MPUK DOTA has become a joke

[afty]

Are we going to do something about it?

I've played DOTA 8 out of the last 10 nights... trying to find one good close, enjoyable challenging game where either team has a chance of winning it. Out of about 25-30 games I've found one. And it was a random public.

I'm fed up of:
1] People leaving without a reason or saying "oh, I need to eat" or some other crappy excuse. There is little difference between an MPUK game and a public these days.,
2] Playing games when they are clearly over. I love playing nice, tight games of DOTA - but when one team has better heroes and/or better players and/or a serious level and cash advantage early on the game is over.
3] Starting games with a clear outcome. About three or four times now over the last fortnight I've been involved (on both sides) in games where the teams were ridiculously stacked. A little bit of forethought before hitting the "go" button is nice.

I have alot of people argue the point about games being over after 10 or 12 levels, but it's easy when it's happening (name an example of when it's been called wrong with no leavers involved, and I'll buy you a beer). If the imbalance in levels/cash happens late in the game then there is still a chance to win because you can group up and spank through creep to take rax when you have the opportunity. However, if it happens early you can't even push a single tower after a large gank because at level 10/12 you are too weak to push creep effectively. When this happens I am fed up of being expected to sit around for 30 or 40 minutes waiting for the inevitable. I have work to do, fingernails to cut and sleep that could be had. Taking a rough guess I'd say I've spent about 100 hours doing this in the last 12 months. Ouch.

I came back into playing DOTA after i25 after barely playing all summer, and I have to say it's taken a massive turn for the worse. I hope we can sort this out, because while publics may be more fun than MPUK games, they're nowhere near as much fun as MPUK games used to be.

I don't really know what we can do to get quality even games again... Suggestions on a postcard.

[Baz]

it's kaution - he breaks all games he plays in.

Myself and Beat play nightly on our own, and regularly have excellent, very close games, a few come to mind straight away. You just need to stop playing with uber uber pros afty:)

[afty]

Nah, It's not down to one person. Pig, Kaution and Penguin are all top class individual players, and we have some decent team players too. The issues are too obvious... starting a game with all three of them on the same team for example...

Just needs a little applied thought.

[her0n]

those 3 on one team? that's just silly... Crazy Piglet and Penguin are brothers btw ;) (at least thats what i remember being told..)

[Cheez]

Wait. I must have missed something, when wasn't DOTA a joke? ;)

[RoboStac]

I've felt this for ages - I'm not sure whether the newer versions of dota have become less fun with too many disablers being added etc(Nearly every kill in most games these days seems to be with a couple of stuns, and no chance to do anything, whereas I remember it used to be about doing lots of damage, having lots of hp or getting a lucky crit), or just that dota isn't fun when played to win.

No-one likes to just be stunned and not put up a fight, but having a couple of stuns makes winning very easy. The sheep stick is almost a required item for most heros, just to be able to have a chance.

It also seems that it has been made harder to come back from - creeps get insanly strong after a barracks kill. I remember games in the past where the losing team did come back to win after being on defence for ages and having next to no base left.

The only way I can see to get a good game is to play reverse pick, and avoid picking disabling heros, but no-one wants to play that as it isn't all that much fun to play some heros.

And yes, piglet and penguin are brothers.

[afty]

Reverse pick is kinda fun... but only for a few games as the 5 heros on each side always come from a pool of about 10-12 :(

[wucan]

Do u need Frozen Throne to play dota ?

[afty]

Yes you do. Getting the Battle Chest might be an idea... if you can find it in stock anywhere.

[Crazy Piglet]

It's all these damn leavers...

Warcraft 3 on Play (http://www.play.com/play247.asp?pa=sr&page=title&r=PC&title=102357)
Frozen Throne on Play (http://www.play.com/play247.asp?pa=sr&page=title&r=PC&title=115365)

[Dux0r]

me and kandy have been playing a few publics a night for the past week, we would be happy to play with you guys... but are too crap in comparison tbh :)

[Jingles]

Reverse pick doesnt seem to work in the current version

[D0c]

Deathmatch solves the hero imbalance problem, especially as you dont lose a level+exp anymore when you die.

[her0n]

i <3 dota

[DaeMord]

before anybody says anything to contridict me, understand the exact location this statement is coming from, the guy who came up with the DSM (DaeMord Stun Meter) for judging a points system for hero's as to which team would win based on stuns dissables and slows

STUNS MEAN NOTHING

for anybody who wishes proof on this, please take a look at the last CB clan match played, where when we were sentinal we had SIGNIFICANTLY more stuns and slows and disables and silences than the enemy team, but got our arses royally handed to us, this has forced me to do a rethink in both how i play dota, and how dota should indeed be played.

