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The DOTA genre is something we all love and hate at the same time. On one hand, it's a genre full of epic battles, huge fights, and glorious victories. On the other hand, it's full of rage-quitters, very unfriendly to newbies, and can drag on for hours. Blizzard aims to fix these problems and highlight the best parts of DOTA in its brand new game type.
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In Blizzard DOTA, two angry Gods rule over a trans-dimensional pocket universe. They've captured all the heroes you know and love from Blizzard's various titles and forced them to fight to the death. This means you could encounter characters like Arthas, Uther, Muradin, the Skeleton King, or Raynor during any game.
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Blizzard aims to set this game apart from all the other DOTA maps you may have played. They wanted to embrace their "Easy to learn, difficult to master" style. To do this, they have made several changes to the formula. First of all, instead of taking an hour or more, blizzard DOTA games only take about 15 to 30 minutes. This makes people less likely to rage quit when they're losing, because they won't be stuck in a losing game for long.
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Part of making the game easier involved clearly defining hero roles. The 4 classes are Tank, DPS, Support and Siege. This allows players to pick a hero and know exactly what they need to do. There are no in-between heroes, either. Siege heroes are something new to Blizzard DOTA. They are skilled at destroying buildings and especially turrets; they even have abilities that outrange turrets. This means they can destroy a turret quickly unless they are stopped.
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Secondly, Blizzard has done away with all the complicated stats given by items. For example, do we really need Armor, Magic Resistance, and Life? Since armor just makes you more durable, why not just have more life? DOTA shouldn't be about doing math to calculate your skills. Blizzard DOTA has only 3 stats- Health, Damage, and Mastery. Mastery may sound confusing, but really it just lowers cooldowns and boosts mana. Blizzard hopes that with simple stats, the game can be less confusing and more about the action.
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Outside of stats, items are primarily use based with a cooldown such as the Health/Mana Stone that recovers 20% (before being upgraded) of your health/mana. This accompanies the standard Health/Mana Potion that recovers a set amount over a short period of time. Other items include a net that snares the target for 2+ seconds, a shrink ray that reduces the target's damage and a staff that gives nearby allies health/mana over a short period of time. Rather than worry about recipes, many of these items start at Level 1 and can be upgraded to Level 3. While the list of items is much shorter than usual, the items available have very a specific purpose. Blizzard plans to incorporate more items without overwhelming newer players.
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Another radical change is that towers are fairly weak. Not only are they fairly squishy targets when compared to your standard DOTA turrets, they have ammo! Although this ammo slowly recharges over time, players that try to be "tower huggers" will quickly find themselves unprotected and therefore dead. When the tower is out of ammo, it shuts down and can be freely attacked by enemies. Using a tower for some quick cover is fine, but you won't be able to play defensively for long. As mentioned earlier, Siege heroes are especially good at destroying turrets. Players will have to make sure these siege heroes are kept away from the turrets.
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Blizzard wants to emphasize aggressive team-style battles. Without towers to hide behind, you have to push constantly. Blizzard has also removed last-hitting, at least in the way we use it know. Minions give gold and experience to all enemies in range when killed. Some minions will have a small red/blue globe over their head. Once killed, the globe can be picked up to restore a small amount life/mana for you and nearby allied heroes. As a result, the process of denying relies less on you killing your own minions and more on you pushing the enemy back to control these globes. If you are able to pick up every globe, you will be able to use your spells more often and maintain a higher health pool.
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Instead of kills and assists, players receive "Take downs". All gold and experience from the killed enemy will be split between all players that helped in the kill, and each player will receive one take down. There is no kill/death/assist panel; instead the total gold value of each team is displayed at the top of the screen. While this makes it very difficult to know exactly how well a player is doing, over time the amount of gold a player/team has will represent their status in the game.
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Another new feature of Blizzard DOTA is ogres. Inside the jungle, you will find four ogre mercenary camps in addition to the typical jungle creeps. These aren't available when the game first starts, but spawn several minutes into the game. Once available, four gray flags appear below the clock. These flags will move left/right under the gold scores and change color to blue/red indicating which team has control of the camp. You can also summon powerful Yetis near any allied tower from Soul Tokens that you pick up from killed jungle groups. This allows you to fill the traditional jungler role without losing towers early on to aggressive play.
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If you can kill these ogres, you will earn their respect and they will join your team. This means that every time a wave spawns for your team, one of the creeps will be replaced by a more powerful Ogre. Capturing just a few of these shrines will give your team a big advantage.
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In addition to these ogres, there is also a giant stone zealot in the jungle. It's very hard to kill, but if do manage to take it down, it will march down the nearest lane and begin to crush the enemy. It can easily take down turrets and enemy units, so the opposing team will have to respond quickly.
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Blizzard has also done away with boots. Instead of buying boots to increase your speed, all heroes can simply hop on a mount! After a short channel time, you can use a robotic wolf (changes for each hero) to increase your speed dramatically. This allows you to quickly get back into the fight after death instead of slowly walking back to the front lines. You can also chase down that pesky enemy hero before he gets away. Unfortunately, you can't use your mount forever. When you are hit by any source of damage you are dismounted and stunned for several seconds. This prevents you from riding directly into the fight and requires a strong sense of positioning to know when you should dismount as you approach.
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All of these features come together to form a unique and interesting game. And best of all, Blizzard DOTA is free! While there will be bonuses for those that own WoL or HotS, even starter edition players can enjoy Blizzard DOTA. Blizzard has also implemented a matchmaking system based on your DOTA skill and rank to help make this mod even more special. On top of that, they have included tons of different maps and heroes to try out. We don't have a release date, but Blizzard has confirmed that it's coming Soon....ish.
Make sure to check out the rest of our BlizzCon articles here! More will be coming soon. Let us know what you think about Blizzard DOTA!
My first reaction was "it's being dumbed down!". My second reaction was "But dumbed down is such an inflammatory term" >.>
I'm definitely going to try what i've tongue-in-cheek named as "DotA for Dummies", and i may even like it, but the way I see it is DotA is supposed to be for the geekheads. Its the sort of game you would learn about and play to both hone your reflexes, and figure out the mechanics plus the quirks thereof. Something one would want to study.
