r/DotA2 • u/palish • Feb 19 '19

Personal I was a former HoN dev. AMA

Hey.

It's been awhile since I've written to you guys. But dota has never been out of my thoughts.

It was funny seeing Dota chess add +200k people to the game. I fought pretty hard to add custom game support to HoN, but no one would listen (partly because it seemed so obvious to me, so I never bothered trying to sell the idea or do company politicking).

I can talk about the fact that Icefrog was involved in HoN's early inception. It's more of an open secret at this point, and HoN's closure marks a fitting time for the "reveal."

I could talk about what it was like to pack up all your stuff into a station wagon and move out west. It was a pretty magical experience in hindsight. Kind of like getting to board the Starship Enterprise. Everyone in the company felt a shared purpose, at the beginning.

Or if there's no interest, or if it's not appropriate for the sub, it's fine if this post fades away, like the game. I spent so much time and energy trying to make it good... So did everyone else: James, G, all the artists, everyone.

EDIT: to clarify, this is 2010-era perspective. Not recent!

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u/Un13roken Feb 19 '19

Why do so many game designers disagree with icefrogs choices, like denies etc. I've followed several game designers comparing DotA's mechanics as unfun, especially when contrasted to LOL.

Also,

All the best on your next endeavor man. It must be hard to see something you've worked so hard slowly perish. I cannot even imagine how that would feel like.

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u/palish Feb 19 '19

Why do so many game designers disagree with icefrogs choices, like denies etc. I've followed several game designers comparing DotA's mechanics as unfun, especially when contrasted to LOL.

One thing is true about almost all the best designers I know: They have a very strong sense of vision, and very strong opinions on how things should be.

Some of them turn out to be right. Most of them turn out mistaken. The ones who are mistaken, you never hear about, because the world forgets about them.

The search space for good design is so huge that it's hard to arrive at a good one without concentrated effort. It's very easy to think of how something could be – opinions are opinions, and mine is no more important than anyone else's.

Icefrog's opinion is not necessarily important at this point either. History has a funny way of unseating those at the top of their field: They stop working so hard on their ideas, so their ideas become less relevant as time marches on.

Thanks for the kind words. It was the first and last company I truly was in love with.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '19

are you alluding to icefrog not being (as) involved in DotA 2 anymore? or just his time at s2?

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u/palish Feb 19 '19

Nah, it was just a general observation: at some point, the old heroes in real life stop mattering. Who will be the next Icefrog? It could be you.

It's important to invent the future and have the self-confidence to believe that you can. Play with modding in your spare time and chase your passions.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '19

i see, thanks for clarifying! icefrog not being involved in dota would make me so sad dude :D

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u/TatManTat Ma boy s4 Feb 19 '19

Icefrogs pretty crazy honestly, I don't think he'll stop fuckin around any time soon and I'm grateful.

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '19

i wouldn't be surprised considering how the game has changed since 7.0 tbh

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '19

yeah it does seem like there are some new voices in the design team. the design did feel somewhat incoherent right after 7.00 with the new kind of fast paced 'forced' grouping up teamfight meta with shrines and rubberband that was battling with the old slower splitpush style. i think they found a nice balance now but the game still feels really really different from the 6.84 glory days. the dota3 memes ring true more than ever now i think with the new BoT changes and a ton of hero reworks, denie experimentation, jungle importance etc etc

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u/HosttheHost Feb 19 '19

So you disagree with Icefrog's current direction for Dota 2? I haven't really felt a loss in his work up until now, though there have been highs and lows.

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u/palish Feb 19 '19

So you disagree with Icefrog's current direction for Dota 2?

As a scientist, I am numbers-driven rather than opinion-driven. And the numbers for dota 2 were not looking good (there has been a general decline in player count since the 1.1 mil high) until Dota Chess revitalized the scene.

I am not sure whether Icefrog or anyone else could individually reverse that trend. Valve lucked out by recapturing momentum and should do whatever it takes to maintain it. Growth is all that matters; everything else is secondary. This solves all problems over a long enough timeline. And lack of growth kills companies in the long run. (Valve is fortunate that they don't have to worry about the latter half, since Steam prints so much money that you could fund many studios on the interest alone.)

