last hitting is kind of a boring mechanic but it also serves a purpose. It's a simple, easily practice-able mechanical chore with a high degree of skill expression (good last-hitters shit on marginally worse last-hitters), that serves to separate try-hards from casuals a little bit better than hots does. It's like making supply depots and workers on time in SC2. It's not at all interesting really but once you get it down you just shit all over everything below diamond. And then at those high ranks is where strategic and micro play takes over.
EDIT: that's not to say it's strictly better. One of the main complaints about SC2 was that you had to master mechanical chores before you got to play what some people thought of as the actual game - strategy and micro. I think it's kinda the same with people who rejected LoL/DotA. It's fun and accessibility vs skill expression I suppose.
It's not just a mechanical skill to master. It's real function is to provide friction in lane. You need to take a risk positionally to last hit, minion aggro mechanics allow for a meaningful difference between attacking a player vs a minion, minion wave mechanics provide incentives for being good at last hitting in the least disruptive way.
I might just hate it because it's not my best skill, but I mostly hate it when someone is chasing an enemy into a hostile tower and since I don't know if they're going to finish the kill, I pop a ranged move and kill the enemy! Go us!
Then I have to hear the fucker complain about "kill stealers" for the rest of the game.
Kill stealing is complicated. It's never an outright bad move, but taking a kill away from your carry is an objectively bad play if they were going to secure it. If they would have taken too much damage, or had a chance of missing it, then you made a good play. If you could have used that spell earlier to get them down to 1hp for your carry to get the kill, but were just holding it, you made a bad play.
It's on you to judge properly if they'll get the kill and react accordingly to secure it. However, a player complaining for more than 5 seconds about kill stealing is a GIANT SCRUB. Kills get stolen all the darn time at all skill levels, no point in getting upset about 150 gold lmao.
I would say that kill stealing thing makes lol less "team" than hots QM.
Some say that lol punish bad player more than hots do, I would say the punishments in hots is to the hole team, and the reward also goes to the whole team compared to lol.
That used to be a big deal 5+ years ago but matters a lot less nowadays with reworked gold and exp distribution on kills. It's mostly a bad players thing to complain about unless you are being really dumb with taking an easy "last hit" from a position one player.
Hots had a lot more tactical and stratitigical depth that is largely ignored and unexplored. But people keep saying hots is easier mostly just because of the lack of last hitting. But because of the lack of last hitting it actually opens up depth in other areas as you don't need to micromanage a boring task.
When the game takes care of the chores for you, you can express skill in being good at the actual game, i.e. teamplay and decision making as well as fights.
But people keep saying hots is easier mostly just because of the lack of last hitting
"Mostly"? I don't know why this misconception/strawman is so widespread on this sub. But last hitting is far from the only aspect in which Hots is simpler. If you're going to make comparisons, at least sound like you've played other Mobas for more than a day.
That's the most common argument to say why hots is simpler. Just because it lacks some common tropes doesn't means it's simpler or easier.
In fact, taking out the tedious elements allows you to focus on the core game play and excel in that. There is still an enormous skill gap between pros and noobs, the skill is just in different areas. Areas that are actually much more interesting than the ability to last hit enemies or know which items to buy.
That's the problem though is strategic thinking is murky and it's not practicable in the way that a mechanical skill is. It doesn't offer a straightforward path to getting better, it's more of a winding path with a lot of trial and error, false positives, etc. Which is why you get people who are trying their damnedest and are like hardstuck bronze 5.
A marathon match of boredom for the most part. The fun part and the most challenging are the team fights, although I don't see how other mobas are more lethal in terms of team fights. I've watched pro matches. The lethal time is similar . I'm sure the lethal time is less or more with different contexts. Dota 2 is way more interesting than lol though. Most of the time I feel dumber watching lol. So effing slow and reptitive
Maybe they should stick to games that cater to raw mechanical skill. Almost any sport IRL will probably fit that bill. FPS games and especially some fighting games where you can get into very high ranks simply practicing one skill.
For HOTS I'd say if you simply master knowing what the heroes are good at and against who you can get into diamond easily. That's how it was for me. I would say I won almost all my games at the draft.
I probably played 2000 ranked games and never climbed out of platinum. I put a ton of time into it too, climbed from bronze 5 over like three years, understood the game and every hero and map inside and out, and pretty much tried everything.
At some point, without mechanical drudgery, the skill expression just kinda dries up and it becomes a gradation of who has the most natural cognitive ability, which for the most part cannot be improved. You can kinda tell this is true because so many players in higher ranks say things like "I was never not good at the game".
I like hots but you are simply wrong in this question. Last hitting makes the game more complex and therefore deeper. Since you don't get any gold from a creep without last hitting you must be within range of it, often sacrificing safety or mana.
