DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
[R.I.P] Forum
HTML https://ripclan.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: General Discussion
*****************************************************
#Post#: 61--------------------------------------------------
IceFrog Q&A Session #4
By: [R.I.P]^FlyZzz Date: May 15, 2010, 9:33 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Q: When will we hear more about you and Valve? Some people say
it will take 2-3 years, can you give us any clues? (from Zeyall)
A: It certainly won't take that long. There are a lot of very
talented people here at Valve that are working hard on it every
day to ensure high quality in a timely manner. We'll be making
an announcement soon actually, and based on the feedback I've
been getting since the last mention, I'm sure you all will be as
excited as I am.
Q: Can you tell us how you first met Valve and how you like it
so far? (from Sodoes)
A: It started off with an email from Valve where they mentioned
that they were big fans of DotA wanted to fly me out to spend
some time with them and visit their studio. I wasn't quite sure
what to expect from the trip. After arriving and chatting with
them, the first thing I noticed was how much of their decision
making process was like mine. They shared the same aspirations
towards building a long term and sustainable community without
having short sighted business goals that end up hurting the
quality of the game. One of the most important things for me
though was that there wasn't going to be anyone standing above
telling me how I should be doing things. They trust the
developers that have experience to make the best decisions for
their playerbase. The atmosphere at Valve allows everyone to be
very comfortable and able to focus on what they love doing. It
also doesn't hurt that they are huge DotA fans.. until their
favorite heroes are nerfed, then I'm the bad guy for a week!
Q: How popular is DotA these days? (from china_white)
A: I can only give estimates based on getdota.com usage, because
I can't track ingame downloads or fansites or downloads from
China. It is roughly estimated (based on the statistics from
popular Chinese sites) that the Chinese DotA audience is about
40-50% of the worldwide audience. Not counting China, the
playerbase is estimated to be somewhere between 7-11 million. I
expect the audience to grow even more in the not too distant
future.
Q: Is your goal to make everything picked the same amount of
times? (from j.walsh)
A: I don't think about it that way exactly. Sure it's good if
there is a nice distribution and that is something to work
towards, but really the goal in DotA's development is, first and
foremost, to make the gameplay quality the best it can be. It is
the combination of all the heroes, items and mechanics together
that makes DotA what it is and not the individual elements
alone. Sometimes that means certain things are carefully
adjusted to be more frequent than others, sometimes it doesn't,
but ultimately the main judge of a game's quality is not in some
artificial balance metric, but in the overall gameplay quality
and depth that it has.
Q: Can you tell us something about 6.68? (from Carlos)
A: It is still a work in progress and needs some time, but it
will have new heroes, more balance improvements, and some new
features as well. Here is one of the new heroes in development:
Icarus, the Phoenix
Q: What do you think about DotA's future, will it continue to
grow? (from Amir)
A: Definitely. I think players like to spend their time on
something they both enjoy and trust. While DotA has a lot to
offer now in terms of content and gameplay quality, I will
always be working hard to improve it and all that work will be
maintained when it matures to something that solves all the
other non-gameplay elements that it needs to go to the next
level. I think it is a good option for players that want to
spend time on a game that will grow with them. It also has a
very bright future in the competitive scene. In addition to the
already announced SMM ($32,000), ESWC ($24,500), a soon to be
announced online ($30,000) event and another huge offline event
that will be revealed soon, there will also be an even bigger
set of opportunities in the future for players that are
dedicating their time and energy into DotA. I think players on
all levels of play will be satisfied with their choice and
experience with the game.
Q:Why are some heroes unavailable in -CM mode? (from Brandom
Lim)
A: It is a largely experimental idea so it may or may not remain
for the future. There are a lot of different reasons for it
though. In some cases it's balance or bug-potential related.
Other times it is done to limit the number of simultaneous
changes so that certain changes can be more easily measured. In
a lot of cases where the above aren't a factor, it is actually
done to give enough opportunity for players to understand how to
play with and against them and understand the strengths and
weaknesses better. This also makes new versions less
destabalizing for competitive gaming while still providing a
continuous stream of fresh content. That being said though, I've
gotten a lot of requests from players that use the mode for
casual or semi-competitive play and miss omitted heroes, so I
may add a subcommand to unlock all.
Q: What do you think about the fan support of competitive teams?
(from Mooseman)
A: Fan support is, for the most part, very good. I think it's
great how passionate many of them are about competitive DotA. At
times, though, some of them can be a little too judgmental
towards teams based on their last few consecutive wins or
losses. They have a lot of pressure on them and sometimes they
make mistakes or just want to relax and try something different.
I don't think it is always fair to judge them for that. They
also face top competition regularly, so its hard to win every
time. Teams have a lot of pride and spend a lot of time
practicing, so it can be demoralizing to them when some fans
change their attitudes towards them so fast.
Q: Are we going to see more visual effects in the future? (from
Zikaro)
A: Visual upgrades can be a good thing (and they will come in
the future) but is extremely important to not add too much
visual noise. You want a scene that has a nice atmosphere and
theme but isn't too cluttered or shiny that it negatively
affects gameplay by making it hard to tell what is going on.
Q: Should we expect to see any more loadscreens by Kunkka? (from
27302)
A: Yes, he is planning a new one now, but I can't tell you when
it will be done since it depends on his free time.
Q: Do you use WC3 Editor by itself or other things as well?
(from Sasha200)
A: Most of the map development is done outside of the editor
actually. There are a lot of separate script files and program
tools that are used together to create the map file.
