Night_Hand
Neo Member
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DOTA 2 |OT8| DOTA Asian Championship (1/27-2/9)
- Thread starter Teknopathetic
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Dreams-Visions
Member
I think the wait is generally less important than communication about the wait. They're working on stuff. We just never seem to know what or their timelines. This has been one of the problems with Valve that has generated lots of friction over the years. More now than a couple of years ago when updates were frequent. Unless the Dota2 dev team grows, I don't know that we'll ever be able to expect more.
Heavy's Sandvich
Member
Heavy's Sandvich
Member
I'm in complete agreement with you.
Like I said, it's all talked about here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwv1G3WFSfI. External Communication is around 32 minutes in.
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1227800764
FULL
BLOWN
CANCER
GAME
Enigma mid? Check!
Andymage and Naga bitching over jungle prio? CHECK!!! (Bonus, they were a 2 stack)
Terrible Omni who doesn't stfu when I was about to abandon? Check!
We came back lol, everyone was so bad in this game but I guess that's the trench for ya.
Gonna leave a great taste in muh mouth since I'm afk for two weeks on vacay
FULL
BLOWN
CANCER
GAME
Enigma mid? Check!
Andymage and Naga bitching over jungle prio? CHECK!!! (Bonus, they were a 2 stack)
Terrible Omni who doesn't stfu when I was about to abandon? Check!
We came back lol, everyone was so bad in this game but I guess that's the trench for ya.
Gonna leave a great taste in muh mouth since I'm afk for two weeks on vacay
Dreams-Visions
Member
oh ok. will watch. thanks.
These 1000 Riot employees, what do these include? I imagine they have a pretty big marketing department, alot more people involved in E-sports (organizers, managers), etc. The core development team might've shrunk over the years; does Riot have any ongoing projects other than LoL?
Dota 2 support has been good enough so far for me. The big content updates are made with care and, for now, are frequent.
That's such a non argument though, they're obviously making money out of the service they provide so it should be in both sides interest to keep it moving forward
Dota 2 support has been good enough so far for me. The big content updates are made with care and, for now, are frequent.
That's such a non argument though, they're obviously making money out of the service they provide so it should be in both sides interest to keep it moving forward
Heavy's Sandvich
Member
That bug fix example just doesn't add up in my opinion.
Here's a scenario: from the outset, have a blog post about bug-fixing in general. Explain that sometimes it's not as easy as it seems, trade offs etc.
Then when someone reports a bug on their official forum, can just write "we'll look into it".
Shows you've acknowledged it. Silence from then on or "non-action" will not just be seen as being ignored but because of the earlier post about bug fixing, people can easily infer that there's more to it than just fixing it.
Edit: there are a lot of assertions, which I'm sure are all valid, but he doesn't actually explain how they arrived there.
Here's a scenario: from the outset, have a blog post about bug-fixing in general. Explain that sometimes it's not as easy as it seems, trade offs etc.
Then when someone reports a bug on their official forum, can just write "we'll look into it".
Shows you've acknowledged it. Silence from then on or "non-action" will not just be seen as being ignored but because of the earlier post about bug fixing, people can easily infer that there's more to it than just fixing it.
Edit: there are a lot of assertions, which I'm sure are all valid, but he doesn't actually explain how they arrived there.
I think every fan would like to see Dota 2 be the best it can be. I think part of having that perspective is knowing the beast with which we deal. I've been playing Valve games for awhile and a lot of the complaints filed towards Dota 2 have been the same things repeated for TF2 since... well, nearly forever.
So, yeah, I suppose you could say all the replies are excuse-makers but at this point, I'm not convinced that Valve is going to change their ways. They take a long-ass time to get anything done and they're always tight lipped about it. The trade-off is that the quality is incredibly hard to match. I like to believe that most the fanbase understand this trade-off and those that have remained are the ones willing to make that exchange. I'd like to think no one truly believes Valve won't deliver on either hero parity, compendium goals or what-have-you.
