Rage quitting is trivially solved, and I have already provided the solution. Rage quitting counts as a loss. Combine that with no stat resetting, and you will see a huge decline in rage quitting.
However, that policy might result in a huge increase of problem 2, feeding. Your solution of a surrender vote helps, but isn't perfect. I can try to think of a few better ideas. Perhaps as you die more your respawn time gets longer and longer. In addition, the more you die, the less XP and gold you are worth.
Or maybe fundamentally change the rules of the game. One death, and you're OUT. Or maybe three lives, then that's it, you're done. I think that's actually one of the fundamental problems with MOBA is they have the problem of the game being over, even though it's not over.
You are frequently in a situation where one team has won, and can not lose unless they give up intentionally. Yet, the game is still going because they haven't actually finished the job yet. Not only that, but even though the other team can not win, it will still take some time for the job to be finished and for it to actually count as a victory. The rules of the game need to change such that as soon as one team has no chance for victory, the game should end immediately. There need to be some other end-game conditions besides surrender or destroying the other team's flag/pool/crystal thingy. I also think that having these other conditions could really change the strategies of the game for the better.
Rage quitting is trivially solved, and I have already provided the solution. Rage quitting counts as a loss. Combine that with no stat resetting, and you will see a huge decline in rage quitting.
Not only do they do that in BF3 - Even if the team wins the match, if you quit early, you don't get anything for the win like you do if you'd stayed(Nor do you get the consolation 200 point ribbon for playing in the match, even if you lost), nor does it count against your match won record, the only difference is that in the battle reports section, you're told if the team won or lost after you quit - they also have a publically viewable statistic for quitting matches early - How many matches you've quit out of, along with a percentage of games quit.
It does pretty much exactly nothing to stop rage-quitting, which is still rampant - the second the team starts obviously losing, or if the other team puts in too strong of a showing at the start, people start running like rats from a sinking ship. And that's a community that takes the leaderboards/stats super-seriously. I've seen people argue that the punishment for boosting should be the same as for cheating (ie, a permanent ban), because it ruins the "Honesty" of the leaderboards.
Rage quitting is trivially solved, and I have already provided the solution. Rage quitting counts as a loss. Combine that with no stat resetting, and you will see a huge decline in rage quitting.
I have not ever quited on a LoL match so I don't know how it shows or doesn't in your stats. But still even if it counts as a lose it might not be enough to discourage those people who quit because they think that the game has been lost already.
However, that policy might result in a huge increase of problem 2, feeding. Your solution of a surrender vote helps, but isn't perfect. I can try to think of a few better ideas. Perhaps as you die more your respawn time gets longer and longer. In addition, the more you die, the less XP and gold you are worth.
Surrender vote is not my idea, it's something that LoL has and works in many cases, but it has to be majority vote, one guy alone can't surrender. Those other ideas might have something in them. Already in LoL respawn times get longer as a game goes on, I don't remember/know is it tied to your level or the game clock, but i could also be tied to the amount of deaths you have gotten. Also in LoL killing people whit kill streaks gives out extra gold so obviously killing good players of enemy team is more important, but the idea that more you are killed the less you are worth to the enemy is a interesting idea. That way of one player of enemy team falls behind the enemy team has a reason not to constantly kill him so he can't get back to his feet. Maybe.
Or maybe fundamentally change the rules of the game. One death, and you're OUT. Or maybe three lives, then that's it, you're done. I think that's actually one of the fundamental problems with MOBA is they have the problem of the game being over, even though it's not over.
Yes, that would be a fundamental change to the game and after that the pushing to the enemy base and destroying their central thingie becomes secondary objective to the main objective of kill enemy team x times.
You are frequently in a situation where one team has won, and can not lose unless they give up intentionally. Yet, the game is still going because they haven't actually finished the job yet. Not only that, but even though the other team can not win, it will still take some time for the job to be finished and for it to actually count as a victory. The rules of the game need to change such that as soon as one team has no chance for victory, the game should end immediately. There need to be some other end-game conditions besides surrender or destroying the other team's flag/pool/crystal thingy. I also think that having these other conditions could really change the strategies of the game for the better.
Well from my experience with LoL surrender vote works quite well. When team feels like they have no way to win they surrender. Tough last weekend there was a interesting game where first enemy team was in lead and then our team started to hit back and slowly balance the odds and then the enemy team surrendered. It was middle of the game, the teams were in quite balanced state both teams had gotten few turrets down and the enemy team who surrendered actually had more champions killed than our team. I feel that surrender vote is the best solution to that problem that doesn't make the game to a extremely different game.
Leaderboards are actually one of the core problems, in that they encourage all manner of bad behavior as-implemented here.
That is the alternative solution. Don't have leaderboards at all. If there are no stats or records, then there is nothing to reset. There's also no reason to quit because you don't have any record to protect. Perhaps this is the key in Counter-Strike and NS where there is absolutely no persistence between matches, and no official record is kept anywhere.
Leaderboards are actually one of the core problems, in that they encourage all manner of bad behavior as-implemented here.
Thats way I kinda like LoLs solution where there is a player level and you have to be level 30 to be able to play ranked matches. That way everyone who plays ranked has some amount of experience with the game and you can't just make a griefing account to ruin other peoples games and thus affecting their rank. Or you can, but you have to get your griefing account to level 30 first and if you are that devoted to griefing, please feel free to do it as long as it takes to ban your ass off the game.
Or maybe fundamentally change the rules of the game. One death, and you're OUT. Or maybe three lives, then that's it, you're done. I think that's actually one of the fundamental problems with MOBA is they have the problem of the game being over, even though it's not over.
