Dota 2

[khel]

Dotabuff.com is shut down and they are trying to get people to spam Valve with emails.

I think they overstepped their boundaries with the DBR. Valve did not want a public rating system, and they may or may not have been very clear about that.

Dotabuff was a great resource and I really liked the new changes they made. I with they would have just made the changes and left the DBR out of it, because seeing the win rate % of certain skill builds on heroes is very interesting to see. They had something great and pushed too far.

They are not truly "shut down," though. They still have all the data they gathered up until this point, but are making people believe they are down and not allowing access to other pages.

From what I've heard its something about them trying to monetize the ranking system through illegal way of getting data. Also, something bout them not wanting to judt use valves webapi for stats and all

 

[Olikan]

Dota 2 just reached a record peak of 261k players ^^
we are very close to beat SC2 at streams...like twitch

 

[Dijeangenie]

Is there any definitive word from Valve on how the matchmaking system actually works? I've looked around the internet but I can't find one.

Does it match you up based on how well you've done in the games you have played/ just how many games you have played - any ideas?

 

[KaOTiK]

Is there any definitive word from Valve on how the matchmaking system actually works? I've looked around the internet but I can't find one.

Does it match you up based on how well you've done in the games you have played/ just how many games you have played - any ideas?

Pretty sure it is done on how well you've played. I was in a game where on my team we had a level 9 and level 10 while everyone else in the game was level 1 or 2. Needless to say, those 2 high levels didn't play any better than anyone else there and were actually really annoying because they thought they knew everything (which made it even funnier that they were playing with us low lvls lol)

 

[Dijeangenie]

Pretty sure it is done on how well you've played. I was in a game where on my team we had a level 9 and level 10 while everyone else in the game was level 1 or 2. Needless to say, those 2 high levels didn't play any better than anyone else there and were actually really annoying because they thought they knew everything (which made it even funnier that they were playing with us low lvls lol)

I was just wondering because I ended up in such a low standard game on my 3rd game vs real people, when the first two were a much higher standard (I went 29-4 as Lich if you want a yardstick, and we lost!)

 

[drebo]

From what I've heard its something about them trying to monetize the ranking system through illegal way of getting data. Also, something bout them not wanting to judt use valves webapi for stats and all

Dotabuff wasn't selling the statistics. They were selling the analysis of the statistics. Very different thing.

Also, Dota 2 is a competitive online game. There SHOULD be public statistics/comparison of players. It infuriates me that there isn't. I want to know how well I'm doing in comparison to other players.

Dotabuff's service would have been great. Valve taking that away is an asshole move that I'm very unhappy with.

The web API was free and open to anyone for whatever information was made available. That dotabuff spent the time to correlate them into a useful metric that Valve doesn't approve of does not make it "illegal."

Dota 2 is completely, 100% anonymous. Privacy concerns are irrelevant, as are comparisons to other companies like Facebook or Linkedin or whatever.

This is just Valve being dickheads.

 

[SockHaser]

Dotabuff wasn't selling the statistics. They were selling the analysis of the statistics. Very different thing.

Also, Dota 2 is a competitive online game. There SHOULD be public statistics/comparison of players. It infuriates me that there isn't. I want to know how well I'm doing in comparison to other players.

Dotabuff's service would have been great. Valve taking that away is an asshole move that I'm very unhappy with.

The web API was free and open to anyone for whatever information was made available. That dotabuff spent the time to correlate them into a useful metric that Valve doesn't approve of does not make it "illegal."

Dota 2 is completely, 100% anonymous. Privacy concerns are irrelevant, as are comparisons to other companies like Facebook or Linkedin or whatever.

This is just Valve being dickheads.

You need to actually research a topic before you sprout off and talk crap.

Dotabuff did not use the webAPI, they basically hacked the client API to get information that they were not suppose to get. Structuring their entire buisness around a hack is incredibly stupid and they shouldn't complain that Valve shut the exploit down.

And how can you give Valve shit for giving each user the option to not share their data? People who still want to share their information still can but those who do not don't have to.

 

[_Rick_]

(I went 29-4 as Lich if you want a yardstick, and we lost!)

What do you expect, if you go in as Lich and kill-steal everything, instead of supporting properly

 

[Zeze]

Dotabuff wasn't selling the statistics. They were selling the analysis of the statistics. Very different thing.

Also, Dota 2 is a competitive online game. There SHOULD be public statistics/comparison of players. It infuriates me that there isn't. I want to know how well I'm doing in comparison to other players.

Dotabuff's service would have been great. Valve taking that away is an asshole move that I'm very unhappy with.

