Geib Newell has one undeniable dignity – it can deftly bring other people's ideas to mind, turning them into diamonds. Thanks to this approach, Valve has at one time ennobled a lot of amateur modifications, including Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, Portal and Counter-Strike. All these episodes are still enjoyed by well -deserved popularity, which means that Valve is rarely mistaken.
Of course, only carefully selected candidates receive full support and financing. One of the recent “acquisitions” of the company was Abdul “Icefrog” Ismail, a playing designer in narrow circles and the key author of the Dota Allstars Fashion for Warcraft 3. It was hired to create a project, which was supposed to become the most popular game in the digital service Steam – Dota 2 in two years.
Abdul coped with the task even earlier.
Your tower under the attack
The first "Dota" has become one of the most popular multiplayer games of our time. The sequel secured success and broke his records: the number of users simultaneously playing Dota 2 via Steam has recently stably exceeds the mark of 300,000 people. Where did such folk love come from?
The game owes its popularity to two factors: an elementary concept and a hardcore approach, taking into account hundreds of nuances that are mixed every time, like molecules in organic soup.
The game uses a standard camera and a similar interface for real -time strategies, but the battles are seasoned with a drive and elements of role -playing action. Roughly speaking, Dota looks like like Starcraft 2 , But you do not build a base and dispose of a single character. Moreover, each time it has to be developed from scratch as part of the match – from the first level to the maximum twenty -fifth.
[Bullet]] Explosions, Lightning, Small spells and quickly flying out the figures of damage – an inexperienced person risks confusing what is happening with the conquest of Diablo 3 on the complexity of Inferno.
Two teams collide on the battlefield – the warriors of the light and the minions of darkness, in each of which five heroes are fought, selected from an extensive file cabinet. Both sides have on the base, and three paths lead from one to the other. In turn, three rows of protective towers are located along the tracks, which at the beginning of the match of a serious threat to low -level heroes.
The upper and lower parts of the map are mirroring each other, and the main word in the vocabulary of the players is the “Foreign Ministry” – the middle path intended for especially bloody SECh. It is easiest to get to the inhospitable doors of a foreign base in the Foreign Ministry, so there is always increased interest in it.
The main idea of the game is elementary: it is necessary to destroy the towers of the opponent, and then reduce his huts and a building called ancient with the ground-the heart of the base, which is simple by the throne.
Which most amazes beginners-in the game only one card in the game. This can scare away the uninitiated players: where it is visible, so that in the project designed for many hours of network battles there are no other maps? Like it or not, everyone loves diversity.
[[Bullet]] The heart of the base of the warriors of the light is destroyed. The ancient fell, which means that the match came to an end and the victorious villains celebrate without hesitation.
Here the second factor in the frantic popularity of Dota 2 comes into business. Although the card does not change, each subsequent match still does not look like the previous. Why? The game is corny in the game a lot of truly different, unique heroes with an extensive arsenal of opportunities and a lot of artifacts (bought during a match in shops scattered in terms of level).
At the time of writing the review in the game, 102 were available (!) the character: zombies, necromancers, robots, invisibility, an ancient deity creating doubles of a leprekon-geologist, a handful of specialists in the call of small units, which requires good micro-study skills, etc. You can imagine how many different combinations are built during the match.
Skill from the bottom came
Valve hired not only Abdul, but also other participants in the DOTA community to develop the second part, and therefore the continuation remained true to the traditions of the original: both strategies are regularly updated with a small interval, new heroes from the first “bunker” are gradually added to the second, and even the balance is ruleed With an eye on an older brother.
Each of a hundred and extra characters have three parameters: intelligence, strength and dexterity. Depending on their values, the division occurs into specialization – security forces, dodgers and magicians.
Pumping is carried out by killing the champions of the enemy team and countless monsters-statistics. Some players right at the beginning of the match go to the “jungle” (Russian players call them a forest out of habit) – the place of accumulation of freaks on the equator of the card – and quickly swing, preparing for the battles of the “team for the team” format.
[[Bullet]] Setting window allows you to equip a hero before the match or put up bonus items. For example, an increase in the experience or corporate courier of the Na’VI team (only 299 rubles apiece!).
Many characters of the original "Dota" were taken from the plot campaign Warcraft 3. The rights to the universe remain with Blizzard , Therefore, Valve developers were forced to change the appearance, names and biographies of heroes, but retained their unique abilities.
Warriors are collected for every taste: some are able to maintain invisibility, appearing on the screen only after the attack, others can beat with lightning from heaven, stop the time or shoot firecrackers through the entire map, the others are ready to save the battered hero with teleportation on the base and so on.
