Reviews VideoGame / Dota 2

To be honest I don't know how the original DOTA played, nor do I know how it stacks up to LOL (And I don't intend on touching another MOBA...) but I will certainly agree that the community makes it near impossible to enjoy the game.

It played almost exactly the same. And that's the source of the problem. It hasn't evolved at ALL. I barely scratched the surface of my issues with the game, 400 words just isn't enough to fit them all in.

I will disagree on some, though not all, of this. You're right that Valve listened to the whining old school fanboys way too much, which resulted in an interface that is ... lacking, to put it lightly(no enemy mana bars, no overview of team health and mana etc.). Having no surrender option also resulted from their whining because it would supposedly "make you try harder", which has been demonstrated to be complete bullshit because people just leave if they're losing hard.

That being said, you don't get to say the game's mechanics are obsolete or that League is "better". The most you can claim is that it's different and you prefer it that way, because plenty of people prefer dota's mechanics, myself included. League feels like a watered down version thereof which is far too reliant on spamming your abilities until something dies or Flashes away because it starts out with similar damage numbers on abilities and (unless you get horribly fed) the abilities don't feel like they have anywhere near the impact that they do in dota because a champion on average has twice as much health as a hero of equivalent level and farm. On top of that, Riot is scared of making powerful abilities because they don't think it would be "fun". Well, plenty of people think it WOULD be fun and those people play dota, where you can have a hero that can single-handedly stunlock the entire enemy team with a well placed ult. Riot would never dare include an ability like that because in the meta-game they have established that would be overpowered. On top of that, League somehow manages to have a zillion escape mechanisms but still feel like it lacks mobility. All it's flashes and dashes move a champion barely 1/5 across the screen whereas in dota you can get an item on any hero that can teleport you anywhere in an area of effect that is larger than the area covered by you screen. What League calls "stealth" is also seriously lacking compared to dota heroes like Riki who get's permanent passive stealth on level 6. Some people may consider watering down those aspects of a game as an improvement but that doesn't mean their opinion on the matter makes dota obsolete because other people clearly disagree with that idea and would rather play a game that is more high-risk-high-reward.

And all that being said, I rather play Heroes Of Newerth. It's a lot like dota but doesn't treat it like some sacred cow who's core mechanics should never be touched and has a meta-game that is about ganking and pushing more than it is about farming, but that's just personal preference.

re: Some Guy, I'm interested by some of your comments. I'm a Lo L player. I played WCIII but not Dota. I'm interested in taking a look at Dota 2, but have mixed feelings.

I'm a big follower of Surrender@20 and a lot of Riot's developer posts on their methodology and thought process. I feel pretty convinced that they're trying very hard to figure out what's a fun experience and bring that to the players, taking out things that aren't fun- i.e. getting perma C Ced in a teamfight. The game isn't perfect but I like it.

You mention a couple of examples and I was wondering if you could possibly clarify them. You say that in Dota 2 a single champion can "stunlock" an entire enemy team with his ult. When you say "stunlock" what do you mean? Can he just keep them stunned over and over again until they die? Or is it just a long stun? I mean, in Lo L champions like Sona or Zyra have AE CC ults but it's very hard to hit everyone with them and the CC doesn't last very long. I'm just curious as to what the distinction is. If one player can lockup the entire enemy team for a very long period of time, that risks being no fun for the recipient team. I suppose if it requires a lot of skill to pull off it should be rewarded, though!

As for stealth, I think Riot went over this a few times. Evelyn and Twitch were both stealth champions who were heavily reworked in order to hammer out the mechanic. The jist of it was: it was a ton of fun to be a stealthy champion who could disappear into the shadows, but for everyone else in the game things got a whole lot less fun and a whole lot more boring. If a stealth champion got to the point where they could beat you in a 1v1 then you weren't safe anywhere and had to play ultra conservative at all times to make sure you weren't exposed, etc. Well, I won't waffle on, the details are out there- I think Evelyn's article on the Lo L wiki has the posts mentioned under "history". In any case, the lack of stealth is a conscious choice, and I'm curious as to Valve's thoughts on balancing it.

