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Dota 2 |OT2| Ellen Pudge starring in Beyond Two Throws

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Interfectum

Member
Dota 2 development seems so weird right now. It feels like 90% of the team has moved on and it's just icefrog and co doing balancing and approving items.
 

Anteo

Member

Anteo

Member
I want my custom maps.
Dedicated servers are good, but not if we cant create maps from the scratch to play on them. Pudge wars anywone?
 
AP is the second best mode, only outclassed by CM. I do not like CD and RD, they really close a lot of the options to counter lineups. Sometimes 2 bans are not enough. RD is kind of fun but again not many options to counter stuff and AR is just madness. CD is good for praticing new lineups as you are forced to go with stuff you are not confortable with, but that's it

I've never liked RD, or even SD. I don't understand why someone would want to play it. But hey, if people like them great! Give 'em options. I do agree that 2 bans are sometimes not enough, but it's entirely random depending on the pool it gives you and 4 out of 5 times it is enough and that's good enough for me. AR being madness is why I love it :p

No one ever talks about LP and I think it could be a crazy mode that would be fun if they did something drastic to it like make the pool only your lowest played 20 heroes or something. Make it a guaranteed wisp, meepo, chen mode. Force people to try them and maybe get comfortable with playing with them in pubs.
 

Anteo

Member
I've never liked RD, or even SD. I don't understand why someone would want to play it. But hey, if people like them great! Give 'em options. I do agree that 2 bans are sometimes not enough, but it's entirely random depending on the pool it gives you and 4 out of 5 times it is enough and that's good enough for me. AR being madness is why I love it :p

No one ever talks about LP and I think it could be a crazy mode that would be fun if they did something drastic to it like make the pool only your lowest played 20 heroes or something. Make it a guaranteed wisp, meepo, chen mode. Force people to try them and maybe get comfortable with playing with them in pubs.

Oh right, missed SD, but it should be there with RD. Yeah I think I played LP once and I did fine, I only have problems with meepo that's why I dropped the mode. And my friends dont like it so we never queue for that mode.

And I just remembered wc3 dota, in its 6.78 glory has 2 heroes I never played with and we are stuck here with no diretide!!!
 

Anbokr

Bull on a Donut
Valve, pls release diretide so this thread can go back to being fun and about heroes and matches and stuff I like reading about.

fuck just release anything. Hero, diretide, another game event, custom maps; GIVE US SOMETHING. Like DV said earlier, the community is in such a frenzy over diretide because of how sluggish Valve has been. If we got a new hero last week, no one would care. Everyone assumed however that they would just easily update and reuse the same ol' diretide from last year and we'd at least have SOMETHING to look forward to in dota 2. Nope. Still absolutely nothing to look forward, disappointment and nothing has become the norm since the official "launch."

tobiwan2012 said:
Any news on Terrorblade? No. However I was told that by time of The International 2 we should have all heroes apart from 5-10. (EDIT: He may have said 5-10 heroes released before The International

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
 
It is an issue. I don't like it. They should be better at communicating all things. Over the last 15 years though they've never improved on it. I don't think they will any time soon. Valve knows their fans don't like it, and they still haven't "fixed" it. I don't know what to do at that point other than tell you you can either deal with it or play something else if it really bothers you. There aren't a whole lot of other options.

Maybe you could start an internet petition.
So here's the thing. You can still communicate things without directly saying them all the time, right? They established a rhythm with the community. They may have not said there was an update coming every Wednesday to the test client almost without fail, but they delivered it. It was understood. A rhythm was established. Communicated without directly communicating all the time. The community saw a Halloween event for the 5th consecutive year in TF2 and saw rhythm and assumed it would translate to the same kind of rhythm in Dota2 given the time and energy put into it last year. Who did not expect the 2nd Annual DireTide? It looked and smelled like an annual event. Same with the Christmas event...And based on my 6 years of TF2 play (and a large part of this community is/was a TF2 player), it was a shoe-in. Valve never had to say anything. It was a simple matter of expectations created by past consistency regarding these things.

They were...predictable. Square, circle, triangle, square, circle...

