Brief Description
Dota 2 is an online multiplayer battle arena game in a 3D environment, presented from a high-angle 3rd person perspective. Dota 2 is played in matches involving two teams of five players, each occupies a stronghold at opposite corners of the map. Each stronghold contains a central building called the “Ancient”, which the opposite team must destroy to win the match. Each player controls a “Hero” character and he is able to level up his/her character by gaining experience from killing “creeps” or enemy heroes and collecting gold, acquiring items to strengthen the abilities of his/her character and eventually destroy the opponent team’s “Ancient” to achieve victory.
Website : www.dota2.com
Preview : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MuZmHEGqXQ
My Experience when I am playing
I am an experienced player of the game hence I am already well aware of the goals and objectives of the game, however this game never fails to bring the element of surprise up onto the table. Analysing with the Lens of Surprise (#4), the surprise element in the game is mainly due to the unpredictable element that other players may bring into the game and with the many different “heroes”/ characters, different variations and combination of skills which makes each gaming experience unique.
The in game mechanics is also very interesting as the game always takes place in the same landscape but by inserting a new hero/character, it introduce another set of new challenges. Using the Lens of Challenge (#38), the challenging aspect of the game comes from two components; firstly, understanding the skill mechanics of your chosen hero/ character and next is the skill level of your opponents and their ability to utilize the skills of their heroes/ characters. Although there may be a different set of mechanics for a different hero/ character, the goal remains unchanged, which is to destroy the opponents’ “Ancient” before the opponent destroy yours; By the Lens of Goals (#32), the goal of the game is simple and concrete.
The game requires good judgement and good choices to be made by the players, from item builds for your hero/ character to decision making during battles and these choices made throughout the game may affect the eventual result of the game. Using the Lens of Meaningful Choice (#39), these choices indeed makes the game more complex and difficult for newcomers to pick up right away.
What frustrates me the most while I was playing the game is the lack of teamwork during team battles and lack of communication within the team, regardless playing with strangers or with friends; this usually leads to a one-sided game that is in favour of the opponent’s team. Analysing this using the Lens of Cooperation (#44), the only mode communication the game offers is a chat box which requires you to take your hands off the things you are currently doing and put the effort into translating the things you want to tell your teammates into chat messages and your teammate on the other hand has to also take his/her time off to read your message. This task becomes too demanding when you are at crucial moments of the game, especially during battles. Other alternatives are to get 3rd party softwares that provide you with the platform to make verbal communication with your friends during the game or shout across the room to pass the message to your friend. However, these other alternatives do not apply when you are playing with strangers on the other side of the planet.
Last but not least, I would like to credit the game’s graphic and artwork. The game has very responsive animation feedbacks when a player clicks on a location to move his/her hero to as well as clicks on the hero skills to cast them. This certainly is a plus point for the aesthetics of the game.
Observing a friend play
In this observation, I find a friend who is new to the game to obtain results that have more contrast to what have been obtained earlier. My friend had a hard time choosing a hero to start with; this is due to the many options available and reading through the skills of each hero takes a huge amount of time, eventually, he used up all the time given during the hero selection phase. After taking a long time picking his hero of choice, he ended up taking even a longer time to look at the item shops to purchase items for his hero. By using the Lens of Meaningful Choice (#39), the game has failed to provide him a more beginner friendly approach to making these choices.
Despite being new to the game, he is still able to manoeuvre his hero to the place he wanted and targeting his enemies successfully. By the Lens of Control (#59), the game is able to provide him with the ability to control his character the way he wanted to.
However, being put up with players that have experience, he is at a great disadvantage. One huge factor that contributes to that, is the rate where the players are earning the in-game resources; to accurately deal the last damage to the enemy units will earn the player a certain amount of in-game resource and with his experience, he barely gets some with a bit of luck. This can be a big deciding factor to who have the upper hand during a clash between the teams. With the Lens of Skill (#34), this game certainly demands a certain level of skill, concentration and training from the players.
Although the goal of the game is simple and clear, my friend is unable to grasp the different in-game mechanics even at the end of the game. The complexity of the game attributes from the wide variety of items available and their combinations to form a stronger item and the skills of the heroes, the opponents’, his teammates’ and his, by analysing with The Lens of SimplicityComplexity (#48).
However, my friend do find the interface being intuitive, he knows where his health indicator is, where to find the amount of in-game resources he has, where to locate his heroes’ skills and he knows which are the enemy units and which are his allied units. By using the Lens of Transparency (#62), the game did a fairly good job designing an intuitive interface.
Comparison
Both observations reaps very different results, however, one very obvious fact is that experience definitely plays a big role in this game. And by the Lens of Skill vs Chance (#41), the scale heavily leans towards the skill side. It demands quite an amount of skill and high level of concentration from the player in their ability to make good decisions during the game. I being an experience player definitely enjoyed the game more as compared to my friend, being new to the game.
Hence by using the Lens of Interest Curve (#69), in this comparison, is an exponential upward curve when you plot the level of interest against the experience level of the player.
Looking at the Lens of Meaningful Choices (#39), the amount of choices to make in the game is too much to handle for a beginner, in my friend’s case whereas for a more experience player, these meaningful decisions makes the game more interesting and enjoyable as a whole.
The game considers the fact that players may not be able get any in-game resources throughout the game and thus implemented the feature where the players are able to gain the in-game resources periodically with time. This feature at the very least gives my friend to ability to buy items from the item shops despite the fact that he is unable to gain the in-game resources by other means. Using the Lens of Economy (#52), the game has kept his economy rather balanced.