If you want the Dota Experience, you want the Dota experience. They've already said repeatedly that they're dedicated to recreating Dota exactly how it was. They're not going to 'fix' anything that changes how the game is played.
See, this is a dumb attitude. They want to turn DotA 2 into this insane esport with crazy big competitions. Keeping limitations in because "that's how it's done" is completely antithetical to that.
But, I'm sure if they changed it all the DotA players would froth and scream and rage because DOTA IS SACRED AND YOU DON'T CHANGE IT.
It can be such a strange community -_-
It would be like if next season, the NFL decided to remove field goals because athletes have grown stronger and faster, they can score without it. Its a part of the game. You don't change it between seasons.
That's a bad analogy. It's more like if Starcraft 2 was just pretty Brood War, everything else (including mechanics) the same. It's an entirely new game. They have an opportunity to improve it, rather than keeping it weird and limited. Your analogy would be like if they patched DotA before a major tournament in a way that really changed it. This is a different game built on a different engine.
It just won't ever explode if they keep it like this, because I can't imagine a lot of people wanting to spend time in a game with command delay while LoL and HoN (which don't have it) are starting to enjoy pretty good success as esports. Sure, it appeals to their existing fanbase, but it probably won't expand much since it will remain too inaccessible.
Like, I get that their design philosophy is KEEP IT THE SAME BECAUSE DAMMIT, IT'S DOTA. But that's going to hurt their ability to make it explode as an esport the way they want it to.
They re-implemented a command delay because it was present in DOTA? Really?
Don't know where this rumor came from. Pretty sure the only 'delay' is from how the source engine handles networking.
Also, having played the game, except for the rare times where I'm having connectivity problems, I don't have any issues with delay.
/edit: Looking into it, the delay people are bitching about is a 50-100 MS delay from how source handles networking. WC3 has a built in 200 MS delay. Baseless rumor.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Wow, I missed this interview with Sundance. That stinks. Hard for a game to turn into a big esport when the company who made it just doesn't care or support it
SenshiBALLING OUT OF CONTROLWavefrontRegistered Userregular
edited November 2011
Yeah, can't really see Valve pouring a lot of money into anything except making stellar games. Their philosophy has always struck me as kind of a "make the game good enough to be alluring on its own, without the idea of having prize money attached" thing.
That said, they seemed comfortable enough making massive changes between Team Fortress Classic and Team Fortress 2. If I'm to be perfectly honest, however, I can say this much: if the delay stays, I'm not going to be playing Dota 2. It's as simple as that. If they don't feel the need to make their game snappy and responsive, then I don't much feel the need to play it. If I wanted to play an unresponsive shitpile, I'd play BF3.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
They re-implemented a command delay because it was present in DOTA? Really?
Don't know where this rumor came from. Pretty sure the only 'delay' is from how the source engine handles networking.
Also, having played the game, except for the rare times where I'm having connectivity problems, I don't have any issues with delay.
/edit: Looking into it, the delay people are bitching about is a 50-100 MS delay from how source handles networking. WC3 has a built in 200 MS delay. Baseless rumor.
Isn't Valve basically just cutting away the middleman and doing their own esports thing with the invitational and such? They're rich enough to not have to bother with MLG.
Yeah, can't really see Valve pouring a lot of money into anything except making stellar games. Their philosophy has always struck me as kind of a "make the game good enough to be alluring on its own, without the idea of having prize money attached" thing.
That said, they seemed comfortable enough making massive changes between Team Fortress Classic and Team Fortress 2. If I'm to be perfectly honest, however, I can say this much: if the delay stays, I'm not going to be playing Dota 2. It's as simple as that. If they don't feel the need to make their game snappy and responsive, then I don't much feel the need to play it. If I wanted to play an unresponsive shitpile, I'd play BF3.
That's the second false comparison on this page.