In a nutshell, internal private games are incapable of being balanced, several reasons

1) Players skill
the game that prompted afty to make this post, had apparently 3 players "better" than the rest, and having this "stacked" was gonna result in a "stacked" game, well how on earth do you split 3, 1.5 players go on 1 team and 1.5 go on the other, quick SOMEBODY CALL PAUL DANIELS.
2) Interperating player skill
How the HELL do you do this one, because tbh its beginning to get me flumoxed, you CANNOT tell player skill by kills/deaths, or any other measure other than personal opinion tbh of what is and is not a good player which brings me onto point 3
3) Opinions
Afty belives the game was stacked from the word go, i dissagree, whichever of us is rght or wrong is irrelivent, the point is because everybody has a different opinion NOBODY is going to agree on balance
4) Hero's
If we do AP (perhaps the fairest way) everybody goes WEH its boring WEH moan WEH everyone uses the same heros <insert moans here>
If we do AR then the team that gets the heros THEY ARE BEST WITH, especially if the apposing team gets heros there not so good with, there team with the heros there good with will chances are win, irrelivent of hero skill
Okay so DM fixes this to a point, a key thing here is as an example other night Kaution got bloodseeker, and went to get some silly x/0 killing spree, point is its very easy to get a bunch of heros you love, rape the enemy team get loads of xp and gold boost, then die and tbh it doesnt make a blind bit of difference, your already 2 lvls higher and got twice the gold, hence AR wether this be DM or standard AR makes "balancing" teams pointless.

So....... What can ya do
In yet another nutshell very little, tbh im getting the thinking it simply depends what ya want out of dota, if ya want a giggle, your probably better off stomping on some noobs with some imba hero and going freeky builds
If you want a tough game then encourage some sort of clan thing to go on properly like the clanbase matches are, now i would like this to become more common, when we have 5, find a dota clan play a game, okay ya gonna win some, and some ya gonna get trounced in 5 mins, but at least you will have no idea of the outcome before the match.
And on this point, another reason internal mpuk games are becoming more pointless is simply we can all play dota, some better than others, but we can all play it, so these days we target players who are troublesum, hence why when on the apposing team from afty, i got for afty hard, i organise gang bangs making afty the main target and i remove him from the game by denying him xp and gold wherever possible, yes afty i pick on you, and will continue to pick on you, and its your own damn fault for being so damn good when i started playing dota, im not the only one who does it, and your not the only one i do it to, and this is also breaking dota games.

My opinion is, its broken beyond repair now, so im gonna stick with 5vnoobs and clan wars, and when clanbase is done, if mpuk isnt playing more clan games, i will probably see if i can find a clan that is, do noob stomps with you lot, and proper games with them.

Rant Over :)

[Jingles]

I just enjoy playing it - doesn't matter if we win/lose as long as Daemord doesn't start singing on comms :D

[Kaution]

think my bloodseeker killing spree in the DM games was something along the lines of 24/0 :)

[Crazy Piglet]

Stun is nothing.
Skill is everything.
Obey your teammates!

/flee

[Killy]

yeah and stop whining on ts when you die, for half an hour, or talking about something totally irrelevant for the same amount of time when i'm asking for backup... you know who you are... ;)

[her0n]

daemord and the darlington buses? :o

[XW-Fade]

Some of you will think I'm "new". Some of you will remember the "old" days when you first started playing and the clan was XW.

There is more to DotA than stuns and hero-killing. Comebacks are not impossible (although they seem much harder in the newer versions), but often require creative thinking and adaptation.

[sh0ckwave]

Originally posted by XW-Fade
Some of you will think I'm "new". Some of you will remember the "old" days when you first started playing and the clan was XW.


Fade you are so nu ;)
Although didn't we used to play DotA before it was DotA Allstars ? I'm sure i rememeber playing a version where you had the choice of upping 1 stat each level - str, ag, int.. but a nice bug was if you pressed all 3 buttons in quick succession you got all 3 stats each level !


Some other random thoughts:-

I've found that if a particular hero is getting too powerful, the best response is to use team work and .. well, basically, gang-bang them. This might invoke lots of "wahhh" from the player on the receiving end, but surely the objective of the game is to win. And not die. So there should also be no problem with someone windwalking out of a fight if it looks like they're gonna die! :)

I agree with the fact we should have no leavers in mpuk games, or no reason for anyone to be afk for half the game. If you haven't got at least 60-90 mins spare or nothing you can't put off, then don't start!


