FYI, my hatred for steam has nothing to do with network play. I do not like the idea that my games are tied in any way to a network, beyond what is necessary for gameplay. That includes extra content addons, unlockables, achievements, etc.. I just *bought* the game from valve, I didn't marry them, and I certainly don't want their nanny tool watching me and tracking everything I own and do. No, just no.
This is correct. HoN is the viable DotA alternative today, but still not as good in many ways. Nothing beats the experience of straight DotA, if you can get a fucking game going. These days bots take care of most of the administrative hassle.
First, AI maps in DotA are all unofficial (hence the lag time). Second, in addition to good micro the AI also cheats. A skilled player can last hit as well as an AI bot but if you leave the AI on hard mode (the default) they gain 150% XP. This is necessary to give them any hope of beating normal players. Even at their smartest the AI in BMP's maps can be exploited (clouds were even worse!) and their skill is very uneven. Example: If you're Lion and you mana drain one of the AI bots it will walk back and forth in range of the drain, will not attack you or attempt to break the drain. This was still true the last time I played vs. AI. A better example: If you attack the base tower the AI will come back and defend, always, even when it makes no sense. You can leave one guy doing hit-and-run on the top lane to prevent pushes mid, for example. They're also very predictable in play style and really easy to fool into making all kinds of crazy choices.
In short, no AI can beat a good DotA player in a fair fight. Most AI will feed like noobs.
If anyone is seriously planning to start playing DotA based on this here are a few tips:
- Go to getdota.com and download the latest map and the latest AI map - downloaders get kicked from most games
- Learn the dota game modes. At the beginning only enter games marked APEM, All Pick, Easy Mode until you feel comfortable with most heroes and items.
- Go to playdota.com's forums and read a guide on a hero before you pick it the first time. Also read the general guides on jungling, denying and so forth when you get a chance.
- Experiment against the AI with AI allies a few times. Do not try to 1v1 AI, you don't get the full experience and you probably wont succeed.
- You *will* get called a noob and cursed at and told never to play again (this happens from time to time even if you're experienced and doing everything right). DotA players are mostly abusive assholes; just ignore it.
No amount of history can be relied on for predicting future actions. The fact is that bob had complete access to do anything he needed and without that OMG would probably not have been created. If Valve makes DotA2 modable enough for this, great, but it's a point of concern for me no matter how good their track record is.
I've played several valve games but this does not give me a positive impression of the company. I hope that everything you say is true and I really want it to be true, but I worry. I really don't want anything to happen which alters the in-game dota experience, or the community-driven nature of enhancements, or the many interesting map hacks that have been created.
I had the same thought. I'd prefer the hero to simply run back to the fountain on disconnect and the game to allow a disconnected player to reconnect. Auto-reconnect is a killer feature, no doubt there. If someone simply leaves and doesn't come back then I don't see a problem with the -unlock vote and harvesting gold and items; that certainly beats an AI which cannot possibly be any good.
True or not, I don't care. Icefrog could be an asshole for all I care as long as the result is that DoTA 2 copies DoTA and does not try to change things. DoTA works, changing it damages it (see LoL and to a lesser extent HoN). Sometimes we all dislike icefrog but if he's developing and defending DoTA then no other wrongs he does matter, IMO.
There are a lot of privately owned Windows boxes in the USA that have fast internet connections and excessive amounts of CPU and RAM. This combination is surely juicier than the kind of specs and connections and (importantly) volume you can get in most other places. I would be shocked if first-world countries with large tech sectors were not the biggest source of compromised computers.
Skill based matching? Shades of SC2. Everything you do is tied back to your one true identity? Uh oh. I've been playing dota for something like six or seven years now. I *like* the fact that anyone can host a game (especially now that bots have made this process hassle-free) and I *like* the fact that anyone can roll up a new bnet account in a few seconds. I've never been banned for anything, so it's not ban avoidance or dodging a bad reputation that I'm after. I like not always being the same person in every game. I like getting in to games with people far more skilled than I am! Yes, I lose badly, but I always learn something about play techniques that goes on to improve my game. How much can you learn if you can always compete with those you play against? All that teaches you is that you don't have to change anything and you'll do fine.