And then they go and remove:
An interesting item system
Last-hitting
Jungling
strong towers
which is quite a bit of what makes DotA interesting to us geek heads. Towers, for instance, prevent it from being just a "hurr durr push push push tower dive for killz" game. Jungling adds an alternative to just laning, and is IMO more interesting than just lanes. Etc.
Young whippersnappers, they want their games to be handed to em on a silver platter. Then they want the games to be forced down their throats and digested for em.... :P /oldfart
I wouldn't mind trying this out (Along with the Warcraft III DotA, which seems to be the best compared to other clones including Dota 2), and considering that it's just a mod, at least there'll be a chance for other new genres to emerge(:
Jungling still exists, just not in the same way as DotA or HoN or LoL. I actually like the lack of needing to last-hit as well. I was playing a ton as Arthas and just focused on killing other players rather than worrying about my income.
Come on, the item system from DotA was pointlessly confusing. You get the same result with upgradeable items, just you don't need to have an item spreadsheet open.
I think this single mechanic put me off the whole DotA series. People call it skillful, and they'd probably be right. I'd call it tedious for tedium's sake.
strong towers
which is quite a bit of what makes DotA interesting to us geek heads. Towers, for instance, prevent it from being just a "hurr durr push push push tower dive for killz" game. Jungling adds an alternative to just laning, and is IMO more interesting than just lanes. Etc.
For me, every game needs it's 6-pool strategy. If you physically can't lose in 5 minutes no matter how bad you are, you're (as a designer) just delaying the action.
I said this on the stream, and some people made the jump between 6-pool and an "uncounterable tactic that everyone will use". 6-pool is risky for both the player and his opponent. It doesn't always work, and is pretty easily countered if you know it's coming, but as soon as you remove that risk, you actually dumb the game down. "Hey, I've got no risk of losing for the first 10m so I'll just do what I want with impunity".
Young whippersnappers, they want their games to be handed to em on a silver platter. Then they want the games to be forced down their throats and digested for em.... :P /oldfart
DotA has a lot of pointless tedium and overly complicated mechanics. Sure, you can say that removing them simplifies the game, and you'd be right. A simple game isn't necessarily an easy game, though. There are also many ways to add skill to a game.
Basically the same debate like the control improvements from SC1 to SC2. Adding convenient stuff like auto-enabled health bars, unit groups with more than 12 units, rally-mining for workers and stuff like that made many people say the same: "How should players show their skills now?"
Well, while some people might say, it takes skill to tell every single worker you build to mine, I say, it just takes your attention away from the important things. The creator of the game is usually responsible for the skills needed in a game. If Blizzard would want people to send each worker individually to a mineral patch at every point in the game, people who could do that consistently and even while fighting are considered skilled. If Blizzard wants players to lasthit and know all complicated recipes for items, people who can do that are considered skilled.
If Blizzard changes stuff, so these actions are no longer required, those people will lose their edge and have to adapt, usually causing many of them to complain about it. But if they are indeed good players, they will adapt and still excel at the game, even if the priorities sort of shifted.
And to be honest, denying and last hitting is just as tedious as having to send each worker to a mineral patch individually. If they find a working way to take last hitting out of the game, I am more than willing to try it.
I see both sides to the argument here, but I'll put my point of view in anway...
Simplifed Items - Its the same as School Math teaching you 15 steps to do a problem, compared to grandpa (a rocket scientist) who teaches you to do it in 3. Keep It Simple Stupid. Grandpa didn't have time to do a 15 step problem when the ship was flying... you really don't in DOTA either.
Last Hitting - This system was just down right dumb for DOTA. You profess that "geeking" on the numbers was so pivital to DOTAs enjoyment, yet you seem to think that Last Hitting is a logical result? Last Hitting is like Killing Blows in WoW PVP. You can have all the damned KBs you want in a BG game; it still won't win you the match. Blizzard change forces KBs to be minutely effective in an individual perspective and more in a team perspective. Even the Last Hit resulting in health globes can be considered a team perspective, as players can let some one who is wounded get the last hit on purpose so he gets a free heal.
Jungling - It's still available, just accelerated and far less Idle. You actually DO SOMETHING in Blizzard DOTA rather than just hugging a choke in the other ones.
Strong Towers - Towers being weakened is debated I guess. I can see easily where there are times I'd rather have a long game, and focus on PVE in a PVP environment. However, DOTA is about PVP, so I see the point of making them easy to let you down if you think they'll cover you endlessly. This forces you to have balls. I don't see anything wrong with that either.
This is not WoW - I dunno where people get the idea that DOTA should be complicated beyond the point of a 16 gig, 11 Million populated MMORPG. DOTA is more or less an Arena Match with PVE elements geared to PVP results. It's a giant duel fest! Over complicating the stats for what? So that you think you have an edge? I'm sorry but all the math can be done off-game and I can simply have a build order basically ready when I log in to save time. It's the exact same thing as Cookie Cutter Specs in WoWs current Talent Tree System. It's simply not needed, unnecessary, and I feel all it promoted (Last Hitting, Complicated Items, ect) was Elitism, which in turn ruins the game's popularity and depth. Sometimes, people, LESS = MORE.
Just added more info to the article now that I'm back. Read it again for more details :)
I actually played this multiple times, so I can safely say that:
Jungling is still possible with mercenary camps and soul tokens; every game boiled down to who controlled the jungle. Period.
Last hitting is replaced with globe control; feels less frantic and allows you to maintain better map awareness. The globes aren't created directly from last hits though. That bit of information was inaccurate.
Item complexity still exists in that you have 4 slots with which to decide your build. You don't have "wasted items" that sit in your inventory half the game until they turn into the item you really wanted.
Towers are not weaker in the sense that they don't do damage. My fastest win occurred when the other team believed that a herp derp push in a 3v1 mid lane was the answer. They died under my tower repeatedly (the ammo recharges fast enough to last through 3-5 dives in a row) while we picked up the 4 jungle camps and won in 13mins.
