I'm glad I broke the habit last year and didn't get the BP due to China. There's just too much stuff that's one time only now for me to want to invest the time or money. Same problem I've had with Destiny 2, FOMO and "You had to be there". Also since I haven't played any since the last "seasonal" event that wasn't just a battlepass. Siltbreaker I think? Unfortunately I don't even have a team to cheer for this year.
I hope everyone gets the drops they're hoping for and enjoys Skeleton King being back though.
EDIT It will be nice to have a guild again. I've kept the Penny Arcade room open all this time but I've only ever seen 2 other people use it.
DotA 2 has always had the world's most convoluted out of game progress features I've ever seen in a video game. I feel like an old man trying to make sense of it.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
DotA 2 has always had the world's most convoluted out of game progress features I've ever seen in a video game. I feel like an old man trying to make sense of it.
the tl;dr of battlepass progression is "spend several hundred dollars"
DotA 2 has always had the world's most convoluted out of game progress features I've ever seen in a video game. I feel like an old man trying to make sense of it.
the tl;dr of battlepass progression is "spend several hundred dollars"
And they pretty clearly tier rewards to "encourage" spending cash to buy levels. I still remember the last BattlePass I bought 2 or 3 seasons ago where every couple of tiers you got to spin a prize wheel, and it never, ever paid out anything. I ended up buying points to get the reward I wanted once I realized the grind it was going to take to get there otherwise. I miss the days when Valve wasn't so greedy with DOTA loot.
Looks like they're really leaning on having a fairly full group of at least semi-active players, so forming up a PA group with a handful of folks would probably require opening the floodgates a bit anyways.
So if anyone happens on a good mix of low toxicity and semi-active players (even if they're new, god knows my skill level is legit low Herald), let me know. I went perusing the Reddit list of guilds and joined one to have a spot to start from, at least.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I'm not even questioning the dollar value, it's that I wouldn't know what the hell was going on even if I did pay!
I have 1576 hours logged and I still haven't the faintest idea how wagering, battlepoints, or any of the rewards work. I think I've maybe unlocked 3 pairs of alternate shoulder pads for cosmetics to show for the 3/4ths of a full time work year I've put into this game.
MrBody on
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
It's a pretty decent amount of easy early levels. I ran through all my portal consumables, did a contract, and beat one of my Smash Adventure mode circle thingies and I'm just shy of level 10.
But yeah, basically just play as much as you can, play heroes on your Smash board, and join a guild for contracts and guild missions. If in September you're shy of whatever item you want, then you can put in more money if you want.
A small but disproportionately helpful thing to do would be to join a Guild that is high enough to get the bonus Side Shop spot before spending the gold you get there.
I didn't realize that was a thing, and having an extra slot would have been a godsend several times. I should have looked closer before I went on an Underlords inspired journey of rerolls, but oh well, at least others can learn from my mistake.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
X-posting from the #MeToo thread.
Didn't see it brought up but Dota 2 community is in shambles lately too. Toby "Tobiwan" Dawson, a popular caster of professional Dota has been revealed as a shithead and all of his voicelines and cosmetics were removed from the game by Valve. Also Grant “GranDgranT” Harris was dropped from EG for similar sexual assault allegations.
Didn't see it brought up but Dota 2 community is in shambles lately too. Toby "Tobiwan" Dawson, a popular caster of professional Dota has been revealed as a shithead and all of his voicelines and cosmetics were removed from the game by Valve. Also Grant “GranDgranT” Harris was dropped from EG for similar sexual assault allegations.
I was a big Toby fan for years but even 3-4 years ago he started to get creepy as fuck with women and made some really bad comments about the talent of women players.
Damn shame as he really did a lot to boost the popularity of DOTA
PSN: Canadian_llama
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Several gaming communities are having a #MeToo wave right now. It's good to see, even if the stories themselves are really distressing.
Of course, a bunch of grognards are screeching about "GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT, WITCH HUNT, LET THEM DEFEND THEMSELVES" even thought that's got fuck all to do with anything. This isn't a court of law and they are not owed anything, if other people and groups believe the allegations and choose to drop them as a result they're completely within their rights to do so. Ya fuckin' CHUDs.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
The telling part in both the Grant and Tobi cases is how quickly fellow casters came out and said "Yeah, we totally believe the accusers"...as we should, but the speed and veracity has been stunning.
