Competitive Roundup (Part 6)

Introduction

There are so many tournaments going on at the same time that it can get overwhelming trying to keep up with them. In this series of blog posts, I will share matches which I have found notable and worth watching in the past week or two.

iG outpick Na'Vi

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Tournament:  Alienware Cup (Lower Bracket Finals Game 3)

Teams: iG versus Na'vi

Casters: LD, 2GD, Luminous, Merlini, & Bruno

I really like the drafting strategy in this game - one of those games that are won in the drafting stage alone.

Na'vi get second pick and thus are able to pick up two heroes in a row, and they go for Naix + Storm Spirit, an aggressive combination that has served them very well in the past - the infamous Naix bomb, where Naix infests into the Storm Spirit and they go ganking. From the point Storm Spirit gets his Orchid no hero can solo farm safely - even traditionally safe farmers like Anti-Mage - due to the instant activation on the Orchid silence.

However, iG immediately counter-pick with Outworld Devourer. This creates a laning problem for Na'vi, where their Storm Spirit is unable to solo mid (Outworld Devourer is not only a strong mid but is especially strong against Intelligence heroes). Yet Storm Spirit needs a solo lane for a fast level 6 - without getting his ultimate he is very easily killed and can't contribute much to the game. iG further seal the deal by picking Treant, where his global defensive potential counteracts the Naix + Storm Spirit global ganking potential.

In the end, Na'vi have terrible lanes, with Storm trying to solo their safe-lane and getting repeatedly killed by the iG aggressive tri-lane, their Naix trying to solo mid against the Outworld Destroyer and losing, and they just get crushed overall and lose the game badly.

Link to draft stage

Funnik plays Bone Clinkz

  

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Tournament: Alienware Cup (Finals Game 2)

Teams: LGD.cn versus Na'Vi

Casters: LD, 2GD, Luminous, Merlini, & Bruno

This game is particularly notable because there are no players in any well known competitive team that use Bone Clinkz except Funnik, and even Funnik has not used Bone Clinkz for months.

Na'vi run a free farming Clinkz (Funnik) while LGD have a free farming Spectre (Sylar). Obviously Spectre is a stronger lategame carry, however, once Clinkz finishes his Orchid (at which point Sylar is still farming his Sacred Relic), he starts terrorizing everyone on LGD, to the point where Sylar only dares to farm when his entire team is standing behind him to save him from being ganked by Clinkz.  Even that doesn't save him once Clinkz gets his BKB and Daedalus.

Clinkz is a hero with a very niche role in DOTA2 and is often misunderstood, leading to his poor win rate. He's not a carry (despite appearances), and does very poorly in teamfights. His skill set is deceptively simple but in reality requires a lot of skill to play properly. Clinkz is a hero that has a really bad early game and really bad late game - he only shines for a small window in the mid-game, and only if he managed to farm a fast Orchid. When he does shine though, he's an absolute terror, as this match shows.

Link to draft stage


Other thoughts

The Alienware Cup was really well run and had very enjoyable commentary from a variety of people with good insight into the game. I might review more games from it next week. Also there was the StarLadder Finals going on which I missed most of (there's only so much DOTA2 you can watch in a week) which I guess I will review next week. And right now the Defense is starting up again. Also I nearly didn't get to post this because I've been playing too much Endless Space lately but that's a topic for a different blog, methinks...

Voice Acting in DOTA2 and LOL

Voice Acting in LOL

There's really not too much voice acting in LOL - a typical champion has about 17 different lines of dialogue, mostly related to moving and attacking. Some examples - Ahri, Nidalee, or Garen. There's no context related dialogue, or conditional dialogue (more on that later).


Voice Acting in DOTA2

There's a lot more voice acting in DOTA2. A typical hero has over 300 lines of voice acting, related to a variety of actions such as spawning, killing an opponent, getting first blood, using spells, dying, reviving, etc. There's even a whole host of lines related to actual chat (thanking someone, laughing), calling missing in your lane, expressing their disappointment at failing to connect with a skill shot or failing to kill a hero, and of course, special rival dialogue where your hero will taunt the enemy in a specific way related to their character after the kill.. Some examples - Juggernaut, Crystal Maiden, Bounty Hunter.

The main attraction, however, is the context specific conditional dialogue. The game is smart enough to detect certain unique events (whiffing with a skill, killing a specific rival, performing a special combo, buying a certain item) that is notable enough to warrant special dialogue that is quite often humorous in nature. Discovering these special lines of dialogue is always a fun and amusing exercise. I'm just going through the heroes that I know below, I'm listing down 24 special dialogue triggers that amuse me but there's obviously way more than this.