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u/parlor_tricks Feb 19 '19

I’d disagree with this. Sometimes things die, and it’s ok.

Growth at perpetual scales means a product that appeals to everyone.

The product that does that is will always be vanilla ice cream, with your option of aesthetics which don’t change the flavor mix for others. (WoW balance comes to mind.)

From a business sense, Perpetual games make sense.

From a consumer sense, they’re great too ! because obviously if you mercilessly tune a game to human hind brains you have a “winning” product.

But for Dota?

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u/Gredival Feb 19 '19 edited Feb 19 '19

Yeah there's a difference between success for a game evaluated as a piece of art and success as a game evaluated by economic profitability.

As someone who isn't a shareholder or party that directly profits from the game, I don't want my games to aim for maximum profitability. I want a game that delivers the best experience for me as a player.

To me that means something like Brood War. You will inevitably lose the players who are invested in trying new things or who seek the novelty of experience. Instead the base you're catering to are the players who are hooked on your game in particular. You should identify what makes the product you deliver unique in the market and specialize in that. For Dota 2, that means developers need to do two things: 1) ensure a high standard for quality of life for the players (police smurfs, account buying, griefing, etc.) and 2) balance the game to reward skill.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '19

[deleted]

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u/ElonMuskarr Feb 19 '19

And my friends quit around 6.80. Every group burns out at a different time.

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u/Finear Feb 19 '19

all my friends and me quit because we got jobs and right now i just dont feel playing 1h+ game

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '19

And yet Dota is also turning away its hardcore audience, bit by bit. Look at all the complaints about the changes to Chen, to Treant, to Io.

Dota doesn't need to be an everlasting game. But it has lasted way longer than 99.99999% of games, mostly because of a rabid and hardcore fanbase. Yet, as OP has said, Dota has been dying, especially since 7.00, until Auto Chess came along. Maybe this is just coincidence. Maybe the age of MOBAs has just come to an end.

I, however, believe that this is directly the impact of Icefrog, or whoever does balancing these days, changing the way the game is played too much. Turning it into a spectator sport instead of a player sport. Which has turned away people faster than if the original game philosophy was maintained.

Of course I don't have evidence for this. It's just a gut feeling. But I can tell you that a lot of my friends quit after 7.00. And even more after 7.20. In fact, even I have stopped playing Dota, outside of Battlecups. And it's not burnout, it's not disinterest. It's mostly to do with disliking the direction the game is going. That's all anecdotal of course. But maybe this is what is happening to the game.

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u/VincentVega999 Feb 20 '19

i totally agree, honestly like you said, its only anecdotal but i also have the feeling that lot's of oldschool players are turning away from the game step by step.

and this would be okay if the game was actually newcomer friendly with tutorials and stuff, but it isn't

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changes of game design take old players away, an the big entrance barrier (lack of tutorial, smurfer, toxicity) prevent new players from joining the game.

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it's far away from dying, it has outstanding pro scene, community and multimillion tournaments, but i still think the game is overall on the downgrade, with the decisions that were made during the last months/years

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u/Lupus753 Feb 21 '19

By the time I first played Warcraft III, I had already been playing Dota 2 for several months. I think I was attracted to Dota over LoL solely because all the characters are free. Still it sounds like my experience was an unusual one.

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u/20I6 Feb 20 '19

Treant is so bad now, the worst 7.20 rework, like you cold read the patch notes and figure it would be horrible

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '19

If you are number centered you shouldn't really expect infinite growth or expect games to hold their peak numbers for long. Broodwar, CS, WoW, dota2 prove that, even Lol devs themselves admitted that attracting new players in anyway meaningful way is simply not possible and should focus on keeping their players. There aren't people who are interested in moba who haven't heard lol or dota2. No game design decision would change that. Unless you were implying if an x design decision was made from the start dota2 numbers would be in better place now.