I love getting in to games with the skilled players, the ones who can read your mind and are always up for a gank. Will I be relegated to the equivalent of pub mashups because of that one game where I fed like thanksgiving?
I've played LoL and HoN so I know what can happen when you try to clone DoTA. Little things being different can make a large difference in gameplay: towers in HoN don't act quite right, nor is the right click interaction the same. When cloning the cloners are never content to just copy a good thing, they always *ALWAYS* try to 'fix' things they think are broken... usually with unintentionally awful side effects. Part of what I, and other dota players, like about dota is going to be lost if it becomes a hosted by a single central authority, requires a monthly fee to play, subjects you to "reputation" requirements before you can enter good games, or any one of a dozen other things that seem like good ideas from the outside.
I like the idea of an updated dota client (war3 is a bit cumbersome!) but I worry about any big change. One nice thing about icefrog is that he doesn't change a lot of things at once, even when there's a big, sweeping change it's incremental. Since this is valve-based I'm presuming that means steam, and I hate steam in general. Will there be LAN play? Will we be able to host our own servers?
How will things like OMG mode be supported? This is by far the most popular sub-mode of DoTA at the moment and with the keys to the kingdom locked up in a non-user-editable valve proprietary game I don't think OMG would ever have been developed. I certainly hope valve plans to support this in dota2, along with the built in but less common modes (id, sc, hell even wtf).
tl;dr I'm worried by this, but I'd like to be happy about it. I just hope it's as good in every way as the existing dota.
The best thing is, every device ever made could have had a relatively straight forward firmware flash.
I know you like to think that it would be that simple, but it really wouldn't have been. Plus, moving entrenched networks of ipv4 today to ipv6 when the people who invented it and implemented them are mostly still alive and when there are only so many networks and devices is far, far easier than trying to move ipv4.1 (or whatever you call your scheme) to ipv6 in 50 years when there are two orders of magnitude more devices and more obsolete and inscrutable hardware and essentially every important everything relies on it all working and nobody alive remembers how it was supposed to work well enough to rebuild it.
All of these so-called "deliberate actions" are thereby implicitly authorizing Blizzard to disclose my real identity. Such disclosure should never be implicit and should only occur with my express approval. Don't say "Well because they're my friend this means I approve of them knowing my name" - this is totally untrue. Again, and let me repeat, RealID as a system offers unique features which people will want to use. Making use of this system should not require me to disclose my meatspace identity to anyone other than Blizzard.
I'm glad that some of these horrors can now be disabled, but I will not be happy until they are disabled by default.
It's a logical extension of chat features... which displays your real, meatspace identity to random people on the internet.
I'm with you on the *features*, that's cool, I am not okay with someone else deciding what my name is and who gets to know it. I am not the same person to everyone and I don't want all my identities connected, not even all my identities for the same game (much less different games, much less the rest of my life).
No. Originally OpenOffice.org was called OpenOffice, but there was an existing product with that name and IIRC they complained (or maybe it was just preemptively changed to prevent a potential complaint). In any case all the reasons not to use that name are still valid.
I am mystified by your belligerent shortsightedness that means anyone who thinks your wrong doesn't understand what he's talking about.
What's the difference between a single trigger with 1000 conditionals and 1000 column triggers?
If there was something *order dependent* in it you would never have done it with independent column triggers, now would you?
Any idiot can make a hundred interdependent triggers that can cause cascading changes every-which-way and royally screw up everything. If you were trying to object to this kind of spaghetti you should object elsewhere; no one disagrees.
Triggers may not improve readability but I believe the discussion was about whether or not per-column triggers improve on regular triggers, which for readability is "maybe" and for performance is "yes" from where I sit.
There are two broad ways to approach DB design: smart and dumb. The mysql folks advocate the dumb design and are less likely to want or use triggers. A hard core DBA will like the smart design. In a smart design the DB and its triggers and procedures are set up to, at as fine a level as possible, defend the integrity of the data. Triggers for people designing this kind of DB are not in any way bad. On the other hand for people who have designed for a dumb DB triggers are almost always a horror.
