Mate, I am starting to think you are blindly defending Sotis, yes Sotis is imbalanced, every game is, except of course rock, paper, scissors - as soon as you add any more variables than that it becomes imbalanced. I was not complaining about imbalance, I was stating that it is imbalanced, and the reasons why people would dislike it because of that imbalance.
I am not hating on Sotis, I was agreeing with Mozared with a statement that from my point of view it is a shit map - which means it could be a lot better. And also please don't take my comments out of context, post the entire sentence, not half of one and half of another, it makes you look like a troll. FYI, the half comment you copied about "...as people are use to what they play everyday, even if what they play is shit." goes for say half of the top 10 maps, it was not directed solely at Sotis, but merely an overall observation of the current state of custom maps.
For the most part I was next to my tower, and the enemy hero would run up the lane, and ta da all my health gone. You speak of those tactics that you mentioned as if they were something I would have overlooked, plz mate, more credit kthx. It is true that they have different gameplay but that is largely due to it's imbalance. The gameplay in Dota evolves every map edition, as it would in Sotis or any other AoS map.
The third paragraph you just basically rewrote what I wrote earlier, so it appears we entirely agree on that subject.
That is why people hate it ... I like Eck, I even offered my services to him about 8 months ago, but he didn't want to take me up on that offer. He is not the most talented map maker out there, but you do not have to be to have a well played map. I think people were expecting something amazing in Sc2, yet when they play Sotis it is honestly worst than Dota ever was, even pre-frozen throne. It is a hard job doing both the engine side and the data side of a Dota game, especially when real life has a huge calling - and most importantly, it just simply takes so long to do things in Sc2 - unlike Wc3.
It is not really blind hate as a discussion about Sotis's faults - which is a good thing. I am sure Eck is well aware of the faults of his map, and at no time was anything directed towards him or his map in a way he could not read and take inspiration from to fix things.
Well take a look at my map, Phant3m and Phantom Mode ... my map is the better map, has the better engine, has the more unique features. But when you take on a juggernaught that is in the top 10, and they *cough*copy*cough* your ideas, then there is not much incentive for people to play your map.
If a new AoS was to come along, which I am sure there will be a couple before midyear, it has to be something absol.fucken.utly amazing to take down Sotis, as people are use to what they play everyday, even if what they play is shit. It is overrated, it is a shit map, and when something better comes along, we have to pray to god that people get behind it - talk about it, advertise it, make commentaries for it - so it can take the throne off Sotis, otherwise it will disappear like everything else into the darkness that is the popularity system.
They will, give it time mate. Starcraft's editor is more complicated, it will take a while for good maps to surface, by the end of the year we should have some good ones.
Yes its true, programmers are not artists, and artists are not programmers. I have a really nice Dota-style terrain that is the perfect size for Sc2 that I will probably use for an upcoming project. I initially copied Dota's terrain 1 for 1, found it was a bit small for Starcraft, made it a bit bigger, winged it, added a few things that I would like to see changed in the terrain (that Icefrog would never change cause the masses would cry OMFG), and ta da, presto magic.
I am probably one of the rare scripters that has a background in terrain design, well design in general. I know very well of your weekly terrain comps, and I wish so much that I could participate mate, you have no idea, but I am too busy with my own projects. Its quite sad really.
I cannot stand bad design, nothing pisses me off more than bad design - ESPECIALLY bad terrain. So yes, I understand it - I am a terrain foremost, but there is a very fine line between making something beautiful for say an RPG compared to making something useable, say Nexus Wars. As the quality of maps improve people will tolerate shit less, you need say 2-3 of the top map makers to get together and say, Alright fuck it, we are gonna make the top 3-5 maps on each region really fucken amazing. But of course, people won't do that cause they are stupid and think their shitty terrain is better than yours. =\
Not really ... true a part of it is, and after so many years playing it becomes common knowledge like the back of your hand. It is hard for me to judge this as I know the game so well, and often people will call me noob for going certain items cause its not a standard build, but then they stfu after I pwn the other side ... having certain build orders that you _must_ go every game is fucken stupid, wing it, be a pro, think outside the box.
For Dota 2 this is a huge problem, and has been stated by numerous sources. Icefrog responded by having a tutorial system that is unlike the world has ever seen, or something like that ... but at the end ... tutorials are tutorials, it is up to you wether you want to stay a noob or become pro - in anything, not just games, but real life too. Thats why you go to school, so you become pro and not a noob for adult life, or at least thats the idea.
Its basically an open and free market of which Dota monopolized which can and will happen everywhere else. The majority of Dota players migrated to Garena due to less delay, rather than play through battle.net. The only people left on battle.net were noobs and bots, and its the bots that caused the problem, hosting games for everyone flooding the screen. Before that it was still easy to find other types of games.
They were brilliant but they didn't change ... The first types of custom maps I played were Open RPGs, it was from those I developed my scripting knowledge, into what it is today. I personally love Dark Deeds, but it never really changed much ... Survivor maps like Ice Trolls were awesome, but then the knock offs came like Jungle Trolls etc ... and I hated those, I liked the original, but - they didn't change. Enfos is the same, I played hundreds of games but it hasn't changed. Dota was pretty much the only map that was updated constantly over the last eight years. I went to Malaysia about the time of 6.1X, and everywhere there they played 5.83c (competitively) ... I got my ass kicked by them, because I forgot how imbalanced things were.