Original dota -> dota 2 is not comparable to BW -> Starcraft 2. Starcraft 2 is a sequel, and the mission statement from its announcement was that it would be a different game, but still be Starcraft. That's the opposite of what dota 2 is supposed to be, and neither icefrog nor Valve have ever been shy about saying it. They want dota 2 to be as close to wc3 dota as they can possibly make it.
Same goes for TF -> TF2. They hired the same developers to make tf2, but it seems like they asked them to make a casual fps, as apposed to what TF was originally. So they went about removing things and streamlining things. This is not what Valve is doing with dota 2. They said they hired icefrog to make an exact copy of wc3 dota, not a game like dota but with everything simplified.
People need to stop being surprised by that. Maybe it's the superfluous number attached to the title.
The corollary to this is that, since dota is a constantly evolving and changing game, the dota 2 product we'll be playing 6 or 7 months after the commercial release could be very different from wc3 dota. And while that's an extreme scenario I do expect some firm changes in the game once it's not tied down to wc3 anymore. I remember hon would implement wc3 dota changes within a day or two.
Sidebar: as dota 2 is still playing catch-up to wc3 dota it will be interesting to see what happens when 6.73 is finally released (probably around Christmas). I'd expect a lot of the balance changes to be brought in immediately, but there's always the extreme case of one of the dota 2 heroes being remade--which is more extreme still since icefrog had announced dota 2 well before he was working on 6.73. I wonder how the full release of dota 2 will handle remakes. I imagine it would be hell and a half in a f2p system, which is another reason why I hope the game is p2p.
I do hope they implement stuff like a pings on the scoreboard and a netgraph. It should be possible, probably even easy.
There should be no issue with dota 2 tourneys. There are already tons of established wc3 tourneys and leagues that seem to have no problem with switching to dota 2 when they can. A bunch already have. Valve doesn't need to do anything but give them the tools they need and make online play as stable as possible. Even better would be a lan function, since all the biggest tourneys are held and lans and dota 2 already has an established reputation for being unstable as hell during tourneys.
I do hope they implement stuff like a pings on the scoreboard and a netgraph. It should be possible, probably even easy.
While you're logged into steam, right click on DotA2 -> properties -> set launch options and type -console in the box to enable the console.
The net_graph commands works as in other source games.
Maybe the real revolution will be in an improved -DM mode. Bloodbaths that end in 15 minutes, rather than draft-lane-etc-etc-end that last 35-60 minutes.
I think that's one thing that always struck me in dota: unless you are playing WTF and somebody decides to go nuts with a global ability, even the games played in the fun modes can take half an hour or more. Sure you get the <20 minute rolls sometimes in any mode, but those are usually not the norm.
The delay is entirely unnoticeable after just a few games.
If you don't like it, don't play it. You're not going to change anybodies mind or lead us to a great revelation through the internet. Shut the hell up about it already.
I am sure he just forgot you, our god and savior, decide what is and isn't alright to talk about. Worry not, for his hubris will certainly lead to a life of misery.
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
The delay is entirely unnoticeable after just a few games.
If you don't like it, don't play it. You're not going to change anybodies mind or lead us to a great revelation through the internet. Shut the hell up about it already.
...I feel like the point of this thread is discussing aspects of DotA 2?
And we were discussing an aspect of DotA 2 that concerned us. I'm glad it doesn't concern you! But I found the discussion interesting. I don't think anyone was trying to convince anyone of anything.
Oh wait, sorry, forgot that criticizing anything about DotA is absolutely not okay since the game is perfect or something o_O
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SenshiBALLING OUT OF CONTROLWavefrontRegistered Userregular
Yeah we wouldn't want to give anyone the impression that the war3 engine isn't the best engine ever and that it should be recreated with as much attention to strengths and flaws alike
Oh wait, sorry, forgot that criticizing anything about DotA is absolutely not okay since the game is perfect or something o_O
There's an obnoxious tendency for people to come in here and complain about DotA2 based on either misinformation, or because they expected DotA2 to be something it never intended to be (i.e: LoL).
