DotA 2 : It's mostly a numbers game

As I previously mentioned, I'm a big fan of using numbers as a way to understand things. For that I have been collecting a lot of numbers from the games I play, mostly all pubs. After gathering enough that I feel that I may be able to draw some conclusions or at least some patterns.

The first aspect I compared in my games was to see whether gold collection or XP collection actually produce a good indicator of which team will win a game. I used the total gold accumulated to make a ratio where I divide gold accumulated by the winning team by the gold accumulated by the losing team. A ratio of 1 means both teams accumulated the same, anything above one represents the winning team having more gold than the losing team.

All the data below is based on my last 131 matches. As you can see it appears pretty obvious from looking at these ratios that both are indicators on average to what team will win, and it is obvious that the team to get the most will tend to win. However looking at the individual numbers, I do see that there are 8 out of the 131 matches where a team with less XP actually managed to win. Most of them are quite close to 1, however there is a 0.84 and a 0.86, which sort of suggest that in general the rule works but there are circumstances where the cumulative XP isn't the only indicator.

Interestingly however, is the fact that the gold ratio is a much much better predictor. Only one game in my records has a 0.99 ratio, which is basically 1. While it does appear that gold might be the more important number here, it did make me wonder what kind of effect towers have in this. How much of this gold is actually coming from towers, in which case the late game, especially when the other team is doomed in their fountain, produces large amounts of gold, that are hardly useful for the purpose of predicting a winner. I suppose it would be much more useful to look at numbers excluding tower gold, or numbers up to the last 5-10 minutes. Another option which is probably more verifiable is to look at last hits, since this will potentially be less biased, however the late game can offer a large amount of creep killing as well.




Another cool little graph I produced was looking at the same gold ratio vs the duration of a game. I figured that games that last longer will generally have a more even gold distribution as teams are probably more balanced. From plotting these 131 games, it is pretty clear that this trend is accurate. For the most part games with a gold ratio close to 1 tended to last 45-65 minutes. As an aside, the average duration of my 131 games was 40.6 minutes.

My last comparison involves looking at my performance and how much I contribute to team gold in my wins and losses. Basically I divide my total accumulated gold by the gold accumulated by my team. Initially this sounded like a good comparison and I have a 20.7 ± 0.6 % during my losses, and a 19.0 ± 0.4 % participation during my wins. While there may even be a statistical difference suggesting that I do seem to be less important of a player during games I lose, I think not accounting for my role adds a lot of noise to the data. I mean this is an obvious stat to look at, but I wanted to see how much of an impact I actually have. A much more meaninful comparison would be to isolate only the gold I contribute in games I play a particular hero or a particular role.

So that's what I did. If I make the same graph but only look at my Furion games this is what it looks like. I did 22.3 ± 0.7 % of my team's gold during my losses and did 19.7 ± 0.8 % during my victories. Showing a slightly less noisy graph despite it having less than a quarter of the data points.

Anyway, I just wanted to post some interesting graphs for now, even if they are not terribly insightful. I will be looking to post more impactful graphs and information later on, as I learn more about this deliciously complex game.

DotA 2: 200 hours and counting

Since I've began playing Dota a couple months ago I've actually racked up 200 hrs of gameplay. Which is a lot considering my RL responsibilities. It's a really great game, that has managed to keep bringing me back virtually every night. I haven't had an experience like this with a game since I stopped playing WoW. Usually games get old after 20-50 hours for me. However, since DotA is so challenging and so complex, it makes you feel like you have to play more and more, to practice to actually become half decent. 200 hours is actually considered very noobie still, generally people that get good play thousands of hours, and it really does take that long to absorb even the basic complexities of this incredible game.

I think since this game has essentially become my new goto game, I might actually start posting more about my experiences in this game, what I learn and my thoughts on some of it. I know I'm still very fresh, but I figured some of my experiences may be useful to other new players and perhaps if I get some feedback, some more seasoned players may be able to point out flaws in what I'm saying.