All the maps you mentioned were brilliant, but they are old. For the most part people who game, play consistently nearly everyday. I might go back to Wc3 to play a couple of games for old times' sake, but they only map I would go back and play often would be Dota because it is the only map that has changed.
@Mozared,
C/D) I have played Dota since the beginning, my skill level is beyond most people, and yet I got my ass handed to me in Sotis, that simply should not happen. Yeah, a tiny bit of imbalance here or there is fine, but when normal abilities can take 80% of my life away ... nah ... stuff that hey mate. In a map like Sotis it is better to underpower things at the start and buff when needed, than overpower things and nerf when needed.
My opinion is that it is for someone like me with a knowledge of AoS maps; pure imbalance.
The first game I played I went something like 5-0 simply because I had better skills than my opponents using what I believe now is an underpowered hero, last hitting creeps, denying creeps, baiting opponents into traps etc, standard gameplay. Then my next 3-4 games I got my ass handed to me, not because the players were more skilled, no one was denying, no one was last hitting creeps - it was simply because they would run up to me cast 1 spell and 80% of my life is gone ... wtf mate.
E) If you want a good community then you need to find a niche map not played by the masses. The more people that join something, the more egos get inflated, the more people get pissed off etc. Dota is a hate filled fuckfest, no doubt. I mean, yeah ... when I was in my prime in Dota I was angry, really angry, not so much because of Dota, but because of my life at the time and Dota was a release for that anger. When you lose and the other players shit talk you, it makes you rage harder, then when you win you have to shit talk them even worst to make up for it. It is a snowball effect. I was talking to my ex-housemate the other week, and he said he never heard anyone swear so much and so fast and so loud as when I was playing Dota ... I gotta laugh about it now, because I don't remember being like that, but if he says that I trust him.
Dota is also a game that caters to people's most burning desire, being selfish assholes. Dota is a 'team' game where the objective of the game is to down the opponents throne/tree. However, 95% of players get caught up in Hero Kills, and not pushing lanes, so when they lose the game with more Kills, it makes them rage hard, really hard. And the only weapon we have on the internet is our fingers, and obvious giving the bird to your monitor doesn't do shit, so you have to curse the other players as fast as you can.
@RCIX,
The terrain is pretty, I never said it wasn't. I said it was small, the shit comment referred to its size.
I disagree with you on the second point. Skill is not a much higher factor than imbalance in Sotis ... it is in Dota, Hon and LoL, but not Sotis.
And yes, Dota has had eight years of balance and I think I touched on that before either in this post or the previous one. Sotis cannot be expected to match Dota's level of balance, nothing can. The billions upon billions of hours of balance testing done by every single player that ever played Dota has contributed to it. Sotis (right now) is the same as it was when Allstars was released, completely imbalanced - HOWEVER, unlike Allstars which was basically at the emerging market of the AoS concept, Sotis is jumping in when the AoS market is already established and people expect things to be balanced, simply because everyone cloned Dota to a certain stage, before adding their own tweaks. Sotis however did not, Eck started from scratch which is completely fine and IMO, morally better than cloning Dota - however this of course puts Sotis back say 6 years in terms of balance.
What I meant when I said he tried to reinvent the wheel, is that he basically took the Dota concept (which is fine), added Mercs but kept everything pretty much the same. I love his idea of Powerups that are animals and follow you, I think that is an amazing concept that I would actually love to see in Dota (yea, I know what I just said). There was always going to be a Sotis in Starcraft 2, an exact clone of the Dota concept - regardless of it was Sotis or something else. The problem with this is that it adds nothing new to the genre. If you want a clone, that's fine, but you should play a clone that was cloned completely that is already balanced to a very high level like Dota/Hon/LoL.
But I do not think Sotis will stay at the top for very long, not because it's a bad map ... alright it's because of that, but also because it offers nothing new. It is pretty much the same gameplay, imagine talking to some people who play Dota (and the average player would have been playing Dota for say at least 2-3 years) and say "Hey guys, come check out Sotis", they would be like "OMFG STFU NOOB BAD CLONE IS BAD" etc. Where if you took the concept of Dota and completely overhauled the mechanics behind it, make it into something really really unique, they would be more like "Wow, this is different", if they say anything like the omfg comment above then they are noobs and you don't want them as friends anyway :P
Mate, I am no noob =\ ... I use to be a Clan TDA moderator (Official Dota Mod), I knew Icefrog before he took over Dota and he 'borrowed' quite a few concepts from my unfinished map that I sent him in early 2005, the most famous of which are chickens/couriers O_O. I have played inhouse games of Admins + Mods vs the Offical Dota Allstars team etc, and we got our asses handed to us in 10 minutes flat. =\
I don't want to sound like an ass inflating my own ego, but I dare say there is no one else on these forums which as much knowledge of Dota as myself, or the origins and concepts behind it. I have written quite a few long articles about the birth of Dota, because I was there for that. Atm, I dare say the history of Dota is divided between myself, Pendragon, Icefrog and Guinsoo - and whilst I was never in the 'inner circle' of Dota, and have only limited knowledge of what transpired in that regard, I was there before most of them, I was there before Icefrog came along, before Pendragon and before Guinsoo himself. I have Guinsoo's original Beta maps, where he gave credit for taking all the heroes off of other people's maps O_O, amongst other things. Guinsoo, Pendragon and Icefrog have never publically disclosed their history of Dota, and I doubt they will any time soon, and it is a shame, but perhaps one day I will get over to the USA, be able to meet up with them, in Icefrog's case, hit him with a rubber chicken, and ask them to write memoirs.
