How is it that MOBAshit manages to retain a player base for years while other multiplayer games can't?

How is it that MOBAshit manages to retain a player base for years while other multiplayer games can't?

f2p and time spent learning feels wasted if you stop.

Huge roster of characters and huge variety between natched. Games take half an hour to an hour so if you want to play every hero for 10 games you have ~800 hours of content.

being a fun engaging and complex game.

Most other multiplayer games get replaced eventually, either by a sequel or by new game that draws the players from it. When people say "MOBA" they're really only referring to two games, Dota 2 and LoL. It used to be HoN and LoL, but Dota 2 replaced HoN. I don't think the two we have right now are going anywhere any time soon.

Also, players who value a deep competitive experience aren't going to want to switch games frequently like people who play for leisure. Plenty of esports titles retain playerbases for longer than the average game does. See: Melee, CSGO, Starcraft

It's literally a game you could play forever. It's basically a more action oriented RTS with one unit to control that has a bunch of skills.

By being a GOOD game

>f2p
>makes people feel like they contributed to a team effort, even if they were being carried
>eSports

I mainly hate the poor quality of everything in these games. I downloaded LoL once, the first time I played it I upgraded my character with some weapon, I was expecting a visual change with the character having a new weapon and animations. When I realized every single item merely adjusted some stat I closed the game and deleted it.

I was expecting it too look something like Dawn of War 2 combat but instead it was runescape tier animation and every model looks like shit.

lmao you big dum dum

They're skinner boxes fueled by grindy ranking systems, free wins as long as you pick the right character, and bossing people around for not knowing as many of the game's mechancis as you do.

Once you get how to play them and know the items/heroes they're fucking braindead games. High skill floor but the skill ceiling is barely above it.

This, Dota 2 is literally balanced around these faggots because they're the ones who buy the hats, not the players who actually can carry. What, picking five hard carries is shit? Better change the meta so Pedro and Ivan can get their free wins too!

>Dota 2 is literally balanced around these faggots because they're the ones who buy the hats,

what are you talking about, Dota 2 is balanced around the competitive scene and has been since it's existence

>Dota is ruined forever
>you will never go back to 6.78

1. you can play forever
2. high knowledge skill cap relative to shooters, then when you plateau it becomes a sport to exercise said skill.

what's wrong with it?

every patch has turned it into more of a hero brawler where deathballing as 5 is the optimal strategy and punishing any other kind of tactic like splitpush because it's not FUN TO WATCHJ!!!!!!!!

The point of Dotalikes is that no game is ever alike - unless it's LoL.

Thus leads to lots of replayability.

People like it a lot hard concept to grasp I know. we here at Sup Forums have a refined rythm game taste

Yeah, that's Valve's official stance on it. I guarantee you shrines and talents were not made to enhance the competitive scene. Comeback gold is pretty fucking pub-scrub shit too.

They ALWAYS balance shit around reddit bitching and pick/ban rates exclusively without actually addressing the problems that make certain heroes broken. They break shit frequently and then do patchwork fixes that still forever change how a hero works while either damning them to be effortless wins when they do re-enter the meta or never be viable again.

>Dota 2 is balanced around the competitive scene
This used to be true.

Skill gap

This. Not to mention the insane bias and power creep towards snowballing carries in general. Aggressive supports that aren't named Tusk or Pudge got the short end of the stick because every fucking carry in the game can solo kill every support once they hit level 6 and their right click power comes online at 15 minutes.

You don't even have to farm anymore, it's retarded. It's like Heroes of the Storm, but instead of being relaxing and casual, it's frustrating and casual.

Got a source on that? What's a hero brawler? You mean a MOBA?

Despite going downhill since TI3, it was still okay until 7.00. Now FOTM 5 man is the only way to win even if my shit tier pubs. Think I'm going to quit.

It becomes embedded into your daily routine and you don't quit because that'd disrupt it

Can you prove it's not. I don't remember Zeus getting buffed when his Arcana was released.

