Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Dota 2

I've been playing a lot of Dota 2 recently. There are a few things I like about it that I think give it a pure lead in my mind when compared to League of Legends and I'll attempt to list a few of them here and then explain what I mean by each point.

  1. Better good behavior incentives.
  2. Better incentives for playing the game.
  3. Better welcome back for players that take a break.
  4. Better spectating through replays.
First, the game encourages the community to be kind and forgiving. Every match begins with a reminder to commend people for good behavior, and to report anyone who is misbehaving. Dota has traditionally been known as one of the worst online communities due to very aggressive name calling and other text abuse. Other games have the ability to report and police bad behavior, and that still exists in Dota 2. The thing that they do right that no one else does is allow commendations for good behavior. This follows my long-standing belief that rewarding good behavior is the right way to get people to do what's right. While punishment for doing what's wrong can be effective in some cases, no one likes to be hurt, whether they deserve it or not. Everyone likes to be rewarded, and placing a carrot in the right spot can do a lot to make everyone enjoy the game more together.

Second, Dota 2 gives you rewards for playing the game. In essentially every other free-to-play game that I'm aware of, the principle reward you get for playing, is things required to play the game anyway. In a game like League of Legends, that includes things like levels up, which unlock masteries and rune slots that are required to compete with your opponents. Additionally, to truly be competitive, you need to have all of the heroes available to you in the game. Nearly all other dota-like games allow you to pay either real money, or in-game currency to unlock those heroes, thereby giving you more of a fighting chance to compete. In Dota 2, everyone has everything available to them for free to be able to compete. The rewards you get are purely cosmetic. Furthermore, these rewards become yours, and usually have some real cash value. There is a thriving marketplace where you can trade things you earn for playing Dota to other players in exchange for other items, or even for entire games on steam. 

Third, taking a break from Dota for a while doesn't set you back competitively. This point is related to my second point by the fact that each player is on an equal footing in terms of hero unlocks. There are no preparations required before you can jump into a real competitive match in Dota 2, presuming you know the heroes already. You don't have to look up all of the changes, and redo your runes and masteries, and purchase all of the new heroes before you can feel caught up with people that have been playing during your break. Even when new heroes are added to Dota 2, you don't have to have saved up 80 hours of playtime "rewards" to be able to unlock that hero. A single practice against bots is plenty to get the idea of that hero's concept.

Fourth, better spectating in Dota 2. Now the quality of the spectating modes between League of Legends and Dota 2 may be a matter of preference, but one point in which Dota 2 wins outright, is the ability to watch replays. You can look at any of your recent games, and download the replay to watch. You can check the play history of anyone on your friends list and download their replays. You can even create links to any replay that you can post online, or send to friends to be able to load up and watch on their own. Plus, while you are watching a replay, you can queue for a match and continue watching the replay while you wait for a match to be found.

For me, these simple changes, some of them fundamental to the payment model of the game, put Dota 2 in a league above the competition. It matches well with the way TF2 works, creating its own marketplace and allowing the players to extract value for themselves by contributing to the community through playing. While other games make playing the game seem like a method of grinding out tons of matches in order to remain competitive and current, Dota 2 actually presents rewards for participation, and refuses to punish you for not playing. Why can't all game companies be like Valve?

Thursday, June 7, 2012

My opinion of E3 2012

This year's E3 seems to have been less exciting than I would have liked. For me (as a computer engineer), the biggest thing missing from Nintendo's presentation was any discussion of what the actually computation units will be. Sure it'll use an IBM multi-core processor and a AMD Radeon GPU, but those were expected partnerships and they don't really say much at all about what the actual computation units will look like. Based on current trends and the lack of information about the memory, I think it's safe to assume that the Wii U will use DDR3 RAM, though it could use DDR2 depending on the exact chipsets they're using. I don't particularly think the amount of RAM they have is as important as the type of memory they use, and I think consoles have greater flexibility of using more exotic memory technology, so I would have liked to see them toying around with a partnership with RAMBUS or some other unique memory technology.

As for the things that were announced, there will be a bunch of new games coming out in the next year. The ones I'm most excited about (that weren't necessarily the ones announced at the convention) include Borderlands 2, Guild Wars 2, SimCity, Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, Bioshock Infinite, and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. You may notice that much of my list are PC games, and that's because I really enjoy having a decent gaming PC that I maintain, and I enjoy good games that use a mouse well.