Imagine a tug of war. You would never once even consider easing up on the rope. You pull as hard as you can to the end. You are trying to win with all your might the entire time. It makes sense.
MOBAs are a tug of war where you do sometimes, actually often, want to let up on the rope. It makes no fucking sense. Even now that I know I'm supposed to do it, it makes no fucking sense. It's a battle. I should fight as hard as I can the entire time until it's over.
Compared that to Tetris. You make as many lines as you can as fast as you can the entire game until it's over. Even if people don't have the skill to do it, they understand it from the beginning. Nobody would ever not get a Tetris with a line piece.
What do you even mean by let up on the rope? What are you doing in the game that is analogous to that? Are you talking about the lane creep equilibrium and wanting the enemy to come closer to your tower?
MOBAs are a tug of war where you do sometimes, actually often, want to let up on the rope. It makes no fucking sense. Even now that I know I'm supposed to do it, it makes no fucking sense. It's a battle. I should fight as hard as I can the entire time until it's over.
You can play a pusher strategy actually, and just push towers from the start, but if you fail, it's basically game over, and it's easy to counter as well.
Something I think should be said, and hasn't really been - Full points to Scott for having a crack at it. Say what you like about the price being right, or what have you - but he's giving it a go, and a lot of people in his position wouldn't bother, so that's something that's worth a spot of praise.
Something I think should be said, and hasn't really been - Full points to Scott for having a crack at it. Say what you like about the price being right, or what have you - but he's giving it a go, and a lot of people in his position wouldn't bother, so that's something that's worth a spot of praise.
Not only that, he played like 5 or 6 hours, and was clearly not enjoying it.
All the MOBA apologists are just falling on blaming Scott and his lack of knowledge/skill instead of acknowledging flaws in the game. But hey, if Rym makes the same criticisms it's a revelation.
Lacking knowledge /skill in a game does make it harder to criticize it. He doesn't understand the stealth elements (ganking), so he wishes the game gave him information which would eliminate that mechanic. He doesn't understand how teams play the game (both his team and the opponents), so he wishes the game had less teamwork in it. That said, a lot of his criticism is right. The game does an awful job at explaining itself to new players, which is definitely a flaw in the game. The UI has many issues, and the heuristics aren't intuitive. It would've been nice to have another game mode aimed at players who need that information, but it's silly to blame a complex game for not being simple. Not all games have to be simple, and it's easy to mix obfuscation with complex mechanics when you don't understand the game.
MOBAs are a tug of war where you do sometimes, actually often, want to let up on the rope. It makes no fucking sense. Even now that I know I'm supposed to do it, it makes no fucking sense. It's a battle. I should fight as hard as I can the entire time until it's over.
Many games have moves where you sacrifice a pawn to win the game. An inexperienced player might mistake that for helping the opponent.
Oh. Is he talking about laning in that analogy? If so, this is no different than any other feint really. The fiddlyness of the mechanics involved are odd, but the top down concept makes sense.
The issue I have w/ MoBA design stems from how the genre is birthed from literally playing a game against its design. I always get the feeling that they're filled with what are essentially vestigal design structures. They're still really firmly situated on classic RTS mechanics and whatnot, yet are actually different enough that a re-design from the ground up would be nothing but beneficial. Think of how much Tower Defense games have strayed from being primarily custom RTS maps (not to diss Rampart or anything).
Big update coming on Dota this week. Not only one new tutorial but 3. Mechanic 2, Laning 1 and Laning 2. Don't know how good they are, but more help for newbs is always better than less.
One thing that is interesting to me is how much DOTA knowledge I have from almost ten years ago is still applicable in DOTA 2. And the whole cloning the entire game thing when some of the mechanisms only existed because of trigger limitations.
"A new addition to the challenge is also an aura effect now that surrounds creeps that are in the damage range of last hitting, which is very useful for the new players. "
This is a part of an unreleased last hits challenge map. Glad how much effort they're putting into the tutorials, but currently it seems rather lengthy before you even start playing a match versus real people if you go through the recommended actions.
