Nicht im Vent, aber Spielen DOTA Zwei

or "Not in Vent, but Playing DOTA 2"

I never liked DotA. DOTA 2 is somehow managing to eat up most of my gaming time. How has this come to be? DOTA 2 is pretty much just a clone of DOTA. What's the difference that makes it so much better? Is is just my mind rationalizing the time I've spent playing a game I might not even like? Just what's going on that I suddenly find myself enjoying something that is near-identical to something I despised? There's actually a multitude of reasons, but let's get with the negativity and assign some blame, much like your pub teammates will do when you're losing!

I place the blame firmly on these three:

This Guy Right Here, Obsessed with Improving His Rating.

This Guy for Giving That Guy on the Left the Key.

This is Me. I Should Have Known Better.

You see, DOTA ain't really a game you play alone unless you like suffering. Without some buds to play with, you're stuck with whoever matchmaking throws you in with, and thanks to human biases, you'll always feel you're being thrown in with the monkeys while the enemy team is filled with people who actually know what they're doing. This may or may not actually be true, as theoretically, your presence in the group of monkeys could make the match even: however, against even a team of dudes with similar (but even significantly lower) skill levels, your simian friends may snowball the match in the other team's favor (theory: I'm not particularly stellar at the game). The point is, that without some buds to keep you interested and play with you while you're sucking, you're probably never going to get into it: The only payoff is the sweet, sweet taste of victory.

Said victory will most likely come after a string of defeats. A string of terrible horrible defeats in which your team will curse at you for your uselessness, threaten to report you, and in general, using negative reinforcement to encourage more people to join in the hobby. The basic effect of this is that without some buds to help you out, there is basically no incentive to continue playing: normal people generally don't like being yelled at. But a certain percentage of the newbie population may hang onto through this, and perhaps even feel at home. I presume it is this segment that ends up being most vocal about their displeasure at the performance of their (and the enemy) team and ends up taunting as a basic reflex. This may be the reason that the general MOBA/Action RTS/AoS community seems to be a epicenter of caustic maggots festering and trying to burrow into the competitive scene. Perhaps that was a bit harsh, but I believe it stands (and may be slightly more creative than the insults you're gonna receive, which is likely just to be a string of expletives).

Someone carrying the weight of their team. Maybe.  The ball looks pretty heavy, anyway.

Although those curse-filled games those are the ones you'll probably remember most: for every one of those there were plenty that just involved a bunch of dudes trying (and possibly failing) to coordinate disparate actions in mixture of chat, pings, and voice. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You can try and help out, but who knows whether they'll take any advice (or even speak your language). Even if they're pretty chill about things, it doesn't mean they won't sometimes do stupid things that'll make your blood boil. Having your friends take their place at least somewhat guarantees that they'll listen to your advice, and if you're kind of shy, make you more comfortable using your mic for greater coordination. There's even the rare game where everyone even kind of cheery or takes things in stride. 

On the other hand, if your friends are extraordinarily competitive, you might want to just avoid playing with them so they don't get riled at you for dragging the team down (i.e. your own rating obsessed buddy). They may or may not subscribe to the theory that at least playing with you is better than chancing the wilds of soloqueue and calm down. If not, don't contribute to their apoplexy and stop playing with them: you'll probably both be happier that way.

The point of this rather long, meandering spiel is that I did have some buds to play with, even if it was mostly just that rating obsessed dude and I duoqueuing through much of the those first 50 games or so (He's actually lost more games than I've even played, just as a measure of relative experience, with a roughly 50% win rate). And without those dudes around I probably wouldn't care enough to continue playing: I have no love of watching pro matches as a spectator sport and no aspirations to turn pro or even semi-pro myself. The reason I'm in the game is to play with friends and win or lose, together (winning preferred). These days we got enough guys around that we can usually set up a 5-man and throw ourselves into queue with significantly less risk that our teammates will end up being a Russian or Brazilian that we can't speak to (those real Chinese players tend to be a boon more often than not). 

