There seems to be a near-universal hate of SotIS around these parts and i don't understand why. Not only is it really fun to play once you get some skill, it's quite easily one of the largest and most impressive maps (especially with the coming 4.0 update). Is it just because Ecko got it up to the top of the list and no one else has been able to do that with their map (save a lucky few; i'm looking at you vexal)?
I personally think it's one of the best-made maps and way ahead of its time (maybe not as much anymore). In a world of tugs and frenzies and tds, it's nice that ekcol made a hero map.
However, personally I don't like AOS style gameplay. In War3, DOTA killed the golden age of maps, and I found it to be a farm-fest filled with over competitive egos.
But it's probably hated for the same reason WoW is. Even though both are great (atleast when i played both).
Wintermaul's pretty decent. It was the best in WC3 and might be so again in SC2.
In regards to SOTIS; I personally dislike it because of several reasons.
A) The terrain sucks horribly. It's not original, it's not cool, it barely serves a function... it's just ugly. Me being a terrain 'guru', I can't let it pass when people put so little effort into their terrain.
B) Those health bars annoy the CRAP out of me. What's up with the "hey lets use over 9000 blocks for a unit with 100 HP!"? Why the hell did Ecko ever think that was a good idea?
C) It's not newbie-friendly. Heck, it's not friendly ANYONE who hasn't played the map 20+ times. I'm an AoS veteran, having played pretty much all of the AoS and DotA's in WC3 and having played most of them that have been released for SC2. Yet I get my ass kicked consistantly in the map. And not just because I play sucky, but also because I'm comfortably farming creeps and then suddenly get jumped and literally 3-shot. Which brings me to my next point;
D) It's imbalanced. I'm not as good at SOTIS as I am at all other AoS's I've played, but there's a couple of heroes that are downright better than everything else out there. Tiberius Rancor and the DT ALWAYS, in every game I've played, become so strong so fast that they alone completely rape the other team.
E) Its community sucks. People in, for example, HotAT were always friendly and pleasant. Whenever I join a SOTIS game, I end up with three leavers first, after which I get killed by Tiberius Rancor once or twice, after which the enemy players start randomly shouting "LOL NOOB I PWN U" and my allies start yelling "OMG NOOB U SUCK FFS".
Honestly, I just hate every DOTA map for the most part. While its a good concept for a map, there are just so many poorly made ones that I've lost faith in the entire genera of DOTA unless its actually a decent map. I only played sotis for like 5 minutes ever. I would agree its probably the best DOTA map (at least most popular) for sc2 as of now.
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In regards to Mozared, I will jump on the bandwagon.
A) The terrain is shit, its tiny, too small ... if you made a 1 to 1 scale of Dota in Starcraft 2 and compared it to Sotis you would see how tiny Sotis is, I think from my measurements it is 66% of the size of Dota. I don't even look at the screen when running through the forests, I watch the minimap cause it is just that small.
B) I don't really like any of the User Interface in Starcraft ... let alone the Healthbars. I think it could be done a lot better.
C) As for not being noob friendly, these types of games are not meant to be. But, if you are a veteran of any you should be able to jump in another no problem. But the inherient design flaw with Sotis is your following point ...
D) Sotis is the biggest piece of imbalanced shit I have ever came across, and it is sad that I have to say that as I wish I didn't. In the last week I have played it about half a dozen times, and coming from an eight year background in Dota, yes, at one point Dota was just as imbalanced as Sotis is now, but it has had 8 years of balancing to make it what it is. You cannot expect people who are use to playing Dota/Hon/LoL to jump into Sotis and not be enraged.
The other Dota clones, as the name suggested, cloned all the numbers, so they were balanced from the start. Sotis did not ... Eck has attempted to reinvent the wheel, but has failed miserably. I cannot even start to suggest at how pissed off I became in the games I played where I would loose 80% of my health to 1 ability, which isn't even an ultimate ... wtf mate.
E) That is Battle.net ... You put angry kids in with sensible adults, the adults will soon turn into angry kids themselves and everyone is a-raging.
And FYI, I hate the noobs who cry Dota ruined Wc3 ... If Dota wasn't so good people wouldn't play it, the other maps failed cause they couldn't live up to Dota's status.
- On a different Note ...
For those of you who remember the birth of Warcraft III ... all those years ago ... Starcraft II is actually following in it's footsteps pretty much step for step. The Custom Map scene in Wc3 started out with TDs, Survivor Maps, Tugs, Hero Arenas and AoS (Like Sotis without the Dota Layout) ... before Dota came along about ugh ... 9 months into it? And even then, Dota wasn't that popular ... you would join your normal TD game, or your Hero Arena game and people would say, have you played Defense of the Ancients? And yes, it wasn't even called Dota back then. It started off very slow, didn't get much popularity ... it wasn't until Eul left, and spawned the ugh ... 20 clones ... and Guinsoo came along and took everyone's heros from the best maps and put them together in a single map and called it his own that Dota surged in popularity ... oh and he added sound, that helped alot.
I'm a noob who cries dota ruined the creativity of maps in wc3. I don't know why you label people off as noobs. It obviously was a big enough issue that Blizzard completely redid their custom-game system (ironically ending up worse... pre 1.3 though).
I thought games like tides of blood were actually better, and even though i dislike AOS i enjoyed it. Wintermaul wars, dark deeds, open rpgs, COT rpg, zoators, skibis, LOAP, risk maps, sheep tag, resident evil maps, Enfos, prison escape, survivor maps, Legacies RPG & NOTD, hell even cube D back in the day... all these maps that I think were brilliant got pushed aside (for the most part) for DOTA.