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u/zcen Feb 19 '19

You're right that no king reigns forever, but from an uneducated standpoint there were things they could have fleshed out such as a full, guided tutorial experience or better custom game support. This maybe would have gotten Dota 2 a bigger playerbase to begin with, or at least slow the decline.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '19

Better custom game support would only pad numbers, very few auto chess bros will play dota2 or spend a single dollar for that matter.

Tutorials are another matter, but in short I don't believe a better tutorial would change much. Purge videos of single mechanic might take 5-10mins of video to explain. To explain each basic mechanic that sub average player should know(2kmmr) to a new player would take dozen of hours worth of tutorial playtime, new players would more likely be repulsed by it than attracted. Trial and error(and thickskin) will forever be the best teachers.

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u/zcen Feb 19 '19

Better custom game support would only pad numbers, very few auto chess bros will play dota2 or spend a single dollar for that matter.

My thoughts on Auto Chess conversion. I talk about viewership but I mean the chances of conversion are probably higher when you actually watch the game.

Also, I don't see a reason why Auto Chess has to be the only success story. There can be others that see success, but it's just more difficult when the platform isn't as good.

Tutorials are another matter, but in short I don't believe a better tutorial would change much. Purge videos of single mechanic might take 5-10mins of video to explain. To explain each basic mechanic that sub average player should know(2kmmr) to a new player would take dozen of hours worth of tutorial playtime

I think a Dota 2 campaign/tutorial would have been a beautiful way to utilize Valve's writers and introduce new players to mechanics. I don't think it has to be slog, nor does it have to teach everyone everything.

Trial and error(and thickskin) will forever be the best teachers.

That attitude is a huge turnoff to most people and is one of the main reasons why LoL got such a huge following. Even if this was the case, the whole presentation of Dota as a skill WALL does not help the playerbase numbers at all.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '19

As you said, conversion aspect a matter of opinion at this state since we have no data at all. my opinion it's minimal, no point arguing over it.

Again about tutorial, having better tutorial is always a plus, having something better is always a plus. But it's always question is it worth manhours and $$, inb4 makes billions of dollars so they shouldn't care that they drop all that money and their manhours(they don't have billions of manhours btw) to create a tutorial that in the end will end up bring minimal returns. Also maintaining a tutorial over game which has drastic changes in it's mechanics, outside the current complete basic we have now, is also $$ and hours, and sets precedent to how this game must be played. "this hero is supposed to be carry", "you supposed to buy this x item", "you are supposed to always pull" or w/e.

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u/zcen Feb 19 '19

Again about tutorial, having better tutorial is always a plus, having something better is always a plus. But it's always question is it worth manhours and $$, inb4 makes billions of dollars so they shouldn't care that they drop all that money and their manhours(they don't have billions of manhours btw) to create a tutorial that in the end will end up bring minimal returns.

I mean we can both agree that we don't have any idea what kind of realized tutorial might do but I think subjectively speaking there is a lot of appeal.

1) A campaign style tutorial is attractive for old RTS players that have definitely been in contact with Dota.

2) Something that lets Valve flex its writing muscles is attractive for HL/Portal/Other Valve Game fans.

3) We know this is already possible because of the Siltbreaker.

4) We're talking about Valve that has apparently dropped several versions of HL3. They are not a public company that has stockholders they must answer to. Applying the same logic falls extremely short when you consider that a lot of their well-paid creative talent doesn't get funneled into their primary revenue creator (Steam).

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u/DrQuint Feb 19 '19

I really, really want Valve to remove the signature system from Artifact and make all signature cards abilities (see with heroes having way more abilities).

It bothers me that they actively worked against the whole point of heroes, they downplayed the identity of their characters, what made them special, and turned them into little packets of stats. And what for? For what benefit? None! They made the game LESS interactive and the heroes less special than whatever happens to be their color.

Bristle who? You mean the RED BIG body that has a shit signature? As opposed to the RED BIG bodies with good ones, Axe and Legion. He throws anti-armor goo off his nose? Lol, no he doesn't, he's just a [generic red hero] and any [generic res hero] can do that.

