DOTA 2: First Impressions from a Rookie

Most of the past week or so I've really getting into the DOTA 2 beta. If you haven't heard about DOTA before or what it is, it was originally a mod for the original Warcraft 3. To be completely honest... this game is pretty fucking amazing. I'm now seriously kicking myself in the ass for never really getting interested or even trying the original DOTA. The game mixes several of my favorite components of online games to start. It's a team based multi-player game. It's real-time strategy. It's role playing. It's incredibly competitive. It's purely a win.

The game play is pretty fast and simple at it's core. It's a 5v5 game where every player picks a "hero" from a pretty huge pool of heroes and then compete against each other in a Tower Defense meets RTS style match. If you've ever seen or heard about League of Legends, it's the exact same thing. Only better I think. The goal of each team is to ultimately destroy the opposing teams Ancient which is really just a massive tower which sits in the middle of each of the bases located on opposite ends of the map. To be able to destroy the opponents Ancient, the heroes must roam the map killing enemy creeps, neutral creep camps, and enemy heroes to gain experience. However, just killing units isn't enough. To gain the advantage over the enemy you also have to be someone good at planning your builds in terms of skills and also in terms of the items you purchase.

The economy system in DOTA is without a doubt the biggest challenge I can see any newcomer trying to overcome when they first start playing. In fact, depending on your hero selection, I can see how some people can become completely overwhelmed with frustration as to why some heroes have such an easy time with killing other heroes, or killing large groups of creeps for example. The items you buy and the speed at which you acquire them almost always are the deciding factor into which team will win. To buy these items you have to acquire gold, which can be done in a few ways. Naturally every player will acquire gold at a rate of 1 per second. However, you can obtain bonus gold for yourself by causing the last hit which kills an enemy creep or by killing an enemy hero outright. Either way though, you want money, and you want a shit ton of it quickly. Because the richer you are the more shit you can by and the more powerful you become.

This is the item list for DOTA 2. You can buy anything if you have the gold and each has it's own special properties. Good luck parsing this through your head when your playing when you first get started. I know i needed it...

But beyond that, you can do whatever the hell you want in the game. Especially depending on the type of hero you pick. They all come in various types and abilities. From the ones which are super tanky and can take a shit ton of damage. To the ones which work better during certain times of the day (in-game). To others which can slice your face off in a couple seconds flat even though a couple bitch slaps to the back of their head will do the same to them if they're not careful.

I've been experimenting with a bunch of heroes. I still haven't found the type that I really enjoy playing the most per se, but I do know that a couple types of heroes aren't the best fit for me. Pretty much anything tank or gank related just annoy the living hell out of me. I'm not sure if it's just the fact I can take a shit ton of damage, but don't really deal out as much and have to rely on the other people on my team to dish it out. Or if it's the fact that I haven't yet mastered the art of being stealthy enough to corner someone or pick them off in an awkward position without feeling awkward myself. I'm way more comfortable being someone quick and agile and extremely mobile. Who can get into and out of most situations relatively easily. It's kind of funny though thinking about other role-playing games I've played and how I've picked the same kinds of heroes or at least preferred them. For example, In Diablo I'm a demon hunter... In Fable, I maxed out agility first... In Elder Scrolls I was a Thief/Archer... You get the point.

That being said. I've got a lot of experimenting with this game left to do. And EVERYONE needs to pick up this game and play it. No one has a reason not to. Why? Oh, maybe because you don't want to spend your hard earned (or not) cash on it? Tough shit... it's FUCKING FREE! You just have to register on Valve's website for it and usually in a week or two they give you access. Since technically it's still in beta phase right now, but you'd never know it. The game is getting polished each week with better stuff and is still getting more and more heroes. I believe Valve has said they are dedicated to releasing 2 new heroes every week until the game's official release. So there's still a lot to come.

In the future, I think I'm going to take a break from Diablo 3 for a while and focus on this. I'm not sick of Diablo 3, but I'm starting to get burned out on doing the same repeating this of just trying to farm items and sell them for gold for days. I need to switch things up and this game definitely does that.

If you'd ever want to join up and get into a DOTA group just let me know. I'm definitely looking for others who are interested in this game since I think it'd be even more entertaining with a group of people you know. But until then...

Happy Gaming!