However, there are no strict rules for the development of champions, even avid tanks, such as a knight Sven, are capable of playing the role of a killer (specializing in attack) and support (support). For reference: the support fighter puts on the map of beacons, dispersing unknown areas, pumps a store courier (an expensive bot that allows you not to go to the base for objects) and, as a rule, does not achieve monsters, so that the experience of them is taken on the team.
The universal pets are the dwarf Ricky, who loves to attack from the back, and the half-decomposed butcher, a puja butter with protruding giblets, who pulls his victims with a hook and kills them with a cadaverous smell of his own sewage.
[[Bullet]] The Dazal character has just healed himself, his partner and several monsters-cryes. He knows how to help out in difficult, almost hopeless situations and is very useful as a support.
The eternally hungry bear of Ursa is stored for sweets, who alone kills the strongest monster on the map https://sister-site.org/golden-genie/ – Roshan. Funny fact: the gamers tease him Ravshan, and he received his name from the name of his favorite ball for Bowling one of the creators of the first “Dot”. The team who confused Roshan has a significant advantage: if the hero who took the heart of the monster is killed, he is restored after five seconds at the scene of death, without the need to go to the Tavern (to the base) and wait for the resurrection there. In addition, the death of the owner of the artifact does not bring him any gold to the killers, and Roshan himself automatically comes to life ten minutes after his death – the poor man is doomed to serve forever to serve the dairy cow.
Caught under the fountain
At the beginning of the match, the champions are divided into mini-groups and occupy all three paths, looking at the gaps in the defense of the enemy. The initial phase of the battle, as a rule, is monotonous and repeated from the game of the game: fighters carefully exterminate the monsters on their half of the card and try to catch any of the enemy heroes on the mistake.
Only one player enters the Foreign Ministry who has to become the main killer of the team, gaining a high level faster than the rest. Successful "Miders" help the team gain weight, making attention and thereby allowing comrades to pump up too. After that, the game moves to the middle phase, when the champions are random and hunt by the group, simultaneously destroying the towers and looking at Roshan. Coordinated hunting by the whole team for the enemy mini-groups is called "gank".
[Bullet]] A convenient encyclopedia is built into the game, ready to tell everything about heroes, artifacts and recommendations for rocking characters from more experienced players.
Full-component battles are distinguished by a large number of special effects and pompous spells: a hurricane of ice, fire and lightning are happening on the screen, “Silence”, temporarily depriving the hero of abilities, the nearest comrade turns into stone, something will light up ..
But this is not all. Often artillery enters the battle. So, the game has a gnome on a helicopter and a robot with a set of lasers for frying from the distance. The crippled landscape pierces the most powerful spell of the ancient titanium, and the destructive light beats from the crack, and the inexorable archer, meanwhile, lets the ice arrows into the victims.
Successful survival in the middle and late stage requires a well -coordinated teamwork, otherwise the losers, like the real “crayfish”, will be “at the bottom”.
Some of the heroes are just created with an eye that their murderous power will prove themselves only in Leita (as the players call the final stage of the match). A good example of a leitist is Abaddon, who debuted immediately after Dota 2 from the beta test. This hero, who quickly gained popularity, was known in Warcraft 3 as Prince Artas – the son of the king, who chose the path of the necromancer. Remember this? Abaddon is able to heal himself and cripple the enemies, tearing off pieces of dead flesh from himself. Puj, envy!
The cape fair
DOTA 2 is a conditionally paying project, and Valve earns on an in-game store, constantly updating the models of heroes and releasing clothing for characters. Fortunately, there were without a total monopoly: thanks to the Steam workshop, to make a costume, decoration or texture of the interface to their liking can be a player. If it is quite popular, it will be added to the store and the lucky author, along with the developers, will receive deductions from sales.
About the same scheme, the super-impressive Team Fortress 2 works, but if it was a pen of the pen for Valve, the circuit, then in Dota 2 “Bidding hats” acquired a truly pandemic nature and attracted hundreds of enterprising comrades who are ready at any time to exchange any ax for real money bypassing the store. Nevertheless, most of the content is now produced by Valve.
[[Bullet]] The British team is trying to destroy one of the towers on the central path. Judging by the sluggish defense of the defenders, they are quite on the shoulder. Noticed that the screen was painted red? It seems that our hero was painfully hit.
Their most successful idea is to sell the interactive book of the compensation, launched directly from D2. It brings a bunch of new opportunities and items to the game, and due to profit from sales of the book, the prize fund of the main Dota production of the year is replenished-The International tournament (at the time of writing the review it was $ 2,684,540, and more than a million dollars-the merit of the compensation).