Yes, that would be a fundamental change to the game and after that the pushing to the enemy base and destroying their central thingie becomes secondary objective to the main objective of kill enemy team x times.
You're wrong here.
The way the game is, that secondary objective is ALREADY the main objective, as it is the real determiner of who wins. The destruction of the central thingie is an after-effect as far as I can see, and the real victory was determined some time prior by other factors.
Even if the game doesn't explicitly say that other goal is your objective, it appears that it actually is.
Good games end when they're over, when victory is a mathematical impossibility by anyone but the person/team already winning, or at least very close to that point. The major problems all DOTA-likes have leads me to believe that victory is determined with reasonable certainty very early in an average match, and the rest of the play is just book-keeping.
Leaderboards are actually one of the core problems, in that they encourage all manner of bad behavior as-implemented here.
I agree. I mean, people are gonna make their own leaderboards anyway, but having an official one certainly takes the problem presented and magnifies it. I'd bin the BF3 leaderboards, if I had my choice. I'd keep the stats, simply because that's fair enough, you want something to measure your own performance, but removing the official leaderboards would mitigate many problems with the community. Won't fix ragequits, though.
Good games end when they're over, when victory is a mathematical impossibility by anyone but the person/team already winning, or at least very close to that point. The major problems all DOTA-likes have leads me to believe that victory is determined with reasonable certainty very early in an average match, and the rest of the play is just book-keeping.
I agree with your premise, and you are right a lot of the time, but in the case of most MOBA games there's also an issue of being "backdoored" or lacking the necessary strength to make the final push in a game. This doesn't typically happen (often) at the professional level so-much though. But it's not impossible. There are come-backs... which are something you want the game to have to some degree if you want it to have a spectator sport appeal.
Honestly League of Legend's implementation for the most-part works for me. I think they should actually scale up under-performing players a bit so that the game doesn't become so lopsided so easily. One little suggestion would be to give a little bit of experience-over-time like they do gold-over-time so that every player stays roughly with +2/-2 levels, and possibly scale jungling so that it's either less mandatory or at least more interesting.
The way the game is, that secondary objective is ALREADY the main objective, as it is the real determiner of who wins. The destruction of the central thingie is an after-effect as far as I can see, and the real victory was determined some time prior by other factors.
I thought this (and the rest of your post, but I feel like this is the most relevant part to quote) and you are kinda right. I could say that in dota-like the real goal is to your team to overpower the other team, for your team to be stronger than the other. In early game you try to get more money and exp than the other team and later you try to kill members of the other team to get money and exp from them and at the same time make them sit and be dead thus preventing them getting more exp and money. It's all to get towards the goal of building your team to be stronger than the other team.
But in this case the "goal" of destroying the enemy central thing is not a goal, but a test has the goal of being stronger team been achieved. Because in dota-likes the game gives edge to the defending team and the defense has more edge the more the enemy pushes. When you are under your own turret you can attack the enemy, but if the enemy attacks you the powerful turret will hit them and it will hurt. Similarly it takes less time for minions and respawned players to reach the place where pushing team is. Thus the defense can push the game around by being good at defending.
Yes there are situations where middle game clearly tells witch team has won and rest is just customary, but there are also games that turn around in a late phase. Also I believe that the cases where game is clearly in favor of one team in the middle of the game it's because at that point one team has proven that they are clearly better team than the other and between equally strong teams (in this case I mean player skill rather than any game element) there probably is more surprises in late games. But that's just my hunch and I might be wrong. And I believe that voting to surrender, while maybe not the best solution to the problem of lost game that drags on just because, it's pretty good and probaly better than any computer algorithm could be.
Edit: Actually haven't I heard in Geeknights the podcasts some stories about games of Natural Selection where marines have taken the last stand against the enemy that cannot be beaten and have been holing their final positions for quite a while before ether rising to the unexpected victory or fallen to sad defeat? And never I have heard that as a problem while discussing about that particular game.
The queues take so long because the search range of skill level is slowly increasing. If everyone is matched immediately with a person of the closest skill level, then there's not going to be a lot of people waiting around that you can match with. If you want, you can just join a lobby with other people without having to worry about wait times or skill level. The servers are all provided for free within seconds. I have never seen lag except because of distance to the server or my connection being terrible. There isn't even a need for being able to set up dedicated servers because you can chose your own settings when creating your own lobby. It would probably be gimped in terms of modding through, so if you want to highly customize the game then I don't see how that would be possible with the current system.
I don't really see how griefing is funner in DotA than in other games. It's hilarious in all games. I've never really seen anyone grief either. I've seen some people throw a hissy fit and refuse to play and fuck around when we're losing, but never actually just plain out grief. Sure, when the game is pretty much over I've done stupid shit, and at that point it doesn't matter. People are highly competitive tryhards and don't want to lose, anyway. To be honest, I don't really see how you can change some things to stop griefing. For example, this one guy called Tiny can throw any unit near him to an enemy, including your allies:
How would you stop this character from also throwing one of your allies into an enemy tower? Is there a way to determine if this act is griefing, or actually a tactic that may or may not have worked and killed the entire team? What about Vengeful Spirit who can swap herself with either an ally or a friend? Or Pudge who can hook either an ally or a friend to themselves? Both have so much griefing potential, but then you would get rid of plays like this which I think make the game much more fun and awesome compared to league of legends.