It sounds from what you're saying like you prefer a dumb DB, which I gather from your desire for DB-agnostic applications. I can understand the desire and it's not a bad one; for you triggers are probably something to use only if you must. For some scenarios, though, being cross-DB is useless (even stupid!) and it is naturally and purely helpful to use advanced DBMS features such as triggers to help defend integrity and aid performance.
Suppose you're right and you take pride in your work and write bug-free code not requiring testing or revision. In such a scenario greater granularity is harmless.
Suppose you're wrong or someone is working in an environment where testing and review are mandatory whether they're needed or not. In such a scenario greater granularity is helpful and worth almost any price.
Suppose that you get your head out of your ass, where I'm sure everything is only done correctly and once and a way with which you're familiar, and take a look at the rest of the world. Perhaps in some environments which are blessed by small projects, simple requirements and no end of quality developers it can be beneficial to write things your way. In most places in the world the projects are huge, the requirements are an ever-changing series of absolutes about which grey-suited men are gravely serious and the developers are mostly mediocre.
Get a little perspective before telling other people they don't know what they're doing.
Well said and in accordance with my views. I would like to endorse libertarianism, but for all of the free market utopians who start with "We can't regulate anything, period" and work backwards to try to justify all evils that result from that.
Ideally I'd like a new word to describe what you call "social libertarian" - which is a label that also holds much ambiguity - so that these ideas can be promoted more readily.
Slashdot Mirror
FYI, my hatred for steam has nothing to do with network play. I do not like the idea that my games are tied in any way to a network, beyond what is necessary for gameplay. That includes extra content addons, unlockables, achievements, etc.. I just *bought* the game from valve, I didn't marry them, and I certainly don't want their nanny tool watching me and tracking everything I own and do. No, just no.
This is correct. HoN is the viable DotA alternative today, but still not as good in many ways. Nothing beats the experience of straight DotA, if you can get a fucking game going. These days bots take care of most of the administrative hassle.
First, AI maps in DotA are all unofficial (hence the lag time). Second, in addition to good micro the AI also cheats. A skilled player can last hit as well as an AI bot but if you leave the AI on hard mode (the default) they gain 150% XP. This is necessary to give them any hope of beating normal players. Even at their smartest the AI in BMP's maps can be exploited (clouds were even worse!) and their skill is very uneven. Example: If you're Lion and you mana drain one of the AI bots it will walk back and forth in range of the drain, will not attack you or attempt to break the drain. This was still true the last time I played vs. AI. A better example: If you attack the base tower the AI will come back and defend, always, even when it makes no sense. You can leave one guy doing hit-and-run on the top lane to prevent pushes mid, for example. They're also very predictable in play style and really easy to fool into making all kinds of crazy choices.
In short, no AI can beat a good DotA player in a fair fight. Most AI will feed like noobs.
If anyone is seriously planning to start playing DotA based on this here are a few tips:
- Go to getdota.com and download the latest map and the latest AI map - downloaders get kicked from most games
- Learn the dota game modes. At the beginning only enter games marked APEM, All Pick, Easy Mode until you feel comfortable with most heroes and items.
- Go to playdota.com's forums and read a guide on a hero before you pick it the first time. Also read the general guides on jungling, denying and so forth when you get a chance.
- Experiment against the AI with AI allies a few times. Do not try to 1v1 AI, you don't get the full experience and you probably wont succeed.
- You *will* get called a noob and cursed at and told never to play again (this happens from time to time even if you're experienced and doing everything right). DotA players are mostly abusive assholes; just ignore it.
Have fun! I look forward to ganking you soon.
Try here instead. Also look for songs by Devil's Urethra for more DotA sing along fun.
No amount of history can be relied on for predicting future actions. The fact is that bob had complete access to do anything he needed and without that OMG would probably not have been created. If Valve makes DotA2 modable enough for this, great, but it's a point of concern for me no matter how good their track record is.