My first reaction was "it's being dumbed down!". My second reaction was "But dumbed down is such an inflammatory term" >.>
I'm definitely going to try what i've tongue-in-cheek named as "DotA for Dummies", and i may even like it, but the way I see it is DotA is supposed to be for the geekheads. Its the sort of game you would learn about and play to both hone your reflexes, and figure out the mechanics plus the quirks thereof. Something one would want to study.
And then they go and remove:
An interesting item system
Last-hitting
Jungling
strong towers
which is quite a bit of what makes DotA interesting to us geek heads. Towers, for instance, prevent it from being just a "hurr durr push push push tower dive for killz" game. Jungling adds an alternative to just laning, and is IMO more interesting than just lanes. Etc.
Young whippersnappers, they want their games to be handed to em on a silver platter. Then they want the games to be forced down their throats and digested for em.... :P /oldfart
..... said just like a typical DOTA player who doesn't know how to respond to change.
The item system in Allstars isn't interesting. It's a fuck-ton of standalone variables thrown together on a platter for players to memorize. New players don't want that. Blizzard isn't aiming this game at the "young whippersnapper" OR the opposite end of the spectrum, the "geek heads". They're aiming this at players who want to have fun. New players have a madly hard fucking time getting into Allstars from the start. With this setup, newer players don't have to spend hours memorizing item builds. It's not a question of casual vs. hardcore, it's a question of smart vs. stupid, and Blizzard realized that.
Last-hitting is something I question with Blizzard DOTA. Last hitting has become a part of the AOS genre. It's one of the best "skill exercises" in DOTA, meaning it's one of the primary ways for players to demonstrate their skill. Blizzard's removing last hitting but trying to get the same idea of the positional gameplay and the mind games that go along with laning/last hitting with the globes, but I personally think it's going to fall a bit short. Maybe not.
As for jungling, Blizzard answered your concerns in their panel. There is space in between lanes. It has to be filled with something. They would rather fill that space with direct points of interest (in this case capture-able mercenary camps) than WC3-style creep camps. Yeah, jungling is gone, but its replacement will provide a greater teamplay aspect. Blizzard stated that one of their primary goals was to remove the individuality and make a more teamplay oriented map. This fits with that. If you want individuality, play Allstars.
Weaker towers is the same idea. They want to reward you for grouping up as a team. Also, the weaker tower dynamic is also going to affect how players play their lane. No more is the dynamic of not trying to actually kill the other teams creeps and not push the lane. It's all just much simpler and more straightforward and that's good. Weaker towers also balances the idea of having Siege heroes (which is reminiscent of DOTA in its original form on Wc3:ROC): if players group up as a team of 5 and attempt to push, an unaccounted-for siege hero could wreck their base by himself.
This map isn't a full-fledged hero arena in disguise like Allstars, it's about killing the other team's base. if people don't like that, they don't have to play it.
I never played a single DotA game (don't like games where the only objective is to kill the other guy), the only interest I have in Blizzard Dota is how it will improve the editor... but I'd like to know what exactly "last hitting" is. It's sound like just another name for kill stealing... that's consdered a measure of skill? :S
Come on, the item system from DotA was pointlessly confusing. You get the same result with upgradeable items, just you don't need to have an item spreadsheet open.
Nah. How hard is it to understand that a Medallion of Courage is built from a Chainmail and a Sage's Mask? :P After a while playing, you get a sense of what items you need for various heroes and when you try a new one you can probably come up with a decent build idea quckly. The key though is time.
And with leveling up items, you remove a way to have variety. If you have, for instance, an item that does AoE damage on activation, that's all it really can do (without getting into a just as confusing "X item does Y at level 1, Z at level 2, and A at level 3, etc." system). You can't have a component item that grants you a bit of cleave plus a component that grants you some strength combining into an centered-around-self AoE active item, then that combining with another low-level recipe that grants a small chance to stun on attack to give a stronger AoE with ministun, then THAT combining with a few more components to become a targeted AoE damage active with ministun and silence.
When playing SotIS, I've never needed more math capability than what I can do in my head (and it's not like i can remember a ton of numbers or do calculus up there or anything). I HAVE been motivated to do in-depth analysis of a few heroes and the occasional item between games, but that's part of the fun to me.
I just noticed that people say the same thing about EVE online, but plenty of people have fun there. Moreover, I'm betting that the vast majority don't crack open excel to calculate ideal numbers for the latest ship they're gearing out or anything. I wonder if it's simply a different tolerance for dealing with numbers among people?
I think this single mechanic put me off the whole DotA series. People call it skillful, and they'd probably be right. I'd call it tedious for tedium's sake.
Lasthitting is definitely one of the more tedious of the mechanisms they removed. I personally like it because it adds an element of reflex and timing to DotA, though I can see why it was removed.
It's still there, and seemingly more important than other DotA games.
Jungling is there in DotA as an alternative to laning for one hero. In Blizzdota, it's a quick way to fight a few enemies (one time!) then get some boosts to your lane creeps. Not a sustainable way to level up like in DotA.
The method is interesting and I do like it, but why did they have to remove jungling entirely? The two could co-exist.
For me, every game needs it's 6-pool strategy. If you physically can't lose in 5 minutes no matter how bad you are, you're (as a designer) just delaying the action.
I said this on the stream, and some people made the jump between 6-pool and an "uncounterable tactic that everyone will use". 6-pool is risky for both the player and his opponent. It doesn't always work, and is pretty easily countered if you know it's coming, but as soon as you remove that risk, you actually dumb the game down. "Hey, I've got no risk of losing for the first 10m so I'll just do what I want with impunity".
And in bronze (and to an extent, silver), 6pooling is close to a free win. My problem is that 6pool like strategies vastly reduce the depth of the metagame by forcing the game to be over ending in victory for one side or the other very quickly. I mean, which would you rather watch: FruitDealer 6pooling his way through [insert tournament here] or some epic ZvZ/ZvT/ZvP with nice 30/40/50 minute games?
Uh huh, I thought it would be the latter =] That's no way to design a game.