Much like other aspects of my life, including work, I really enjoy trying to make sense of things using concrete information, and nothing is more concrete than numbers, which this game actually offers quite a bit of, so I might try to focus on that.

In terms of what my experience in the game has been so far, I have been playing mostly public match making games (Pubs as they call it, which is confusing since on wow they called it PUGs). I have played over 150 Pub games and some Co-op games when I try new heroes. I also started to play some BOT games now as a way to practice some of the more basic skills in this game such as last hitting and general mechanics of new heroes.

My record right now shows that I've played (win rate in brackets)

Nature's Prophet (Furion) - 46 games (54%)
Viper - 29 (52%)
Venomancer - 24 (63%)
Witch Doctor - 18 (61%)
Spirit Breaker - 10 (50%)
Crystal Maiden - 8 (623%)
Windrunner - 7 (43%)

I have played a couple other heroes more casually such as Phantom Assassin, Templar Assassin, Wisp, Morphling (my current obsession), Omniknight.

A lot of people suggest playing a lot of different heroes initially but I must say I find it frustrating to try new heroes in a Pub because I generally suck when I do that, so I rather play a few initially, get familiar and see how much it matches my play style and my taste. I've found that some heroes are great in terms of how well I can use them, but they aren't crazy fun to play for me (Crystam Maiden is the hero I'm thinking of). Then I have heroes like Windrunner and Leshrac, which I do enjoy playing but tend to suck at them at this point.

Review: Don't Starve, or at least try not to

Just recently I've discovered a new game which fits the "survival game" genre. Not sure how old this video game genre is, but if you don't know what it is, it's basically what Minecraft and Terraria would likely be under. Games where the main objective is to provide your character with basic necessities to stay alive. In all these games it seems that building and gathering resources are the tasks that you will spend most of your time performing. While Minecraft if a 1st person fully 3D game and Terraria is a plataformer, Don't Starve comes somewhere in between. Almost like an isometric game but you can move the screen around as well. The game has a very neat feel to it, reminds me a lot of a Tim Burton movie, a bit sinister while a bit comical. 

Don't Starve doesn't really have a tutorial and a bit like minecraft, it requires you to experiment in order to learn how things work. The one help of this particular game is that recipes for things are shown to you up front once you have the science machine. The majority of your time will be spent collecting things and managing your resources, but it's all a lot of fun since there is enough to keep you interested for a long time.

First thing you have to do once you begin the game is gather materials for your first night. Most importantly materials to make a fire pit, unless you just use a dinky torch, and some berries or other food items. It's actually quite challenging initially to keep you character alive. The game gets more difficult as you go, with winter starting at day 20 and the raging dogs of the full moon. At night, it is very difficult to be productive because if you are caught in complete darkness you quickly die, so you need to keep a fire going and you need to have gathered the minimum needed to survive for another day. Much like on Minecraft, having the wiki open as you play is probably recommended.

Overall I was happy to spend the 15 dollars for this game after I played a bit of a pirated copy. This game kept me interested for many hours already and I foresee this trend continuing for a while longer. If you enjoy building games like minecraft with a slight edge of desperation and the fact that there is no real objective aside from not dying, which is a goal you will never achieve, this game is for you. 

Hints and Tips:

For the most part you actually don't need to use the mouse if you don't want to. Most basic actions like item collection and other actions based on what tool you have equipped can be done by pressing the space bar and holding it. This is great for convenience and for making your character do things quicker.

Don't set up your permanent camp right away. I've found that I do a lot better if I spend one or two full days exploring different areas and biomes to pick the perfect settling spot. Personally I like to have a few things nearby when I set my permanent camp. I like having Beefalos for manure, spiders for silk, frogs for food. If I can settle in the junction between a few different biomes that's even better since you may want an easy source of different things close by. I've read a lot of people that like camping near the pig folks as they can help protect you (by giving them monster meat) as well as providing manure. Often they also have sources of food around too.

