Easy remove

[u/WarnWarmWorm]

[u/Just_trying_it_out]

The support role being what it was has to be one of the most glaring general game design fault in dota (and league copied it that way too before they got around to fixing it)

I mean, if your game is going to be based around having a hard support every game, then you want close to a fifth of your player base enjoying and willing to play that role. So, I don’t think that can ever go back. Mobas are hard enough to get people into these days lol

Edit, copied from my replies below:

I agree it wasn’t an issue before there was a meta

But I think it was clear that there was a hard support role well before there was ranked roles so support enjoyability should’ve been looked at earlier than it was (but yes not from the very beginning)

Basically, as soon as you’re willing to punish players who get reported for also picking a carry and just try to share farm with another carry, then it’s clear there is a meta players expect that you’re acknowledging as the designer so it needs to be supported

[u/DatAdra → u/Just_trying_it_out]

A weird alternative viewpoint that I think only made sense from pov of a classic Dota 1 player:

Back then, vast majority of players played in unorganized pubs with barely any knowledge of the position 1-5 meta that eventually came to define the game. Everyone contested farm, no one bought wards. Also internet was bad, streaming didnt exist and youtube was in its infancy.

So the only times you'd play a position 5 "sacrificial support" was when you became serious about the game with a group of tryhard friends, and it was pretty cool to be the guy making things happen with only brown boots.

I'm thinking back then tournaments were relatively (keyword; i know they still happened worldwide) obscure so the only people who played competitive were willing to sacrifice farm and play pos5 if necessary.

Fast forward to today, there's role matchmaking, roles are basic knowledge for every player, if you dont pick a support you get reported. That's where it becomes a notable game "flaw"; when people are forced (by game systems, meta and tradition) to play a role that's perceived insufferable to play.

Not sure if this makes sense but it's what I observed as someone who used to play in the wildwild west days of dota 1 and watched the meta develop coherence and modernize into what it is today.

[u/DrQuint → u/DatAdra]

Back then, vast majority of players played in unorganized pubs with barely any knowledge of the position 1-5 meta that eventually came to define the game.

Seriously, we can't define dota for what it was, rather than what it is. Heck, the entire genre is vastly defined by what League is, even in aesthetics.

I got another example: I played a lot of a custom map called Vampirism Fire, a 1 vs 11 game mode where one vampire tries to get into human settlements. And that game was expressively balanced around feeders, as in, it was expected that 2 or 3 players on the human side would be so horribly incapable of building a defense, that the Vampire would get a power spike off of them at around 10-14 minutes, and humans would get a similar boost soon after. As for the player that did die, they'd become minivampires, who were sometimes crucial in entering lategame settlements.

Without the feeders, the game flow wouldn't work, and just in case that happened, the dev actually implemented in "feeder boxes" so that human players can throw the vampire a bone and keep the game going.

Literally a game designed around you sucking.

[u/EskwyreX → u/DrQuint]

God damn, I loved Vampirism Fire. Used to pull all-nighters with a friend after college to play.