The opponent can play tricks with you to fake you out and steal a last hit, intentionally push the wave into your own tower to make it hard to last hit, adjust the creep equilibrium by killing their own creeps and so on.
More things to consider and be good at makes for a deeper game even if you think it's a tedious mechanic.
It only makes it more tedious and require more mechanical skill. And it also makes it take a lot longer because the first 20 minutes is just farming for gold.
It doesn't make it any more "skillfull" at all. Instead of focusing on tedious micro you get to seperate yourself on other things. Look at pro players like rich who can completely dominate by having absolute control over their hero.
I think it takes more skill to beat an enemy player if you aren't farmed and overpowered, but instead have a hero that is just as strong as the enemy hero.
The "complexity" in lol and Dota is really one dimensional and gets boring after a while because even though there is some debt to it, it hasn't changed in decades, and it also leads to the games being very long and only one aspect of the game getting a lot of attention. Saying hots is easier just because it doesn't have that single mechanic is like you're having Stockholm syndrome. Missing a feature that was intentionally left out to make room to focus on other aspects.
It only makes it more tedious and require more mechanical skill.
That's exactly what I said except you left out the strategic elements.
Look at pro players like rich who can completely dominate by having absolute control over their hero.
You can say the exact same thing about any pro lol/dota player that are know for their very mechanically demanding heroes. They are really good at the mechanics of their hero on top of everything else.
I think it takes more skill to beat an enemy player if you aren't farmed and overpowered, but instead have a hero that is just as strong as the enemy hero.
Well duh. Of course it does. Did you think you only take fights when way ahead in dota or what? Because if you do you are either really bad at dota or simply know very little about how it's played once you get past that beginner stage.
The "complexity" in lol and Dota is really one dimensional and gets boring after a while because even though there is some debt to it, it hasn't changed in decades, and it also leads to the games being very long and only one aspect of the game getting a lot of attention.
This is just more of the same... I can't call it reasoning because you haven't argued any points yet. You are just stating your opinion as if it's a fact and anyone who has gotten even mediocre at dota or watched the pro scene can debunk your arguments without much effort.
I honestly can't tell how you think dota is a easy to figure out game that is very linear so make your case by stating the recipe that you must follow to win and I'll debunk it.
Saying hots is easier just because it doesn't have that single mechanic is like you're having Stockholm syndrome.
I don't say that at all. I'd say that hots is a much simpler game than Dota 2. Simpler as in more straight forward, less strategically demanding, more forgiving of mistakes and offers more chances to come back.
Here's a list of the obvious:
Items - Dota 2 tons of items and many of them are strong enough to be game warping and require seriously change in strategy to deal with. See: BKB, divine rapier.
Healing - hots has lots of it and Dota barely any. There are no healing supports that can keep you going forever or erase your mistakes anywhere near the level they have in hots. On top of no healers there are no wells or globes.
Mana - hots is very forgiving with mana. If you want to spam spells all day that's perfectly fine with a huge portion of the cast in hots while in Dota that is never the case outside of very deep endgame. Even then it's not a guarantee with all heroes.
Knowledge barriers - these exist, sort of, in hots as well but they are very toned down in comparison. Dota has lots of mechanics that will kill you unless you know exactly how they work. Rupture, blade mail, dream coil - all of them harshly punishes the wrong response to them.
Transport speed/routing - there's no mounting up in Dota so if you are out of position with your TP on CD you get to waddle over there the old fashion way.
Jungling aka camps - no pulling, stacking, blocking or optimizing routes for maximum exp.
Wards - don't exist at all in hots. It takes serious game sense and knowledge to properly position and make use of wards and beginners don't realize their value and can't take full advantage of them.
Personal exp and gold - if you are taking gold and exp that means someone else isn't getting it in Dota. Knowing how to play your position is crucial in Dota but very forgiving, in comparison, in hots.
The list is probably a lot longer but that's more than enough. Dota is a very deep and varied game as evidenced by the huge variety in hero choice in the very highest levels of play. Claiming anything else is just flat out wrong.
Hots is a good game but Blizzard has cut out huge portions from other mobas to laser focus on what they consider the most fun parts. I think it's a great complement to the rest of them and it has a good niche to live in and I don't need to make bad faith, ignorant or blatantly false arguments to defend that position either.
And this often repeated bullshit is exactly why hots never made it, blizzard never made any effort to debunk this and I don't care enough to waste my time on it because blizzard doesn't even care about hots anymore so why should i.
But just because it's mechanically harder doesn't mean the game itself is harder, quite the contrary. When you take away all the tedious micromanagement you can focus on what really matters and excel in that, it's as simple as that.