I'm not denying reddit has an influence on hero balance but th

what do you mean source? the source is that I played this game from 2010 to 2016 and watched the downfall with my own eyes

>fun

I play dota since TFT(2003?)and i can say that its anything but fun, unless you play with 4 other friends.

Its more like cigarettes - its completely useless, you dont even feel that great when doing it and you feel like shit for doing it in general, but you cant fucking stop for some reason

but the choices of balance are still Icefrogs and he does take input from competitive players.

Otherwise we'd see Chen and Io buffed because they're low in pubs or Bristleback but they aren't. Neither is Broodmother or Enchantress or Puck or Tusk or Batrider are being called for buffs despite low win rates in pubs. It's not balanced around pubs. No one calls out Zeus for having naturally high win rate since he's ever existed in pubs or Spectre, everyone knows this shit they don't care and they don't balance around them.

Alright wise guy, he's trying to say that the game is fucking 100% deathmatch-oriented now and that it's basically HotS with less skillshots and shittier UI. Actually, split pushing in HotS is more viable than it is in Dota right now for fuck's sake. Hell, Awesomenauts is fighting 24/7 and splitpushing is STILL good in that game because you don't feed 1000 gold for being a carry and having the nerve to die ever.

>tfw friend has more hours in Dota than MMR
>tfw he's 6k MMR

I'm not good enough to play with him.

What's HotS

Sorry you don't have fun playing dota :(

>deathmatch oriented

what does this even mean, you mean racing til 40 deaths per side? Fuck off retard.

>HotS

Lol

>shittier UI

LOL

Just pick NP or something god. Awesomenauts is good though but Dota 2 has it's own unique flavor.

they don't retain players, but they gather new players frequently mostly because it's F2P, available worldwide, and the games are accessible as fuck.

>Dota 2
>don't retain players
m8, pros from WC3 Dota still play Dota 2 without being successful you have no idea.

those people are a minority.
F2P games have no actual major player retention rate. they thrive on new blood, smurf accounts ,etc.

most MOBA's dont
they just die off like HoN or HotS or Smite

>inb4 some mad hotsfag

no one cares about your shilled game, Blizzard is smart,they just use esports as an advertising tool and dump money into their games.

how else would we have
>competitive hearthstone
>competitive overwatch

Competitive used to mean something, a community/playerbase that was dedicated to gitting gud, not being paid to put on a show by the developers themselves.

Heroes of the Storm. Blizzard's moba/dota clone/ARTS/whateverthefuckyouwannacallit.

>pick NP
>feed 1000 gold for being a carry and having the nerve to die ever
>feed treants because they're slow as shit

Not to mention shrines make it REALLY fucking hard to rat. You can teleport into your own jungle, get a free fountain-worthy heal and mana refresh for your whole team, and then get rewarded at least 800 gold for a single kill because of the insane rubberbanding mechanics.

>fun
>MOBAS

The people that have fun playing mobas are the same people who have fun playing in their own shit and drooling on themselves.

You can't help these people, they will never evolve and they will never listen. Walk away boys.

why are you complaining about rubberbanding, being punished for dying because you have a higher networth makes sense and it's scaled by kill streaks which means you should be owning people harder

I kept giving it the benefit of the doubt, but every match goes the same way.

>one team has 3 meta carries, Omniknight optional
>run down mid at 10 minutes as 5
>they're unstoppable because despite having more heroes that were once considered supports, they have stronger early game with Jugg/LC/PA/Drow/Slark/MK/Timbersaw or some shit
>even if you beat them in early fights, you lose one fight and suddenly they auto-win because the rubber banding doesn't take into account power spikes at all, despite Dota having the most severe ones in the genre

I finally uninstalled it today. Good fucking riddance.

He's just buttmad he doesnt get to just snowball and get free MMR by being good at mid like in League.