Don't overlook any one of your stats, I often get complacent after a while without running hungry until I'm almost dying of starvation only to find out I have no food anywhere near me. 

If your sanity isn't at 100%, pick up flowers as you go (+5 sanity and a bit of health). You know you are going insane when it's a few minutes before dark and you have to go on a mad and desperate hunt for flowers. It perfectly illustrates how your character is doing.

Farming is a good thing to get started early. So look for a source of a lot of manure as well as grass to build yourself some farm plots.

Review: DotA 2, the best things in life are free

About a month ago DotA 2 was finally released as a final version (ie. no longer Beta). I made sure to sign up for it as soon as I found out on Steam. After less than a day of waiting I got my pass and wow, this is an amazing game. Dota 2 is my fist MOBA (multiplayer online batlle arena) game, which for those that don't know is a genre of games that began with the original DotA and now include the popular League of Legends as well as others like HoN.

Basically the idea behind a MOBA is seemingly simple but the game itself gets very complex and technical. You have an even map with 2 starting points, one for each team, as well as 3 lanes where teams must clear in order to get to the other team's base. Each lane has 3 sets of towers that must be destroyed by the opposing team with the help of "creeps", which are foot soldiers that help the teams out.  A team consists of 5 players and the objective as I mentioned is to destroy the other team's Ancient.

If both teams just sit and do nothing, waves of creeps will just fight each other and the game will probably be stagnantly stopped forever. However, with help from each of the 5 heroes, creeps push lanes towards the enemy towers until they can start damaging the tower. Heroes all start at level 1 with a small amount of gold. From there players gain experience through being close to the dying enemy units, and gold is obtained by delivering last hits on enemy units. This is an important aspect of the game since only one player can last hit. Players that keep getting last hits (LH) will accumulate gold faster than his team mates, and if you are more efficient than your opponent, you will also gain more than him/her. The interesting bit of the game is the variety of strategies available to move through the enemy's lanes. The most common is the use of 2 heroes on each side lane and one hero in the middle lane. This allows the middle lane hero to gather gold and experience faster than the side lanes, since he does not have to share XP or gold with anyone (although gold is usually not shared). Also the mid lane is the safest lane since towers are closer together, offering more protection from enemy attacks. Side lanes will often consist of a carry and a support, which are some of the different roles heroes can have. This is a lot like in sports where you have a football striker for instance, whose role is to score goals and pressure the opposition offensively. You have defenders that keep the ball away from their own goal. The carry is the player that will have to become the strongest of their team because they will be the ones doing most of the pushing and killing towards the end of the game, they "carry" the team at the end. Support are there to assist the carry in harassing the other team and helping him farm for gold and XP as much as possible. There are other roles that are a bit more complex as well, such as roamers/gankers which are heroes that tend to be more mobile offering more map awareness to his team mates as well as help in killing enemy heroes when opportunities arise. There are initiators, which tend to be heroes good at starting fights with abilities that put the enemy in positions where they have to react, usually leading to combat. You also have pushers, which are heroes that are specialized in killing enemy creeps as well as towers, allowing the team to move through the enemy's lane quickly when it is uncontested. You can also have nukers, which are heroes that are able to do a lot of AoE (Area of effect) damage, and can be great for team fights, farming or lane pushing in some cases.

Aside from the game itself, Dota 2 has a great and growing community. Just last week was the International, which is basically DotA 2 world cup, and it was such a great event to watch. This was the first time I've watched an eSport event, and I must say it was very exciting. Really, just as exciting as a good football or hockey game. The coverage was great, exciting and professional. I urge anyone interested in video games to check these games out, they will surprise you in how thrilling it can actually be to watch people play video games.

I'm really only touching the surface of this game with this post, but I think the main message I want to convey is that DotA 2 is a great fun game for anyone interested in a deep strategic game that could potentially consume a lot of your free time. I'll give this game a 9.5/10.