DotA has a lot of pointless tedium and overly complicated mechanics. Sure, you can say that removing them simplifies the game, and you'd be right. A simple game isn't necessarily an easy game, though. There are also many ways to add skill to a game.
Well sure. Tetris or Bejeweled could be deep games (if they aren't already), but who would want to watch a Tetris tournament? Or a Bejeweled one? They may have some depth to their strategy, but the action is very very same-y. Half of the attraction of DotA is the mass variety in mechanics, action, heroes, and items that all combine together to create huge quantities of very unique games. Blizzdota is going a whole other direction than that.
By actually being a good player instead of staring at health bars, I guess.
How though? The item system was whacked in half, there's not much to do in lanes except pewpewpew, a bit of harass, and scrambling for those globes now and then, and you can't rely on anything to help defend you (except maybe allied heroes) anymore if you get team ganked or such.
Actually, thinking about it, that's gonna be really scary. Towers won't defend you for very long, so I suspect that a game will be made out of just running around in one big deathball picking off hero after hero. It happens in SotIS, and somehow Blizzard made towers that are actually worse than them, soo.....
..... said just like a typical DOTA player who doesn't know how to respond to change.
...Not so much. When the 4.0 Sotis update came, and everyone was whining "wa wa wa this game sucks if you dont put it back ecko im gonna ragequit!!!!1!111!!!!" I was all for it, loving the new mechanics and all the changes to gameplay. I'm fine with changes. But what Blizzdota is doing is by no means a traditional DotA, it's a whole different brand.
The item system in Allstars isn't interesting. It's a fuck-ton of standalone variables thrown together on a platter for players to memorize. New players don't want that. Blizzard isn't aiming this game at the "young whippersnapper" OR the opposite end of the spectrum, the "geek heads". They're aiming this at players who want to have fun. New players have a madly hard fucking time getting into Allstars from the start. With this setup, newer players don't have to spend hours memorizing item builds. It's not a question of casual vs. hardcore, it's a question of smart vs. stupid, and Blizzard realized that.
I'm a player who wants to have fun. I'm also a player who happens to want something I can really sink my teeth into learning and practicing, something between a game and a hobby and a sport. If that's not what they're making, fine, then I'm not the audience. I'm just saying, from my perspective, these are my concerns.
And items. So you get 4 slots to dump what looks like one of 20 or so items (maybe 30?) into and upgrade. That's boring to me. No strategy, no "oh that hero is X, so instead of Y i need to buy Z and do A differently", just "uhhh this item looks good ill buy that" and i win anyway.
I do like the boots removal though. It never made much sense to me to have to buy a boots item, why not just remove the boots part and develop the special abilities (if any) into actual full-fledged items.
I saw a new player in SotIS the other day. He stayed back, farmed, played cautiously, and helped where he could. He found the shop right away, easily grasped the concept of recipes, and bought a few decent items (IIRC). He proved to me that people can learn to play DotA quite quickly, if they're actually willing to put the effort into it. But most people seem to just want a "herp derp chaaaarge leeeeroy jenkins!!!!!" type game where what your strategy is and what you buy doesn't matter.
Yes, that was kind of ranty. I don't mean to offend anyone though :P I'm also not going to pretend that the entire dota genre is ruined forever!!! because of this, or any such sort of thing.
As for jungling, Blizzard answered your concerns in their panel. There is space in between lanes. It has to be filled with something. They would rather fill that space with direct points of interest (in this case capture-able mercenary camps) than WC3-style creep camps. Yeah, jungling is gone, but its replacement will provide a greater teamplay aspect. Blizzard stated that one of their primary goals was to remove the individuality and make a more teamplay oriented map. This fits with that. If you want individuality, play Allstars.
The thing is though, DotA is already plenty teamplay oriented. And that brings me to my next point, which is...
Weaker towers is the same idea. They want to reward you for grouping up as a team. Also, the weaker tower dynamic is also going to affect how players play their lane. No more is the dynamic of not trying to actually kill the other teams creeps and not push the lane. It's all just much simpler and more straightforward and that's good. Weaker towers also balances the idea of having Siege heroes (which is reminiscent of DOTA in its original form on Wc3:ROC): if players group up as a team of 5 and attempt to push, an unaccounted-for siege hero could wreck their base by himself.
I already play something like that. And let me tell you right now: for the most part, it sucks. Oh, did you land in a group of bad players while the enemy team is a premade? Sucks to be you, good luck having fun when the enemies skip the laning phase, start running around in a deathball, chaingank the heck out of each hero on your team, and hurl insults about your skill because they don't even realize why they're winning. Or in reverse, you start the game, get a good group, and proceed to curbstomp the enemies without any real effort involved.
And with weak towers, yeah that's horribly boring. You have nowhere to run or hide when the enemy team wants you, they just ignor towers, stretch past enemy heroes, and slam you down. The tower is either ignoring your plight in favor of the shiny creeps next to it (and in this case, now it's wasting ammo doing so), or it's being pitfully weak at hurting the enemies.
The difference is, when you can get a pair of relatively evenly matched teams, it's a 5v5 heaven for the duration of the game. This will be, what, a bit of laning, 2 teamfights, and a couple of pushes into victory (or loss)? Bleh. I'm not looking for fast food or candy in my games, I'm looking for solid meat and potatoes.
all that said, I'm still going to try it when it comes out. These are my concerns just from hearing about this, not a tantrum thrown because everything isn't going my way.
I never played a single DotA game (don't like games where the only objective is to kill the other guy), the only interest I have in Blizzard Dota is how it will improve the editor... but I'd like to know what exactly "last hitting" is. It's sound like just another name for kill stealing... that's consdered a measure of skill? :S
Oh cmon... Last hitting require timing, and there's tons of depth around it. Example:
- I see my minion health is almost empty, I can anticipate and predict my enemy is going to attack that minion. I know that and I can use that opportunity to harrass him, he will lose 10% from this harassment.
- I will then continue doing this until he's 50% injured. Then I can start calling for teammate and gank him. If I have a teammate in my lane, that could result in a kill even faster.
