An in-depth analysis of certain DotA/AoS elements

This is a reply I made to a question about "how the gameplay will be" in VoD2. For those who does't know, VoD2 is the working title of my AoS-style map. Since I was feeling very talkative tonight, I ended up writing a massive analysis of what I personally feel are problem areas in DotA:Allstars along with possible solutions. To be more precise, I talk a lot about ganking, hero-killing/death, farming and strategic elements (and the lack of it) in DotA:Allstars.

Beware, this is a long and rambling post, but hopefully interesting for those that are really interested in game-design. Please respect the length and depth of this post by refraining to reply with "quick comments" such as "omg no gold for killing unit sucks". I'd be very happy if all objections and other points of view are carefully explained and takes into consideration the entirety of my post. :)


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I have recently finished what I consider the main "bulk" of the background coding and took a break from VoD for a week or so. At the same time I played very very much mid-level DotA in private games.

First off I wouldn't mind starting with my impressions after the really heavy DotA: Allstars playing I have been doing recently. When I think back on the last week there is one thing I am more fed up with than anything else: FARMING. I think we can all agree that farming isn't very fun now is it? This has not really occurred to me before, but think about it for a second. Farming is not fun.

Let's start with where farming comes from in DotA, Warcraft III. There you have some creeps and killing them gives you resources (XP, gold, it's all resources). I'd never say creeping in Warcraft III becomes very boring because you don't really spend all that much time doing it. And when you have creeped the creeps, well, they stay creeped! In a DotA game that lasts 60 minutes, at least 40 of those are spent doing nothing but trying to get the last hit on a creep. So basically, this farming stuff is just something that has been inherited from War3 Melee. I am starting to question the sanity and usefullness of the entire farming mechanics. But let me get back to that.

The second thing that comes to mind when I look back on my previous DotA:AS-heavy week is being killed. Whether ganked or killed by one of the many rather dangerous single-heroes, being killed in DotA doesn't seem fair. Right now I am not talking about clan-level play, but skilled-random-people level, but at this level killing someone is both too easy and too damaging. First off, ganking. Yes, it is EASILY avoided if you are a clan and use a good strategy involving wards and good teamwork, but so TERRIBLY TERRIBLY devastating for more casual players. It doesn't matter how skilled you are, when that stunner pops up from nowhere you are going DOWN. Even when I started playing private games (still with random people on each team) this was as bad as ever because you just don't get clan-level protection against missing players and possible ganks just because you have 5 good players on a team.

Then there is those heroes that are much better at killing units than others. Spiritbreaker with his infinite range charge&stun topped by a stun ultimate often means unavoidable death even for skilled careful players, then you have Bounty Hunter and Clinkz which zoom through the map unseen to kill you off the second you have low hp, and well, the list could go on. There are many heroes that are a bit too good at killing others in my opinion. Sure, many of these heroes would never be considered in clan-games because there are better team-oriented heroes, but they do remain to mess things up in 99% of DotA games being played.

But there is a common denominator to all my problems here. In fact, these problems only are problems because of one single thing: Killing someone has too much importance in DotA:Allstars. That is the problem right there. Now let's imagine there is no gold penalty for a dying hero and reduced gold-bonus for killing a hero. Ok, someone kills you - just being put out of the game for a while is already very negative, you don't earn gold or xp and the enemy team is stronger on the battlefield. Why on earth do you need to loose a very substantial amount of your gold? This is where the imbalances occurs and games are decided in average-level DotA:AS. This is what makes DotA:AS a farm and gank-fest. The immense effect of a hero's death magnifies the importance of killing off heroes. Is that what we want?

Right now, I am strongly considering to have no penalty for a dying hero beyond a revive-time. I see absolutely no benefit of making someone that has just been killed WEAKER because of it.


But ok, back to the farming. Let's say heroes no longer get penalized gold for dying. It still wouldn't change how the game plays by much. Everyone would still stand around trying to earn as much gold as possible with the retarted "last-hit" technique, and whoever does it the best will end up much stronger. Is THIS something we want? To determine a hero's power based on how many creeps he can get the last hit on? Right now, it just seems utterly stupid to me. It just seems like no-one ever sat down and really gave some serious thought to the design of DotA.