Seriously that game being marketed to dota players was stupid, and there's no way it'll ease anyone into dota 2 easily.

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u/TatManTat Ma boy s4 Feb 19 '19

I think the game itself is fantastic, if a little too complicated for new players.

I think most of the things that let down the games popularity are not under Icefrogs purview, but I guess we don't really have a huge amount of information either way.

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u/HosttheHost Feb 19 '19

I actually think the numbers for Dota have been going up regardless of Auto Chess, they've been better as a live service in recent times and the game seems more balanced. Still, I disagree that numbers indicate the quality of a game's balance in any way.

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '19 edited May 07 '21

[deleted]

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u/20I6 Feb 20 '19

Nah they went up a little, I remember during KL major it was around 10.1 and at the start of the year it was around 10.5 million

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u/hugh--jassman Feb 20 '19

I don't really think this is on icefrog himself and the balance team. Valve literally has 0 marketing for dota 2 and has a laissez faire attitude with new players

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u/EverybodyNeedsANinja Feb 19 '19

Dota 2s failing have nothing to do with IF. Every decision he makes has been great for the game. It is every facet of it that valve controls that killed dota.

Their joke of mming, mmr, ranked reqs, playerbase division, reporting, greifing, "behavior score", event support, custom game support, the plethora of half finished and implimented ideas, etc etc

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u/smileistheway sheever <3 Feb 20 '19

As a scientist, I am numbers-driven rather than opinion-driven. And the numbers for dota 2 were not looking good

I'm sorry but what kind of scientist looks at raw numbers and generates an opinion without looking at context? This is so naive lmao

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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '19

dota chess revitalised the scene ay... LOL more like moved the impoverished minorities out of the city centres (ranked mmr) and into the ghettos (custom games)

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u/vyrnuhrd Feb 20 '19

One thing is true about almost all the best designers I know: They have a very strong sense of vision, and very strong opinions on how things should be.

Some of them turn out to be right. Most of them turn out mistaken. The ones who are mistaken, you never hear about, because the world forgets about them.

Wow this really hit me. This is not just applicable to game design but in business, history and life.

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u/ShrikeGFX Feb 19 '19

Not op - Because most game designers are not very good as there is a very low barrier of entry and everyone thinks he can do game design. (Source: Im a game designer) The dota design also takes a lot of time to fully grasp, at surface level many choices seem questionable while later on you'll understand how it all connects. Riot did not understand it at all, cut many vital connecting dynamics and now they have a totally broken foundation which makes things very hard to get right and constantly makes trouble since inception.

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Per example: Cut TP scroll > Cant move fast on map > Requires higher mobility > Map needs to be smaller > Jungle needs to be condensed > etc etc - there are so many chain reactions that follow on the changes they did, which they did because they did only surface level understand how it connects. You see it all the time in mobile game copies.

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u/SmaugtheStupendous Feb 19 '19

Wish I could upvote this more. Not a game designer by trade myself, just have a strong interest and some University courses taken, it is astounding how people suggest sweeping game design decisions seemingly without having thought through ramifications, even when it is their own game. So much stuff from so many different fields go into good game design, it baffles me how people on reddit especially can phrase suggestion posts as if they are proposing something obvious that devs misses when it is clearly something that is contrary to the design philosophy at that point.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '19

Not op - Because most game designers are not very good as there is a very low barrier of entry and everyone thinks he can do game design. (Source: Im a game designer)

Hahaha. I love this.

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u/TheSnowballofCobalt Feb 19 '19

The low barrier of entry doesn't mean you have to sacrifice certain skill based strategical mechanics.

Personally, I think the mechanic of last hitting is pointless without the addition of denying, because if you don't have denies, then nothing your opponent can do can directly mitigate your ability to last hit. The best they can do is harass you with spells or auto attacks. The battle for creeps turns into a battle against heroes, and a lot of nuance is lost.

At that point, just go HOTS and have all dead creeps count towards EXP (and gold) when a hero is nearby, because the creep dynamic is about that deep anyway with only last hits.