I do have a replay of some of us playing v bnet randoms, having the base pretty much overrun and then coming back to a storming victory. So IMO its not over till its over.

[XW-Fade]

Originally posted by sh0ckwave
Fade you are so nu ;)
Although didn't we used to play DotA before it was DotA Allstars ? I'm sure i rememeber playing a version where you had the choice of upping 1 stat each level - str, ag, int.. but a nice bug was if you pressed all 3 buttons in quick succession you got all 3 stats each level !


*sniff*

Hmm..I think Allstars was the one with the broken stats buttons, or was that DotA Darkness Falls..there were a couple of others (including the 3-way multihero fest that MXW pwnd with his micro skills).

My personal favourite was the DotA hack MXW and I were putting together. We had a hero called Nexus, with a skill called Gaydon. It was bloody marvelous. Back when Heron used to play the SA all the time I think we were gonna do a hero called Heron the not so stealthy assassin that pinged the minimap every second or something :D

As for AFK/leavers...well...the point is more that you shouldn't get people leaving because they are losing, got a bad hero, got unlucky etc. Life (invariably) gets in the way, punishing people or bitching for it means you're taking the GAME too seriously :p:

[Blue_Monkey]

At lanse we've always taken it as a bit of fun, true leavers do spoil it. But whats been worse is the crashs that seem to pop up more now, as more often than not they appear in the longer games you want to win.

As i say, i don't know when it got this serious, we've only played an MPUK bunch once and they left then as well :/

We'll have a couple of games, if you can promise to cool it tho? :P

[Aardvark]

Originally posted by Blue_Monkey
As i say, i don't know when it got this serious, we've only played an MPUK bunch once and they left then as well :/

We didn't 'leave', we conceded. We then went on to win 2-1 overall, so I fail to see your point here...

[Blue_Monkey]

It's completely my point, concede? I thought it was a game not cricket!

next time someone says "gotta go eat" i'll write that off as conceding then.

[afty]

The only people who want to play on when the other team has offered a gracious concession is stocked with people who need their egos' stoking.

[Blue_Monkey]

The only difference between conceding and "leaver" is the word concede.

For completely the same reasons.

So many times there have been huge fightbacks, was one last night and the night before from having one rax down and two raxs down. It is the fun in the game to draw together.

Although i do "concede" that if you're 30 minutes in with 1 rax down you're going to be in a ****e mood with it. Doesn't stop it being the same motivation.

[XW-Fade]

There's quite a big difference between a team conceeding an organised matchup and a person leaving because they're a git.

Sometimes (although rarely, and no-where near as often as some seem to think) it is possible to tell when you've lost, moreover it is possible to tell when the other team could happily push and win but is instead stacking their heros. The latter type of person is also a git.

[Blue_Monkey]

it's those you take advantage of though, a group did that when we had 2 raxs down, went to kill roshan while i was pushing north, had just got the creep wave to their base as the Roshan has been slain message came up.
Two people boots to me we pushed in and they came staggered so we turned the game around from that.
People "concede" far too easily. Have fun with the heros, more often than not when we play pubbies it's -dm now, it adds that extra element.

[Aardvark]

In a clan match, the concession is OUR choice, not yours. If we could have won, then its our own stupid fault for conceding.

[Blue_Monkey]

oh goodness, clans? I hope there isn't a Clanbase for it, when i used to play battlefield that all got far to serious far too quick. Then you get the "hax" etc and it all goes to pot.

[Aardvark]

If it were me, I'd be happy that my team played well enough to win a match in under 20 minutes. I guess theres no pleasing some people...

[Blue_Monkey]

I'd prefer to play an hour and narrowly lose. Odd but true.

[afty]

Originally posted by Blue_Monkey
we had 2 raxs down ... i was pushing north, ... the Roshan has been slain message came up. ... they came staggered so we turned the game around Congratulations. In our MPUK games, no team is stupid enough to do Roshan with 2 rax down.

We concede games that are clearly over (sure you can "comeback" against randoms online, and sometimes if your team has good late game heroes you can comeback too) not games where one or two deaths or towers separate it. I've been forced to play on in at least 15 or 20 games now that I've called as a loss or a win... and barring leavers I've yet to be wrong.

DOTA is one of those games where you can easily assess who has what heroes, how badly behind one team is, and predict a winning team with a VERY high degree of accuracy.

[Blue_Monkey]

which is a shame really. Also some hero's are extremely hard to handle at the moment and you may say gang them, but early game that hinders your team more than benefitting it :(

Anyway, i'm looking forward to a lan this weekend with some monopoly tycoon :p