C) & D) - these seem to tie into eachother one way or another. The problem here is the definition of 'noob-friendly' I guess. What my fuss in my original post was, was that every time I tried the map and played a random hero I got my ass kicked MAJORLY. Now I understand people need to develop skill in a specific map, but that's why I mentioned my previous encounters with AoS-style maps; I reckon that if you know how to micro, gank and bait opponents well in a DOTA map, you should at least be able to... not die horribly to everything in the game. Yet I did. The question is, I guess, whether this is just noob-unfriendlyness or pure imbalance. With my lack of expertise in the map, I can't say.
E) I disagree. I know that 'the internet' can be a horrible place, but there is a very clear difference in community between... all types of maps, really? On Nexus Wars, you tend to find TL posters who want something competitive that isn't melee for a change. RPGs tend to have the people that want to delve into something. Then there's the micro maps (survival, micro wars, marine arena) - these tend to be your average melee player trying to work on his micro. TD's tend to have a mixture of all styles. Melee+Observer maps are *always* littered with platinum/diamond/masters league players giving eachother tips and commenting on the games at hand. To name a simple example, I've never had beef with anybody from the Melee+Obs crowd. Quite the difference with SOTIS, where I've been insulted and called a noob every single time I played the map.
A) The terrain is shit, its tiny, too small ... if you made a 1 to 1 scale of Dota in Starcraft 2 and compared it to Sotis you would see how tiny Sotis is, I think from my measurements it is 66% of the size of Dota. I don't even look at the screen when running through the forests, I watch the minimap cause it is just that small.
I don't get why people complain about the quality of the terrain. It's extremely well decorated and easily matches or beats the quality of any melee map and 99% of custom maps out there (including my td), at least IMO. Also, 4.0 will probably resolve virtually every issue you have about SotIS (at least the ones Ecko can do anything about anyway).
D) Sotis is the biggest piece of imbalanced shit I have ever came across, and it is sad that I have to say that as I wish I didn't. In the last week I have played it about half a dozen times, and coming from an eight year background in Dota, yes, at one point Dota was just as imbalanced as Sotis is now, but it has had 8 years of balancing to make it what it is. You cannot expect people who are use to playing Dota/Hon/LoL to jump into Sotis and not be enraged.
The heros you're complaining about are carries, and the point of a carry is to be able to facroll opponents mid-late game unless the other team does a good job protecting their own carry/harassing yours. As with melee, skill is a MUCH bigger factor than imbalance for SotIS.
The other Dota clones, as the name suggested, cloned all the numbers, so they were balanced from the start. Sotis did not ... Eck has attempted to reinvent the wheel, but has failed miserably.
This makes no sense given that you JUST said that DotA has had 8 years to balance, and SotIS has had 8 months. Of course it's going to have rough edges. Balancing takes time...
I cannot even start to suggest at how pissed off I became in the games I played where I would loose 80% of my health to 1 ability, which isn't even an ultimate ... wtf mate.
This is because you're dying early due to mistakes or superior teamwork from the other team, which leaves you under geared and under leveled for the rest of the game. A noob's first goal needs to be to learn how to not die early and mid game, and also pick one hero to get good at.
(No offense, but you're starting to sound a little like the average Bronzie who whines on the battle.net forums after losing to some strategy. )
All that said, I do agree that there's too much positive feedback [for players that obtain small victories] as well as certain imbalances with certain heroes.
And a note: the inhousing community is supposedly much more friendly (i haven't experienced it, but all of the SotIS admins say it is); the pub games have a ton more jerks who only care about stats and noobs who can easily ruin an otherwise decently competitive match.
the map feels small or the units move speed at start seem to fast. if you play dota on wc3 walk across it takes forever which is good because it makes it hard to counter a gank. where as in LoL and sotis you seem to fly across heaps fast. i cant remember with hon how fast it was. but also with sotis the feel seems all to dark. hard to see and too much going on your screen. lol was fine it was brighter. in sotis runes were strange were you able to kill a rune following someone and stop them from gaining benefits? cant really remember. but i prefer dota from over all these. also i think theres a problem with the custom game system as you cannot type in names for the map you are hosting eg: pros only, noobs only,3v3,2v2 in game names and such think thats a big disadvantage heading towards all games on sc2
I don't get why people complain about the quality of the terrain. It's extremely well decorated and easily matches or beats the quality of any melee map and 99% of custom maps out there (including my td), at least IMO.
Well yeah, but that's because the terrain in the majority of maps is horrible. The most populair EU maps at the moment (excl. SOTIS): Battlecraft, THE Card game, Income Wars, Nexus Wars, Marine Arena, Retribution TD, Special Forces: Elite, Fastest Map Possible and Retribution TD. Which of those maps do not have a terrain consisting entirely of three to four (out of EIGHT) textures and either no doodads or randomly placed trees/filler doodads all over the place? Income Wars is the only one, and I did the terrain for that map. Now I realize that there isn't room for stuff we create in showcases on the terraining for in every map, but hell, SOTIS' terrain should be 'just below average', if it were up to me. Take a look at any of these; so much can be done with this engine, but so little of it is actually used. When EternalWraith releases AoS 2, I guess I'll show you how a DOTA-style terrain could be.
Eko's terrain is an attempt at creating something better than the 'nothingness' which is the standard - the only problem is that it's filled with bad looking nooks and crannies, has absolutely no focal points and is overall just more of a wild mess of cliffs rather than an actual 'terrain' - forgive me if I sound artsy and pretentious.
SoTIS isnt really about APM or Strategy, its all about memorizing skill and item combinations to kill the enemy hero....
