News Valve announces Defence of the Ancients 2

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2010/10/13/valve-announces-defence-of-the-ancients-2/1

 

this is relevant to my interests

 

Do want!

 

With Icefrog working for Valve, I wonder what is going to happen to the existing DOTA. Will they allow him to keep working on it too, although it's free and not a Valve title? Or does he hold some copyright on DotA: Allstars which he brought with him over to the Valve camp?

 

Please make this newbie friendly. I'd love to get into it, but the other outings have been horrendous for learning curves.

 

have been DOTA player for years now, I will definitely purchase the game when it comes out, hopefully karma won't come back to bite me in the a$$ cause I wasn't exactly nice to new players

 

@Chicken76: did you noticed what happened to Alien Swarm developers ? That should answer your questions. True, there can be a conflict of interests, but considering Valve behavior so far, they will probably let him do anything he wants.

 

Please don't! For real, you are a newbie for what? Two weeks? Then you have to spend a lifetime of gameplay with clipo telling you when to attack.

 

How about they focus on the games that were already supposed to come out like the next HL2 release...

 

QFT. No another dota...

 

so.... what *is* DOTA?

all i heard from it is its a WoW-mod.... of turn-based RTS or some sort....

i hate WoW
i hate turn-based

but im cool with RTS......

 

It's an Warcraft mod not WOW, and it is not turn based. but a finer explanation I will leave to other gentlemen in this fine forum as I have only a little experience with DOTA

 

so, like a Warcraft3 with a new skin and a couple gameplay tweaks?

 

You, uh... heard two incorrect things. It's from Warcraft, yes, but has nothing to do with WoW. It's also completely real time, which is part of the steep learning curve.

DOTA is two teams, each comprising of 5 players (typical) on opposing sides of a map. Each team has a base with basic structures comprising of a main structure (the win condition), mob spawners (will get to them later) and towers (will also cover them later). In betweent these bases is forest, rivers, cliffs, etc. with "lanes" connecting each base. These lanes are essentially paths straight to the enemy's base. Along these lanes are towers under the control of each team. The previously mentioned mob spawners spawn NPC monsters which travel down these lanes towards the enemy base. However, the opposing towers and monsters fend them off when they get to close to the enemy base.

That is where players come in. Players control avatars which generally have stats, items, levels, and four abilities (as per WC3). These avatars are controlled in a manner very similar to any hero in your generic RTS game, top down camera, click to move, etc. which is where the RTS aspect comes in. Players go down these lanes toward the enemy base to destroy enemy towers and monsters and eventually push into the enemy base to kill the main structure and win. Obviously, enemy players want to do the same thing to you, while also preventing you from getting into their base. This brings a strong player vs. player aspect to the game since all NPC aspects are perfectly balanced (most maps are made by creating one half and mirroring it) and only players can shift the balance to one side or the other. In some respects, imagine an RTS where you have one unit which respawns and a premade base. That is DOTA.

Of course, this is just a brief overview of the core gameplay. The genre is known for the subtle nuances that come about during gameplay. The various unspoken "phases" of gameplay, the expected roles, and conduct which is not explicitly explained to the new player. If you took the description that I just game and player a round you would lose, horribly. And you would continue to lose until you got an understanding of the basic pattern of the game: things that come about through years of players' trial and error.

EDIT: Yes and no about being a reskinned WC3. Yes, that's what it originally was created as, a WC3 mod, but the genre has grown out of that in many ways. Some games like Heroes of Newerth are carbon copies which essentially recreate the WC3 mod, some like League of Legends create largely their own game with various stylistic and gameplay changes. What Valve creates has yet to be seen.

 

Clicky

Very informative article on GameInformer about DotA 2. Basically surmises what it's about and what was right/wrong with DotA (player base, learning curve etc.).

Also reveals that all the Champs from DotA will be ported into the sequel. Not sure if i'm fond of this though... the thought of learning ~100 chars just seems like a huge/steep learning curve. Same thing that put me off HoN tbh.