Here's Purge talking about Grant, and how much of a shit head he was in general, and how Purge absolutely believes without question that Grant was a predator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3CbTdegYMI
Several gaming communities are having a #MeToo wave right now. It's good to see, even if the stories themselves are really distressing.
Of course, a bunch of grognards are screeching about "GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT, WITCH HUNT, LET THEM DEFEND THEMSELVES" even thought that's got fuck all to do with anything. This isn't a court of law and they are not owed anything, if other people and groups believe the allegations and choose to drop them as a result they're completely within their rights to do so. Ya fuckin' CHUDs.
This pisses me off.
Every woman that I have seen online or know in person that reported a sexual assault when through pure fucking hell afterward....
Do you think they are doing this for kicks?
and yeah, in a court of law you are innocent until proven guilty. If I take a giant shit on main street and my employer finds out I don't feel like they need to wait for my court date to fire my ass.
Tobiwan has always been a gross disgusting person. He has a long documented history of creepy and offensive behaviour. Remember when he dropped the N word and got away with a slap on the wrist? He used the Pewdiepie defense before Felix did.
Tobi still got gigs at the biggest dota 2 tournaments because he was one of the 'best'. His presence at tournaments like the international is part of why I became disillusioned with Dota and other esports. ESports has long covered up and brushed off behaviour from terrible people with the defense it was small and not mainstream. "Can't get rid of abusive person for the good of esports" was a thing.
Hey, guys. I'm interested in jumping back into DotA again. It was the first MOBA that I had ever played, and I really enjoyed it. This has been many years ago at this point. I stopped playing only because Heroes of the Storm came out, and I figured because it had been presented as a much more casual experience, my friends (who had refused to get into DotA with me) might actually come play it. Turned out I just, really liked HotS lol and I've been playing it for years. Ended up as a Masters-level player over there. But I'm very much interested in coming back to DotA now, and I'm having a difficult time figuring out how. The game's changed so much (I stopped right about the time Techies came out). There are like, neutral items, and the map's changed, and a lot of the heroes have changed dramatically, and I'm just not sure how to get started again. Any advice?
Watch some matches or players on Twitch for a little while and read the patch notes.
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
Join a custom lobby vs AI Bots. You'll get more familiar with the mechanics after playing with them. I think most of it is learning heroes & talents, the newer neutral items (they have a chance to spawn every 10 minutes starting at 7 until 37 minutes, last tier is at 60), and finally the map changes. Bots are a great way to at least learn the heroes, you'll learn more advanced things like counter warding, smoke ganks, and player movement trends by playing actual games.
Granted you could just jump into unranked play and get some matches in, but you're more likely to run into toxicity from the community if you don't know how heroes work. Even in unranked play, people are usually good with a few mistakes, but consistent misplays will bring out the comm abuse.
Shrines- The healing shrines are gone. Replaced with 2 xp shrines (top left and bottom right). They activate at the 10 minute mark and can be captured. Your team gets bonus xp if you own at least one at every 10 minutes after that (owning both will not grant bonus, just deny the other team). They also grant some vision with truesight and allow your team to teleport to them.
Neutral items- Have a chance to spawn from defeated neutral creeps. You can hold one at time in the slot located to the right of your normal slots. There is a neutral item "merchant" at your fountain. You can drop off items there and anyone from your team can pick them up. Useful to donate to heroes who can better use them.
Inactive backpack slots- I don't think these were around when you were playing. You can now hold 3 (4?) extra items in your backpack, located in small slots below the usual 6. These items will not be active, but you can carry them and swap them out with your 6 active items (with a small delay before they take effect).
Wards- Vision wards are now free. Sentry wards cost 75 each and are limited.
Dust- Can now be purchased one at a time for half the price of the previous 2 packs.
edit:
Oh yeah, couriers. Each player now gets their own courier for free from the start. They also now automatically upgrade to a flying courier at a certain time, with the speedup upgrade unlocked a little later.
I've been getting the itch to come back. I was really into DOTA 2 between 2015-2017, but have stopped playing it since then.
I was very burnt out by toxic teammates, who often indulged in all manners of griefing from feeding, killing the courier, insults, or backseat lecturing and shaming. It remained the same when I dropped by for a visit during 2019 - and I see Valve is trying to crack down hard on griefers, but I still feel very much exhausted in dealing with obnoxious "allies". Has it improved at all?
well every player has their own courier now so thats one problem solved
i think i can count with one hand the number of people who were trying to micromanage teammates / actively griefing since I started playing when this year's battle pass was introduced. then again, i only play unranked and turbo
at this point I'm not certain any other competitive multiplayer game is devoid of assholes
At least objectively one-tenth as toxic, by my experience. Number of matches where my team was already slinging feces right at hero select or the first 2 minutes was ten times higher in LoL than DotA2.