I've played several valve games but this does not give me a positive impression of the company. I hope that everything you say is true and I really want it to be true, but I worry. I really don't want anything to happen which alters the in-game dota experience, or the community-driven nature of enhancements, or the many interesting map hacks that have been created.
I had the same thought. I'd prefer the hero to simply run back to the fountain on disconnect and the game to allow a disconnected player to reconnect. Auto-reconnect is a killer feature, no doubt there. If someone simply leaves and doesn't come back then I don't see a problem with the -unlock vote and harvesting gold and items; that certainly beats an AI which cannot possibly be any good.
So stop feeding. I learned this, you can too.
Skill based matching sounds good, sure, and it has its uses, but it's also hidden poison. Having an option for it is okay, requiring it is bad mojo.
True or not, I don't care. Icefrog could be an asshole for all I care as long as the result is that DoTA 2 copies DoTA and does not try to change things. DoTA works, changing it damages it (see LoL and to a lesser extent HoN). Sometimes we all dislike icefrog but if he's developing and defending DoTA then no other wrongs he does matter, IMO.
There are a lot of privately owned Windows boxes in the USA that have fast internet connections and excessive amounts of CPU and RAM. This combination is surely juicier than the kind of specs and connections and (importantly) volume you can get in most other places. I would be shocked if first-world countries with large tech sectors were not the biggest source of compromised computers.
Skill based matching? Shades of SC2. Everything you do is tied back to your one true identity? Uh oh. I've been playing dota for something like six or seven years now. I *like* the fact that anyone can host a game (especially now that bots have made this process hassle-free) and I *like* the fact that anyone can roll up a new bnet account in a few seconds. I've never been banned for anything, so it's not ban avoidance or dodging a bad reputation that I'm after. I like not always being the same person in every game. I like getting in to games with people far more skilled than I am! Yes, I lose badly, but I always learn something about play techniques that goes on to improve my game. How much can you learn if you can always compete with those you play against? All that teaches you is that you don't have to change anything and you'll do fine.
I love getting in to games with the skilled players, the ones who can read your mind and are always up for a gank. Will I be relegated to the equivalent of pub mashups because of that one game where I fed like thanksgiving?
I've played LoL and HoN so I know what can happen when you try to clone DoTA. Little things being different can make a large difference in gameplay: towers in HoN don't act quite right, nor is the right click interaction the same. When cloning the cloners are never content to just copy a good thing, they always *ALWAYS* try to 'fix' things they think are broken... usually with unintentionally awful side effects. Part of what I, and other dota players, like about dota is going to be lost if it becomes a hosted by a single central authority, requires a monthly fee to play, subjects you to "reputation" requirements before you can enter good games, or any one of a dozen other things that seem like good ideas from the outside.
I like the idea of an updated dota client (war3 is a bit cumbersome!) but I worry about any big change. One nice thing about icefrog is that he doesn't change a lot of things at once, even when there's a big, sweeping change it's incremental. Since this is valve-based I'm presuming that means steam, and I hate steam in general. Will there be LAN play? Will we be able to host our own servers?
How will things like OMG mode be supported? This is by far the most popular sub-mode of DoTA at the moment and with the keys to the kingdom locked up in a non-user-editable valve proprietary game I don't think OMG would ever have been developed. I certainly hope valve plans to support this in dota2, along with the built in but less common modes (id, sc, hell even wtf).
tl;dr I'm worried by this, but I'd like to be happy about it. I just hope it's as good in every way as the existing dota.
The best thing is, every device ever made could have had a relatively straight forward firmware flash.
I know you like to think that it would be that simple, but it really wouldn't have been. Plus, moving entrenched networks of ipv4 today to ipv6 when the people who invented it and implemented them are mostly still alive and when there are only so many networks and devices is far, far easier than trying to move ipv4.1 (or whatever you call your scheme) to ipv6 in 50 years when there are two orders of magnitude more devices and more obsolete and inscrutable hardware and essentially every important everything relies on it all working and nobody alive remembers how it was supposed to work well enough to rebuild it.
Out of mod points so I am replying to express my approval.
