Rock, Paper, Dota2

[Rauten]

Good. > I've been playing co-op vs bots exclusively (with at least 1 friend) for about 3 months now. So, this gives me hope for when I get around to playing real games.

3 months?! If you're winning bots in medium with ease (should be the case after 3 months) and a bit of stomping, you should move on to people. Even more so if you're stomping hard difficulty bots.

I think co-op vs bots is the way to go for initially learning the game, getting competent with heroes and overall mechanics. That way, you're not really wasting anyone's time or screwing with their record. There are enough bad co-op bot players as it is, so I can only imagine how horrible it would be if they were in real games.

Co-op is certainly the way to go, but you'll still be screwing up people's records, because playing vs bots and playing vs people are two completely different beasts.
What bots lack in skill, they make up for with insane teamwork and ridiculous coordination to fully utilize the length of all their stuns and disables when chaining them.
People won't have that level of coordination, but tend to be much more capable at controlling their hero.

[sabrage]

If you're worried about ruining other people's records, just remember that people had it coming.

[Procrastination Giant]

Yeah, their teamwork and coordination is one of the reasons why i'd agree with the statement that bot matches teach bad habits. Everything they do is predictable and their laning phase and 'other stuff'-phase seems to be timed by what appears to be a completely indifferent eggtimer. 10 minute mark? *ding* 4(/5 on hard) man dota! I'd say that teaches a completely skewed version of map awareness and 'game sense' for example. And it's made worse by the fact that bots have a fairly limited pool of heroes to pick from (right now) and none of them are particularely "exotic". No stealth, no micro, no ...wisp (bloody wisp!), etc. not to mention their "what you see is what you get" approach to classes.

And i'm not entirely sure if it really can teach hero proficiency on more than a basic 'i have those 4 skills'-level since half of what makes a hero is knowing when you'll have a horrible time with that particular hero. Like i said before: Single draft is the way to go when it comes to learning heroes - You're guaranteed to be forced to play against weird lanes and chances are that you'll end up feeding horribly on occasion, but it makes for a vastly superior learning experience in my opinion. (and 'but they have a wisp and (what appears to be a carry-)tiny team and i've never played treant before! D:' is a completely valid counter argument against being asked to uninstall dota)

So yeah, bot matches are great for learning the basics, tinkering with builds and just mucking about with a friend (on a side note regarding playing with a friend: forced random all mid 1v1 can be quite amusing) and so on, but what Rauten said is fairly spot on - It won't really prepare you for the horrors out there (wisp! WISP!) - Bot-Dota might share the same game mechanics and such, but to some extend it's almost like a completely different game.

(closing statement: i also play bot matches with a friend occasionally, and yep, i agree that it's fun)

[deadly.by.design]

3 months?! If you're winning bots in medium with ease (should be the case after 3 months) and a bit of stomping, you should move on to people. Even more so if you're stomping hard difficulty bots.

Yeah, we started out on Easy and were winning Mediums consistently after 3-4 weeks. Now that I'm better at executing and dealing with denials, we can Hard. It's past time that my buddy & I advance to players, but some of it is the time thing. I really worry that games will go longer than I have time for (since bot matches have pretty reliable timing).

I feel like I'm at least aware that bot matches aren't teaching me the next level of play, and just knowing that is a good thing. If I thought I were totally prepared for player tactics, it'd be even worse.

My break if a full hour, so maybe I'll try my first single draft at lunch. Seriously, though ... the hour-long time & concentration requirement is my least favorite thing about the game.

[Rauten]

Problem is, when you're already beating medium bots without a sweat, there's not much else you can learn from bot matches, other than using them to try out new heroes or new crazy builds you might've come up with.

And if you start stomping hard, then even the "not much else" is gone, end of the line (pretty much the only "new" thing you can learn against hard bots is denying), any improvement you might see in bot matches from there on will basically come down to learning their patterns and abusing them, which of course serves no purpose on a PvP match.

PSA: Some fella has created a "Dota 2 Translator" http://sletmo.com/

I've given it a go in a private lobby throwing random crap in various languages. What this does is, once ingame, it reads every single line of text chat and passes it through Google Translate, then spews out the result on the area just above the minimap and below the event log, translated to your desired language (you can configure it).
It's a separate program that adds itself over the game as an overlay of sorts.

It seems to work nicely enough (as nicely as Google Translate allows), but unlike the event/standard chat, it doesn't fade out, which means you'll constantly have a couple lines of white text on that corner on the screen, which might be a bother. There's also no quick way (read: hotkey) to remove/add the overlay.
Then again, it's sort of the first release, so he might fire out some updates in the future.

[deadly.by.design]

Problem is, when you're already beating medium bots without a sweat, there's not much else you can learn from bot matches, other than using them to try out new heroes or new crazy builds you might've come up with.

That's pretty much what I've been doing -- playing random each game. I'm not too intense about playing DotA2, since my bot games have only taken me to level 7 or so and I still have ~25 heroes yet to play (with 10-15 that I've played multiple times).