Apreche, your mention of "sudden flashy colors and instant death" is something I noticed to be a pretty common thing in bot matches. It still happens when against humans, but not anywhere near as often. Bots are unforgiving and group up to gank for a sure kill; you explode before you know what's hit you. Humans on the other hand tend to attempt ganks with a bare minimum of what's needed to get the job done.
In my opinion, CoopVsBot matches are only worth doing while you are still getting a handle on the most basic mechanics like buying, teleporting and finding the guides button. Humans suck, so go beat them up instead for more helpful practice.
Apreche, your mention of "sudden flashy colors and instant death" is something I noticed to be a pretty common thing in bot matches. It still happens when against humans, but not anywhere near as often. Bots are unforgiving and group up to gank for a sure kill; you explode before you know what's hit you. Humans on the other hand tend to attempt ganks with a bare minimum of what's needed to get the job done.
In my opinion, CoopVsBot matches are only worth doing while you are still getting a handle on the most basic mechanics like buying, teleporting and finding the guides button. Humans suck, so go beat them up instead for more helpful practice.
Played with some humans yesterday. Discovered new problems.
1) It takes forever to find a match. I waited ten minutes to even get in a game. For a game that takes 40 minutes, that's just awful.
2) Both games I was able to play there was a player on the other team that was so strong it didn't matter what we did. Instant kill walking out of fountain. But they didn't kill the ancient, dragging the game out. Let us end it!
3) The one player who gets super strong is always on the other team. I think someone in this thread said DotA is like basketball. It is true. If you have Michael Jordan on your team, the other players hardly matter. As long as they don't completely fuck it up, it's really a 1 player game, not a team game. It's only a team game if everyone is good, not in the nub games I get put into.
4) I had enough power to kill people, but failed. I was just attacking the other people who were in my lane when I saw their health was low, but they ran away in time to save themselves. I think I have to do what other people do and go hide in the jungle and pop out to surprise another lane to help my teammates. I'm just pretty sure that while I'm in the woods I'll get spotted and killed. Also, I'll fall behind on xp while I'm hiding.
1) It takes forever to find a match. I waited ten minutes to even get in a game. For a game that takes 40 minutes, that's just awful.
I feel that those waiting times are the price to pay for relatively good matchmaking system, although ten minutes is longer than usual. I feel that the queue times might get shorter when one gets close to the average skill level, because biggest part of player pool is there.
2) Both games I was able to play there was a player on the other team that was so strong it didn't matter what we did. Instant kill walking out of fountain. But they didn't kill the ancient, dragging the game out. Let us end it!
That sucks and it's a dick move from the enemy. Personally I feel that little fountain fishing is ok, if the Ancient is about to go down soon, but prolonging the game in order to fountain-fish, is a sin and a mark of a royal dick.
3) The one player who gets super strong is always on the other team. I think someone in this thread said DotA is like basketball. It is true. If you have Michael Jordan on your team, the other players hardly matter. As long as they don't completely fuck it up, it's really a 1 player game, not a team game. It's only a team game if everyone is good, not in the nub games I get put into.
I don't know the details here, but I assume that those strong players picked and played some of the many so called "pub stompers", heroes that are relatively easy to get to the point where they are super strong, unless enemy team knows how to handle them. They are kinda like the AVP of Dota, noobs cry that they are overpowered, when they just haven't learned how to deal with them. And they are always on the enemy team because the game hates you.
4) I had enough power to kill people, but failed. I was just attacking the other people who were in my lane when I saw their health was low, but they ran away in time to save themselves. I think I have to do what other people do and go hide in the jungle and pop out to surprise another lane to help my teammates. I'm just pretty sure that while I'm in the woods I'll get spotted and killed. Also, I'll fall behind on xp while I'm hiding.
I don't see any problem in the game in this one. You have just learned the importance of slows stuns and other such things to keep enemy from running away. Also if you manage to almost kill the enemy and they run back to their base to heal, then that's good too. For that time they don't get any exp and only the passive gold.
So I saw a guy playing melee. He did this thing where he would start to swing his axe or whatever, but then stop. He would basically keep resetting the attack animation until it was time to let it go for the last hit. How he do that?