The attitude of a lot of Dota 2 players (not yourself, as you're very eloquent and have stated your own preference for Ho N) is what puts me off it the most. I've generally been told that "it's better because it's Valve" and "it's better because it's Dota 2, the sequel to Dota", without really material explanations :(

In response to your disagreement, I disagree in turn with pretty much everything you said. You say insane OP abilities are "fun" which is true; fun for the player who gets to abuse them, not for anyone hit by them. In my time playing Dota 2 I have been locked down by a Faceless Void ult and butchered from full health to nothing with absolutely no response possible; I have seen my entire team picked off one after another by Sniper ults that knock off almost half of their HP every 25 seconds; I have seen Spirit Breaker charge across nearly the entire fucking map to stunlock me for several seconds while I get destroyed; I have been instagibbed repeatedly by Pudge landing his hook onto me from completely offscreen then ulting me to kill me with no warning or chance of escape; I have seen Phantom Lancer butcher entire teams with retardedly huge armies of clones while being completely unkillable himself. It's not fun, it's bullshit. Riot doesn't include these abilities because they realise (quite correctly) that they're horrible for game balance and completely inhibit counterplay- the first player to get an edge wins (thanks to the INSANE effects of Unstable Equilibrium) , or failing that, the first player to get their OP ability off first does. Also, LoL used to have long-term stealth like Dota 2's but it was eventually removed because Riot realised that it's a really bad idea. Claiming that LoL can't be "fun" because it has a lower power level is sheer lunacy because when everyone is still balanced against each other, you can still feel powerful without needing to be OP. What I'm saying, and I stand by my right to say this, is that LoL's metagame is better than Dota 2's.

Also some things are just mystifying. The ridiculous number of heroes and items who are reliant on the Random Number God (most notably Chaos Knight) means that it is PERFECTLY possible to be completely screwed by nothing more than your luck. In LoL we have a saying- "if you say it was 'luck' it's because you don't want to admit you got outplayed". In Dota 2, no, it's luck that Spirit Breaker procced his stupid Greater Bash on you 4 times in 10 seconds and you had absolutely no chance of fighting back. The randomly spawning runes only exacerbate this. There's just NO EXCUSE for how hopeless the item shop is. Controlling multiple units is a COLOSSAL pain, but even viewing other units is needlessly awkward- in LoL when you click on another unit a mini-window pops up in the top-left with its stats and items on it, but in Dota 2 it completely takes over your own interface even if it's going to go away again the instant you try and command your hero (a relic of the old RTS engine the original game was built on). And just to add insult to injury, in my experience the servers are rubbish, with barely a single game going by where I don't get lag spikes (playing on my LOCAL OCEANIC servers) and players don't get repeatedly disconnected or crippled by lag.

And frankly, I don't see why I "don't get to say the game's mechanics are obsolete". It's basically a fact, not an opinion. Go read The Pennyfarthing Effect page and ask yourself why FPS games aren't still controlled with the arrow keys, why RTS games allow you to group units and why RPGs don't still force you to go to a specific NPC "trainer" to level up once you've accumulated enough experience. The Random Number God elements alone make Dota 2 a joke compared to LoL from a serious competative standpoint and the differences in balance between the games make comparing LoL to Dota 2 like comparing a statue carved from a block of marble with a small hammer and a delicate chisel to a statue carved from a block of marble with a pickaxe. Riot explain every balance change they make in LoL and whether you agree with them or not, you can see their reasoning is in the service of balance. LoL is crafted, Dota 2 is thrown together.

I disagree about these abilities being OP.

Faceless Void requires a lot of farm to butcher your full health. You can prevent that by stopping his farm and ganking him. Sniper is a squishy hero that cannot escape at all. His ultimate is part of the reason he's not completely worthless. If you can see Spirit Breaker charging at you from the map, you can easily teleport away to your fountain and watch him either stop on his track to save himself or get instagibbed like a fool. There's no excuse for not carrying a TP Scroll unless you're wearing Boots of Travel or you're Nature's Prophet. Hell, TP Scrolls are just 135 gold. It's like three last hits or so. Wards makes it easier for Pudge's enemy to see that hook coming. Pudge is honestly a Skill Gate character. Phantom Lancer is completely unkillable? Place a sentry ward or get anything that detects invisible heroes and illusions, and PL will be dead if there's any focus fire. He's squishy and can't take a lot of damage.

