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The "zoning" myth vs. the reality of pro-level skill

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
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Nope the first WCG to feature Dota 1 or 2 was in 2012. Neither it nor League was an Esport until Warcraft 3 was nearly a decade old - not a fair comparison.
DotA was at WCG Asia in 2006 and was at Blizcon for multiple years. Had multiple competitive leagues since 2004 (ESL, ICG, etc) and major international tournaments. Was at Dreamhack as early as 2007, etc. Part of the reason IceFrog is so revered is that he was balancing AllStars for competitive/tournament play.

DotA was both in CAL and was featured by the CPL, the original big esports organization and league.

DotA was an Esport whether you like it or not. Esports is simply bigger now than it was back then.

https://dota2.gamepedia.com/History_of_Competitive_DotA_(Violent_AOE:_The_6.32_Era)
https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Dota_History/Part_2
https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Dota_History/Part_3
https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Dota_History/Part_4
https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Dota_History/Part_5
 
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God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
DotA was at WCG Asia in 2006 and was at Blizcon for multiple years. Had multiple competitive leagues since 2004 (ESL, ICG, etc) and major international tournaments. Part of the reason IceFrog is so revered is that he was balancing AllStars for competitive/tournament play.

DotA was in both CAL and the CPL, the original big esports organization and league.

DotA was an Esport whether you like it or not. Esports is simply bigger now than it was back then.

https://dota2.gamepedia.com/History_of_Competitive_DotA_(Violent_AOE:_The_6.32_Era)
https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Dota_History/Part_2
https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Dota_History/Part_3
Being played there doesn't mean it had a tournament

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Cyber_Games click on the history tab.

Warcraft 3 had WAY more players than Dota, it only began to eclipse WC3 in popularity around when it was released as a stand alone - in a different decade. I don't understand what possible measurement you are using in which Dota can possibly count as an eSport, but Warcraft 3, a game with way more players which is literally required to play Dota to begin with, is dead.

"whether you like it or not" lol I don't like it or dislike it, that doesn't make sense. We are talking about the history of a game. What is there to dislike?
 

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
Being played there doesn't mean it had a tournament

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Cyber_Games click on the history tab.

Warcraft 3 had WAY more players than Dota, it only began to eclipse WC3 in popularity around when it was released as a stand alone - in a different decade. I don't understand what possible measurement you are using in which Dota can possibly count as an eSport, but Warcraft 3, a game with way more players which is literally required to play Dota to begin with, is dead.

"whether you like it or not" lol I don't like it or dislike it, that doesn't make sense. We are talking about the history of a game. What is there to dislike?

Dreamhack, CPL, ESL, WCG Asia, ESL, ASUS etc... That's literally the bedrock of esports. Read through the history I posted -- it's mentioned constantly as an esport. I'm not saying you dislike DotA, but it seems like you dislike the idea of it actually having been an esports title long before 2012. It was.
 
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God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.

Dreamhack, CPL, ESL, WCG Asia, ESL, etc... That's literally the bedrock of esports. Read through the history I posted -- it's mentioned constantly as an esport. I'm not saying you dislike DotA, but it seems like you dislike the idea of it actually having been an esports title long before 2012.
Well it really depends on what your measure of eSports is. If "anything with a tournament scene" is an eSport, then yes it's obviously been an eSport. The point is that it was still smaller than Warcraft 3. I was responding directly to a post stating this:

Same for Warcraft being dead while what was the cheap version (lol/dota) being a worldwide esport.
and you saw this context when you quoted me. It's quite clear he was referring to the big, million dollar online games as eSports. If not his post makes absolutely no sense, because WC3 is still being played with money tournaments right now. I was referring to eSports in the context in which it was presented, and you saw this context when you initially responded. If you cared about correcting the history you would be correcting the guy who said this.


"it seems like you dislike the idea of it actually having been an esports title long before 2012."

No, I don't, and that makes absolutely no sense. Why would anyone dislike that? What is the personal investment there to care about anything other than getting it right? lol. Seems like you're just doing the ol Crimson special and gaslighting anyone you disagree with.
 

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
Well it really depends on what your measure of eSports is. If "anything with a tournament scene" is an eSport, then yes it's obviously an eSport. I was responding directly to a post stating this:
It's not "Anything with a tournament scene". The scene was literally called "DotA esports". It was major international competition and had sponsored events featured by several of the organizations that *are* the genesis of modern esports (CPL/CAL, ESL, Dreamhack, WCG, etc.). There are even surviving esports organizations that had teams (like comLexity).

It is what it is.



 

God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
That's fine, the only thing I'm contesting was that Dota was an eSport IF your definition is "multi million dollar tournament game" as the guy I was responding to was quite clearly saying. I took the context in which it was used and responded to it as such, many people think of eSports as only the 5 or so biggest games at any point, and the guy I responded to was doing so - or else in what universe is Warcraft 3 not also a worldwide eSport? Defence of the Ancients only started to eclipse Warcraft 3 when the game was nearly a decade old.
 

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
did you play many of the RTS's? excited for WC3 reforged? I haven't been this hyped for a game in a long time.
Mainly Starcraft (the original). Other than that I was super into FPS's at that time. But I think it's pretty awesome that we live in a time period where the audience is so big that so many passion/nostalgia projects are coming to fruition.. WC3 Reforged, WoW Classic, Starcraft: Remastered, FF7 remake, RE2 Remake, etc.