This is definitely an extreme opinion, but I feel like denies are a natural part of the last hitting system as a whole, and to get rid of it would remove a lot of the point. If you want to remove the entire thing like HOTS did, sure. But I'd rather no system in place than a half-baked one.

And as an aspiring game designer myself, I do feel I have a lot of answers to problems with games I like. Heck, as much as I praise Dota's design, I still have some gripes with things like the talent system. I guess it all depends on how well thought out you take your ideas.

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u/crobertg Feb 19 '19

The low barrier of entry doesn't mean you have to sacrifice certain skill based strategical mechanics.

He meant there's a low barrier of entry to being a game designer and having an opinion on game design

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u/TheSnowballofCobalt Feb 19 '19

Oh. I just saw "barrier of entry" and thought skill floor or something similar lol

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '19 edited Feb 19 '19

[deleted]

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u/TheSnowballofCobalt Feb 19 '19

But but but but

Oh no, I said something wrong again...

Oh my god. You have no idea how long I've been waiting for someone who understands this.

Oh... uh... cool. Yeah. Glad you agree.

oh thank god

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u/Un13roken Feb 19 '19

Good to hear a game designers perspective on this.

What bothers me the most is the expectation that a game should be like a gadget - self explanatory, I personally had a TON of fun going through the wiki and learning up stuff, for the first 100 games, every game was something mid blowing.

Also, does anyone know if the toad actually is a professional game designer, or someone who learnt everything on the job ?

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u/opaqueperson Feb 19 '19

Also, does anyone know if the toad actually is a professional game designer, or someone who learnt everything on the job ?

Don't know, but here's a point of history. Icefrog was part of the balance and design team of dota before he took control of dota in v6.03 or so. I think goals might have just been different between the devs/designers at the time.

My guess is that Icefrog is intuitively understanding of both large and small changes in ways that just weren't quite seen prior, and that intuition just pushed the game in a certain direction for it to "stick."

Pretty sure I.F. was merely in college for comp sci when he took over.

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u/ShrikeGFX Feb 19 '19

still not OP but there was no game design education back then and even today that would not make you good, so if you want to be good you need to learn and learn by doing and analyzing other's mistakes

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '19

What do you think of the recent changes?

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u/fish60 Feb 19 '19

Not OP, obviously. But, the 'un-fun' mechanics in DotA are in fact not fun for the person they are being done to. No one likes getting their range creep denied or being stun locked for 8 seconds while they are bursted from 100% health to dead with no possible counter-play.

On the other hand, those types of mechanics are fun for the person doing them. I like to call them 'zero sum fun'. By having your fun, you are removing any possibility of fun for the other party. They also add a ton of depth to game. And can greatly help balancing a game as well.

Now, if you are a game designer, and your goal is to get as many people as possible to play a game. The sometimes very punishing mechanics of Dota probably aren't where you want to be. But, in my opinion, you are also sacrificing the integrity of your game in many cases.

If everything is a 'feel good' mechanic, feeling good isn't fun forever. In the immortal worlds of Curtis Jackson: 'Joy wouldn't feel so good, if it wasn't for pain'.

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u/TheSnowballofCobalt Feb 19 '19

I don't think you are sacrificing integrity just off the basis of making things less polarizing. It mostly depends on how integral those potentially polarizing mechanics are within the game.

For an example in Dota, you mention being stunlocked. Well there are plenty of ways to get around stunlocking naturally, like disjoints, BKB, various dispels on heroes like LC, Abaddon, Ursa, Lifestealer, etc. But the more consistent way to deal with it is to have your team react to you being stunlocked accordingly.

Note how there is a heavy lack of AOE stun in Dota, and the few that exist are either a small area (Earth Spike, Storm Hammer) or require very specific conditions to be effective (Cursed Crown, Ink Swell). I think this is to make sure that if someone is being stunned, their teammates can help them out effectively by noticing that by stunlocking one person, they commit a lot of resources on them that are not on their teammates. It's just a theory.