Literally all of these are rarely seen in competitive Dota 2 games for a reason. And that's because they're pubstompers. Except for Faceless Void, but he requires a lot of farm and professionals knows how to shut down his farming.

Fascinating, simply fascinating. I play League, and I find plenty of things to complain about as being OP or frustrating to face, and I've noted that in quite a few places I've seen it pointed out that League champions are too...tanky, I guess(?) compared DOTA heroes. Having been frustratingly insta-gibbed on quite a few occasions in League, I'm compelled to wonder if it's that bad in DOTA or if it's just...different. I can't say personally, because I've never played DOTA.

That said, there are some features that turn me off completely from DOTA, like denying creeps (I just feel this would be frustrating to be on the receiving end, and frankly apart from the strategic and monetary value of killing creeps, it's just part of the enjoyment and sense of accomplishment for me to kill them) and losing money upon being killed...it's frustrating enough to face down a counter-champion or simply a better player and suffer a handful of embarrassing deaths, I seriously doubt it would improve my gameplay experience to also lose gold on top of that.

Also, I don't like the "it's not OP because the pros don't do it" argument. The vast majority of players aren't pros and don't/can't do things on the level that pros can. Some things CAN be OP in casual games, and I think that's a valid complaint. I'm not saying one way or another about anything specific, just about that general argument. Which I hear from my League friends all the time while getting my butt kicked by a champion that's incredibly tough to deal with yet doesn't see major play in the pros.

One final note: thank GOODNESS they finally fixed Master Yi. That dude was WAY too powerful. I enjoyed playing him, but not nearly as much as I hated playing against him.

@ Kamen Review

Stunlock was probably the wrong term to use as it is really a single ability. In the case of Enigma, he targets an area and all enemies in the area are stunned, take dot and are pulled to the center slowly as long as he keeps channeling for a maximum of 4(?) seconds, in the meantime his team is free to unload on the enemy with everything they got. The area of effect is considerable. Once he gets a Blinkdagger he can jump on the enemy team from beyond their field of vision if they aren't mindful of who they're playing against and later he can get another item which gives him temporary magic immunity to make most stuns useless against him for a while. And despite all of that he's almost never picked in competitive play because people know how to counter him. Ward the map, spread out, cancel his ult, have silencer on your team etc. Unless he gets the entire team in his ult he's probably not going to manage keeping the full channel. Dota heroes may sound ridiculously overpowered on paper but it's really just a matter of knowing how to play against them.

Another hero with a large stun is Faceless Void, who can "freeze time" in an area, which means that everyone who enters it is stunned for the duration except himself. It also stuns allies. It's an instant cast with a large area that lasts for 4-5 seconds. Naturally it needs to be properly targeted as catching your allies inside it would be useless at best and dangerous at worst. If played properly he can stun enemies while allies attack them from outside the area. Also, he's a hard carry, meaning that later in the game he deals extreme damage if he gets proper farm, but he is also rarely picked in competitive play because he can be countered. He deals barely any damage in the beginning of the game and is very fragile, so if an enemy with some kind of CC stays out of his ult he won't be able to make full use of it and will be left in the middle of the enemy team with little defense after his ult expires.

All this is further compounded with the adaptability of the items in the game. If your supports are lacking a stun, there's an item for that. If your supports are lacking a Silence ability, there's an item for that. If your initiator lacks mobility, there's an item for that. If your ganker needs stealth, there's an item for that etc.

@Arcane Azmadi

"Abuse" them? Hmm.

Abuse - Verb: Use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse. Noun: The improper use of something.