So I saw a guy playing melee. He did this thing where he would start to swing his axe or whatever, but then stop. He would basically keep resetting the attack animation until it was time to let it go for the last hit. How he do that?
S stops whatever you are doing. So if he had autoattack on, he just mashed 's' and if he has if off he mashed 's' and rightclick.
So I saw a guy playing melee. He did this thing where he would start to swing his axe or whatever, but then stop. He would basically keep resetting the attack animation until it was time to let it go for the last hit. How he do that?
S stops whatever you are doing. So if he had autoattack on, he just mashed 's' and if he has if off he mashed 's' and rightclick.
I chose the WASD controls, so S for me is move camera down...
I definitely need to do some adjusting. What is the difference between stop and halt?
I rarely use stop and never use halt, so I might be wrong, but stop stops whatever you are doing, interrupts attacks and such, but after you push it it's back to the neutral state. Hold keeps you in one place, so if you have autoattack on and you press hold, you stay were you are instead of running to hit nearest enemy. Again not 100% sure about these, but that's what I remember reading at some point.
I chose the WASD controls, so S for me is move camera down...
This sounds really difficult to manage along with abilities and items but it is probably just a personal preference thing. However, if you're having issues with using your abilities you might want to consider using grab and drag, screen edge panning or mini-map clicking to control the camera.
It frees up your left hand to click ability and item buttons.
Also, I've got my inventory slots bound to alt+q alt+w alt+e alt+a alt+s alt+d
And my abilities on Q, W, E, R
then there is no hunting and pecking for ability or item use, just thumb alt.
You may want to look into using the "Only target Champions Button." It'll help you target a champ in a group of creeps.
This is a LoL thing. Apreche, just imagine the heroes are heads and click on them
Comments
That said, a lot of his criticism is right. The game does an awful job at explaining itself to new players, which is definitely a flaw in the game. The UI has many issues, and the heuristics aren't intuitive.
It would've been nice to have another game mode aimed at players who need that information, but it's silly to blame a complex game for not being simple. Not all games have to be simple, and it's easy to mix obfuscation with complex mechanics when you don't understand the game.
Many games have moves where you sacrifice a pawn to win the game. An inexperienced player might mistake that for helping the opponent.
But I'll test them myself on test client and maybe report.
This is a part of an unreleased last hits challenge map. Glad how much effort they're putting into the tutorials, but currently it seems rather lengthy before you even start playing a match versus real people if you go through the recommended actions.
In my opinion, CoopVsBot matches are only worth doing while you are still getting a handle on the most basic mechanics like buying, teleporting and finding the guides button. Humans suck, so go beat them up instead for more helpful practice.
1) It takes forever to find a match. I waited ten minutes to even get in a game. For a game that takes 40 minutes, that's just awful.
2) Both games I was able to play there was a player on the other team that was so strong it didn't matter what we did. Instant kill walking out of fountain. But they didn't kill the ancient, dragging the game out. Let us end it!
3) The one player who gets super strong is always on the other team. I think someone in this thread said DotA is like basketball. It is true. If you have Michael Jordan on your team, the other players hardly matter. As long as they don't completely fuck it up, it's really a 1 player game, not a team game. It's only a team game if everyone is good, not in the nub games I get put into.
4) I had enough power to kill people, but failed. I was just attacking the other people who were in my lane when I saw their health was low, but they ran away in time to save themselves. I think I have to do what other people do and go hide in the jungle and pop out to surprise another lane to help my teammates. I'm just pretty sure that while I'm in the woods I'll get spotted and killed. Also, I'll fall behind on xp while I'm hiding.
Again not 100% sure about these, but that's what I remember reading at some point.
It frees up your left hand to click ability and item buttons.
Also, I've got my inventory slots bound to
alt+q alt+w alt+e
alt+a alt+s alt+d
And my abilities on Q, W, E, R
then there is no hunting and pecking for ability or item use, just thumb alt. This is a LoL thing. Apreche, just imagine the heroes are heads and click on them