12 replies to this topic

[Grief-Code]

Please reject all the changes for balancing on the new map for -bo modes.

 

I got since yesterday (10 hours ) around 25 request to switch back to the old lod map, reason: no fun, the challenge and fun was to have inbalanced builds which need to be smashed to win a game.

And cmon all the fucking cries around one hit, perm stun, super tank. Play in a team game and you can easily counter that shit.

Im considering to swap back, or create a vote option for the map, that include the real old roc+rearm, the latest unbalanced and working map or the latest map.

 

This changes could be done in my opinion for -eb, only there this make sense, because you balancing now over the dota map...

[DracoL1ch]

do you mean hero classes? i'd like to see if people would be satisfied if they would have a class of heroes with 0 cast point. cause its the main thing got changed i think.

or please, make it more clear, what did they called "fair". both could help

[Ech0]

Well, i can't say this for sure but with a little insight i have. Most negative feedback has come from the heroes being all the same. And tank model isn't good enough for hard tanks. Too little str and base hp regen same as others. Also missing of 0.00 caster is very bad thing i've heard.

 

Also i would add for the diversity of the game not the"making all same" concept. This just my suggestion: Instead of creating classes and making all models basically same hero i would and i think many "long timers" who have hard time to adapt to the new system would agree more to a change like you made with some heroes earlier (buffing) like pit lord and tauren chieftain clinkz, meepo, not in a radical way like these were buffed maybe a little too much but with the base point of normal dota heroes and then with "common sense" you could take a look at each hero individually and see what they miss compared to others and how could you "balance" the situation a little. So every hero would have his pros and cons.

 

for eg. We could take now (1) centaur/tidehunter, (2) invoker/leshrac (3) naix/alechemist for good examples.

 

(1) Centaur has good stats, movement and statsgains, little bad base dmg and cast points but suits very nicely for a tanky build. (mostly picked hero for tanks)

Then is tidehunter, you probably dont see him like ever in games, unless somebody want to pick it for the lols (like me) and own with it. But anyway, tidehunter has fairly bad stats, bad gains, also bad cast time his only perk is his movement speed. Then you could think how to get people to pick him but also keep the game diverse and heroes separate. Well you could make him a little more updated to anyway like giving him a fairly better mana gain and cast time alongside with his normal movement speed. So people could use it as caster for example or anyway you want to change them.

 

(2) Invoker/Leshrac

Invoker is fairly bad in everyway except he has awesome cast time which makes him a valuable choice for only caster. His movement speed is just very terrible but lets keep it that way. Buffing him with a good gain of int and keeping his slowiness. Then there is leshrac with good movement speed and intellisgence. Also he is very seldom seen ingames because he has TERRIBLE cast time, but lets keep it that way so he suffers from bad cast time but then he could be used in some other builds. Lets upgrade his stat gains (str/agi and drop his BaT. Now he is suited for other type of builds like (impetus) and makes a valuable choice for it.

 

(3) Naix is allaround hero and one of the most picked heroes of older lods (6.74) He has a little bit of everything. Not very good statgains and bad armor. But he is very fast and quick to cast with a good attack animation/cast animation. Lets keep him as he is. Comparing alchemist then. Alchemist is probably never seen ingame (except his ultimate skill) he has bad stats and gains and he is slow and dont have armor or damage, he could be implemented with better movement speed and like very good agility gain for str hero.

 

So my conclusion would be that instead of classifying all models i think they should be upgraded and the game could be made more diverse. Give some hero good stats but he is a slow caster or has bad attack animation. Somebody very bad statgain but make him Insanely fast in everything with attacks cast times, movement speed. One could be slow but has very high mana, some could be allaround "good" in everything but not awesome. Other could have very high range but thats about it for him. So every hero would be unique and separate from other but put all together they would suit for their own role.

 

I know this would be a lot of work to do and probably lots of tweaks would be needed after release but already after the "upgration" of heroes on earlier versions (pit lord meepo etc...)was mainly positive experience i've seen. And people started to pick them but also picked the older ones. They had probably too radical buffs and made them the new most picked but if every hero could be tweaked to its unique purpose with their pros and cons i think it would be succesfull.

 

Feedback appreciated from both administration and dota communities is apreciated.

[PancakeSpecial]

I'll reiterate here what I was saying on the OHS forum: Making all the heroes be just repeats of the same few "classes" shows a lack of respect for the imagination of the players. Clearly the intent is to provide a class for each basic play style/build type, but in LoD there are a huge possible variety of strategies that can be taken that the creators never thought of, *and we like it that way*. Finding novel combinations that allow for unique, funny or interesting strategies is 80% of the reason I play the map. Widening the number and makeup of classes would help (e.g. as ech0 suggests, there is now no real tank class, no good cast spam, etc.) but even this misses the point: you must assume that you can't think of all the kinds of heroes your map can be used to make! Don't second-guess the creativity of the players.