Q: Any interesting bugs or features that were in beta maps?
(from OpyyuRDs)
A: We once had a different ability for Techies that used the
same visual art and sound effects from starcraft one for the
ghost nuke. When he used it, a red indicator would appear on the
ground like in Starcraft and then it would play the classic
"Nuclear Launch Detected" audio. It sounded a lot cooler than it
played out in practice and it was near the end of a beta cycle
and had some balancing and design issues, so we decided to
remove it instead of rush it in. As far as bugs go, Chaos Knight
could pull towers in one beta version, so you were able to have
a line of towers pushing on the enemy side!
Q: Will more heroes get an Aghanim upgrade to their ultimate?
(from Akder)
A: Yea, I usually try to add some more every version or two. I
think it's a good idea to add them in slowly though, instead of
too many at once. I've also gotten more requests for extra
graphic animations for the ones that already have, so I'll try
to find suitable ones for those as well.
Q: What is the hardest part when developing dota? What risks are
there? (from Bannion)
A: The hardest part is actually not the development itself, but
in how to measure success. The thing I always try to work on the
most is increasing the measurability/prediction of a successful
patch. The goal is to be able to improve the development process
and feedback systems for better accuracy to what reasonates best
with players. The riskiest thing is making a change where it
might take too long to discover its true impacts on the game
where it becomes hard to reverse. We work really hard to
eliminate that stuff early on in the theory phase with either
careful analysis or specific beta testing.
Q: How do you decide when to release a new patch? (from VinceX)
A: There are two separate considerations for this. The first is
frequency. If you update too frequently players do not get a
chance to settle into the previous changes and learn the game,
if you update too slowly then you aren't providing enough fresh
content. It is a balance between the two that I'm always trying
to find a happy medium between as I get more feedback from
players. The second is when it's "ready". I usually release it
as soon as I feel that the value we get out of more internal
testing is too low compared to external feedback we'd get from
the larger community. If we are still in the experimenting phase
where we are trying out ideas then it's not ready. Once it feels
like it needs external testing to be able to make more good
decisions, then it is released. From my perspective, the game is
in constant development and improvement regardless, it just
becomes a matter of what is the most effective way to improve
something.
Q: What takes the most time each patch? Researching, Balancing,
Implementing or Bug Hunting? (from Enders)
A: The two most time consuming are usually research and
experimentation. Research involves more than just playing the
game, it's also watching replays, reading a wide range of
feedback and talking with players. Experimentation is the other
time consuming part. It would be fast to just reproduce a patch
if I already knew exactly what to do, but the hard part is
usually figuring out what you want to do and doing the proper
testing before making changes.
Q: What are you most happy about with regards to DotA? (from
Artem)
A: I am really thankful for all the support players have given
this game, it is more than I could ask for. I see a vibrant
community that, despite the very hard learning curve DotA has,
grows through the dedication and passion of its players. That
shows me how much more potential the game has and encourages me
to work harder
#Post#: 62--------------------------------------------------
Re: IceFrog Q&A Session #4
By: limzihao Date: May 15, 2010, 10:43 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Hey dun Copy Paste From Other Forum =.=
#Post#: 68--------------------------------------------------
Re: IceFrog Q&A Session #4
By: TheRaveZ Date: May 15, 2010, 11:04 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
i got see this at forum getdota.com .. i also hear IceFrog want
kick some DotA hero ..
#Post#: 71--------------------------------------------------
Re: IceFrog Q&A Session #4
By: [R.I.P]^FlyZzz Date: May 15, 2010, 11:06 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=TheRaveZ link=topic=14.msg68#msg68
date=1273982692]
i got see this at forum getdota.com .. i also hear IceFrog want
kick some DotA hero ..
[/quote]
dont kik leh==
#Post#: 150--------------------------------------------------
Re: IceFrog Q&A Session #4
By: TheRaveZ Date: May 16, 2010, 1:16 am
---------------------------------------------------------
he say he will hehe
#Post#: 159--------------------------------------------------
Re: IceFrog Q&A Session #4
By: [R.I.P]^FlyZzz Date: May 16, 2010, 1:23 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=TheRaveZ link=topic=14.msg150#msg150
date=1273990612]
he say he will hehe
[/quote]
so bad==
#Post#: 193--------------------------------------------------
Re: IceFrog Q&A Session #4
By: TheRaveZ Date: May 16, 2010, 2:37 am
---------------------------------------------------------
some people like to remove slark and void funny ...
#Post#: 194--------------------------------------------------
Re: IceFrog Q&A Session #4
By: [R.I.P]^FlyZzz Date: May 16, 2010, 2:38 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=TheRaveZ link=topic=14.msg193#msg193
date=1273995445]
some people like to remove slark and void funny ...
[/quote]
ravez jr member n i full member d^^
#Post#: 200--------------------------------------------------
Re: IceFrog Q&A Session #4
By: TheRaveZ Date: May 16, 2010, 2:43 am
---------------------------------------------------------
later i edit hehe ... Full member i edit to 300 post ;D
#Post#: 202--------------------------------------------------
Re: IceFrog Q&A Session #4
By: [R.I.P]^FlyZzz Date: May 16, 2010, 2:44 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=TheRaveZ link=topic=14.msg200#msg200
date=1273995801]
later i edit hehe ... Full member i edit to 300 post ;D
[/quote]
lol
*****************************************************
DIR Next Page