>>run down mid at 10 minutes as 5
this shit never happens anymore, not only that but deathball is nerfed, it's better in going 2-3 man groups for ganks while your core farms and even the pro scene reflects this

Naga, Alchemist, Ember, Invoker aren't deathball heroes yet they're picked a lot.
>inb4 but

Well yeah they're gonna 5 man in the future everyone does, you don't even have a good definition for deathball, TI4 was a deathball, now? Hardly see that same stuff of just taking tower after tower.

do i get jugg arcana

not surprised LoLfags invade Sup Forums still and shitpost

Power spikes are a thing, user. Not all heroes gain equal power from the same amount of gold for obvious reasons. Plus, if you secure an early advantage but can lose it to one mistake, what's the point of even securing an advantage? If I go 5-0 and my opponent goes 0-5, why should we be equal because they got one kill? Do you think a 5-0 CM is any harder to kill for an Ursa than a 0-3 CM?

>never happens anymore

This is literally the last 5 pub games I played. It's way, way more viable now than it was in 2013, god forbid 2011.

>people hate shit patches
>must be LoL fans

muh riot boogeyman

Because it has near infinite replay value and an extremely high skill ceiling.

>argue all you want you know i'm right

It's true but too many retards can't accept that Dota 2 requires more skill than X favorite game.

BUT MUH QUAKE MUH ROCKET JUMPS AND MAP MEMORIZATION
REEEEEEEEEEEEEE

...

...

I love Omnislash's design, it's pretty much guaranteed attacks in a fight, on a melee hero with no strong steroids of fighting abilities besides his nice BAT and Critical.

>get phase
>get 6
>hit enemy
>they run from creep wave, you ult
>they don't, you just keep hitting them

...

desu you can't balance 450% crit if the crit chance was 100%

That's because your team probably kept running into the goonsquad like tards. All you have to do is stall while your core gets big and then shit on them in one teamfight and end.

look up pseudo-rng

Repel is more balanced now though, less uptime. 11 second down time is huge. Also very limited cast range.

next thing you know someone will post a TP scroll with the filename "should be a summoner spell"

FPS gets ruined by hackers.

>Plus, if you secure an early advantage but can lose it to one mistake, what's the point of even securing an advantage?
To get even further ahead and stay there by not taking bad engagements.

Better cast point makes for some clutch ass saves tho.

>no strong steroids
Good one. Getting 21% better attack speed effectiveness and an average of 35% extra damage per attack is not at all a good steroid, especially not when combined with a physical nuke that does 600 and a magic, non-ultimate one that does 775 damage without talents.

It's a shitty substitute for "attack procs every X hits" while still allowing bullshit streaks. It's literally gamed in the same way too, by hitting something until you don't crit several times, it just adds arbitrary randomness where none is needed.

>I control all five heroes every game directly.
>There's a game where people don't instalock carry.

I know that. Most people don't.

>Stalling and farming for 20 minutes means that the game is good and riveting and totally worth my time.

How about I play a game that's not WoW PvP?

why git gud when you can just program it for you

personally why I don't respect FPS eSports.

21% better isn't better than 400 or 130 or 80 attack speed steroids from an ability coupled with benefits.

Also there's other things that deal damage or provide benefits besides Critical. The point is Juggernaut doesn't have a stun or anything to guarantee he can just keep hitting people all day like an Alchemist could with Unstable+Chemical Rage.

He doesn't rape people like Lifestealer, he doesn't burst people like Ursa or PA. He provides a unique skill set which is topped off with guaranteed attacks to contribute for his otherwise lack of offensive abilities (Bladefury is good but is mostly defensive late game otherwise you'd right click for more DPS)

>There's a game where people don't instalock carry
>Post 7.03
Ban then pick phase drafting is here to stay so you shouldn't have to worry about that as much
Probably helps if you aren't playing NA servers though because those players are notoriously pig headed.


>Stalling and farming for 20 minutes means that the game is good and riveting and totally worth my time.
>Complains about hero brawler
>Complains about farming
Most games are an alright balance for me but in the event shitters are trying to run a no brain strats like Aura push why would you not punish them for it then spend the last 2 minutes of the game shit talking them as you mulch their ancient?