The web API was free and open to anyone for whatever information was made available. That dotabuff spent the time to correlate them into a useful metric that Valve doesn't approve of does not make it "illegal."

Dota 2 is completely, 100% anonymous. Privacy concerns are irrelevant, as are comparisons to other companies like Facebook or Linkedin or whatever.

This is just Valve being dickheads.

I suggest you research further on this at reddit.com/r/dota2.

Valve learned the lesson from HoN & LoL (Dota clones) that showing ELO score public creates a nasty hostile environment. So they've been hiding it on purpose.

Dotabuff comes along and data mines Dota 2, then suddenly decides to release the hidden ELO for everyone to see. AND they want to charge MONEY for the ability to view others'.

Their whole business model is data mining someone's product and trying to make $$ from it- especially the things Valve wants hidden.

Of course they got shut down and everyone supports this decision.

 

[BergeLSU]

I suggest you research further on this at reddit.com/r/dota2.

Valve learned the lesson from HoN & LoL (Dota clones) that showing ELO score public creates a nasty hostile environment. So they've been hiding it on purpose.

Dotabuff comes along and data mines Dota 2, then suddenly decides to release the hidden ELO for everyone to see. AND they want to charge MONEY for the ability to view others'.

Their whole business model is data mining someone's product and trying to make $$ from it- especially the things Valve wants hidden.

Of course they got shut down and everyone supports this decision.

I was fairly neutral on the issue (I used and liked the site) until I saw the blatant lies dotabuff was spewing.

It was never clear that they were using an exploit to datamine their stats, and then tried to get a feeding frenzy against Valve because they pushed too far. Their sensationalism worked, too. drebo became hostile towards Valve without understanding what exactly happened because he read that dotabuff blog entry that "Valve shut down Dotabuff" and believed it word for word.

Valve seemed to be okay with everything Dotabuff did. They knew the risks they were taking. Nothing they had done up to the DBR was legitimate, and they also know Valve didn't want a public rating system (or else they would have implemented one). How can they be upset when they get shut down? It is their own fault.

 

[Chiropteran]

Has there been any real information on what the "exploit" was? It's hard to pick a side here without knowing the details, I've heard of enough lawsuits about hackers stealing valuable information... information which was readily published on a website at the time, with no "hacking" or real "exploit" required to obtain it. I wonder if this is a similar case.

As far as privacy, that seems like a silly thing to worry about. Any public dota 2 game has at least 9 other players, plus potential observers. Any expectation of privacy is foolish, IMO.

 

[blackdogdeek]

Has anyone here tried to play dota2 via wine/linux? How was your experience and what is your setup?

 

[Dijeangenie]

What do you expect, if you go in as Lich and kill-steal everything, instead of supporting properly

Its not my fault if new players don't know to spread out from chain frost!

 

[BergeLSU]

Has there been any real information on what the "exploit" was? It's hard to pick a side here without knowing the details, I've heard of enough lawsuits about hackers stealing valuable information... information which was readily published on a website at the time, with no "hacking" or real "exploit" required to obtain it. I wonder if this is a similar case.

As far as privacy, that seems like a silly thing to worry about. Any public dota 2 game has at least 9 other players, plus potential observers. Any expectation of privacy is foolish, IMO.

Perhaps exploit is the wrong word, but Valve has a TOS, and their method went outside that TOS. Someone on reddit said they were packet sniffing to get the stats/replays.

My guess is that Valve was just not going to bother with any of this while in beta, but their hand was forced. I'm hoping Valve has something in mind that is similar to what Dotabuff+ was, except inside the Dota 2 client.

 

[CrackRabbit]

Pub players can be like herding cats.
I felt like warming up before playing real people and trying out Troll Warlord in a bot game last night. After asking and pleading to group up to push a lane and team fight for the better part of 30 minutes, I gave up.
The only way we won is that I got fed enough that I could kill a tower and barracks from full health in 30 seconds. So while the bots were off murdering the rest of the team one by one I would take a tower, and retreat.
Took a freaking hour.

 

[drebo]

Perhaps exploit is the wrong word, but Valve has a TOS, and their method went outside that TOS. Someone on reddit said they were packet sniffing to get the stats/replays.

My guess is that Valve was just not going to bother with any of this while in beta, but their hand was forced. I'm hoping Valve has something in mind that is similar to what Dotabuff+ was, except inside the Dota 2 client.

So you believe someone on reddit who says they're "packet sniffing", rather than the people who actually wrote the software?

Packet sniffing? Really?

