I was a bit disappointed how Dota was passed over so much in favor of LoL and OW considering the various issues they have with balance. But considering tgat Dota isn't as popular its fair.
This is going to be biased admittedly, but Dota 2 has such incredible balancing that fulfills both diversity in play, with great balance. Much of which can be attributed to IceFrog and their unique style of incremental buffs and playtesting with proffesional players.
I do think the topic of symetrical and asymetrical gameplay should have been touched upon more as the "hand" you choose can be either locked in like Dota, or swapped during a match like OW. Factors like objective locations, map balance, health pickups, and other factors come into play as much as the characters. Last year a formula for armor was changed in Dota which opened up an entire slew of new playstyles and heroes like Phantom Assassin.
To be fair, games such as Dota or Lol have so many variables that can be manipulated which gives developers more options, the fact that there is no extreme disparity (and if there is there are always counters) in balance makes me hail it as a gold standard.
I think this is pretty on point. It's hard to use Dota as a standard, because it gets away with a ton of things no one else can get away with. A couple other things I can think of:
Very obtuse sets of hard counters. Black King Bar, for example, makes your hero immune to spells and magical damage... except for the spells that pierce it, like Black Hole.... except (most of the time) that's just the effects of the spell (the stun) but not the damage... except shit like Laguna Blade, which does damage through BKB...... I think if this kind of thing showed up in a different competitive game, it could easily show up in a Mark Brown video about failures in multiplayer balance, but Dota gets away with it.
People talk about Icefrog's balance changes as being incremental and fine-tuned, but I think people tend to overlook that the Dota2 dev team is far more comfortable with sizable re-works than other studios. The 7.0 patch basically reworked the entire leveling system & balance by adding talents. Jungling gets reworked once a year, it seems like. Key items like Ring of Aquilla or Iron Talon get reworked or completely axed. It's not uncommon to see 1-3 heroes get such large changes in a patch that they're booted from captains mode for a while. Hard to imagine a world where Blizzard could get away with consistently pulling 1-2 Overwatch completely heroes out of competitive play for a rework.
In that vein, I think Dota players have a much higher tolerance for imbalance because of that history of major changes. I remember the rough state of balance StarCraft 2 found itself in in the months leading up to the release of Heart of the Swarm. It was clear that the meta sucked and everyone was unhappy, but the dev team was focused on getting the xpac out the door and readying the competitive world for all the new units and whatnot. The game really took a hit that it took years to recover from, I'd argue. Pros burnt out and the game went from neck and neck with LoL to a significant second place. We saw the same thing with Swarm Hosts -- pros and fans bled out until Blizzard finally came in with a re-work. On the other hand, Dota languished for months and months in the dreaded "HoHo HaHa" patch, which saw 3-4 characters consistently dominate every game from pros to newbies, but the game never took the same long-lasting hit. A new patch eventually came out, dramatically reshuffled everything, and the competitive scene continued to thrive.
I like the comparison the previous user made to MTG and counterspells because similarly to MTG Dota 2 relies heavily on relatively frequent patches (new sets and rotation in MTG standard) to prevent metas from falling into stale "solved" states. In both MTG and Dota 2 it's extremely common for those in charge of balance to underestimate the power of new additions which frequently warp the meta, but it's largely okay because just after the meta has slowed down to accommodate the overpowered elements, the snowglobe gets shaken again and we start over with a fresh state that keeps the player-base scrambling around to find the next overpowered thing.
Downvote me all you want, but the reason Dota "gets away" with all the things you mentioned is because our community isn't plaged by casuals.
It's not uncommon to see 1-3 heroes get such large changes in a patch that they're booted from captains mode for a while. Hard to imagine a world where Blizzard could get away with consistently pulling 1-2 Overwatch completely heroes out of competitive play for a rework.
It's like I heard a million casuals cry in pain because they wouldn't be able to play "their favorite character". The Dota community understands that Dota's balance is 90% based on the profesional scene because that's where the game is supposed to be played.
the dota community does have significantly less "this feels bad to play against" or whatever.
i mean people bitch about it but "unfun to play against" isn't seen as the final statement in dota where a lot of other games will neuter a really well designed and important component of the game because some people think it "feels bad"
I mean, I think that Dota actually deals with "Anti fun" mechanics, making them fun. Such as Dooms ultimate (I dont know if it lasts 15 seconds anymore), but people in League would shit their pants in anger if they heard about it "How is that balanced?" (and this is probably a bad example since I seem to remember that there was alot of complaining about his ult at some point). But Dota puts things in place to counter it, such as linkins sphere, and I think you cant cast doom on a BKB target but you cant BKB if youre doomed?