What if you just don't get any money for killing units. I have asked myself this very question several times and I always said to myself "naah..." but right now, I am more inclined to "Hell yeah, and replace it with some smarter ways to give players income".

It will be a challenge, and something I must still consider, but some preliminary ideas include:

Gain gold for being involved in taking over a Point of Interest.
Creepcamps that dynamically grow more powerful each time they are defeated - this is both more risky and interesting than to "stand behind your creep waiting for a last hit" and awards a team for controlling larger parts of the map in the way that they have more control over money-generating creep-camps.
Income - When a hero has been in a lane for a certain period of time, he starts gaining income periodically, the income is increased the further towards the enemy that lane is pushing.
Point of Interests that GENERATE income while controlled. It doesn't have to be much, but worth controlling.
All of these are just IDEAS, but I hope they prove that some more sane approaches are possible. I really do think that replacing farming with a whole range of aspects that focus on map-area control will add much more strategy to the game.

There are some problems with giving a team bonuses based on how much of the map they control though; I know from the original VoD that when there are points of interest that generate resources for a team, then as soon as one team gains control of more than 50% of the map, it easily becomes a steamroller. This is why I didn't initially want to put much resources into the Points of Interests in VoD2 and rather make them yield small team-bonuses. But the recent idea of Creep-camps is much more promising. It is good to control the areas the creep camps are in, but you still have to FIGHT them to get the gold. Even if you control the whole map, you can only fight so many creeps and the enemy with no mapcontrol can still sneak in and kill the creeps as well, and even creepjack. I wouldn't want the creeps to spawn all the time because that would again create a never-ending farm-fest, but maybe the general idea could be made to work as a replacement for last-hit-farming.

If there are several ways of gaining money, such pushing lanes for income, taking out creeps and taking over PoIs there will also be room for more KINDS of heroes. A healer hero can be good not just in clan-games (where "being there for the team" is reward enough) - he can also make a great living both pushing lanes and assisting in creep-camp assaults. Area control heroes like some of the engineers I have been designing on paper will certainly find their niche with abilities that permanently improves conditions for a team on a part of the map. Summoning heroes will no longer hear teammates yelling "OMG STOP FEEDING ENEMY GOLD" and instead be highly appreciated both for their lane pushing power and creep-camp meatshields.

Maybe some of these ideas will prove fruitful - at least I am very glad I got this opportunity to really write down and crystallise some of the vague feelings I have had about how VoD2 will be. You are right, I can't be totally sure how the gameplay will end up, but my vision is to remove the one-sidedness of "kill units, get items to kill units faster" and replace it with something richer while SOMEHOW manage to make it as appealing as DotA:AS is. Because the competition, despite the imbalances and lack of depth, really IS appealing and no matter how good VoD2 becomes, it just can't be considered a success unless it becomes equally popular in terms of players playing it. Because that IS why DotA is the only custom map that has "pro" players - it is because so many people play it that proficiency within the map starts to MEAN something, and that is when a map really becomes fun!

I agree, DoTA centralizes way too much on killing other heroes. This greatly deminishes the value of the army that approaches the enemy base. In fact, the non-playable units in DoTA pretty much serve no purpose other than feeding gold to players. Sure, they are useful in taking out a tower, but in most situations they're just there to distract the enemy tower while a hero actually takes it out. In addition to this problem, hero kills force players to be part of this playstyle. Yes, some heroes are designed specificly for killing other heroes, but because killing another hero impacts the game so greatly these heroes are more valuable and have a greater advantage. In turn, players who enjoy a support play-style or an NPC killing play-style (such as aoe) are left with less appealing options. All the 'variety' of heroes put into DoTA no longer exists to satisfy play-styles but rather make the game seem less repetetive (which inevitably happens anyways).

We all know this shit. Fun to see it posted sometime, but whatever.

Also, stop looking at dota allstars. Its a crap and flawed game. If you want to look at dota, look at the real dota back on RoC.

The real DotA on RoC was actually worth playing if I remember correctly. That morphing tank was awesome ^_^

it was the best AoS of its day. maybe even the best ever made.

Quoted for truth.

Yup. That is because DoTA AS is a poor quality map designed so people can 'pwn' those who don't know what is overpowered.

