I'm hearing that people are getting scammed left and right and not just this community. You may be pathetic but perhaps you can at-least be smart about it.
If you want legitimate proof:
Ask that person to type something in-game and to take a screenshot of it for them to send back to you.
Request to have the person show their steam homepage/account profile and if there's no Dota2 game in the list of games that person has then don't trust it.
Even just linking a random profile with Dota2 is not enough, make that person prove that they are the person by having him change his profile name or comment on his own page; whatever you request.
The reason for this is not only will you be able to know that person is in beta but...
YOU CAN TAKE SCREENSHOTS OF YOUR TRANSACTION AND PROOFING PROCESS.WHY?
BY DOING THIS, YOU ARE GAINING LEVERAGE OVER THE PERSON YOU'RE WILLING TO "BUY" OFF OF-
If the person doesn't honor his part of the deal and is in fact part of the beta, you can send it to whoever of interest and have them deal with the person (we will help you). However no one has made it completely clear if people are allowed to trade/buy keys but I assume this is not encouraged, so really there's no quality assurance of your "transaction". The best you can do is get that person's steam account tarnished and kicked out of the beta (maybe). Really you shouldn't be in these situations in the first place...
If you're unsure about anything:
Insist that they provide proof in the threads posted here rather than to you personally - and this really should be a requirement for anyone willing to giveaway a betakey here.
By subjecting the person to the ridicule of the community, we can help determine and prove whether its a scam or not and you can make your own judgments from there.
Everyone wants to be in the beta, we get it, but try and resist yourself... seriously.
If you're giving anything of intrinsic monetary value whether its money, cd keys, items, games, accounts, for something that is going to be free for you by the next few months or weeks or even tomorrow, you're getting yourself ripped off in the long short run.
The following pictures below you may never have seen before but they are not original and should not be accepted as proof:
If anyone wants to contribute more pictures of proof in the past (and I know there are some more obvious ones) I'll update it.
Posted 10-23-2011 at 11:20 PM byR.U.Sty Updated 10-28-2011 at 10:28 AM byR.U.Sty
After researching a lot more into BlizDota, I felt I needed to include this. This is a more in-depth understanding of what BlizDota is offering as an alternative "Dota" game. What we know already is that BlizDota brings together an all-star cast of Blizzard heroes and villains.
HERO DESIGN
Mantra "One thing to keep in mind is that we want to ensure every hero and ability feels truly unique -- we want quality over quantity. One of the pillars of our design philosophy with Blizzard DOTA is that the heroes should fit their roles very strongly and contribute from a team perspective. Not every hero needs to be a high-damage killing machine to be valuable to the team, and our game design is informed by that philosophy."
Defined roles:
Quote:
Tank: work as you might imagine, soaking up damage for your team and initiating group fights.
DPS: There to shoot and stab while the Tank distracts enemies; their glass cannon nature will make them shatter if targeted directly. (NOT CARRIES)
Support: Have the power of crowd control in the palm of their hands, stunning and disabling enemies while they heal their allies.
Siege: One main directive; destroy as many towers and buildings as they can. Their long-range attacks make them perfect for laying suppressing fire and controlling space on the map.
Warfield, a seige hero that requires a lot of movement and positioning play.
1st skill:
Puts him into an immobile siege mode, increasing his range and damage dealt at the expense of movement.
2nd skill:
A point-blank knockback to shoo away any enemies near by.
3rd skill:
Launches a cone of mines that explode when an enemy unit or hero steps on them.
Ultimate:
A Far-range incendiary round on a short cooldown that lays down patches of fire that hurt friend and foe. Interesting mechanic with an AOE that can deal friendly fire!
From what I've seen siege heroes look the most unique so I'm interested to see if they will add a new dimension to the game or completely destroy it.
No passive abilities
Gone are the days of the 2-1-1 approach to DotA heroes. (2 active, 1 passive, 1 ulti) And before that the 1-2-1 approach (Luna/Faceless/Bara/Sniper/etc)... it's become a phasing out of sorts. If you take a look at most of the new heroes by icefrog you'll notice 4 active skills on most of them. If you ever play LoL you'll notice that rather than phasing out passives, give everyone a fifth skill that's a passive to compensate.
However BlizDota looks to step that up by completely removing any passive abilities (atleast for now). A hero like Pudge for example has been "ported" into the game with the removal of his passive skill while maintaining that heroes' signature skills and synergy (Hook + Rot).
Quote:
Stitches, a damage-soaking tank modeled after WarCraft III's abomination unit.
