I agree. Last hitting has nothing to do with spectator enjoyment. The whole concept of last hitting is awful (as is Kills/Deaths/Assists) but being one of the primary sources of skill, it has to be replaced with something. At least blizzard realized that and implemented the globes, but only time will tell if that's a solid solution or not.
Also the inclusion of dedicated healers/support heroes as well as not all heroes being solely focused on hero killing means that hero fights will last longer, be much cleaner, and more enjoyable to watch.
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.
Was talking with some old DOTA buddies on vent tonight about competitive team maps on SC2.
honestly, they really don't exist.
throw out sotis, it's a clone of something else.
the concept of individual skill merging with team cooperation is actually a really complicated one. It's something that the MOBA genre does best (or so it has thus far) and it's something that is difficult to strike a balance. in other words, how do you make a map where teams can compete and show their teamwork but also where individual players can showcase their own skills?
looking at MOBA maps, the better team will succeed but where do players' individual skills directly influence the outcome of the game without taking account their teammates? DOTA achieves a large amount of this through laning, where a player's own skills have a massive impact on the outcome of a game; the player is directly responsible for how many last hits/denies they get, not their teammates. In addition, certain heroes themselves have high skill ceilings with various abilities (Pudge made vigoss a commonly known name back in the day) but ultimately the use of these abilities in a team setting is what has the greatest impact on the game.
Individual skill shining is very important to players. For example, as a competitive player, if I start playing a map like Hero Wars, I'm immediately turned off. Individual skill is marginal when I have such little control over how much money and experience I get, which are the two most important resources in AOS/MOBA maps. If I start playing an AoS with 15 units spawning each wave and huge battles going on everywhere, sure it looks cool and feels epic but it loses the sense of me feeling like I control how much I succeed by taking out the laning "skill" present in so many AoS maps. If that is taken out, it needs to be replaced with something else.
What are other possible gametypes that could come out of this powerful editor that not only allow two teams to compete, but also allow individual players to shine? What other ways can individual skill be demonstrated in MOBA maps?
1. Allstars didn't win because it had the "DOTA" name; like 30 other maps had the "DOTA" name at the time as well. DOTA: ROC was released in December 2002. It was an overnight success because it was one of the first AOS maps on WC3 that used custom abilities. TFT Came out in summer 2003. When TFT came out, DOTA's original creator Eul was MIA playing Halo and had passed the map off to another editor. Due to his absence when TFT was released, no official port of the DOTA map was created on TFT and tons of different versions of "DOTA" by tons of random people popped up. There were literally 15 different DOTA maps circulating within 2 weeks of TFT being released. Guinsoo's map took all the best heroes from each of these maps and put them into one (copied and pasted literally) and called it "DOTA: Allstars". It ended up being the one that won out. because it was the most fun to play. Eventually the ROC map was ported (during the 4.XX series of Allstars) but it failed to get any popularity as Allstars had already won in the public. This time around, Classic DOTA couldn't play the "we have custom abilities and you don't" card as everyone had them with the TFT editor so Allstars kept going as it was more fun to play casually.
2. The earlier versions of Allstars (pre-6.0) had a greater snowball effect because carries didn't scale nearly as well. Their abilities weren't all necessarily designed with the intent of them being carries, as heroes weren't really designed with that philosophy yet. There was no Quelling Blade. Lastly, jungle creeps couldn't be farmed until 20 minutes into the game because they were so strong. For these reasons getting early kills and ganks especially ones that prevented the other team's carries from farming and allowed yours to do so created a much bigger disadvantage than it does now.
like, half the reason they did things such as add Quelling blade and fix neuts to be creepable earlygame was to combat the snowball effect idea, and honestly its just not really prevalent in the map anymore. if you get a bunch of early kills its really not going to matter come midgame because its not going to create a big enough advantage anymore.
To somewhat tie into this; what DOTA would need to get to 'the next generation', imo, is A) some kind of lane make-over as Eiviyn talked about and B) a replacement of the 'pendulum' winning-system. What this means is that in DOTA gameplay, whoever gets the first kill of is usually the one to win the game. This might not be as true for a single kill, but if a team gets 2, 3 or 4 kills ahead of the other team, their chance of winning increases dramatically. A LOT of DOTA games are over by the 15 minute mark because the kill score is 12-5, but it's too early for the winning team to actually kill towers and finish it off.
The fact that getting a kill not only cripples the opposing team for a set amount of time but also increases the speed with which your hero techs makes especially high-end games usually very stale. It's like two players are lying in a swimming pool, and whoever pushes his opponent down first wins, because he also pushes himself up and it simply becomes downright impossible for the 'drowning' player to make a comeback. Professional-level LoL games basically have this 'feature' where if every person on one team misclicks once, they've basically lost. Imagine you'd lose your SC match due to one misclick - this happens in some matchups (where drops or unit positioning is complete key for one player), but it's extremely rare in SC, especially when compared to DOTA games.