1. Juggernaut triggers town portal while using Blade Fury
(Bladefury renders Juggernaut magic immune for the duration, allowing him to escape with a Town Portal scroll safely as he cannot be stunned or interrupted)

• Play I'm out of here.
• Play Hate to hit and run.
• Play I'll be back to finish this later.

2. Juggernaut fails to kill his enemy with Omnislash
(Omnislash is often sure kill, unless you mess it up and it hits too many targets or the enemy manages to dodge it)

• Play What a waste!
• Play Argh, I had such plans...

3. Juggernaut kills Lich
(Rival kill dialogue has a 25% of occuring, normally it just picks a random kill dialogue)

• Play I'm the Juggernaut, Lich!

4. Axe executing opponent with Culling Blade
(His Culling Blade ultimate is an instant kill on opponents with low hp)

• Play Culled!
• Play Wheat before a scythe!
• Play I said good day, sir!

5. Axe failing to kill with Culling Blade
(If the enemy HP is not low enough the instant kill effect will not happen)

• Play Axe misjudged?
• Play Axe misjudged?
• Play You're tougher than Axe thought!

6. Axe using a blink dagger to catch up to the enemy, then killing him with Culling Blade
(... why not)

• Play Not so fast!
• Play You been blinked!
• Play No escaping Axe!

7. Sven using Storm Hammer to stun a teleporting hero
(Sven can use his stun to prevent heroes from escaping by interrupting their teleport channel)

• Play You look stunned.
• Play Don't move.
• Play Not so fast.
• Play Stand and fight.
• Play Stand your ground.

8. Windrunner missing her Shackleshot / Powershot
(Windrunner has two skill shots that many players find difficult to land)

• Play Lucky you, slipped off the kebab.
• Play Dang!
• Play What the? I missed!
• Play Unbelievable, I never miss!
• Play What?

9. Witch Doctor about to kill with Maledict 
(The Witch Doctor has a strong damage over time spell called Maledict, if the game engine knows the enemy is about to die from it, he will say one of the following lines)

• Play Wait for it…wait for it…
• Play He's about to pop.
• Play Dat make a big mess.

10. Ursa purchasing Vladmir's Offering
(With this item Ursa can easily solo Roshan, it's commonly made as soon as possible on him)

• Play Behold Vladmir. In my claws, Roshan is undone.
• Play Behold the offering. In my claws, Roshan is undone.
• Play Roshan shall bow to me!
• Play Roshan! I come to reclaim what you stole!

11. Troll Warlord meeting an ally
(The Troll Warlord's dialogue lines are parodies of bad mannered players in the game. (He is a troll, after all). Many of his lines involve insulting his allies. When he meets allies in the game, he might say one of the following.)

• Play I'd be better off fighting alone.
• Play Don't get in my way.
• Play You've got to be kidding.
• Play Why are my allies so weak and pathetic.
• Play I can see I'll have to carry us to victory.
• Play Try not to feed.
• Play Just try not to feed.

12. Treant Protector using Tangoes
(Well, he is a Treant, and the tangoes are healing items that require you to destroy a tree to gain health... so naturally he feels quite bad about it)

• Play Sorry, friend.
• Play That was rude of me.
• Play Apologies.
• Play I'm sure you understand.

13. Timbersaw using Tangoes
(Timbersaw hates trees, so naturally when he uses tangoes he has something to say too)

• Play Mm god I hate trees.
• Play Another tree down.
• Play Mmm splinters!
• Play Delicious.
• Play De-li-cious.
• Play Won't need a toothpick.

14. Sniper killing a hero that used a bow
(Sniper is very proud of his gun, and naturally looks down upon people who use other weapons)

• Play Oh, how cute!
• Play Oh, feather bullets!
• Play Heh, crummiest gun I've ever seen.
• Play What's wrong, your string break?
• Play Aw, isn't that quaint?
• Play Get a gun, you'll live longer!
• Play Guns are the future, my friend!
• Play My gun is quick!

15. Sniper killing a hero that used a blade
(Sniper is very proud of his gun, and naturally looks down upon people who use other weapons)

• Play Someone brought a knife to a gunfight!
• Play You pull a knife, I pull a gun.
• Play Someone brought a knife to a gunfight!
• Play Inconceivable!

16. Slardar killing a hero after a long chase
(Slardar can sometimes score kills after an extended chase, due to his increased movement speed and ability to track his opponent's movements with Amplify Damage)

• Play I cross the world to take you down.
• Play I came a long way to see you die.
• Play Tsee heeh heh he he heh heh.

17. Silencer stealing intelligence
(Enemy heroes dying near the Silencer have some of their Intelligence permanently stolen by him. That's bad enough, but it's insult to injury that Silencer taunts them as well)

• Play Once a warrior, now a fool.
• Play Your intelligence flows to me.
• Play My intelligence grows.
• Play Have you forgotten something?
• Play Can you feel your grasp slipping?
• Play Ha! How about a little brain damage?
• Play Your mind is mine! Not like you were using it anyway.