I'm pretty sure none of the abilities in the game are being misused. They do exactly what they were designed to do. Your examples, as Eldrake already explained, are a result of you not knowing how to or simply refusing to play the game properly. If Faceless Void killed you that easily then clearly either he had grossly outfarmed you or you incorrectly estimated the correct course of action to take. If you saw Spirit Breaker charging then why didn't you do something about it? If Pudge hooked you from off-screen then either your supports weren't doing their job properly and didn't have adequate ward coverage or you were wandering alone in places you shouldn't be. All it takes is one aoe spell to determine which of the illusions is the real Lancer as the illusions take 300% more damage. These abilities don't "inhibit" counterplay, they demand it. Sometimes it includes knowing when not to pick a fight, and don't tell me Riot somehow eliminated that from League because I know for a fact that they didn't.

And I'm not claiming that League "can't be fun". I play it quite a lot myself when I take a break from HoN for a while. I'm saying it's a different kind of fun that appeals to different people. Dota is extremely punishing, where the slightest mistakes will cost you dearly and some people find more enjoyment in succeeding under such conditions than they would under lighter one's. They are willing to put up with potentially high frustration in return for a higher payoff in case of success.

The higher involvement of the Random Number God is true and I would like to see it reduced as well, but don't pretend that League doesn't have elements of it considering that Crit chance is still present in that game. And even with Chaos Knight it's never entirely down to luck.

I don't understand what your problem with the shop is, as I find it perfectly navigable myself. You want more distinct categories? Sorry, but the items don't really conform to a single one that neatly. Besides, you're probably better off choosing a guide beforehand and sticking with the suggested items while learning to play. The interface itself is indeed lacking in several respects, with that I agree, but it's nothing game-breaking. The servers, however, I've never had a problem with, even when playing across an ocean.

And please don't make broad statements about the overall balance of a game that you have never played on a competitive level. When you do that, you literally have no idea what you're talking about.

"The Unstable Equilibrium factor in the game is insane; a game can be basically over in less than 10 minutes with minimal chance for a comeback, but still take about 40 minutes to finish even if you're getting utterly stomped every step of the way."

This is a huge overstatement.I've very rarely come across a game where my team has been basically completely outplayed in ten minutes, and if that happens it never goes on for any more than thirty minutes. Anyway, it's a MOBA, you know you're making a time commitment.

"Regardless, Valve failed to add a surrender function, even though a losing game is a horrifically joyless experience."

Surrender buttons are stupid. Most MOBA players are weepy assholes who will call GG when they're team is behind five kills. Giving them a surrender button is a horrible idea. People have doubted me, so apparently I'm in the minority, but I've had many many comebacks that probably would have been surrenders in Lo L. It's your opinion that surrender buttons are good, but don't say Valve "failed" to add one. It's a deliberate choice.

"There is little to no counterplay beyond direct hard counters (almost no way to cleanse the insane amounts of CC for example)."

There's tons of counterplay, actually. Carries can be absurd, but you can stop their farm. Tidehunter's ulti is horrible but you can stunlock him and kill him first. It's not that hard. And there is an easy way to cleanse CC, it's called a BKB.

"Mechanics are obsolete and clunky,"

How so? There are some rule quirks, but they'll almost never come into play in a normal game.

"control is awkward and fiddly,"

How? Because there's turning time? Orb-walking? It's really not a big deal.

"the shop layout is embarassing,"

Embarrassing is a bit strong, but Lo L's is better, yeah.

"denying really adds nothing to the game apart from an extra layer of frustration"

Yeah it does. It gives your support something to do other than harrassing and baby-sitting the carry and gives you another way to cripple enemy carries (more counterplay!)

"and there are far too many pointless gimmicks that have been retained just because."

Namely? I've been playing it for a long time but transitioning to Lo L to Dota I didn't notice many "pointless gimmicks" beyond the above obscure rules quirks.

"Of course, you're not allowed to have these opinions. Stating them will bring out the usual responses of "go back to your casual easymode game, scrub" or "get better, noob" from the blinkered and blinded defenders of the game who refuse to admit that "more complicated" does NOT mean "better"."

In risk of being a "blinkered and blinded defender"- yeah, you do need to get better, or at least more familiar with the game. It's clear most of these opinions are from knowing nothing about the game and are approaching it from the perspective of a Lo L player. I'm not going to call you a "casual noob", but I am going to tell you that many Dota players love its "outdated mechanics" and that you really need to get off your high horse and not act like every Dota defender is an idiot.