I find it grating at times as well, although I didn't really see the point of Flock's post because people were just honestly misinformed (and the intentional delay thing, if true, would be a totally legit gripe, much like mana bars)
Well it would be one thing if it was an unfixed bug but it isn't. It's an intentional design choice. It's like playing Call of Duty and complaining about how fast the gunplay is or playing Quake and griping about the bunny hopping. Dota2 was modeled after a slower style of MOBA.
Don't like it? Super-duper. Thanks a ton for pointing it out over the course of the last 10 pages.
New topic time: What do you guys think of that awful delay? Totally not like HoN.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I mean, it turns out the delay was just misinformation. And what's wrong with complaints over design choices? Just because it was an intentional design choice doesn't mean we should just accept it as is and be happy with it. People are always going to discuss games and criticize choices the designers made.
Sorry you didn't like the discussion about it I guess?
Speaking of tournament games, EHOME seems to be having trouble recently. Anyone else feel that way? They haven't really been gelling the way they did during the International.
How is an endemic limitation of an ancient engine, something that the Dota creators were forced to live with and work around rather than a deliberate design, not similar to an unfixed bug?
Call of Duty's pacing was carefully calibrated in a deliberate manner and was not defined by buggy or unintended behavior. The Quake analogy is slightly more relevant, because to my knowledge bunny hopping originally was a physics bug, but I still see it as qualitatively different from a command delay because bunny hopping quickly transformed into a substantial and popular feature that became a core skillset of the game-- it was a happy accident rather than a blunder, and there was "meat" on those bones. I have a hard time understanding the argument that a command delay in a fast paced tactical game constitutes a "feature", or is something that contributes to fun in any way. The only argument I've ever seen is that competitive dota players are used to the game's timing being a certain way, and changing it at all will apparently make their world crumble around them.
I also don't see how a small command delay does much to control the overall pacing of the game, and in particular it seems like the worst possible way to do so. It seems to me like Dota's slightly slower pacing is far more a product of things like turning speeds, move speeds, animation times, and other variables of that nature, and so input delay is a sort of bizarre place to make a stand for conservatism. You don't make Street Fighter 4 slower than MvC3 by making sure to include a command delay.
All this said, I personally have not noticed the input delay in Dota 2 to be noticeably worse than any other of the action RTS games, and it seems inconclusive whether or not this artificial delay is even a real thing.
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Dac VinS-s-screw you! I only listen to DOUBLE MUSIC!Registered Userregular
/edit: Looking into it, the delay people are bitching about is a 50-100 MS delay from how source handles networking. WC3 has a built in 200 MS delay. Baseless rumor.
Are we unable to read or the situation is such a clusterfuck that no one knows what?
/edit: Looking into it, the delay people are bitching about is a 50-100 MS delay from how source handles networking. WC3 has a built in 200 MS delay. Baseless rumor.
Are we unable to read or the situation is such a clusterfuck that no one knows what?
They re-implemented a command delay because it was present in DOTA? Really?
Don't know where this rumor came from. Pretty sure the only 'delay' is from how the source engine handles networking.
Also, having played the game, except for the rare times where I'm having connectivity problems, I don't have any issues with delay.
/edit: Looking into it, the delay people are bitching about is a 50-100 MS delay from how source handles networking. WC3 has a built in 200 MS delay. Baseless rumor.
People seem to believe that they're making DOTA2 to appeal to new gamers and people interested in the Moba Genre. They're not. They're making DOTA2 to play DOTA with new graphics and matchmaking. They're not updating, they're not changing, they're porting it to the new engine. That simple. They want to bring DOTA players over. They don't mind if new people get interested, and learn to play DOTA, but they're not trying to innovate and rejuvenate a failing genre(Which MOBAs are not), they're just replicating DOTA on a new engine. Everyone asking for new and innovative changes to the entire DOTA scene are barking up the wrong tree.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Who is asking for "new and innovative"(i.e. dramatic) changes, or for the game to be made appealing to casual players? That's a misrepresentation of the discussion here. People aren't debating more inventory slots, or denying, or stronger towers. It's mostly fairly minor stuff that is somewhat ancillary to the core game, like the UI, controls, and the way games end.