I know very well how Dota works, and the 'pro' level of playing it. Trust me, I am not dying to stupid mistakes. If I was after 8 years of playing Dota, I should re-evaluate my outlook on life and swiftly cut my wrists for failing so hard. The inhouse community in any game is friendly than the public community - but the majority of people play in public games, and therefore, that is what we should talk about. Speaking the way I do it is more than possible I will come across as an asshole, how you got a whinging battle.net noob out of that is beyond me, but I have the knowledge to back it up.
@Zeropoints,
The map is small, it is physically small and the movement speed is a tad faster. I personally think Dota is a tad bit slow - but it had to be because of Wc3's engine limitations. Starcraft is an inherently faster engine and as such, I expect an AoS game to have a faster gameplay and especially movement speed - but with that, you need to make the map equally as big as Dota, if not a tad bigger (say 10-20%), having faster movement speed and a smaller map is just cookoo.
As for being dark, turn up the gamma or get a better screen :P
In regards to Mozared, I will jump on the bandwagon.
A) The terrain is shit, its tiny, too small ... if you made a 1 to 1 scale of Dota in Starcraft 2 and compared it to Sotis you would see how tiny Sotis is, I think from my measurements it is 66% of the size of Dota. I don't even look at the screen when running through the forests, I watch the minimap cause it is just that small.
B) I don't really like any of the User Interface in Starcraft ... let alone the Healthbars. I think it could be done a lot better.
C) As for not being noob friendly, these types of games are not meant to be. But, if you are a veteran of any you should be able to jump in another no problem. But the inherient design flaw with Sotis is your following point ...
D) Sotis is the biggest piece of imbalanced shit I have ever came across, and it is sad that I have to say that as I wish I didn't. In the last week I have played it about half a dozen times, and coming from an eight year background in Dota, yes, at one point Dota was just as imbalanced as Sotis is now, but it has had 8 years of balancing to make it what it is. You cannot expect people who are use to playing Dota/Hon/LoL to jump into Sotis and not be enraged.
The other Dota clones, as the name suggested, cloned all the numbers, so they were balanced from the start. Sotis did not ... Eck has attempted to reinvent the wheel, but has failed miserably. I cannot even start to suggest at how pissed off I became in the games I played where I would loose 80% of my health to 1 ability, which isn't even an ultimate ... wtf mate.
E) That is Battle.net ... You put angry kids in with sensible adults, the adults will soon turn into angry kids themselves and everyone is a-raging.
And FYI, I hate the noobs who cry Dota ruined Wc3 ... If Dota wasn't so good people wouldn't play it, the other maps failed cause they couldn't live up to Dota's status.
- On a different Note ...
For those of you who remember the birth of Warcraft III ... all those years ago ... Starcraft II is actually following in it's footsteps pretty much step for step. The Custom Map scene in Wc3 started out with TDs, Survivor Maps, Tugs, Hero Arenas and AoS (Like Sotis without the Dota Layout) ... before Dota came along about ugh ... 9 months into it? And even then, Dota wasn't that popular ... you would join your normal TD game, or your Hero Arena game and people would say, have you played Defense of the Ancients? And yes, it wasn't even called Dota back then. It started off very slow, didn't get much popularity ... it wasn't until Eul left, and spawned the ugh ... 20 clones ... and Guinsoo came along and took everyone's heros from the best maps and put them together in a single map and called it his own that Dota surged in popularity ... oh and he added sound, that helped alot.
To refresh a dialog you have to set it again, when you create a dialog it should always be blank. And then you set the dialogs using a refresh script, basically a blank function/trigger that sets the dialog to the texts you want.
TLDR: Everytime you want the dialog to update you have to 'set text' again.
This thread has merely turned into one of the debate games.
Rodrigo, you know we are cool, but your game is just a trollolol game. It has no high replayability, and yes it was fun for a one off thing, it is not Starcraft, the majority of people come on Battle net to play a game, not bitch at each other unless its after winning said game. The masterpiece of debates could only have been created by the biggest troll of them all, you. And yes, I think its funny the way you troll Blizzard, you really gotta get off your high horse - if you keep poking the dogs ass, and that dog turns around and bites you, you got no one to blame except yourself.
This topic has been done to death ... you know they are fixing it in the next patch, you knew they always would, but they would just take their time. Your level of bitching of the official forums is just going to piss people off, no one likes people standing over them bitching about the work they are doing constantly. Blizzard stated that there was an ongoing issue, and I understand the anger at them not stating anything more - this is Blizzard's fault, they keep their mouth shut about nearly everything - this is how they fucked everything up in the first place.
I like Mephs, and had the privilege of working with him and Rodrigo on a few of the live casts. That being said - I do not like Smashcraft, or at least not while it was in it's early stages, and I believe the reasons which I am going to list out might have something to do with it's lack of popularity.