Anyway, as to the gold - I liked the system in battleships, where you got gold for killing stuff, but every so often your team gave you part of the gold it had. This meant that even if you didn't get the last hit, you still got part of the gold. Additionally, once you knocked out a spawning point, your own spawns that came from the correlating spawner no longer game gold, so they didn't get additional gold.

That was not just a very non-constructive post, it also sent any possible discussion down the drains. What on earth are you trying to communicate with that first two sentances?

Stop looking at DotA Allstars you say? That is equivalent to "Stop looking at the map that has gotten a following and popularity that in modding history has only been overshadowed by Counter-Strike". Yes I am very aware of the fact that DotA:AS is stigmatized in mapper communities. Whether it is fueled by jealousy because it is so much more popular than the mappers own maps or because mappers play it and get owned and proceed to conclude that the map sucks or any other reason is beyond my knowledge, but I sure wont be so stupid that I adopt this childlike and ignorant attitude towards something when all evidence point to the opposite: That DotA:AS is a great map.

We don't even need to discuss whether DotA:AS is a great map. That is a subjective question and every person will have their own opinion. But objectively it is crystal clear that the map IS great because a GAZILLION freaking people play this map and the only reason they would do so is because they really enjoy playing it.

People can always choose which reality to subscribe to. You can live in the world where you create a map that "is so much better than DotA:AS but no one plays it" or you can face the truth and realize that DotA:AS is a powerhouse of a map that blows away the competition leaving nothing in it's trails. The first reality is great for mappers to feel good about themselves because hey, their maps "really are better than that stupid DotA:AS". But it's also not the truth. Sure, the mapper and some of his friends may love the map, and in their small world it probably IS a great map, but anyone that wants to have ambition for greatness will have to face the truths. And one truth is that DotA:AS is the biggest thing in War3 modding scene and one of the biggest things in any modding scene. Deal with it.

The USSR was a devastating economic and military powerhouse, ploughing through anything standing in its way. By contrast, Switzerland is tiny, fairly insignificant, exports only clockwork, knives and banking, and has only a token standing army. In short, Switzerland was far less important, far less people, and far less economically and militarily powerful.

Which one would you rather live in?


In my opinion, it has bad balance and doesn't even look that good.

It is badly made (the triggers when I last looked were atrociously inefficient, and it lags like hell), and it was stolen.

Having a lot of people play it doesn't make it good, and it certainly doesn't make it great.

BACK ON TOPIC, though, before this turns into flame war about DoTA...

Nope, wait, you didn't post anything on topic.

Do behave, please.

On topic, keep things simple. Choose one mechanic and stick with it, out of the offered possibilities, the creep camps seem the most promising; similar to gold-giving PoIs, they have the added benefit of not giving an advantage to the winning team by default, but require some effort to farm efficiently, which in turn gives chance to the other team to regain lost ground or thwart the effort with "creepjacking".

Another thing that is bothersome in AoS maps is that if you take damage, but manage to survive, you are useless until you go back to base and heal up, wasting almost as much time as by dying; I suppose this could explain the absurd penalties related to dying in most AoS maps. However, if you negate that with, for example, shops on the battlefield that sell cheap healing salve/clarity potion-like items, you have the problem of also negating home-terrain advantage, when a weaker team is granted a chance to hold it's own because when pushed back, they have healing avaliable much closer than the enemy.

perhaps to counter that, each team has its own shops on thier side of the lines, so half of the lane shops will belong to 1 side and the other to another side. Only heros from the proper team can buy items from that shop.

I have found clan games to be unbelievably boring- hour after hour of chicken. Killing and ganking is central to my enjoyment of dota. I think you are on the right track by giving players more interesting things to do when they're not ganking, as I have a habit of alt tabbing frequently when creeping. I like Anitarf's proposal for minimizing the need for the fountain, as going back to the fountain is quite soporific.

Creeping in melee is exciting because it's like real time chess. There are complex decisions to be made. In DotA the choices are enormously simplified. This makes the game much less fiddly and robust balance wise, a necessity when there are so many different game modes.