Dota has never been this unchanging, sacred game etched in stone. We're not talking about Chess. There have been tweaks and changes made to Dota constantly over its lifespan. With the move to a completely new engine and game assets, it is only sensible to take a hard look at the more nuts and bolts aspects of the game, and see if it there are places where the quality of the experience can be improved without adulterating the meat of the game.
ok coming as someone who only played for a bit back in WC3 days..
- Command delay, it isn't appreciable for a newbie to notice I guess, if i didnt read it in this thread I wouldn't know it was a "thing"
- Not getting partial gold (only last hit gets gold) is stupid on creeps but I guess i can see the strategy behind it
You are basically King Arrogance if you are announcing a sequel to your game and don't bother making any gameplay improvements.
Dota is not perfect, and Dota 2 is an opportunity to fix those imperfections. I mean, it'll make them boatloads of money regardless, but it comes off as very lazy to me.
Rorus, gameplay improvements in dota weren't restricted by the engine. Things like UI, matchmaking, and coaching are the real reason why dota needed a new engine. There will eventually be gameplay changes, but those are going to be gradual changes. Dota 1 is the jumping-off point.
The amount of improvements dota 2 has made are vast, but if you're not familiar with the original then you'd miss almost all of them.
Exhibit A: The minimap.
Take a look at the minimap in this picture.
You have 1 second to find purple, brown, and dark green.
All it should take is a glance, but without disabling terrain details or setting it to team colours (which means you can't tell which hero is which from just the minimap) it's often very hard to find purple, brown, and dark green on the Warcraft 3 minimap. That's just the way it is, and there was no way to get around that.
Now let's check out the dota 2 minimap.
Not only are all the colours very visible, but teams are better differentiated by opposing knots and crosses icons. Then, with a simple tapping of the alt key, all the heroes are made clear as well.
These are simple changes but they make a big difference. If the game's design had been geared completely toward taking every bit of Warcraft 3's design flaws and preserving them for the old guard then this type of thing wouldn't be needed. It's something that people who hadn't played a lot of Warcraft 3 wouldn't even know to look for, and it makes things simpler and easier for everyone.
Exhibit B: Icons and auras.
In Warcraft 3 there are only so many spell effects to go around, even with the customization available. The hardest thing to get around is the limited number of auras and how they clash. Because of this dota 1 often has to use the same icons for skills and abilities. In dota 2 everything has its own icon.
There are also issues with buffs and how they stack, for the same reasons as the icons. You can see some lists here that show how the limited amount of buffs and auras available mean that many items clash with each other. Some this this is intentional now, but with dota 2 it will be possible to further differentiate buffs and auras, and create newer ones as well.
This is just as relevant for how orbs work. Even the ones that are intended to work together are fairly weird in their execution, since Warcraft 3 will only allow 1 effect to proc at a time. This means that having multiple items or abilities will cause one or more of them to malfunction. For example . . .
Exhibit C: Weaver.
Weaver's geminate attack skill is buggy as hell in Warcraft 3 dota. It's supposed to make him attack a target twice every time it's off cooldown, but because of how Warcraft 3 works it will only do so if the player manually attacks the target. A passive or hold position Weaver will never proc their second attack.
On top of all that it's considered an orb effect, which means that it can't stack with any attack procs. Weaver can never crit with the second attack because of Warcraft 3's limitations. It helps balance the hero out some, but it's also something that can be changed in the future.
There are two important things to keep in mind for the time being. First of all, dota 2 is a beta. It's not done. Second, and this is part of the first, is that dota 2 is an incomplete beta based on a much more complete game. That means that dota 2 is playing catch-up with Warcraft 3 dota. Until it reaches parity with the first game I doubt many completely new things will be added. If you want to take the competition into account then remember that Heroes of Newerth didn't add anything new to the gameplay (besides the way orbs and buff placers work) until it had copied a lot of Warcraft 3 dota, and continued to take directly from Warcraft 3 dota's patches and balances changes well after that.