I don't want to sit and read a 10 page guide on how to react to these 1000 different situations, and what items and abilities you should have if you encounter them.
No fuck that, im not gunna play a memorization game... I like to gain skill through play experience rather than reading a shit load online.
if you don't read the guides online, your going to suck. It's the most unfriendly map to noobs, that's why it licks cock. you're either a pro or a noob.
Its basically an open and free market of which Dota monopolized which can and will happen everywhere else. The majority of Dota players migrated to Garena due to less delay, rather than play through battle.net. The only people left on battle.net were noobs and bots, and its the bots that caused the problem, hosting games for everyone flooding the screen. Before that it was still easy to find other types of games.
They were brilliant but they didn't change ... The first types of custom maps I played were Open RPGs, it was from those I developed my scripting knowledge, into what it is today. I personally love Dark Deeds, but it never really changed much ... Survivor maps like Ice Trolls were awesome, but then the knock offs came like Jungle Trolls etc ... and I hated those, I liked the original, but - they didn't change. Enfos is the same, I played hundreds of games but it hasn't changed. Dota was pretty much the only map that was updated constantly over the last eight years. I went to Malaysia about the time of 6.1X, and everywhere there they played 5.83c (competitively) ... I got my ass kicked by them, because I forgot how imbalanced things were.
All the maps you mentioned were brilliant, but they are old. For the most part people who game, play consistently nearly everyday. I might go back to Wc3 to play a couple of games for old times' sake, but they only map I would go back and play often would be Dota because it is the only map that has changed.
@Mozared,
C/D) I have played Dota since the beginning, my skill level is beyond most people, and yet I got my ass handed to me in Sotis, that simply should not happen. Yeah, a tiny bit of imbalance here or there is fine, but when normal abilities can take 80% of my life away ... nah ... stuff that hey mate. In a map like Sotis it is better to underpower things at the start and buff when needed, than overpower things and nerf when needed.
My opinion is that it is for someone like me with a knowledge of AoS maps; pure imbalance.
The first game I played I went something like 5-0 simply because I had better skills than my opponents using what I believe now is an underpowered hero, last hitting creeps, denying creeps, baiting opponents into traps etc, standard gameplay. Then my next 3-4 games I got my ass handed to me, not because the players were more skilled, no one was denying, no one was last hitting creeps - it was simply because they would run up to me cast 1 spell and 80% of my life is gone ... wtf mate.
E) If you want a good community then you need to find a niche map not played by the masses. The more people that join something, the more egos get inflated, the more people get pissed off etc. Dota is a hate filled fuckfest, no doubt. I mean, yeah ... when I was in my prime in Dota I was angry, really angry, not so much because of Dota, but because of my life at the time and Dota was a release for that anger. When you lose and the other players shit talk you, it makes you rage harder, then when you win you have to shit talk them even worst to make up for it. It is a snowball effect. I was talking to my ex-housemate the other week, and he said he never heard anyone swear so much and so fast and so loud as when I was playing Dota ... I gotta laugh about it now, because I don't remember being like that, but if he says that I trust him.
Dota is also a game that caters to people's most burning desire, being selfish assholes. Dota is a 'team' game where the objective of the game is to down the opponents throne/tree. However, 95% of players get caught up in Hero Kills, and not pushing lanes, so when they lose the game with more Kills, it makes them rage hard, really hard. And the only weapon we have on the internet is our fingers, and obvious giving the bird to your monitor doesn't do shit, so you have to curse the other players as fast as you can.
@RCIX,
The terrain is pretty, I never said it wasn't. I said it was small, the shit comment referred to its size.
I disagree with you on the second point. Skill is not a much higher factor than imbalance in Sotis ... it is in Dota, Hon and LoL, but not Sotis.
And yes, Dota has had eight years of balance and I think I touched on that before either in this post or the previous one. Sotis cannot be expected to match Dota's level of balance, nothing can. The billions upon billions of hours of balance testing done by every single player that ever played Dota has contributed to it. Sotis (right now) is the same as it was when Allstars was released, completely imbalanced - HOWEVER, unlike Allstars which was basically at the emerging market of the AoS concept, Sotis is jumping in when the AoS market is already established and people expect things to be balanced, simply because everyone cloned Dota to a certain stage, before adding their own tweaks. Sotis however did not, Eck started from scratch which is completely fine and IMO, morally better than cloning Dota - however this of course puts Sotis back say 6 years in terms of balance.
What I meant when I said he tried to reinvent the wheel, is that he basically took the Dota concept (which is fine), added Mercs but kept everything pretty much the same. I love his idea of Powerups that are animals and follow you, I think that is an amazing concept that I would actually love to see in Dota (yea, I know what I just said). There was always going to be a Sotis in Starcraft 2, an exact clone of the Dota concept - regardless of it was Sotis or something else. The problem with this is that it adds nothing new to the genre. If you want a clone, that's fine, but you should play a clone that was cloned completely that is already balanced to a very high level like Dota/Hon/LoL.
