That game that was a map in Warcraft 3
Then I heard that Blizzard, the company that made Warcraft 3, was making their own version of DOTA (or in this case a MOBA) called Heroes of the Storm (before that is was Blizzard Dota, then Blizzard All-Stars) and I even managed to get into the alpha, which was sooooo cool!!!
I downloaded the game, played it a few times and I realized I loved it more than DOTA 2. Here's why:
1. Away with Gold and Items
The first thing I realized after playing dota was how imbalanced the gold system can be. Gold gives the player the ability to purchase items, which then strengthens their hero. Imagine this scenario, if a pro player is pitted against weaker players, the sheer skill and understanding that pro player has would definitely amount to better gold gain as compared to the other players. That player then proceeds to killing more (which grants you extra gold for killing an enemy hero) and farming more (killing weaker monsters to obtain gold), which allows him/her to purchase more items and the cycle continues. This "snowball" effect can get out of hand if the game is matched wrongly and can lead a one sided game of bully (which is no fun for the team being bullied).
Cheater!! Cheater I tell you!!! And then she laughs at your frail attempt to get away, and the laughs even more when you die... Ughhhh
I hate to say that the earlier days of my playing dota usually ended up to this. How I overcame that is beyond me but it is an issue with the game. It may not seem so apparent when watching competitions because the players there are all more or less of the same level in terms of skill (experience may differ though).
On top of that the first time I played DOTA, I was confused with all the gold and items and creeps and wards and so on. Not to mention recipes which I didn't know how they worked at first, it was dota 1 anyways and I was one of those people that bought the recipe thinking I would gain all the stats it listed. Plus I hated the fact that when I played against an enemy, at first they wouldn't even dream of getting into a duel with my hero, but then halfway through the game they would then proceed to kill me with just two hits. Only after that did I know how much items truly impacted the game.
Which leads me to my second point,
2. Sheer Simplicity
Gone are all those gold and items. Away with last hits, denies and warding. Heroes of the Storm (HOTS) also has simpler skills with more straight forward effects. All of which come together to bring you a game that is much friendlier to newcomers but also easier to pickup with a lot of leg room for mastery. Blizzard is one company that upholds one thing for their games, it's that a game should be easy to pick up, but hard to master. DOTA is hard to pick up and hard to master, it has a lot going on in the game all at the same time, HOTS, however, trims all that down to bring you a simpler game you can learn 5 minutes into your first game.
Everything's self explanatory and easy to play with friends
DOTA tries to make each and every hero unique by giving heroes different abilities that also function differently. Heroes in HOTS have abilities that work similar, but ultimately make the hero unique despite all that (more on this later). A good example would be Icarus, the phoenix hero in DOTA, one of the skills it has is Fiery Spirits which conjure up 4 spirits when you first cast the spell, then allowing you to use them as projectiles when you cast the spell again, exploding and dealing damage over time to any enemy cause in the area targeted. The mechanics of the spell is basically a point and click skill shot. In HOTS, you have a number of heroes with the same mechanics but its exactly as it is supposed to be, a point and click skill shot ability. Not a skill you have to cast first giving you 4 shots, of which you have to use within a certain period of time before they expire all together. I get it, you want to make your heroes unique but I'd take simplicity over variety in game mechanics any day. A little bit is fine but most of the new heroes have quite a learning curve to them as opposed to the older heroes in DOTA. The room for mastery I mentioned is due to the fact most of projectile based skills in HOTS are skill shots, meaning you have to anticipate where you opponent would be when the projectile would hit, as opposed to a homing missile mechanic where you simply click on the target and the spell seeks them out.
You must be wondering, no items, similar spell mechanics, where's the fun in that Faruq? For which I say to you,
Patience human, let me finish
3. Talents and Trait System
How Blizzard overcame the lack of items and unique spells is the talents and traits system, which is quite brilliant given how simple the system really is yet it makes a huge difference. In DOTA, items allow heroes to change or enhance their role in the game, a support would buy items that augment the other heroes' stats and attacks, heal or provide resource regeneration or if you want to be a tank, buy items that increase your health and defense. In HOTS, you can do this by selecting talents as you level up in game. In DOTA, as you gain levels, you get to unlock or strengthen you abilities with points, in HOTS though, you have access to all your basic abilities at the start of the game, and you gain talent points every 3 levels. Talents can do many things, it can enhance the ability, give it a new effect or do something else entirely, some talents even give heroes new abilities, passive or active. Each hero has a unique trait that no one else does (duh, unique), and a trait can differ from a simple additional ability you can use in game to allowing you to speed up your resurrection time.
The fact that each hero has its own set of talents plus its unique trait, really differentiate each hero from the rest. It was one of the things I found that DOTA lacked, try as they might to make each hero different from the rest, in the end, a carry always carries the same set of items, which means it doesn't matter what hero they're using, in the end, the heroes all look the same. Take for example a sniper, his late game item would be a manta style, but so would a Luna or an Anti-mage or even a Templar Assassin. Sure the heroes start off completely different, but they follow the same route to get stronger, because they buy the same items. I hated the fact that most abilities in DOTA can be replicated by items, need a cleave? Battlefury for ya, need crits? Here's a Daedalus. This makes the hero feel less unique and once you know the basic formula, you can play most heroes of the same attribute exactly the same.