I don't know. I think Valve is on the right track and doing a good job. If I didn't, I would have gone to one of the other companies. Given the advantages and disadvantages of each, for me Valve comes out on top. We know Source 2 is in the works and we know Custom Games are coming soon(TM). This on top of regular support is a lot of work which, yeah, could be mitigated by more employees and a change in their corporate structure. However, I'm not a business executive and I'm not certain how beneficial demanding a change in how they run their business would be since what they're doing right far outweighs what they're doing wrong.
And seriously, League still doesn't have a spectator mode?
all the stabbings
Dreams-Visions
Member
Okay did watch. This isn't really what I want to highlight when I talk about external communication. In this video, the gentlemen presenting is talking about communicating about individual bug fixes, Valves intentions towards them and the value of keeping your options open by simply fixing things as much as you can rather than highlighting individual bug issues. Addressing problems by improving the products rather than talking about them.
On the subject, I think his analysis of the DireTide situation is wrong and the wrong lesson was learned from it. He described DireTide as a product failure that became a communication failure. On the contrary, it was a communication failure through and through from the very beginning. People ended up identifying the failure to provide the DireTide event as a product failure because previous communication led them to believe that it would be an annual event, and the lack of communication meant they never changed their expectation. In other words, people were Given DireTide and told it would be an annual event around Halloween. Then Halloween came and people had no reason to believe DireTide would NOT be coming. TF2 got their Halloween event as always, and people assumed that Dota2 would be treated at least as well as TF2 so DireTide must be on the way. Except it wasn't. People would ask about it. They'd tweet about it. They'd post on the dev forums about it. And nobody would clarify what was going on or what the delay was. It took things hitting a fever pitch for them to issue any statements at all.
If they had specified in September/October that DireTide would not be coming "as we prepare even bigger things as we head into the new year", everyone's expectations would have been properly adjusted and guess what? No #DireTideGate. It was all about communication.
Getting back to the original point that you responded to with this video, my issue isn't really about bug squashing. I understand that putting timelines and agreeing bringing recognition to certain bugs can be inherently problematic. But I'm not talking about anything as specific as putting a date on a bug so much as the overarching communication. There are things that Valve can say to the community more frequently than they do. Whether it's a general commentary about things like visual updates to hero models or lore or where they want to see the game go or more of the thinking behind certain balance changes...all of it is communication that makes people feel like there is a conversation being had that they're invited to take part in and help influence. It reminds people that there is activity going on and that there is a team that really cares working on things...and that while it may take longer than we'd all like to get some things done, they're coming.
Where radio silence for bug-squashing timelines makes sense, it makes no sense when applied to other more high-level social matters surrounding the game.
Heavy's Sandvich
Member
Dreams-visions dropping truth bombs.
Disagree about bug approach but agree with diretide analysis 100%
Disagree about bug approach but agree with diretide analysis 100%
call_kotaku
Member
Seeing the product of community "interaction" and "outreach" with Blizzard or Riot or Netherrealms, I sometimes think that Valve might just be reaching the correct conclusion with just ignoring all of it. We know Valve reads input from community hubs and we know they're working on something, but honestly while some validation that our opinions matter would be nice I'd have a hard time arguing that it doesn't end up promoting a lot of toxicity as well.
I guess the point is that they see communication as competing for a limited amount of attention and generally engenders a massive amount of expectation, so they can't afford to say anything that isn't extremely calculated and specific, so with the size of their team and the amount of stuff they can reasonably talk about, they just don't bother with communication for communication's sake.
Dreams-Visions
Member
It has a spectator mode, but it is *nothing* compared to Dota2's.
1.) You can only spectate if you can find a certain player within their convoluted ranking system (good luck finding anyone by name that's not in the highest division) unless you have some sort of outside tool.
2.) You can't spectate pro matches.
3.) There are no audio commentary channels for broadcasters.
