Unity Game Lamb Knife vs. Pendragon: What DotA did right

"Dog planing Learning net Zhuangao, reproduced please specify the source" Dog Planing Learning Network reports/esports and Moba has become a very hot in the industry in recent years, according to riot Games published data show that 2014 "League of Heroes" S4 Korea finals at the peak of the simultaneous viewing of the number of 11.2 million people, According to SuperData in October 2014, "League of Legends" Revenue will exceed $1.1 billion in 2014 years. There is no doubt that the League of Legends and the esports and Moba have achieved world-class success. However, when it comes to all this, it is believed that everyone knows how the DotA map contributes to this, and that it is because of the foundation of DotA that the global electric race is now hugely successful and influential. In the middle of 2003, a developer named Eul wrote a map called DotA for Warcraft 3, and later the Lamb knife was expanded on the basis of its content and gameplay, renamed DotA Allstar, after a significant increase in the number of players, Pendragon is responsible for creating the DotA community. With the game content increasing and the size of the team limited, the Lamb Knife in 2005 to the DotA map work to the Ice Frog to do (after 6.10 version), their own focus on game optimization. Then in 2009, both the Pendragon and the Riot Games, and the ice frog joined the valve in 2009 to create DotA 2. And in November 2013, Blizzard Chief system Designer Ghost Crab (Ghostcrawler) also announced to join Riot Games. recently, the Dog planing Learning Network has turned to Steve Feak (Guinsoo, a DotA5 before the map creator) and Steve Mescon (Pendragon, DotA All-Star map creator, a blog published in March 2009, blog post the origins and development of DotA, detailing the strengths and weaknesses of DotA. Lamb Knife (right)At that time, just joined riot games of the Lamb knife in the release of this blog post may not think, after more than 4 years, there is a DotA-based MOBA game can reach 67 million of the monthly active user volume, The game, released 7 years ago, has finally become a world-class masterpiece, driving the development of global esports and Moba games, and the contributions of Eul, sheep knives, Pendragon, ice frogs, and countless other volunteers who have participated in the development of DotA maps are indelible. Here's a complete blog post on the Dog Planing Learning Network (the original lamb Knife and Pendragon co-authored by two people):since its launch in 2004, DotA has surpassed tens of thousands of players to become the most popular game of all time. Since Blizzard's "Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne" Free editor launched, each new version of DotA has experienced the hard work of hundreds of community volunteers. The origins of DotADotA is an online multiplayer game map that supports up to 10 players for 5V5, with computer-controlled monsters in the map, each player controlling a hero, killing local heroes and wild monsters to gain experience and resources to purchase items and upgrade hero skills. The game winning condition is to destroy each other's main base, the game is usually based on online or local area network (LAN) to fight, the average game duration of about an hour or so. inspired by the very popular StarCraft map Aeon of Strife, the first version of DotA was originally released in the middle of 2003, when the creator's pseudonym Eul. In Eul's original DotA map, players have 32 heroes to choose from, with 39 items available, and players who need to control a hero and can bring up to 6 items to fight. This map is a first step towards the creation of a later DotA map and the success of today's Moba games. on May 29, 2003, Blizzard officially released the "Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne" documentary, adding a new set of features, including an improved map editor. This new editor provides map creators with more options for customizing items, skills, models, and more. With the help of the new tools, many items were created on the original DotA map, including the "Guinsoo" Feak (hereinafter referred to as the Lamb knife) produced by the DotA All-Star. At the beginning, the sheep knife began to develop the DotA all-Star, because he was in the original DotA map version of the game encountered bug and balance problems, which at the time is also one of the most important DotA map. His initial idea was not to start a huge project, but simply to make a more interesting version for himself and his friends to experience. After the initial changes were successfully completed, he found himself more and more interested in developing the map, and then the Lamb knife decided to start expanding its own DotA all-Star map. What are the right things that the DotA team has done? 1. Diversity of contentIt was quickly realized that the key to the success of DotA was the repeatability of the gameplay, although the engine and tools were limited, and the deep development of the lamb Knife for the DotA map was one of the most popular determinants of the map. He is mainly testing the game play the fun, and to add more options for the game, and on this basis, the new