Over the last several months the rhythm of things has changed. Weekly updates can't be assumed or expected now, despite 2 years of consistency. Now, they may come, they may not. They may come on Wednesday, they may come on Monday...maybe not at all. New heroes going from reveal and in-game assets to actually in-game has gone from a month or two to now almost 4 months between releases (and over 6 months since since we first saw the in-game materials). The wait continues for the completion of heroes they showed us in April.

I agree speed is not Valve's forte. But they're fairly consistent with regard to consistency in updating the F2P games for things like...fucking holiday events. And they've never been as slow or unpredictable with anything regarding Dota2 as they have been since the game's official release and TI3. That consistency worked as a suitable substitute for direct communication. Without that consistency, people are finding frustration.

Hats don't stop flowing, though.

It's really not about DireTide. It's about the desire for the lack of consistency OR communication. They used to either provide one or the other. Now it's neither. Hopefully that will change. It really needs to. Otherwise, due frustration builds up. Then people vent.
 
6.79 was a great accomplishment, thank you to icefrog and the two bug-squashing interns working the weekend to release it

roflmao

you really believe this is all that update took?

Steve's right. Your expectations are all out of whack.


When TF2 was at its peak, it got a content update every month. This is still true for Dota 2, one major update a month since release (TI3, First Blood, 6.79).
 

Arkanius

Member
I still think it's pretty bad the slow cadence of the updates we are getting lately.
I have MMO's updating faster than DOTA2. And they are MMO's
 

belvey

Member
6.79 should have released today.
We would be happy

i had the same thought. at least it would have been something, even if it wasn't appropriately themed. i had thought, in fact, that they released it when they did to sort out whatever tidying they would inevitably need to do, and that they wanted to get it taken care of before the impending content patch. but i suppose that's a bit silly now.
 

Anbokr

Bull on a Donut
roflmao

you really believe this is all that update took?

Steve's right. Your expectations are all out of whack.


When TF2 was at its peak, it got a content update every month. This is still true for Dota 2, one major update a month since release (TI3, First Blood, 6.79).

I never like to credit valve for the big changelog updates since Icefrog handles all the actual changes. It's why getting a huge balance patch around a hero or two wasn't crazy--Valve handled the heroes, Icefrog handled the patch. And just judging by how dead dota 2 has been recently, yeah I'm going to go ahead and take a jab at them and say a few interns + icefrog probably did the bug-squashing on 6.79. Hell, the dude has been bug-squashing dota 1 for close to a decade now I wouldn't be surprised if he contributes a lot in that regard on dota 2.

roflmao

you really believe this is all that update took?

Steve's right. Your expectations are all out of whack.


When TF2 was at its peak, it got a content update every month. This is still true for Dota 2, one major update a month since release (TI3, First Blood, 6.79).

And? TF2 was arguably ruined by all it's shitty updates that completely imbalanced the original game (I'm not worried about this with dota 2 since icefraud still handles all the balancing). Plus it's nowhere near the popularity of dota. I.E. a juggernaut like WoW requires much larger and much more frequent updates than a small fry like SWTOR to keep the majority of it's playerbase interested.

A lot of us are old dota 1 rabid fanboys and we're used to 6 month updates. The patch notes twice a year were like Christmas day. All I want (and I'm assuming a lot of other oldies), is parity. That's it. FINISH THE GAME, then abandon it. Hell, put out one update a year for all I care. I just want to play a 100% finished dota on the dota 2 engine; the pace of recent updates is frustrating simply because it makes parity feel unlikely for at least a few years. Hope they kick it into gear and finish the last 10 or so heroes.
 

Emerson

May contain jokes =>
So are we likely to get anything tonight? How long before updates do the build changes happen?

If Valve intends to put out a patch today then they can and will. There's no set minimum time frame for an update to follow such a DB change.
 
So here's the thing. You can still communicate things without directly saying them all the time, right? They established a rhythm with the community. They may have not said there was an update coming every Wednesday to the test client almost without fail, but they delivered it. It was understood. A rhythm was established. Communicated without directly communicating all the time. The community saw a Halloween event for the 5th consecutive year in TF2 and saw rhythm and assumed it would translate to the same kind of rhythm in Dota2 given the time and energy put into it last year. Who did not expect the 2nd Annual DireTide? It looked and smelled like an annual event. Same with the Christmas event...And based on my 6 years of TF2 play (and a large part of this community is/was a TF2 player), it was a shoe-in. Valve never had to say anything. It was a simple matter of expectations created by past consistency regarding these things.