Book-Real Nou-Hau Valve. This is not another content-pack, but a uniquely organized semblance of Gold subscriptions in Xbox Live, for which, however, you need to pay only once.
The owners of the compensation have a preemptive right to vote for the addition of certain heroes to the game plus receive special collection cards, which, imagine, are literally glued to the pages of the book. Remember how in the nineties all children collected stickers for albums with some kind of ninja turtles? So here, only solid bonuses are relied on for collecting full compositions.
Two strongholds
The advantages of the Steam client, the free game, its elaboration and variability allowed dota 2 to become what Counter-Strike was once once. This is a real personification of the cult of yeast. The phenomenon of unanimous success is both among players and among critics.
Today, the game has only two serious competitors: Leage of Legends and Nivalovsky Prime World. But if Moba from Russians is just starting the expansion of the Western markets, then Lol has already managed to gain popularity both in Europe and in America. We must pay tribute, deserved success: this is a high -quality genre game, which is an order of magnitude more friendly to its user than Dota 2.
[[Bullet]] Everything that did not fit in the inventory (6 slots) can wait for the owner in a cache in the courier base or carcass. With couriers, it’s generally interesting, this is a know-how series; In LOL, for example, there are no couriers. The store is allowed to choose a model of a courier of dozens of options.
The creation of Valve still retains a whole string of disadvantages. At the launch, the game was among the most raw projects in the history of Steam-even after the end of beta testing it is corrected on the go, in real time. Servers often behave unstable, D2 Network sometimes turns off, sometimes you have to look for rivals for a long time. The matchmaking system deserves a separate slap: often, experienced veterans are exposed against weak players, leaving the first chance to compete on an equal footing. At the same time, Dota 2 has become, without offenses, the most bulky work of Valve in recent years, a lot of time, labor and money is spent on its debugging.
However, we have no doubt that all errors will be corrected by inexhaustible patches. But the main problem of the game, which is especially visible against the backdrop of the LOL officially represented in Russia, is the unfriendly community and the lack of comfortable conditions for beginners is to overcome not just.
Meanwhile, against the backdrop of the popularity of Dota 2 and Leage of Legends, many game publishers, including Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment , Electronic Arts And Activision Blizzard , hastened to announce their moba. Someone likes it or not, the once highly specialized genre occupied one of the large niches in the modern entertainment industry.
The high threshold of the entry and depth of gameplay is distinguished by D2 against the background of colleagues. It allows you to hone your skills on bots or online for an infinitely long time, trying to get closer to perfection. For many, the carousel from endless training and competition has become an integral part of life, and this is explainable: Dota 2 is a delightful e -sports shell and just a very tight game.
But this lies one of its minuses: many relate to Dota too seriously. It happens that you will start a game with a random company, and they immediately begin to scream at you with a commanding voice – run there, do what you are so slow and all like that. If you play not with close friends, then you risk getting negative experience, but we still advise you to try. Not so often in the genre there are such exciting projects. Well, all the fanatics want to wish to be calmer. Games are great, we all love them, but we must not forget about the simple rules of decency and mutual respect.
Reigracy:
Cool plot:
Originality:
Easy to master:
Gameplay:
9
Graphics:
7
Sound and music:
9
Interface and management:
8
Waited?
One of the main PC exclusives of our time. Thinking and deep game, which, however, can scare away newcomers with their harsh character. However, this is not very critical. Dota 2 is clearly waiting for a great future, in the coming years Valve will bring to mind an already excellent game, and then it can be recommended to everyone without a twinge of conscience without a twinge.
Mania rating: 9.0
"Fabulous"
Crayfish click with claws
Why Russians don't like
As a large -scale phenomenon, Dota 2 enriched the vocabulary of our compatriots: previously harmless words “bottom”, “fat” and “drag” received new, often negative meanings, and the verb “cracked” the Russian game in D2.
Interestingly, slang is not the only branded line, in the absence of an official publisher in the CIS, who gave the game a domestic flavor-the Russians have already become famous on the entire Internet with their insolence, unfriendliness, illiteracy, ignorance of their native and English, as well as an unwillingness to listen to someone else's tips. On the Steam forums, you can find entire gunscan guidelines, flaunting derogatory definitions and examples. Because of this, adequate players from Russia, who are also many, are very often embarrassed to admit their roots and prefer to play on European servers. The situation is offensive to the pain, but only itself remains to blame for it.