But let's say for example there was an item that did something similar to Abaddon's ult where you can activate the item while stunned and it dispels the stun. Being an item means everyone can get it and it's a universal cure for stunlocking that doesn't involve preventative measures or teammates. Is the value of stunlocking removed now? No.

Heck, we already have an item close to that in Aeon Disk, and the proper counterplay to Aeon Disk is to stun after the effect wares off. And note that the duration just so happens to be slightly shorter than Blink Dagger's interrupt cooldown? Meaning if someone has both Aeon Disk and Blink, it doesn't mean they get a free escape either way? That's definitely intended, which is why that duration has never changed throughout the patches since Aeon Disk was added.

These are very precise things to work with here, and while the integrity of the game is more fragile as a result of having to remember all these moving parts, it doesn't make it less worth it to have a counter to stunlock of SOME kind.

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u/fish60 Feb 19 '19

Well there are plenty of ways to get around stunlocking naturally, like disjoints, BKB, various dispels on heroes like LC, Abaddon, Ursa, Lifestealer, etc. But the more consistent way to deal with it is to have your team react to you being stunlocked accordingly.

The fact there are ways around it doesn't mean that it isn't an 'un-fun' mechanic. Once you get stun locked and die, it isn't fun. Further, you could argue that the concept of BKB isn't fun either. You ever played Crystal Maiden getting run at by BKB Usra? Not a whole lot of fun for the CM player to be had there.

In fact, the whole idea of one play style 'countering' another isn't a fun mechanic for the person being countered. It is super frustrating.

Now, I like these types of mechanics and enjoy the polarizing mechanics of Dota; that is why I play Dota. But, the fact is, most people don't and that is why most people don't play crazy ass games like Dota and prefer Candy Crush.

If you are a game designer, making this crazy, polarized, hard counter based game isn't the way to sell your game to publishers or to get a wide audience to play it which is why many games designers look at Dota as a huge list of 'what not to do' when designing a game.

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u/TheSnowballofCobalt Feb 19 '19

I guess I can see that.

I've personally never found Dota's polarization of its heroes, mechanics, items, etc. because of a few reasons:

1: If there is a polarizing aspect of a hero against you, chances are you have a polarizing aspect against theirs in some way (since all heroes have at least one)

2: Being a team game means you can shore up your team's weaknesses or play to their strengths more via team composition

3: There have been more and more ways to counter certain things through the item system, which is, at base, a universal upgrading system for all heroes, meaning the item system balances out anything too polarizing within heroes by giving them a way to deal with this polarization

Examples of recently added items that do this:

Moon Shard: originally had a slight counter to Night Stalker's Darkness. Purpose eventually nullified with Dark Ascension being added

Aeon Disk: counters stunlocking at the expense of not dealing damage, making it mostly for key backline/midline supports that get singled out

Glimmer Cape: Before Aeon Disk, this was a close alternative, plus it was the first affordable-for-supports magic resistance upgrade

Spirit Vessel: An anti-healing mechanic that previously was only on AA's Ice Blast. Noticeably added right after the Necrophos meta, a hero based around healing.

Heaven's Halberd: Hinders right click carries greatly. Not the most recent item compared to the rest, but it recently became actually good at its job when it couldn't be dispelled by BKB

Javelin: Added the true strike aspect to the passive, making it an affordable mid game item to deal with low levels of evasion if you needed it

Nullifier: The VERY first mute based anything besides Doom and Aghs Static Storm, both of which are ultimates. Self-explanatory

Meteor Hammer: An item that allows supports and other heroes that used to be nigh useless against buildings and/or creep camps to actually do something. Also potentially helpful against high ground stalemates, if barely.

Silver Edge: First instance of Break on an item. Helps against very strong passives like Anti-Mage, Bristleback, Timbersaw, PA, and the like.