They were...predictable. Square, circle, triangle, square, circle...

Over the last several months the rhythm of things has changed. Weekly updates can't be assumed or expected now, despite 2 years of consistency. Now, they may come, they may not. They may come on Wednesday, they may come on Monday...maybe not at all. New heroes going from reveal and in-game assets to actually in-game has gone from a month or two to now almost 4 months between releases (and over 6 months since since we first saw the in-game materials). The wait continues for the completion of heroes they showed us in April.

I agree speed is not Valve's forte. But they're fairly consistent with regard to consistency in updating the F2P games for things like...fucking holiday events. And they've never been as slow or unpredictable with anything regarding Dota2 as they have been since the game's official release and TI3. That consistency worked as a suitable substitute for direct communication. Without that consistency, people are finding frustration.

Hats don't stop flowing, though.

It's really not about DireTide. It's about the desire for the lack of consistency OR communication. They used to either provide one or the other. Now it's neither. Hopefully that will change. It really needs to. Otherwise, due frustration builds up. Then people vent.

Like I said, it does suck. I'm not particularly happy about it. But it is what it is.

Also we're still getting something "major" at least once a month like ballad said. It's hardly ded gaem. The rhythm has changed, and it's more in line with their overall history. TF2 never got crazy large weekly updates for such a long time like Dota 2 did.

I still think Diretide is coming. It's just a little late. When the rhythm gets messed up it doesn't mean your pregnant! Maybe just stressed out. Yeah it is kind of strange to release a halloween mode after halloween but whatever.

Doubtful.

Balance/number tweaking patches aren't as fun

I disagree with this.

I'm not even talking about myself. I just mean in terms of how the community reacts to a patch
But agree with this.

I don't even want to know how big the part of the community that didn't even know 6.79 came out. They just logged on one day and brood can now climb cliffs. If you're not on the internet actively looking at dota stuff how would you know? No one here is part of that group, but it does exist.

Diretide though is a big art splash around the play button and you get hats and shit man lets get excited about that!
So are we likely to get anything tonight? How long before updates do the build changes happen?
No one knows. Could be minutes, hours, days. It could update many more times before a patch happens.

And? TF2 was arguably ruined by all it's shitty updates that completely imbalanced the original game (I'm not worried about this with dota 2 since icefraud still handles all the balancing). Plus it's nowhere near the popularity of dota. I.E. a juggernaut like WoW requires much larger and much more frequent updates than a small fry like SWTOR to keep the majority of it's playerbase interested.

A lot of us are old dota 1 rabid fanboys and we're used to 6 month updates. The patch notes twice a year were like Christmas day. All I want (and I'm assuming a lot of other oldies), is parity. That's it. FINISH THE GAME, then abandon it. Hell, put out one update a year for all I care. I just want to play a 100% finished dota on the dota 2 engine, the pace of recent updates is frustrating simply because it makes parity feel unlikely for at least a few years. Hope they kick it into gear and finish the last 10 or so heroes.
I disagree with almost everything you said about tf2, but whatever I'm not here to talk about that (but I will anyway, the game is more balanced than it ever has, and vanilla servers exist for a reason if you don't like them).

Like I essentially said higher up the page, yes it sucks that it hasn't and probably won't reach parity particularly quickly. At the same time it's valve. It's honestly not surprising it's going to take them >3 years to make and "complete" this. I'm sorry you came into this game not expecting that this was a possibility and didn't adjust your expectations accordingly. That's just the way it is. Valve going to Valve. The jokes exist for a reason. Yes it sucks.
 
So are we likely to get anything tonight? How long before updates do the build changes happen?
On a Friday? Highly unlikely. I've seen them do fixes to patches released earlier in the week on Friday, but never the release of a full patch update. It still has to go though the test client (usually), and they want to be around to fix bugs (they usually aren't around on weekends). Monday/Wednesday updates give them a few weekdays to fix things that unexpectedly break. Friday doesn't.
 