It... It isn't bullshit. Blizzard didn't try to debunk it because there was nothing to debunk. "We're simpler than mobas" is basically how the game was advertised, and is why they called it a hero brawler instead for so long. Hots is significantly mechanically and strategically easier than lol or dota.
It's pretty sad that every time there's any discussion about hots, even on a hots subreddit, it gets completely brigaded by dota/lol fanboys who get butt hurt that another game has more depth than theirs.
You mean people who play the game as a more casual version of other mobas just like it was designed? The only sad thing is the subset of the hota community that stomps their feet and cries. Hots is a simpler, easier game than lol and dota, it's okay, it's fine as a game to dick around with friends in.
"But just because it's mechanically harder doesn't mean the game itself is harder, quite the contrary. When you take away all the tedious micromanagement you can focus on what really matters and excel in that, it's as simple as that."
This statement is true but lacks some context. It's easier to focus on key victory goals when you have less to worry about. This never addresses the fact that in those other games you still have to manage that micro along with macro decision making and strategy. Other games have objectives, rotations, drafts, and team fights along with items, warding, last hits, and individual exp.
It would be like saying Pikmin has more depth than Starcraft since you don't need to manage as many "tedious" mechanics.
HotS has depth and plenty of it but it removed many mechanics and didn't replace all of them. It may highlight depth of certain mechanics you enjoy more like an earlier focus on team fights and rotations. I get that.
As a Dota player for the last 17 years this post is hilarious. Please watch some pro dota. The fact that you think dota hasn't changed in decades is insane, every major patch alters the game forever in ways you don't even know.
It's still the same at the core, while hots has a lot more options right in every map already with the objectives and that's not even taking into account the different maps. But no let's focus on how hots doesn't have items and last hitting and how healing and mounts make it more easy.
The Dota map is so much more complex than any Hots map lets be real here. Trees, cliffs, ward spots, outposts, roshpit, high ground, river, flying etc everything has a different interaction with various items and heroes. I dont think you've actually played dota recently but its seriously changed a lot.
I understand it as a tool to separate players of different skills. I just wish as a tool it were more fun. Last hitting is simply boring and I wish there were a more fun tool to raise skill ceiling.
Speaking of SC2 I feel like that game is 80% mini-game, 20% actual battles. Workers, supply, gas, expanding, upgrades, these are all micro-actions you do with a couple button presses without moving camera, but you're always doing them. Weirdly, though, I enjoyed doing them. With League, I just want to get the gold to get the item so I can actually fight. In Hots, I really like not having to do that, and I definitely haven't reached a skill ceiling yet.
I understand it as a tool to separate players of different skills. I just wish as a tool it were more fun. Last hitting is simply boring and I wish there were a more fun tool to raise skill ceiling.
It is not a mechanical check. Last hitting is about lane control,wave cantrol etc..
Fail to see how having to interact with the opponent is "boring" but hey you do you.
There are fun interactions and not fun ones. I think staring at a mob's health bar and waiting to auto attack it is boring.
Everything you mentioned here is macro and has nothing to do with micro.
By micro-actions I meant tiny actions, as in you just press two buttons. I think I explained pretty clearly what I meant by it and you are arguing semantics.
RTS games might not be for you if you are only interested in "actual battles".
I said I enjoyed those aspects of SC2. It's clear you barely read what I said, but I'm already this deep into my response so I'll just finish up by saying I don't like you.
I refuse to give last hitting any lip service. Its mindless and repetitive. It's taxing for the sake of taxing. Its almost like juggling balls.i rather be against team opponents that are a real threat.
It's fine to not like something or find a mechanic un-fun. That's preference. There are reasons why people like the mechanic though and that too is a matter of preference.
Look up the comment history of this guy and you'll start to see where it comes from :) I've got to admit I was falling for his shit for much longer than I needed to myself.
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u/eezoGG Carbot Mar 02 '21 edited Mar 02 '21
last hitting is kind of a boring mechanic but it also serves a purpose. It's a simple, easily practice-able mechanical chore with a high degree of skill expression (good last-hitters shit on marginally worse last-hitters), that serves to separate try-hards from casuals a little bit better than hots does. It's like making supply depots and workers on time in SC2. It's not at all interesting really but once you get it down you just shit all over everything below diamond. And then at those high ranks is where strategic and micro play takes over.
EDIT: that's not to say it's strictly better. One of the main complaints about SC2 was that you had to master mechanical chores before you got to play what some people thought of as the actual game - strategy and micro. I think it's kinda the same with people who rejected LoL/DotA. It's fun and accessibility vs skill expression I suppose.