LoL started off as the more casual, friendlier, easier to get into gateway alternative to DotA. After the first 3-4 years, all of that swapped. LoL is now the more toxic, obtuse (every new item has 1-2 paragraphs describing its effect), difficult to break into of the two. Adhering to LANE META in LoL became downright draconian, and would get you instantly screamed at for the slightest infraction, even in unranked. The final straw that finally killed it for me was that ridiculous new rune system.
DOTA has gotten a lot better from a community standpoint as the competitive scene has continued to subside. I don't think the game is getting the constant influx of try hard players who think they've got a shot at an LCS team or a lucrative stream brand like LOL does anymore, and probably hasn't for awhile. Don't get me wrong, at least through last year big DOTA tournaments were still top earners and mass streamed, but you can tell something in the game has definitely slipped away. There aren't really any new major star players emerging, it's basically still the same cast of big names as it was 3 years ago, and with that last major patch, elements of the dreaded "randomness" like HOTS has a lot of, started to find their way in. You still need to have your mute button ready and able though, lots of games are still toxic shitholes. Regardless, I don't play anymore, every time I think about reinstalling I'm forced to download some insane 50 gb download because Valve refuses to reduce the cosmetic bloat, and I give up and do something else.
Adhering to LANE META in LoL became downright draconian, and would get you instantly screamed at for the slightest infraction, even in unranked.
I put that problem directly at Riot's feet, they have continually patched and balanced the game to force that meta. And anything that threatens it, like the laneswapping meta, is quickly patched away.
DOTA has gotten a lot better from a community standpoint as the competitive scene has continued to subside. I don't think the game is getting the constant influx of try hard players who think they've got a shot at an LCS team or a lucrative stream brand like LOL does anymore, and probably hasn't for awhile. Don't get me wrong, at least through last year big DOTA tournaments were still top earners and mass streamed, but you can tell something in the game has definitely slipped away. There aren't really any new major star players emerging, it's basically still the same cast of big names as it was 3 years ago, and with that last major patch, elements of the dreaded "randomness" like HOTS has a lot of, started to find their way in.
I never understood why the companies pushed so hard for an e-sports scene. How much of a profit comes in from that compared to the in game sales? I consider Heroes of the Storm the best designed and most fun MOBA (although its enhanced vulnerability to "it only takes one bad teammate" syndrome drags it down immensely), but it's considered a failure because the e-sports scene never took off? I feel like an old man for asking, but why does anyone care?
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Companies pushed hard for eSports because they wanted a piece of the pie. It's simple capitalist economics. The thing is, a lot of them don't have the patience for it, so they think they can get away with dumping a shitton of money to try and jumpstart it and think that's all it takes. DotA 2 had the advantage of a DotA 1, and it was growing an organic competitive scene. Just as fighting games did. The latter is in a weird situation because you have events like EVO that encompass many games, so the bar of entry for a fighting game to make a push for competitive is low. But with MOBAs everyone wants their own walled gardens.
1.) The summer event is out
2.) It's pretty fun
3.) You absolutely need some movement item for the final boss
4.) The final boss has like 70% physical resist and 0% MR. Pick viper and choose the +1% MR reduction every time, do like 300% as much damage as your sniper does.
My friend is working on a roguelike game you can play if you want to. (It has free demo)
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
I like Weaver a lot because of the "many threads" talent.
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I must be bad at Googling, when is The International exactly this year? I know things are weird because of the pandemic but I haven't seen that it's canceled.
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
I must be bad at Googling, when is The International exactly this year? I know things are weird because of the pandemic but I haven't seen that it's canceled.
It is. They decided that they were not doing an International 10, but that they would still release a battle pass and host events to raise money for a prize pool. Then they'll combine the TI10 battle pass prize pool with the TI11 battle pass prize pool. Basically, no TI this year, but double the prize pool for next year.
I must be bad at Googling, when is The International exactly this year? I know things are weird because of the pandemic but I haven't seen that it's canceled.
It is. They decided that they were not doing an International 10, but that they would still release a battle pass and host events to raise money for a prize pool. Then they'll combine the TI10 battle pass prize pool with the TI11 battle pass prize pool. Basically, no TI this year, but double the prize pool for next year.