When Smashcraft was released it was actually quite popular, at least on page 2, it then fell from popularity and then had a hard time coming back up to where it once was. This was simple IMO (and I must stress that part - in my own opinion), the gameplay whilst unique and innovative, it was also repetitive, too simple and boring.
It is the type of game that I would want to play on a console, with a group of mates, where you can laugh, drink, physically bump each other to try and get them to stuff up their combo moves ... not on a computer by myself against 12 year old kids.
I believe you would be hard pressed to find anyone with more knowledge about Dota on these forums than myself, being an Ex-TDA Moderator. Comparing Smashcraft to Dota is fail, not epic fail, just fail, like when you loose the game. Smashcraft as the name suggests - is related to Smash Bros, perhaps with a twist of PvP arena - it is nothing like Dota, it is not a Dota without creeps and items, because a Dota without creeps and Items is just a fucken Arena like Smash Bros.
It is all good to cry and complain about the Popularity System, it is a huge piece of fail from Blizzard, and yes - we have been given broken and half hearted promises time and time again, but it will never ever be solved. Think of it this way - Say I created the next Dota on Sc2, and it is by far the most played map, with twice the hours played of the next down map, kind of like Sotis now. I would want people to have an easy way to access it, because if it is at the top of the list it has to be doing something right.
However, on the other hand - Compare Phantom Mode to my map, Phant3m. Whilst my map is still in beta, and the new version of it is far more advanced than the beta, Phantom Mode is still page 1.
This is down to a few things ...
1) Phantom Mode already has an established community that percieves any other map to be a threat.
2) Phantom Mode has Husky, each time he did a video on that map he doubled its popularity and pushed it from Page 2 to Page 1.
3) Phantom Mode's innovative features have been quietly taken from my map, while basically now denying my map exists.
And 4) - The most important part ... I have never ever once advertised my map. Not once.
So if we take these things apart and look at them; the first part is that people play what they play, and it is very hard to get people to try new things. Every single person that said a bad thing about my map, while you could still talk about it on the Phantom forums (except for the Administrator) changed their mind after they played a single game, they were blown away at how far ahead Phant3m was from Phantom Mode.
The second part, is what makes maps on Battle.net 2.0, commentators and their huge fanbases are the single best source of players. Husky has proven that one single video about a custom map on his channel can absolutely sky rocket it to Page 1 or 2. I contacted Husky about eight weeks ago asking him if he would be interested in casting my map, I never heard a reply and a week ago he casted Phantom Mode, firmly locking its position on the first page.
The third part is absolutely necessary for any designer - knowing where to hide their sources, while denying they ever copied/borrowed/lent/stole the ideas from the other party. I can write all about Phantom Mode on my blog that I want to, and say that it is painfully obvious Phantom Mode copied all its recent changes from my map - however, 99% of the Phantom community is not on the Sc2Phantom.com forums, nor reads my blog - they simply don't give a shit, they are happy playing the same map they play everyday.
The fourth part is the hardest, you need to get in the inner circle, you need to network, connect with people and get them on their side. It is true that to some, my blog could make me sound like an asshole trying to get my own way, to others, I am speaking the truth and am someone to be put on a pedastool and worshiped (taking the two greatest extremes of possibilities). I know I have a great number of supporters, and haters, and these two groups of people will always exist regardless of what I choose to do. The vast majority of people will make up their mind based on my skill, and skill alone.
I have networked with enough people that I could possibly take down Phantom Mode and cement my map in it's place, however it is too premature to guess which map will come out on top of the Phantom wars. Whilst my map is more innovative, more refined and is generally the better map by far - Phantom Mode's creator Infernal, and his Admin Brian, have a nice way of downplaying my ideas and then using them as their own. The greater population will never be the wiser, because it has that established popularity, and it is more than possible that when I release Phant3m officially, that Phantom Mode will again copy the ideas I have and my map will stay in darkness.
This is not generally bad for the community, as my map just being there is pushing Phantom Mode to go far beyond what it ever would. but it is still disheartening to see something you work hundreds if not thousands of hours on, have very little reward.
So I know where Mephs is coming from - But I understand that my map isn't popular because it is simply not getting out there. Yes, popular maps stay popular because Battle.net's system is shit, but if my map was popular I wouldn't want to change it because I would be loosing the core of my map's popularity, on the other hand because my map has literally no games, it would be easy to blame it on the system, but I know until I have honestly to god exhausted every advertising opportunity, and my map is actually great and not a pile of shit, I can only blame myself for its failings.
Omfg this > - Increase map upload time out to 10 min from 2 min. Currently with my 4mbit net, I can only upload 5mb size cause it.
For aussies its kind of fucked up, I can only upload 4/5mb maps because of it =\
And this > - Trigger to get global time. (This would get the current time from the battlenet server.) This would enable new type of games, (Like: tamagotchi, browser mmorpgs or E.V.E)
Having the editor auto minimize when launching a map through F9 should be an option (that you can turn off), for those of us with more than sufficient ram or using dual screens this is a great annoyance to us - especially when you have 5-6 windows opened in the editor.
Being able to find out the aspect ratio (resolution) of a player's computer.
Being able to retrieve a server's name and/or address through a string (such as NA / SEA / EU / us.battle.net / sg.battle.net / eu.battle.net).
Being able to retrieve a player's name through string.
Being able to retrieve a player's character code through integer.
Convert Text to String function.
