Thoughts on Talents and Learning Curves in 7.00+
04 Jun 2017I haven’t written anything on Dota in a very long time. (Life is busy.) However, I’ve been meaning to comment on the changes in the Dota 7.00 update. As many players have already said, it is probably the biggest change to Dota 2 since it launched. There have been many important changes to the game, but I think the largest mechanic change has been the addition of Talents.
Talents - Do they improve gameplay?
Now that everyone has been playing for months with talents, it’s hard to imagine Dota without them. Talents have definitely added new and exciting elements to the game. Cooldowns reduced to a few seconds. Enhancements of key hero powers. Who can resist waiting for your own hero’s level 25 power spike? Certainly, some heroes have almost acquired new roles, with some supports acquiring heavy late-game damage abilities. Not only are there new abilities, but game-wide variables are being adjusted like respawn reductions (keep reading), additional gold per minute, and additional experience gain.
However, is this good for the game?
Talents - Concerns
My general opinion is that talents should not have been introduced. My main concerns are that some game variables shouldn’t be manipulated, and that talents make a game that is already notoriously difficult to learn, even harder. Assuming they can be balanced, talents are an inelegant game mechanic that could be better solved in other ways.
Changing variables that shouldn’t be changed
Most talents are a bonus to stats (str, agi, int) or hero variables (move speed, attack speed, range). However, one of the new aspects of talents is that they adjust game-wide variables, such as respawn rates, gold per minute, and xp per minute. Balancing these variables will be very difficult, and understanding these effects will be hard to see. Is a support hero stats or abilities too weak, or should they be expected to choose a gold or xp talent?
Adjusting variables like respawn rates eventually led to the imbalance in even pro matches. As a strong example, see Lina’s 79% win rate at the Dota Asia Championships. Thankfully, Icefrog has responded, and as of the 7.05 update, all of the respawn talents have been removed.
Making a steep learning curve even steeper
I started playing Dota in 2016, so I’m a relative newcomer. One very important topic I plan to write more about is the amount of knowledge to play Dota at an even basic level. The addition of talents now make new players have to acquire the knowledge of not only 140+ items, 110+ heroes, their 4 unique abilities, their unique playstyles, their surprising interactions with other heroes, but now also their unique talent trees with an additional 8 arbitrary variables. While some level 25 powers are rarely seen, other talents like Axe’s +75 damage at level 15 are generally too influential to not be aware of.
Because talent trees are specific to each hero, this is an additional 8 x 110 variables a new player needs to be aware of. When you play one hero it is not a big deal, but having to be aware of what talents your opponents and team members are choosing is important. If Dota takes 1000 games to become an intermediate player, with talents it now might take 1100 games.
Talents - an inelegant game mechanic
As a person interested in game design, the addition of talents seems like an inelegant way to add a new element to the game. From my understanding, talents were originally seen in Heroes of the Storm (HotS). In HotS, talents were a substitute for the complex item system that Dota and League of Legends have. HotS simplifies the economic side (or vertical power growth) to experience, i.e. there is no gold. In HotS, the way you adjust your situational hero build is by choosing different talents. In Dota, items (and gold) would theoretically play this role.
While there is a LOT to learn about for items, items are at least a general concept that applies to all heroes. Knowing how Radiance works with illusions allows you to apply that knowledge on all heroes, importantly Naga Siren or Alchemist.
Talents can be used to bluntly adjust a hero’s power curve. While I have full confidence in Icefrog and his team’s game balancing abilities, talents does take away from the emergent gameplay that Dota embodies. Talents can turn supports into semi-carries in a fairly arbitrary manner (Lich +120 damage, Techies +250 damage, etc.). They are not subtle linear improvements. Rather, they are often major alterations. Most of all, talents are not balanced on a horizontal basis between heroes. Some heroes have huge level 15 talents, while others have very modest bonuses. The talent modifications seem very arbitrary, and heavy-handed.
Talents - Already used to it?
Now that we’re already on Dota 7.06c, I strongly don’t think anyone at Valve is seriously considering removing talents. Talents are here to stay. However, I think it’s worth thinking about Dota before talents happened, and the direction of how the game is evolving. Dota is an amazing, amazing game. However, it suffers from high complexity, and the addition of any needless complexity should be avoided if possible. I’ll post more ideas on that later.