Anbokr

Bull on a Donut
Also we're still getting something "major" at least once a month like ballad said. It's hardly ded gaem. The rhythm has changed, and it's more in line with their overall history. TF2 never got crazy large weekly updates for such a long time like Dota 2 did.

Again, I don't buy the comparison to TF2. TF2 was a finished game, there were no expectations at all. Same with CS. DOTA 2 was intended to be a direct port (with a few exceptions) of dota 1. That was the goal from the start. It's like Blizzard releasing Starcraft 2 minus zerg and slowly adding units and finally finishing zerg two years later. It would be like TF2 missing the spy and the scout from original TF for god knows how long (4 months and counting since official launch right?). I think the community has a right to complain about an unfinished product getting sluggish updates on a similar schedule to finished products. The two aren't even comparable. There are expectations for the former and none for the latter.

Like I essentially said higher up the page, yes it sucks that it hasn't and probably won't reach parity particularly quickly. At the same time it's valve. It's honestly not surprising it's going to take them >3 years to make and "complete" this. I'm sorry you came into this game not expecting that this was a possibility and didn't adjust your expectations accordingly. That's just the way it is. Valve going to Valve. The jokes exist for a reason. Yes it sucks.

Well here you have it folks, "Valve guna valve," all complaints invalid. Adjust expectations plz. Thanks for opening my eyes Steve. Except this isn't Valve. Note the same company worked overtime in beta releasing weekly updates and 3-4 heroes a month and then abruptly stopped when they reached 80% completion. That's why people are complaining. What happened at 80%? Why did Valve suddenly stop updating dota 2, to the point where two finished games (CS and TF2) are getting more updates? I'm sorry if you don't ever like to question or complain about a company or product, but some of us would like to make our voice heard (and I think with the mass complaining from twitch, to gaf, to reddit; they finally might have heard). Hell, if we get a delayed diretide I'm 100% sure it's because of all the whining.
 
Again, I don't buy the comparison to TF2. TF2 was a finished game, there were no expectations at all. Same with CS. DOTA 2 was intended to be a direct port (with a few exceptions) of dota 1. That was the goal from the start. It's like Blizzard releasing Starcraft 2 minus zerg and slowly adding units and finally finishing zerg two years later. It would be like TF2 missing the spy and the scout from original TF for god knows how long (4 months and counting since official launch right?). I think the community has a right to complain about an unfinished product getting sluggish updates on a similar schedule to finished products. The two aren't even comparable. There are expectations for the former and none for the latter.
TF2 has 9 classes. Dota has 112 heroes.

Pretty silly comparison.
 

dave is ok

aztek is ok
Again, I don't buy the comparison to TF2. TF2 was a finished game, there were no expectations at all. Same with CS. DOTA 2 was intended to be a direct port (with a few exceptions) of dota 1. That was the goal from the start. It's like Blizzard releasing Starcraft 2 minus zerg and slowly adding units and finally finishing zerg two years later. It would be like TF2 missing the spy and the scout for god knows how long (4 months and counting since official launch right?). I think the community has a right to complain about an unfinished product getting sluggish updates on a similar schedule to finished products. The two aren't even comparable. There are expectations for the former and none for the latter.
All of Dota's competition is adding heroes as it goes - so it's not under the same scrutiny. It's really only missing ~4 of the Dota 1 heroes from when it went into beta. The others were added in the past couple of years.
 

sixghost

Member
Again, I don't buy the comparison to TF2. TF2 was a finished game, there were no expectations at all. Same with CS. DOTA 2 was intended to be a direct port (with a few exceptions) of dota 1. That was the goal from the start. It's like Blizzard releasing Starcraft 2 minus zerg and slowly adding units and finally finishing zerg two years later. It would be like TF2 missing the spy and the scout for god knows how long (4 months and counting since official launch right?).

Does the game feel like it's that much worse off for not having the missing heroes? Removing two of nine classes from a game like TF2 would be huge, and removing a race from Starcraft would bring the game down to four matchups from nine. Having 9 or 10 heroes missing when there are already 100-something seems like less of an issue.
 

