11 replies to this topic

[Fayth]

Well I was going to initially write some short and straight to the point post about people's arguments about Dota 2 being hard and not fun and blah blah blah, then it kinda went into a long rant about Dota 2, and stuff. Well I decide since I wrote a bunch of nonsense anyways I mind as well post it.

As most of you people know that there have been articles written that bashed on Dota 2 for being a game that has ancient game mechanics that does not have a place in the new era of “Action RTS” games. Dota 2 punishes players too harshly for deaths, forces you to do many tedious things and having over complicated heroes. I will offer counter arguments for those points and other arguments that people have voiced or have complained as well. I will refer to Starcraft 1 and 2 examples so that I can attempt to make a comparison to Dota 2 to make the point a bit more clear and explain things better. For people who are not familiar with Starcraft at all I will try to explain to the best of my abilities as if the person does not know anything at all, and they are total “noobs” to Starcraft. I will also make comparisons with Dota 2 and League of Legends to contrast two different games. I will hope that people will read this and change their attitudes towards Dota 2 and have a more enjoyable experience and have fun playing the game.

Let’s start with some background for Starcraft 2.

Starcraft 2 is the most popular online game in terms of just sear number of players and the number of competitive tournaments. No game at this current time comes close to Starcraft 2’s popularity for E-sports events, or even the number of people who watch and stream the game. Its success is based on the first Starcraft game which boomed in Korea during its recession to become the most popular played and watched game in the country. In Korea they even have TV channels just dedicated to Starcraft, which shows just how popular this game is in that country. The game is basically about building armies, harvesting resources, and destroying all the opposition’s buildings and become victorious. There are 3 main races; Terran, Protoss and Zerg. Each race has their own unique units and has their weaknesses, and strengths. The game is very deep and each match has different outcomes, and different build orders, strategy, and unit compositions. So no matches are ever the same. This was the excitement and the joy of just watching a professional level game of Starcraft 2. Just to see what people can do in Starcraft 2 fascinates observers, the amount of skill required to mimic what some of these professional gamers is really high. It just seemed the sky was the limited on what some of these players can pull off. Not all Starcraft 2 watchers played the game themselves, some are people who never even played the game and they still enjoy watching just as much as others who have poured countless hours into playing this game. Starcraft 2 continues to grow and get more and more viewers as time goes by.

Now time to dive into the main arguments.

Dota 2 has been heavily criticized for being too unfriendly to new comers to the game and being very hard to learn since you have hundreds of heroes and many items that did many things, and had many purposes for purchasing them. This argument, people have said that would be the downfall of this game and people after being too frustrated will just not play this game anymore and move on to another game like League of Legends. This reason alone will stagnant Dota 2’s player base and will cause it to never come close to League of Legend’s popularity, just like many other really complicated games like Natural Selection, Eve Online, Red Orchestra, and etc. (all are very hard games to learn and play and have small player base) . This argument almost sounds ridiculous and silly. Complication alone is never a reason why people don’t play a game. Just look at Starcraft 2, this game is very complicated and is almost as hard or harder to be very good at, as Dota 2. You have to know many builds orders, understand how each units work and what they do, know what your opponents are doing and what they plan on doing, timing attacks, how to control your units, hotkeys, counters, and the list almost seems to go on and on. You know by now that this game will need some serious amounts of time to understand this game intimately and be very good at it. I mean sure you don’t have to watch and read countless tutorials on the game to actually play it with enjoyment. You can be in Bronze league (lowest player bracket) the whole time, playing Starcraft 2 blissfully and still have fun. It’s up to decide if you want to improve or not, and bother to spend a lot of time learning the game to its fullest extent. You can do the same with Dota 2, as well. You don’t have to watch videos on Youtube on how to become better, or go on Playdota and read every single hero guide. You can have fun playing the game at low levels, and still feel that the game is worth playing for just the enjoyment’s sake. For almost any game you can make this argument for and Dota 2 is no different. If the argument of a game being too complicated and not fun was true, Starcraft 2 would have never been as popular as it is now.