...
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
I must be bad at Googling, when is The International exactly this year? I know things are weird because of the pandemic but I haven't seen that it's canceled.
It is. They decided that they were not doing an International 10, but that they would still release a battle pass and host events to raise money for a prize pool. Then they'll combine the TI10 battle pass prize pool with the TI11 battle pass prize pool. Basically, no TI this year, but double the prize pool for next year.
After extensive consideration of the global health emergency stemming from COVID-19, we have made the difficult choice to delay The International. We have been exploring various date possibilities, but it is likely that the event will need to happen in 2021. Given the highly volatile landscape for local gathering restrictions, virus trajectory, and global travel policies, we don’t expect to have enough confidence to communicate firm dates in the near future. In the meantime, we are working on restructuring the DPC season for the fall, and will be providing more information as soon as we have it.
The 10th International prize pool will be funded by 25% of sales of the next Battle Pass, which we are planning to release soon instead of closer to the event itself. However, with our team working from home and things taking longer to complete, the release date of the Battle Pass will be at least a couple of weeks later than usual.
We hope everyone in the Dota community is staying as safe as possible, and look forward to a time when we can once again welcome everyone to enjoy the spectacle of The International.
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I suppose doing a remote event would've been controversial with latency concerns at play. And even flying people into sequestered nearby rooms to cut back on that latency would've been an exposure risk.
At the end of the day I'm happy there's responsible decisions being made. I was confused because I saw so much promotion of the Battle Pass and such.
Posts
I hope everyone gets the drops they're hoping for and enjoys Skeleton King being back though.
EDIT It will be nice to have a guild again. I've kept the Penny Arcade room open all this time but I've only ever seen 2 other people use it.
DotA 2 has always had the world's most convoluted out of game progress features I've ever seen in a video game. I feel like an old man trying to make sense of it.
the tl;dr of battlepass progression is "spend several hundred dollars"
Streaming 8PST on weeknights
And they pretty clearly tier rewards to "encourage" spending cash to buy levels. I still remember the last BattlePass I bought 2 or 3 seasons ago where every couple of tiers you got to spin a prize wheel, and it never, ever paid out anything. I ended up buying points to get the reward I wanted once I realized the grind it was going to take to get there otherwise. I miss the days when Valve wasn't so greedy with DOTA loot.
So if anyone happens on a good mix of low toxicity and semi-active players (even if they're new, god knows my skill level is legit low Herald), let me know. I went perusing the Reddit list of guilds and joined one to have a spot to start from, at least.
I have 1576 hours logged and I still haven't the faintest idea how wagering, battlepoints, or any of the rewards work. I think I've maybe unlocked 3 pairs of alternate shoulder pads for cosmetics to show for the 3/4ths of a full time work year I've put into this game.
But yeah, basically just play as much as you can, play heroes on your Smash board, and join a guild for contracts and guild missions. If in September you're shy of whatever item you want, then you can put in more money if you want.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
I didn't realize that was a thing, and having an extra slot would have been a godsend several times. I should have looked closer before I went on an Underlords inspired journey of rerolls, but oh well, at least others can learn from my mistake.
Didn't see it brought up but Dota 2 community is in shambles lately too. Toby "Tobiwan" Dawson, a popular caster of professional Dota has been revealed as a shithead and all of his voicelines and cosmetics were removed from the game by Valve. Also Grant “GranDgranT” Harris was dropped from EG for similar sexual assault allegations.
https://www.talkesport.com/news/dota-2-caster-tobiwan-accused-by-multiple-women-for-sexual-abuse-voice-lines-removed-from-battle-pass/
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Been out of the scene for a while....
I was a big Toby fan for years but even 3-4 years ago he started to get creepy as fuck with women and made some really bad comments about the talent of women players.
Damn shame as he really did a lot to boost the popularity of DOTA
Of course, a bunch of grognards are screeching about "GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT, WITCH HUNT, LET THEM DEFEND THEMSELVES" even thought that's got fuck all to do with anything. This isn't a court of law and they are not owed anything, if other people and groups believe the allegations and choose to drop them as a result they're completely within their rights to do so. Ya fuckin' CHUDs.
Here's Purge talking about Grant, and how much of a shit head he was in general, and how Purge absolutely believes without question that Grant was a predator:
This pisses me off.
Every woman that I have seen online or know in person that reported a sexual assault when through pure fucking hell afterward....