1st skill - hook:
We know what to expect here... a skill-shot projectile that physically pulls the target towards Stitches. (Pudge/Devo/Blitzcrank)
2nd skill - Shockwave:
A cone-shaped burst of damage.
3rd skill - Devour:
Not exacly what you were expecting... consumes an enemy creep (doesn't work on ally creeps) and heals Stitches.
Ultimate - Putrid Bile:
A stronger version of Rot, slows and damages enemy units near Stitches. as(Pudge/Devo)
Hero stats
Quote:
Unlike in other games of this genre, there are no hidden values and calculations needed (doing away with damage reduction/diminishing returns); very simple stats to determine the clear winners with regards to DPS (autoattack) - Since there's no attack-speed and Armour attributes.
The three main stats are Health, Damage, and Mastery which are mostly straightforward.
Health - survivability
Damage- DPS
Mastery - Mana+CD reduction
INTERFACE
No need for words, just bask in the simplicity of it all.
ITEMS
Quote:
*Look at the above picture*
No recipies - buy an item and upgrade it.
No movement items - replaced with mounts.
Simple.
you’ll simply spend gold to upgrade your character in one of three ways: increased damage, survivability, or mana and ability regeneration. There are other items to purchase, of course, most of them consumables and a few on-use items with unique effects, but the bulk of your character development comes from increasing these core stats.
It’s definitely lacking the depth of branching item upgrade tress in the other games of this genre, but that’s kind of the point. The idea is to make a system that’s easily understandable and gets you back in the action as quickly as possible.
EARLY GAME
Quote:
If games are going to take 20 minutes on average (games as short as 10 and epic games as long as 30) then early game should at-least be addressed.
Starting gold
start off with practically no gold! get on your mount and start moving!
Last hitting/denying
Last hitting isn't important in BlizDota; whats important is pushing as towers have limited ammo, and targets are alot softer. This step aims to simplify the early game while also trying to maintain the difficulty through other means. One of the problems with last hitting is you often get complained at when you're a new player "not denying, you're a noob!" "Stop auto attacking, you're pushing the lane!"
LoL kind of helped this with the removal of denying but there's still last hitting for gold. No need to worry about last hitting here, just need to be near the dying creeps. Will the loss of such a mechanic lead to less tension and more passive play? Well there is a new mechanic being introduced to try and keep that tension in the early game: regen orbs.
Waves (Creeps)
Each wave has a flag bearer, when he dies, a tasty regen orb drops which gives mana and health to whoever picks it up.
This creates tension about decisions like pushing heroes away from flag-bearers, timing when you want to kill flag-bearers, etc.
Adds more positional play as you want to be close to obtain the orbs.
Easier to understand - helps gauge how well people are doing in the early game by just checking their health as opposed to just looking at a heroes level and then being surprised when they come out with a 12 minute blink dagger.
Much more cause & effect style as heroes with more stay-ability are naturally winning their lane whether its from regen orbs or just the right combination of heroes. Also these waves can be upgraded by obtaining control points from neutrals camps as if you've "enlisted" them.
Towers
Towers in the lanes are powerful entities that can quickly decimate enemy heroes that wander into their range. But unlike many other DOTA-style games, the towers in Blizzard DOTA have a limited amount of energy that slowly recharges over time.
This means that a team making a concerted push against a tower can force that tower to run out of ammo, making it easier to overrun the position. This encourages more team-based aggression and reduces the amount of defensive, tower-hugging play in the early-mid game.
STATS
Quote:
In-game stats
doesn't record individual KDA as it rewards individuals. aiming the mechanics on a more team-base style by only recording team's overall stats.
Ladder stats/MM
Yup for Match Making (maybe disable for SE SC2 version). Also at the end of each game, will also track various stats such as number of player takedowns, towers destroyed, and average gold and experience gained per match.
Leaver system?
wait and see approach... some people prefer the non-leaver system with DotA and the games are much shorter (short games can last around 10 minutes, long games can last around 30 minutes) so it will be OK to see how much it effects the game.
DIFFERENT MAPS
Quote:
This one is a bit worrying for me. For casuals it won't really have an effect so I'm going to look at it in terms of a competitive game. On the one hand we could have new maps offering up the chance to have a change in the game's tempo, the speed at which it's played, and lets players develop different strategies for each map.
It would be interesting to watch but I can't help but get flashbacks of other games that have failed to steer away or at-least provide a true alternative from the 3's formula = 3 lanes populated with 3 towers each which are protecting the 3 raxes.