But I do not think Sotis will stay at the top for very long, not because it's a bad map ... alright it's because of that, but also because it offers nothing new. It is pretty much the same gameplay, imagine talking to some people who play Dota (and the average player would have been playing Dota for say at least 2-3 years) and say "Hey guys, come check out Sotis", they would be like "OMFG STFU NOOB BAD CLONE IS BAD" etc. Where if you took the concept of Dota and completely overhauled the mechanics behind it, make it into something really really unique, they would be more like "Wow, this is different", if they say anything like the omfg comment above then they are noobs and you don't want them as friends anyway :P
Mate, I am no noob =\ ... I use to be a Clan TDA moderator (Official Dota Mod), I knew Icefrog before he took over Dota and he 'borrowed' quite a few concepts from my unfinished map that I sent him in early 2005, the most famous of which are chickens/couriers O_O. I have played inhouse games of Admins + Mods vs the Offical Dota Allstars team etc, and we got our asses handed to us in 10 minutes flat. =\
I don't want to sound like an ass inflating my own ego, but I dare say there is no one else on these forums which as much knowledge of Dota as myself, or the origins and concepts behind it. I have written quite a few long articles about the birth of Dota, because I was there for that. Atm, I dare say the history of Dota is divided between myself, Pendragon, Icefrog and Guinsoo - and whilst I was never in the 'inner circle' of Dota, and have only limited knowledge of what transpired in that regard, I was there before most of them, I was there before Icefrog came along, before Pendragon and before Guinsoo himself. I have Guinsoo's original Beta maps, where he gave credit for taking all the heroes off of other people's maps O_O, amongst other things. Guinsoo, Pendragon and Icefrog have never publically disclosed their history of Dota, and I doubt they will any time soon, and it is a shame, but perhaps one day I will get over to the USA, be able to meet up with them, in Icefrog's case, hit him with a rubber chicken, and ask them to write memoirs.
I know very well how Dota works, and the 'pro' level of playing it. Trust me, I am not dying to stupid mistakes. If I was after 8 years of playing Dota, I should re-evaluate my outlook on life and swiftly cut my wrists for failing so hard. The inhouse community in any game is friendly than the public community - but the majority of people play in public games, and therefore, that is what we should talk about. Speaking the way I do it is more than possible I will come across as an asshole, how you got a whinging battle.net noob out of that is beyond me, but I have the knowledge to back it up.
@Zeropoints,
The map is small, it is physically small and the movement speed is a tad faster. I personally think Dota is a tad bit slow - but it had to be because of Wc3's engine limitations. Starcraft is an inherently faster engine and as such, I expect an AoS game to have a faster gameplay and especially movement speed - but with that, you need to make the map equally as big as Dota, if not a tad bigger (say 10-20%), having faster movement speed and a smaller map is just cookoo.
As for being dark, turn up the gamma or get a better screen :P
Yeah agreed that they are old. I just hope we can have a period of those on sc2 :D Or just more in general (categories should help). Although Blizz is risking splitting the community too much... hard enough to fill lobbies up anyway.
Yes its true, programmers are not artists, and artists are not programmers. I have a really nice Dota-style terrain that is the perfect size for Sc2 that I will probably use for an upcoming project. I initially copied Dota's terrain 1 for 1, found it was a bit small for Starcraft, made it a bit bigger, winged it, added a few things that I would like to see changed in the terrain (that Icefrog would never change cause the masses would cry OMFG), and ta da, presto magic.
I am probably one of the rare scripters that has a background in terrain design, well design in general. I know very well of your weekly terrain comps, and I wish so much that I could participate mate, you have no idea, but I am too busy with my own projects. Its quite sad really.
I cannot stand bad design, nothing pisses me off more than bad design - ESPECIALLY bad terrain. So yes, I understand it - I am a terrain foremost, but there is a very fine line between making something beautiful for say an RPG compared to making something useable, say Nexus Wars. As the quality of maps improve people will tolerate shit less, you need say 2-3 of the top map makers to get together and say, Alright fuck it, we are gonna make the top 3-5 maps on each region really fucken amazing. But of course, people won't do that cause they are stupid and think their shitty terrain is better than yours. =\
Not really ... true a part of it is, and after so many years playing it becomes common knowledge like the back of your hand. It is hard for me to judge this as I know the game so well, and often people will call me noob for going certain items cause its not a standard build, but then they stfu after I pwn the other side ... having certain build orders that you _must_ go every game is fucken stupid, wing it, be a pro, think outside the box.
For Dota 2 this is a huge problem, and has been stated by numerous sources. Icefrog responded by having a tutorial system that is unlike the world has ever seen, or something like that ... but at the end ... tutorials are tutorials, it is up to you wether you want to stay a noob or become pro - in anything, not just games, but real life too. Thats why you go to school, so you become pro and not a noob for adult life, or at least thats the idea.
They will, give it time mate. Starcraft's editor is more complicated, it will take a while for good maps to surface, by the end of the year we should have some good ones.
I fully acknowledge your skill, but what i don't think you realize is that SotIS is pretty different from most DotAs. Are you trying to tank creep waves? Are you checking behind bushes and in the river for incoming ganks? Are you pushing deep into enemy territory with no backup? The point is that SotIS plays different, and you're mistaking you playing wrongly for it being imbalanced. Only your fault in that you're assming that all DotAs have to be exactly the same :P
And honestly, if it's that imbalanced, then you should have been able to pick some of these heroes that are supposedly OP and own with them versus a "better" team. And if you can't it just goes to show that skill and teamwork > SotIS's current imbalances :D
You say that SotIS is jumping into an AoS scene that is already established, and people are expecting things to be balanced. Well, I contend that the only way to do that is to flat copy the numbers and mechanics from a previous, successful DotA version. This means that not only are you ignoring the uniqueness the SCII engine has to offer, you're just making "another DotA clone". While it might be worth doing that at some point, you're not going to get an AoS that has unique features without spending quite a lot of time doing balancing work. SCII is the perfect opportunity to do this, because you have a large influx of new players untainted (if you will) by previous DotAs and willing to give SotIS a shot.
There is no way that I would consider SotIS the most impressive map out there. Heck I'm more impressed with Smashcraft.