Do you think they are doing this for kicks?
and yeah, in a court of law you are innocent until proven guilty. If I take a giant shit on main street and my employer finds out I don't feel like they need to wait for my court date to fire my ass.
Tobi still got gigs at the biggest dota 2 tournaments because he was one of the 'best'. His presence at tournaments like the international is part of why I became disillusioned with Dota and other esports. ESports has long covered up and brushed off behaviour from terrible people with the defense it was small and not mainstream. "Can't get rid of abusive person for the good of esports" was a thing.
Grant is another example of that.
Granted you could just jump into unranked play and get some matches in, but you're more likely to run into toxicity from the community if you don't know how heroes work. Even in unranked play, people are usually good with a few mistakes, but consistent misplays will bring out the comm abuse.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Streaming 8PST on weeknights
Shrines- The healing shrines are gone. Replaced with 2 xp shrines (top left and bottom right). They activate at the 10 minute mark and can be captured. Your team gets bonus xp if you own at least one at every 10 minutes after that (owning both will not grant bonus, just deny the other team). They also grant some vision with truesight and allow your team to teleport to them.
Neutral items- Have a chance to spawn from defeated neutral creeps. You can hold one at time in the slot located to the right of your normal slots. There is a neutral item "merchant" at your fountain. You can drop off items there and anyone from your team can pick them up. Useful to donate to heroes who can better use them.
Inactive backpack slots- I don't think these were around when you were playing. You can now hold 3 (4?) extra items in your backpack, located in small slots below the usual 6. These items will not be active, but you can carry them and swap them out with your 6 active items (with a small delay before they take effect).
Wards- Vision wards are now free. Sentry wards cost 75 each and are limited.
Dust- Can now be purchased one at a time for half the price of the previous 2 packs.
edit:
Oh yeah, couriers. Each player now gets their own courier for free from the start. They also now automatically upgrade to a flying courier at a certain time, with the speedup upgrade unlocked a little later.
I was very burnt out by toxic teammates, who often indulged in all manners of griefing from feeding, killing the courier, insults, or backseat lecturing and shaming. It remained the same when I dropped by for a visit during 2019 - and I see Valve is trying to crack down hard on griefers, but I still feel very much exhausted in dealing with obnoxious "allies". Has it improved at all?
i think i can count with one hand the number of people who were trying to micromanage teammates / actively griefing since I started playing when this year's battle pass was introduced. then again, i only play unranked and turbo
at this point I'm not certain any other competitive multiplayer game is devoid of assholes
Streaming 8PST on weeknights
I mean, less toxic than infinity is still a big ass number.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
LoL started off as the more casual, friendlier, easier to get into gateway alternative to DotA. After the first 3-4 years, all of that swapped. LoL is now the more toxic, obtuse (every new item has 1-2 paragraphs describing its effect), difficult to break into of the two. Adhering to LANE META in LoL became downright draconian, and would get you instantly screamed at for the slightest infraction, even in unranked. The final straw that finally killed it for me was that ridiculous new rune system.
I put that problem directly at Riot's feet, they have continually patched and balanced the game to force that meta. And anything that threatens it, like the laneswapping meta, is quickly patched away.
No MMR decay was rough for the first couple weeks
You talk clean and bomb hospitals, so I speak with the foulest mouth possible
I never understood why the companies pushed so hard for an e-sports scene. How much of a profit comes in from that compared to the in game sales? I consider Heroes of the Storm the best designed and most fun MOBA (although its enhanced vulnerability to "it only takes one bad teammate" syndrome drags it down immensely), but it's considered a failure because the e-sports scene never took off? I feel like an old man for asking, but why does anyone care?
You talk clean and bomb hospitals, so I speak with the foulest mouth possible
2.) It's pretty fun
3.) You absolutely need some movement item for the final boss
4.) The final boss has like 70% physical resist and 0% MR. Pick viper and choose the +1% MR reduction every time, do like 300% as much damage as your sniper does.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
It is. They decided that they were not doing an International 10, but that they would still release a battle pass and host events to raise money for a prize pool. Then they'll combine the TI10 battle pass prize pool with the TI11 battle pass prize pool. Basically, no TI this year, but double the prize pool for next year.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Here's an official statement: https://blog.dota2.com/2020/04/the-international-2/
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
At the end of the day I'm happy there's responsible decisions being made. I was confused because I saw so much promotion of the Battle Pass and such.