Also, TOS only applies to players of the games. Not people who grab statistics that Valve is publishing.

LOL. Packet sniffing.

 

[BergeLSU]

So you believe someone on reddit who says they're "packet sniffing", rather than the people who actually wrote the software?

Packet sniffing? Really?

Also, TOS only applies to players of the games. Not people who grab statistics that Valve is publishing.

LOL. Packet sniffing.

http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/17b4vh/source_code_for_application_to_scrape_stats_by/

They likely started that way, and found something easier.

The Dotabuff guys did not like the WebAPI, reverse engineered the client and used that instead to parse replays. Valve was probably okay with that until it was used for the DBR, and Valve then closed that hole.

Most of the analysis that was on Dotabuff Friday is still available (hero usage, item usage, win rate using items, common items on heroes). They are actually back up with stats (if you enable it through your Dota settings).

Dotabuff threw a tantrum and wanted the community's support. They didn't get it, so they backed off.

 

[Anonemous]

Pub players can be like herding cats.
I felt like warming up before playing real people and trying out Troll Warlord in a bot game last night. After asking and pleading to group up to push a lane and team fight for the better part of 30 minutes, I gave up.
The only way we won is that I got fed enough that I could kill a tower and barracks from full health in 30 seconds. So while the bots were off murdering the rest of the team one by one I would take a tower, and retreat.
Took a freaking hour.

Bots are easy to manipulate, if you are losing, push a lane with a TP/BoT to their tower, the bots will automatically TP to that tower to defend and you run away. Rinse/repeat. Hopefully, you are gaining lots of gold so you can buy your end game weapons.

 

[CrackRabbit]

Does anyone else feel that the last two heroes added, Troll Warlord and Medusa, are underpowered and need a bit of a buff?

 

[Gunslinger08]

Does anyone else feel that the last two heroes added, Troll Warlord and Medusa, are underpowered and need a bit of a buff?

I've only played Medusa once. She seemed fair enough to me. She's not really a hard carry to me. More of an AoE damage dealer with some pretty good disables. I may play her differently than most people though.

Troll Warlord has a ridiculous ulti for auto-attack heavy teams. I haven't played him since WC3 Dota, so I can't comment on his actual balance.

 

[Chiropteran]

I loved Medusa whenever I got her on random. She seems a little weak early on, but after a lot of farm she is really insane. Overall DPS in a team fight is huge with split arrow, and manaa shield makes her harder to kill than some of the most tanky champions. I never really got a good usage out of her ultimate, but she was strong despite that.

I usually built a soul booster first, into a bloodstone, and then worked on manta style and such. Probably a terrible build, but I've only played her a couple times, and it worked.

 

[BergeLSU]

Up to Jakiro on my A-Z.

Was on my way to a win with him (them?) and my internet went out for the night. I checked the results this morning and my team lost with a 20 kill advantage.


My Faceless Void match has probably been the funniest. I went safe lane with a babysitter against a solo Tide. Not 1 gank. I missed 1 possible cs in the first 8 minutes and just snowballed from there. Got Midas before the 6 minute mark and finished the game in around 32 minutes with 720 gpm. I don't know what the other team was thinking..

What I have learned:

I am awful at Invoker and Huskar
Clockwerk is a lot of fun.
Chaos Knight is incredibly boring when you play multiple matches in a row with him (same build over and over).

 

[TheVrolok]

Troll Warlord has a ridiculous ulti for auto-attack heavy teams. I haven't played him since WC3 Dota, so I can't comment on his actual balance.

He's still a pretty easy pub stomper, especially if combo'd with a good support (wisp, etc.).

 

[CrackRabbit]

I loved Medusa whenever I got her on random. She seems a little weak early on, but after a lot of farm she is really insane. Overall DPS in a team fight is huge with split arrow, and manaa shield makes her harder to kill than some of the most tanky champions. I never really got a good usage out of her ultimate, but she was strong despite that.

I usually built a soul booster first, into a bloodstone, and then worked on manta style and such. Probably a terrible build, but I've only played her a couple times, and it worked.

That was my issue as well, she seemed to need much more farm than other heroes to be able to do well. Maybe I wasn't playing her right though.

I'll have to try that build the next time I play her and see how it goes.

 

[Olikan]

I usually built a soul booster first, into a bloodstone, and then worked on manta style and such. Probably a terrible build, but I've only played her a couple times, and it worked.

it works, but i prefer linkens... gives more damage, enough regen and spell block "kinda" makes up for the lost Ehp.

remember, she needs around 60% more hp than mana to use mana shield well