If people need more examples then I'd be happy to find them.
Valve choosing to use the number 2 in the title is going to get really tiresome for everyone who likes the game for what it is. It's just going to be a neverending stream of transients that come by to complain about some trivial thing they don't like and how Valve should change it because "ZOMG IT'S A SEQUEL IT HAS A 2!" I think they had a better idea with CS:Go rather than calling it Counter-Strike 2. "OMG I HATE WAITING FOR THE ROUND TO END AFTER DYING DO ROLLING RESPAWNS LIKE TF2"
Thus curing the hardest part of the game for me, the super tiny colored dots on the minimap. 800 has me seeing everything nicely. Cater to my old, withered eyes.
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That's a bad analogy. It's more like if Starcraft 2 was just pretty Brood War, everything else (including mechanics) the same. It's an entirely new game. They have an opportunity to improve it, rather than keeping it weird and limited. Your analogy would be like if they patched DotA before a major tournament in a way that really changed it. This is a different game built on a different engine.
It just won't ever explode if they keep it like this, because I can't imagine a lot of people wanting to spend time in a game with command delay while LoL and HoN (which don't have it) are starting to enjoy pretty good success as esports. Sure, it appeals to their existing fanbase, but it probably won't expand much since it will remain too inaccessible.
Like, I get that their design philosophy is KEEP IT THE SAME BECAUSE DAMMIT, IT'S DOTA. But that's going to hurt their ability to make it explode as an esport the way they want it to.
Kind of. This is the head guy at MLG.
LoL is distinct and different enough from DotA that i don't consider them in direct competition with each other
tumblr | instagram | twitter | steam
Also, having played the game, except for the rare times where I'm having connectivity problems, I don't have any issues with delay.
/edit: Looking into it, the delay people are bitching about is a 50-100 MS delay from how source handles networking. WC3 has a built in 200 MS delay. Baseless rumor.
Wow, I missed this interview with Sundance. That stinks. Hard for a game to turn into a big esport when the company who made it just doesn't care or support it
they looked at dota and went "hm. there are about 15 million people in europe and china that play this thing."
and gaben's face went like this $_$
tumblr | instagram | twitter | steam
That said, they seemed comfortable enough making massive changes between Team Fortress Classic and Team Fortress 2. If I'm to be perfectly honest, however, I can say this much: if the delay stays, I'm not going to be playing Dota 2. It's as simple as that. If they don't feel the need to make their game snappy and responsive, then I don't much feel the need to play it. If I wanted to play an unresponsive shitpile, I'd play BF3.
This puts my cold black heart at ease.
That's the second false comparison on this page.
Original dota -> dota 2 is not comparable to BW -> Starcraft 2. Starcraft 2 is a sequel, and the mission statement from its announcement was that it would be a different game, but still be Starcraft. That's the opposite of what dota 2 is supposed to be, and neither icefrog nor Valve have ever been shy about saying it. They want dota 2 to be as close to wc3 dota as they can possibly make it.
Same goes for TF -> TF2. They hired the same developers to make tf2, but it seems like they asked them to make a casual fps, as apposed to what TF was originally. So they went about removing things and streamlining things. This is not what Valve is doing with dota 2. They said they hired icefrog to make an exact copy of wc3 dota, not a game like dota but with everything simplified.
People need to stop being surprised by that. Maybe it's the superfluous number attached to the title.
The corollary to this is that, since dota is a constantly evolving and changing game, the dota 2 product we'll be playing 6 or 7 months after the commercial release could be very different from wc3 dota. And while that's an extreme scenario I do expect some firm changes in the game once it's not tied down to wc3 anymore. I remember hon would implement wc3 dota changes within a day or two.