If you plain out don't like the existence of such features and dislike the genre because of it, then I'm cool with that. There's only 8 games in this genre that I can think of anyway - 4 of which are horrible, and 1 which is just a footnote in history. You can also play League of Legends.
As for the tribunal in League of Legends as a system of determining if someone should be banned: I've read plenty about how everyone logs in, click punish, and gets their free points for buying stuff like new heroes, or runes which make your hero better. I don't know if such a system would be wise. The award for being a reviewer of reports should be carefully chosen if existent at all.
As for the tribunal in League of Legends as a system of determining if someone should be banned: I've read plenty about how everyone logs in, click punish, and gets their free points for buying stuff like new heroes, or runes which make your hero better. I don't know if such a system would be wise. The award for being a reviewer of reports should be carefully chosen if existent at all.
I want to believe that majority of players playing the game are not dicks who want to dick other people. Also from what I've understood the reward you get from reviewing a tribunal case is tiny almost insignificant. More of a tap to your head, for taking care of your jury duty.
Also, the inability to have a comeback is a design decision in League of Legends, not DotA 2.
I've seen a few LoL comebacks. Of course, that depends slightly on what you consider a comeback. Being the underdog and being down 3-4 kills seems like it's enough of a penalty that another team can leverage it into a win... but at the same time it's probably less than a 10% raw stats advantage.
Keeping everyone within a few levels of each other is pointless. Why even have levels then?
Leveling in this kind of game is actually not so bad. It's not like you keep the levels from game to game. Everyone has the same opportunity to level under the same rules. People who level faster clearly have some skill or knowledge that puts them ahead of the other players, and they were able to execute in game.
That being said, it can get dumb because once a player is so far ahead on levels, the other parts of the game don't matter. The rock/paper/scissors mechanic of when you actually have to encounter your opponents is completely pointless. If they have 10 levels on you, your strategy doesn't matter. Only leveling skill mattered. Might as well just have a race to see who can level the fastest.
And I realized, there are two things that NS does which MOBA could take and make themselves amazing.
One is map control. Instead of just having half a map from the get go, force players to go out and conquer the map and hold the map. As you get ahead the game gets harder because you have to defend more territory. This gives the game a lot more back and forth.
The other thing is that levels in MOBA games can't be lost, as far as I know. In NS when you spend res you level up, but you can lose that shit! Get killed and grenade launcher is gone. Hope you got enough res to buy another one, or that you can get back to where you left it before it disappears. Got weapons level 3? Nope, I ate your arms lab!
I think if I made a MOBA I would not have XP and leveling or gold. Instead I would have one, and only one, resource. Instead of leveling or getting gold, you would collect that resource. You could then spend that resource in various ways. You could buy items at the shop, but if you die, they drop! You can spend them on your team's structures to boost your entire team, such as upgrading towers. But those structures can be destroyed! You can also spend them to power yourself up, but you buy those power ups from structures that are in your town. If those structures are destroyed, then you loose that boost. You could even spend the resource points to boost up the automatic mobs and give the other team a lot of trouble they might not be ready for unless they do the same.
And remember,these are resource points. If you spend them all on good shit, but then you fail, you have to earn some points again. You can't just go straight back to the front lines. You lost most of your shit. But the same is true for the other team. Defending still has an advantage, so if they try to attack while you are down, they will need some serious power or they ill lose their shit as well.
I'll leave you to explore all the awesome consequences of this kind of mechanic.
Also, the inability to have a comeback is a design decision in League of Legends, not DotA 2.
Also I would be interested of hearing what game elements Dota 2 has changed so it has easier comebacks?
The most obvious thing to me is the lack of AP scaling. I will explain in-depth enough for those not in the know.
Spells in LoL do a flat amount of damage. They also additionally do damage based off of the amount of ability power you have. The amount of additional damage is a percentage of AP. You can buy items that you get with AP. For example, a spell can do 100 damage + 50% of AP. With 50 AP, that spell will do 25 extra damage. With 300 AP, that spell will do 200 extra damage.
When you have a fully decked out character, you can get 400+ AP. Depending on the spell, you can more than easily double your damage output. This allows characters to get kills, and continue snow balling out of control. This stops an effective comeback, or at least slows it down a lot.
In DotA 1 and 2, this doesn't exist. Spells do the damage listed, and nothing else. If a spell caster gets a ton of kills, it will help them get money, but they aren't going to do more damage using that money. if you survive until the late game, this means that you now have more health, have magic resistance, your support gets you a spell shield, and in general are much more resistance to magic damage. You could still lose because you got owned hard early game, but there isn't as much as a snow balling effect.
I once got 5 kills as Omniknight, a support character. The carry, the character which shines once the game has gone on long enough and he's farmed up enough money, didn't get the money from the kills and thus wasn't able to fuck up the enemy team despite a major kill advantage. The concept of an AP carry doesn't exist in DotA.
You could even spend the resource points to boost up the automatic mobs
Because push-strats weren't already viable and effective.
Apreche, you're ridiculously uninformed, biased, and suggesting things that aren't even in your beloved (but equally shit) NS/CS. Play your games and go talk about something you actually know something about.
The most obvious thing to me is the lack of AP scaling. I will explain in-depth enough for those not in the know.
Interesting. But doens't that in one way mean that casters become relatively less powerful as game goes on. At least in LoL I have understood that you always try to build to strengthen the strong points of your character. Tanks get more health and armor. Casters get ability power, damage dealers get more attack power. Remove AP from casters and they go from glass cannons to less powerful cannons made with some real metal.
When you think about that it means that money gives you more defense potential than attack potential because with money you can boost your defensive stats, but not your spells.