Like I said, I'll probably try single draft on lunch break. The timing is a concern, but we'll see how it goes.

[safewood]

My experience regarding gamelenght is that it reduces drastically as the games skill level decreases.

My typical game lasts for about 30-40 minutes, closer to 30 minutes, with the occasional 50+ minute game (less than 1/10 are this long), and those games are mostly very close or involve an epic comeback from one of the teams.

However when I play with a friend who is new to Dota 2, this is relatively speaking he is about 250 games, the games go on far longer typical game lenght is 50 min. When I play with him and I'm losing I get a bit frustrated when the other team doesn't go for the win as soon as they have the chance, though sometimes it costs the other team the win when they just sit with their advantage and don't try to use it cause it will evaporate sooner or later. Best tip for making comebacks in low skill games is to try to motivate your team by being relentlessly positive, and encouraging those who need to try to get farm to go get it (safely). Basically just try to lead by example and remind people to remember the farm priority, even if that means to stop farming a huge creepwave because the carry is close enough to get it, you should also remind your team to concede farm to the most important heroes.

Whoops, I really didn't intend to derail that much.

Tl;dr
Game lenght decreases as your skill rise, remember to push your advantage, and never stop believing in comebacks untill they got all your raxes.

Edit: Saw that wrote relatively without explaining the difference between me and my friend. He is about 250, I am about 1,6k and have had one game at the first page of the watch tab (however I suspect that was because I got matched with a stack of four competetive players).

[deadly.by.design]

Alright, I tried to play a Single Draft game during lunch break ... I really did. The queue simply took too long, even after adding more regions to the search parameters, so I went for a co-op bot match again. Maybe I'll try again one evening this week.

I played Wisp in lunch game and found out that I am terrible with him. Maybe not after some practice, but it was one of my worst first times ever. Lots of dying in the first half before I started getting the hang of his playstyle. That brings my number of unplayed heroes down to 24.

[Vandelay]

The matchmaking can be really, really slow. I've been waiting for over 10 minutes to get into game before, including the time it takes when one or more people decline. Generally, the estimates it gives (usually around 3 to 4 minutes) are fairly accurate though.

Played another game tonight on Single Draft with Jeriko, the second time I had used him. He seems to be an incredibly powerful hero, with a really easy to use couple of skill combos. Would definitely recommend him to other newbies. Even better, the game didn't lose a single person to raging, even though we were a fair distance ahead in kills (they were actually holding in pretty well, despite this.)

I also had a glance at my stats and I don't seem to be doing as bad as I thought. Currently on lost 5 and won 4, so definitely making some good progress. Will hopefully be able to break even!

[Rauten]

Just a quick heads up, don't obsess over your W/L ratio. It's about as pointless and worthless as your Dota 2 "level".

[Procrastination Giant]

Yeah, i guess the slightly lenghtier queue is one of the downsides of Single Draft in comparison to All Pick, but usually the estimates are fairly accurate for me aswell (with both EU servers selected in my case) - All Random is an even worse offender when it comes to that, which makes me somewhat sad. Well, and don't get me started on delays due to declined matches - I'm amazed that the "9/10 ready" message hasn't burnt itself into my screen yet.

Heh and when it comes to wisp... I'm not surprised that the first attempt with him turned out to be painful, since he/she/it is fairly... unique? Not to mention that he seems pretty unsuited for bot matches since they rarely roam around alone or endlessly farm the jungle - wisp's scary side only shows when you're able to 'hotdrop' your team's ganker on top of lone and unsuspecting heroes or turn 3v3 fights into sudden 3v5 fiascos via tether+ulti.

Ah and Vandelay: Good luck with breaking even, but don't let it put you off if your win/loss ratio takes a turn for the worse at some point - Single Draft can create ridiculously unfair team compositions and murphy's law dictates that 50% of the matches where the odds are stacked in your favor get flagged as insignificant due to abandonment, while the same rarely is the case if your team ends up with a horrible draft.

[deadly.by.design]

I'm down to around 19 unplayed heroes now, after having used Riki, Mirana and Sniper for the first time recently. Mirana seems pretty balanced, but both Riki and Sniper can be ridiculous. Granted, it was vs medium bots and not a real game, but my Riki game ended max level with 30 kills, the Aegis and a Divine Rapier. I'm sure real players can counter that much better, but it was a lot of fun to dominate the match so thoroughly.

So, my left-to-play list only includes a few Radiant Intelligence heroes, and then around 15 Dire. Trouble is, now I'm having a hard time remembering who I really like without looking at the tiled-out hero list. It's kind of ridiculous.

[Procrastination Giant]

Ah Riki - I just played a Single Draft match as him today and it didn't end well, despite me getting first blood and most of the early ganks. I'd say he's probably the most "binary" hero in Dota 2 - either you play against folks who can't handle stealth at all and you get yelled at by the enemy for playing an overpowered hero, or, like today, they plonk down sentries like crazy, carry a total of 3 gems on their team at some point and basically render everything but your silence-skill completely unusable. (We also had a Bounty Hunter, so yeah - 2/5th of our team simply got countered.)