Sidebar: as dota 2 is still playing catch-up to wc3 dota it will be interesting to see what happens when 6.73 is finally released (probably around Christmas). I'd expect a lot of the balance changes to be brought in immediately, but there's always the extreme case of one of the dota 2 heroes being remade--which is more extreme still since icefrog had announced dota 2 well before he was working on 6.73. I wonder how the full release of dota 2 will handle remakes. I imagine it would be hell and a half in a f2p system, which is another reason why I hope the game is p2p.
I do hope they implement stuff like a pings on the scoreboard and a netgraph. It should be possible, probably even easy.
There should be no issue with dota 2 tourneys. There are already tons of established wc3 tourneys and leagues that seem to have no problem with switching to dota 2 when they can. A bunch already have. Valve doesn't need to do anything but give them the tools they need and make online play as stable as possible. Even better would be a lan function, since all the biggest tourneys are held and lans and dota 2 already has an established reputation for being unstable as hell during tourneys.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
While you're logged into steam, right click on DotA2 -> properties -> set launch options and type -console in the box to enable the console.
The net_graph commands works as in other source games.
I think that's one thing that always struck me in dota: unless you are playing WTF and somebody decides to go nuts with a global ability, even the games played in the fun modes can take half an hour or more. Sure you get the <20 minute rolls sometimes in any mode, but those are usually not the norm.
Although, seeing it once was enough. If dota 2 was an fps I'd refuse to play it online.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
If you don't like it, don't play it. You're not going to change anybodies mind or lead us to a great revelation through the internet. Shut the hell up about it already.
...I feel like the point of this thread is discussing aspects of DotA 2?
And we were discussing an aspect of DotA 2 that concerned us. I'm glad it doesn't concern you! But I found the discussion interesting. I don't think anyone was trying to convince anyone of anything.
Oh wait, sorry, forgot that criticizing anything about DotA is absolutely not okay since the game is perfect or something o_O
that would be awful
I find it grating at times as well, although I didn't really see the point of Flock's post because people were just honestly misinformed (and the intentional delay thing, if true, would be a totally legit gripe, much like mana bars)
ARGRGRGRGRG
Don't like it? Super-duper. Thanks a ton for pointing it out over the course of the last 10 pages.
New topic time: What do you guys think of that awful delay? Totally not like HoN.
Sorry you didn't like the discussion about it I guess?
Speaking of tournament games, EHOME seems to be having trouble recently. Anyone else feel that way? They haven't really been gelling the way they did during the International.
Someone's gonna get fired!
I lol'd IRL. EPIC FAIL
'GOD DAMN IT PARKER I HAVEN'T GOT TIME FOR THIS, I NEED MORE PICTURES OF SPIDERMAN'
This post delivers.
Call of Duty's pacing was carefully calibrated in a deliberate manner and was not defined by buggy or unintended behavior. The Quake analogy is slightly more relevant, because to my knowledge bunny hopping originally was a physics bug, but I still see it as qualitatively different from a command delay because bunny hopping quickly transformed into a substantial and popular feature that became a core skillset of the game-- it was a happy accident rather than a blunder, and there was "meat" on those bones. I have a hard time understanding the argument that a command delay in a fast paced tactical game constitutes a "feature", or is something that contributes to fun in any way. The only argument I've ever seen is that competitive dota players are used to the game's timing being a certain way, and changing it at all will apparently make their world crumble around them.
I also don't see how a small command delay does much to control the overall pacing of the game, and in particular it seems like the worst possible way to do so. It seems to me like Dota's slightly slower pacing is far more a product of things like turning speeds, move speeds, animation times, and other variables of that nature, and so input delay is a sort of bizarre place to make a stand for conservatism. You don't make Street Fighter 4 slower than MvC3 by making sure to include a command delay.
All this said, I personally have not noticed the input delay in Dota 2 to be noticeably worse than any other of the action RTS games, and it seems inconclusive whether or not this artificial delay is even a real thing.
Are we unable to read or the situation is such a clusterfuck that no one knows what?