One is map control. Instead of just having half a map from the get go, force players to go out and conquer the map and hold the map. As you get ahead the game gets harder because you have to defend more territory. This gives the game a lot more back and forth.
In LoL there is an alternative game mode where instead of walking down some lanes to the enemy base the map is a ring with five points along it and some smaller routes in the middle of the map going between the points and the objective is to control more points than your opponent. As long as you control more points as your opponent their central thingie starts taking damage, and more points you control the more damage the thinge takes until it reaches 0 and it's game over.
I've understood that isn't not as popular or liked than the basic game mode, but the few times I have played it I found it interesting. Also in that mode you start at level 3 with more than usual amount of gold so it has a faster start than normal mode.
The other thing is that levels in MOBA games can't be lost, as far as I know. In NS when you spend res you level up, but you can lose that shit! Get killed and grenade launcher is gone. Hope you got enough res to buy another one, or that you can get back to where you left it before it disappears. Got weapons level 3? Nope, I ate your arms lab!
Interesting idea, but I don't find many good ways of implementing that to LoL (dunno about dota) without breaking the game.
I think if I made a MOBA I would not have XP and leveling or gold. Instead I would have one, and only one, resource. Instead of leveling or getting gold, you would collect that resource. You could then spend that resource in various ways. You could buy items at the shop, but if you die, they drop! You can spend them on your team's structures to boost your entire team, such as upgrading towers. But those structures can be destroyed! You can also spend them to power yourself up, but you buy those power ups from structures that are in your town. If those structures are destroyed, then you loose that boost. You could even spend the resource points to boost up the automatic mobs and give the other team a lot of trouble they might not be ready for unless they do the same.
And remember,these are resource points. If you spend them all on good shit, but then you fail, you have to earn some points again. You can't just go straight back to the front lines. You lost most of your shit. But the same is true for the other team. Defending still has an advantage, so if they try to attack while you are down, they will need some serious power or they ill lose their shit as well.
Wont use too much time thinking about all the details how this kind of game would work with the general structure of dota-like, but on a surface level I like this idea. It could be interesting. There is one possible problem I can see I can't put it in better words so let me paint a example with words. Let's say that one team starts beating other team in the map and in teamfights. They are a good team, always knowing how to lure enemy team in to a trap and how to work as a team to crush the other team in teamfights. Now every time when they win a teamfight not only they get stronger, their enemy gets weaker. Wouldn't that only worsen the problem of game has been actually decided, but it has not ended yet? If the now defending team would try to farm some resource, the enemy team could easily prevent them from doing so, by being stronger and being able to kill enemy team members with ease.
Off course you didn't actually tell where the resource points come from. How those are acquired is quite a meaningful part of how the game would play out.
Interesting. But doens't that in one way mean that casters become relatively less powerful as game goes on. At least in LoL I have understood that you always try to build to strengthen the strong points of your character. Tanks get more health and armor. Casters get ability power, damage dealers get more attack power. Remove AP from casters and they go from glass cannons to less powerful cannons made with some real metal.
When you think about that it means that money gives you more defense potential than attack potential because with money you can boost your defensive stats, but not your spells.
These sorts of characters get utility items. Off the top of my head, they get stuff like:
Sheep stick, turns an enemy into a sheep. Mek: heals everyone on your team that's nearby. Eul's thingamajig: Lifts a person up in a cyclone. Mana boots: Restore mana to yourself and everyone around you. Blink dagger: teleport a certain range either into or away from the enemy. Force staff: Push yourself and anyone else in the direction they're facing.
I lied though. I just remembered, you can get a sceptre which upgrades your ultimate ability. That is something that makes a single one of your abilities more powerful by a specific amount, not a percentage. They can also get more health so that they can last longer and cast more spells in a fight. Don't get me wrong, they now have an advantage through levels and items if they get kills, but they aren't going to snow ball like in LoL. It doesn't have to be something defensive. A caster's reign of terror lasts for a shorter amount of time in DotA 2, and allows for a greater chance of comeback.
Of course you didn't actually tell where the resource points come from. How those are acquired is quite a meaningful part of how the game would play out.
We could probably assume that resource would come from the creeps/minions and from killing champions.
I like the idea, but how powerful are the upgrades in comparison to the normal levels of things? I could see the idea working if we used small percentage upgrades. Maybe %5-%10-%20 better kind of thing.
In League of Legends right now honestly, even with fed champions, by the end of the game, you can even things out. I feel like at any time, especially near the end, a key kill on the carry can lead you to push and take a dragon/baron, etc, which helps you even out the gap between the teams. I've come from deficits upwards of 25 kills/ 10 kills, and our team rallies and we win.
My biggest issue with League of Legends is the community. You have so many people trying to troll or screw with others that unless you run more than half of your team with friends, you end up losing because of some AFKer, quitter, or feeder. It's enough to make me wonder how new players can even start the game.
My proposition is that we make a game with integrated perfect voice chat, like DOTA/LOL, but have no levels and just gold like Scott said. Have 5 times more ability to relay information to each other, and reward players for working together. Lower AP/AD scaling, but it should still be there. Less focus on farming, more focus on upgrading in paper/rock/scissors fashion. You could make your turret an ice turret with an aoe, or a fire turret with a DoT, etc.
My big question is, should items off of your character drop when you die? Maybe have them turn into gold and you lose them. 400 AP means nothing if when I kill you in a bad situation, you lose your advantage.