I think I can safely say that the AoS 2 project we're working on has improved upon both these concepts, which is why I've got good hopes for it and think it'll be deserving of its name.
oh jeez --
first, read the guy above me's post.
second, half of WC3 mapping became people trying to "put a new spin on the AOS genre" when in reality all they did was make things more complicated and failed. the idea is to make a fun map. dont worry about anything else, which leads me to saying this:
dota got popular for a reason. i know the history of the map probably better than anyone here, and I can tell you that the things you expressed in your post were even more prevalent earlier on in the map's life. why did Allstars win out then? because players had the most fun playing it. the dota model works fine, and your criticisms of it are your opinion yet despite the "snowball effect flaw" as you perceive it, people love playing it on both a casual and competitive level. obviously it's not that big of a deal. honestly I'll side with the map that's popular as opposed to the map maker trying to pick apart the flaws and make something better, which people already tried doing in WC3. and failed hard.
Furthermore, if you're truly worried about the "snowball effect", study the original DOTA map on Wc3:RoC because your team could be down 5-25 in hero kills and still easily win the game if you had better strategy and execution.
edit: how far along is your map anyway? I hope it's close, because it's about to get a lot of competition in the coming months :/
Also, I hate seeing the custom game list scare you away from interest in your project, as it sounds like there was a mild case of that. if this map is even half of what you've said it will be, I'm sure itll do just fine on the popularity list.
as you've said, the maps on the pop list are a bunch of shit. your map should be fine. as a gamer, it's exciting to have a new opportunity to play something competitive because the ones on SC2 right now suck major wang.
Blizzard recently said they basically scrapped a big portion what they had of Blizzard All-Stars and started from scratch on a lot of stuff (but didn't give reasons as to why - however, from what I saw of the map at Blizzcon, it definitely needed a lot of changes) and that it's scheduled to come out around the same time as HotS.
I do think they realized they didn't quite have the product they needed to really get people's attention, but it had nothing to do with this map.
Honestly all the custom games right now suck so much ass and I want this map to be out there for the sake of playing something new. I think a lot of people would feel that way.
Hi... I'm sort of new at getting into data editing, I've mainly been a terrainer since I got SC2
I'm trying to create a tree which has those apple shape models hanging from it, but I don't know how to create the proper attachment points and events for the apple's creation when the tree models don't have built in attachment points to reference and there isn't an actor message such as Unit Birth.
I was happy to hear from the creators but it seems like they either have a lot of problems with updates breaking their map or they forget to keep updating us. Every time this happens I lose interest and usually go back to melee games.
0
@WxsOnline: Go
I agree. Last hitting has nothing to do with spectator enjoyment. The whole concept of last hitting is awful (as is Kills/Deaths/Assists) but being one of the primary sources of skill, it has to be replaced with something. At least blizzard realized that and implemented the globes, but only time will tell if that's a solid solution or not.
Also the inclusion of dedicated healers/support heroes as well as not all heroes being solely focused on hero killing means that hero fights will last longer, be much cleaner, and more enjoyable to watch.
0
..... 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.
0
we've been through this already with smashcraft :(
0
Was talking with some old DOTA buddies on vent tonight about competitive team maps on SC2.
honestly, they really don't exist.
throw out sotis, it's a clone of something else.
the concept of individual skill merging with team cooperation is actually a really complicated one. It's something that the MOBA genre does best (or so it has thus far) and it's something that is difficult to strike a balance. in other words, how do you make a map where teams can compete and show their teamwork but also where individual players can showcase their own skills?
looking at MOBA maps, the better team will succeed but where do players' individual skills directly influence the outcome of the game without taking account their teammates? DOTA achieves a large amount of this through laning, where a player's own skills have a massive impact on the outcome of a game; the player is directly responsible for how many last hits/denies they get, not their teammates. In addition, certain heroes themselves have high skill ceilings with various abilities (Pudge made vigoss a commonly known name back in the day) but ultimately the use of these abilities in a team setting is what has the greatest impact on the game.
Individual skill shining is very important to players. For example, as a competitive player, if I start playing a map like Hero Wars, I'm immediately turned off. Individual skill is marginal when I have such little control over how much money and experience I get, which are the two most important resources in AOS/MOBA maps. If I start playing an AoS with 15 units spawning each wave and huge battles going on everywhere, sure it looks cool and feels epic but it loses the sense of me feeling like I control how much I succeed by taking out the laning "skill" present in so many AoS maps. If that is taken out, it needs to be replaced with something else.