It seems to me that AoS are great in concept, and I have seen some that I really liked. But Dota clones are often an attempt by the developer to hop on the popularity of DotA, which is fine, but it often results in an unwillingness to add unique game elements, or in anyway do something original with it besides different heroes.
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There seems to be a near-universal hate of SotIS around these parts and i don't understand why. Not only is it really fun to play once you get some skill, it's quite easily one of the largest and most impressive maps (especially with the coming 4.0 update). Is it just because Ecko got it up to the top of the list and no one else has been able to do that with their map (save a lucky few; i'm looking at you vexal)?
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I personally think it's one of the best-made maps and way ahead of its time (maybe not as much anymore). In a world of tugs and frenzies and tds, it's nice that ekcol made a hero map.
However, personally I don't like AOS style gameplay. In War3, DOTA killed the golden age of maps, and I found it to be a farm-fest filled with over competitive egos.
But it's probably hated for the same reason WoW is. Even though both are great (atleast when i played both).
Eh people play it. Why do you assume people hate it.
I guess maybe round these parts it may be the lack of originality.
I play LOL for my MOBA action though. Ive played sotis a couple time but I really didnt dig the way it is. But thats personal preference.
Plays like your standard MOBA.
Vexal isn't lucky. He has the best TD out there currently. TD is a popular type of map. It shouldn't surprise you that he is at the top.
To avoid a flame war, I will just say that the state of TDs is pathetic on SC2 currently. Someone needs to change this.
Wintermaul's pretty decent. It was the best in WC3 and might be so again in SC2.
In regards to SOTIS; I personally dislike it because of several reasons.
A) The terrain sucks horribly. It's not original, it's not cool, it barely serves a function... it's just ugly. Me being a terrain 'guru', I can't let it pass when people put so little effort into their terrain.
B) Those health bars annoy the CRAP out of me. What's up with the "hey lets use over 9000 blocks for a unit with 100 HP!"? Why the hell did Ecko ever think that was a good idea?
C) It's not newbie-friendly. Heck, it's not friendly ANYONE who hasn't played the map 20+ times. I'm an AoS veteran, having played pretty much all of the AoS and DotA's in WC3 and having played most of them that have been released for SC2. Yet I get my ass kicked consistantly in the map. And not just because I play sucky, but also because I'm comfortably farming creeps and then suddenly get jumped and literally 3-shot. Which brings me to my next point;
D) It's imbalanced. I'm not as good at SOTIS as I am at all other AoS's I've played, but there's a couple of heroes that are downright better than everything else out there. Tiberius Rancor and the DT ALWAYS, in every game I've played, become so strong so fast that they alone completely rape the other team.
E) Its community sucks. People in, for example, HotAT were always friendly and pleasant. Whenever I join a SOTIS game, I end up with three leavers first, after which I get killed by Tiberius Rancor once or twice, after which the enemy players start randomly shouting "LOL NOOB I PWN U" and my allies start yelling "OMG NOOB U SUCK FFS".
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Curse PremiumHonestly, I just hate every DOTA map for the most part. While its a good concept for a map, there are just so many poorly made ones that I've lost faith in the entire genera of DOTA unless its actually a decent map. I only played sotis for like 5 minutes ever. I would agree its probably the best DOTA map (at least most popular) for sc2 as of now.
In regards to Mozared, I will jump on the bandwagon.
A) The terrain is shit, its tiny, too small ... if you made a 1 to 1 scale of Dota in Starcraft 2 and compared it to Sotis you would see how tiny Sotis is, I think from my measurements it is 66% of the size of Dota. I don't even look at the screen when running through the forests, I watch the minimap cause it is just that small.
B) I don't really like any of the User Interface in Starcraft ... let alone the Healthbars. I think it could be done a lot better.
C) As for not being noob friendly, these types of games are not meant to be. But, if you are a veteran of any you should be able to jump in another no problem. But the inherient design flaw with Sotis is your following point ...
D) Sotis is the biggest piece of imbalanced shit I have ever came across, and it is sad that I have to say that as I wish I didn't. In the last week I have played it about half a dozen times, and coming from an eight year background in Dota, yes, at one point Dota was just as imbalanced as Sotis is now, but it has had 8 years of balancing to make it what it is. You cannot expect people who are use to playing Dota/Hon/LoL to jump into Sotis and not be enraged.
The other Dota clones, as the name suggested, cloned all the numbers, so they were balanced from the start. Sotis did not ... Eck has attempted to reinvent the wheel, but has failed miserably. I cannot even start to suggest at how pissed off I became in the games I played where I would loose 80% of my health to 1 ability, which isn't even an ultimate ... wtf mate.
E) That is Battle.net ... You put angry kids in with sensible adults, the adults will soon turn into angry kids themselves and everyone is a-raging.
And FYI, I hate the noobs who cry Dota ruined Wc3 ... If Dota wasn't so good people wouldn't play it, the other maps failed cause they couldn't live up to Dota's status.
- On a different Note ...For those of you who remember the birth of Warcraft III ... all those years ago ... Starcraft II is actually following in it's footsteps pretty much step for step. The Custom Map scene in Wc3 started out with TDs, Survivor Maps, Tugs, Hero Arenas and AoS (Like Sotis without the Dota Layout) ... before Dota came along about ugh ... 9 months into it? And even then, Dota wasn't that popular ... you would join your normal TD game, or your Hero Arena game and people would say, have you played Defense of the Ancients? And yes, it wasn't even called Dota back then. It started off very slow, didn't get much popularity ... it wasn't until Eul left, and spawned the ugh ... 20 clones ... and Guinsoo came along and took everyone's heros from the best maps and put them together in a single map and called it his own that Dota surged in popularity ... oh and he added sound, that helped alot.