- In DOTA All-star, they have deny mechanic. You know you see your minion is almost dead. Attack that minion so you deny gold and experience to enemy. But as an enemy you can predict your opponent is going to move close and deny, so you use that opportunity to harrass, etc. etc.
- Last hitting minion could also result in pushing your lane too hard, making you prone to ganks. I could pretend I don't last hit for couple of seconds, so that enemy is prone to gank, then call my teammare for a kill.
- Talking about ganking. You think ganking is simply 2 or more heroes ganking a lane? There's more. In DotA, they have wards as consumables which you can place for scouting. You see enemy is coming to your lane to gank. What do you do? Run to your tower for protection? That's noob because then the ganker will notice you placed a ward and he goes back farming to his lane...That's noob. Good player will take a gamble, and pretend he hasn't warded, making the ganker to wait and wait for the right time, the longer he waits the more that ganker wasted experience
- Want more depth? There are hero types that are very scalable/good for late game. Let's give that hero the last hit/ks so that he got the money. That's another simple but hard to execute strategy as everyone wants to be the superstar due to greed and arrogance.
- I can write never ending strategies to explain the depth even just for last hitting. But I'll stop here...
Agree that DotA genre is nowhere near in terms of complexity vs StarCraft RTS game. Nowhere near. But StarCraft game is for DemiGod, not for human like me or millions other. So there goes DotA!
I am sure you're going the be cold-headed and still not calling that skill/strategy/depth. I can understand that, especially considering you never even give that DOTA game a try... Sorry if you cannot enjoy so many games. Life is too good to be to cynic and critical you know. Enjoy little things, at least try it before declaring it's not fun, not skillful =)
Plus... The fact that DotA genre is so popular, even as eSport, with prize pool reaching $ Millions, with viewers surpassing StarCraft 2 of 300k simultanous viewers in an instance during the Dreamhack tournament, speaks for itself in terms of skill, fun, watchability, etc etc.
I know I never played a DOTA game or mod but I'll play Blizzard DOTA... seriously. Of course waht I really want to do is to search all those models and other assets to see what I can use in my own maps, but I'll take some time to play it too. Maybe I wont suck at it as much as I suck at SC2 :-)
I know I never played a DOTA game or mod but I'll play Blizzard DOTA... seriously. Of course waht I really want to do is to search all those models and other assets to see what I can use in my own maps, but I'll take some time to play it too. Maybe I wont suck at it as much as I suck at SC2 :-)
Somehow I don't think it was last-hitting that made DotA (type games) popular to watch as e-sports. Its nice for decent players to watch and say, "wow, he has 30 denies already", but I don't think people sit at the edge of their seat waiting to see who last hits that dying creep in a lane when the camera focuses that lane for a whole ten seconds. I always find myself waiting for something to happen between the heroes. Watching teams fight over who kills a buff creep or trying to level a lane w/ the Zealot statue sounds a lot more interesting than saying, "that nevermore farmed his dagger way fast because he last hitted 20% more often than their carry." Of course, until we actually get our hands on it and see how things in BDotA play, we won't really know how its skill cap and lasting appeal compare to Hon/Dota(2)/LoL.
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Blizzard Dota
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The DOTA genre is something we all love and hate at the same time. On one hand, it's a genre full of epic battles, huge fights, and glorious victories. On the other hand, it's full of rage-quitters, very unfriendly to newbies, and can drag on for hours. Blizzard aims to fix these problems and highlight the best parts of DOTA in its brand new game type. <center> </center> In Blizzard DOTA, two angry Gods rule over a trans-dimensional pocket universe. They've captured all the heroes you know and love from Blizzard's various titles and forced them to fight to the death. This means you could encounter characters like Arthas, Uther, Muradin, the Skeleton King, or Raynor during any game. <center><iframe width="640" height="360" src="" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> </center> <center> </center> Blizzard aims to set this game apart from all the other DOTA maps you may have played. They wanted to embrace their "Easy to learn, difficult to master" style. To do this, they have made several changes to the formula. First of all, instead of taking an hour or more, blizzard DOTA games only take about 15 to 30 minutes. This makes people less likely to rage quit when they're losing, because they won't be stuck in a losing game for long. <center> </center> Part of making the game easier involved clearly defining hero roles. The 4 classes are Tank, DPS, Support and Siege. This allows players to pick a hero and know exactly what they need to do. There are no in-between heroes, either. Siege heroes are something new to Blizzard DOTA. They are skilled at destroying buildings and especially turrets; they even have abilities that outrange turrets. This means they can destroy a turret quickly unless they are stopped. <center> </center> Secondly, Blizzard has done away with all the complicated stats given by items. For example, do we really need Armor, Magic Resistance, and Life? Since armor just makes you more durable, why not just have more life? DOTA shouldn't be about doing math to calculate your skills. Blizzard DOTA has only 3 stats- Health, Damage, and Mastery. Mastery may sound confusing, but really it just lowers cooldowns and boosts mana. Blizzard hopes that with simple stats, the game can be less confusing and more about the action. <center></center> Outside of stats, items are primarily use based with a cooldown such as the Health/Mana Stone that recovers 20% (before being upgraded) of your health/mana. This accompanies the standard Health/Mana Potion that recovers a set amount over a short period of time. Other items include a net that snares the target for 2+ seconds, a shrink ray that reduces the target's damage and a staff that gives nearby allies health/mana over a short period of time. Rather than worry about recipes, many of these items start at Level 1 and can be upgraded to Level 3. While the list of items is much shorter than usual, the items available have very a specific purpose. Blizzard plans to incorporate more items without overwhelming newer players. <center> </center> Another radical change is that towers are fairly weak. Not only are they fairly squishy targets when compared to your standard DOTA turrets, they have ammo! Although this ammo slowly recharges over time, players that try to be "tower huggers" will quickly find themselves unprotected and therefore dead. When the tower is out of ammo, it shuts down and can be freely attacked by enemies. Using a tower for some quick cover is fine, but you won't be able to play defensively for long. As mentioned earlier, Siege heroes are especially good at destroying turrets. Players will have to make sure these siege heroes are kept away from the turrets. <center><iframe width="640" height="360" src="" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> </center> <center> </center> Blizzard wants to emphasize aggressive team-style battles. Without towers to hide behind, you have to push constantly. Blizzard has also removed last-hitting, at least in the way we use it know. Minions