Multi + Player = ^_^

So random thought here... I was considering playing some COD today, but at the last second backed out and loaded up some DOTA 2 instead. Looking back it's making me think as to why I like to play most of my multi-player games on the PC versus the console. There's a bunch of personal reasons which nobody would probably care to hear, however the main reason I do is simple. I have way more fun playing against other people on the PC than playing anyone on a console. With a PC you have better control so I feel like it's more personalized, the people who play on PC's are usually dedicated gamers and play more seriously and respectfully, and the maturity level is usually much higher. Last one gets a double bump... The number of wanna be "gangsta's", do-nothing in real lifers, and kids under the age of 12 who think they're mature is down right laughable on consoles. I understand some people like playing against people who are like that and that's fine. It's just not the kind of group I like to play against. Although, every now and then it's a great way to get some entertainment, even if I have to be the one who is trolling to get it.

Now I can totally appreciate a good console game given I was born and raised on them. But that was just the way it was back in the 90's and early turn of the century. If you wanted to play against other people your only real choice was to do it on a console. Sure people watched your screen while you played against them, fight ensued because of it, but whatever, it was social! That was the point. It's not like today, were people play anonymously and you never see them again. It's kind of sad really. It was the biggest draw to why I loved to play multi-player over any other game in single player. Ever. Even though there were issues with playing multi-player games with everyone on the same TV. Two words, Screen watching. EVERYONE who played multi-player games (especially fps games) screen watched. Case in point... Goldeneye.

When the game first came out there wasn't a 24 hour period where I wasn't playing it. And when I wasn't playing it alone, I had one or more of my neighbourhood friends over or was at their house getting in a good console fragfest. And since the number of ways you could play a Goldeneye multi-player game was seemingly endless the fun was extremely high as was the variability. Which is why it probably was as popular and as genre defining as any other FPS of its time. Without even thinking I can think of my favorite modes to play. Proxy mines only, rockets only, and slapper mode. How fucking hilarious and aggravating all at the same time was it to run up behind someone (only for them to screen watch you and turn around) and then get into a Bruce Lee style karate match to see who could land the first hit. And then whoever lost went on a suicidal revenge binge for the one person who killed them. Unless someone else wanted to engage in another kung fu match along the way...

However, it does bring me back to why I was talking about console gaming in the first place. It was a foundation, but over time I've outgrown what a console has to offer for multi-player. I do appreciate everything Xbox Live, for example, has to offer and I think Microsoft is on the right track by trying to make their console an all-inclusive media center for the living room. And with some work on their ends it could very well eventually bring me back to being a console gamer. But there's still some work there which needs to be done before. Mainly on the way I find other people to play against and how I can tailor my multi-player match finding in any game in particular.

I think with some enhancements to the types of people you'd like to play with or against on a console, it would open up some pretty incredible possibilities. First off, you could easily begin to filter out the people you would never like to play with, but at the same time indicate your preferences and delight when you find someone who you had the pleasure of jabbing sticks with (insert gay joke here). Possibly do something along the lines of how internet radio stations work. When you find someone you liked playing with you could favorite or "like" them which in turns tweaks the search settings for future games. Or countering that indicating your absolute hatred, disgust, rage-face, etc... against someone who just made you want to track that son-of-a-bitch down and beat the shit out of him with his own TV. Yes, I've been there... as with many millions of others. It sucks. You can't do anything about it. So you just try to ignore it and move on... But I think that's a pretty poor way to go about it. Which is why I bring up the search preferences possibility.

The criteria for which something would be compared against would be the hard part. Simply relying on say everyone honestly describing their likes and dislikes in a profile would simply never happen. This is the real world and there are just as many assholes as there are honest people. (The Law of Polarity ftw). There would probably have to be some kind of algorithm tracing a gamers history. Like what games they played, how often there were on, whether they talked a lot, whether they spammed a lot, etc... From this data some kind of a personality profile could be constructed over time and when the profile has enough data it would allow a gamer of all types to be matched against people which match his or her personal criteria. It could also open up all sorts of lobbying possibilities if someone wanted to switch the kind of people he wanted to play against at any time. Again the metrics for all of this would all have to be worked out, but it does have promise if it was ever to be implemented.

On that note, I think I'm going to get a few good rounds of DOTA 2 in before I crash for the night. If anything I'll get a couple good laughs reading the ragers/trolls in the chat. ^_^