items further integration with the play. The lamb knife adds new items to the DotA map very quickly, and each new hero adds to the repeatability of gameplay. Heroeswhen the Lamb Knife released his final version of DotA, there were 69 completely different heroes at the time, and the players were playing more than 300 million times with 5v5 on his map. The addition of each new hero adds new possibilities for game matching, adding new heroes to increase gameplay depth and game life without having to hold large company resources. According to the Lamb knife revealed that at that time the idea of a new hero from his many good friends, community forums, volunteer testers and other channels, the hero's name is also influenced by a lot of popular factors, such as popular animation, magic, comics and so on. Itemsin DotA, items were launched initially to create more ways for players to customize their heroes in the game. However, in the initial version of DotA, it takes a long time for players to set up ' best items ' for their characters to fill the inventory in a game, and even a lot of game gold coins are not consumed before the game is over. Therefore, the lamb knife feel that the role of the available items are very necessary, so that players in the beginning of the game can choose to compare inexpensive items, the game to the middle of the time can choose medium-term equipment, later can choose high-priced items. Unfortunately, the problem with simply increasing the number of items is that many players then find that if you want to buy premium items, you need to sell low-grade items and sell at half price, which means half the effort is wasted. Because many players feel obliged to sell and buy new items to replace the unattractive, the lamb knife feels it is very necessary to create an item synthesis system to solve this problem. This allows players to purchase inexpensive items at an early stage and then add some money to synthesize intermediate and premium items. The advantage of this is that the resources that players get during the game are always useful, and they provide the impetus for players to pursue more advanced items. Boss Map Roshanin the 4.0a version, the Lamb Knife added Roshan as the boss in the game map, controlled by the computer and required the entire team to work together to kill. Defeating Roshan can bring experience and items to your team, but during the battle your defenses are in an unguarded state, so it's a potentially dangerous option for a team to choose whether to hit the boss for resources or to keep towers. a bowling ball called Roshan.If your opponent realizes that you're hitting bosses, they can choose to surround your players (and steal Roshan) and choose to destroy your critical defenses. As a significant resource for the progress of DotA games, Roshan's name is actually derived from the bowling of a lamb knife. With so many variations in play, the game also has some balance problems, because the tools available are limited, the game balance adjustment must be based on their own direct observation and timely feedback from the players. Each version is balanced, and the only criterion he can judge is to see if the players are still complaining. 2. Focus on PvP battlesIn the original version of the DotA map, the greatest fun in the game is not the battle between heroes, but the computer-controlled wild monsters. The first thing that the lamb knife did when he developed the DotA in depth was to observe which gameplay was the most interesting and reproducible. He quickly realized that the most interesting part of the game did not have to be to let one of the players push off the other side's defense tower and the main base, but the PvP battle. in this conclusion, the sheep knife began to quickly transfer the game from the previous PvE strategy to PvP play. Killing your own creeps is still a viable option, but the hero who kills the place becomes more fulfilling and rewarding, so the Lamb knife provides the game map with an update designed to enhance the appeal of PvP combat, including: Kill local heroes to gain more experience and gold coins; add Virtual tournament sound, Make it more fulfilling to kill players, increase the death penalty, make the team a key factor in determining the game, add value-added props, design a hero with less summon or control skills, and change to a single injury or stun. focusing on PvP fighting is also one of the necessary factors for DotA to enter the world of esports. DotA has been involved in a number of global events, including Blizzard Carnival, Asian esports Championship, esports amateur league, esports World Cup, WCG and many more. 3. A strong communityThe biggest challenge for the DotA community at first was the scale issue, and if the Blizzard network was a pond, then DotA was just one of the small fish. To alleviate this situation, the Lamb knife creates an official channel for DotA players to gather, and they can discuss the latest map changes with each other and can team up to play together. These basic work created a very good community for early enthusiasts, and this is the foundation for the success of all virtual products. These and their charismatic players have attracted