exe3 wrote:6. How? A pink circle doesn't tell me anything about who or what is at that location of the map. A character portrait does. Should I worry about that circle heading towards me? Is it a character with abilities to pwn me or would I win a 1v1 fight against them if they decided to engage? Also they're not that easy to discern thanks to the muddy graphics, pink might be ok but others aren't (no I will not shut up about the muddy graphics).
well maybe its just me but I find it quite easy to keep track of which hero is which colour throughout a game and those colours are also indicated at the top of screen. Its just a design thing (which you seem to like
) for easy viewing you need less detail, eg road signs. I guess there's no point in arguing though seeing as we both win either way (although I would hate it if portraits became the default...)7. Yes I understand that the game is played in stages but I expect each stage to have its own nuances while still having the same goals. Early game involves farm farm and more farm, nothing more, mid and late game are the parts that actually involve pushing and trying to win the game. Personally I would rather it start at mid game or at least have that early game very short.
well unfortunately farming is just a key part of the game and as such is a key part of trying to win the game. I'm going to draw more parallels to RTS here, you don't win a game of Starcraft without building a few SCV's. You may not like it because it doesn't fit neatly into the story of why we're here killing towers but as a mechanic to add strategic depth to the game its fantastic IMO.
Blizzard DOTA will decide whether only tower pushing will be dull, personally I don't think so, games will be shorter in general by removing the farm portion so that's a plus and mid/late is generally all about pushing yet those stages aren't dull.
I do see the appeal of a pure tower pushing frenzy but I'm not sure how you add progression to that without some sort of farming element anyway. I'll be very interested to see how they attack that but for now it feels like it will be a rather shallow experience.
I disagree about levels and economy as their inclusion isn't the issue, the issue is how much say the economy has over who wins. Great tactics don't win games nearly as much as having more gold does, it's why the genre is so unacceptably snowbally.
this is true, but you've got to remember that the way you get more gold is by using great tactics. I think you're looking at the game far too one dimensionally in a lot of ways. Laning isn't just last hitting and denying, its also about a whole heap of other things (tactics) to maximise your last hitting and denying. All of these things also vary greatly depending on what role you're playing on the team.
Also I disagree over your comparison to an RTS because Dota may have been made on an RTS engine but it most definitely isn't an RTS, it's an action RPG if anything. And besides, plenty of RTS's have toned down the economy portion to focus more on fighting, it's still there and it still has a say on things but it isn't nearly the deciding factor as it is in some other games and imo Dota like games should be more focused on this than having your economy dictate whether you win or lose.
you have to understand dota's origins, its very much an RTS at its roots hence the reliance on economy and I think its all the better for it. The other thing is that you don't wave a magic wand to get a pile of gold to spend, you have to earn it the whole way by playing well and playing smart. You don't win because you have a good economy, you have a good economy because you're winning.
Also the games definitely aren't similar. You may as well say that Quake and Unreal are similar, that Age of Empires and CnC are similar, or that Forza and GT are similar. They're the same genre so that automatically makes them similar in what you generally do but that doesn't make the games themselves similar at all.
Just from that single game I played I could see just how significantly different the two games are. Dota items are more about actives than just plain stat gains. Dota items don't affect your abilities except special items that only affect your ultimate (in LoL you have cooldown reduction items and AP to increase the damage abilities can do, also mana and mana regen are separate stats you have to build for as well unlike in Dota where you get both from intelligence). Dota has donkeys and appears at first glance to have far more variety in its champions (especially pet champs, LoL has a woeful pet control system currently but there have been some indications that this may be looked at at some stage). The whole stat setup is completely different (agility/int/strength) and the fact you can actually increase those stats when you level up in place of upgrading a spell (I assume your base stats don't automatically increase per level as they do in LoL). The environment is far more dynamic than in LoL (eg: nature guy creating Treants directly from nearby trees). There are those hidden stores (unsure how I feel about them currently personally, need to learn more about them first). Let's not even get into the obvious stuff like denying or how their are exclusive champs depending on what team you're on.
No, the games are VERY different and calling them similar is an insult to both of them.
dude, they're similar and so are your three examples.