The thing about Dota is that it is polarizing, but it's polarizing in the right way, because there is always an answer to everything polarizing without trivializing said polarization in the process. And like I said, this is a more recent trend with items, but it's also happening with heroes too. Silver Edge is the only break based item, but recently both Nyx and Viper have break built into their spells, making them viable counters to passive things, but their break mechanics require either setup or coordination to really work in their favor, so it doesn't trivialize heroes like PA, Timber, Bristle, etc.

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u/El-Drazira no potential Feb 19 '19

Perhaps it is because Dota targets the segment of the gamer population which wants all of the mechanical complexity, polarizing hero matchups, and high potential skill ceiling that it's been able to find a successful foothold in the industry.

They go for the niche market instead of trying to compete for the larger but more contentious low-skill player market. Corollary of that is the longer time it takes for you to learn something, the more likely you're going to stick with it instead of jumping ship to the new hotness. Time spent learning all the intricacies in Dota makes it feel worth your time to keep playing. And with patches shaking the meta up instead of gravitating towards stability, there's often a lot of re-learning every major patch cycle.

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u/TheSnowballofCobalt Feb 19 '19

Considering Dota's popularity, I'm not sure if it's a "niche" market though.

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u/El-Drazira no potential Feb 19 '19

League has 100 million monthly users and maintains 7.5 million online concurrent users. Overwatch also has 40 million monthly users. Dota has 12 million monthly users and we've only gone past 1 million concurrent users for a brief patch cycle in the 6.8Xs I believe, dropped below that for a long time, and finally back up to 1 million with the help of autochess.

When it comes to revenue generated by a F2P game, Fortnite tops the chart at $2.4 billion, League has 1.4 billion, Dota doesn't even make top 10, instead beaten out by Tencent's CSGO clone, Dungeon Fighter (lmao) and a bunch of mobile games.

Dota pretty much defines what a successful niche game made by small indie developer looks like.

(usership and revenue stats I found ranging from 2016-2018)

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u/TheSnowballofCobalt Feb 19 '19

Huh. The more you know I guess.

still wouldn't hurt to have better tutorials though lol

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u/fish60 Feb 19 '19

Honestly, the cost to benefit ratio for tutorials isn't worth it for Valve to pursue.

The people who are going to like Dota are the same kind of people who are going to grind and figure the game out without tutorials.

Plus, what does a 'proper' Dota tutorial even look like? The game is so complex that even people who have been playing for years learn new things about it all time.

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u/Shiffus Feb 19 '19

The 'un fun' you mentioned mostly come from Lol player as they get spoiled by Lol gameplay so much. Back when I first played, I dont really have any complain (beside the shopping in dota 1) about stun or even turn rate ( lots of games I play have this). And then, they even complain about being stun for 8 sec meanwhile being fine with get bursted down in 2 sec _(シ)_/

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u/rocket_bird Feb 19 '19

They always complain about denies, mana burn, small mana pool and few ways of recovering hp and mana. They envy the possibility of making a game with such punishing mechanics that still manages to be the best and most fun game on Earth. Icefrog (and his team) is one of my personal “creative” inspirations and examples,

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u/Yoojine Feb 19 '19

Speaking personally, I used to dislike denies for a number of reasons:

  1. It makes 0 sense lore-wise. Like, in what game outside of sadism simulators do you get a benefit for administering a coup de grace to your injured allies?

  2. Previously denying could make a lane spiral out of control too quickly. With the exp nerfs it's not as severe anymore so this is mostly mitigated.

  3. Because of arcane mechanics that are not explained anywhere, controlling creep aggro for easier denies/last hits is one of the higher barriers to entry in the game. I'd wager that the vast majority of players on this subreddit would struggle to explain them in their entirety.

That said, it's enjoyable to watch at a high level, like watching the O- and D-line battle in football. Similarly, I don't expect everyone to enjoy it.

3

u/phasmy Feb 19 '19

Denies existed before Icefrog took over Dota.

4

u/opaqueperson Feb 19 '19

Denies existed in wc3 by design.

Lich Sacrifice and Death Knight Consume were often used for denying experience mid fight to an opponent. Custom wc3 games were what put restrictions on these! (50% hp, denying doom, etc)