I will always play the same hero in 'Dota 2' and I'm not sorry.
I will always play the same hero in 'Dota 2' and I'm not sorry
Dota 2 is a complex, strategic multiplayer game with over 120 different playable characters. Combined with their individual catalogues of skills and upgrades, as well as a vast inventory of buyable items, this online battle arena provides players with millions of variables that make each game a unique experience.
Yet despite this endless well of options and opportunities, nine times out of 10 I will choose to play Rylai, the Crystal Maiden. I'm not sorry.
Spending nearly 3,000 hours on just one character isn't exactly how multiplayer online battle arenas such as Dota 2 are intended to be played. (Yes, I have played over 3,000 hours of Dota 2. No, I will not be taking questions at this time.) Though much less exciting, Dota 2's draft process is just as significant and strategic as the game itself. Evaluating how different abilities interact with each other is critical to setting your team up for success, as it should inform which of the game's 122 heroes you'll choose to play.
For example, if your opponents have chosen invisible characters like Riki or Clinkz, you might pick a hero such as Zeus or Slardar, who reveal invisible units. It is therefore customary to assess both your teammates' and opponents' lineups when choosing your character, and inadvisable to select the same hero in every single game.
However, this piece of Dota 2 wisdom ignores one very important fact: I do not care. I want to be a shiny snow queen with sparkly frost magic, and I will make it work.
Crystal Maiden is, in Dota 2 terms, a relatively simple character to play. Think of her like Elsa from Disney's Frozen, only less singing and more homicide. An Intelligence hero, Crystal Maiden's strength is in her powerful ice-based magical abilities rather than frankly unimpressive physical damage and health. Designed to support other heroes like an overqualified supernatural babysitter, her talents lie in slowing enemies and freezing them in place while simultaneously buffing allies to help them deal the killing blow.
It doesn't sound like a particularly glorious job on paper. Why be an accessory to murder when you could do the deed yourself? But, like all Dota 2 heroes, playing Crystal Maiden can become a glorious task when skilfully conducted. There's nothing like the thrill of hurling yourself into the middle of a losing fight and immediately turning the tide, slowing and damaging all enemies around you so your teammates can clean them up.
"Think of her like Elsa from Disney's "Frozen," only less singing and more homicide.
Rylai is also very pretty, particularly as I've equipped her with a $34.99 virtual dress which not only makes her float and sparkle, but also gives her a puppy. This is equally as important.
There are most definitely heroes who could easily cut my Crystal Maiden's life into pieces before I can even blink. But through my commitment to sparkle maiden I have become accustomed to such obstacles and know how to deftly navigate them. Having literally spent thousands of hours playing one character grants practical skills and knowledge that act as a considerable counterbalance to any natural disadvantages against certain heroes.
Experience can't always completely offset this gap. Even so, picking an objectively weak hero for an unfavourable lineup could be considered similar to attempting a no-hit run of Dark Souls — a difficult but not insurmountable challenge. You may be a fast-striking Phantom Assassin, but if my Crystal Maiden blinks away before you can hit me then that means nothing.
Of course, Dota 2 is a multiplayer game, and you have to keep in mind that suboptimal hero selection can make the experience less enjoyable for your teammates. A poorly played Techies, for example, can make the minelaying goblin more of an irritation than assistance. As such, it's important to be considerate of your teammates, and to flag exactly who you're going to pick early on so that everyone can plan their own choices accordingly.
But if you aren't gaming competitively, why spend your limited recreational time playing a second choice hero? If you're playing a character you are comfortable with and find fun, you're much more likely to have a good time whether you win or lose. You're arguably more likely to win as well. Even professional esports team OG won the multimillion dollar Dota 2 International in 2018 by prioritising heroes they enjoyed playing over what might have theoretically been better for the draft.
Regardless of the video game, choosing the options that will make you happiest is always the purest way to play. Like constructing a team of Pokémon based solely on how cute they are, or cheap shotting creatures in Breath of the Wild, or repeatedly murdering your husbands in The Sims 4, I contend that my monogamous approach to Dota 2 is no less valid than any other playstyle.
Technically, you could stop me from playing Crystal Maiden. You could be a big ol' Scrooge and ban my favourite magical girl during the draft, preventing anyone at all from playing her. Alternatively, you could pick Crystal Maiden before me, forcing me to begrudgingly choose some other, less personally coveted hero as my inadequate consolation prize.