a large number of new players to the game and brought a large number of users to the community, providing basic marketing conditions for multiplayer games such as DotA to succeed. at the end of the day, as a DotA all-star Map editor, I (Pendragon) launched the official Community website (www.dota-allstars.com), a new website that will allow all players around the world to gather together to discuss game maps and communication, Make suggestions for future versions, share game videos, and find like-minded players in the community. The community site was launched to create a strong sense of cohesion among players, and it really helped people define themselves as DotA players, which was very important to the success of DotA. 4. "Warcraft 3" engine and map toolsas a game map, the key advantage of DotA as a complete game is the tools provided by Warcraft 3, an extremely powerful tool that allows us to quickly develop and modify content. The Goat knife and his team don't have to worry about creating models, stickers, map elements (tilesets), because everything is available in the Toolset, so the team can focus on what they do best, that is, game play. 5. Small research and development and testing teamThe participation of volunteers is very important in promoting the success of DotA. The entire map creation team, including the Sheep knife, is a volunteer, which gives the team the advantage that many companies envy. as a team manager, sheep knives don't have to worry about the players ' lack of motivation because they do dota maps because they're passionate, and everyone wants the game to be successful and more acceptable because they want to make their hard-to-make games a success or a popular one. the team also had no business needs, no need to worry about deadlines and no need to consider joining a business model, no marketing team, no producers, and no executives who needed to be supervised. So the whole team can focus on gameplay without worrying about project management, daily meetings and the like. such a small team, and only one captain, means that the game's modification process can be very fast, fast adjustment and content publishing is also one of the key factors of DotA success. If team members find a bug in the morning, they can make a patch in the afternoon, just upload a new file on the official website, and once the patch is released, players will be able to get a new version quickly so that all players can experience the latest version of the feature overnight. Controlling the development process by a small team also means that the entire planning team usually holds a completely consistent view. All research and development is done by a group of friends, and traditional office politics rarely happens in the DotA team, which means that the release of the game content can be tightly controlled without worrying about the risk of a secret leak. the problem with DotA1. Development and testing team is too smallwhile maintaining a small research and development team has advantages in many ways, it also brings a unique problem that many game teams are not exposed to. Team members don't have enough time to test the new version, so sometimes a new version of the release itself is problematic and needs to be patched immediately. when version 5.84 was released, it was only one game test, that is, death mode (once your hero dies, it cannot be resurrected, and then it is assigned a new hero) so that we can test all the heroes in one game. Unfortunately, the Dragon Knight Tester has no way to test his heroic abilities, so the Dragon Rider's HP Recovery speed reaches 400hp/s, rather than the normal 4hp/s, after the release. However, this version of the problem is not left to the team enough time to solve, the sheep knife and his team did not have time to join the things they want, and if simply expanding the research and development team will lead to new challenges. In the end, they decided to limit the amount of things that would affect the overall experience of the game, and many good ideas were not able to join in. 2. "Warcraft 3" engine and map tool issuesThe use of "Warcraft 3" engine also brought some specific restrictions, which in many full version of the game is not encountered, because there is no matching system, many novice will often encounter skilled players, resulting in a lot of new contact DotA players are assigned to unfair game. later, the players created communities such as dota-league.com, Gg-client, Dota-rank, Clan TDA, and so on. Unfortunately, the services of these communities are cumbersome, most players are difficult to use, and DotA's novice threshold is relatively high. In addition to the absence of a matching system due to tool limitations, the lack of a data-statistical system has left many players without the power to continue playing. While each game can bring a unique and diverse experience to the players, players will have to start playing again after the game is over. Even the outcome is untraceable, which means that even though you've played 9000 games, others still don't see your records, data, and how much you're getting started. Blizzard is also constantly posting updates for Warcraft 3 and the map editor, and