What are other possible gametypes that could come out of this powerful editor that not only allow two teams to compete, but also allow individual players to shine? What other ways can individual skill be demonstrated in MOBA maps?
0
I'll respond to a few of your points
1. Allstars didn't win because it had the "DOTA" name; like 30 other maps had the "DOTA" name at the time as well. DOTA: ROC was released in December 2002. It was an overnight success because it was one of the first AOS maps on WC3 that used custom abilities. TFT Came out in summer 2003. When TFT came out, DOTA's original creator Eul was MIA playing Halo and had passed the map off to another editor. Due to his absence when TFT was released, no official port of the DOTA map was created on TFT and tons of different versions of "DOTA" by tons of random people popped up. There were literally 15 different DOTA maps circulating within 2 weeks of TFT being released. Guinsoo's map took all the best heroes from each of these maps and put them into one (copied and pasted literally) and called it "DOTA: Allstars". It ended up being the one that won out. because it was the most fun to play. Eventually the ROC map was ported (during the 4.XX series of Allstars) but it failed to get any popularity as Allstars had already won in the public. This time around, Classic DOTA couldn't play the "we have custom abilities and you don't" card as everyone had them with the TFT editor so Allstars kept going as it was more fun to play casually.
2. The earlier versions of Allstars (pre-6.0) had a greater snowball effect because carries didn't scale nearly as well. Their abilities weren't all necessarily designed with the intent of them being carries, as heroes weren't really designed with that philosophy yet. There was no Quelling Blade. Lastly, jungle creeps couldn't be farmed until 20 minutes into the game because they were so strong. For these reasons getting early kills and ganks especially ones that prevented the other team's carries from farming and allowed yours to do so created a much bigger disadvantage than it does now.
like, half the reason they did things such as add Quelling blade and fix neuts to be creepable earlygame was to combat the snowball effect idea, and honestly its just not really prevalent in the map anymore. if you get a bunch of early kills its really not going to matter come midgame because its not going to create a big enough advantage anymore.
0
oh jeez --
first, read the guy above me's post.
second, half of WC3 mapping became people trying to "put a new spin on the AOS genre" when in reality all they did was make things more complicated and failed. the idea is to make a fun map. dont worry about anything else, which leads me to saying this:
dota got popular for a reason. i know the history of the map probably better than anyone here, and I can tell you that the things you expressed in your post were even more prevalent earlier on in the map's life. why did Allstars win out then? because players had the most fun playing it. the dota model works fine, and your criticisms of it are your opinion yet despite the "snowball effect flaw" as you perceive it, people love playing it on both a casual and competitive level. obviously it's not that big of a deal. honestly I'll side with the map that's popular as opposed to the map maker trying to pick apart the flaws and make something better, which people already tried doing in WC3. and failed hard.
Furthermore, if you're truly worried about the "snowball effect", study the original DOTA map on Wc3:RoC because your team could be down 5-25 in hero kills and still easily win the game if you had better strategy and execution.
edit: how far along is your map anyway? I hope it's close, because it's about to get a lot of competition in the coming months :/
0
nope! but I figured somebody would have said something about how it went or something.
hope it went well, if that's the case
0
lol this didn't end up happening did it
0
so wait, you're testing it this weekend or next?
Also, I hate seeing the custom game list scare you away from interest in your project, as it sounds like there was a mild case of that. if this map is even half of what you've said it will be, I'm sure itll do just fine on the popularity list.
as you've said, the maps on the pop list are a bunch of shit. your map should be fine. as a gamer, it's exciting to have a new opportunity to play something competitive because the ones on SC2 right now suck major wang.
0
any updates on this? is it dead?
0
DEFEND YOUR CASTLE
0
Blizzard recently said they basically scrapped a big portion what they had of Blizzard All-Stars and started from scratch on a lot of stuff (but didn't give reasons as to why - however, from what I saw of the map at Blizzcon, it definitely needed a lot of changes) and that it's scheduled to come out around the same time as HotS.
I do think they realized they didn't quite have the product they needed to really get people's attention, but it had nothing to do with this map.
Honestly all the custom games right now suck so much ass and I want this map to be out there for the sake of playing something new. I think a lot of people would feel that way.
0
lol dont worry this map won't ever come out
0
Hi... I'm sort of new at getting into data editing, I've mainly been a terrainer since I got SC2
I'm trying to create a tree which has those apple shape models hanging from it, but I don't know how to create the proper attachment points and events for the apple's creation when the tree models don't have built in attachment points to reference and there isn't an actor message such as Unit Birth.
Anyone have ideas?
0
yeah i think interest is starting to fade lol