@DogmaiSEA: Go
I'm a noob who cries dota ruined the creativity of maps in wc3. I don't know why you label people off as noobs. It obviously was a big enough issue that Blizzard completely redid their custom-game system (ironically ending up worse... pre 1.3 though).
I thought games like tides of blood were actually better, and even though i dislike AOS i enjoyed it. Wintermaul wars, dark deeds, open rpgs, COT rpg, zoators, skibis, LOAP, risk maps, sheep tag, resident evil maps, Enfos, prison escape, survivor maps, Legacies RPG & NOTD, hell even cube D back in the day... all these maps that I think were brilliant got pushed aside (for the most part) for DOTA.
@DogmaiSEA: Go
In reply to your post;
C) & D) - these seem to tie into eachother one way or another. The problem here is the definition of 'noob-friendly' I guess. What my fuss in my original post was, was that every time I tried the map and played a random hero I got my ass kicked MAJORLY. Now I understand people need to develop skill in a specific map, but that's why I mentioned my previous encounters with AoS-style maps; I reckon that if you know how to micro, gank and bait opponents well in a DOTA map, you should at least be able to... not die horribly to everything in the game. Yet I did. The question is, I guess, whether this is just noob-unfriendlyness or pure imbalance. With my lack of expertise in the map, I can't say.
E) I disagree. I know that 'the internet' can be a horrible place, but there is a very clear difference in community between... all types of maps, really? On Nexus Wars, you tend to find TL posters who want something competitive that isn't melee for a change. RPGs tend to have the people that want to delve into something. Then there's the micro maps (survival, micro wars, marine arena) - these tend to be your average melee player trying to work on his micro. TD's tend to have a mixture of all styles. Melee+Observer maps are *always* littered with platinum/diamond/masters league players giving eachother tips and commenting on the games at hand. To name a simple example, I've never had beef with anybody from the Melee+Obs crowd. Quite the difference with SOTIS, where I've been insulted and called a noob every single time I played the map.
I don't get why people complain about the quality of the terrain. It's extremely well decorated and easily matches or beats the quality of any melee map and 99% of custom maps out there (including my td), at least IMO. Also, 4.0 will probably resolve virtually every issue you have about SotIS (at least the ones Ecko can do anything about anyway).
The heros you're complaining about are carries, and the point of a carry is to be able to facroll opponents mid-late game unless the other team does a good job protecting their own carry/harassing yours. As with melee, skill is a MUCH bigger factor than imbalance for SotIS.
This makes no sense given that you JUST said that DotA has had 8 years to balance, and SotIS has had 8 months. Of course it's going to have rough edges. Balancing takes time...
This is because you're dying early due to mistakes or superior teamwork from the other team, which leaves you under geared and under leveled for the rest of the game. A noob's first goal needs to be to learn how to not die early and mid game, and also pick one hero to get good at.
(No offense, but you're starting to sound a little like the average Bronzie who whines on the battle.net forums after losing to some strategy. )
All that said, I do agree that there's too much positive feedback [for players that obtain small victories] as well as certain imbalances with certain heroes.
And a note: the inhousing community is supposedly much more friendly (i haven't experienced it, but all of the SotIS admins say it is); the pub games have a ton more jerks who only care about stats and noobs who can easily ruin an otherwise decently competitive match.
the map feels small or the units move speed at start seem to fast. if you play dota on wc3 walk across it takes forever which is good because it makes it hard to counter a gank. where as in LoL and sotis you seem to fly across heaps fast. i cant remember with hon how fast it was. but also with sotis the feel seems all to dark. hard to see and too much going on your screen. lol was fine it was brighter. in sotis runes were strange were you able to kill a rune following someone and stop them from gaining benefits? cant really remember. but i prefer dota from over all these. also i think theres a problem with the custom game system as you cannot type in names for the map you are hosting eg: pros only, noobs only,3v3,2v2 in game names and such think thats a big disadvantage heading towards all games on sc2
Well yeah, but that's because the terrain in the majority of maps is horrible. The most populair EU maps at the moment (excl. SOTIS): Battlecraft, THE Card game, Income Wars, Nexus Wars, Marine Arena, Retribution TD, Special Forces: Elite, Fastest Map Possible and Retribution TD. Which of those maps do not have a terrain consisting entirely of three to four (out of EIGHT) textures and either no doodads or randomly placed trees/filler doodads all over the place? Income Wars is the only one, and I did the terrain for that map. Now I realize that there isn't room for stuff we create in showcases on the terraining for in every map, but hell, SOTIS' terrain should be 'just below average', if it were up to me. Take a look at any of these; so much can be done with this engine, but so little of it is actually used. When EternalWraith releases AoS 2, I guess I'll show you how a DOTA-style terrain could be.
Eko's terrain is an attempt at creating something better than the 'nothingness' which is the standard - the only problem is that it's filled with bad looking nooks and crannies, has absolutely no focal points and is overall just more of a wild mess of cliffs rather than an actual 'terrain' - forgive me if I sound artsy and pretentious.
@Mozared: Go
SoTIS isnt really about APM or Strategy, its all about memorizing skill and item combinations to kill the enemy hero....
I don't want to sit and read a 10 page guide on how to react to these 1000 different situations, and what items and abilities you should have if you encounter them.
No fuck that, im not gunna play a memorization game... I like to gain skill through play experience rather than reading a shit load online.
if you don't read the guides online, your going to suck. It's the most unfriendly map to noobs, that's why it licks cock. you're either a pro or a noob.