>pick hero that just runs around and ganks people
>no death ball
>no farming
>no hero brawl

fixed your play style senpai

>>pick hero that just runs around and ganks people

>>no death ball
>>no hero brawl

???

no seriously can someone define hero brawl
that sounds retarded
brawl means fight, take and give hits whatever

if it means hero fight isn't that just dota heroes fighting each other? isn't that the point of the game?

He's made of paper and has no manapool. Land one stun on him and he's fucked. But that would require teamwork and you seem to be averse to interacting with your own team.

like deathball is actually defined
you 5 man and just move around killing towers/people and hope they don't do the same, simple and recognizable pattern, heroes like Underlord do this well, Mek item, Pipe, Drum, auras, Beastmaster is good too, what's a hero brawl hero, Bristleback? Tusk?

>talks about quality
>moans about pretty graphics

Grow up.

Hero brawler is a /d2g/ meme made to shit on Dota 2 because HotS called itself a hero brawler so we took the label and memed it.

Latest patchnotes

XP Required to go from level 1 to level 6 increased by 15%, 300 XP total
XP Required to go from level 9 to 13 redistributed from 700/720/740/1200 to 800/820/840/900
AoE hero kill Gold and XP bounties reduced by 10% (including comeback gold and XP)
Tier 1 Team Bounty reduced from 160 to 120
Passive gold income reduced by 10%
Reduced lane melee creeps base gold bounties by 2
Increased lane melee creeps gold bounty per upgrade cycle by 1
Reduced lane range creeps gold bounty per upgrade cycle by 1
Shrines base HP regen reduced from 120 HP/sec to 100
All towers base armor reduced by 4
Towers now gain 2 armor per nearby enemy player within 1200 AoE
Tier 1 Tower HP increased from 1300 to 1400
Scan cooldown reduced from 270 seconds to 210

Yeah they're really just pumping out patches that turn the game into a deathmatch simulator amirite?

Of course I'm complaining about both, because that's the very problem. If you pick all carries, you can afford to just fight as 5 all the time because the game just spoonfeeds you gold whether you win or lose them. If you pick more than one support, you can't fucking push because all those carries will get right back into the game if you feed a death. The game is making lategame strats incredibly low-risk because that's obviously what the most dipshits who wouldn't know what balance is if it hit them on the head an gave them a concussion play. They played carries that actually had to farm like Void, PL, and Spectre, but failed at that, so Valve just buffed the shit out of their early game so psych, you don't have to farm on them anymore. Have fun deathmatching, may the most OP hero win automatically! Remember to buy your arcana!

He also has built-in magic immunity and synergizes well with items that give high movement speed. Good joke, made me chuckle.

This one, specific patch is a step in the right direction, but good thing 6.82-7.02 have done their damndest to pull it away! You don't put out a forest fire with a single bucket of water.

>He thinks 5 carries works
>Complains about carry void and pl

>He thinks spectre pl or void have arcanas
Back to 1k MMR

No other multiplayer gametype is as addictive.
LoL/Dota are literally the heroin of video games

Are you being dense on purpose? I said that those characters used to need farm to come online, and Valve re-balanced their spells and numbers to make them come online way earlier. Also I never mentioned them specifically having fucking arcanas you retard. Monkey King, Jugg, and PA would like a word with you though, and they fit that bill perfectly.

I swear dota fanboys do this shit on purpose. There's clearly no rationality left in your head, you're just justifying your addiction at this point. Enjoy your glorified slot machine I guess, your loss.

>Of course I'm complaining about both, because that's the very problem. If you pick all carries, you can afford to just fight as 5 all the time because the game just spoonfeeds you gold whether you win or lose them. If you pick more than one support, you can't fucking push because all those carries will get right back into the game if you feed a death. The game is making lategame strats incredibly low-risk because that's obviously what the most dipshits who wouldn't know what balance is if it hit them on the head an gave them a concussion play. They played carries that actually had to farm like Void, PL, and Spectre, but failed at that, so Valve just buffed the shit out of their early game so psych, you don't have to farm on them anymore. Have fun deathmatching, may the most OP hero win automatically! Remember to buy your arcana!
Then why doesn't this happen in pro games?