 

Specifically: Caster tanks are gone, super tanks are gone, int tanks are nearly gone, armor stack tanks are seriously nerfed, chase tanks are nerfed, cast spammers are nerfed.

 

The attempt to buff under-used models was noble but overcompensated a bit too much. I think the ideal would be close to stock stats with tweaks to those that are too outclassed to ever be considered (much like sand king; who ever took him in the previous version? After all the other buffing he was no longer viable and I stopped seeing the cx mage build be used.)

 

I often bring up this point when comparing dota to other similar games for players not familiar with it: What makes dota better is that it has more things that make it more complex, that add strategic elements and make the game deeper. This raises the barrier to entry, no question about that, but it also brings greater reward at the top end... and what I tell them about the top end is that when they have a firm grasp on dota1/dota2 and all of the myriad of strategic elements that lie therein they can then graduate to *the next level* and play LoD, where  there are *even more strategic elements*, complexity goes up and fun spikes much, much higher.

 

I don't know whether LoD will ever be a widely accepted competitive map, but I caution against chasing this and losing what makes it such a blast to play.

[DracoL1ch]

now, with hero classes, dont you feel game any better? When you dont need to hope "let some 0-cp hero be mine, god of random, plz", but definitely will have one, regardless what teammates/enemies pick? I tought that might be usefull to make some very-very useful heroes commonly available instead of click rushing them.

 

second thought, about hero uniqueness. Some hero like Slark or Weaver had shitty shitty stats, due to in doto they have full pack of imbalanced abilities. Basically you could pick whole slark on some hero with good stats gain and punish hard, cause no longer suffer from Frog's balance. That was the case mostly, but what can we do about that? What could make it better for players to pick Slark model? Improving stats? Then we would have imbalanced Slark if someone will use his skills just because no longer need to search for another model. Doto has been developed in whole stack hero+abilities, if we buffs hero he'd become imba, if nerf skillz - get more cries from players. Just nowhere to go actually?

 

Making 114 hero unique from each other, saving balance (at least some of it) looks like utopia for me. Neither time, neither any wish to get through balance issues. Yes, we could make it back to black, if community so aggressive about that. But whats the reason behind that aggression? Thats the question. And whole HC wasnt about player's too lazy to think or whatever you blamed us in - its about making chances equal beside players, destroying 0-cp meta. Seems like no success there.

[Ech0]

Don't get me wrong i've mostly enjoyed your work you've done with the map except for few things but 90% thumbs up, but this hero class system isn't what i would want to see in lod. After changing from dota to lod a couple of years ago, the game being so diverse and having all these choices how to customize your hero. That's the game i enjoyed and still enjoy mostly. I think balancing/restricting the game too much equals less fun ingame.Lod was always the funmap for me where i went to play so i could relax with silly builds or just raping the entire enemy team if i wanted to.

 

First restriction was the rearm combos being restricted too much, this reduced a lot of gameplay content= less fun. Now i think this will also affect the gameplay in too large way people having always "same" hero, causing the game being more competetive in a way and not so much fun map. It reflects straightly to skill pick phase when people know they got exact same heroes if they just got the same class than your enemy. And other skill combos may benefit from these changes more than others. I like my hero being custom whatever way i decide to make it. This just reduce the fun on skill pick. I also never had any problems with hero selection as building my hero i always thinked the option that somebody might pick it so thought about 3 hero on all drafts that would suit my build in its custom way. This change also affects -ardm mode in a very bad way if you think about what was good in it...The mode was hilariously fun to play with friends.

 

Atleast i liked the game as it was with rearm combos and all unrestricted but this is just my opinion and others may have different opinion. My suggestion is that the rest of the heroes would be updated a little to the "same" level than the most picked hero option, not mainly through stats but with everybody having their pros and cons as i explained before ( for eg. having very high speeds but low stats, and other could have very high agility but bad intelligence and cast time while somebody could be very tanky having high str and armor but is mainly very slow.) And overly buffed heroes should be reduced a little (arc,clinkz,meepo,pit lord, tauren chief) or just made to the "same" level. This might be utopia as you said but who knows

 

But anyways i appreciate mostly what you've done with the map in past and keeping up with updates and all so i have had many hours of fun.

 

Ech0

[DracoL1ch]

but speaking about " just raping the entire enemy team if i wanted to" - how do they feels about it?

its always funny to pick imbaness and destroy children, but what do those child will think about lodo then?

"fucking broken map, he keep rightclicking us, nothing to do here"

thats why every game tries to make it balanced, to make it some kind of fair - to keep people play and restrict them from QQ too much.