Server side bank files (Though I doubt this will happen)
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@RCIX: Go
/facepalm
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@RCIX: Go
Mate, I am starting to think you are blindly defending Sotis, yes Sotis is imbalanced, every game is, except of course rock, paper, scissors - as soon as you add any more variables than that it becomes imbalanced. I was not complaining about imbalance, I was stating that it is imbalanced, and the reasons why people would dislike it because of that imbalance.
I am not hating on Sotis, I was agreeing with Mozared with a statement that from my point of view it is a shit map - which means it could be a lot better. And also please don't take my comments out of context, post the entire sentence, not half of one and half of another, it makes you look like a troll. FYI, the half comment you copied about "...as people are use to what they play everyday, even if what they play is shit." goes for say half of the top 10 maps, it was not directed solely at Sotis, but merely an overall observation of the current state of custom maps.
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@RCIX: Go
For the most part I was next to my tower, and the enemy hero would run up the lane, and ta da all my health gone. You speak of those tactics that you mentioned as if they were something I would have overlooked, plz mate, more credit kthx. It is true that they have different gameplay but that is largely due to it's imbalance. The gameplay in Dota evolves every map edition, as it would in Sotis or any other AoS map.
The third paragraph you just basically rewrote what I wrote earlier, so it appears we entirely agree on that subject.
@Ardnived: Go
That is why people hate it ... I like Eck, I even offered my services to him about 8 months ago, but he didn't want to take me up on that offer. He is not the most talented map maker out there, but you do not have to be to have a well played map. I think people were expecting something amazing in Sc2, yet when they play Sotis it is honestly worst than Dota ever was, even pre-frozen throne. It is a hard job doing both the engine side and the data side of a Dota game, especially when real life has a huge calling - and most importantly, it just simply takes so long to do things in Sc2 - unlike Wc3.
@tacticmove: Go
It is not really blind hate as a discussion about Sotis's faults - which is a good thing. I am sure Eck is well aware of the faults of his map, and at no time was anything directed towards him or his map in a way he could not read and take inspiration from to fix things.
@Mozared: Go
Well take a look at my map, Phant3m and Phantom Mode ... my map is the better map, has the better engine, has the more unique features. But when you take on a juggernaught that is in the top 10, and they *cough*copy*cough* your ideas, then there is not much incentive for people to play your map.
If a new AoS was to come along, which I am sure there will be a couple before midyear, it has to be something absol.fucken.utly amazing to take down Sotis, as people are use to what they play everyday, even if what they play is shit. It is overrated, it is a shit map, and when something better comes along, we have to pray to god that people get behind it - talk about it, advertise it, make commentaries for it - so it can take the throne off Sotis, otherwise it will disappear like everything else into the darkness that is the popularity system.
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@OneTwoSC: Go
They will, give it time mate. Starcraft's editor is more complicated, it will take a while for good maps to surface, by the end of the year we should have some good ones.
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@Mozared: Go
Yes its true, programmers are not artists, and artists are not programmers. I have a really nice Dota-style terrain that is the perfect size for Sc2 that I will probably use for an upcoming project. I initially copied Dota's terrain 1 for 1, found it was a bit small for Starcraft, made it a bit bigger, winged it, added a few things that I would like to see changed in the terrain (that Icefrog would never change cause the masses would cry OMFG), and ta da, presto magic.
I am probably one of the rare scripters that has a background in terrain design, well design in general. I know very well of your weekly terrain comps, and I wish so much that I could participate mate, you have no idea, but I am too busy with my own projects. Its quite sad really.
I cannot stand bad design, nothing pisses me off more than bad design - ESPECIALLY bad terrain. So yes, I understand it - I am a terrain foremost, but there is a very fine line between making something beautiful for say an RPG compared to making something useable, say Nexus Wars. As the quality of maps improve people will tolerate shit less, you need say 2-3 of the top map makers to get together and say, Alright fuck it, we are gonna make the top 3-5 maps on each region really fucken amazing. But of course, people won't do that cause they are stupid and think their shitty terrain is better than yours. =\
@cinicraft: Go
Not really ... true a part of it is, and after so many years playing it becomes common knowledge like the back of your hand. It is hard for me to judge this as I know the game so well, and often people will call me noob for going certain items cause its not a standard build, but then they stfu after I pwn the other side ... having certain build orders that you _must_ go every game is fucken stupid, wing it, be a pro, think outside the box.
For Dota 2 this is a huge problem, and has been stated by numerous sources. Icefrog responded by having a tutorial system that is unlike the world has ever seen, or something like that ... but at the end ... tutorials are tutorials, it is up to you wether you want to stay a noob or become pro - in anything, not just games, but real life too. Thats why you go to school, so you become pro and not a noob for adult life, or at least thats the idea.
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@Onetwo,
Its basically an open and free market of which Dota monopolized which can and will happen everywhere else. The majority of Dota players migrated to Garena due to less delay, rather than play through battle.net. The only people left on battle.net were noobs and bots, and its the bots that caused the problem, hosting games for everyone flooding the screen. Before that it was still easy to find other types of games.
