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.

On Complex and Simple Combat Resolution Systems

So, my gaming group is switching from a FUDGE based system to Pathfinder. I can't really say I'm surprised. We haven't a great of track record with more more simplistic systems. My best guess on the reason why is the 'feel' of combat. That is, the combat subsystem is not very detailed compared to ol' D&D 3.5E. Only a few ranges, not very detailed movement, everything very abstracted into simple rolls. This isn't a bad thing, but it doesn't feel as involved as a more detailed subsystem, like is present in 3.5E. The actual need to move little men (or pennies) around a battle mat, calculation ranges, and the like add to the 'feel' that something cool and different is happening. Simply using the core resolution mechanic of rolling a d20 and adding a number without the rest of it adds no 'feel' to the game. This might be different if we used more description in our attacks, to flavor the rolling of dice, but we're mostly limited to 'Sword Flurry at X' or 'I smack him with my hammer' which doesn't color the die rolls very much, so it ends with the same problem we had with 4E: everything feels the same. We use mechanical differences as the general 'feel' of the game, and that's the basic problem we have with the more abstracted game systems. It's very difficult to capture the feel of things mechanically while remaining simple, and one of the best ways to do that 'describing action rolls' is not a great option for us.

The Effects of Using Tactically Aggressive Strategies in a Multiplayer Environment

or Being the Villain (It may be more appropriate to use 'Being the Midboss'.)

Does your multiplayer group contain people who love to go in swinging? Or is it filled with people who hang back and see how things develop? A mix of both? In my opinion, a mix is probably the best possible choice. Why? Well, the downside revolves around nothing happening and games dragging on for too long if no one in the group starts swinging to get things rolling. I'm not sure what would happen in a group filled with aggressively attacking players; my best guess is that it would feel very similar to the 'Attack Left/Right' variant. Everyone's going in swinging anyway, right? Well, my group is basically filled with people who have a distinct tendency to hang back; no one wants to be the one who starts swinging (In fact, I made a deck to capitalize on this tendency).

About two weeks ago, I played a 3-man game of Commander. It wasn't a very big game and it had been a while since I played in one; it was nice playing some multi again. Commander itself is a sort of long, wait and see, wipe everything and restart repeatedly, kind of format. It's not too awesome for the ol' swing every turn, if only because everyone has twice as much life to start with. I started swinging anyway. Someone's usually (perhaps always) open. This proven to be the case in this match, so I swung at him. I think it's a tactically sound choice to do. Thanks to the Great Mana Screw, he was unable to respond, and I had a much larger creature than my other opponent (As a note, this seems much like kicking a man while he's down: tactically sound, but possibly distasteful. LD decks are basically keeping them down and raining blows in this analogy) . This left me in a dominant position for the early game.

I don't know about your group, but mine tends to to gang up on on the one who establishes this kinda hold early: perhaps it's why they don't like initiating hostilities. Very few people enjoy being ganged up on. But despite my early game lead, I ended up as the first to fall: my hand dried up in finding larger threats (not to mention that most of removal was rendered useless due to the 'nonblack' clause and they both played black), while my unmanascrewed opponent was able to drop several to keep me off of him and the other ate the brunt of my attacks. Had we had 20 life instead of 40, I still would've lost, though they both would've been in the low single digits and I probably would've rushed more than I did. It was not an unexpected outcome, really. And despite being first to fall, I actually enjoyed the game immensely.

But sometimes, I wish that someone else would take that role. My natural style isn't actually too aggressive at all, actually: I'm also inclined toward the 'wait and see' method (In fact, someone outside my current play group once remarked something along the lines of 'he can't do anything but weird decks that are slow and cumbersome'). I've tried it a few times, going closer to that. But I don't enjoy those games nearly as much as when I start attacking. It's not as if I actively dislike constantly sending my guys into the red zone; I'm rather fond of the general method of defeating your enemies. But almost always, no one else will start swinging until they've prepped considerably. Everyone will silently build up their forces, a cold war. I do not find that to be too enjoyable at all. Nothing's happening. It drags.

I'm guessing this general reluctance has something to with not wanting to be the first to fight: no one wants to fire the first shot. No one want to look too threatening in the beginning, possibly because they don't want to be ganged up on. But for something interesting to happen, someone has to step up: someone has to throw the first punch, fire the first shot, or commit the first crime.

Something has to shake up the status quo to begin the story. And in this case, that something is generally first attack. It's a risk: you may be leaving yourself open to reprisal, and much of white's removal suite is for attacking creatures. You're actively declaring hostilities against a person. You may seem more threatening for being willing to commit to an early attack. Before your attack, despite the ultimate goal of the game being the annihilation of your opponents, things are cold. You ignite things with a consistent choice to go on the offensive. At least one other person has something that's pounding on them, forcing them to think, decide, and act. And this will very likely put a few crosshairs on you.

But if you're like me, that doesn't matter. Those attacks will start something bigger. Your last moments may be laughably miserable as you get killed by an alliance of your opponents creatures, but that is good! For that moment, the old lie is truth: it is glorious to die in battle. Your threat may unite others against you, but the alliance will fracture: the end goal is the obliteration of one's enemies, after all. But through your actions, you upset the balance of power: They will have expended differing amounts of resources of eliminate you, and balance is lost: it will probably never be restored. There is no going back. This game will not be one of a slow buildup of forces that results in a draw from mutual boredom and unwillingness to start the attack. You have seen to that, and that is worth it.

For those of you who take this role on themselves and those of you who are naturally inclined towards this, I thank you for making multi a much less boring experience. Those of you who manage to consistently win despite this, you have my admiration.