But the bros aren't the only reason I feel that DOTA2 manages to capture my interest.  One of the other, (shallower) reasons is that it's much prettier than the original. That's too be expected really, Warcraft 3 literally came out 10 years (and 6 days) ago. I've upped the settings on my computer pretty high and it doesn't look much better or much worse than the other MOBA I've played (though it's much less... TECHNICOLOR than League of Legends).

Adorable Necrolyte is not actually in game... YET.

The basic theme of why I enjoy DOTA2 more follows this theme: It's the little things that getcha when you weren't payin' attention. They revamped the shop interface, making it much simpler to find and get everything you need for items. You can see what items build into what.They implemented a suggested item list for people new to heroes, which are generally at least okay, and makes for some orthodox builds while you learn about items to make your own decisions and altered builds later.. My favorite little thing however, is the new voicing and lines from the heroes. They don't change game play in anyway, having the heroes have their own lines and react to things really adds a measure of immersion no present in the original. You no longer have to hold at to show life bars. Heroes have tick marks denoting increments of life to make it easier to judge when to use certain abilities. Hero ability hotkeys are streamlined to the QWER keys used in current MOBA settings (with an option to use the old ones if you're an old player). It's all these little tweaks that build into a game that just generally feels better than the original, despite being a clone, gameplay wise.

But the little big thing is denying, as I like to call it, terrorism. DotA had denying and last hitting as one of the core mechanics of the game. You get gold if your attack on creep (one of those mindless drones that just rush forward and hit the nearest opposing thing) kills it dies. You can also do this this on your own creeps: you want to do this on your own creeps, as it negates a huge portion of the experience your opponents receive when your creeps die and it stops them from gaining gold. Last hitting was always its own reward: a cha-ching tone and more money for you, and it was already an enemy. However, denying just felt wrong to me in the original (and it's not like anyone actually bothered to explain this to me, I learned from reading random guides on the internet and that assumes a level of interest a starting player may not have) and it still felt wrong until I actually denied a creep: an exclamation point will appear over the creep (in whatever color the denying hero is) and a small quip with play, usually some variation of 'Denied!". It's a small thing, but the small reward (even if it's merely a short taunt) and satisfaction gained from a successful deny encourages its practice and negates the bad feel of killin' your own dudes.

So despite being the same game, presentation and company makes all the difference. That's the take home message, really.

Impressions: Sword Girls Online

So, I was in the second Sword Girls closed beta! I meant to post this much earlier but Steam sales sidetracked me.

Swords Girls is yet another flash-based, online CCG. It's most distinctive feature is that unlike many other card games in the West, which depict things that generally want to kill/maim/destroy other things (or farmers. I'm looking at you, Dominion), you have a bunch cute anime girls... who happen to kill, maim, and destroy other girls and a few monsters. There actually seems to be some kind of overarching plot, but it doesn't really make any sort of appearance outside their website as far as I can tell.

The game includes three card types: Character, Follower, and Spell. All cards have an Emblem, telling you what faction they belong to: certain cards only have effects on others of a certain faction Character cards represent you: they set your total life and each have an ability of some sort of to set them apart. Followers are your main workhorse: They stay in play, attack your opponents and their followers to defeat them. They have 4 characteristics, Size, Attack, Defense, and Stamina. Size is part of the game's resource management system, which will be reviewed later; think of it as analogous to mana cost in Magic. Attack is how much damage the card deals when it strikes other followers, defense reduces damage taken, and stamina is the total amount of damage it can absorb before it dies. Spells also have a Size, but are one shot effects that immediately go to your discard pile after use.

The deck building limits aren't very different from what you would expect: You must have 30 cards, exactly in your deck, and it can only contain a variable (mostly 3, but some are limited to 1 or 2) number of copies of a single card. The interface is simple and workable, with a list of the cards currently in your deck on the left, and a sortable display of your cards in the middle. It is possible to train and upgrade your cards, and give your Character cards gifts (of other cards... it's a bit of strange). During my play I didn't encounter any upgraded cards, but it is a point of a concern for me: the game seems to imply these upgraded cards will have better stats, and the upgrading process has a chance of failure, like many Korean MMOs. If these upgraded cards are significantly better than their ungraded counterparts, I worry for the new users.