My biggest issue with League of Legends is the community. You have so many people trying to troll or screw with others that unless you run more than half of your team with friends, you end up losing because of some AFKer, quitter, or feeder. It's enough to make me wonder how new players can even start the game.
I dunno. From my experience with levels 1 to 16 of LoL in eastern europe servers it's not that bad. There has been couple of quitters, haven't seen a feeder myself actually and some unpolite dicks who thinks that noob is a standard word to usa about your teammates. Outside of that biggest issue for me is those damn polish people who seem to have lots of communication trough the match, but they like to use their own damn language. Russians are more rare, but even worse, they use their own letters too.
My big question is, should items off of your character drop when you die? Maybe have them turn into gold and you lose them. Snowballing means nothing if when I kill you in a bad situation, you lose your advantage.
Maybe if there is a system like in LoL where you build stronger items from weaker ones those could break town to their components and if you don't have enough room in your inventory for all of the component items some of them would be automatically sold. That way if you spend 15 minutes to build an awesome item you don't lose all of it for a one strike of bad luck.
I'm not sure the exact mechanic for dropping weapons when you die. Maybe they don't even drop, they just disappear. The important part is that you lose them. That way game momentum can actually shift. Someone who has powered up a whole bunch has one shot to actually make use of that power.
Right now if I'm level a zillion and I attack and fail, I come back and I'm still level a zillion. Our team still has the momentum even though you just gained a nice reward for killing me. Instead of you getting a reward like that for killing me, I need to have a major setback so that I have to build myself up again. The reward you get is that our team is that a weak spot has opened on our team, and you have a chance for victory.
I'm not sure the exact mechanic for dropping weapons when you die. Maybe they don't even drop, they just disappear. The important part is that you lose them. That way game momentum can actually shift. Someone who has powered up a whole bunch has one shot to actually make use of that power.
Right now if I'm level a zillion and I attack and fail, I come back and I'm still level a zillion. Our team still has the momentum even though you just gained a nice reward for killing me. Instead of you getting a reward like that for killing me, I need to have a major setback so that I have to build myself up again. The reward you get is that our team is that a weak spot has opened on our team, and you have a chance for victory.
Losing items punishes the team that is behind. The way it currently is eventually the worst person will catch the best person in items and the game becomes only a contest between the skill of the two teams. If you lost items then the people behind would never catch up, and one small mistake would end the game in the first few minutes. It also punishes much of the tactical decisions of playing. If you lose your items you can't really dive to save a tower or a teammate.
I'm not sure the exact mechanic for dropping weapons when you die. Maybe they don't even drop, they just disappear. The important part is that you lose them. That way game momentum can actually shift. Someone who has powered up a whole bunch has one shot to actually make use of that power.
Right now if I'm level a zillion and I attack and fail, I come back and I'm still level a zillion. Our team still has the momentum even though you just gained a nice reward for killing me. Instead of you getting a reward like that for killing me, I need to have a major setback so that I have to build myself up again. The reward you get is that our team is that a weak spot has opened on our team, and you have a chance for victory.
Losing items punishes the team that is behind. The way it currently is eventually the worst person will catch the best person in items and the game becomes only a contest between the skill of the two teams. If you lost items then the people behind would never catch up, and one small mistake would end the game in the first few minutes. It also punishes much of the tactical decisions of playing. If you lose your items you can't really dive to save a tower or a teammate.
Well, that's another major problem in the game that needs fixing. A lot of things are just too powerful. Right now some item you have matters more than all the strategy in the world. Ideally the game would be designed such that even someone with no items or boosts at all should have at least a slight advantage over someone who is completely maxed out because the decisions you make are more important.
Just like how in Counter-Strike a guy with a para, full armor, all the grenades, night vision, etc. can be taken out by a glock headshot from a naked guy. Points and levels and items and boosts should only help you as much as more expensive weapons help you in CS or NS.
Well, that's another major problem in the game that needs fixing. A lot of things are just too powerful. Right now some item you have matters more than all the strategy in the world. Ideally the game would be designed such that even someone with no items or boosts at all should have at least a slight advantage over someone who is completely maxed out because the decisions you make are more important.
Disagreement! Getting better equipment ties to a gameplay skills. In dota-likes (or at least in LoL) you have be be better at getting money than your enemy and you have to know what to buy and when (or read a build guide online if you are lazy like me).
The money grabbing is actually quite a big part of the game and main motivator in early game decisions. Usually beginning of the game is all about killing the little monsters and getting gold from them and maybe (like I like to do) harassing the enemy team so they are unable to do so as effectively. Also in early team fights gold is probably one of the biggest motivators to do team fights and to kill members of enemy team. Xp is part of it too, but if game drags on everyone will be at max level at some point and then what you are wearing can make a difference (and skill of the team, obviously).
Your ideas of doing badly being punished go to the territory of too much punishment. I have previously on other threads stated how I dislike games that feel like they are too punishing and I don't think that challenge or a test of gameplay skill needs to be tied to a system of heavy punishments.
Your ideas of doing badly being punished go to the territory of too much punishment. I have previously on other threads stated how I dislike games that feel like they are too punishing and I don't think that challenge or a test of gameplay skill needs to be tied to a system of heavy punishments.
You don't like it, but it is a better test of skill. Better tests of skill are typically more stick than carrot. When you have too much carrot, it becomes a game of momentum.
I think your guys problem is that you are too invested in the genre. You are inside the box and can't think outside of it. The fact is that all of the games in this genre are married to these ideas that were in the original DotA, and they are only innovating on things on the fringe. Thus the rules are full of humongous flaws that people refuse to even consider changing.