They were brilliant but they didn't change ... The first types of custom maps I played were Open RPGs, it was from those I developed my scripting knowledge, into what it is today. I personally love Dark Deeds, but it never really changed much ... Survivor maps like Ice Trolls were awesome, but then the knock offs came like Jungle Trolls etc ... and I hated those, I liked the original, but - they didn't change. Enfos is the same, I played hundreds of games but it hasn't changed. Dota was pretty much the only map that was updated constantly over the last eight years. I went to Malaysia about the time of 6.1X, and everywhere there they played 5.83c (competitively) ... I got my ass kicked by them, because I forgot how imbalanced things were.
All the maps you mentioned were brilliant, but they are old. For the most part people who game, play consistently nearly everyday. I might go back to Wc3 to play a couple of games for old times' sake, but they only map I would go back and play often would be Dota because it is the only map that has changed.
@Mozared,
C/D) I have played Dota since the beginning, my skill level is beyond most people, and yet I got my ass handed to me in Sotis, that simply should not happen. Yeah, a tiny bit of imbalance here or there is fine, but when normal abilities can take 80% of my life away ... nah ... stuff that hey mate. In a map like Sotis it is better to underpower things at the start and buff when needed, than overpower things and nerf when needed.
My opinion is that it is for someone like me with a knowledge of AoS maps; pure imbalance.
The first game I played I went something like 5-0 simply because I had better skills than my opponents using what I believe now is an underpowered hero, last hitting creeps, denying creeps, baiting opponents into traps etc, standard gameplay. Then my next 3-4 games I got my ass handed to me, not because the players were more skilled, no one was denying, no one was last hitting creeps - it was simply because they would run up to me cast 1 spell and 80% of my life is gone ... wtf mate.
E) If you want a good community then you need to find a niche map not played by the masses. The more people that join something, the more egos get inflated, the more people get pissed off etc. Dota is a hate filled fuckfest, no doubt. I mean, yeah ... when I was in my prime in Dota I was angry, really angry, not so much because of Dota, but because of my life at the time and Dota was a release for that anger. When you lose and the other players shit talk you, it makes you rage harder, then when you win you have to shit talk them even worst to make up for it. It is a snowball effect. I was talking to my ex-housemate the other week, and he said he never heard anyone swear so much and so fast and so loud as when I was playing Dota ... I gotta laugh about it now, because I don't remember being like that, but if he says that I trust him.
Dota is also a game that caters to people's most burning desire, being selfish assholes. Dota is a 'team' game where the objective of the game is to down the opponents throne/tree. However, 95% of players get caught up in Hero Kills, and not pushing lanes, so when they lose the game with more Kills, it makes them rage hard, really hard. And the only weapon we have on the internet is our fingers, and obvious giving the bird to your monitor doesn't do shit, so you have to curse the other players as fast as you can.
@RCIX,
The terrain is pretty, I never said it wasn't. I said it was small, the shit comment referred to its size.
I disagree with you on the second point. Skill is not a much higher factor than imbalance in Sotis ... it is in Dota, Hon and LoL, but not Sotis.
And yes, Dota has had eight years of balance and I think I touched on that before either in this post or the previous one. Sotis cannot be expected to match Dota's level of balance, nothing can. The billions upon billions of hours of balance testing done by every single player that ever played Dota has contributed to it. Sotis (right now) is the same as it was when Allstars was released, completely imbalanced - HOWEVER, unlike Allstars which was basically at the emerging market of the AoS concept, Sotis is jumping in when the AoS market is already established and people expect things to be balanced, simply because everyone cloned Dota to a certain stage, before adding their own tweaks. Sotis however did not, Eck started from scratch which is completely fine and IMO, morally better than cloning Dota - however this of course puts Sotis back say 6 years in terms of balance.
What I meant when I said he tried to reinvent the wheel, is that he basically took the Dota concept (which is fine), added Mercs but kept everything pretty much the same. I love his idea of Powerups that are animals and follow you, I think that is an amazing concept that I would actually love to see in Dota (yea, I know what I just said). There was always going to be a Sotis in Starcraft 2, an exact clone of the Dota concept - regardless of it was Sotis or something else. The problem with this is that it adds nothing new to the genre. If you want a clone, that's fine, but you should play a clone that was cloned completely that is already balanced to a very high level like Dota/Hon/LoL.
But I do not think Sotis will stay at the top for very long, not because it's a bad map ... alright it's because of that, but also because it offers nothing new. It is pretty much the same gameplay, imagine talking to some people who play Dota (and the average player would have been playing Dota for say at least 2-3 years) and say "Hey guys, come check out Sotis", they would be like "OMFG STFU NOOB BAD CLONE IS BAD" etc. Where if you took the concept of Dota and completely overhauled the mechanics behind it, make it into something really really unique, they would be more like "Wow, this is different", if they say anything like the omfg comment above then they are noobs and you don't want them as friends anyway :P
Mate, I am no noob =\ ... I use to be a Clan TDA moderator (Official Dota Mod), I knew Icefrog before he took over Dota and he 'borrowed' quite a few concepts from my unfinished map that I sent him in early 2005, the most famous of which are chickens/couriers O_O. I have played inhouse games of Admins + Mods vs the Offical Dota Allstars team etc, and we got our asses handed to us in 10 minutes flat. =\
I don't want to sound like an ass inflating my own ego, but I dare say there is no one else on these forums which as much knowledge of Dota as myself, or the origins and concepts behind it. I have written quite a few long articles about the birth of Dota, because I was there for that. Atm, I dare say the history of Dota is divided between myself, Pendragon, Icefrog and Guinsoo - and whilst I was never in the 'inner circle' of Dota, and have only limited knowledge of what transpired in that regard, I was there before most of them, I was there before Icefrog came along, before Pendragon and before Guinsoo himself. I have Guinsoo's original Beta maps, where he gave credit for taking all the heroes off of other people's maps O_O, amongst other things. Guinsoo, Pendragon and Icefrog have never publically disclosed their history of Dota, and I doubt they will any time soon, and it is a shame, but perhaps one day I will get over to the USA, be able to meet up with them, in Icefrog's case, hit him with a rubber chicken, and ask them to write memoirs.