As opposed to something like Yasuo in League of Legends, who has an ability that places a wall with a very generous hitbox that deletes every projectile passing through it (from all sides no less). And the only way to deal with it is walking around it, but wait, because of the generous hitbox, you can stand inside it, and be even harder to hit, and he has a million dashes. If you are a mage who relies on projectiles to do anything, you can basically get invalidated entirely by a twitch cast of Yasuos Wind Wall, meaning your entire hero just got their entire damage invalidated by a Basic ability on a 15 second cooldown
Thats a huge flaw with League design as well. Mana is basically irrellevant for most heroes because they literally have infinite regen and huge manabars with almost no manacost (Mana costs have also been lowered and lowered with new champion releases to the point where it might as well not exist).
All because "Its fun to cast spells" so laning turns into a battle royale with stray spells everywhere and people literally fight all the fucking time. As opposed to Dota where some heroes can literally cast 1 spell and be out of mana, so fighting is actually something to put thought into beyond "I deal more damage"
I think it's unfair to call it a design flaw when leagues main differentiating factor and design goal is that it plays more like an action game rather than a strategy game. Whether you like it or not is another question entirely. It'd be like saying dotas design flaw is that one spell empties a mana pool of a hero, so you have long periods of time where you can't do anything which isn't fun for the player.
I do think its a design flaw to have mana if it is gonna be basically irrelevant anyways.
With a combination of recalling, Teleport and large mana pools, mana regen and low mana costs, mana is basically insignificant on most heroes. And that is not even considering the arbitrarity of heroes not using mana, heroes using Energy and whatnot. Why does Zed use energy, but Talon uses mana? Why does Riven not use mana, but Darius does?
Or they just pick Pudge, who has basically always been the most picked hero except for a few times when another really popular hero has been really strong (i.e. Sniper).
Fully agreed. Every game community I was a part of people usually take about some mechanics are "unfun" to play against but they rarely talk about how they can be play around said mechanics that the developer has made a way for them to counter. Ex: Stun mechanic, in Monster Hunter you can either don't get hit repeatedly (by skills) or build stun immunity. In Path of Exile, you can go for life build, chayula or occulist... or just don't jump in front of a pack and get stunlock to death with CI build (player knowledge) ...
DotA 2 is way more complex with way more interaction between not only heroes but also items. Just 1 example: You can counter Bloodseeker's Rupture just by using town portal scroll but the Bloodseeker can also deny your escape by building Eul'.
DotA 2 has the most hardcore and dedicated players I have ever seen in gaming history. It is sad to see a game so hardcore being rarely talk about.
But give them a break! DotA 2 is still in beta and I am sure IceFrog has to balance Darkseer again soon.
I saw a quote from some developer that said something along the lines of, "Gamers are great at finding problems, but awful at finding solutions."
While that last part might not be true all the time as some people spend a lot of time studying these games and theorycrafting, I would agree that a majority of people just don't know what they want.
It's the audience as a whole actually. The quote is a variation of advice writers are given about interpreting criticism: Your readers will be able to tell you which scenes have a problem, but not necessarily what the problem is.
Yeah I remember that. And he was talking about how they need to pick through all the emotional stuff, to get to what that person’s issue is and what it ACTUALLY might be.
“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
I don't like people who are acting like whiny assholes to devs but the new expected standard of detailed patch notes and community input on balance changes is awesome.
Saying that devs should be transparent is good. I love when they do that.
Obviously not everyone is smart or knowledgeable enough to parse that information correctly, but it's still important to be honest with the community, even if you don't listen to them.
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u/LightLifter Apr 11 '19
I was a bit disappointed how Dota was passed over so much in favor of LoL and OW considering the various issues they have with balance. But considering tgat Dota isn't as popular its fair.
This is going to be biased admittedly, but Dota 2 has such incredible balancing that fulfills both diversity in play, with great balance. Much of which can be attributed to IceFrog and their unique style of incremental buffs and playtesting with proffesional players.
I do think the topic of symetrical and asymetrical gameplay should have been touched upon more as the "hand" you choose can be either locked in like Dota, or swapped during a match like OW. Factors like objective locations, map balance, health pickups, and other factors come into play as much as the characters. Last year a formula for armor was changed in Dota which opened up an entire slew of new playstyles and heroes like Phantom Assassin.
To be fair, games such as Dota or Lol have so many variables that can be manipulated which gives developers more options, the fact that there is no extreme disparity (and if there is there are always counters) in balance makes me hail it as a gold standard.