The report and commend system seems to have lessened that kind of behaviour, although not eliminated it entirely. (Lord knows that I still see the word "faggot" used way too often.)
Wondering when you'd get around to him. Hooray for Blast and Reviver Seeds!
Now wait till you get to the first rival team. That's when the game starts getting downright vindictive.
Like I said, you can expect to finish the game around level 30 or so. But for what it's worth, levels mean a lot less than they usually do, and a lv30 still unevolved hero could whup his lv50 ass pretty easily -- which would be absurd in just about any other Pokemon game.
By the end of the game I was Waterfalling for over 100 apiece, and by the time I was fighting a boss I was usually ignoring type disadvantages, attacking twice a turn, running at least one constant Attack boost, or all of the above. And then my first move would be Swords Dance (which can also double-move) + partner's Light Screen.
I think hero + partner have way higher growth rates than everyone else too. A level on everyone else usually gives me 1 point in a handful of stats, but on them it's almost always 1-2 of just about everything, in addition to all the performance enhancing drugs you'll inevitably hoard for yourself.
I'd say so in most cases, but I like the axe moveset and mobility better, and previous games provided a better power balance between them. Still weighted in favour of sword mode, but some options were really strong in axe mode (particularly status effects). In MH4U, the Deviljho axe is supremely imbalanced on paper but its dragon phial is a minor fringe benefit, and and lacking the power phial bonus, its "overpowered" axe mode remained balanced.
So much of the weapon's depth is in axe mode, and I hate to see that depth wasted by a further shift towards switch axes that want to stay in sword mode all the time.
defense of the ancients 2, the video game on steam
Actually it's literally just "Dota" now.
The name itself, though, as well as the format, do originally come from "Defense of the Ancients", a (mini?)game that one can play in Warcraft 3.
They usually don't treat it as an acronym any more, but there are exceptions. Like one of things you can buy in the store or on the Steam market to help them make money on this free to play game is packs that replace the default announcer with various other people. (This includes not only characters from the game, but GLaDOS, Rick and Morty, the narrator from The Stanley Parable, the narrator from Trine, Rucks from Bastion, General Fletcher from Defense Grid, Dr. Kleiner from Half-Life 2, and a pirate captain from no game in particular who just says piratey stuff in a piratey way.)
Anyway, Crystal Maiden (one of the pickable heroes) just had an announcer pack released. If the other team is attacking your Ancient (a big building on either side of the field for each team; if yours is destroyed, you lose the game), then her line is "Defent your Ancient! It's kind of the name of the game!"
I heard from a friend that it has a toxic community and it alienated him. I read the previous page and... I see what he means now.
I was made aware of it through reading Nerf Now!! After several strips I decided to find out what this Dota thing was, and one of the places I asked was TV Tropes, when I was still on there of course.
Anyway, everybody in the thread told me to go in expecting the worst, with some people telling me not to even bother. At the time, I decided I should probably stay away.
But eventually I decided to give it a try.
My first ever match teaming with other people and playing against a team of bots (set to Easy) did have one enormous asshole on the team who was constantly insulting me and telling me to uninstall the game and kill myself and other shit like that. I had braced myself for that kind of thing, but it was still amazing how angry he was getting. In fact, it's even more amazing in retrospect, because after I played more I discovered that usually NOBODY gets angry in matches against bots. And of the small number that do, an even tinier fraction of those will get upset if somebody on their team is playing badly but they are still winning the game. We did win, so I have no idea what that guy's problem was.
Anyway, I went into matches after that expecting more of the same, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that nobody else was as abusive as that first guy, or very abusive at all, really; these were bot matches, after all.
I gradually queued for higher difficulty matches, against Medium bots and then Hard bots. But we all know how Artificial Stupidity works, so I was worried that I'd do bad againt real people and end up costing my team the game.
One day I finally decided to take another plunge and play an actual five-people-against-five-other-people game. And as it turned out, I actually did better in that game than I was doing against the bots I'd been playing with. So it turned out I was ready.
I had some bad games after that, unsurprisingly, and there was a learning curve. And to be honest, I'd say that in any given match there's like a 20% chance that I'll end up with someone on my team who acts like a dick, whether it's just saying "you suck" once or twice, or whether it's a lot worse than that.
The reason I say that I think it's gotten better (although that may not be saying much) is because you get to report people for communication abuse, and that's what I do whenever somebody on my team or the other one so much as insults somebody else a single time. You get like 6 reports per week to use. If it were as bad as it was at launch, then I'd use up my 6 reports very quickly. But I often go entire matches without anybody getting abusive and I often finish a week with reports left. Also, it seems that Valve usually does punish people who get too many reports, since when I've reported people I often get a message later on that they did take action against the player.
(The report system, unfortunately, can be abused; in the beginning there were people who would report their teammates just for sucking, and even now I see people typing "Report Lycan, he sucked" or whatever. But it seems like these days most people don't bother. Seems like that to me, anyway, since I've had people asking everybody to report me when I've had a bad game, yet I've never gotten enough reports that I was penalized for it. And while I'd LIKE to be able to say that this is because I've had very few bad games and that I'm unstoppable, that would sadly be untrue.)