+2 Awesome
All of these so-called "deliberate actions" are thereby implicitly authorizing Blizzard to disclose my real identity. Such disclosure should never be implicit and should only occur with my express approval. Don't say "Well because they're my friend this means I approve of them knowing my name" - this is totally untrue. Again, and let me repeat, RealID as a system offers unique features which people will want to use. Making use of this system should not require me to disclose my meatspace identity to anyone other than Blizzard.
I'm glad that some of these horrors can now be disabled, but I will not be happy until they are disabled by default.
It's a logical extension of chat features... which displays your real, meatspace identity to random people on the internet.
I'm with you on the *features*, that's cool, I am not okay with someone else deciding what my name is and who gets to know it. I am not the same person to everyone and I don't want all my identities connected, not even all my identities for the same game (much less different games, much less the rest of my life).
This is not moving goalposts. When RealID first was announced the general outcry was "NO! We don't want this." and "Or at least let us disable it."
It's nice that they did the "at least" part, but it's still fair to say that most people don't want this and defaulting to opt-out would reflect that.
I've heard it pronounced Ex-Dot-Org, Ex-Org, Zorg and others. The first two are the most common.
I think they should go balls-out and call it Freedom Office, then go sell it to the USA government.
No. Originally OpenOffice.org was called OpenOffice, but there was an existing product with that name and IIRC they complained (or maybe it was just preemptively changed to prevent a potential complaint). In any case all the reasons not to use that name are still valid.
I don't think it is necessary to have no hierarchy, it's just a generally good idea for a fair society. A worthy goal but not directly related.
I am mystified by your belligerent shortsightedness that means anyone who thinks your wrong doesn't understand what he's talking about.
What's the difference between a single trigger with 1000 conditionals and 1000 column triggers?
If there was something *order dependent* in it you would never have done it with independent column triggers, now would you?
Any idiot can make a hundred interdependent triggers that can cause cascading changes every-which-way and royally screw up everything. If you were trying to object to this kind of spaghetti you should object elsewhere; no one disagrees.
Triggers may not improve readability but I believe the discussion was about whether or not per-column triggers improve on regular triggers, which for readability is "maybe" and for performance is "yes" from where I sit.
There are two broad ways to approach DB design: smart and dumb. The mysql folks advocate the dumb design and are less likely to want or use triggers. A hard core DBA will like the smart design. In a smart design the DB and its triggers and procedures are set up to, at as fine a level as possible, defend the integrity of the data. Triggers for people designing this kind of DB are not in any way bad. On the other hand for people who have designed for a dumb DB triggers are almost always a horror.
It sounds from what you're saying like you prefer a dumb DB, which I gather from your desire for DB-agnostic applications. I can understand the desire and it's not a bad one; for you triggers are probably something to use only if you must. For some scenarios, though, being cross-DB is useless (even stupid!) and it is naturally and purely helpful to use advanced DBMS features such as triggers to help defend integrity and aid performance.
Suppose you're right and you take pride in your work and write bug-free code not requiring testing or revision. In such a scenario greater granularity is harmless.
Suppose you're wrong or someone is working in an environment where testing and review are mandatory whether they're needed or not. In such a scenario greater granularity is helpful and worth almost any price.
Suppose that you get your head out of your ass, where I'm sure everything is only done correctly and once and a way with which you're familiar, and take a look at the rest of the world. Perhaps in some environments which are blessed by small projects, simple requirements and no end of quality developers it can be beneficial to write things your way. In most places in the world the projects are huge, the requirements are an ever-changing series of absolutes about which grey-suited men are gravely serious and the developers are mostly mediocre.
Get a little perspective before telling other people they don't know what they're doing.
Should it be suspicious that his approach sounds a lot like the MySQL Way? "Who needs a fancy DB, just stuff it all in to the application layer!"
Well said and in accordance with my views. I would like to endorse libertarianism, but for all of the free market utopians who start with "We can't regulate anything, period" and work backwards to try to justify all evils that result from that.
Ideally I'd like a new word to describe what you call "social libertarian" - which is a label that also holds much ambiguity - so that these ideas can be promoted more readily.