You've got a shitty old house that needs remodeling. To make it not suck you're going to have to knock down some walls. You don't like that, so you only allow the furniture to be changed. No matter how much you change the furniture, your house still sucks.
Also, remember that people are usually poor judges of what they will like. The first time I heard about Counter-Strike I was told that when you die you don't respawn. You have to sit there and wait. What was my reaction? That's the dumbest game I ever heard! Who wants to sit around waiting to play most of the time? Turns out that seemingly awful punishment was a great revolution.
Obviously lots of details need to be worked out in playtesting. We are without a doubt not even at the shit-talk stage here. Since this is just tossing around ideas and nobody has even said they have a plan to make any such game. The thing is, I really see potential in this kind of game. Small teams, overhead view, strategically attack and defend on a map where a war is going on. Lots of different characters and abilities to choose from. I can easily imagine an awesome game like that. If the developers would take more risks and really try out some new game mechanics, instead of just adding new heroes or whatever, I really think a great game could emerge. And as far as I'm concerned, if existing MOBA players hate that game, that is a sign the game is doing something right.
You get more gold when you kill someone who has had multiple kills in a row without dying. You also get more experience when you kill someone who is a higher level. The higher your level is, the longer it takes to respawn. It also costs more money to buy yourself back to life if you want to ignore the timer.
Your ideas of doing badly being punished go to the territory of too much punishment. I have previously on other threads stated how I dislike games that feel like they are too punishing and I don't think that challenge or a test of gameplay skill needs to be tied to a system of heavy punishments.
DotA 2 has a way higher amount of punishment. For example, Windrunner has a stun that leaves you disabled for 4 entire seconds if there is anything behind you. This is a major amount of time that can leave you fucked over. If you catch someone out of position, you can fuck someone up who is much more powerful than you if you have some backup. Getting map control through wards can help you see enemy movement, and if you coordinate, you can gang up on someone to take them down while they're alone. all it takes are some mistakes from the enemy for you to take advantage of. LoL is much more forgiving, which is what I think is another aspect of why comebacks are harder. You don't have the tools to reverse the momentum because of a lack of any real punishing abilities.
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However, that policy might result in a huge increase of problem 2, feeding. Your solution of a surrender vote helps, but isn't perfect. I can try to think of a few better ideas. Perhaps as you die more your respawn time gets longer and longer. In addition, the more you die, the less XP and gold you are worth.
Or maybe fundamentally change the rules of the game. One death, and you're OUT. Or maybe three lives, then that's it, you're done. I think that's actually one of the fundamental problems with MOBA is they have the problem of the game being over, even though it's not over.
You are frequently in a situation where one team has won, and can not lose unless they give up intentionally. Yet, the game is still going because they haven't actually finished the job yet. Not only that, but even though the other team can not win, it will still take some time for the job to be finished and for it to actually count as a victory. The rules of the game need to change such that as soon as one team has no chance for victory, the game should end immediately. There need to be some other end-game conditions besides surrender or destroying the other team's flag/pool/crystal thingy. I also think that having these other conditions could really change the strategies of the game for the better.
It does pretty much exactly nothing to stop rage-quitting, which is still rampant - the second the team starts obviously losing, or if the other team puts in too strong of a showing at the start, people start running like rats from a sinking ship. And that's a community that takes the leaderboards/stats super-seriously. I've seen people argue that the punishment for boosting should be the same as for cheating (ie, a permanent ban), because it ruins the "Honesty" of the leaderboards.
The way the game is, that secondary objective is ALREADY the main objective, as it is the real determiner of who wins. The destruction of the central thingie is an after-effect as far as I can see, and the real victory was determined some time prior by other factors.
Even if the game doesn't explicitly say that other goal is your objective, it appears that it actually is.
Good games end when they're over, when victory is a mathematical impossibility by anyone but the person/team already winning, or at least very close to that point. The major problems all DOTA-likes have leads me to believe that victory is determined with reasonable certainty very early in an average match, and the rest of the play is just book-keeping.
Honestly League of Legend's implementation for the most-part works for me. I think they should actually scale up under-performing players a bit so that the game doesn't become so lopsided so easily. One little suggestion would be to give a little bit of experience-over-time like they do gold-over-time so that every player stays roughly with +2/-2 levels, and possibly scale jungling so that it's either less mandatory or at least more interesting.
But in this case the "goal" of destroying the enemy central thing is not a goal, but a test has the goal of being stronger team been achieved. Because in dota-likes the game gives edge to the defending team and the defense has more edge the more the enemy pushes. When you are under your own turret you can attack the enemy, but if the enemy attacks you the powerful turret will hit them and it will hurt. Similarly it takes less time for minions and respawned players to reach the place where pushing team is. Thus the defense can push the game around by being good at defending.
Yes there are situations where middle game clearly tells witch team has won and rest is just customary, but there are also games that turn around in a late phase. Also I believe that the cases where game is clearly in favor of one team in the middle of the game it's because at that point one team has proven that they are clearly better team than the other and between equally strong teams (in this case I mean player skill rather than any game element) there probably is more surprises in late games. But that's just my hunch and I might be wrong. And I believe that voting to surrender, while maybe not the best solution to the problem of lost game that drags on just because, it's pretty good and probaly better than any computer algorithm could be.
Edit: Actually haven't I heard in Geeknights the podcasts some stories about games of Natural Selection where marines have taken the last stand against the enemy that cannot be beaten and have been holing their final positions for quite a while before ether rising to the unexpected victory or fallen to sad defeat? And never I have heard that as a problem while discussing about that particular game.