18. Shadow Shaman trapping opponents with Serpent Wards
(Using Serpent Wards directly on an enemy hero can sometimes box them in completely, rendering them unable to move - it's something you always try to do, but don't always succeed at)

• Play My serpents paralyze!
• Play Entrapped.
• Play You're not going anywhere.
• Play Keep an eye on that one.
• Play Hold that one fast!

19. Faceless Void using Chronosphere correctly
(The Faceless Void will say some bad-ass sounding lines if he manages to land Chronosphere on enemy heroes, trapping them in a bubble of stopped time)

• Play Entombed by time.
• Play Sealed your fate.
• Play Like insects in amber.
• Play Time's pendulum stops.

20. Faceless Void missing with Chronosphere
(Sometimes though.. he might misclick and cast Chronosphere on nothing...O GOD THESE LINES ARE TOO FUNNY especially the voice acting itself)

• Play Nothing to see here.
• Play How embarrassing.
• Play Dear Gods, my mistake!
• Play Forgive me my friends!
• Play An eternity of embarrassment!
• Play I can't bear to look.

21. Mirana hitting hero with Sacred Arrow
(This is a skillshot that is somewhat difficult to land)

• Play Ha ha! Perfect!
• Play Yes!
• Play Perfect!

22. Mirana hitting hero with Sacred Arrow for maximum stun
(If it travels at least 1500 range it deals the maximum 5 second stun)

• Play Bullseye!

23. Mirana accidentally hitting a creep with Sacred Arrow
(Creeps tend to get in the way a lot...)

• Play Out of my way!
• Play Who spoiled that shot?
• Play Son of a...
• Play Gaaah!

24. Mirana hitting Roshan with Sacred Arrow
(She often uses it against Roshan while the team is attacking, being an easy to land 5 second stun)

• Play I could have hit Roshan with my eyes closed.
• Play Poor Roshan.
• Play An easy shot.

Design (Part 5) Pattern Mismatch

Introduction

This will be a series of articles about game design, using the popular games DOTA and League of Legends as illustrative examples. The specific words, "Design is an Optimization" was coined by the design director of Riot. It means that to him, design is an iterative process of optimization.

Thus if some aspect of DOTA or LOL seems inferior or different to the other, it is because a conscious choice has been made by its designers – the trade-offs have been examined, the benefits judged more than the costs.


Pattern Mismatch in DOTA2

This deals with a topic of skill design - when designing the skill-set for a character, how do we know a skill we propose is a good "fit"? A skill which doesn't fit well is deemed to have a problem called Pattern Mismatch - the skill doesn't fit the usage pattern the rest of the character design seems to suggest.

For example, a healer who is given a critical strike passive that he never uses because he never hits anyone to begin with (Sub-optimal Use). A hero could have a skill that slows the enemy and also deals more damage to them the less HP they have (Conflicted / Redundant Use) so you're not quite sure if you're supposed to use it at the start of the fight to disable them, or at the end of the fight to execute them. Some heroes could have skills that have negative synergy, like a warlock who specializes in damage over time debuffs and has a CC (fear) that breaks on damage (Anti-Combo). Some examples to follow.


Sub-Optimal Use

A classic example of this would be Lina Inverse from DOTA2.

Lina Inverse is a spell-caster - she primarily does damage by casting her Dragon Slave, Light Strike Array and Laguna Blade nukes . Typical of most spell casters, she buys items that increases her mana, and doesn't do much damage with physical attacks. However, she has a passive called Fiery Soul that greatly increases her attack speed whenever she casts a spell.

Most of the time, players take Fiery Soul last, or even skip it entirely and take stats instead. Sometimes, players may take Fiery Soul early and try to build her as a physical DPS character, with predictably poor results.


Conflicted / Redundant Use

A classic example of this would be Necrolyte from DOTA2.

His ultimate skill, Reaper's Scythe, inflicts a 1.5 second superior magic stun (which pierces magic immunity) and also deals damage based on how much life they have missing - basically it's an instant kill when they're at low hp, but it does less damage the more hp they have.

The two components of this spell seem to work at cross purposes - if you cast it on a low hp hero, they die instantly, and you didn't get the benefit of the stun. If you use it on a higher hp hero to stun them, the damage component of this spell is very weak. There is actually a "perfect" time to use this spell, but it comes up very rarely - when the enemy is low hp but just about to escape: the high damage from the skill, plus the extra damage he took from your allies in that 1.5 second stun was just enough to kill him.


Anti Combo

A classic example of this would be Omniknight from DOTA2.