When your whole argument is "The game is balanced around noobs" this is a pretty important question.

Fuck off retard. Juggernaut was good before his Arcana came, PA was shit after and only okay during. What about CM and Linavand Zeus and SF retard. Nice statistics I'm sure.

Where's my Pudge arcana dotards.

I barely play Dota anymore but I'm pretty sure PA and Jugg have their Arcana's because the community contest, and that they're nowhere near their most powerful at the point they got them.

Jugg used to fucking abysmally powerful, he's only alright now when the Arcana has come out.

>He thinks 5 carries work

Back to 1k still you poorfag retard.

It's like heroin
winning feels so fucking good compared to winning in any other multiplayer game I've played
losing also feels fucking terrible, probably the worst of any other multiplayer game I've played

and then you find people to play with regularly, bang, everyone is doing drugs and nobody can stop

Sometimes I lose a long game, and I find myself wishing I could just stop playing, but then I win a well-fought game with my friends and remind myself, nah, this is pretty fun

So did Zeus and hes hardly getting buffs, in fact he's very weak competitively and has been nerfed. No spotlight for his Arcana.

Juggernaut is popular right now not because of buffs (he hasn't received a direct buff in many patches now) but because magnus has made a comeback into the game and his skill empower is one of the strongest, if not the strongest buff you can give your melee carry. Ban Magnus every game.

F2P Pay to Win Garbage

A magic immunity that lasts all of 5 seconds and phase which lasts for 2. Especially now that roots are OP as fuck that's easy to deal with. He can't buy BKB because that takes up a slot and drops his damage.

>Pay to Win

>dota
>pay to win

>winning feels good
this is a complete lie

in dota a loss makes me want to fucking kill myself but a win makes me feel nothing at all, besides the relief of it being finally over

Because pros are coordinated and can literally avoid most of these problems for that very reason. They play well enough to make it a non-issue.

Most of us who play Dota 2 don't play pro games. This shit doesn't happen in pro games, but it's a fucking nightmare and pubs and makes the game actively unfun. It makes it so that if anybody slips up, the whole team takes huge hits for it.

In 2011, five carries was a non-threat. It was literally a fucking free win because quite frankly it's a retarded team comp that shouldn't be rewarded. It's actually fucking threatening in new!Dota if anybody, you or allies, make a mistake ever. You can shit on them for 30 minutes, but when the Gaben Welfare System kicks in there's no going back.

That's way fucking better than most heroes, including other carries get. They get ZERO seconds of magic immunity. They don't get to walk out of a potential stunlock for free unless their name is Slark.

More likely he's in 3K where people all think they're actually good and can solo carry the game. If anything that bracket is more retarded than 1k.

You're probably one of those people who doesn't get endorphin ticks as a reward in their brain for doing shit.

my therapist calls it "dysthymia" but I think I'm just a loser

>force staff or euls doesn't cancel omni

what the fuck

Not him, but I do feel rewarded when I do good things. They just don't feel deserved in Dota because half the time you win for losing and lose for winning, at least according the game's older metas. The game's state at any given point is so volatile that the whole game might as well be a draw until somebody actually wins.

I think that happens more at 4k than 3k. I rather have a 3k player on my team than a 4k player.

Makes sense. 4k was the standard account calibration level for a long time, especially once people realized that the buttons when you start a new account actually determined your MMR. 3k is full of those of us who happened to click "I've played RTS's, but not mobas", then didn't bother grinding ranked. We've played for a lot longer even if we still suck, and at least we're not smurfs.

are you me?
losing in shit makes me wanna throw up desu

If I hop on a shooter and play death match and I get a good KDA, I still feel good even if my team loses in the end. But if I play Dota and my team loses, I still feel like shit even if I went godlike. Anyone else relate?