I know very well how Dota works, and the 'pro' level of playing it. Trust me, I am not dying to stupid mistakes. If I was after 8 years of playing Dota, I should re-evaluate my outlook on life and swiftly cut my wrists for failing so hard. The inhouse community in any game is friendly than the public community - but the majority of people play in public games, and therefore, that is what we should talk about. Speaking the way I do it is more than possible I will come across as an asshole, how you got a whinging battle.net noob out of that is beyond me, but I have the knowledge to back it up.
@Zeropoints,
The map is small, it is physically small and the movement speed is a tad faster. I personally think Dota is a tad bit slow - but it had to be because of Wc3's engine limitations. Starcraft is an inherently faster engine and as such, I expect an AoS game to have a faster gameplay and especially movement speed - but with that, you need to make the map equally as big as Dota, if not a tad bigger (say 10-20%), having faster movement speed and a smaller map is just cookoo.
As for being dark, turn up the gamma or get a better screen :P
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In regards to Mozared, I will jump on the bandwagon.
A) The terrain is shit, its tiny, too small ... if you made a 1 to 1 scale of Dota in Starcraft 2 and compared it to Sotis you would see how tiny Sotis is, I think from my measurements it is 66% of the size of Dota. I don't even look at the screen when running through the forests, I watch the minimap cause it is just that small.
B) I don't really like any of the User Interface in Starcraft ... let alone the Healthbars. I think it could be done a lot better.
C) As for not being noob friendly, these types of games are not meant to be. But, if you are a veteran of any you should be able to jump in another no problem. But the inherient design flaw with Sotis is your following point ...
D) Sotis is the biggest piece of imbalanced shit I have ever came across, and it is sad that I have to say that as I wish I didn't. In the last week I have played it about half a dozen times, and coming from an eight year background in Dota, yes, at one point Dota was just as imbalanced as Sotis is now, but it has had 8 years of balancing to make it what it is. You cannot expect people who are use to playing Dota/Hon/LoL to jump into Sotis and not be enraged.
The other Dota clones, as the name suggested, cloned all the numbers, so they were balanced from the start. Sotis did not ... Eck has attempted to reinvent the wheel, but has failed miserably. I cannot even start to suggest at how pissed off I became in the games I played where I would loose 80% of my health to 1 ability, which isn't even an ultimate ... wtf mate.
E) That is Battle.net ... You put angry kids in with sensible adults, the adults will soon turn into angry kids themselves and everyone is a-raging.
And FYI, I hate the noobs who cry Dota ruined Wc3 ... If Dota wasn't so good people wouldn't play it, the other maps failed cause they couldn't live up to Dota's status.
- On a different Note ...For those of you who remember the birth of Warcraft III ... all those years ago ... Starcraft II is actually following in it's footsteps pretty much step for step. The Custom Map scene in Wc3 started out with TDs, Survivor Maps, Tugs, Hero Arenas and AoS (Like Sotis without the Dota Layout) ... before Dota came along about ugh ... 9 months into it? And even then, Dota wasn't that popular ... you would join your normal TD game, or your Hero Arena game and people would say, have you played Defense of the Ancients? And yes, it wasn't even called Dota back then. It started off very slow, didn't get much popularity ... it wasn't until Eul left, and spawned the ugh ... 20 clones ... and Guinsoo came along and took everyone's heros from the best maps and put them together in a single map and called it his own that Dota surged in popularity ... oh and he added sound, that helped alot.
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The only sad thing is it is basically a parody of my life =\
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To refresh a dialog you have to set it again, when you create a dialog it should always be blank. And then you set the dialogs using a refresh script, basically a blank function/trigger that sets the dialog to the texts you want.
TLDR: Everytime you want the dialog to update you have to 'set text' again.
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...
Inbetween each of those add another parameter with the text <n/>
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This thread has merely turned into one of the debate games.
Rodrigo, you know we are cool, but your game is just a trollolol game. It has no high replayability, and yes it was fun for a one off thing, it is not Starcraft, the majority of people come on Battle net to play a game, not bitch at each other unless its after winning said game. The masterpiece of debates could only have been created by the biggest troll of them all, you. And yes, I think its funny the way you troll Blizzard, you really gotta get off your high horse - if you keep poking the dogs ass, and that dog turns around and bites you, you got no one to blame except yourself.
This topic has been done to death ... you know they are fixing it in the next patch, you knew they always would, but they would just take their time. Your level of bitching of the official forums is just going to piss people off, no one likes people standing over them bitching about the work they are doing constantly. Blizzard stated that there was an ongoing issue, and I understand the anger at them not stating anything more - this is Blizzard's fault, they keep their mouth shut about nearly everything - this is how they fucked everything up in the first place.
