a) is not true.
The only single thing that dota2 brung for game mechanics:
If you have life leech on drow, you no longer need to put autocast on, if you want to orb walk with frost arrow.
matrice come on dude, Rubick could steal almost nothing back then, now he can steal everything. Also looks like you really don't like Dota 2, why don't you go back and play Dota 1 then?
+ nothing workd with Weaver's Geminate, you couldn't lifesteal/burn mana/- armor/true strike/slow, etc.
You cant say that dota 2 brung nothing to the game. The superior engine allowed many things to happen.
And i dont think that Valve changed Icefrog.
Maybe he tries new things, or maybe he does things that he had in mind way back, but he couldn't do it because of the WC3 engine
I actually think he might be forced into following a pattern by Valve because they obviously want more players to play the game so making the game more noob-friendly is good for Valve.
Icefrog is making the game more 'team-based.'
But the problem is, dota isn't a team game. It's an asymmetrical co-op. I've lost count of the number of games where people on my team would pick useless shit (or random their heroes and not know how to play them) and I'm supposed to 1x5 the enemy team. It's way more difficult now due to the gold bounty reductions and basically you have to fight while surviving through every encounter. The easiest way is to use your teammates as meat shields, but ofc you get those games where nobody wants to do anything and you're stuck with a hero that falls off late.
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Sry for bringing up "le nostalgia argument xdddd" )))) but if you've followed Dota 1 since at least 2010 you will notice a general theme in Dota's balance changes. Icefrog would willingly revert a previous buff/nerf to a hero if he felt that change affected the hero's viability too much. The introduction of radical mechanics also tended to happen less frequently. Here's what I could remember back then:
- Different players' TP to the same building will take longer (in 6.6x era, this is because in the previous patch all TP would take 3s which discouraged ganking by a tower a lot)
- Introduce buyback cooldown (in 6.6x era, after a pro game where YYF would use buyback on Storm over and over to defend base)
But now you look at the changes in Dota 2 and a radical changes happen much more frequently from 2013 onwards:
- Neutral creeps now share XP to all players around their death location, nerfing the junglers (in 6.79)
- Introduce new hero bounty formula and therefore spawning the memeback, memeband (in 6.82)
- Introduce glyph resetting (in 6.82)
- Another overhaul of the hero bounty formula, this time let's nerf the creep bounty as well (in 6.84)
- Changes to discourage split pushing. You are not allowed to pick heroes like Terrorblade and NP if you want to win. Games must be "ackshun-pakked" with 5memeballs collding into each other.
- Icefrog stopped reverting buffs and nerfs. According to his modus operandi nowadays, a hero can't be buffed and nerfed later in the same area.
I have come up with 4 possible explanations so tell me what you guys think about this.
a. Dota 2 runs on Source engine which has more potential than War 3 engine, so most of the changes are experimenting with the technical superiority of new engine (proof: There is no longer release time parity between Dota 2 gameplay patch and Dota map in War 3)
b. Icefrog is coming under corporate pressure to make the game more casual-friendly.
c. Icefrog drank the Kool-Aid and is now willing to introduce terrible mechanics into the game design.
d. Valve's employees have relieved Icefrog of his decision making right. They have taken over the entire process. Icefrog is now just a mouthpiece and advice giver.