The pinnacle argument for complication being anti-fun would be the Dota 2 heroes themselves, using Invoker as the prime example of that. People say he is a hero that is hard to play and overly complicated for no real reason at all. They say a hero (or champion) should be easy to use and learn, so that everyone can have fun with playing those heroes instead of being frustrated by using heroes that have abilities that are hard to use or execute. Players who have spent more time playing with the hero will have an unfair advantage compared to other players that have not. People that are not familiar with what the hero will do poorly against them, and will not have fun playing the game, compared to some who actually knows what that hero can do and what abilities it has. When I read this, it seems to not make any sense at all. Of course people who have play a hero more than another person is going to better with it, and have a better time facing them as well. If you put time into learning something (which does not need your whole life time) then the payoff is greater. Like many other games you have to learn how to play and then devote sometime into it if you plan on getting better. If that’s not for you then don’t play the game, there many other games out there that don't need many hours of play time. Let’s take this example of Starcraft 2, if you play Zerg all the time you would be much more familiar with units and the build orders for them. Let’s say you face someone who plays Protoss but have not play against Zergs often or even know what their units do. Since the Zerg player which is you, knows the ins and outs of its race, knows how to deal with the Protoss. The Zerg player has more knowledge and experience, so the player proceeds to beat the Protoss player. Is it unfair or anti-fun that the Protoss player who hasn’t faced against many Zerg players, or haven’t played Zerg doesn’t know how their units work, or their build order? The answer is no. You play the game and you learn from how Zerg players play and what each of the units does, what their timing attacks and build orders are, and you improve from that. Just because someone has spent more time playing a particular race more doesn’t make it less fun for people who didn’t, it’s simple as that. If you want to have fun in a competitive game then you have to learn different aspect of the game, and that comes from experience. The same applies to different or complicated heroes, you just going to have to learn what they do, and act accordingly.

I would like to point out that League of Legends has also a huge “anti-fun” factor that is the game and which I think is a horrible game design; the levelling system and runes. If you don’t want to put any money into the game then it will take a lot of your time to actually acquire all the necessary things to play the “real” game and be at the same level and have no handicaps. The small advantages that need you to level your account and acquire runes have big effects on the gameplay. I know you won’t run into some that is ranked higher than you with the max level and all runes but if you do face someone with more levels and runes then you, they have an advantage over you. They can beat you by simply just having those advantages which are unfair and not fun. The level and rune advantages can feel that you are facing someone in Dota 2 with full inventory items and you having no items at all (ok maybe not that drastic, but you get the point). In the early game it’s pretty small advantages but never less they have the edge over the opponent and even if they are better, the person with the advantage will win the lane. I think this is almost worse than someone not knowing how a complex hero works, or feel handicapped because they are playing one and have no clue. At the very least they don’t have anything that would give them a disadvantage from the game from the start. If a high level player plays the complex hero it will start the same as if a compete newbie plays one. The only difference really is the players themselves that makes the hero powerful or weak. With all “Action RTS” games like Dota 2, having a levelling system doesn’t work very well, and should be only in games like World of Warcraft where the game is based on levelling and acquiring items. The other problem with skill builds and runes in League of Legends is that it forces players to know how to build certain heroes and what runes to use with each of them. You can’t simply use one set of builds to work perfectly with all heroes, and have to go on websites to see what are the “best” builds are. You do the same with Dota 2, there are good builds with skill levelling and items which is also in League of Legends but you don’t do this pre-game and everyone has access to these skills and items. This can be considered something that isn’t fun and it adds more complexity to the game?

The idea that complexity of a hero that makes it not fun to play can be the same if the hero were simplified and have no variation from another one. If the ability feels the same with just different particle effects then it’s not a different hero. People after a while will realize that there is little difference between the heroes and have played and see the same things over and over again. This will get old fast and will not be fun anymore. There are only so many things that you can add to the game that will be simple but different from all the other abilities. Sure you can make an ability that is single target but do different amounts of damage, with a slow, or damage over time, or a debuff and etc, but it will feel similar to another ability. This is why Dota 2 differs on its overall game design and development over time, it adds variations that are new and are fun. Each hero in Dota is very unique and fits in many different roles, that why the meta game constantly shifts.