@Onetwo,
Its basically an open and free market of which Dota monopolized which can and will happen everywhere else. The majority of Dota players migrated to Garena due to less delay, rather than play through battle.net. The only people left on battle.net were noobs and bots, and its the bots that caused the problem, hosting games for everyone flooding the screen. Before that it was still easy to find other types of games.
They were brilliant but they didn't change ... The first types of custom maps I played were Open RPGs, it was from those I developed my scripting knowledge, into what it is today. I personally love Dark Deeds, but it never really changed much ... Survivor maps like Ice Trolls were awesome, but then the knock offs came like Jungle Trolls etc ... and I hated those, I liked the original, but - they didn't change. Enfos is the same, I played hundreds of games but it hasn't changed. Dota was pretty much the only map that was updated constantly over the last eight years. I went to Malaysia about the time of 6.1X, and everywhere there they played 5.83c (competitively) ... I got my ass kicked by them, because I forgot how imbalanced things were.
All the maps you mentioned were brilliant, but they are old. For the most part people who game, play consistently nearly everyday. I might go back to Wc3 to play a couple of games for old times' sake, but they only map I would go back and play often would be Dota because it is the only map that has changed.
@Mozared,
C/D) I have played Dota since the beginning, my skill level is beyond most people, and yet I got my ass handed to me in Sotis, that simply should not happen. Yeah, a tiny bit of imbalance here or there is fine, but when normal abilities can take 80% of my life away ... nah ... stuff that hey mate. In a map like Sotis it is better to underpower things at the start and buff when needed, than overpower things and nerf when needed.
My opinion is that it is for someone like me with a knowledge of AoS maps; pure imbalance.
The first game I played I went something like 5-0 simply because I had better skills than my opponents using what I believe now is an underpowered hero, last hitting creeps, denying creeps, baiting opponents into traps etc, standard gameplay. Then my next 3-4 games I got my ass handed to me, not because the players were more skilled, no one was denying, no one was last hitting creeps - it was simply because they would run up to me cast 1 spell and 80% of my life is gone ... wtf mate.
E) If you want a good community then you need to find a niche map not played by the masses. The more people that join something, the more egos get inflated, the more people get pissed off etc. Dota is a hate filled fuckfest, no doubt. I mean, yeah ... when I was in my prime in Dota I was angry, really angry, not so much because of Dota, but because of my life at the time and Dota was a release for that anger. When you lose and the other players shit talk you, it makes you rage harder, then when you win you have to shit talk them even worst to make up for it. It is a snowball effect. I was talking to my ex-housemate the other week, and he said he never heard anyone swear so much and so fast and so loud as when I was playing Dota ... I gotta laugh about it now, because I don't remember being like that, but if he says that I trust him.
Dota is also a game that caters to people's most burning desire, being selfish assholes. Dota is a 'team' game where the objective of the game is to down the opponents throne/tree. However, 95% of players get caught up in Hero Kills, and not pushing lanes, so when they lose the game with more Kills, it makes them rage hard, really hard. And the only weapon we have on the internet is our fingers, and obvious giving the bird to your monitor doesn't do shit, so you have to curse the other players as fast as you can.
@RCIX,
The terrain is pretty, I never said it wasn't. I said it was small, the shit comment referred to its size.
I disagree with you on the second point. Skill is not a much higher factor than imbalance in Sotis ... it is in Dota, Hon and LoL, but not Sotis.
And yes, Dota has had eight years of balance and I think I touched on that before either in this post or the previous one. Sotis cannot be expected to match Dota's level of balance, nothing can. The billions upon billions of hours of balance testing done by every single player that ever played Dota has contributed to it. Sotis (right now) is the same as it was when Allstars was released, completely imbalanced - HOWEVER, unlike Allstars which was basically at the emerging market of the AoS concept, Sotis is jumping in when the AoS market is already established and people expect things to be balanced, simply because everyone cloned Dota to a certain stage, before adding their own tweaks. Sotis however did not, Eck started from scratch which is completely fine and IMO, morally better than cloning Dota - however this of course puts Sotis back say 6 years in terms of balance.
What I meant when I said he tried to reinvent the wheel, is that he basically took the Dota concept (which is fine), added Mercs but kept everything pretty much the same. I love his idea of Powerups that are animals and follow you, I think that is an amazing concept that I would actually love to see in Dota (yea, I know what I just said). There was always going to be a Sotis in Starcraft 2, an exact clone of the Dota concept - regardless of it was Sotis or something else. The problem with this is that it adds nothing new to the genre. If you want a clone, that's fine, but you should play a clone that was cloned completely that is already balanced to a very high level like Dota/Hon/LoL.
But I do not think Sotis will stay at the top for very long, not because it's a bad map ... alright it's because of that, but also because it offers nothing new. It is pretty much the same gameplay, imagine talking to some people who play Dota (and the average player would have been playing Dota for say at least 2-3 years) and say "Hey guys, come check out Sotis", they would be like "OMFG STFU NOOB BAD CLONE IS BAD" etc. Where if you took the concept of Dota and completely overhauled the mechanics behind it, make it into something really really unique, they would be more like "Wow, this is different", if they say anything like the omfg comment above then they are noobs and you don't want them as friends anyway :P
Mate, I am no noob =\ ... I use to be a Clan TDA moderator (Official Dota Mod), I knew Icefrog before he took over Dota and he 'borrowed' quite a few concepts from my unfinished map that I sent him in early 2005, the most famous of which are chickens/couriers O_O. I have played inhouse games of Admins + Mods vs the Offical Dota Allstars team etc, and we got our asses handed to us in 10 minutes flat. =\
I don't want to sound like an ass inflating my own ego, but I dare say there is no one else on these forums which as much knowledge of Dota as myself, or the origins and concepts behind it. I have written quite a few long articles about the birth of Dota, because I was there for that. Atm, I dare say the history of Dota is divided between myself, Pendragon, Icefrog and Guinsoo - and whilst I was never in the 'inner circle' of Dota, and have only limited knowledge of what transpired in that regard, I was there before most of them, I was there before Icefrog came along, before Pendragon and before Guinsoo himself. I have Guinsoo's original Beta maps, where he gave credit for taking all the heroes off of other people's maps O_O, amongst other things. Guinsoo, Pendragon and Icefrog have never publically disclosed their history of Dota, and I doubt they will any time soon, and it is a shame, but perhaps one day I will get over to the USA, be able to meet up with them, in Icefrog's case, hit him with a rubber chicken, and ask them to write memoirs.