most of the DotA map code needs to be rewritten due to the updates that blizzard brings. Because of the Limitations of Warcraft 3, the map itself does not have more than 4MB of files, which means that developing customized content, such as skins, animations, and models, is simply unrealistic. because the development teams are too small and they don't have enough bandwidth to do everything they like, some very important optimizations can only be overlooked due to the limitations of the Warcraft 3 engine. There are some roles and skills that can cause the game to be delayed and will take a long time to load before each game starts. After each new release, the team must decide whether to optimize the existing map or add new content. while optimizing a map is extremely important for a lamb knife, it is often forced to be canceled due to new additions. Shortly after the sheep hilt map was handed to the ice frog, he began to focus on optimization and added something to the game's performance improvements in his final version. 3. Difficulty in distribution and installationbecause it's just another game map, DotA lacks enough network support, so once the new map is released, all players will know the new version and then get the latest version of the map. The new map version is on a Web page, but as the number of active players increases, bandwidth constraints are causing more and more problems. players can also download maps from other people's hosts in the game, but often many people do not want to let other players download it, because it slows down their game speed. Others feel that some players do not download the latest version of the map because these players are not technically good, and do not want to team up with the game. after the player has obtained the map file, also cannot install immediately, each player needs to put his own map in the correct "Warcraft" Map folder, otherwise can not find the game map, which for many players is very depressed, especially some new players and do not know the file path of users. 4. Novice threshold is too highIn addition to the lack of multiplayer support and matching systems, the depth of gameplay, and the difficulty of installing and distributing games, the first new player to contact DotA is hard to get started with. If players do not have Warcraft 3 installed, they will first need to download and install and update to the latest version of the film, then download the game map, put it in the right place, and finally play the game online. due to a series of complex requirements, most players in the absence of other people's guidance is difficult to play the game, DotA can be very popular later, all rely on the reputation of loyal fans and social communication. even if a new player installs "Warcraft 3", downloads the game map, puts it in the right folder and enters the game successfully, they will still encounter a series of new problems. Because there is no novice to teach and guide, novice players can only be through the real game to learn, and they play with the likely years of old players. Having launched more than 60 heroes at the time, it's hard for novices to know what their hero skills are and what their opponent's heroes are capable of. With complex items and crafting systems, new players don't even know what they need to buy and the order in which they buy items. Finally, as the level of new players is usually not too high, and DotA is a highly collaborative game, some experienced players may accuse them of being dragged down, which can easily lead to the loss of new players in the game soon. 5. Game Duration IssuesDotA averages about 60 minutes per game, but sometimes a game can be dragged to about 2 hours, and these unpredictable factors make it difficult for players to set aside enough time to finish a game, as long as one player exits will cause the entire game to become unfair. And the duration of the game also makes it difficult for DotA to have an advantage over other esports games. because of the length of the problem, the tournament is difficult to accurately arrange the time, because the two sides of the battle may be between 30 minutes to 2 hours, because the game is not as fast as a lot of FPS games, many people will find watching a game is very boring or even bored. SummaryAfter all this, including good bad, ups and downs, and a lot of time spent on a purely passionate-driven project, one thing is very obvious: DotA is very interesting. After the global number of players reached 10 million, DotA in many regions of the heat more than CS, wow and even "Warcraft 3", although the DotA very successful, but it is clear that the game is incomplete. Because it is within the Game of Warcraft 3, DotA has a natural potential flaw. later, the growth in the number of DotA players worldwide attracted the attention of game developers, who also wanted developers to make a unique depth and fun gameplay for DotA and add more to the game. In 2006, Riot Games was founded, and they wanted to make a complete game of DotA basics, hoping to solve many of the problems that existed in DotA maps, and released the League of Legends on October 7, 2008.

Unity Game Lamb Knife vs. Pendragon: What DotA did right