Anbokr

Bull on a Donut
All of Dota's competition is adding heroes as it goes - so it's not under the same scrutiny. It's really only missing ~4 of the Dota 1 heroes from when it went into beta. The others were added in the past couple of years.

They are adding heroes that were added after beta before heroes that were already in the game pre-development. It's clear the goal is to add all the heroes and catchup, otherwise we wouldn't have heroes like Skywrath in the game.

TF2 has 9 classes. Dota has 112 heroes.

Pretty silly comparison.

Numerically silly, yes. However, classes are the core of TF2 and heroes are the core of DOTA 2. They should be priority 1, how come we got 2-3, sometimes 4 heroes a month in the past and then development suddenly stalled at 80-90% completion? I'm guessing they just consider dota a finished product, and this is where my complaints come from. It shouldn't be treated as such at all.

Does the game feel like it's that much worse off for not having the missing heroes? Removing two of nine classes from a game like TF2 would be huge, and removing a race from Starcraft would bring the game down to four matchups from nine. Having 9 or 10 heroes missing when there are already 100-something seems like less of an issue.

It won't feel completely like warcraft 3 dota until it does. The game is still fun. I still play the game. I still love the game. Doesn't mean I can't or won't complain about a complete lack of hero updates. The complaints come from a love of the game, I want to play terrorblade. I want to play techies. I played these heroes day and night at the LAN cafe with my buddies 8 years ago and yeah, it sucks that I can't relive that nostalgia for 3 years of development and counting! "WELL ANBOKR JUST PLAY DOTA 1." No.

Valve's biggest mistake was shipping hero progress in the test client. That warped people's sense of how long things actually take to make. Medusa, TA, Gyro and now Legion Commander. They weren't flukes, Treant was the fluke. Heroes take awhile and now that their pre-release backlog of heroes is finished, we have to witness the entire development process of a new hero and people's misunderstanding of old heroes progress is making it really awkward.

I think going from releasing 4 heroes a month, to two heroes a month, to one hero every few months, to no hero for 4 months warped people's sense how long things take to make. Is one hero a month too much to ask for?
 
Valve's biggest mistake was shipping hero progress in the test client. That warped people's sense of how long things actually take to make. Medusa, TA, Gyro and now Legion Commander. They weren't flukes, Treant was the fluke. Heroes take awhile and now that their pre-release backlog of heroes is finished, we have to witness the entire development process of a new hero and people's misunderstanding of old heroes progress is making it really awkward.
 

Emerson

May contain jokes =>
On a Friday? Highly unlikely. I've seen them do fixes to patches released earlier in the week on Friday, but never the release of a full patch update. It still has to go though the test client (usually), and they want to be around to fix bugs (they usually aren't around on weekends). Monday/Wednesday updates give them a few weekdays to fix things that unexpectedly break. Friday doesn't.

Counterpoint: if (which I have little expectation of) Valve does have a Halloween update and it's just late, it could go to main client on a Friday since they generally push those to main client anyway.
 
Again, I don't buy the comparison to TF2. TF2 was a finished game, there were no expectations at all. Same with CS. DOTA 2 was intended to be a direct port (with a few exceptions) of dota 1. That was the goal from the start. It's like Blizzard releasing Starcraft 2 minus zerg and slowly adding units and finally finishing zerg two years later. It would be like TF2 missing the spy and the scout from original TF for god knows how long (4 months and counting since official launch right?). I think the community has a right to complain about an unfinished product getting sluggish updates on a similar schedule to finished products. The two aren't even comparable. There are expectations for the former and none for the latter.

1 out of 3 and 2 out of 9 aren't even close to like 9 out of one hundred something. I would say it's shown that it's actually totally fine without them as we've had an extremely popular game and lots of tournaments since then.

If that stuff happened to SC2 and TF2 neither would likely be as successful.