Also worth noting that on my review of Lo L you said:

"While you go in depth, this is just the usual biased opinionating regurgitated by all the Fan Haters, as outlined on the YMMV page. Lo L and Dot A 2 have different mechanics, but you just come out and cite all these differences as proof that Dot A 2 is better, even though a lot of these mechanics are stale, unbalanced and obsolete. And a lot of your claims are just biased nonsense, especially your ridiculous rant about how you feel "condescended" to by the Fan Service."

This applies perfectly to your views, funny how that works.

Hey now, I virtually never call a surrender vote, and 90% of the time I vote no even in situations that look very grim. Even so, the surrender button DOES have its uses, because sometimes a game simply isn't fun and the best option is to cut losses and move on to the next game without having to slog through several more minutes of un-fun curb-stomping. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun. There's nothing wrong with a team deciding by majority rule that the game has ceased being fun and it's time to quit.

I too have had many, many unlikely comebacks, but it's ridiculous to say that there shouldn't be a surrender button because players are "weepy assholes." Stop making ad hominem generalizations, it does a disservice to your arguments.

They really are though. Maybe I should have have said "most", but I can't count all the times someone has called GG and/or ragequitted once we were behind two towers or so.

And how does not having a surrender option stop them from ragequitting?

I agree, I think people pull the trigger on the surrender button way too easily. They overreact to minor setbacks. But that's not a problem with the surrender mechanic, that's a problem with the players. In that sense, yeah, they're weepy assholes. But it's not because they have a surrender button available, that's all I'm saying. We're always gonna have to deal with trolls and rage-quitters. Heck, sometimes the surrender button is a viable option to get away from exactly those kinds of players.

^^ If you ragequit, you get punished with a low priority queue that's really horrible, so you don't really want to do it unless you're very angry (but you can freely leave after some time after that guy ragequitted; you won't be punished). So in Dota, you get punished for being a weepy asshole who quits when your team is behind five kills. In Lo L, that sort of behavior is mandated.

It improves nothing because people still do it and the game is wasted. Having an actual legit way of ending the game when it's no longer fair enough to be fun is a much better option and actually conveys a sense of victory to the winners, unlike when someone leaves and the game was just pointless.

The game isn't pointless, it still counts towards your win percentage. It only doesn't count if the guy quits in the first five minutes, and then it isn't really a waste of your time.

Playing the game when it's no longer 5v5 is a waste of time and it would be much better if there was an option to end it and move on to a new game. I have no idea why some people think it makes others try harder. The number of leavers on the losing teams has clearly proven that assumption to be false. Nothing is gained from having no option to surrender. Nothing.

I've seen teams win 3v5 after leavers quit the game, either because the outnumbering team got overconfident and did something stupid or the outnumbered team turned out to be far more competent than the other team.

I've won a 3v5 game myself. It's my happiest Dota 2 moment.

And I've won a game 2v5, but that changes nothing because it is too rare to compensate for the number of games where you just end up pushing against 3 people who keep throwing themselves at you even though you're fed to the point where they don't stand a chance or the enemy just sits in the well because they got pissed about getting stomped. Or worse, when that happens to your team.

Really old conversation, but I just want to say as a Lo L player, the teams I was on only ever surrendered when there was no possible way we could've won.

Obvious troll is obvious. An opinion is an opinion, it doesn't matter how much one tries to back it up with the opinions of other people. What makes it clear the author is a troll is that good ol' way of trying to get a raise out of people by saying that their opinion is fact.

Dota 2 and League of Legends are essentially the same game (with one being the remake and spirtual successor of the original Dota and the other being a ripoff) with only very small differences, one not liking the differences doesn't make either game better or worse per se.

I, having loved Dota and dabbling with Dota 2 now, while being almost completely unable to play the ripoff because there's no Linux version, am glad that Dota 2 keeps steadily gaining players, I prefer its mechanics that emphasize skill (such as denying) over Lo L's slightly more complacent and serviceable gameplay.

phylos, I mean this in the nicest possible way when I say blow me. I'm not a troll and screw you for saying I am.