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@jerberson12: Go
Do it in game with dialogs.
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I like Mephs, and had the privilege of working with him and Rodrigo on a few of the live casts. That being said - I do not like Smashcraft, or at least not while it was in it's early stages, and I believe the reasons which I am going to list out might have something to do with it's lack of popularity.
When Smashcraft was released it was actually quite popular, at least on page 2, it then fell from popularity and then had a hard time coming back up to where it once was. This was simple IMO (and I must stress that part - in my own opinion), the gameplay whilst unique and innovative, it was also repetitive, too simple and boring.
It is the type of game that I would want to play on a console, with a group of mates, where you can laugh, drink, physically bump each other to try and get them to stuff up their combo moves ... not on a computer by myself against 12 year old kids.
I believe you would be hard pressed to find anyone with more knowledge about Dota on these forums than myself, being an Ex-TDA Moderator. Comparing Smashcraft to Dota is fail, not epic fail, just fail, like when you loose the game. Smashcraft as the name suggests - is related to Smash Bros, perhaps with a twist of PvP arena - it is nothing like Dota, it is not a Dota without creeps and items, because a Dota without creeps and Items is just a fucken Arena like Smash Bros.
It is all good to cry and complain about the Popularity System, it is a huge piece of fail from Blizzard, and yes - we have been given broken and half hearted promises time and time again, but it will never ever be solved. Think of it this way - Say I created the next Dota on Sc2, and it is by far the most played map, with twice the hours played of the next down map, kind of like Sotis now. I would want people to have an easy way to access it, because if it is at the top of the list it has to be doing something right.
However, on the other hand - Compare Phantom Mode to my map, Phant3m. Whilst my map is still in beta, and the new version of it is far more advanced than the beta, Phantom Mode is still page 1.
This is down to a few things ...
1) Phantom Mode already has an established community that percieves any other map to be a threat.
2) Phantom Mode has Husky, each time he did a video on that map he doubled its popularity and pushed it from Page 2 to Page 1.
3) Phantom Mode's innovative features have been quietly taken from my map, while basically now denying my map exists.
And 4) - The most important part ... I have never ever once advertised my map. Not once.
So if we take these things apart and look at them; the first part is that people play what they play, and it is very hard to get people to try new things. Every single person that said a bad thing about my map, while you could still talk about it on the Phantom forums (except for the Administrator) changed their mind after they played a single game, they were blown away at how far ahead Phant3m was from Phantom Mode.
The second part, is what makes maps on Battle.net 2.0, commentators and their huge fanbases are the single best source of players. Husky has proven that one single video about a custom map on his channel can absolutely sky rocket it to Page 1 or 2. I contacted Husky about eight weeks ago asking him if he would be interested in casting my map, I never heard a reply and a week ago he casted Phantom Mode, firmly locking its position on the first page.
The third part is absolutely necessary for any designer - knowing where to hide their sources, while denying they ever copied/borrowed/lent/stole the ideas from the other party. I can write all about Phantom Mode on my blog that I want to, and say that it is painfully obvious Phantom Mode copied all its recent changes from my map - however, 99% of the Phantom community is not on the Sc2Phantom.com forums, nor reads my blog - they simply don't give a shit, they are happy playing the same map they play everyday.
The fourth part is the hardest, you need to get in the inner circle, you need to network, connect with people and get them on their side. It is true that to some, my blog could make me sound like an asshole trying to get my own way, to others, I am speaking the truth and am someone to be put on a pedastool and worshiped (taking the two greatest extremes of possibilities). I know I have a great number of supporters, and haters, and these two groups of people will always exist regardless of what I choose to do. The vast majority of people will make up their mind based on my skill, and skill alone.
I have networked with enough people that I could possibly take down Phantom Mode and cement my map in it's place, however it is too premature to guess which map will come out on top of the Phantom wars. Whilst my map is more innovative, more refined and is generally the better map by far - Phantom Mode's creator Infernal, and his Admin Brian, have a nice way of downplaying my ideas and then using them as their own. The greater population will never be the wiser, because it has that established popularity, and it is more than possible that when I release Phant3m officially, that Phantom Mode will again copy the ideas I have and my map will stay in darkness.
This is not generally bad for the community, as my map just being there is pushing Phantom Mode to go far beyond what it ever would. but it is still disheartening to see something you work hundreds if not thousands of hours on, have very little reward.
So I know where Mephs is coming from - But I understand that my map isn't popular because it is simply not getting out there. Yes, popular maps stay popular because Battle.net's system is shit, but if my map was popular I wouldn't want to change it because I would be loosing the core of my map's popularity, on the other hand because my map has literally no games, it would be easy to blame it on the system, but I know until I have honestly to god exhausted every advertising opportunity, and my map is actually great and not a pile of shit, I can only blame myself for its failings.
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Omfg this > - Increase map upload time out to 10 min from 2 min. Currently with my 4mbit net, I can only upload 5mb size cause it.
For aussies its kind of fucked up, I can only upload 4/5mb maps because of it =\
And this > - Trigger to get global time. (This would get the current time from the battlenet server.) This would enable new type of games, (Like: tamagotchi, browser mmorpgs or E.V.E)
Great suggestions hookah!
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