The next big reason that makes Dota 2 anti-fun is the harsh punishment for dying in the game. Dying in any game is not fun but it’s part of every game. Each game has different ways of punishing players for dying and that can be anything from a long wait time to losing a chunk of money. Losing a big amount of gold for dying and the killer gaining it, is the reason that people say makes Dota not fun. That is simply not true, and I would say it’s more frustration on the player who dies often. Frustration can be experience from any game, and League of Legends is no different. Sure you don’t lose gold for dying but does it mean that they are not as equally frustrated and not having fun? No one wants to die 10 times in a row to the same person, that is simply not fun (for the killer it’s probably fun). Simply having the punishment more bearable does not make it more fun and better than punishing someone more. I know the deaths in Dota 2 can snowball faster and can lead to game that might to be impossible to come back from, but they are still possible. How is it fun to have a team upset you when you have the massive kill advantage, and rob you of your victory not due to skill or being outplayed but simply because the other team is not punished enough (in League of Legends, more you kill them, the less gold you get). I think that is simply wrong and does not create for more fun or excitement when teams can just comeback from a dire situation undeserving. The penalty and reward system in Dota is implemented so it reward players that kill other heroes and put themselves in at an advantage, which allows the team to be one step closer to victory. If you successfully killed the other team and up by 20 kills, do you not think it’s fair for the losing team to be able to win, simply because they weren't punished enough? I don't think so. The winning team has outplayed the other team, and maybe even picked better, but very deserving of the victory. That to me is what fun is supposed to be, and that is being rewarded for killing other heroes. No one finds losing fun but that’s the reality of the game and every game that is competitive. Simply making the punishment for death much less doesn’t make it more fun and fair at all.

Now we will dive into the mechanics of the game.

Everyone knows that Dota 2 is trying very hard to replicate the same mechanics of WC3 Dota and keep it true to the original. Some people have said that these mechanics are out of date and needs to change in order for the game to stay fresh and creative. The mechanics that is mainly argued against is the ability to deny creeps/hero/towers. The main argument is that I seems to be over counter-intuitive to do so, because why in the world would you kill your own creeps, it's your own ally. You wouldn't kill your own team, would you? Well of course the logical answer is no, but I mean this a video game for fuck's sake. It's a game mechanic in the game that adds more depth to the game, there is skill involved when trying to last hit and deny. It's playing mind games with your opponent in the lane, and trying to outwit them, so that you can gain small advantages in the game. It may seem a tedious thing for some people to do but it's the nature of the game, I mean some hero just need to get lots of farm to acquire the items they need to be powerful, that can be tedious to some as well. If you hate doing that then this game genre is not for you, because farming is a very important aspect of the game. Denying in Dota 2 seems to be a counter-intuitive thing to do, but when we look at Starcraft we have many game mechanics that may seem like that way as well, but does not makes the game less fun or make no sense to do. Take for example at every starting minutes of a game match in Starcraft. Does it seem intuitive to send out a worker to scout every spawn locations on the map, to find the enemy? Not really, because why the fuck is the worker not mining resources, or building something? Seems to not make sense right? Well of course it doesn't, but it's a very basic skill to learn and have because finding the spawn location is very important, and can influence what strategy is used. Another counter-intuitive mechanic would be building placements, which is very important if you play Protoss, and Terran. Blocking off a choke point with important buildings such as Supply Depot (building that gives you more supply limit to build more units), and Barracks (building that produces units), seems to be counter-intuitive, but it's a mechanic that was discovered and used because it added another element to the game. Now with this block off you won't have a million Zerglings (very cheap and fast units that Zerg players can make) flooding into your base and killing you straight up. If it wasn't for counter-intimate mechanics then the game would become very stale, and old very fast. Counter-intimate mechanics adds depth to the game and adds more interesting elements.