If worse comes to worst and I have a teammate who I absolutely can't stand to listen to, then I can always mute them.
TL;DR: It's worth a try if experience has taught you that you can just shrug off verbal abuse in other multiplayer games, and worth staying away from if experience in other games has taught you otherwise.
Last brief bit of advice if anybody does try the game: Ranked Mode can really take a toll on your sanity. It did on mine, which is why I don't play it any more. Some of the cooler people I've teamed with have responded to my apology when I screw up with "Ah, don't worry about it, it's not like we're playing Ranked or anything." People in Ranked are generally much less forgiving.
@KilgoreTrout thanks for the commentary! I have a friend who is or at least used to be really into it, and she was trying to get me to play the game, and I downloaded it...but never got around to it because I was too busy with other stuff lol. But I was indeed considering it, at least at one point in time.
Though at the moment I'm slightly more likely to play Heroes of the Storm because I have another friend who's wanted me to get into playing it with him, and I've actually played like a handful of matches with him.
Meanwhile, I've seen how uptight and high-anxiety ranked players can be, thanks to seeing them post quite frequently on the main Steam forums. This is why I avoid competitive gaming.
@GMH: You're welcome! You might actually have a better time in HotS; I haven't played it, but I've heard good things.
@Jane: I was actually surprised to read that, since I think Wraith King's the simplest hero to play. That's because you only have one spell to figure out how to use, and three passives. You have a stun, a passive lifesteal, a passive that makes you crit, and automatically being resurrected as your ult (provided you have enough mana left).
@bee how do I deal with moves that deal 50 damage to everyone in the room
Say hi to the rival team for me.
Bring Pancham and give him a Barrage emera if you can. Work Up and Arm Thrust is crazy good this early. Pack a Petrify Orb, Slumber Orb/Wands, and plenty of Reviver Seeds (in general, bring more Reviver Seeds in this game than in other PMDs). Take a Pure Seed too if you have one -- warping to the back stairs makes for a good breather in a pinch. Feed everyone a couple Oran Berries beforehand to boost max HP -- if everyone can survive one AOE, it means your seeds last twice as long.
Start with Petrify Orb, and disable all of Pancham's moves except Work Up. If you have any buffs yourself, now's the time.
I think the two that AOE are Trapinch and Drifblim or something. Target one, and beat the shit out of him with Alliance spam, then move down the line. Keep the AOE monsters asleep.
Keep Pounce/Surround wands on hand. If/when you start running into random monsters with room AOE or attacks with no max range like Hydro Pump, it can either get your allies into position for a quick kill, or you can shoot it backward into a tunnel to warp to the wall where it bends around (and thus out of the room).
Dilemma: Adept Switch Axe is really fun, but having access to only one hunter art means I can't do Demon Riot + Energy Charge.
(Demon Riot puts you into sword mode, boosts your damage by... 30% I think, but constantly drains your phial, prevents you from filling your phial, and ends when your phial is empty. Energy Charge is a 100% phial refill.)
I think the thing that took me the longest to figure out compared to as much good as it would have done early on...wands are all ranged without limit. If you need to snipe someone across a big room with confuse or petrify or something, do it.
Something MonHun really needs to sort out: How they start off. MH4U had you do a ton of gathering and kill small monsters quests early on, whilst MHG kinda goes way off in the other direction and goes "collect some mushrooms, kill a maccao, ok you're good now go kill this cephadrome."
I think Bloodborne is one of the best Lovecraft games of all time, largely because you spend the first half of the entire game thinking it's a gothic horror action game.
Comments
the fuck
was that salamence
how did I even beat that
I AM AT LEVEL 15
GAME
GAME
WHAT R U DOIN
that's
something?
unbalanced
this really is a slice-of-life anime....
that may actually just end up being one of my favorite video game experiences ever just die to the unexpectedness and ridiculousness
I still dunno what DOTA is.
The name itself, though, as well as the format, do originally come from "Defense of the Ancients", a (mini?)game that one can play in Warcraft 3.
Though at the moment I'm slightly more likely to play Heroes of the Storm because I have another friend who's wanted me to get into playing it with him, and I've actually played like a handful of matches with him.
Meanwhile, I've seen how uptight and high-anxiety ranked players can be, thanks to seeing them post quite frequently on the main Steam forums. This is why I avoid competitive gaming.
The fandom is distracting and often annoying.
I'm kinda vaguely enjoying The Asterisk War lately and I can't keep thoughts of the hatedom from going through my head.
I'm playing Mighty No. 9 on Steam and people message me to ask me how much it sucks.
Quite frankly, I hate enjoying something but having no one to share that experience with.
also @Odradek, thanks for reminding me about Terranigma. I should finish playing it. It's an amazing game.
regardless the advice is infinitely appreciated
(Demon Riot puts you into sword mode, boosts your damage by... 30% I think, but constantly drains your phial, prevents you from filling your phial, and ends when your phial is empty. Energy Charge is a 100% phial refill.)
ass ass ass ass ass ass ass
ass