I don't really see how griefing is funner in DotA than in other games. It's hilarious in all games. I've never really seen anyone grief either. I've seen some people throw a hissy fit and refuse to play and fuck around when we're losing, but never actually just plain out grief. Sure, when the game is pretty much over I've done stupid shit, and at that point it doesn't matter. People are highly competitive tryhards and don't want to lose, anyway. To be honest, I don't really see how you can change some things to stop griefing. For example, this one guy called Tiny can throw any unit near him to an enemy, including your allies:
How would you stop this character from also throwing one of your allies into an enemy tower? Is there a way to determine if this act is griefing, or actually a tactic that may or may not have worked and killed the entire team? What about Vengeful Spirit who can swap herself with either an ally or a friend? Or Pudge who can hook either an ally or a friend to themselves? Both have so much griefing potential, but then you would get rid of plays like this which I think make the game much more fun and awesome compared to league of legends.
If you plain out don't like the existence of such features and dislike the genre because of it, then I'm cool with that. There's only 8 games in this genre that I can think of anyway - 4 of which are horrible, and 1 which is just a footnote in history. You can also play League of Legends.
As for the tribunal in League of Legends as a system of determining if someone should be banned: I've read plenty about how everyone logs in, click punish, and gets their free points for buying stuff like new heroes, or runes which make your hero better. I don't know if such a system would be wise. The award for being a reviewer of reports should be carefully chosen if existent at all.
Also I would be interested of hearing what game elements Dota 2 has changed so it has easier comebacks?
Leveling in this kind of game is actually not so bad. It's not like you keep the levels from game to game. Everyone has the same opportunity to level under the same rules. People who level faster clearly have some skill or knowledge that puts them ahead of the other players, and they were able to execute in game.
That being said, it can get dumb because once a player is so far ahead on levels, the other parts of the game don't matter. The rock/paper/scissors mechanic of when you actually have to encounter your opponents is completely pointless. If they have 10 levels on you, your strategy doesn't matter. Only leveling skill mattered. Might as well just have a race to see who can level the fastest.
And I realized, there are two things that NS does which MOBA could take and make themselves amazing.
One is map control. Instead of just having half a map from the get go, force players to go out and conquer the map and hold the map. As you get ahead the game gets harder because you have to defend more territory. This gives the game a lot more back and forth.
The other thing is that levels in MOBA games can't be lost, as far as I know. In NS when you spend res you level up, but you can lose that shit! Get killed and grenade launcher is gone. Hope you got enough res to buy another one, or that you can get back to where you left it before it disappears. Got weapons level 3? Nope, I ate your arms lab!
I think if I made a MOBA I would not have XP and leveling or gold. Instead I would have one, and only one, resource. Instead of leveling or getting gold, you would collect that resource. You could then spend that resource in various ways. You could buy items at the shop, but if you die, they drop! You can spend them on your team's structures to boost your entire team, such as upgrading towers. But those structures can be destroyed! You can also spend them to power yourself up, but you buy those power ups from structures that are in your town. If those structures are destroyed, then you loose that boost. You could even spend the resource points to boost up the automatic mobs and give the other team a lot of trouble they might not be ready for unless they do the same.
And remember,these are resource points. If you spend them all on good shit, but then you fail, you have to earn some points again. You can't just go straight back to the front lines. You lost most of your shit. But the same is true for the other team. Defending still has an advantage, so if they try to attack while you are down, they will need some serious power or they ill lose their shit as well.
I'll leave you to explore all the awesome consequences of this kind of mechanic.
Spells in LoL do a flat amount of damage. They also additionally do damage based off of the amount of ability power you have. The amount of additional damage is a percentage of AP. You can buy items that you get with AP. For example, a spell can do 100 damage + 50% of AP. With 50 AP, that spell will do 25 extra damage. With 300 AP, that spell will do 200 extra damage.
When you have a fully decked out character, you can get 400+ AP. Depending on the spell, you can more than easily double your damage output. This allows characters to get kills, and continue snow balling out of control. This stops an effective comeback, or at least slows it down a lot.
In DotA 1 and 2, this doesn't exist. Spells do the damage listed, and nothing else. If a spell caster gets a ton of kills, it will help them get money, but they aren't going to do more damage using that money. if you survive until the late game, this means that you now have more health, have magic resistance, your support gets you a spell shield, and in general are much more resistance to magic damage. You could still lose because you got owned hard early game, but there isn't as much as a snow balling effect.
I once got 5 kills as Omniknight, a support character. The carry, the character which shines once the game has gone on long enough and he's farmed up enough money, didn't get the money from the kills and thus wasn't able to fuck up the enemy team despite a major kill advantage. The concept of an AP carry doesn't exist in DotA.
Apreche, you're ridiculously uninformed, biased, and suggesting things that aren't even in your beloved (but equally shit) NS/CS. Play your games and go talk about something you actually know something about.
When you think about that it means that money gives you more defense potential than attack potential because with money you can boost your defensive stats, but not your spells. In LoL there is an alternative game mode where instead of walking down some lanes to the enemy base the map is a ring with five points along it and some smaller routes in the middle of the map going between the points and the objective is to control more points than your opponent. As long as you control more points as your opponent their central thingie starts taking damage, and more points you control the more damage the thinge takes until it reaches 0 and it's game over.