give gold and experience to all enemies in range when killed. Some minions will have a small red/blue globe over their head. Once killed, the globe can be picked up to restore a small amount life/mana for you and nearby allied heroes. As a result, the process of denying relies less on you killing your own minions and more on you pushing the enemy back to control these globes. If you are able to pick up every globe, you will be able to use your spells more often and maintain a higher health pool. <center> </center> Instead of kills and assists, players receive "Take downs". All gold and experience from the killed enemy will be split between all players that helped in the kill, and each player will receive one take down. There is no kill/death/assist panel; instead the total gold value of each team is displayed at the top of the screen. While this makes it very difficult to know exactly how well a player is doing, over time the amount of gold a player/team has will represent their status in the game. <center> </center> Another new feature of Blizzard DOTA is ogres. Inside the jungle, you will find four ogre mercenary camps in addition to the typical jungle creeps. These aren't available when the game first starts, but spawn several minutes into the game. Once available, four gray flags appear below the clock. These flags will move left/right under the gold scores and change color to blue/red indicating which team has control of the camp. You can also summon powerful Yetis near any allied tower from Soul Tokens that you pick up from killed jungle groups. This allows you to fill the traditional jungler role without losing towers early on to aggressive play. <center> </center> If you can kill these ogres, you will earn their respect and they will join your team. This means that every time a wave spawns for your team, one of the creeps will be replaced by a more powerful Ogre. Capturing just a few of these shrines will give your team a big advantage. <center> </center> In addition to these ogres, there is also a giant stone zealot in the jungle. It's very hard to kill, but if do manage to take it down, it will march down the nearest lane and begin to crush the enemy. It can easily take down turrets and enemy units, so the opposing team will have to respond quickly. <center><iframe width="640" height="360" src="" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</center> <center> </center> Blizzard has also done away with boots. Instead of buying boots to increase your speed, all heroes can simply hop on a mount! After a short channel time, you can use a robotic wolf (changes for each hero) to increase your speed dramatically. This allows you to quickly get back into the fight after death instead of slowly walking back to the front lines. You can also chase down that pesky enemy hero before he gets away. Unfortunately, you can't use your mount forever. When you are hit by any source of damage you are dismounted and stunned for several seconds. This prevents you from riding directly into the fight and requires a strong sense of positioning to know when you should dismount as you approach. <center> </center> All of these features come together to form a unique and interesting game. And best of all, Blizzard DOTA is free! While there will be bonuses for those that own WoL or HotS, even starter edition players can enjoy Blizzard DOTA. Blizzard has also implemented a matchmaking system based on your DOTA skill and rank to help make this mod even more special. On top of that, they have included tons of different maps and heroes to try out. We don't have a release date, but Blizzard has confirmed that it's coming Soon....ish. Make sure to check out the rest of our BlizzCon articles here! More will be coming soon. Let us know what you think about Blizzard DOTA!
My first reaction was "it's being dumbed down!". My second reaction was "But dumbed down is such an inflammatory term" >.>
I'm definitely going to try what i've tongue-in-cheek named as "DotA for Dummies", and i may even like it, but the way I see it is DotA is supposed to be for the geekheads. Its the sort of game you would learn about and play to both hone your reflexes, and figure out the mechanics plus the quirks thereof. Something one would want to study.
And then they go and remove:
which is quite a bit of what makes DotA interesting to us geek heads. Towers, for instance, prevent it from being just a "hurr durr push push push tower dive for killz" game. Jungling adds an alternative to just laning, and is IMO more interesting than just lanes. Etc.
Young whippersnappers, they want their games to be handed to em on a silver platter. Then they want the games to be forced down their throats and digested for em.... :P /oldfart
I wouldn't mind trying this out (Along with the Warcraft III DotA, which seems to be the best compared to other clones including Dota 2), and considering that it's just a mod, at least there'll be a chance for other new genres to emerge(:
I really want to use the archer assets from Sylvannus :D
<3
More Warcraft units makes me happy!
What, no jungling or last-hitting? It really is DotA for dummies then. For the casual masses.
How is a good player supposed to shine then?
While we're at it... let's bet on how often they update it (to balance) ;D
@s3rius: Go
Jungling still exists, just not in the same way as DotA or HoN or LoL. I actually like the lack of needing to last-hit as well. I was playing a ton as Arthas and just focused on killing other players rather than worrying about my income.
Administrator of Staredit.net and GalaxyWiki.net
Model heaven, I am sad that dota dont have flying units:(
Come on, the item system from DotA was pointlessly confusing. You get the same result with upgradeable items, just you don't need to have an item spreadsheet open.
I think this single mechanic put me off the whole DotA series. People call it skillful, and they'd probably be right. I'd call it tedious for tedium's sake.
It's still there, and seemingly more important than other DotA games.
For me, every game needs it's 6-pool strategy. If you physically can't lose in 5 minutes no matter how bad you are, you're (as a designer) just delaying the action.
I said this on the stream, and some people made the jump between 6-pool and an "uncounterable tactic that everyone will use". 6-pool is risky for both the player and his opponent. It doesn't always work, and is pretty easily countered if you know it's coming, but as soon as you remove that risk, you actually dumb the game down. "Hey, I've got no risk of losing for the first 10m so I'll just do what I want with impunity".
DotA has a lot of pointless tedium and overly complicated mechanics. Sure, you can say that removing them simplifies the game, and you'd be right. A simple game isn't necessarily an easy game, though. There are also many ways to add skill to a game.
By actually being a good player instead of staring at health bars, I guess.
Basically the same debate like the control improvements from SC1 to SC2. Adding convenient stuff like auto-enabled health bars, unit groups with more than 12 units, rally-mining for workers and stuff like that made many people say the same: "How should players show their skills now?"
Well, while some people might say, it takes skill to tell every single worker you build to mine, I say, it just takes your attention away from the important things. The creator of the game is usually responsible for the skills needed in a game. If Blizzard would want people to send each worker individually to a mineral patch at every point in the game, people who could do that consistently and even while fighting are considered skilled. If Blizzard wants players to lasthit and know all complicated recipes for items, people who can do that are considered skilled.