4.) There is no "player perspective" mode that allows you to see a player's mouse clicks or what they're looking at. It's basically the equivalent of Directed mode, but following just one character around.
5.) There is no way to interact with other spectators. No voice, no chat.
6.) I'll have to look again, but I don't recall there being any gold or xp graphs. You can see current team worth and that sort of thing, but the wealth of metrics available to Dota2 match spectators just aren't there.
You can pause and rewind and the Directed cam is fine, but it's extremely bare-bones by comparison. It's part of the reason there so many people watching pro Leeg on Twitch: there's no other way to watch pro matches. On the other hand, there's the ability to hide the UI while spectating which is really nice. But their spectator product is literally years behind Dota 2's.
Yea. At the same time, that just means you need to communicate about things that do not require a deadline be applied to them. You can write a post about "rethinking Dota2 lore" or "visual updates: what's to come" without tying yourself to a date or time other than, "in the future..." That communication has inherent value because it keeps people engaged in the totality of Dota2 and makes people feel more involved. Then there's communication in the form of lore videos that give everything surrounding the game a bit more life.
Last I heard Riot was working on an LoL themed Hearthstone clone, not sure if that fell though though.
Steam maintenance day is Tuesday
I think the dota interface needs to fix at least one minor thing -- party invites take up a huge portion of your screen, and you can't do anything while they're up there. I know they're meant to go away quickly, but if you're chatting with someone in client and somone invites you, sometimes you just wanna finish your conversation before accepting.
Also, can someone link to me to where that statement from the ex-valve employee about arrogance at the company came from?
Also, can someone link to me to where that statement from the ex-valve employee about arrogance at the company came from?
Sigismundo
Member
From what I can tell it did because it got leaked.
Dreams-Visions
Member
you know what would be cool for the blog? interviews! With pros, item creators, and developers. Text, video, whatever. It's just so under-utilized.
This is one of the things thing I like Dota 2's culture over League's. Icefrog and Valve aren't going to tell you shit about how you are supposed to play a hero, and they will let the community figure out where they fit. Riot seems a bit too focused on ensuring their champs fit their predesignated roles, and from what I see they will nerf any ability that allows them to succeed in another role then the intended one. Like, maybe I'm just far to out of the loop, but are there any Champs that can really be picked early in a draft and be put in multiple positions if needed?
Now thats something that would be great. Even if they just promoted other people's content more, the blog is so under utilized. They at one point seemed to be making a point to promote new items and tournaments, but that is basically dead outside of a bit of stuff during big named updates. I think Riot's blog has too much fluff, but Valve's is just barron.
Remember that company wide blog site they put up a while back? Entire thing basically died after a few months:
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/
Heavy's Sandvich
Member
Gaben asks
I have a question for you guys. Does it seem to be easier to get LPQ these days, or is it just a bunch of butthurt people posting on reddit? I see posts constantly, and don't know if its really gotten easier to be reported into it, or just that people who get reported a lot tend to be the kind of people who are very vocal.
Heavy's Sandvich
Member
I've not been in LPQ in ages
helps that I'm not playing the game at all
Procarbine
Forever Platinum
Unfortunately I think it might be gone forever, but I can contact the streamer and see if he has anything.
Their maintenance always happen randomly and only last one minute? Serious question, no idea how it works.
FlutterPuffs
Member
Sometimes it's just a few minutes on Tuesday.
The server does crashes once in a while though, but considering it's hosting one of the biggest multi-player game and a large majority of pc games..
Im ok with it.
Purple Cheeto
Member
I've seen heroes in LoL be used across a variety of roles. Annie was designed as a bursty carry and nowadays she's played as either a bursty carry or an AoE initiator.