I've understood that isn't not as popular or liked than the basic game mode, but the few times I have played it I found it interesting. Also in that mode you start at level 3 with more than usual amount of gold so it has a faster start than normal mode. Interesting idea, but I don't find many good ways of implementing that to LoL (dunno about dota) without breaking the game. Wont use too much time thinking about all the details how this kind of game would work with the general structure of dota-like, but on a surface level I like this idea. It could be interesting. There is one possible problem I can see I can't put it in better words so let me paint a example with words. Let's say that one team starts beating other team in the map and in teamfights. They are a good team, always knowing how to lure enemy team in to a trap and how to work as a team to crush the other team in teamfights. Now every time when they win a teamfight not only they get stronger, their enemy gets weaker. Wouldn't that only worsen the problem of game has been actually decided, but it has not ended yet? If the now defending team would try to farm some resource, the enemy team could easily prevent them from doing so, by being stronger and being able to kill enemy team members with ease.
Off course you didn't actually tell where the resource points come from. How those are acquired is quite a meaningful part of how the game would play out.
Sheep stick, turns an enemy into a sheep.
Mek: heals everyone on your team that's nearby.
Eul's thingamajig: Lifts a person up in a cyclone.
Mana boots: Restore mana to yourself and everyone around you.
Blink dagger: teleport a certain range either into or away from the enemy.
Force staff: Push yourself and anyone else in the direction they're facing.
I lied though. I just remembered, you can get a sceptre which upgrades your ultimate ability. That is something that makes a single one of your abilities more powerful by a specific amount, not a percentage. They can also get more health so that they can last longer and cast more spells in a fight. Don't get me wrong, they now have an advantage through levels and items if they get kills, but they aren't going to snow ball like in LoL. It doesn't have to be something defensive. A caster's reign of terror lasts for a shorter amount of time in DotA 2, and allows for a greater chance of comeback.
I like the idea, but how powerful are the upgrades in comparison to the normal levels of things? I could see the idea working if we used small percentage upgrades. Maybe %5-%10-%20 better kind of thing.
In League of Legends right now honestly, even with fed champions, by the end of the game, you can even things out. I feel like at any time, especially near the end, a key kill on the carry can lead you to push and take a dragon/baron, etc, which helps you even out the gap between the teams. I've come from deficits upwards of 25 kills/ 10 kills, and our team rallies and we win.
My biggest issue with League of Legends is the community. You have so many people trying to troll or screw with others that unless you run more than half of your team with friends, you end up losing because of some AFKer, quitter, or feeder. It's enough to make me wonder how new players can even start the game.
My proposition is that we make a game with integrated perfect voice chat, like DOTA/LOL, but have no levels and just gold like Scott said. Have 5 times more ability to relay information to each other, and reward players for working together. Lower AP/AD scaling, but it should still be there. Less focus on farming, more focus on upgrading in paper/rock/scissors fashion. You could make your turret an ice turret with an aoe, or a fire turret with a DoT, etc.
My big question is, should items off of your character drop when you die? Maybe have them turn into gold and you lose them. 400 AP means nothing if when I kill you in a bad situation, you lose your advantage.
Right now if I'm level a zillion and I attack and fail, I come back and I'm still level a zillion. Our team still has the momentum even though you just gained a nice reward for killing me. Instead of you getting a reward like that for killing me, I need to have a major setback so that I have to build myself up again. The reward you get is that our team is that a weak spot has opened on our team, and you have a chance for victory.
Just like how in Counter-Strike a guy with a para, full armor, all the grenades, night vision, etc. can be taken out by a glock headshot from a naked guy. Points and levels and items and boosts should only help you as much as more expensive weapons help you in CS or NS.
The money grabbing is actually quite a big part of the game and main motivator in early game decisions. Usually beginning of the game is all about killing the little monsters and getting gold from them and maybe (like I like to do) harassing the enemy team so they are unable to do so as effectively. Also in early team fights gold is probably one of the biggest motivators to do team fights and to kill members of enemy team. Xp is part of it too, but if game drags on everyone will be at max level at some point and then what you are wearing can make a difference (and skill of the team, obviously).
Your ideas of doing badly being punished go to the territory of too much punishment. I have previously on other threads stated how I dislike games that feel like they are too punishing and I don't think that challenge or a test of gameplay skill needs to be tied to a system of heavy punishments.
I think your guys problem is that you are too invested in the genre. You are inside the box and can't think outside of it. The fact is that all of the games in this genre are married to these ideas that were in the original DotA, and they are only innovating on things on the fringe. Thus the rules are full of humongous flaws that people refuse to even consider changing.
You've got a shitty old house that needs remodeling. To make it not suck you're going to have to knock down some walls. You don't like that, so you only allow the furniture to be changed. No matter how much you change the furniture, your house still sucks.
Also, remember that people are usually poor judges of what they will like. The first time I heard about Counter-Strike I was told that when you die you don't respawn. You have to sit there and wait. What was my reaction? That's the dumbest game I ever heard! Who wants to sit around waiting to play most of the time? Turns out that seemingly awful punishment was a great revolution.
Obviously lots of details need to be worked out in playtesting. We are without a doubt not even at the shit-talk stage here. Since this is just tossing around ideas and nobody has even said they have a plan to make any such game. The thing is, I really see potential in this kind of game. Small teams, overhead view, strategically attack and defend on a map where a war is going on. Lots of different characters and abilities to choose from. I can easily imagine an awesome game like that. If the developers would take more risks and really try out some new game mechanics, instead of just adding new heroes or whatever, I really think a great game could emerge. And as far as I'm concerned, if existing MOBA players hate that game, that is a sign the game is doing something right.