I know very well how Dota works, and the 'pro' level of playing it. Trust me, I am not dying to stupid mistakes. If I was after 8 years of playing Dota, I should re-evaluate my outlook on life and swiftly cut my wrists for failing so hard. The inhouse community in any game is friendly than the public community - but the majority of people play in public games, and therefore, that is what we should talk about. Speaking the way I do it is more than possible I will come across as an asshole, how you got a whinging battle.net noob out of that is beyond me, but I have the knowledge to back it up.
@Zeropoints,
The map is small, it is physically small and the movement speed is a tad faster. I personally think Dota is a tad bit slow - but it had to be because of Wc3's engine limitations. Starcraft is an inherently faster engine and as such, I expect an AoS game to have a faster gameplay and especially movement speed - but with that, you need to make the map equally as big as Dota, if not a tad bigger (say 10-20%), having faster movement speed and a smaller map is just cookoo.
As for being dark, turn up the gamma or get a better screen :P
@DogmaiSEA: Go
Yeah agreed that they are old. I just hope we can have a period of those on sc2 :D Or just more in general (categories should help). Although Blizz is risking splitting the community too much... hard enough to fill lobbies up anyway.
@Mozared: Go
Yes its true, programmers are not artists, and artists are not programmers. I have a really nice Dota-style terrain that is the perfect size for Sc2 that I will probably use for an upcoming project. I initially copied Dota's terrain 1 for 1, found it was a bit small for Starcraft, made it a bit bigger, winged it, added a few things that I would like to see changed in the terrain (that Icefrog would never change cause the masses would cry OMFG), and ta da, presto magic.
I am probably one of the rare scripters that has a background in terrain design, well design in general. I know very well of your weekly terrain comps, and I wish so much that I could participate mate, you have no idea, but I am too busy with my own projects. Its quite sad really.
I cannot stand bad design, nothing pisses me off more than bad design - ESPECIALLY bad terrain. So yes, I understand it - I am a terrain foremost, but there is a very fine line between making something beautiful for say an RPG compared to making something useable, say Nexus Wars. As the quality of maps improve people will tolerate shit less, you need say 2-3 of the top map makers to get together and say, Alright fuck it, we are gonna make the top 3-5 maps on each region really fucken amazing. But of course, people won't do that cause they are stupid and think their shitty terrain is better than yours. =\
@cinicraft: Go
Not really ... true a part of it is, and after so many years playing it becomes common knowledge like the back of your hand. It is hard for me to judge this as I know the game so well, and often people will call me noob for going certain items cause its not a standard build, but then they stfu after I pwn the other side ... having certain build orders that you _must_ go every game is fucken stupid, wing it, be a pro, think outside the box.
For Dota 2 this is a huge problem, and has been stated by numerous sources. Icefrog responded by having a tutorial system that is unlike the world has ever seen, or something like that ... but at the end ... tutorials are tutorials, it is up to you wether you want to stay a noob or become pro - in anything, not just games, but real life too. Thats why you go to school, so you become pro and not a noob for adult life, or at least thats the idea.
@OneTwoSC: Go
They will, give it time mate. Starcraft's editor is more complicated, it will take a while for good maps to surface, by the end of the year we should have some good ones.
@DogmaiSEA: Go
I fully acknowledge your skill, but what i don't think you realize is that SotIS is pretty different from most DotAs. Are you trying to tank creep waves? Are you checking behind bushes and in the river for incoming ganks? Are you pushing deep into enemy territory with no backup? The point is that SotIS plays different, and you're mistaking you playing wrongly for it being imbalanced. Only your fault in that you're assming that all DotAs have to be exactly the same :P
And honestly, if it's that imbalanced, then you should have been able to pick some of these heroes that are supposedly OP and own with them versus a "better" team. And if you can't it just goes to show that skill and teamwork > SotIS's current imbalances :D
You say that SotIS is jumping into an AoS scene that is already established, and people are expecting things to be balanced. Well, I contend that the only way to do that is to flat copy the numbers and mechanics from a previous, successful DotA version. This means that not only are you ignoring the uniqueness the SCII engine has to offer, you're just making "another DotA clone". While it might be worth doing that at some point, you're not going to get an AoS that has unique features without spending quite a lot of time doing balancing work. SCII is the perfect opportunity to do this, because you have a large influx of new players untainted (if you will) by previous DotAs and willing to give SotIS a shot.
There is no way that I would consider SotIS the most impressive map out there. Heck I'm more impressed with Smashcraft.
It seems to me that AoS are great in concept, and I have seen some that I really liked. But Dota clones are often an attempt by the developer to hop on the popularity of DotA, which is fine, but it often results in an unwillingness to add unique game elements, or in anyway do something original with it besides different heroes.