 

There's also the social aspect. It got me into the game in the first place. Although my friends quit, I discovered a linkshell (kind of a chat channel) for Finnish players which helped me actually stay in the game. Being able to chat (or follow one) while doing whatever seemingly boring task turns the game into a fine passtime. Occasionally, especially in the endgame, we would also form full parties to speedrun and tackle some of the hardest bosses, usually as a favor to newer players in the linkshell. I always enjoy helping people out in games, so although there wasn't anything for me to gain (other than good karma I guess) these were fun times. It's once again a bit like any actual project - being involved with people makes it so much easier to make it through one. Although dungeons were mostly fun from a pure gameplay perspective, I feel it's the project angle that really keeps players like myself in these games.

Come to think of it, I seem to like my games (even) more when they become projects. For RPGs this happens after beating the game, when I start to tackle all the post-game content (optional dungeons, bosses, achievements and such). After beating the game, I'm armed with much more knowledge about it not just because I have been playing it for 30+ hours, but also because I allow myself to look at guides at this point to see what I've missed. I never use any additional information while playing the game because I want to surprise me and I don't want to know about any possible overpowered skills, weapons and such beforehand. It is half the fun to tackle the game with what you manage to find. However after it is done, that's when the other kind of fun - the project fun - begins. 

5. Reasons to quit

I did stop playing FFXIV before completing the project largely because it no longer felt worth doing - at least considering the time investment it would have required. For the last four weeks I was more or less just doing one thing: speedrunning the same two dungeons over and over again to farm tomes (needed for endgame gear). What had happened was that I had leveled up all the crafts I wanted and I didn't feel like leveling up another adventuring class (for reasons mentioned earlier). There was literally nothing left except two things: the speedrun, and waiting for an opportunity to tackle hard mode Titan in order to proceed to the final endgame stage. The latter never happened because although I was interacting with a lot of people, getting a Titan party together was pretty rare.

I didn't really feel like getting into an FC that would focus the endgame content. I don't really feel like having social obligations in my games - especially not weekly. Still it seemed like the only real way of getting anywhere with the endgame. I was pretty much playing on my own, unable to schedule anything so I was just reliant on being in the game when someone started to put together a party for a speedrun or Titan. I only logged in to do my weekly speedruns anyway so I didn't spend too much time in the game for the last couple of weeks. Christmas holidays came around and it was then when I decided to take a break from the game and see if I would feel like getting back to it come new year. I started to play other games (Remember Me and Valkyrie Profile 2 at the time) and didn't feel like getting back into the time sink.

There was another thing that really bothered me about the endgame. Unless you have a full party of friends who want to tackle unknown challenges, it is pretty much mandatory to look up boss strategies etc. beforehand. For me figuring out strategies is the reason to play games in general so it felt really lame. I wasn't really looking forward to the final endgame phase for this reason. Even if I got there, I would still be just repeating someone else's strats more or less. MMOs like this one don't really have that much challenge in executing a strategy, at least not on individual level. It's really more like a communication effort. That's fine and all, but really only works with a group of people you know.

Conclusion

The big question considering the entire experience is: was it worth the three months I spent on it? From a pure gameplay perspective... probably not. Although I clearly enjoyed playing the game, something about it definitely rubbed me the wrong way in the long run. I don't think it was FFXIV specifically was the problem either - while the game had its flaws, I honestly don't think any other MMO would have made much of a difference. However as a game dev and as a researcher I think it was valuable to really get into an MMO to see what's it all about. It was also nice to notice that this genre works just fine with a pad. The only real difficulty is with typing - it's ridiculously slow. I did bear with it for like two months but I eventually got a bluetooth keyboard for my PS3 just to type.

The game was already remade once, and I think Square-Enix still has some work to do with it - mainly fix the braindead loading priority and lag issues. There's not much wrong in the game compared to the competition (based on hearsay). From a thematic perspective it definitely feels like a Final Fantasy game, but the gameplay is very standard MMO stuff - sure, the class system brings some FF spice into the mix, but it doesn't do quite as much as it could. The crafting system is probably the biggest distinguishing factor, but its impact is ultimately a bit too small. Whether the game is worth trying really depends on what you're looking for. There is one thing it does superbly though: it's the best MMO you can play on a PS3 (FYI: the PC version also supports pad, and some people seemed to prefer it to ye olde keyboard+mouse combo).

I'm glad I played it, I'm glad I quit it, and - unless a really game-changing MMO comes around - now I can safely say "never again". 

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.