 

When only 1-5 players feels funny 'cause they can destroy enemies pressing 3 keys each, it isnt really about good gameplay, but issues with balances. In my opinion that shouldnt be available. I wanna have fun picking some experimental builds but also i have one-shot-kill set available. Hardly believe enemy wont pick that - I'd be forced to pick it too, either way i'd be killed much more time and lost not because my build is bad, but 'cause there is 100% imba builds. People get sticky to imba and that prevents any kind of progress.

[Djargoo]

Changes are too drastic! 

I agree with most of the people here!

I play lod for 6 years now and i am disappointed about the changes. I played in chev community to (until 2 years ago i guess, now in rgc only) but have nothing in common with the people here and still came to the same opinion! So does almost everyone i know that plays the map for a few years! Remove the whole hero classes system. This maps aim was never to be 100% balanced!!! Its not the same map anymore! I tolerated the recent hero changes where you tried to make them more pickable even tho i wasnt ok with it! but the work in general is good so i could ignore that!

 

keep it up i know at least draco will listen to the will of the community  

[PancakeSpecial]

but speaking about " just raping the entire enemy team if i wanted to" - how do they feels about it?

its always funny to pick imbaness and destroy children, but what do those child will think about lodo then?

"fucking broken map, he keep rightclicking us, nothing to do here"

thats why every game tries to make it balanced, to make it some kind of fair - to keep people play and restrict them from QQ too much.

 

When only 1-5 players feels funny 'cause they can destroy enemies pressing 3 keys each, it isnt really about good gameplay, but issues with balances. In my opinion that shouldnt be available. I wanna have fun picking some experimental builds but also i have one-shot-kill set available. Hardly believe enemy wont pick that - I'd be forced to pick it too, either way i'd be killed much more time and lost not because my build is bad, but 'cause there is 100% imba builds. People get sticky to imba and that prevents any kind of progress.

I understand what you're saying, but I disagree.

 

The class system doesn't prevent unbalanced builds it just reduces the set of effective builds to the point where there are very few choices: play one of the few builds that work very, very well or lose to someone who picked them, because there are now only a handful of workable choices given the stats available. How can I counter a strong carry? Have a strong carry! Can't counter with a strong tank if you can't make a strong tank... so now my team MUST have a strong carry and we can't win any other way. I almost never play OP builds and go for weird experimental ones, so I feel like my play style has been most directly hindered by the class system.

 

Onehit builds and other game breaking things are definitely an issue, just like rearm RoC was. It is sometimes frustrating to make an experimental or clever build and then have the other team pick something so OP that you never get to really try and use it, but I think that's a cultural problem more than a technical one. Some new players may be turned off by the super-OP builds, yes, (and that's too bad because if they stayed around they'd learn what fun it can be) but pleasing new people at the expense of displeasing regular players doesn't seem like a winning combination. I don't have a simple answer for this, but stat classes doesn't seem likely to resolve it.

 

If it's just a case of "too hard/time consuming to balance" then please let me help. I'm sure a way could be found to farm some effort out to the community and get closer to utopia.

 

Let me just throw some other ideas in to the mix: If the problem is that e.g. "He took cent, but I needed cent and now I can't pick him"--how hard would it be to allow duplicate heroes as in sh mode? Seems like this worked at one time, at least, although it has been years since I did a same hero dota game. You might still have a problem with some models being over-picked, but at least no one would get sniped.

[maverickrohan]

I actually like the new Map ... it was a first step, we just need to tweak and evolve ... to make it more dynamic and fun

 

I agree with Draco ... just create more Hero Classes with a wider delta in their stat differences ... In the current map I always pick Battle Mages even for hard carry builds as they have the best overall stat gains ...

 

How about this: http://1drv.ms/1rruR8q (Excel File)

 

Screenshot:

[NeverMore]

I agree

[Whiteboard]

I stand for the concept of diversity and diffrence.

 

If anyone would like to incline why streamlining is a great thing needed in context with anything. Feel free to take that argue with me personally on RGC (cba atm).

 

To summarize briefly, diversity and diffrence grants depth, a width spectrum of choices when the moment comes at hand.

 

Last thing I wish for this project to happen, is landing in a situation where as: There's a blueprint for every decision to make, before you encounter the situation.

Ergo, a pre-determined answer for every question.

 

As it is, to an extent. You have multiple choices to confront a single topic. All of various effective ratios, with diffrent outcomes and varying results. For all that is sacred with gaming, keep it as such for as long as possible. I hate to see something I care about becoming related to something casual.

 

While at it, will apply this argument on abilites as well.

For this reasoning, I support Ech0's proposition on "Trade-off Models" setup.

 

- Sincerely, Whiteboard.

[DracoL1ch]

was reverted