<story><title>Valve releasing Dota2 for Linux</title><url>http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=96878</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Glyptodon</author><text>Unfortunately Dota is not so much skill based as it is trivia based -- you need to know many many many combinations of item progressions to match your hero&amp;#x27;s stats and abilities. The gameplay of Dota, creep denial or not, isn&amp;#x27;t that deep, but the sheer complexity of items and purchase order is overwhelming. So more about trivia, not so much skill.&lt;p&gt;Classic FPS&amp;#x27;s in minstagib mode are generally very simple to play with a total of about 3&amp;#x2F;4 controls and are very much skill, not trivia based, and an anathema to console gamers and noobs. Skill is not about memorizing dictionaries of trivia.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, key word is &lt;i&gt;trivia.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item><item><author>psykotic</author><text>How can the existence and relative success of this game offend you so? Virtually all games out there nowadays are newbie friendly and watered down to a fault. People with your preferences are drowning in choices. For those of us who enjoy uncompromising skill-based games, the only AAA titles to come along in recent memory have been Dota 2, Dark Souls and a handful of RTS and fighting games.&lt;p&gt;League of Legends addresses many of your apparent concerns with Dota&amp;#x27;s game design. But guess what? Its online community is every bit as toxic and obnoxious. Both are skill-based team games that are played over the Internet, require a lot of coordination, and usually take over 30 minutes per match. You can address in-game bad manners at the margins with something like Riot&amp;#x27;s tribunal system or Valve&amp;#x27;s reporting system, but I doubt you can do much to eliminate the problem without also eliminating those essential features of their game design.</text></item><item><author>Pxtl</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m actually really sad that these take off so well, because imho the DOTA format is the &lt;i&gt;worst&lt;/i&gt; thing to happen to online gaming.  The game is feels &lt;i&gt;deliberately&lt;/i&gt; brutal to newbies in so very many ways.  The whole genre seems utterly dysfunctional for any kind of player who doesn&amp;#x27;t have a tight, committed clan to play with.&lt;p&gt;Long high-commitment match-ups make it bad for people with other committments, a hyperlong list of powers and heroes makes for a tremendous amount of trivia to learn, there&amp;#x27;s the various play mechanics that make you &lt;i&gt;hate&lt;/i&gt; the weakest man on your team (and can examine his failings in detail), and the way DOTA2 embraces counterintuitive hardcore tweaks that were eradicated in other iterations (like killing your own troops to deny the opponents XP).&lt;p&gt;I like the pro gaming circuit, but a truly good game is one that&amp;#x27;s approachable, friendly, &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; deep.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Keyneston</author><text>Our office has a lot of Dota players so we regularly play five man dota. We range in skill from very noob to ex-pro.&lt;p&gt;The difference in skill between the ex-pro, or even several of the just very talented players and the rest of us is immense.&lt;p&gt;The trivia helps, knowing counter items and the like helps but at high level play all sorts of things become very important. For example positioning of your unit(s), to either miss a spell being cast or to physically block the person you are trying to kill makes the difference between a major win or complete loss of a fight. Or your ability to farm, last hitting creeps, stacking&amp;#x2F;jungling and maximizing your gold per second.&lt;p&gt;So yes at low level Dota is all about the trivia. I&amp;#x27;m a better player then a random new player because I know the characters, their abilities and the items. But at the end of the day despite putting in hundreds of hours I pale in comparison to a &lt;i&gt;Excellent&lt;/i&gt; player because I don&amp;#x27;t have the reflexes, or the split second analytical mind. In addition, and most importantly, I&amp;#x27;ve not put in the hours upon hours of purposeful practice that a pro dota player has.&lt;p&gt;Dota is a skill based game.</text></comment>
<story><title>Valve releasing Dota2 for Linux</title><url>http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=96878</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Glyptodon</author><text>Unfortunately Dota is not so much skill based as it is trivia based -- you need to know many many many combinations of item progressions to match your hero&amp;#x27;s stats and abilities. The gameplay of Dota, creep denial or not, isn&amp;#x27;t that deep, but the sheer complexity of items and purchase order is overwhelming. So more about trivia, not so much skill.&lt;p&gt;Classic FPS&amp;#x27;s in minstagib mode are generally very simple to play with a total of about 3&amp;#x2F;4 controls and are very much skill, not trivia based, and an anathema to console gamers and noobs. Skill is not about memorizing dictionaries of trivia.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, key word is &lt;i&gt;trivia.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item><item><author>psykotic</author><text>How can the existence and relative success of this game offend you so? Virtually all games out there nowadays are newbie friendly and watered down to a fault. People with your preferences are drowning in choices. For those of us who enjoy uncompromising skill-based games, the only AAA titles to come along in recent memory have been Dota 2, Dark Souls and a handful of RTS and fighting games.&lt;p&gt;League of Legends addresses many of your apparent concerns with Dota&amp;#x27;s game design. But guess what? Its online community is every bit as toxic and obnoxious. Both are skill-based team games that are played over the Internet, require a lot of coordination, and usually take over 30 minutes per match. You can address in-game bad manners at the margins with something like Riot&amp;#x27;s tribunal system or Valve&amp;#x27;s reporting system, but I doubt you can do much to eliminate the problem without also eliminating those essential features of their game design.</text></item><item><author>Pxtl</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m actually really sad that these take off so well, because imho the DOTA format is the &lt;i&gt;worst&lt;/i&gt; thing to happen to online gaming.  The game is feels &lt;i&gt;deliberately&lt;/i&gt; brutal to newbies in so very many ways.  The whole genre seems utterly dysfunctional for any kind of player who doesn&amp;#x27;t have a tight, committed clan to play with.&lt;p&gt;Long high-commitment match-ups make it bad for people with other committments, a hyperlong list of powers and heroes makes for a tremendous amount of trivia to learn, there&amp;#x27;s the various play mechanics that make you &lt;i&gt;hate&lt;/i&gt; the weakest man on your team (and can examine his failings in detail), and the way DOTA2 embraces counterintuitive hardcore tweaks that were eradicated in other iterations (like killing your own troops to deny the opponents XP).&lt;p&gt;I like the pro gaming circuit, but a truly good game is one that&amp;#x27;s approachable, friendly, &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; deep.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>KVFinn</author><text>&amp;gt;but the sheer complexity of items and purchase order is overwhelming.&lt;p&gt;There are built in user contributed guides that suggest what what to build and why, with the guide&amp;#x27;s author comments on both individual items and skills, for every hero and numerous alternative builds.  There is in game voting on the quality of each guide.  It&amp;#x27;s a cinch now in Dota 2 to buy basic stuff even if you&amp;#x27;ve literally never played a hero before, and also easy to try experimental builds for fun right in game.&lt;p&gt;The skill is all judgement calls and spacing.  Memorizing item or skill progressions is irrelevant and indeed &amp;quot;trivial&amp;quot; in the sense that it plays little part in the game or your thinking during it.  On the other hand, having the skill to use the blink dagger and catch opponents or save yourself is essential.</text></comment>