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Dota has never been this unchanging, sacred game etched in stone. We're not talking about Chess. There have been tweaks and changes made to Dota constantly over its lifespan. With the move to a completely new engine and game assets, it is only sensible to take a hard look at the more nuts and bolts aspects of the game, and see if it there are places where the quality of the experience can be improved without adulterating the meat of the game.
ok coming as someone who only played for a bit back in WC3 days..
- Command delay, it isn't appreciable for a newbie to notice I guess, if i didnt read it in this thread I wouldn't know it was a "thing"
- Not getting partial gold (only last hit gets gold) is stupid on creeps but I guess i can see the strategy behind it
Stop talking about the command delay because there is no command delay and you guys are just spreading misinformation, damn it.
Dota is not perfect, and Dota 2 is an opportunity to fix those imperfections. I mean, it'll make them boatloads of money regardless, but it comes off as very lazy to me.
GT: Tanky the Tank
Black: 1377 6749 7425
Exhibit A: The minimap.
Take a look at the minimap in this picture.
You have 1 second to find purple, brown, and dark green.
All it should take is a glance, but without disabling terrain details or setting it to team colours (which means you can't tell which hero is which from just the minimap) it's often very hard to find purple, brown, and dark green on the Warcraft 3 minimap. That's just the way it is, and there was no way to get around that.
Now let's check out the dota 2 minimap.
Not only are all the colours very visible, but teams are better differentiated by opposing knots and crosses icons. Then, with a simple tapping of the alt key, all the heroes are made clear as well.
These are simple changes but they make a big difference. If the game's design had been geared completely toward taking every bit of Warcraft 3's design flaws and preserving them for the old guard then this type of thing wouldn't be needed. It's something that people who hadn't played a lot of Warcraft 3 wouldn't even know to look for, and it makes things simpler and easier for everyone.
Exhibit B: Icons and auras.
In Warcraft 3 there are only so many spell effects to go around, even with the customization available. The hardest thing to get around is the limited number of auras and how they clash. Because of this dota 1 often has to use the same icons for skills and abilities. In dota 2 everything has its own icon.
There are also issues with buffs and how they stack, for the same reasons as the icons. You can see some lists here that show how the limited amount of buffs and auras available mean that many items clash with each other. Some this this is intentional now, but with dota 2 it will be possible to further differentiate buffs and auras, and create newer ones as well.
This is just as relevant for how orbs work. Even the ones that are intended to work together are fairly weird in their execution, since Warcraft 3 will only allow 1 effect to proc at a time. This means that having multiple items or abilities will cause one or more of them to malfunction. For example . . .
Exhibit C: Weaver.
Weaver's geminate attack skill is buggy as hell in Warcraft 3 dota. It's supposed to make him attack a target twice every time it's off cooldown, but because of how Warcraft 3 works it will only do so if the player manually attacks the target. A passive or hold position Weaver will never proc their second attack.
On top of all that it's considered an orb effect, which means that it can't stack with any attack procs. Weaver can never crit with the second attack because of Warcraft 3's limitations. It helps balance the hero out some, but it's also something that can be changed in the future.
There are two important things to keep in mind for the time being. First of all, dota 2 is a beta. It's not done. Second, and this is part of the first, is that dota 2 is an incomplete beta based on a much more complete game. That means that dota 2 is playing catch-up with Warcraft 3 dota. Until it reaches parity with the first game I doubt many completely new things will be added. If you want to take the competition into account then remember that Heroes of Newerth didn't add anything new to the gameplay (besides the way orbs and buff placers work) until it had copied a lot of Warcraft 3 dota, and continued to take directly from Warcraft 3 dota's patches and balances changes well after that.
If people need more examples then I'd be happy to find them.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
And CS:Go isnt even being done by Valve and isn't really a sequel anyway, so calling it CS2 would have made little sense.
Thus curing the hardest part of the game for me, the super tiny colored dots on the minimap. 800 has me seeing everything nicely. Cater to my old, withered eyes.