"War is long periods of boredom punctuated by short interludes of sheer terror"

I just remember a thing I had in an AoS map I did not finish a while ago, where each lange had "crystals" growing around through the lanes. The AI would spawn crystal gatherers which harvested these for the team. They were killed very easily so as soon as they came to the lane's battlefront they would be killed off quickly, but it was a good way of awarding teams for map-control. It was also possible for heroes to assasinate these gatherers so that the loosing team could still hamper the enemy's economics.

Not saying I have any plans of implementing this either, just another idea.

So far, the most promising seems to be the mentioned Creep camps - not automatic yet still beneficial to control is the key. They can even be combined with Points of Interest, making the creeps the guards and giving the team that defeats them gold and control of the PoI for a period of time.

I am still a bit worried about the tediousness of repeatedly farming creepcamps. I'm also afraid of seeing teams "gank" the creeps, running 5 people from one camp to the next. I still think there are some divine inspiration to be had to come up with the real solution here.

in your careful analysis of DotA:AS, you made a distinction between "clan" playing and just regular random publics. I agree that DotA has its imbalances, but when you get to that profficient level of play (i'm talking serious Clan-style play with plans and a dedicated ventrilo server for scrims and such), the game really takes on a different face.

Most players who call DotA a piece of shit AoS have their reasons. But allow me to speak my mind. When I first played DotA, i was the noobiest of the noobest. We all were at least for 5 minutes. But I've played the game to such a level now that playing in a public match against random players simply isn't fun. It's too easy, and when you boil it down to the concepts, it's just farming to get a quick build and own it up.

HOWEVER, when you start to play people who know and play the game just as well as you.. things change. "Farming" isn't just farming. It's not just about last hits at all. Everything counts, every kill, every deny, every harass, everything. Heroes that dominate in public games (like Clinx and Spirit Breaker) don't come close to having a chance in a game with good players who know what they're doing.

So you see, it's hard to describe DotA when you generalize it. DotA can be a great game.. you just need to look at it from a different perspective. I never realized how competitive DotA could get until I experienced it for myself. It's no mistake that the game has evolved into a digital sport. And so those of you who choose to ignore that plain and simple fact will need to realize sooner or later that there's a lot more to DotA than just ganking and hero killing and farming. That's really the surface.

Now I'm an avid DotA player, but I too think DotA can be a lot better. Taken to the next level, if you will. I too am designing my own AoS (beta out soon) when it's ready, i'll release details on this site.

The point is, there are more maps that could be played on the competitive level in the same way as DotA. Some came close. I know Battleships were played by clans back in their prime; heck, I was in one. But many other maps were just left to be forgotten. So where's the catch?

Can it be that there's a certain limitation to how much diversity the player base can support, and that even the best maps can't succeed if there are already enough other "popular maps". There are many factors that lead to this, like people liking to play familiar games where they feel in control, and liking to see their game fill fast, logicaly these would suggest that there is a limit to the number of maps that can be popular at one time.

So, supposing that there is enough room on bnet for another popular map,what should a map be like to be able to fill that space? Without any thorough analysis, just based on my experience, it seems like simplicity is key. Battleships were simple, you had a few ships and a few weapons; maybe some were still redundant, but it was still far less than other AoS maps have heroes and items. Sked, the creator of the map, really knew where to stop: he didn't want to add special weapon that would have an on-hit effects; could be just lazyness because it was a lot easier to do only damaging attacks, since they could be done with phoenix fire, while anything more would need dummy weapon units, but in truth the map really didn't need to get any more fancy; the variations in weapon damage, rate of fire and range, as well as ship special abilities (only 2 per ship) and the great trader mechanic were more than enough to turn the game into a sort of real-time chess.

DotA was fairly simple in the beginning too; now it's not so much anymore, with all the custom heroes and items, but it started with simple mechanics that gave fun and deep gameplay. Another popular map I can remeber was Enfo's Team Survival, again a simple map where all you had was one hero to kill the creeps and one building to annoy the enemy with.

Simple recipies are the ones that go far, as long as they are designed with care to provide a good ammount of interesting possibilities. Creeps can guard PoIs or just be there on their own. Do the PoIs really add anything big to the creep-camp mechanic? Do you need PoIs at all? Do you need that many heroes or items or gods from the start?