The Omniknight is a support character with a variety of healing and protective spells. He has a skill called Purification that heals an ally. He also has a skill called Repel that grants magic immunity to an ally.

The interesting thing, however, is that Purification cannot target magic immune heroes. Through the course of history countless heroes have fallen due to the Omniknight casting Repel on a low hp ally to "save" them only to belatedly realise that he now can't use his healing skill on them.


Pattern Mismatch in LOL

There's generally more Pattern Mismatch going on in DOTA2 due to the free-form style of character design practiced there. The champions in LOL tend to have stronger character themes and focused kits so it is rare for this issue to occur. The only example I can think of is perhaps Kassadin.

Kassadin is a high mobility burst damage mage. Riot seemed to want to design him to be a hybrid melee attacker / caster, giving him a mix of spell damage, high mobility and good auto-attack damage skills - his passive gives him attack speed when he take damage, and his Nether Blade boosts his damage and restores his mana with every attack. In practice, players ignore his auto-attack abilities and just play him as a straight caster. I'd argue this is more a case of the designers failing at creating the champion they envisioned, rather than having a particular skill being mismatched with the rest of his kit.


Why?

In theory some Pattern Mismatches could allow some fun game-play. Lina in particular has been built as a "battle mage" by countless players, mostly ineffectively, but that never stopped people from having fun. Conflicted Use cases and Anti-Combo introduce an additional layer of complexity to the game, forcing players to think a bit more about how their character is meant to play, but the downside to that is that it tends to confuse players - they're never quite sure whether they used that skill properly or not, and this disrupts the learning curve. Ideally, you'd want the skills to give clear feedback to the player whether they're being used right or not - like a skill-shot stun you had to aim, getting it to land on the enemy and stunning him gives immediate feedback that you used it correctly, so you should play it that way again. With skills that have elements of Conflicted Use and Anti-Combo, you're left wondering after you used it if you really did use it correctly, and this tends to be less satisfying for the player but also does increase the skill cap. On the plus side it does allow the skills themselves to be made more powerful - consider how the numbers would need to be tweaked on his Repel and Purification if the heal was allowed to go through the magic immunity - it's likely Repel duration would need to be shortened and Purification heal would need to be reduced to keep him balanced, which would be no fun and run counter to DOTA2 philosophy of high risk, high reward gameplay.

Deliberately giving players skills with Sub-Optimal Use cases is like a designer who leaves a "trap" for a player to fall into and fail, not usually a thing you want (you probably have a sadistic designer, and soon to be unhappy players).

Competitive Roundup (Part 5)

Introduction

There are so many tournaments going on at the same time that it can get overwhelming trying to keep up with them. In this series of blog posts, I will share matches which I have found notable and worth watching in the past week or two.

This week I only have one match to share: I watched a lot of matches, most of them weren't good / interesting enough to post here.

Tongfu vs Na'Vi

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Tournament:  Alienware Cup (Upper Bracket Round 2)

Teams: Tongfu versus Na'vi

Stream: Beyond The Summit

I have not yet featured Tongfu in this series - they are a strong team, placing 7th in 2012 Internationals, and recently winning the Dota2 Super League.

This game between Tongfu and Na'vi is well worth watching despite it going on for a full hour - plenty of turnarounds and comebacks, with Tongfu at one point holding an over 10k gold advantage over Na'vi. Two Aegis steals, supports turning into carries, plenty of excitement to go around. There was one fight which forced 7 instant buybacks and just kept going, heroes dying and streaming back into the fight.

Link to draft stage

Link to game start

Nexon Starter League

Part of the reason I haven't seen many games worth watching is that I have been watching the Korean stream of the Nexon Starter League which opened on the weekend - it's run by GOMTV, a professional broadcaster who has a lot of experience running the Starcraft 2 scene in Korea. Some matches are uploaded here but you really had to watch it live with the English comment stream trying to translate the Korean casters in real time. Totally impressed by the random CGI DOTA2 opening they made up for it. None of the games are particularly good (the Korean teams in general just starting to pick up DOTA2 so their skill level isn't world class yet, and all the casting is in Korean so good luck understanding anything) but the production value is great, the studio is awesome, the teams have uniforms, the casters wear ties and inject so much energy into the game even though you have no idea what they're saying. Even Nada showed up to watch! And goodness, the customized advertisements that ran in between games were so funny. The team names are hilarious (Bird Gang, Tiger Power, Best Magic Skill) and in particular one player is called Jesus Stick. It's probably just the Korean culture we don't understand, good memories of the first GOMTV GSL match finals between Fruit Seller and Hope Torture, where his mom actually featured on stage after the match during the prize giving ceremony telling everyone how her son was such a good boy.