It's an awesome time to be a gamer -- we get the best of both the new stuff and the old.
 

God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
A $700,000 tournament was just announced for WC3 which is awesome.

Dota is obviously much bigger nowadays - but my only point is that this is not a fair comparison as it's a different era. Surely we can agree on that @CrimsonShadow . I wasn't trying to imply it wasn't a true eSport back when it was grassroots and before it got a release - just that by the time it became this multi million dollar showstopper, WC3 was around a decade gone.
 
Fortnite is extremely high APM when playing well. You can coast by without doing it but you will lose to someone who is.
Never said it's mechanically easy at high levels. But the skill difference needed in being constantly successful is very high.
I used to like the Magic card game, but quitted it cause frustrating little randomness. Me and my friend actually go to a local torunament once per month and i play one of his decks and we always make top3 and get moneys (in form of new cards or mangas) just coz skill difference. But when we play with each other the results are very very random. Same when you go at a bigger event, you know that there are certain skilled worldwide famous guys that generally you don't want to face, expect them to do very well, but if they don't even make top8 you won't be surprised at all cause it's Magic. So i understand what do you mean even while not being a Fortnite player. Just played it twice, once died like instantly and the other time i was like top3 cause was hiding in some thing for 10/15 minutes and killing people who would come close LOL
I mean, am i really better than 97 people? I don't think so. With them same 99 people would i constantly come top3? No, but that happened in that game. And imho it's bullshit competitively wise. While very funny casually wise so i understand why it's cool.

This one doesn't make a whole lot of sense man. Warcraft 3 was heaps popular. 6 million sales all up, and one of the OG games to get a proper competitive scene. And spawned one of the most successful games ever in WoW.
Injustice 2 was relatively popular too. We are discussing why the general sentiment of casuals heads in a certain direction.
The main point is that is hard to make something hard to master and balanced at the same time for the pro scene, cause then certain stuff will happen in the lower skill levels. Example Injustice 2 was pretty balanced but bad/average players would complain about zoning cause they had no idea how to deal with it. But do they know how to deal with a Black Canary? Neither. So as a developer i guess it's hard to make everyone happy. Both casuals and competitive players/fan that want a cool deep game.
We all might agree that MKX was very rushdown based, again, people would win by mashing 50/50. But are we forgetting all the hate messages you would get when winning against a guy that can't deal with a single projectile ''spam''? On I2 when i would see a guy couldn't deal with projectiles i would play rushdown for fun and generally that player would not be unable to respond to that too (even to garbage zoning oriented pgs).

League of Legends was released almost a decade afterwards, and Dota came after even that, of course WC3 is going to be dead by then.
My post is unrelated to the actual release of the games. Did you play WC3 back then? At some point it was easier to get a decent DotA game on custom mode than an actual WC3 game. The crippling started there, with DotA making big moves in the competitive scene too in various big name cups that CrimsonShadow mentioned already. Imagine for a mod to get that sort of support. And it wasn't even that unbalanced cause in a single moment you had various different elo lobbies too. So yea, it was pretty popular already while not having support and being a totally secondary thing in a sea of secondary custom maps.
Good part of the new/newer playerbase would always play that to relax and not deal with 100+ apm, etc.

In no sense i'm dissing those games tho, the skillset required, while less fancy, it's still very deep. And as a team game there's always some little randomness but it's what makes team games more enjoyable i guess. I actually wish some other wc3 custom mods had support and became real games, there were crazy fun things to play.

there's no way that's true. It does not take more than a few matches to get "basic knowledge of game fundamentals. Even low level on games of Dota the majority of people seem to understand basic game fundamentals, it's the higher level stuff and....
In my opinion, in a teamgame (2+ players) there's certain basic fundamentals that you need to know if you want to actually play competitive and win, instead of just pressing buttons and having fun.
If you play below Plat (5 or 4 depending if we consider G5/P5/D5/etc boosted noobs or not) you will see the lack of certain very basic things:
-no proper jungler tracking: getting ganked in obvious moments and complaining often (you will meet people with 0 vision score at 15 mins)
-no proper team comp: played on adc smurf in G3 a month or so ago, at least one third of the games one side had a full AD comp and wondering why they lose, and from G3 up its like 30% of the best players lmao
-no match up knowledge: they literally don't know when they should or shouldn't fight against their laner. It's like not knowing when to respect someone in a FG or doing a combo that does 20% dmg instead of 33%. I consider that pretty much fundamental
It might seem exagerated but if you actually think about it it's true, all of that starts somewhere in plat that the 10-15% best players of the game.
And consider that you see actual mechanics in Diamond (1.2%) and a master/challenger will still tell you that you are very bad, have zero macro, no match up knowledge and horrible decision making.

Let's be honest. If we had an actual skill breakdown in, let's say, Mortal Kombat we can bet that at least half of the people playing would not be respecting frames and stuff. They didn't take the time to learn the very basics, so are they allowed to complain? Maybe not, but they are the vast majority so gotta deal with it somehow if we wanna sell the copie$$$. Either with cool single player modes or with a more randomized online experience.


[QUOTE]questionable play decisions that hold them back.
[/QUOTE]
Well we can't balance dumb people i guess LOL In team games will make you mad, but sometimes the opponents will have the dumb guy too, you know, randomness can be a blessing too :p