If Blizzard changes stuff, so these actions are no longer required, those people will lose their edge and have to adapt, usually causing many of them to complain about it. But if they are indeed good players, they will adapt and still excel at the game, even if the priorities sort of shifted.
And to be honest, denying and last hitting is just as tedious as having to send each worker to a mineral patch individually. If they find a working way to take last hitting out of the game, I am more than willing to try it.
I see both sides to the argument here, but I'll put my point of view in anway...
Just added more info to the article now that I'm back. Read it again for more details :)
I actually played this multiple times, so I can safely say that:
..... said just like a typical DOTA player who doesn't know how to respond to change.
The item system in Allstars isn't interesting. It's a fuck-ton of standalone variables thrown together on a platter for players to memorize. New players don't want that. Blizzard isn't aiming this game at the "young whippersnapper" OR the opposite end of the spectrum, the "geek heads". They're aiming this at players who want to have fun. New players have a madly hard fucking time getting into Allstars from the start. With this setup, newer players don't have to spend hours memorizing item builds. It's not a question of casual vs. hardcore, it's a question of smart vs. stupid, and Blizzard realized that.
Last-hitting is something I question with Blizzard DOTA. Last hitting has become a part of the AOS genre. It's one of the best "skill exercises" in DOTA, meaning it's one of the primary ways for players to demonstrate their skill. Blizzard's removing last hitting but trying to get the same idea of the positional gameplay and the mind games that go along with laning/last hitting with the globes, but I personally think it's going to fall a bit short. Maybe not.
As for jungling, Blizzard answered your concerns in their panel. There is space in between lanes. It has to be filled with something. They would rather fill that space with direct points of interest (in this case capture-able mercenary camps) than WC3-style creep camps. Yeah, jungling is gone, but its replacement will provide a greater teamplay aspect. Blizzard stated that one of their primary goals was to remove the individuality and make a more teamplay oriented map. This fits with that. If you want individuality, play Allstars.
Weaker towers is the same idea. They want to reward you for grouping up as a team. Also, the weaker tower dynamic is also going to affect how players play their lane. No more is the dynamic of not trying to actually kill the other teams creeps and not push the lane. It's all just much simpler and more straightforward and that's good. Weaker towers also balances the idea of having Siege heroes (which is reminiscent of DOTA in its original form on Wc3:ROC): if players group up as a team of 5 and attempt to push, an unaccounted-for siege hero could wreck their base by himself.
This map isn't a full-fledged hero arena in disguise like Allstars, it's about killing the other team's base. if people don't like that, they don't have to play it.
I never played a single DotA game (don't like games where the only objective is to kill the other guy), the only interest I have in Blizzard Dota is how it will improve the editor... but I'd like to know what exactly "last hitting" is. It's sound like just another name for kill stealing... that's consdered a measure of skill? :S
Worths giving a try !
@Triceron: Go
me too! :D
Nah. How hard is it to understand that a Medallion of Courage is built from a Chainmail and a Sage's Mask? :P After a while playing, you get a sense of what items you need for various heroes and when you try a new one you can probably come up with a decent build idea quckly. The key though is time.
And with leveling up items, you remove a way to have variety. If you have, for instance, an item that does AoE damage on activation, that's all it really can do (without getting into a just as confusing "X item does Y at level 1, Z at level 2, and A at level 3, etc." system). You can't have a component item that grants you a bit of cleave plus a component that grants you some strength combining into an centered-around-self AoE active item, then that combining with another low-level recipe that grants a small chance to stun on attack to give a stronger AoE with ministun, then THAT combining with a few more components to become a targeted AoE damage active with ministun and silence.
When playing SotIS, I've never needed more math capability than what I can do in my head (and it's not like i can remember a ton of numbers or do calculus up there or anything). I HAVE been motivated to do in-depth analysis of a few heroes and the occasional item between games, but that's part of the fun to me.
I just noticed that people say the same thing about EVE online, but plenty of people have fun there. Moreover, I'm betting that the vast majority don't crack open excel to calculate ideal numbers for the latest ship they're gearing out or anything. I wonder if it's simply a different tolerance for dealing with numbers among people?
Lasthitting is definitely one of the more tedious of the mechanisms they removed. I personally like it because it adds an element of reflex and timing to DotA, though I can see why it was removed.
Jungling is there in DotA as an alternative to laning for one hero. In Blizzdota, it's a quick way to fight a few enemies (one time!) then get some boosts to your lane creeps. Not a sustainable way to level up like in DotA.
The method is interesting and I do like it, but why did they have to remove jungling entirely? The two could co-exist.
And in bronze (and to an extent, silver), 6pooling is close to a free win. My problem is that 6pool like strategies vastly reduce the depth of the metagame by forcing the game to be over ending in victory for one side or the other very quickly. I mean, which would you rather watch: FruitDealer 6pooling his way through [insert tournament here] or some epic ZvZ/ZvT/ZvP with nice 30/40/50 minute games?
Uh huh, I thought it would be the latter =] That's no way to design a game.
Well sure. Tetris or Bejeweled could be deep games (if they aren't already), but who would want to watch a Tetris tournament? Or a Bejeweled one? They may have some depth to their strategy, but the action is very very same-y. Half of the attraction of DotA is the mass variety in mechanics, action, heroes, and items that all combine together to create huge quantities of very unique games. Blizzdota is going a whole other direction than that.
How though? The item system was whacked in half, there's not much to do in lanes except pewpewpew, a bit of harass, and scrambling for those globes now and then, and you can't rely on anything to help defend you (except maybe allied heroes) anymore if you get team ganked or such.
Actually, thinking about it, that's gonna be really scary. Towers won't defend you for very long, so I suspect that a game will be made out of just running around in one big deathball picking off hero after hero. It happens in SotIS, and somehow Blizzard made towers that are actually worse than them, soo.....