There was definitely a period where the Riot design team was forcing and adjusting heroes into singular roles and removing avenues for playing them in more than one way but they've made some leadership changes in that team and seemed to have softened their stance on that in more recent times.
call_kotaku
Member
I think both Blizzard and Netherrealms thought that more community engagement meant more community interest, but all it did was feed toxic entitlement and generally degrade the quality of discourse and accelerated the decline of their games. I'm not suggesting that it's the only outcome of increased community interaction, or that community interaction can't be done productively and positively, but that to do it properly requires an amount of effort that Valve wouldn't be able to allocate and they're probably doing the smart thing about not bothering to do it at all.
While updates would be nice, I think Valve would be best served not ever directly acknowledging that the community influences their decisions, because it has the potential to direct the focus of discourse in a really negative way.
Appently We Love Fine had a New Bloom Contest:
http://www.welovefine.com/featured/211-dota2-new-bloom-design-contest-winners
http://www.welovefine.com/featured/211-dota2-new-bloom-design-contest-winners
this has already happened, the "we did it reddit" joke is probably the best descriptor of reddit dota 2
I don't want to miss the entire eventThere is CSS for a Comic on the Part 1 page, and it doesn't look like Valve just copied another page's update CSS (I checked a few), so I want my comic about taming the year beast!
dev forum activity / dev project tracker or something
it's just logical from a business perspective and the speed of updates relative to the speed of updates 2-3 years ago, why invest fully into a game that they consider "done" (from a baseline perspective) and outside of arcanas--players make the revenue source (hats).
it's like blizzard with diablo, probably just like 4 devs left updating items and shit, there's no reason for a full team
I feel like a large amount went to the Source 2 team, and it the project has simply dragged on longer then expected. Remember, Dota 2 three to four years back was the most advanced version of source, and likely had the bulk of the guys who liked working on game engines working on it ("Minor" stuff like redoing the pause system likely had huge internal overhauls)
I hope we get a glut of new heroes after Source 2 hits, while it may be wishful thinking there may be underlying engine changes that allow some of Ice Frogs new ideas to work that can't currently work in Source 1. They guy must have some new ideas, its been over 2 years since the last new heroes were added to Dota 1.
I hope we get a glut of new heroes after Source 2 hits, while it may be wishful thinking there may be underlying engine changes that allow some of Ice Frogs new ideas to work that can't currently work in Source 1. They guy must have some new ideas, its been over 2 years since the last new heroes were added to Dota 1.
looking forward to playing those new heroes shortly before the heat death of the universe
call_kotaku
Member
It's used ironically like 99% of the time, because there's never been any acknowledgement that reddit contributed anything or was an influence on any decision, which honestly is a good thing. Don't interact with people on reddit or any forums (official or not), it never leads to anything positive.
The moment you give them any attention they'll follow you around expecting validation like some sort of creepy forever alone stalker. The front page of reddit is nothing but petty ass negative bullshit and that's without people thinking it has the ability to sway Valve's decision-making.
Ancient Apparition will be a super buff carry then though, so we will have that going for us.
Edit: Comic up for Part 2. Gives a very TF2 vibe, CM is a weird person. Winter Wyvern looks like she will have an interesting personality, and would likely get along with Warlock and TA.
sleverfunk
Member
New blog post!http://www.dota2.com/newbloom/part2
Cm pretty cool, she fights dragon and monsters and is not afraid of anything.
Cm pretty cool, she fights dragon and monsters and is not afraid of anything.
waxinlyrical
Member
call_kotaku
Member
https://twitter.com/Aui_2000/status/565350593842401280
Looks like it isn't an official player's union discussion, but Valve just getting feedback from players. Seems pretty big to fly in a dozen people, though, but I guess they have the resources for that.
AA is already a carry, they're always in my lane stealing my CS to build their midas into aghs. I end up buying wards and being a jungling spectre support.
Looks like it isn't an official player's union discussion, but Valve just getting feedback from players. Seems pretty big to fly in a dozen people, though, but I guess they have the resources for that.
AA is already a carry, they're always in my lane stealing my CS to build their midas into aghs. I end up buying wards and being a jungling spectre support.
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