Game Tech: If you really didn’t have an iota about DOTA...
Last weekend, the eighth annual DOTA 2 championships took place in Vancouver, with over $25m prize money doled out in total. Known only as ‘The International’, this event just keeps getting bigger.
If DOTA (Defence of the Ancients) is a mystery to you, then you’re not alone. Until this weekend, it was largely a mystery to this writer, too.
However, after watching the finals alongside some educated friends, here are some of the things we managed to learn.
1 DOTA is a tug-of-war
In the most basic terms, DOTA is a game of back and forth between two teams of five.
A match can last anywhere between 15 and 90 minutes on average, and during that time the teams are constantly battling each other for ‘gold’ to buy items and for experience to make their characters stronger.
The end goal is to destroy the opposition base, but depending on how that tug-of-war goes, the speed of that outcome can vary hugely.
2 DOTA is speed chess, but the pieces evolve
At the beginning of each match, the five-man teams pick their line-up from a roster of over 100 characters.
While every character can get stronger by acquiring experience and new items, some are designed specifically to be strong in the early stages of a match, while others grow better in the late stages.
For that reason, DOTA is like a game of speed chess where the pieces change as time goes forward, adding another layer of strategy. Do you go for the early win, or try and hold out for a late surge?
3 Mechanical speed isn’t everything
While the ability to click fast and hit keys quickly is important to professional players, teamwork and vision are the more important traits.
During the International finals, it become very clear that timing was king, with many skirmishes between teams won or lost based on decision-making, rather than finger speed.
4 The roster is tons of fun
One of the most surprising elements of DOTA is the imagination on display. It’s the kind of universe that deserves a
Saturday morning cartoon show.
The characters range from a goblin piloting a steampunk helicopter, to a Will-o-the-Wisp, to demonic centaurs to the Monkey King from Asian myth.
Every character has their own abilities and style of play, making it easy to choose favourites.
5 There’s more depth than we thought
Having 100 characters might seem like depth enough, but DOTA is more layered than that. Each character gets new powers as they level up, plus they can buy up to six items as the gold comes in, providing all kinds of bonuses or defences.
In addition, the mixture of characters in any five-man team means those abilities and traits can be combined in any number of ways. As DOTA is a game of percentages, those tiny elements can win or lose a match by a fraction.
6 Playing is very different to watching
Watching DOTA is only a fun spectator experience when you have someone to explain what’s going.
Even then, the screen will often appear to be a blur of explosions and colours and minions, as the ‘observer’ (the cameraman) moves to points of interest.
As a player, however, your vantage is limited to your screen only — and a fog of war obscures your visibility, making teamwork and communication of vitally important.
7 DOTA is the football of eSports
What surprised us most about the International and watching DOTA live was how exciting the game could be. In the semi-final, the eventual winners OG won a game with literally seconds to spare.
Not only that, but the reasons for the victory (a combination of skill and luck) were unique to the moment and not predictable.
At a DOTA party we attended, this resulted in screams of delight from the OG supporters and roars of anger from the opposition fans.
The world of eSports is volatile and it’s hard to predict what games will still be here in five years. Starcraft II disappeared from the face of the earth, for example.
But we’re betting DOTA will still be around — and we might even be playing it ourselves.
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