For those of you who kill us, I leave you this:



On the Procurement, Amassment, Management, and Eventual Exchange of Tools Necessary for Continued Survival in a Hostile Environment

or On Limited Storage Space in Video Games.

Or, more specifically, that I hate it. I admit, I'm something of pack rat. I hate throwing things out. I like keeping old things, even if I use them infrequently, or in case of decorative items, not at all. But I do not understand at all the purpose of having a limited storage space at all in video games, particularly loot driven games, like Diablo, Torchlight, Borderlands or Dungeon Defenders.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the latter three games (my memories of Diablo are a bit fuzzy, but I'm fairly certain I enjoyed it as well.), it's just that the storage limit always annoyed the hell outta me. I hated throwing away the one piece of good armor or weapon that I used for 5 levels because I needed more space to store other, alternate pieces of equipment that were statistically better, or awesome items that you always manage to get for the other classes and want to pass on to another one of your characters or a friend. In fact, the first mod I installed for Torchlight was one that gave me more chests to use as storage. I did the same thing for STALKER because I got tired of lugging weapons back to the shop to sell. And don't tell me that I should've just "dealt with it, it's apart of the the game" because I did. I before I added those chests and increased the weight limit I sold that piece of gear, and for an hour I ran weapons back to the dealer. I did the same thing in Human Revolution, running guns back to the dealer instead of picking them up for 2-3 pieces of ammo.

So the question is why this is necessary in the first place? What prompted them to put limits on storage space to begin with? The technical difficulties in  the actual coding of inventory in general remains mostly speculation as I have no real programming experience and the problems inherent in item storage coding are a mystery to me. However, with various games storing items by weight (Oblivion, STALKER, etc) it seems as if it isn't technically infeasible to implement a basically infinite capacity in storage. For example, Demon's Souls storage seems basically unlimited (not to mention nicely sorted). It does limit what you can carry with you (by weight), but that isn't what important here. Perhaps it's because it isn't a loot driven game? The same annoyance pops up in various MMOs: You only have so much inventory space but seems especially egregious when your crafting items, various tickets you need to enter dungeons, and vendor trash all share the same low number of available slots. It's a rather annoying money grab in these "free" MMOs.

I can't think of a good reason for it, at all. A reason for a limited available inventory, perhaps, but nothing comes to mind when I try and find a rationale for limiting storage. It just seems to stem from habit and convention: Diablo did it this way, so we're going follow it. But even then, people made mule characters to store their items. What's the point in continuing this if it doesn't enhance the experience? Does anyone actually like chucking away their items, or being unable to pick up loot when they're full? Is it just for pacing? Did they find that people would usually pick up around X items in Y time frame and set the inventory limit on a rough sketch of that so people would go back to town to hock their stuff? Is (in multiplayer games) to stop people from automatically running around looting everything? These are still just reasons for a limited available inventory, and try as I might, nothing comes up for why you would ever implement limited storage at all (not counting technical problems in implementation.). Am I just missing something that's enjoyable about this process?

This post in particular is mostly from playing Dungeon Defenders and their 10 page shared Item Box space (No mules allowed!). If the supposed 24 Characters maximum is attained, each individual character will have a mere 5 Slots for alternative gear, and no room for extra pets. I suppose they're counting on people never reaching that many characters, like the ol' Conga Line of Doom for the Magic 2010 change. But it seems rather strange, because once you fully upgrade an item you get to name it and selling a loyal friend you've named just seems like a terrible thing to implement and promote.

An Experiment in the Use of Pseudorandomly Generated Availability of Components in the Construction of Mechanisms for the Elimination of One's Enemies.

or 15 Random Cards.

Restrictions breed creativity. A blank check induces inaction through the sheer number of possibilities. Action Paralysis. The basis of this alternative Magic format is the result of several bored afternoons and is need of refining. Let's get started.

The (Current) Core
15 Random Cards is an alternative magic format (or just a possibly amusing deck building exercise) that, as you may have guessed has 15 random cards.

Guidelines are as follows

• Pick 15 Magic Cards somehow. (I use MagicCards.info)
• Of those 15, You must use at least 7 in your deck and at least half of the nonland cards must consist of this pool.
• Find the set latest printing of the first 4 random cards. Those sets are what's legal for the rest of the deck
• You can have up to 4 copies of any of the cards in your random 15, and up to 2 of any in your set pools.

Now, to put this into practice. Let's get our 15 cards.

The Cards!
1. Counterspell
2. Loxodon Warhammer
3. Crystallization
4. Winter Blast
5. Tarox Bladewing
6. Kaervek the Merciless
7. Giant Spider
8. Demonic Hordes
9. Demystify
10. Coordinated Barrage
11. Oblivion Ring
12. Vulshok Sorcerer
13. Sorin Markov
14. Springjack Knight
15. Armageddon

And for this pool, the sets for the rest of our cards are: 7th Edition, 10th Edition, Alara Reborn, and 5th Edition... This might be interesting, eh?

On the Assigned Purpose of Blog Unit 002 (Dubious Reasoning!), its Schedules of Content Generation, and Other Miscellania.

Hello and welcome to Dubious Reasoning!, my blog on all of my general geeky interests, including but not limited to: board games, anime, manga, video games, Magic: The Gathering, books, and pen and paper roleplaying games. In addition to these, you'll get the prententious sort of scientific sounding titles all for the low, low cost of absolutely FREE. I hope to update with content of some sort at least once weekly. That's it, over and out.