...Not so much. When the 4.0 Sotis update came, and everyone was whining "wa wa wa this game sucks if you dont put it back ecko im gonna ragequit!!!!1!111!!!!" I was all for it, loving the new mechanics and all the changes to gameplay. I'm fine with changes. But what Blizzdota is doing is by no means a traditional DotA, it's a whole different brand.
I'm a player who wants to have fun. I'm also a player who happens to want something I can really sink my teeth into learning and practicing, something between a game and a hobby and a sport. If that's not what they're making, fine, then I'm not the audience. I'm just saying, from my perspective, these are my concerns.
And items. So you get 4 slots to dump what looks like one of 20 or so items (maybe 30?) into and upgrade. That's boring to me. No strategy, no "oh that hero is X, so instead of Y i need to buy Z and do A differently", just "uhhh this item looks good ill buy that" and i win anyway.
I do like the boots removal though. It never made much sense to me to have to buy a boots item, why not just remove the boots part and develop the special abilities (if any) into actual full-fledged items.
I saw a new player in SotIS the other day. He stayed back, farmed, played cautiously, and helped where he could. He found the shop right away, easily grasped the concept of recipes, and bought a few decent items (IIRC). He proved to me that people can learn to play DotA quite quickly, if they're actually willing to put the effort into it. But most people seem to just want a "herp derp chaaaarge leeeeroy jenkins!!!!!" type game where what your strategy is and what you buy doesn't matter.
Yes, that was kind of ranty. I don't mean to offend anyone though :P I'm also not going to pretend that the entire dota genre is ruined forever!!! because of this, or any such sort of thing.
The thing is though, DotA is already plenty teamplay oriented. And that brings me to my next point, which is...
I already play something like that. And let me tell you right now: for the most part, it sucks. Oh, did you land in a group of bad players while the enemy team is a premade? Sucks to be you, good luck having fun when the enemies skip the laning phase, start running around in a deathball, chaingank the heck out of each hero on your team, and hurl insults about your skill because they don't even realize why they're winning. Or in reverse, you start the game, get a good group, and proceed to curbstomp the enemies without any real effort involved.
And with weak towers, yeah that's horribly boring. You have nowhere to run or hide when the enemy team wants you, they just ignor towers, stretch past enemy heroes, and slam you down. The tower is either ignoring your plight in favor of the shiny creeps next to it (and in this case, now it's wasting ammo doing so), or it's being pitfully weak at hurting the enemies.
The difference is, when you can get a pair of relatively evenly matched teams, it's a 5v5 heaven for the duration of the game. This will be, what, a bit of laning, 2 teamfights, and a couple of pushes into victory (or loss)? Bleh. I'm not looking for fast food or candy in my games, I'm looking for solid meat and potatoes.
all that said, I'm still going to try it when it comes out. These are my concerns just from hearing about this, not a tantrum thrown because everything isn't going my way.
Oh cmon... Last hitting require timing, and there's tons of depth around it. Example:
- I see my minion health is almost empty, I can anticipate and predict my enemy is going to attack that minion. I know that and I can use that opportunity to harrass him, he will lose 10% from this harassment.
- I will then continue doing this until he's 50% injured. Then I can start calling for teammate and gank him. If I have a teammate in my lane, that could result in a kill even faster.
- In DOTA All-star, they have deny mechanic. You know you see your minion is almost dead. Attack that minion so you deny gold and experience to enemy. But as an enemy you can predict your opponent is going to move close and deny, so you use that opportunity to harrass, etc. etc.
- Last hitting minion could also result in pushing your lane too hard, making you prone to ganks. I could pretend I don't last hit for couple of seconds, so that enemy is prone to gank, then call my teammare for a kill.
- Talking about ganking. You think ganking is simply 2 or more heroes ganking a lane? There's more. In DotA, they have wards as consumables which you can place for scouting. You see enemy is coming to your lane to gank. What do you do? Run to your tower for protection? That's noob because then the ganker will notice you placed a ward and he goes back farming to his lane...That's noob. Good player will take a gamble, and pretend he hasn't warded, making the ganker to wait and wait for the right time, the longer he waits the more that ganker wasted experience
- Want more depth? There are hero types that are very scalable/good for late game. Let's give that hero the last hit/ks so that he got the money. That's another simple but hard to execute strategy as everyone wants to be the superstar due to greed and arrogance.
- I can write never ending strategies to explain the depth even just for last hitting. But I'll stop here...
Agree that DotA genre is nowhere near in terms of complexity vs StarCraft RTS game. Nowhere near. But StarCraft game is for DemiGod, not for human like me or millions other. So there goes DotA!
I am sure you're going the be cold-headed and still not calling that skill/strategy/depth. I can understand that, especially considering you never even give that DOTA game a try... Sorry if you cannot enjoy so many games. Life is too good to be to cynic and critical you know. Enjoy little things, at least try it before declaring it's not fun, not skillful =)
Plus... The fact that DotA genre is so popular, even as eSport, with prize pool reaching $ Millions, with viewers surpassing StarCraft 2 of 300k simultanous viewers in an instance during the Dreamhack tournament, speaks for itself in terms of skill, fun, watchability, etc etc.
I know I never played a DOTA game or mod but I'll play Blizzard DOTA... seriously. Of course waht I really want to do is to search all those models and other assets to see what I can use in my own maps, but I'll take some time to play it too. Maybe I wont suck at it as much as I suck at SC2 :-)
Oh exactly. SC2 is for DemiGod. Not for us.
Somehow I don't think it was last-hitting that made DotA (type games) popular to watch as e-sports. Its nice for decent players to watch and say, "wow, he has 30 denies already", but I don't think people sit at the edge of their seat waiting to see who last hits that dying creep in a lane when the camera focuses that lane for a whole ten seconds. I always find myself waiting for something to happen between the heroes. Watching teams fight over who kills a buff creep or trying to level a lane w/ the Zealot statue sounds a lot more interesting than saying, "that nevermore farmed his dagger way fast because he last hitted 20% more often than their carry." Of course, until we actually get our hands on it and see how things in BDotA play, we won't really know how its skill cap and lasting appeal compare to Hon/Dota(2)/LoL.