Hopefully for people who have bothered to read it, would find that Dota can be fun for anyone that would choose to play the game. Dota 2 is a very deep game and it will take a very long time before you get decent at it, but what game doesn't take time to master and be good at. The reward for improving in Dota will defiantly show and you will find the game to be even more enjoyable. Enhance your experience with Dota 2 by grabbing some friends, making some new ones, join a Dota 2 community that is friendly, helpful and inviting. I promise you that you will have fun and play a game that will exist for who knows when... probably till the end of time.

Having more knowledge is the reward, not the lack of.

-Fayth

Click here to view the article

[ThePro-G]

TLDR - GOOD JOB

[Burrowed]

Actually read it all. And are all completely dead on IMO.

[Fayth]

Burrowed, on 23 February 2012 - 11:14 PM, said:

Actually read it all. And are all completely dead on IMO.

Thanks man!

ThePro-G, on 22 February 2012 - 10:45 PM, said:

TLDR - GOOD JOB

lol thanks!

[TheFifhtElder]

Very good topic
Thanks

[w1ndw0lf]

I laughed hard at the "the creep is your ally" part I just imagine there being a revolution among the creeps and the dire and the radiance creeps working together with Rosh and removing the heros from the fields of battle! VIVA LA REVOLUTION.

Also Fayth I'm supprised that you really put so much thought into this! This is only 1000 words off my extended essay I had to do for the IB....

[Fayth]

TheFifhtElder, on 25 February 2012 - 04:21 AM, said:

Very good topic
Thanks

Np!

w1ndw0lf, on 25 February 2012 - 05:42 AM, said:

I laughed hard at the "the creep is your ally" part I just imagine there being a revolution among the creeps and the dire and the radiance creeps working together with Rosh and removing the heros from the fields of battle! VIVA LA REVOLUTION.

Also Fayth I'm supprised that you really put so much thought into this! This is only 1000 words off my extended essay I had to do for the IB....

shhhhhh don't give the mindless creeps in Dota 2 any funny ideas

Yeah I think I could have articulated better, and maybe dive a little more deep into details, but it kinda just started to turn into a rant so I decide not to make it any longer, or put more things in.

[noah6247]

Dang good job Fayth. Even though it was super long

[malachor708]

"I would like to point out that League of Legends has also a huge “anti-fun” factor that is the game and which I think is a horrible game design; the levelling system and runes. If you don’t want to put any money into the game then it will take a lot of your time to actually acquire all the necessary things to play the “real” game and be at the same level and have no handicaps. The small advantages that need you to level your account and acquire runes have big effects on the gameplay. I know you won’t run into some that is ranked higher than you with the max level and all runes but if you do face someone with more levels and runes then you, they have an advantage over you. They can beat you by simply just having those advantages which are unfair and not fun."

I disagree with this. Low-level players who player LoL will be playing versus people of similar or the same level, I.E. if you have no runes or levels, you will be playing versus people with similar amounts of runes and levels.

[Fayth]

malachor708, on 25 February 2012 - 02:04 PM, said:

"I would like to point out that League of Legends has also a huge “anti-fun” factor that is the game and which I think is a horrible game design; the levelling system and runes. If you don’t want to put any money into the game then it will take a lot of your time to actually acquire all the necessary things to play the “real” game and be at the same level and have no handicaps. The small advantages that need you to level your account and acquire runes have big effects on the gameplay. I know you won’t run into some that is ranked higher than you with the max level and all runes but if you do face someone with more levels and runes then you, they have an advantage over you. They can beat you by simply just having those advantages which are unfair and not fun."

I disagree with this. Low-level players who player LoL will be playing versus people of similar or the same level, I.E. if you have no runes or levels, you will be playing versus people with similar amounts of runes and levels.

I've seen people that clearly had more runes and levels then me, but not by that much. Maybe they changed it but when I played it that was the case. Also from what i hear that was the case for some people. Either way I dont feel it's necessary good to have levels and a talent system in a game like this.

[Erakith]

I started reading, then developed ADD, and couldn't finish.

Oooo shiny

[catchmybulletz]

Awesome info bro