The gameplay isn't too different from what I've come to expect from these flash CCGs; the gameplay is highly automated and you do everything during your turn, which little to no ability to react to your opponents moves. Cards are arranged in a semicircle in front of your character, with slots numbered from 1-5. You can only play cards up to your maximum field size (which is 10. I have yet to see anything that can change this limit) and you always play cards to fill the slots sequentially. This the key resource in Sword Girls, Size. You can play any number of cards as long as the field never never goes over the size or slot limit. Cards with higher Size ratings generally have better stats than those without, and direct attacks to the enemy character is based on Size, not attack. This is a double edged sword however: If a follower is killed, your character loses life equal to its size rating. You can play as many or as few cards as like onto the field, and if you don't like your hand you have the option to shuffle it into the deck and draw a new one twice during the game. A coin flip determines whose cards and skills will activate first. Spells will always activate before followers, but the order they and your followers activate is random. Spell activations just trigger their effect and are gone, but followers will attack another follower on the enemy field randomly. If there are no enemy followers  They seem to have a slight preference for targets their attacks will kill, but they won't always go after them. If an enemy follower lives after it is attacked, it will counterattack. There is no limit to the amount of counterattacks a card can perform in a turn, and abilities that trigger on attacking will trigger on counterattacks.  Thing pass back and forth between you and your opponent until all cards on the field are activated, which ends the turn, and you start all over again until things are done.

The game's greatest strength is obviously its artwork: it's all very good, the quality is consistent across cards, nothing looks like a quick Photoshop edit. That having been said, I know some people hate anime-styled artwork, and this game is not for them. It feels at times like someone tore out the pages of an artbook and tacked on some numbers to make a game.

The main gameplay really stems from deck building rather actual play decisions as there are so few of them: what cards to play and whether to shuffle for new ones. The automated process covers the rest, with no real input from you. This can be a real source of frustration as some of you followers will make suicidal attacks when there are targets they can actually remove. The randomness also sometimes results in an enemy follower becoming basically invulnerable through spells or abilities which increase their stats and very dumb attacks by your followers. The whole thing can make you feel somewhat helpless as you watch a pumped enemey follower rip through your ranks with counter attacks after yours blindly attacked it for 1 damage and were killed by its counters. You can't skip the animations, so the resulting battle sequences can take quite a while. You can't actually affect the resulting outcome in any way, so it's a little surprising there isn't a "skip" button.

Swords Girls suffers from the same general flaws that card based games have in general. The tutorial serves passably as a introduction to game, but it's really not very good: I don't know if i would've been able to really make the effective changes I did to my deck without my prior experience in Magic. They also make you choose a starter deck in the very beginning, without any listing of what they contain and just a brief, very limited to description. This happens in a lot of these card games, and I find it to be a terrible thing because it's difficult to know how the decks will really play and if you'll actually like that particular playstyle. Luckily in the beta, they gave you enough free cash to purchase all of the starter to try them out, but I doubt it will be so easy at launch. For the moment, most of the factions seem to have very similar cards. For example, each faction has a card that boosts 2 cards of the same faction's attack and stamina. They each seem to have vanilla followers with the exact same stats. The abilities on cards do differ, but even then they tend to just be stat boosts on attack or on being attacking. The rather limited amount of spell cards seem to do most of the differentiation among the factions. I am unsure if this is the intended feel. They may have wanted people to be able to play with basically nay art setup they liked.The same concern with "buying your way to victory" is present here as well, as there seems to be a definite advantage if one decides to pony up the the money: rare cards do seem to be better than the commons and uncommons.

Overall, the game is free, and it is honestly worth a shot to see if you enjoy the way it does things. It's quite easy to just play a few quick games and be done with it. I personally wouldn't call it a deep or very innovative game, but it is certainly presented well and as enjoyable as any of the others I've played.

Too Long, didn't read?
Good: Art, theoretically free, fairly easy to pick up
Personal Preference: Most of the strategy seems to come from deck building and not play decisions
Bad:  Battle animations unskippable, memorization of cards may be necessary, factions are not really distinct.