TAKEN FROM OTHER GAMES
Quote:
Brush (LoL)
"Brush is the tall grassy terrain on a map that provides a champion with a form of stealth. Upon entering the brush, a champion immediately (no fade time) becomes invisible to enemy units outside of that particular patch of brush. Visually, this effect manifests by your champion's avatar taking on a partially transparent quality. Opposing champions in different patches of brush will not be able to see each other even if they are within normal sight range. Brush, however, will never block your view of an allied champion hiding within." ~LoL
No Deny (LoL) I already spoke abit about this above.
I like the mechanic of denies and don't believe the whole "No Fun" or "Arbitrary skill, No Strategy" comments. For a game like HoN/LoL/DotA i really believe there should be denying as these games are based around a carry in 4 protect 1 style.
With a game like BlizDota, there's no carry heroes. There are heroes that scale differently from each other but there's no time to farm, no time to control creeps, limited tower ammo, weaker creeps; so you better start pushing to your hearts content!
While denying might be a great mechanic in some ways, it wont be missing it in BlizDota; and besides, denying heroes exp/orbs by harassing and pushing them away is close enough!
Neutral camp+boss benefits(LoL/RotT)
In LoL its called Buff Acquisition - where defeating certain neutrals (Ancient Golem · Lizard Elder · Baron Nashor) gives buffs to one or all heroes depending on the ones you kill.
In RotT its called the Boss System - where conquering enemy bosses to allows you to unleash your own bosses which will push toward the enemy base.
BlizDota looks to incorporate both systems as:
Neutral camps result in upgraded waves
Boss camp result in boss joining wave.
The way this works is with power nodes guarded by neutral creeps. Teams that take control of these nodes will add strength to their team's creatures in the lanes. This means that gaining control of the jungle will push the battlefront in the lanes into your team's favor, thus making the jungle nodes key points of interest on the map, ripe for team fights.
It's kind of funny considering suggestions in the past with "killing Roshan = fight for your team" which has lead to modes such as -sc Super Creeps as a middle ground fun mode. However BlizDota are taking this fun idea and turning it serious... or at-least serious enough that I'm actually going to be terrified for once when its announced that a boss unit "has been slain" by the enemy team.
I definitely dont want to fight something that outrages my towers, mows down creep waves and is 3 times my size. Also lasers...
Vector targeting (HoN)
Great mechanic which has also seen its way into LoL, we've yet to see Dota2 implement it but its a safe bet once new heroes start coming out that we will see it there as well.
The way it works is:
Click on the ability/press the hotkey.
Click the location and hold down the mouse button.
Drag the mouse in the direction you want the effect to go.
Simply let go of the mouse button
Couldn't be implemented in the original DotA due to limitations.
Mounts (RotT) The idea of a mount had been announced from RotT months ago and now Blizzard are looking to do their own version. Each character can summon a mount to increase its movement speed. The summoning takes about 2 seconds and lasts unit a hero attacks or is struck. Basically since there are no movement speed items (boots) in the game, mounts look to replace this.
No monetary system is planned, you'll get access to a small group of heroes to start with. As you play matches, more heroes will unlock. When you’ve earned all of the heroes, you can begin unlocking cosmetic "prestige" items by winning games with specific heroes. Prestige items can include alternate weapons, crowns, and other accessories.
Genre (DotA/LoL/HoN/AoS/RoI/RotT/etc.) (Aeon of Strife Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Action Real Time Strategy Tactics AKA AoSMOBAARTST AKA Genre)
If it wasn't for LoL/HoN there'd be no Dota2.
If it wasn't for DotA, there'd be no LoL/HoN.
If there was no AoS, there'd be no DotA.
It's a genre:
Just because its different doesn't mean its wrong.
Just because its the same, doesn't mean its wrong.
Remember to have fun!
Final thought:
This game is very different from DotA and judging from the changes it looks a lot more casual than serious. But as a competitive game and a spectator e-sport, a game like this is extremely pleasing to the eye with simple mechanics, much shorter game length, and someone can get a clear understanding of whats going on in the game as towers = power, not carries = power. Looks more like competition for LoL than the other games...
Posted 10-22-2011 at 06:29 AM byR.U.Sty Updated 10-25-2011 at 07:39 AM byR.U.Sty
Pretty exciting having seen a trailer for Blizzard DOTA but will it hold up against Dota 2?
YUP!
IT'S NEW!!!
One of the most exciting things for me about these types of games is new content.
I love new heroes, I love new items, I love the way I need to play a lot to learn all the content and improve. It's a feeling like what I had 8 years ago, going to an internet cafe and playing DotA an hour every week with all my friends.
No one knows whats going on
people are building perseverance and not telling me about the secret shop!