You're also totally clueless in your dismissal of LoL as "just a ripoff" of DotA and being "essentially the same game". That's like saying Halo is "just a ripoff" of Doom as well as being completely WRONG. There are massive, massive differences between LoL and DotA 2, largely because Riot have spent 4+ years evolving the MOBA while DotA is content solely to wallow in its past.

And saying that (=Lo L=) "evolved" the MOBA is kind of like saying that (=Co D=) evolved the FPS genre (and you'd be right, in a way), but that really just means that a lot of things that are wrong with the FPS genre in general these days are thanks to (=Co D=). In fact, that sentence applies to just about your entire review. I'd like to imagine that (=Lo L=)'s relationship with Dota's is comparable to Co D and (pre-343) Halo, where tons of the aspects that made it fun & balanced are criticized by Halo 4 (a (=Co D=) ripoff) apologists as "outdated" (and apparently think that ripping off (=Co D=) is "innovational"). Maybe I'll make a list of some comparisons of Lo L and (=Co D=) sometime, like the two of them generally being regarded as having the two worst online communities in the world, for example. Hey, there's one right there.

Also, he meant that it was a ripoff of WC 3 Dot A, because that's basically what all MOB As are based on. Did you not know that?

And, I'd bring up some HUGE improvements that Ice Frog made to WC 3 Dot A after he took control of it from Guinsoo when he went off to make Lo L, but it doesn't seem like you're familiar enough with it (despite your claims) for it to matter, which probably also means that you're not qualified to state what exactly is outdated about Dota 2 (although I'm pretty sure you're referring to turn rate, among other things, which has to do with balance, and is comparable to Bungie Halo not having sprint, whereas Halo 4 basically introduced it, along with a plethora of design, gameplay, and balance problems. Hey, there's sort of another comparison right there).

On an unrelated note, it's kind of annoying how they don't let you edit comments here.

Oh right, insulting me in a sexual way does not confirm you as a troll, at all, my apologies. However I do admit that I might have been harsh in calling you a troll, you might just be a teenage player of a MOBA, who tend to be the worst examples of the GIFT around. Which is funny given that you seem to have no idea about MOB As in general and their history, but I won't repeat what Little BIG Head wrote.

I don't know much about DOTA or other MOBA games, but I wanted to say that many people, including me, would consider Doom to be better than Crysis. Newer doesn't mean better.

Yes it was "harsh" calling me a troll, to me, calling me a troll is a killing insult. I was enormously restrained to ONLY tell you to blow me.

Was going to write a review, saw you'd gotten there first.

I will add that the suit is indeed *very* blinged up, with all kinds of goodies available for those who shell out. It just makes me sad that other games (like League and, my poison of choice, SMITE) will probably never have access too them, because they didn't have the kind of resources behind them at launch that this game did. I don't like to use the term "spoiled brat," but Dota 2 is pretty close to that for me, something so used to getting its way that it throws a tantrum whenever it doesn't.

That's the saddest part, to me. The only thing stopping Dota 2 from being good is its own lack of ambition and willingness to rest on its laurels like God's gift to gamers, certain that it doesn't need to change, we do.

I'm gonna defend Dota 2 here, Spectral Time and Acane Azmadi. League and Dota are very different games made for different people. In fact, I would go as far to say that League is a MOBA while Dota is an ARTS and respective imitators fall into their respective categories. Both are good games in their own right. They just appeal to different audiences, and you two aren't part of it.

...Well, after thirty-odd comments of hearing how I'm just a dumb baby who's too stupid to take a real game, I appreciate the olive branch.

Not sure I agree, but I appreciate it anyway. Curiosity compels me to ask, though: what, in your mind, separates the two genres? I do think the games are clearly similar enough to compare on multiple metrics, even moreso than, say, Half-Life and Call of Duty. (Please don't summon fan-fighters out of the woodwork...)

You know what else is an obsolete mechanic? Moving by clicking. League does that too. So much for evolving the genre.