 

In my experience you spend something like 6 months being a newbie you have to learn all the heroes all their abilities all the items all the synergies and all the counters... and then apply them to each different game... and thats just the knowledge requirement without going into the skill requirements of 'feeling' when to gank, when to run, when to attack, when to level, and so on...

If they made it fun and pick up and play, they could still ahve the skill ceilings like they have currently, but it wouldn't be so ridiculous for new players where they end up feeding horrifically until they have much more experience.

 

I love this game <3, in my opinion though there is nothing wrong with more experienced players telling new players to gank, push or defend together. During my years witnessing many new players picking Agi heroes just keep on farming and farming, ignoring everything else until it's too late to make any difference. Sure new players may feel bad at first but when you grasped the gameplay, it will be an addition

 

I wish Ice frog (the creator of DOTA) would have developt it for starcraft 2... But there's no money in a mod that requires the user to purchase a game from blizzard and not him..

Apparently the deal with valve will utilize the source engine for this RTS game.... Strange huh? Can anyone think of a source RTS game? Like using the spectator cam or something?

 

I do not understand why many people are put off by Dota's learning curve. Every game has a learning curve and if it doesn't, it's usually not worth playing. How good you want to be at a particular game determines the amount of time spent practicing, playing, and learning. Dota is no exception!

The whole notion of "i gotta learn and play all 100 heroes to be good" isn't entirely accurate. When you play one game, your actually learning 10 heroes at a time.

From personal experience, learning how to play Dota should take about a month or 2 months if you don't play a lot. The longer you play the better you get. That's pretty much how it is for everything in life.

Is it worth it? Let me ask you this: Would you rather play a game that requires ridiculous APM, fast reflexes, knowledge of a dozen maps, and an indefinite amount of time spent grinding for gear to determine how good you are at a game? Or would you rather spend a game where team work, strategy, knowledge of only ONE map, and very little grinding to determine how good you are at a game?

If you chose the latter, Dota is for you.

 

I don't necessarily think it's the steep learning curve per se. I mean something that's difficult to learn is only more rewarding once you've mastered it.

However, the problem is that the steep learning curve coupled with the very harsh and judgemental community means that often putting time in to learn the game feels like a waste of time.

The problem with DotA/HoN/LoL is that the game is so reliant on teamplay that, as the article said, having a feeding teammate (i.e. one that keeps on dying) is worse than having one not turn up at all. Since all the time you're giving the enemy player(s) EXP and Gold which gives them a distinct advantage in the game, especially early on.

Also, you state that DotA doesn't require a lot of grinding, but i'd beg to differ. The grind in "those" sorts of games (MOBAs, shall we call them, a la Riot etc.) is different but grinding nonetheless. You need to take time to learn the different champions, maybe not enough to know how to play them, but still enough to know what they do, how to counter them, how to best synergise with them. I'll go out on a limb here and assume that your average game of DotA/HoN lasts similar to a game of LoL, as such each game you invest between 25-40 (sometimes even over an hour) per game. At which you're only learning the abilities of those "10 champions" (assuming that there are no repeats on the other team).

Also, it's my experience that being "good"/"competent" at LoL (at least) isn't really something you can teach. Me and another friend introduced a load of others to LoL recently and unfortunately it is rather painful to play with them at times (read above wrt Feeding). And even though you point things out to them, it's not something that you can strictly "learn", it's something you need to experience.

Literally, the better players of that group have said that they played on their own and started to notice all the things that we told them that their other teammates did. That is how they learned the "basics" (map awareness, ganking, etc.) rather than us "babysitting" and covering for them. And at the same time, it's rather disheartening to think that it's not something that was necessarily taught, but only learned through other teammates doing bad (since you yourself might do something stupid, but you yourself won't realise it unless someone else does it and you think to yourself "wtf, why'd he do that").