Welp, since LoL is down, I've got time for this.
Halycon said:
It's perfectly fine in Dota. Maybe not for LoL, but Dota is balanced around what you consider "imbalances".
DotA "balances" out teleportation by letting everyone spend their money and item space on it. Back to square one. Let's reiterate.
Scrolls waste money. Money is time. Money that should be spent on effective items.
Halycon said:
As much speculation as what you just asserted.
Since you think companies don't collect data to use to improve the game, we're done arguing against a point you made dead.
Halycon said:
I wouldn't say completely useless, but noticably less effective. Alistar, Galio and Rammus come to mind. Although the last two are still kind of jank right now. In before "I just had a game where our Galio/Rammus went 10-2 without Flash"
And some heroes are less effective with certain summoner spells. It's a given that some spells just match a heroes play style. Flash doesn't make everyone automatically better.
Halycon said:
Flash's counter best counter is currently Flash. It pigeonholes people into the Flash + 1 build. It's kind of silly that every early game gank needs to happen twice, once to force Flash, and one to actually succeed. But then you don't like early game ganking so this is understandable.
You need Flash to gank? So not pro.
Halycon said:
Ahahahahaha. Go ask them about Kat mid.
They'll probably do it. They even talk about using heroes in Dreamhack that they've only used twice in their life. Pros make wonders happen, not be stubborn and think it's impossible.
Halycon said:
There are AD heroes (usually junglers), that use the Defensive and Utility trees. Ditto for tanks. Anyway this seems kind of a roundabout way to get people to look up guides. Just include the guides in the game. Dota had the -herotips command although I never used it much. HoN has small guides built right into the store. LoL would probably do the same if they bothered to upgrade their engine.
Are you ignorant? They have indepth character description, a few tips of what to do as the character, recommended items to use, and even embedded their champion spotlights into their client.
Halycon said:
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Main_Page
http://wiki.shoryuken.com/
http://elitistjerks.com/
http://thottbot.com/
http://www.mobafire.com/
http://www.solomid.net/
http://leaguecraft.com/
A good portion of gamers "don't do more than they have to", I'll give you that. But to generalize it to "gamers" is just dishonest. You play both WoW and EVE, so you should know players are always willing to look up things to get even a small advantage. This is especially true of multiplayer games.
WoW? Not so much. Even now, you'd still get the player who asks about some dumb question that can be answered by thottbot. EVE, you can't get anywhere in that game without looking at a guide. You'd be podded in a day. But how about TF2? You got some items that you can use, but for the most part, a player doesn't have to give a damn about looking at how they play that class.
MOBA's are neither MMORPGs or FPS multi, but Riot makes strides to get both types of players invested.
Halycon said:
I don't want to bust out the "that's just your opinion man" card but there's really nothing else I can say here. Using phrases like "real pvp"? Yeah okay, real great argument there.
Player actions done onto other players. That's it.
Denying is just as disjointed from the player interaction as is getting your friend to milk your Farmville cow.
Halycon said:
Um, Marc mentioned it as one differences from a game like Starcraft.
The PvE elements of LoL are designed to give players a break between "real PvP" as you say.
In Starcraft, you have to be focused pretty much 100%, there's no breathing room at all.
Read it again. He says he wants to give a small experience of a single player game like Starcraft 2 where you play multiplayer a lot and use singleplayer as a break.
Halycon said:
Both LoL and Dota have times where you don't need to be so focused on your opponents. For example, when there's an empty lane, you can go in there and farm for a bit before people show up to gank you. It's a pacing mechanism.
My argument is that denying is not one of those things that players can do as a reprieve from fighting other players, because there's no point in denying with other players around. Farming, on the other hand, does not require the other side to be present, and is in fact more effective when they're not. This makes denying a more PvP oriented mechanic than farming.
I don't know about you, but when I see my opponent, I'm pretty damn focused on them. I don't just set my guy to auto attack the minions and alt-tab. All the heroes are extremely aggressive that one harass could change the balance of the game.
Halycon said:
I didn't know you were in the industry. May I ask which game you worked on? Also, do you have a book released? You sound like the authority on game design, I was wondering if there's any place where I can read up on your approach to making games. Are you, perhaps, Eric Zimmarman or Richard Garfield?
(In case my sarcasm wasn't clear enough, I'm being hyperbolic on purpose, because saying "Game design is my experience" when asked "Why do you extrapolate your personal experience to the entirety of a game with millions of players" is nothing short of ridiculous.)
Firstly, if you think the industry is made up of people who write books on design, you should probably rethink that stance. There are a lot of great designers that don't take the frontpage for their studio.
And my "personal experience", knowing player types, their behaviours, and designing games for a target audience, helps me understand why Riot made their decisions. You think their design differences don't make sense, but I know why they're doing it because their designing the game to make sense, be quick, and be fun. Denying doesn't make sense, DotA games have tons of mechanics that elongate the game, but it could be fun for some hardcore audience.
Halycon said:
Reading comprehension. I know all of this, if you actually read my posts. I meant to say is that despite their overwhelming financial success, they still behave as though they were startup developer. The lack of features that the playerbase has been clamoring for since beta, is a good example of this. Replays, pause buttons, UI upgrades, etc. Another is how they keep releasing champions before they rebalance old ones, like Shaco, Olaf and Twitch. The recent changes to Kayle arguably made her worse than she was. The only reason I can think of for continuing on as they have is because they care more about making money than making a balanced game. They can't sell replays, nor can they sell an overhauled UI.
Before you say "LOL RIOT IS A BUSINESS", let me tell you that I fully understand Riot is a business. But placing profitability, especially when you're already overwhelmingly successful, over general improvement is always negative from the player's standpoint.
It's like you think Riot can just throw money at a feature and make it work. Do you want your replay or do you want Dominion? You'll probably say, "Why can't I have both?" and that'll be the end of it because you'll never understand game production.
Halycon said:
I was promised Rylai's, yet I don't see a single component of it in your screenshot. Looking at the scoreboard, it looks like you were about 800g away from Rylai's, with a GPM of 314. Assuming you maintained it, it would be 2-3 more minutes before you get it.
Although I have to admit I'm splitting hairs a bit here, they fed you pretty hard, so it's less impressive than it might've been.
Uh, yeah I would get Rylai's before 30 minutes. Two components would max out my inventory. And they didn't feed me. I made good moves and fought as a team to get that many kills. But I doubt you'll believe an unranked match could possibly be competitive.
None the less, I already proven is possible to max out the item limit before 30 minutes.