Well here you have it folks, "Valve guna valve," all complaints invalid. Adjust expectations plz. Thanks for opening my eyes Steve. Except this isn't Valve. Note the same company worked overtime in beta releasing weekly updates and 3-4 heroes a month and then abruptly stopped when they reached 80% completion. That's why people are complaining. What happened at 80%? Why did Valve suddenly stop updating dota 2, to the point where two finished games (CS and TF2) are getting more updates? I'm sorry if you don't ever like to question or complain about a company or product, but some of us would like to make our voice heard (and I think with the mass complaining from twitch, to gaf, to reddit; they finally might have heard). Hell, if we get a delayed diretide I'm 100% sure it's because of all the whining.

Like I've been saying all this time. You don't have to like it. I don't like it. I'm just telling you that's the way it is, and the way it most likely will be. Complain all you want, I don't care. I don't think you've been reading anything I've been writing.
 

MKAllDay

Member
Does the game feel like it's that much worse off for not having the missing heroes? Removing two of nine classes from a game like TF2 would be huge, and removing a race from Starcraft would bring the game down to four matchups from nine. Having 9 or 10 heroes missing when there are already 100-something seems like less of an issue.

Sure the game is still perfectly playable without all the heroes (as evidenced by millions of dollars being thrown around for tournaments). But as a game that is intended to be a remake it simply cannot be complete until it has all the content (heroes) of the original.
 

KingKong

Member
It's not just the missing heroes, almost half the heroes in the game don't have any cosmetics and still need to have their models remade/broken down

How long ago did they promise a Venomancer remake?
 
Numerically silly, yes. However, classes are the core of TF2 and heroes are the core of DOTA 2. They should be priority 1, how come we got 2-3, sometimes 4 heroes a month in the past and then development suddenly stalled at 80-90% completion? I'm guessing they just consider dota a finished product, and this is where my complaints come from. It shouldn't be treated as such at all.

Because heroes were not started when Dota 2 went to public beta. Probably half of the heroes in 2012 were started in 2011, if not earlier. You just didn't notice because it wasn't public. Take Gyro for example. His files were in the game since late 2011, but he wouldn't be released until mid 2012. Heroes that had been released before him weren't started, then worked on, then completed before him, they were started before him but never had any progress shipped so you didn't notice the huge development time.

Abaddon was probably started after TI2. You just didn't notice anything because Meepo, Slark and Centaur had been started even earlier.

However, eventually this backlog ran out, either due to work on other areas taking priority (like the GUI, the foreign versions, building a cosmetic system, etc) or just because progress got ahead of itself.

It's not just the missing heroes, almost half the heroes in the game don't have any cosmetics and still need to have their models remade/broken down

How long ago did they promise a Venomancer remake?

the same time as a PA remake, and you saw how long that took. However, from a friend who toured Valve a couple months ago, Veno is apparently very much well along and honestly they don't know why Valve hasn't shipped him yet.
 

Anbokr

Bull on a Donut
Like I've been saying all this time. You don't have to like it. I don't like it. I'm just telling you that's the way it is, and the way it most likely will be. Complain all you want, I don't care. I don't think you've been reading anything I've been writing.

derp, of course that's the way it is? Hence the mass complaining? Are we in the matrix or something now?

Reality: DOTA 2 updates have stalled. Complaints arise from that reality. Stevewinwood: Reality is that dota 2 updates have stalled. ????? Thanks, I guess. Not sure where we're going with this.
 

Dec

Member
Valve's biggest mistake was shipping hero progress in the test client. That warped people's sense of how long things actually take to make. Medusa, TA, Gyro and now Legion Commander. They weren't flukes, Treant was the fluke. Heroes take awhile and now that their pre-release backlog of heroes is finished, we have to witness the entire development process of a new hero and people's misunderstanding of old heroes progress is making it really awkward.

So instead of working on multiple heroes in multiple different stages in development and staggering the release of them. You're saying they finished their "release" heroes and didn't plan ahead and do that for the next ones? So now we are waiting for them to gear back up to where they were before?

And to be clear I'm not complaining at all, I don't really care when they release, just saying that the amount of time since a hero release is beginning to get past the point where it can be explained away by "game dev is hard".
 
Steve goin in for that community manager position.

I gotta admit I'm bummed diretide isn't in. At first it seemed like such a gimmicky mode, but it rewarded different hero picks so well, not just blinkers and such. I probably got a lot better at the game because of it.

Greeviling can freeze in the graveyard of the giants.
 
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