Bounty Hunter has a similar problem, but at least he's got Track and that fancy guaranteed crit. The only thing i like about Riki in hindsight (wasn't my first match as him, but i'll probably avoid him in the future - Or at least that's what i keep telling myself, since it CAN be hilarious if the other team ignores truesight items) is that playing him REALLY taught me to always keep an eye on items (and/or the suspicious lack thereof - free slots that might have been sentry wards a moment ago, etc.) on enemy heroes.

[UrQuan]

Ah Riki - I just played a Single Draft match as him today and it didn't end well, despite me getting first blood and most of the early ganks. I'd say he's probably the most "binary" hero in Dota 2 - either you play against folks who can't handle stealth at all and you get yelled at by the enemy for playing an overpowered hero, or, like today, they plonk down sentries like crazy, carry a total of 3 gems on their team at some point and basically render everything but your silence-skill completely unusable. (We also had a Bounty Hunter, so yeah - 2/5th of our team simply got countered.)

Bounty Hunter has a similar problem, but at least he's got Track and that fancy guaranteed crit. The only thing i like about Riki in hindsight (wasn't my first match as him, but i'll probably avoid him in the future - Or at least that's what i keep telling myself, since it CAN be hilarious if the other team ignores truesight items) is that playing him REALLY taught me to always keep an eye on items (and/or the suspicious lack thereof - free slots that might have been sentry wards a moment ago, etc.) on enemy heroes.

If they go berserk on you before you get any foothold, it can be tough, but yeah, relying on Riki's invisibility is a deathwish. He's one of the strongest heroes even without his ulti, after playing him a bit you learn that. His skillset is amazing in every way.

[Procrastination Giant]

Yeah, I guess he can be quite useful even without his ulti/reliance on stealth under more typical circumstances (as in: picking him because it makes sense from a team composition perspective and not because it's Single Draft), but in that last match i felt like a heavily gimped version of Phantom Assassin.

Granted, every Hero can be countered hard and it was a fairly bad matchup, and after only having played him in matches three times my 'rant' up there might have jumped the gun a bit - but i've rarely reached a point where i felt as useless and shut down as in this match around the 20-30 minute mark, despite having a somewhat decent start.

[Jiiiiim]

This week's offering

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTd79YX3XdY

[realeh]

Hello everyone,
have just started playing, getting to grips with all the heroes.
I just got a treasure of crystalline chaos, and as I have no intention of buying a key, if anyone wants it let me know!
Mostly playing single draft now, it's a fun way to get to know/fear most of the heroes.
As for bots vs people, I played a few bot matches and then jumped into online, and really, people at the low level are far worse than medium bots so no fear there. The number of people yelling at others has also been nice and low so far, so it's been a good experience.

Am I missing something about how you roughly know what kind of people (ie experienced, high level, or not at all) you're playing with/against? I expected there to be a league or rankings or at least some indication of some sort, but I can only find a level that goes up anyway so that doesn't say match, or a w/l ratio which is bollocks with random teammates anyway. Looking online I could only find some vague information about valve hiding matchmaking stats or something...

[Nullkigan]

Matchmaking rankings are hidden because "lol stfu and play wardbitch, stupid bronze", basically. If you want to track your own stats in some more detail you have to use dotabuff.com as the in-game tracking stuff is limited at the moment.

There's a hiden Elo system in place that they're working on improving and in theory feeds off how well you do certain tasks. The more you do good stuf (get last hits, get ganks, win matches, buy wards) the bigger the ratings boost, so if you're a pro player you can apparently take 20 40-0-3 matches as zeus and get straight into the "top tier" games with other players who know what they are doing. Which are by no means guarenteed.

There's a post-match rating of "Normal", "High" or "Very High" which is only visible through the likes of dotabuff right now and tells you whether the average level of the players is in the first 80, next 10 or final 10% of scores. However, the idea that you can "queue into very high" every match by being THAT AWESOME was debunked recently I believe.


Pretty sure valve commented that they know the systems needed a lot of work but had other priorities right now. Getting out of smurfsville and abandonton takes luck as much as anything else.

E: 90% of the non-AP matches I have played in has had a smurf on the level of the aforementioned 40-0-3 Zeus or early abandons. People say that it's a much better place to play than AP but I think they lie.

[Vandelay]

If you want to track your own stats in some more detail you have to use dotabuff.com as the in-game tracking stuff is limited at the moment.

Any reason why I wouldn't be able to find my profile on there? Steam is all setup to have my profile public and I've changed the DotA2 setting to share game history info with third parties.

Edit: Just read the instructions on the website and it says that future games will appear on there after changing the settings in the game, so hopefully should work once I play another match.

[realeh]

Hmm, I suppose I understand their direction but at the same time it's also nice to have something tangible (eg the next league tier or somesuch) to work towards. Not that I am in any position to judge all of that yet of course..