But know that if you do this, I will make the next 20-45 minutes a misery for you. I will hound you at every available opportunity, hunting you down like Ahab and the whale, and you shall know no peace. And once this game ends, I will go straight back to picking her. You are just borrowing her form, a transitory visitor who will soon move on. I am become Rylai, the Crystal Maiden, and I want my skin back.
The point of video games is to facilitate joy, and if I find it soothing to play the same comfortable persona for hours on end, then nobody has any right to make me stop. The world is already stressful enough without forcing our downtime to fit into arbitrary rules decided by others. Rewatch your favourite television show. Replay your favourite song. Choose your favourite video game character every time without shame.
It might not be considered the right way to play. But there is no wrong way to have fun.
More in Gaming
Dota 2 > League of Legends
ReplyDeleteLMAO
Delete"I want to be a sparkly magical girl."
ReplyDeleteBy words like that, you can tell that the person who wrote it obviously doesn't play dota 2.
DeleteWinter Wyvern > ALL
ReplyDeleteThis AI had one mission. To get extremely good at DOTA. It had a crazy amount of time to learn from it 24/7 without breaks. Of course it's gonna get better than a pro gamer, because human beings don't have one single mission in life. We have so many other things to attend to. It goes without saying it's gonna get better when it has more time to learn. Goes for human beings as well really. If one invests more time into learning something than others, the one will get better at it than the others.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely fascinating, honestly when the pro player said he saw the bot do something and he thought "why aren't we doing that?" It was just crazy to me, years of work and in 6 months they copy it
ReplyDeleteThe main advantage is that AI never makes 'mistakes'. It might occasionally do something that doesn't work in its favour, but it definitely won't have done it by accident. Compare this to even the best humans who are bound to slip up now and again, and it's inevitable the AI will win, especially in a game as finely tuned as Dota, where early advantages snowball into huge advantages later on; where one mistake can entirely change the course of the game.
ReplyDeleteI think there isn't nearly enough computing power in this world to support a 5v5 AI team"
ReplyDeleteLiterally not even 1 year later...
I would LIke to see how the AI reacted to cheaters, unlevel playing field, and unfair play. See how the program reacts to the realities of life.
ReplyDeleteThis could evolve strategy in game significantly imagine creating an ai that is able to solve and adapt to every scenario and develop it's own play style and strategies that it uses to succeed if you used even a snippet of the knowledge it could gain in a year you could be the best player in the world.
ReplyDeleteAn AI has a vast amount of processing power and can train for as long as it is allowed to train. AI also can execute commands at a perfect timing which humans clearly can't. So in all way AI can become unbeatable in this game. Additional point is AI will always stay cool even if the hero dies but a human player will become nervous which will affect his/her skills.
ReplyDeleteIt’ll be really scary when they can create professional bot teams. The level of processing and decision making needed for that will create far more implications on the real world
ReplyDeleteI would love to see the police on Need For Speed learn how to capture you using AI. That would make the chases VERY entertaining and it would make high-level police genuinely difficult to escape.
ReplyDeleteI think to make this a lot more fair there should be 250 milliseconds of latency either from the bot to the controls or from the screen to the bot.
ReplyDeleteThat way reaction time is not at issue and the butt can't take advantage of tricks that depend on extremely fast reaction speeds
I'm curious on how the bot learns and utilizes baiting, when its experiences are against itself. I understand they can place a copy of the bot against itself, but I would assume that the bot would know immediately when it could and couldn't trade successful and when it could guarantee a kill, not to mention with perfect skill usage, two identical heroes should basically kill each other.
ReplyDeleteAI has always had the mechanical advantage. What they lack is intuition and judgement. In a 5v5, the human players will be always have the advantage and its where they should win (at least for the time being)
ReplyDeleteI love this because it means in the future of gaming single player will be harder than multiplayer.
ReplyDeleteImagine implementing this type of technology into real life combat, able to surpass snipers who have been in the field for years and does better in a couple months.
ReplyDelete(Yes, I have played over 3,000 hours of Dota 2. No, I will not be taking questions at this time.)
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"only less singing and more homicide" LMAO
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20738
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