One of my friends picks Stealth Assassin and we're all crying about it being broken as shit. (which it was at the time!)
Playing sniper for the first 3-4 weeks because he's a dwarf
It's what makes a game like LoL enjoyable for a lot of people including myself.
COMPETITIVE GAMING?
People will be playing Blizzard DOTA regardless of if its worse than DotA or Dota2, but could it become a competitive game?
What blizzard have is a huge community following and huge e-sports success.
What RIOT have is a huge community following and extensive e-sports success.
What Valve have is a huge community following and some e-sports success.
If i didn't know better I'd think there's no intent for it be a competitive game but interviews in the past say otherwise: "We’re definitely trying to streamline it, but we’re also definitely trying to make it as competitive, or even more competitive." Games On Net :: General News: Stratagems: Dustin Browder on StarCraft II
LORE
The funny thing about Blizzard DOTA is its lore, it takes a tongue-in-cheek approach with two antagonistic gods (one red, one blue) who have decided to pit endless waves of soldiers against each other. When they find themselves in need of leaders on the battlefield, they summon forth the greatest heroes of the known universe–all from Blizzard’s best intellectual properties which actually sounds very similar to LoL's lore. "When one of the available heroes in the game is a Murloc marine, you know you’re in for a good time."
If you havn't noticed by now the game appears to have a chessboard theme to it!
GAMEPLAY One of the more exciting parts for Blizzard fans is that It will have that Super Smash Brothers or Marvel Vs Capcom type feel as its taking the models from all their past games:
Tanks: Arthas, Muradin, and the Butcher
DPS: Kerrigan, Zeratul, and Nova
Support: Uther, Tassadar and Thrall
Siege: Siegetank, the Witchdoctor, and a new Zerg unit.
Siege?! "A uniquely named role for MOBA-kind, will have one main directive: destroy as many towers and buildings as they can. Their long-range attacks make them perfect for laying suppressing fire and controlling space on the map."
Other than the genre (which i classify as the map with 3 Lanes+ 3 Outer Towers+ 3 Rax sets) this game looks very different with totally new content. Also its worth noting the people at Blizzard encourage people to modify it and do whatever they like with it which is always fun.
TL;DR
In any case, while I still believe Dota 2 is the next logical path; let's hope Blizzard DOTA releases a playable version before Dota2's mass Closed Beta invites or Open Beta (which wont be out for a couple months), so we have something new to play while waiting! I'm not going to take this map seriously but it is free after all (if you have SC2). Lots of people do play SC2 so we'll wait and see how popular this map could get.
They're doing a great job.
The whole point of scrapping (delaying) their mass beta-key invites is to bring the community together. As much as it pains some of us, giving out random beta-keys like they initially planned would have been the wrong move. By handing out keys to the people that contribute most to DotA/Dota2 (casters/streamers, fansites, pros, media contributors, employee's and all their friends) It forces the community to work for the keys rather than being offered them.
Every give-away requires the person to add something to the community whether its a simple "Like" on facebook or a subscribe on youtube to writing out questions to give to icefrog, taking pictures for everyone to enjoy and even this giveaway to get ideas and discussions flowing. By using this system of beta invites, this ties in all the Dota2 fans (regardless of being new or old) together which is why I'm happy to see lots of first time posters. If just 1 one these new posters realise how great a certain forum is, or a certain streamer, or a certain youtube channel, or a certain facebook page/twitter, then that is already considered a successful giveaway.
Keep doing what you're doing valve with the beta-keys (making the community more close-nit). Sure diehards will feel entitled to have them but well they're pretty interchangeable unlike the artists/streamers and people that actually put effort outside of the forums/in-game.
Posted 10-04-2011 at 07:10 AM byR.U.Sty Updated 10-04-2011 at 10:20 PM byR.U.Sty
Be in year 8 (Australian Highschool)
travel by bus with friends for 20 mins after school to internet cafe once a week (even though only 2 of them lived near there and the rest of us not even close.
Every week - play CS for an hour there and then get KFC then travel 20 mins back to school then walk 20 mins back to home.
One day friend suggests we play DotA
Play one game of DotA every week at lan and if game doesnt end in hour -> play cs to finish
Pick sniper for 10 weeks straight
spend every week looking at shop to find components Ring of Health and Void Stone since my friends keep making perseverance and wont tell me how.
Realize there is secret shop after my 5th week of DotA.
Friend legit cries when Zues and me (sniper) KS him.
Friend has siezure one time and we still playing without noticing right away.
Get into multiple physical fights over DotA.
All of us still friends after 7/8 years.
Dota2 will rekindle our friendship since we're always busy with uni.