DOTA addresses weaknesses by using items to cover up those flaws, HOTS expands on a hero's potential by allowing you to concentrate your talents towards how you want to play your hero. (At least that's how it seems to me)
4. Scaling and Team Relevance
DOTA allows you to overcome your hero's weaknesses by buying items, something a support class hero would have difficulty accessing. All MOBA's have support class heroes meant to support the team by means of abilities and early game capabilities. In DOTA, the support classes babysit carry heroes (a hero that starts out weak but with the help of items and levels allow them to dish out a lot of damage, carrying the team to victory, hence the name "carry"). When you play DOTA, it's important to always have a support on your team, or else the carry hero would die too easily without getting the sufficient amount of gold to buy the items needed to start carrying. But as soon as that hero obtains the items needed, your help as a support hero greatly declines. By playing a support, you are expected to give up gold gain and kills to the carry, forfeiting your claim for any yourself, the bad thing about this is that as soon as your carry is strong enough to kill on its own, the enemy's carry would do too, and you are left weak with no items to strengthen yourself. I usually play the support class because normally people wouldn't want to play the support and they like to get kills, so I am very familiar with those situations, you are basically a sitting duck filled with gold for enemies to kill, the only help you can give is by disabling enemies with your spells and items (if you manage to get any) or warding the map. Any damaging spells you have now basically do nothing and so does your basic attacks. You are just a wandering sack of meat, under leveled, penniless and itemless waiting to die.
To represent your value to your team and how the enemy sees you
When I entered HOTS, things were greatly different, your spells scaled as you gained levels and with no gold or items, you could do a lot more than just support, your attacks still packed a punch and your spell can still hit hard no matter what stage of the game. Heroes also leveled up as a team with shared experience instead of individual experience gauges in DOTA, and your abilities greatly mattered because there were no items that could produce the same effects. All heroes can contribute by "soaking" up experience in lane, so the job isn't specifically aimed towards you as the support only. This meant a lot to me, as I felt that support class players are not always given the credit they deserve. It may be personal, but support heroes in HOTS can really make a huge difference as compared to DOTA.
5. Focused Objectives and Pacing
DOTA fails at highlighting the true intention of playing the game in the first place, to destroy the enemy's ancient. Destroy the ancient, finish the game. But ask your friends the point of playing DOTA and they might have a hard time coming to that conclusion. You see, DOTA highlights and rewards killing other enemy heroes, a task at which you are not first needed to do, but allowed to do so because it would make piercing through the defenses easier. The whole point of the game is lost because most play the game for the kills, true enough, if you kill the enemy heroes a number of times, you will have nothing left to stop you from destroying the ancient, allowing you to win the game. The reason I say it's lost is because most just play it to get kills, which if you kill a large number of enemy heroes, you and your killing streak will be announced for all the players to witness, earning you that GODLIKE STREAK, proving your mastery of the game and how excellent you are. It's like you've just bought a Lamborghini and the news network just decided to announce it for the whole world to hear. OF COURSE YOU'LL GLEAM WITH PRIDE. And that's why there's an emphasis on killing more than objectives. (it is a fan started game after all so you can't really complain)
Rampage is a greater honour, meaning you've managed to kill 5 heroes within a short period of time
But HOTS isn't, they've had time to plan and troubleshoot before releasing the game. And the result is a game that still rewards you for a kill streak, but awards your whole team for having done so with the coveted HERO OF THE STORM after 20 consecutive kills. It's simply amazing that by omission of just the player's name, a game is more team motivated than individually motivated. Less of a "I want to get the most kills!" and more of a "let's beat the other guys!"
From this,
To this!
Another problem DOTA has is its pacing. DOTA starts off really slow (unless you're playing pro matches) with the laning phase or early game, mid game is where fights start to happen a lot and late game is mostly a battle of the carries. DOTA's laning phase is about 6-12 minutes long depending on how good the players are, and most of the time you'll be just killing creeps for gold and experience. Do you need to engage the enemy heroes? Not at all. Actually you can win the whole game without needing to engage the enemy. The reason why people engage other enemy heroes is to gain a gold and experience advantage or cripple the enemies' advance, like I said killing enemy heroes awards you with bonus experience and gold. Which brings me to an excellent example, in the 2014 DOTA Internationals, the chinese team Newbie, played one of the longest games of DOTA in the history of TI finals. The reason, simple, being, they never needed to engage the opposing team, most of their time was spent farming gold and experience in the jungle. The only time they would risk getting into battle was to get the Aegis of Immortality to win team fights, if the attempt fails, they would go back to farming, wait out the Aegis and rinse and repeat.
HOTS has map objectives that can influence an enemy's push into the your defenses. These objectives force engagements and at the same time, indirectly remind you of the point of the game. The ancient (or core in HOTS) is protected by 3 lines of defenses, which are towers that deal heavy damage should a hero come under fire. The objectives either disable these towers or weaken them sometimes destroying them all together, forcing you to contest and forcing engagements. This, combined with your heroes having all their basic abilities from level 1, shortens your laning phase to around a minute and making the game move much faster. For comparison, a game of DOTA usually takes 30-60 mins and a game of HOTS takes an average of 15-20 mins. This makes it more exciting as there's always action somewhere on the map and you can play more. One of the things I didn't like about DOTA was how much time it took. So HOTS was a welcome change especially if you can risk spending a whole afternoon playing DOTA.
Now before I end this post, I'm not saying I no longer like DOTA, I'm just listing 5 reasons why HOTS is better than DOTA, I'll write about the counter argument in a later post.
Have a good one and keep playing DOTA or HOTS! (Or LOL, or HONS or SMITE)
No comments:
Post a Comment